The year is 1981. You are a German exchange student studying computer science and comic geekery at a high- priced technical institute in San Diego. By day you eat lots of chocolate and lust after American babes. By night, you fool around with some music production software that you designed and masturbate to copies of Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit issue. One night, on a whim, you decide to check out a local discotheque. There, you run into a drunken, hairy- chested individual from L.A. who claims to work in television. In between sips of his Singapore Sling he asks you to do some scoring for a new show starring David Hasselhoff.

"See," he starts. "Hasselhoff's got this bitchin' talking car, right? And they do these really neat drug busts and shit, y'know what I'm sayin'? They're crime fighters-- it's really cool... Hey, you're from Germany, right? Perfect!"

You spend a few weeks trying to channel the mood of the show. "Vaht is zee dynamic between zis bifcake und heez car?" you ask yourself. You summon the existential tension into some precise, moody pieces replete with slightly tricky beats. You send the producers a tape, but unfortunately they don't like it. "This stuff is way too weird, kid," they write. "We've just decided to get Jan Hammer." Depressed and heartbroken you start buying Playboy magazines and masturbating frantically with your big German hands. You take your copy of the tape and smash it to pieces, crying. When you're done, you go back to Germany and design erognomic toilet paper dispensers for the rest of your life.

Alright, this story has nothing to do with the background of Club Off Chaos. They may be German, but the band is actually made of three people, one which is Jaki Liebezeit, who just happens to be the former drummer of pioneer Krautrockers Can. But personel aside, the phrase "rejected electronic theme music for 'Knight Rider'" seems astonishingly accurate when describing this record. And no, that's not a bad thing.

Why not? Think about it: lots of vaguely sinister effects bleeps, creepy casiotones, and a beat that sounds like the perfect accompaniment to a really good, early- eighties TV action sequence. Think of a leather clad Michael Knight skulking around in an abandonned warehouse, chasing after bad guys and talking to his watch. Occasionally, Liebezeit lends his prodigal drum work to the project (for a better representation, check out the dub- heavy stylings of "Pluramon") and the results are mostly satisfying.

The only problem is that none of the songs featured here stick out as anything much more than really good background music. Even the terrific (and for me, incomprehensible) song titles ("Gottgleicher A.M.," "Chichrillo," "Hades,") do little to help distinguish the individual pieces from each other. If Club Off Chaos had decided to be a little bit more deliberate in their approach to mood, a truly varied and interesting record could have emerged. But until they do, we'll just have to be content with some music that makes one nostalgic for Hasselhoff's early, rugged days. Y'know, like before he sold out. Yeah.

-Samir Khan

"Gottgleicher A.M."

[Real Audio Stream]