The album kicks off with a jaunty flute lick-- it's almost cute. Happy little organ chords start perking around, then squishy synth stabs; the flute starts to flutter while some drums build in. Then the beat runs off, a suave and steady groove that'll play host to a funk guitar riff in a minute or two: it's like Fischer-Price techno, sunny and reassuringly blocky at the same time. When the beat bulks up, it's not the usual housey hi-hat loop coasting over. It's a guy. With his mouth. Going "shick-a-thoomp, shick-a-thoomp."

To liberally paraphrase Alanis Morrisette: Thank you, Germany. Over the past couple years, the Germans have been churning out breeds of leftfield electronica that are pretty much revelatory, handily stirring up a lot of the genre divisions that IDM ("intelligent" dance music) and regular old house, techno, and electro ("dumb-by-implication" dance music?) have set up for themselves. Artists on labels like Klang Electronik and Bpitch Control have taken up the microprocessed sound-sculpting and hyperdetailed laptop jones from IDM, sure, but not so much the penchant for "cinematic soundscapes," the heady splatter, or the fear of all things danceable. Instead, they've made techno and minimal techno, house and microhouse, IDM and electro, and music that's more than happy-- almost giddily happy-- to be all of the above. They seem, basically, to be in love with all the sorts of music only machines can make, whether that means abstracted glitches or thumpy bass beats, ambient echoes or straight-up synth buzz.

This year has seen a few too many standouts in German sound-design to safely single out It's Not for You as It Is for Us as any clear winner-- even in Bergheim 34's more subdued neck of these woods, Barbara Morgenstern's Nichts Muss and Ellen Allien's Berlinette offer strong enough competition that doling out handicaps seems a bit pointless. What brings Bergheim to you here, today, is that "shick-a-thoomp": the slightest bit more than even their immediate colleagues, Bergheim have this free-floating and weirdly optimistic openness to the possibilities of their sound that makes them rather unique. That, and the fact that this record contains one of the better singles of the year so far, a subliminally humming groover called "Random Access Memory" that seems to crystallize everything that was exciting about Stereolab, Broadcast, and Lali Puna in one pillowy electric pulse-- a track that should be sitting on as many indie playlists as electro and techno ones.

So yes, Bergheim do pop songs, on which Anne Vortisch sighs and croons all subdued and matter-of-fact over click-and-whir drum programs and tickly basslines. On "System", she actually puts a hint of R&B; into it-- between and that and the pizzicato string plucks, the track winds up sounding almost like an Aaliyah single as reformatted by an IDM auteur. But Bergheim's feet were originally planted in techno, and they do it here, if on the smallest scale imaginable: there's a minimal, microscopic feel to their tiny-music crackle and pop. On "Nasty Girl", a stiff, clattering beat-- just the beat-- stutters and winds around itself as complexly as laptop tweakery ever can. It's all nearly subliminal: "Frogs on Grills", for instance, seems oddly unassuming as its gentle click-and-cut programming revs a coasting beat, reedy wood-block tones, and some squishy funk touches through a casual series of twists, turns, builds, and falls. It feels like IDM, which is to say that you could fall asleep to it. But it also feels like if you turned it up loud enough, it could almost turn into a dancefloor stepper.

And they play around. It's Not for You was supposedly created via online file-swapping-- the four members trading bits and pieces and finishing one another's ideas-- and it shows, not only in the grab-bag jumble of concepts here, but in their tone, as well. Half the time, it seems as if the four of them were all trying their hardest to surprise one another as often as possible. When Vortisch starts singing on "Nasty Girl", she sings the melody from Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something" over a series of stop-on-a-dime breakdowns. (It's not the only moment of recognition, either: the prechorus to "Random Access Memory" features her Nico-ish delivery of Melle Mel's infamous "Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge" chorus from "The Message"). "US Key" makes slice-and-dice with the mouth noises again, ornamenting them with a careful bass walk and programmed stabs of Vortisch's voice; "Sucker Pt. 1" cuts up organ tones and drum shuffles until it sounds like someone put jazz fusion in a blender and minced it into a fine goo.

But that's standard German sound-sculpting, and what's likeable about this record is the possibility for surprise. Like on "Coding Stains", a grooved-out remix of "Cotton Stains" by Andy Weatherall's fantastic electro-tech Two Lone Swordsmen project: this is Bergheim's Night Out, with the beat rocking steady and even the vocal cut-up leaving plenty of room for a housey, repeating sample. And there's the second of two bonus tracks, possibly the most fascinating things here-- a big ominous chant from Vortisch that starts off brooding and works its way over to some psyched-up synthesizer freak-outs. As one Pitchforker says of this record: "It's pretty weird." And it is, though not in the usual way: it's weird in its surprises and beat-warping Easter Eggs; weird in its impossibility to pin down effectively; weird in its carefree way of floating from idea to idea and trusting you to follow happily along. "Weird" meaning "interesting" meaning, well, "good."

-Nitsuh Abebe, June 4th, 2003