Science Fiction Dance Party

Back in 1968 a pair of Germanic behind-the-scenes sound librarians called Horst Ackermann and Heribert Thusek left a tiny, but indelible, pinprick on the history of German Pop in the misshaped form of a sexy horror cash-in concept album called ‘Dracula’s Music Cabinet’. Shelved at a micro-cosmic axis where Krautrock meets lesbian vampire Horrortica and Easy Listening meets Psychedelia the delayed reaction of this mutant concoction eventually exploded in the mid 1990s in the hands of a generation of ‘record diggers’ sending currency-crushing tremors through the wallets of mods, rockers, hip-hoppers, psych-nuts and kraut-kompletists around the plastic-pillaging planet. The vinyl junkies had resurrected a monster, but, like addicts do, they ravenously sucked it dry and moved on looking for the next fix to feed their habit. Luckily for some, Ackermann and Thusek were also creatures of habit. And it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out that they were holding the next dose, but by the turn of the millennium the mad scientists had been given a 35-year head start on the Pop-archeologists and their mythical sequel was literally light-years ahead of their previous draconian installment… Encouragingly the unclosed cabinet left a shiny white clue in the form of it’s closing track ‘Frankenstein Meets Alpha 7’… Perhaps space was the place. Always read the label. The Ackermann and Thusek duo were far from dynamic. They were undercover agents hiding behind user-friendly mock-Rock monikers and, like most B-Musicians, the only way to sniff them out would be to read the small print. But when an unidentified record on an unknown label with a title like ‘Science Fiction Dance Party’ crops up in the ‘Eins Deutschmark’ crates it’s not exactly rocket science – although the track titles might suggest otherwise. ‘The End Of A Robot’, ‘Monster On Saturn 1’, ‘Galactic Adventures Of The Outer Space Fleet’, ‘The Whistling Astronauts’, ‘Death Rays Out Of The Universe’… The telltale signs are all there and if that vintage psycoplasmodic coloured vinyl doesn’t clench the deal then what will. When rumours about a space-age follow-up to ‘Dracula’s Music Cabinet’ hit the strabe Deutsche-o-phile diggers fingers started twitching nervously.