When I read Bruce Dickinson's comments about the new album from the reconstituted Iron Maiden, Brave New World, I can just about forgive Teuton trance-ho Sven Väth. Dickinson told Pulse (free from Tower Records-- I mention just so you know I'm not a habitual digestor of Metal Hammer or Today's Axe magazines) that the band is far meaner now than in their "Aces High" days. He went on to explain that We the People need his band's lumpen "prog-metal" (Dickinson's own classification!) and that we're tired of three-minute anger tracks. What a ridiculous proposition! At least Korn's songs are over in less than seven minutes!

Sven Väth didn't start off so well. When his band, Organization for Funk (OFF) spawned hip-house chancers Snap!, Väth concerned himself less with writing instrumentals for a German Kool Moe Dee. Though he produced the ambient classic Accident in Paradise and the Jane Fonda- sampling Uranian bliss of "Barbarella," and released Hardfloor's revelatory Acperience EP on his own label, Väth brought us trance. Ugh.

His Eye-Q label championed Cynus X's "Orange Theme," the bassline of which has become the industry standard trance foundation-- chuggah, chuggah, chuggah, ahh. That was almost a decade ago and passionless DJs are still canning that dreck for kids who persist in abusing Vicks' Vaporub and light-emitting camping goods. Not a slip of shame amongst the lot of them!

Väth knows he's done wrong and thinks he can cuddle up to us and our favor by sounding like a Nik Kershaw-fronted Kraftwerk. Well, I'm glad he's penitent, but on the evidence of Contact, he better know some mighty fine remixers-- this ain't the kind of shit that makes you want to forgive and forget. Had Contact been released by Cleopatra Records (the label that specializes in hawking '80s synth-pop as remixed by the bloke who made the tea for Heaven 17) I'd have thought, "Well, at least it's not the hits of Dead or Alive remixed by the bloke who made the tea for Heaven 17! But Contact displays some very un-Cleopatra qualities, such as high fidelity recording, and an attempt at originality and relevance.

However, what might pass for originality and relevance on Cleopatra won't pass muster anywhere else. Väth apologizes for trance with heavy-handed daylight robbery from Kraftwerk's Computer World. Yup, he's gone electro, drafting ex-Harthousers Alter Ego and would-love-to-be- Kraftwerker Anthony Rother.

But even with all this, Contact still may have scraped by if Väth hadn't chosen to add lyrics. Musically, sections of the album are as booty-shakin' and well-versed in low-end theory as anything by AUX 88 or Drexciya. Check "Dein Schweiss" or "Ydolem" for some truly cosmic slop. It's when we judge electro for its innovations that the genre seems to defy aging (the positive spin) or seems hermetically-sealed from development by the reverence of its practitioners (the polite beat-down).

Somehow, the originators, Kraftwerk, got away with sputtering on about radioactivity, neon lights, and man-machines-- this is an unrepeatable achievement. Väth's pastiche of Kraftwerk's robot pastiche sounds like an old "Saturday Night Live" parody featuring the vocal talents of Adam Sandler. Perhaps Väth thought some bogglin' member of the Fluffy Bra Brigade would chill out on an Ibizan beach to the hypnotic piano arpeggios of "Privado." But here in my apartment, where I'm under siege from humidity and vein-emptying mosquitoes, the laziness of the track's nine minutes starkly mark a waste of good aluminum.

So Contact confirms what was becoming evident on Väth's previous album, Fusion: this is the twilight of the formerly godlike Sven Väth. A decade ago, he and his Harthouse label released some of the most vital vinyl of the period. Väth's many collaborations with Ralf Hildenbeutel produced obsolescence-defying records such as "Barbarella," which gave Mixmaster Morris the break (or rather, the bliss) he needed to showcase his lie-down-and-be-counted ambient propaganda. Väth's "Ritual of Life" was the first track to blend electronic music with aboriginal songline chants without sounding like someone had paid excessive attention to far too many National Geographic television specials. On Contact, he's sounds like a follower rather than a pioneer. If you want to hear un-airbrushed German electro, grab Studio K7’s Electrecord CD 2000 compilation, or the electro-flecked dub of Tarwater's squirm.

Still, when faced with a choice between Iron Maiden's prog-metal and Contact, I'll be found hanging out with the electronauts. You can come and get me when the orc-slaying and wizard-bothering has ended.

-Paul Cooper