TOTALLY ZONED

Been listening a lot today to 39 Clocks, the early ’80s German synth-punk duo of Juergen Gleue and Christian Henjes. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of them — even a lot of my most obscurer-than-thou friends never got hep to them. I only know this stuff myself because I used to live with a WFMU DJ. Now we can all revel in their alluring and studiedly cool weirdness, thanks to a collection called Zoned just released by the always great/ super diverse De Stijl label.

Their music sounds born out of time — made by skinny dudes in shades with a broken drum machine (it seemed to have maybe two settings, total) who anticipated the Spacemen Three’s obsession with the Velvets and Suicide but in a fabulously wrong, perhaps intentionally fucked-up, ESL-poetry, bad haircut and pleather pants, more than mildly Gothy and very very ‘Sprockets’ kinda way that seemed both ahead of and woefully behind the times but has never ceased to sound perfect to these ears.

—DJ Yeti