A hybrid of experimental krautrock and new wave celebrates its long overdue rediscovery.
By the time he released his third solo album in 1981, Zeus B. Held (real name Bernd Held) was already a music veteran, though his name wasn’t necessarily etched in the minds of the record-buying public. Held played keyboards with the West Berlin prog band Birth Control in the 1970s, at the end of the decade he was a member of the influential electropop band Gina X Performance and from the 1980s he was a producer of Dead Or Alive, Men Without Hats, Hawkwind and Nina Hagen, among others .
In addition, the unsung hero has released a whole series of solo albums, of which ATTACK TIME occupies a special position. It was released on Aladin, the label of pop singer Peter Orloff, and shows Held at the height of his experimental power. Here synthesizers stand next to rock-ass guitars, the powerful beats of the new wave next to the squeaks and beeps of electronic pioneers.
“Eurode” and “Enfant Terrible” bring the spirit of the cosmic music of the seventies to the reality of the year 1981. The Beatles song “Drive My Car” sounds so angular and edgy on Held as if it were being interpreted by Devo. Musical contrasts not only meet between the songs, but often also within them. That the album teased commercially is not surprising. Not only because of the experimental character and the stylistic leaps, because the Krautrock era was coming to an end at that time, the Neue Deutsche Welle had replaced it. And so, retrospectively, ATTACK TIME stands as the missing link between Kraut and NDW.