Johannes Heil - Freaks R Us

Repeated failure in transforming its rather bright ideas into listenable tracks.

Album Review by Tom Donohue | 16 Apr 2006
Album title: Freaks R Us
Artist: Johannes Heil
Label: Klang Elektronik
Second-rate effluent pours out of this new album from Kanzleramt cornerstone Johannes Heil - a selection of uncoordinated tracks that take in dark electro, industrial-inspired techno and breakbeat numbers, peppered with distorted vocal rants and clichéd buzzing noises. There are some standout moments, but these are all too brief - some are wishy washy attempts to pad out very brief ideas to 8-minute monsters, while other fascinating sounds are crudely pasted onto the end of other tracks, and then done away with, before being fully developed at all. Coming in at 70 minutes, the stark reality is that it just drags on. Oft-exploited producer's tricks appear all over this disc. The gaps between tracks sound like some vacuous death knell and even the opener Freaks R Us already sounds dated. It's only the final track, The 1st, a beautiful unaccompanied string arrangement, that really inspires. Many of the ideas here have potential, but all are either exploited too much, or too little. [Tom Donohue]

Released in April.