Wonderful words by the ever erudite Adam Turner. 

Konformer come from Nuremberg, a city steeped in all kinds of history. The three piece band – synths, bass and drums – make music that recalls the culture of West Germany in the late 1960s and 70s, the motorik and kosmische sounds of Neu!, La Dusselfdorf, Harmonia and Cluster. The fun of the autobahn.

Their second album, Konformer II, is 6 tracks long and has a geography / travel theme with numbers named after Mont Ventoux, Marseille, Todmorden, and Berufsverkehr – the German word for rush hour traffic. It begins with Konfektio Suite – I – Participation Mystique, an epic intro to ease us into the journey; a single ringing note and wash of synths. The bassline takes the lead, as it does on so many Konformer compositions; the grooves and melodies built around Rainer Ruder’s bass, a slow motion four string loop pushing and pulling. There are touches of early New Order in Konformer’s sound; the New Order of Martin Hannett, Movement and Procession, the period just before the disco kicked in, but with less post-industrial dread (and no vocals).

Konfektio Suite II – Persona – III – Affekt – IV – Schatten follows, another 8 minute track that unfolds at its own pace; the synths bringing some light to accompany the shade of the rhythm section. Easy going, sunny afternoon psychedelic krautrock the piece gathers velocity and intensity in its second half; its drums driving and the B-line spiralling and looping in a seemingly endless locked groove.

Marseille heads in the opposite direction, the bass loop descending rather than ascending. Minimalist, but rich in detail, the 3 instruments head perpetually towards a horizon that they never quite reach. Big synth chords come in like a weather front, and that bass begins to pick out a new melody line.

Mont Ventoux has whooshes and swirls, the mountain’s Mistral winds rushing by as the rhythm section keeps on keeping on, locked in, pedalling hard like the peloton climbing to Ventoux’s lunar summit.

We finish in Todmorden; a postcard from Nuremberg to the Calder Valley, Konformer channelling their Neu! Order influences into something uniquely their own – the bass loops and drums hypnotic and absorbing, the synths trippy and spangled. Licht und schatten.

Konformer II can be ordered directly from Bandcamp. 

In late August, the band are heading to the UK for a week of live dates: Ramsgate, London, Bristol, Liverpool, Todmorden, Barrow-in-Furness and finishing at Manchester’s Psyche Fest on Saturday 5th September.

You can find more proper, on point, prose from Adam Turner over at his own brilliant blog, The Bagging Area. Adam is also part of the admin at the mighty Flightpath Estate.