release date: Nov. 1982
format: cd
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,54]
producer: Micki Meuser, Gareth Jones, Ideal
label: Eitel Imperial / WEA - nationality: Germany
Track highlights: 1. "Keine Heimat" - 2. "Ask Mark Ve Ölüm" - 3. "Tränen am Hafen" - 4. "Schöne Frau mit Geld" - 6. "Wir zerstören unser Glück (Tu' mir weh)" - 10. "Müde"
3rd and final studio album by Ideal following one year after Der Ernst des Lebens introduces a new production sound aided by British sound engineer / producer Gareth Jones and German producer Micki Meuser.
Stylistically, the band has made its biggest move towards a more general pop / rock universe. The arrangements have both become more complex, the sound more slick almost without the new wave characteristics, but at the same time the album is their so far most experimental. A few songs stand out: "Keine Heimat", "Schöne Frau mit Geld" and "Wir zerstören unser Glück (Tu' mir weh)". Some would probably argue that the first composition (only lead single) is the only with actual hit-potential as traditionally structured rock-song. As was the case on the predecessor, most songs are credited the whole band, while Annette Humpe remains the band's songwriter with a variation of Humpe as lead vocalist and male vocals. The overall impression is bound to much incoherency. Ideal is obviously influenced by many stylistic variations, with several members having previously played experimental jazz-fusion, and that style emerges here and there in combo with other styles - not as something extra, but more as a sudden style-shift and often in combo with krautrock-inspiration but also with bits pointing towards more electronic music, e.g. Kraftwerk. A song is in Turkish language, some are schlager-like and other songs like contrasts - there's simply too much happening, too many directions in one huge pot.
Saleswise, the album didn't fare as well as their previous albums. Bi Nuu peaked at number #20 in Germany, where the two predecessors made it to number #2 and #3 respectively. Apparently, both label and band took this as a stronger rejection than it may actually have been. Nonetheless, a planned tour was cancelled and the band simply split in 1983.
The album is by no means a poor one - it's full of good ideas and several fine compositions, it's more the fact that the songs hardly speak to one another, as if the band tries too hard to show us how well they master all stylistic aspects and posibilities of Neue Deutsche Welle - they are renewers and pioneers who contain it all and, unfortunately, they try it all at once. Following the disbandment, Annette Humpe joined her sister in the duo Humpe Humpe (or: Inga & Anete Humpe) aka Swimming with Sharks and Bamby, and she later released the solo album, Solo (1990). From 2004 she has been one half of the more lasting duo Ich + Ich with Adel Tawil.
Recommended.
