When I was young, I taped a copy of Disintegration over the only cassette that was handy at the moment, which happened to be an exercise routine of my mother's. I don't know if it was because of the tape or the deck, but the original sound didn't get entirely replaced: When I was done I had a copy of Disintegration with vague traces of aerobic instruction underneath, so that way back in the mix on "Last Dance" you could just make out the odd "and three and four" or "keep those arms up." Over the ensuing years, music's made me want to do a lot of things with my body, but this Toktok vs. Soffy O album is the first recording since that Robert Smith/Jane Fonda mashup that's made me want to Jazzercise, neon-hued Lycra and all. As I am not a particularly active person and look terrible in shorts, this is basically my way of saying that this record is really good.

But first the obligatory history. Toktok itself is two guys from the Berlin techno/electro scene who started off releasing singles on Ellen Allien's Bpitch Control label. Those recordings are a pretty interesting mix of playful techno and sample pastiche, but where everything goes near-magically right is the part where they're lucky enough to team up with a singer named Sophia: The combined Toktok vs. Soffy O endeavor is a step beyond, a big concoction of Hi-NRG techno beats, sunny minimalist synths, and great big strutting pop songs with Sophia twirling and chanting all over them. It's a blend that'll get called techno, or electro, but it strikes me more as a great dance-pop sound that only techno and electro fans have properly appreciated thus far-- and even that's ceasing to be true, as it appears that the group's last single has actually broken the German charts.

When you're done with the Hasselhoff jokes consider this: I'm not surprised in the least. When these three are on, the effect is like watching pyrotechnics spray all over a bedroom while a particularly cool teenager does hairbrush Karaoke in front of the mirror. There's "Missy Queen's Gonna Die", which managed to use just stiff beats, electro's simplest bassline, and Soffy O's bratty, metallic vocal performance to leap onto what seemed like a half-dozen big compilations. Contending on those German charts is "Day of Mine (Ludicrous Idiots)", which fleshes out the group's sound to a surprisingly buttery sheen, replete with string samples and baritone sax. And sadly mislabeled as "Neighbor" is my personal favorite, "Jean", a big Hi-NRG workout that's both a heavy banger and incredibly fun, all minimal swing and big squishy disco loops.

Which is the surprise with their best work: It's amazingly fun and playful. These days it's clear that the 80s fetish in a lot of northern-European dance music has conveniently bypassed the pastel good humor of the real-life decade; on the other end of the spectrum, the outright playfulness of stuff like French house (or, closer to home, DMX Krew) sometimes seems to be doing a little too much winking, nudging, and semi-ironic mugging. Aside from making some stellar pop tracks that can really be danced to, the genius of Toktok vs. Soffy O is their ability to cut a line between those two things in a way that makes them difficult to compare to anyone else: They're playful, sure, but they're also dead serious, which is why Soffy O can sing and chant everything from recriminations and dismissals to heart-on-sleeve songs about aging. It would be a stretch to say the sound is without precedent, but damned if it doesn't seem like it while the record's playing. And it certainly doesn't hurt that Soffy O's vocal presence is as striking and convincing as Madonna's on "Into the Groove".

Here's the big apology: This album is not, at present, out on CD in the U.S., though I'd like to think it might be soon. It's fairly solid even apart from those killer singles, with the double 12-inch format organizing things nicely: The first two sides collect the singles and four other tracks on a general par with them; the next 12-inch sports the "Day of Mine" companion "The Lookalikes", while the other cuts drift gradually back toward those earlier Toktok releases, with the sound less and less focused and Soffy O less and less incorporated. This can look like either a big drop-off or just a final-cuts detour back into Bpitch territory, which means less pop immediacy and more sonic twists: The slinky tweaks of "Talkative" are like a more-fun/less-prissy counterpart to Ellen Allien's own stuff, while the jerky "rock" beats and guitar tomfoolery of "A Pointless Life" serve as the goofed-up throwaway every good record needs. In other words: Not perfect, but look out, because when they're on, they're really quite on.

-Nitsuh Abebe, February 6th, 2003