According to Bela B. and Peter Behrens from Trio, Chris Imler is probably the third best-known stand-up drummer in Germany. Apart from that, as the »grand seigneur of the Berlin underground«, as the taz newspaper once called him, he has made his mark in the background with bands and musicians like The Golden Showers or Peaches, Jens Friebe, Oum Shatt and Die Türen and has also been touring as a solo artist for a decade. »Operation Schönheit« is his third solo album. It alternates between German and English lyrics, between nervous, electronic post-punk and laid-back, Krautrock dub. In the process, a unique groove develops in each of the ten pieces, which not only lets the eternal dandy, Chris Imler himself, float through the wild to transcendental nights of the big city – hopefully without all the coronavirus fuss again soon. The first seconds of the title track briefly bring to mind M.I.A.’s »Paper Planes« before Imler soberly intones: »You want to be bigger / you break your leg / When it heals again / you break it again.« Cosmetic surgery, then, as a symbol and cipher of our time, in which optimisation of the self has become a painful compulsion. Yet Imler’s themes also include paranoia and disappointment, being lost in an empty universe or failure as an attitude to life, which he presents either with fatalism dripping with irony or an almost amused fatalism. Chris Imler also cuts a fine figure as a frontman instead of a drummer on »Operation Schönheit« in this way.
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