• Kreidler - Weekend (30 year anniversary edition)
Originally released 30 years ago, Weekend can be considered Kreidler‘s first fully formed statement. With Weekend, Kreidler truly became a band. The album brought together the loose threads of their preliminary work and set in motion a journey that continues to this day.
In 1996, Weekend was warmly welcomed and praised in the German press, as well as internationally. The band had shows in Western Europe, toured France, played their first gigs in London and attracted large audiences to their concerts. The song Reflections became a minor hit and went on rotation on MTV and Viva.
The Düsseldorf based group consisting of Thomas Klein, Andreas Reihse, Stefan Schneider and Detlef Weinrich began work on the album in Winter 1995/96. Most of the song ideas had emerged as improvisations during concert soundchecks and were often played as encores.
In April, Kreidler set off to Berlin to record what would become Weekend at a studio space in the empty premises of Milchhof in Prenzlauer Berg. Kreidler worked quickly – thanks to their recent performances, the band was well rehearsed. They recorded most of the songs in one or two takes, with some overdubs on location and some minor editing.
And on 20 April Kreidler played at Eimer, the legendary Berlin-Mitte venue, a demolished dwelling where the audience attended on a level below the artists performing through the massive hole of a collapsed floor. After the gig the crowd moved up onto the roof to continue partying with Digital Hardcore DJs. Jutta Bächner was in the audience.
Andreas got in contact with Jutta while she was working as a promoter for electronic dance music acts and labels and he was writing for Düsseldorf city magazine Terz. Quickly they became friends. So when in 1995 she founded the label Kiff SM, it felt natural that Kreidler should join the roster.
Weekend was released in October 1996 to an abundance of positive reviews. "[They] couldn't have chosen a better moment to pop up," Mark Roland wrote in FM. "You can just picture this lot, making it up as they go along, riffling into the night, trancing themselves into some kind of lo-fi, bare bones, technical ecstasy with a two-track open-reel tape machine quietly capturing it all," and awarded the album 5 out of 5 stars.
Weekend connected rather separate musical scenes. The music was read as post-rock, electronica, and – obviously – placed in a certain tradition of Krautrock, the Rhineland type, Kraftwerk, NEU!, Can.
There were rave reviews in club/techno outlets, e.g. Bleed in Frontpage:
"The atmosphere that their pieces consistently evoke is more than just a Weekend’s precise description of what might still be happening around you; it is a moment of clarification – set in stone for years to come – of an irreconcilable relationship between man, machine and the universe, as it once was. In a sense, Kreidler – as pleasantly listenable as they are – are more radical than many other attempts to reduce digital sound aesthetics to the realm of the audible, and certainly go further than Tortoise, who repeatedly seek to simulate electronic music through their musical skill. An incredibly good album.”
Or in Jazzthing: "Weekend suggests a completely independent and, as such, self-sufficient collective of musicians and tinkerers. And not just any musicians and tinkerers, but those who not only know their craft inside out, yet also understand how much space and time really good music needs to truly take off." Or Rob Young's take in The Wire: "Weekend is a real bolt from the blue, a deceptively simple instrumental corpus, drily produced and with barely a hair out of place. [..] A shimmering 14- track set that dusts off the twin legacies of DAF and Felt."
Chris Hill in Westnet: "Weekend is split between the familiar, classical arena of bass guitar and drums, and the electronic realm of keyboards and samples, for a simultaneously inviting and benevolently alien experience. Take a listen, and hear why Momus, David Bowie, and Stereolab number among their fans." Or Ulrich Paasch in the conservative weekly Die Zeit: "Avantgarde, die auf Anhieb Spaß macht." (Avant-garde that's fun right from the start).
Let's finish with Ned Raggett, AllMusic: "The use of soft, chiming keyboard parts at many points, though, give a fun, gentle sense of contrast, adding delicacy in contrast to the darker, heavier elements of the songs. It's a low-key tension, but one that works wonderfully, and invests such fine songs as 'Reflections' and 'La Fille En Beige' with the extra touch that shows the promise of Kreidler as a whole." In end-of-year lists, e.g. in Spex magazine, the album was in the critics' polls, with readers also voting Kreidler "newcomer of the year".
Thirty years later, in 2026, Kreidler endures. They have performed more than 1,000 times in over 30 countries. Their discography spans 20 albums alongside numerous other releases. Today, as the trio of Thomas Klein, Andreas Reihse and Alexander Paulick, the band remains highly prolific. Their most recent LP Schemes was just released in May and the next is already scheduled for January 2027. This 30th-anniversary reissue of Weekend celebrates the origin of Kreidler, while their sights remain firmly set on the future.
Tracklisting
- A1 Traffic Way
- A2 Shaun
- A3 Spat
- A4 La Capital
- A5 Sand Colour Classic
- B1 Lio
- B2 Polaroid
- B3 Desto
- B4 Reflections
- B5 Hillwood
- B6 Telefon
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