Christoph de Babalon

How, you may wonder, does Christoph de Babalon deign to begin the most exhilarating and challenging electronic/noise/techno/drum-and-bass/whatever record in recent memory? With a ten-plus minute percussionless dirge-shriek entitled Opium, thats how. Just like Third Eye Foundation or the Melvins at their most immovable, but more like vapor trails and dementia.

From what I can gather, Christoph de Babalon has been actively destroying music and being a John Peel darling since 1994, though this is his first full-length. Hes based in Germany, theres another hint. Can I just add one more biographical note about Babalon before I talk about the record? He looks eerily like Ian Curtis in every photo I have seen. This is an important point of context in understanding the techno-existential hell of If Youre Into It, Im Out Of It.

The exhilaration never fades after Opium. Nostep is best described as a cross between a circuit board shorting out and a seizure. What You Call a Life is simply gorgeous, crossing deranged spoken samples with hyper beats like a suicidal Photek. Dead (Too) and Damaged III are all nervous twitches and paranoia -- vicious and unrelenting. The Photek (and this is a good thing) ghost shows its face again in Release -- with perfect crystal layers of drum programming.

Intriguingly, the record is divided into four sides, each side beginning with an epic ambient funeral arrangement before the aggression begins again. There could be a conceptual arrangement but I was too enraptured by the drum and bass void closer of My Confession to formulate any grand theories. That Babalon can so effectively balance the necessities of silence and noise is just another testament to his...

There is not one flaw on this album. Babalon manipulates isolationism, jungle, drone, illbient, experimental noise -- its all his for the taking now. If there were any appreciation of true art left in the music industry, 80% of all musicians would be happily retiring upon hearing If Youre Into It... and Cat Powers Moon Pix, then becoming shoe salesmen just because they knew that they could never better this. Not this one.

Never have I heard such an evocative, lyrical album, without any words at all. Babalons sound excursions are obviously intensely personal and terrifying at the same time. Mick Harris and Richard (Aphex Twin) James are the only two reference points I would dare to suggest to you. If Youre Into It... is gloriously self-indulgent and unhinged, like everything that is young and snotty and brilliant. Step to this.

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As part of 6 Music Selector, all of this week's Albums of the Day have been selected by different members of Radiohead. (...) Today it's Thom Yorke's turn. Read on for Thom's thoughts about 'If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It':

I choose this record because it's the most menacing record I own and it's kind of how I imagined drum and bass was always going to be and then it wasn't. But not all of it is drum and bass, there's some very peculiar ambient stuff as well. He kind of splits his work between ambience and some pretty fierce beats.

This record keeps surprising me in different contexts. You have to be in a certain headspace for it. When he does his ambience it's really alarming - really sucks you in. It's a low-fi record, it's all done on early S1000 samplers I think it was done in 1994.

The first track I would choose would be My Confession, which seems to sum up the whole record. It starts very menacingly and you think 'OK, where's this going' and then it explodes into the most amazing drum and bass solo thing. And it just keeps freaking out and goes on forever and I never get bored of hearing it, it's so full-on and extreme.

The second track I would choose is What You Would Call A Life. There's something about the way the beat moves in this and the way that he cuts it really slowly that is really slinky. And there's this amazing drum thing at the end. I just listen to the way he's done it, the way he's put the beats together and knowing how simple the setup was it just amazes me because the beat on it is so sexy.

I think it's a very unusual record as a piece of work because there's not many drum and bass albums that fits together as an album and make you want to listen to it but this really does. This my ultimate drum and bass album even though it's not a drum and bass record; There are no formulas involved.

The third track I would choose would be Opium it's probably called that for a very good reason. This is how I would love ambient music to be, he takes tiny segments of music and speeds them up or slows them down and creates these echoes that build up and up.

My fourth selection would be Release, this one is chosen specifically for its outrageous bass.

A lot of this album is embedded in distortion which is one of the trademarks of the label Digital Hardcore. This is also very slinky, I like the high samples. When I listen to this I imagine him hitting the pads and having a really nice time doing it, this strange chap from Berlin.

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Coverlover: 'If You're Into It, I'm Out Of It'

Das Cover ist eine Porträtaufnahme, die Christoph in seinen eigenen Wohn- und Produktions-Räumlichkeiten selbst gemacht hat. Es ist zunächst eine Lifestyle-Geste, illustriert aber auch den Titel und bringt eine gewisse Haltung auf den Punkt, um die es bei Christoph de Babalon als Kunstfigur geht.

Die Musik ist in diesem Fall vom Rest getrennt kaum vorstellbar, zu gravierend wirkt die Absichts-Ebene in ihr nach. Die Perfektion und Präzision, mit der hier Kommunikation und Nicht-Kommunikation betrieben wird, in der noch einmal alle Grade von Künstlichkeit und Authentizität angerissen werden, ist sehr besonders und verwirrend. Das zentrale Thema: Abgefuckheit.

Das wollte Christoph auch immer, das wollten viele bei DHR, aber er hat es am besten hinbekommen. Das konnte ansonsten nur Shizuo, aber der nur auf der Bühne. Manchmal ging das bei Portät-Fotos auf ec8or-Platten. Die Art des scheinbar zufälligen Dastehens, einen Citybound-Sweater tragend, unter dem auch noch ein Polohemd durchblitzt, die in verschiedenste Richtungen determinierte Frisur konfrontiert uns mit einem Wald aus Zeichen, dessen Geäst sich derart gut verwoben hat, dass deutlich wird, hier ist Mitmachen nicht erwünscht.

Diese Ausschlussgeste setzt sich in dem genialen Titel fort, dessen Aussage keine Zweifel daran lässt, dass das hier auch wirklich ernst gemeint ist! Und ist es nicht genau das, was in Menschen ein Höchstmaß von dem, was in der Mode "Desire" genannt wird, produziert?

Nicht zu schweigen von der sexualpolitischen Dimension wird hier auch noch eine ganz verklausulierte Form der Sexiness angeboten, deren eindeutige Zuschreibung jedoch ebenfalls unmöglich scheint. In der Textur des Covers kommt es noch mal zu einem sowohl auf die Musik wie auch auf deren historische Hintergründe beziehbaren zentralen Konflikt, der am besten mit analog vs. digital bezeichnet werden kann. Hinten sieht man eine kopierte Fläche, vorne gibt es Pixel. Es bedient sich gewissermassen beider Lager.