Review Summary: This album has no right to exist. Maybe it doesn't.
This album has no right to exist. Maybe it doesn't. When RMB hit the scene with their first album "This world is yours" they got a few club hits that rode atop the wave of rave and happy hardcore. Been there, done that, move on. Nobody was prepared for "Widescreen". Nobody, not even its creators, Rolf Maier-Bode and Farid Gharadjedaghi.
Maybe the twin tracks "Unreality" / "Reality" are the best entry point to this fever dream of an album. After minutes of intense buildup, the track erupts and shimmers in all kinds of mid 90s glory. And it still keeps building. To something even bigger, a moment that surely can't happen and when it does you just sit there and stare at the space between the speaker boxes.
This, this is the RMB experience. Amidst an ocean of trash, RMB somehow found an island and created their weird little kingdom on it. And you, as a tourist, just take in the sights. "Break the silence", a majestic marriage of trance and breakbeats with an ethereal, almost classical aura. "Everything", a maniacal descent into the darkest corners of the club. "Fatal illusion", a self-aware meditation bathed in minor harmonies. There are no gaps, no filler tracks. It's an almost cinematic experience.
Yet still there's "Spring"... Whatever the *** "Spring" is. When the melody hits for the first time, the skies explode. You get swallowed by the glow. This is the essence. Tension, release, euphoria. The high we've been chasing ever since. It's a symbol for the peak of the German techno movement. The Love Parade, the Mayday, just when a subculture had not just outgrown its boundaries, but shattered them. Just before corporate sponsorships and "event" culture took over. "Spring" marks the exact moment in time when everything made sense. When there was zero doubt about what music had to sound like. When you were sure.
You know what comes next. Techno evolved into a pillar of pop music culture. Rave slowly faded away, which still kinda sucks. And RMB got buried beneath layers of sediment. An archeological topic, at best. And similar to artifacts of Greek and Roman culture, you just have to admire the craftsmanship of the old masters. The intricate attention to detail, the almost superhuman ability to see beyond the boundaries of convention. "Widescreen" really has no right to exist. Maybe it doesn't.
