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Inner Sleeve: Felix Kubin
- Issue #302 (Apr 09) | Inner Sleeve
- By: Felix Kubin | Featuring: Ich Bin
- Printable version
Ich Bin – Obéis! (Poutre Apparente 2006)
Designed by Harrisson
A few years ago, Hamburg’s best record shop – pardon me, the world’s best record shop – closed. Its owner, a grumpy old anarchist with scrubby hair who insisted on being addressed as Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, was everything but a salesman. He actually performed his record shop. Much to his customers’ dismay, he would intimidate them rather than serve them, making them wait before they were allowed to pay for their records. Meanwhile, he kept hammering obscure poems on his Adler typewriter, avoiding any eye contact before he was done, when he finally started commenting on their choice: “Great!” “Boring!” “BAD! Don’t buy that one!”
The shop carried the most bizarre selection of experimental music I have ever encountered. When entering it, a tang of humidity and poison bemused the senses. Even more confusing was the decoration of the walls. On the right hand side: devotional objects and political posters of German Democratic Republic communism. In the middle of the room: an anaesthetic apparatus connected to a mummy. On the lefthand side: a huge map showing Germany’s borders as of 1941. Squashed in between ideologies, many customers would leave the shop and never return.
It took some years until I ran into a similar kind of humour, namely in the shape of a record sleeve of the group Ich Bin, whose members hail from an area that has been the cause of many fights between Germany and France: Alsace-Lorraine. The front cover shows a map of France which hasbeen severely altered: Paris is replaced by Mulhouse (the group’s hometown, population 112,000); bordering countries are changed to Denmark, Iran and Iraq, Algeria and “Conforama”; the seas are renamed Mer Merde (Sea Of Shit) and Mer Morte (Dead Sea); and the whole country is furnished with symbols of military occupation, cemeteries, petrochemical factories, missiles and other scary objects – all explained in a legend on the flipside of the sleeve. Most notably, the cities don’t read very French: Pompeii, Nagasaki, Munich, Stalingrad, Guantanamo and Parc Astérix. They all gather not very far from the Carpathian Mountains, which are situated to the south of the capital.
Of course, this brilliantly constructed überangst paranoia scenario not only reflects French centralism and language protection but also the general fear of identity loss in times of globalisation. In the song “Danger”, a voice accompanied by frantic electronic sequences screams “Danger: cinema! Danger: email! Danger: Iran-Iraq! Danger: cybernetique! Territoires occupés!” As an antidote to globalisation, Ich Bin suggest local megalomania: Mulhouse for capital! “Avec le Gewuerz et du Schnaps.”
The record was designed by the talented Monsieur Harrisson, a French refugee now residing in Brussels, and released by the Parisian label Poutre Apparente, whose associate Franq de Quengo is the owner of the (now) best record shop in the world: Bimbo Tower.
Designed by Harrisson
A few years ago, Hamburg’s best record shop – pardon me, the world’s best record shop – closed. Its owner, a grumpy old anarchist with scrubby hair who insisted on being addressed as Ditterich von Euler-Donnersperg, was everything but a salesman. He actually performed his record shop. Much to his customers’ dismay, he would intimidate them rather than serve them, making them wait before they were allowed to pay for their records. Meanwhile, he kept hammering obscure poems on his Adler typewriter, avoiding any eye contact before he was done, when he finally started commenting on their choice: “Great!” “Boring!” “BAD! Don’t buy that one!”
The shop carried the most bizarre selection of experimental music I have ever encountered. When entering it, a tang of humidity and poison bemused the senses. Even more confusing was the decoration of the walls. On the right hand side: devotional objects and political posters of German Democratic Republic communism. In the middle of the room: an anaesthetic apparatus connected to a mummy. On the lefthand side: a huge map showing Germany’s borders as of 1941. Squashed in between ideologies, many customers would leave the shop and never return.
It took some years until I ran into a similar kind of humour, namely in the shape of a record sleeve of the group Ich Bin, whose members hail from an area that has been the cause of many fights between Germany and France: Alsace-Lorraine. The front cover shows a map of France which hasbeen severely altered: Paris is replaced by Mulhouse (the group’s hometown, population 112,000); bordering countries are changed to Denmark, Iran and Iraq, Algeria and “Conforama”; the seas are renamed Mer Merde (Sea Of Shit) and Mer Morte (Dead Sea); and the whole country is furnished with symbols of military occupation, cemeteries, petrochemical factories, missiles and other scary objects – all explained in a legend on the flipside of the sleeve. Most notably, the cities don’t read very French: Pompeii, Nagasaki, Munich, Stalingrad, Guantanamo and Parc Astérix. They all gather not very far from the Carpathian Mountains, which are situated to the south of the capital.
Of course, this brilliantly constructed überangst paranoia scenario not only reflects French centralism and language protection but also the general fear of identity loss in times of globalisation. In the song “Danger”, a voice accompanied by frantic electronic sequences screams “Danger: cinema! Danger: email! Danger: Iran-Iraq! Danger: cybernetique! Territoires occupés!” As an antidote to globalisation, Ich Bin suggest local megalomania: Mulhouse for capital! “Avec le Gewuerz et du Schnaps.”
The record was designed by the talented Monsieur Harrisson, a French refugee now residing in Brussels, and released by the Parisian label Poutre Apparente, whose associate Franq de Quengo is the owner of the (now) best record shop in the world: Bimbo Tower.
Posted 13/04/09
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