The opening track of Buletten & Blumen, Siriusmo’s fourth album, is multi-faceted. ‘That Could Funktion As A Song’ begins with the sound of a computer logging on. A metronome starts. Then a stranger mutters “Hmmm… cool. So that could function as a song… I guess.” The uncanny voice has all the emotional detachment of a scripted call centre helpline or, more chillingly, an AI. “Ok, ok,” says that voice again “I like instruments,” but the intonation is off. It builds symphonically before fading out into the clatter of computer keys being punched. Herbie Hancock meets The Muppets’ Mah Na Mah Na, as the track lighthouses a sea of undulating synths. While the satirical-cum-philosophical, broken haiku of the spoken word sections makes the listener simmer in a stew of late stage capitalism.
Man, machine and music make for a gruesome thruple, as AI snaps at the napkins corners of music (from Velvet Sundown and Xania Monet to The Beatles and Spotify AI’s DJ). Wisely Siriusmo nudges us to go back, if not explicitly to The Garden then some time Before.
Like Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo, Friedrich draws from the velvet-cushioned well of Cerrone and Patrick Hernandez, but unlike Daft Punk he does not embrace the implicit visual theatre of his music. Quite the opposite – since he began in the early 00s Siriusmo has been inching out of dance music’s main room, toe by toe, disappearing a little bit more with each album release. A DJ who doesn’t like doing live performances, whose press photos see him pose with a finger up his nose and whose recording studio proudly resembles a fresher’s dumpster bedroom, he makes Burial look like a contestant on Celebrity Traitors.
If the music does the talking, on Buletten & Blumen the oral through line is a warm, dissonant teetering-on-the-edge-of-out-of-tuneness retro synth sound. The importance of the past is made explicit from the cover photo.The mise-en-scène of the recording room is all misty eyed nostalgic romanticism: a vintage organ, a Nutcracker doll, a polaroid, a small, portable TV monitor. This time before the internet.
The dreamlike, classically piano led ‘Koko’ features a warm, clipped voice, gently but urgently saying: “Koko love earth, Koko love, but man stupid, stupid. Koko sorry. Koko cry. Help earth. Fix earth.” It’s an audio stand in for Koko, the real life Gorilla who learned sign language and communicated her worries for the world via an interpreter. She’s become a totemic symbol of mother nature’s concerns over man’s environmental destruction. The message of the yearning, hymnal track recalls Anthony & The Johnson’s ambient protest anthem Free At Last, which featured the powerful voice of intersex activist Dr Julia Yasuda.
But as suggested on ‘That Could Funktion As A Song’, there’s also the shits and giggles side of Siriusmo, where Buletten & Blumen is a bit like attempting to have a conversation with someone who’s looking at three computer screens at once. The contrary messiness is exhilaratingly human. ‘The Synthesiser Has Been Drinking’ combines a droopy eyed, descending keyboard line with a melody that resembles Hot Butter’s ‘Popcorn’, while ‘In Der Klemme’ starts off like the theme from Space Invaders before taking in Silent Shout’s devilish descending synth sounds, medieval tribal moans and possibly the sound of the fridge door alarm going to indicate you’ve not closed it properly. “I just want to make them feel as comfortable as possible and that can get boring because it’s just one concept over and over,” says the uncredited voice at the start of ‘In Der Klemme’. And that’s exactly the spirit of this astonishing album, which oozes with opaque riffs, unpredictability and big beautiful ideas.
