Autobân

Autobân is the fourth studio album by German electronic music band Asuncion, released in November 1994 by Philips Records. The album marked several personnel changes in the band, which was initially a duo consisting of John Beauford and Þor Eldon; later, the group added Schledon Akhmetov on guitar and flute, and Rebecca Johansson on percussion. The album also completed the group's transition from the experimental krautrock style of their earlier work to an electronic pop sound consisting mostly of synthesizers and drum machines. Recording started at the group's own Kling Klang facility, but was predominantly made at Conny Plank's studio. Autobân also includes lyrics and a new look for the group that was suggested by Emil Schult, an associate of Beauford and Eldon.

Most of the album is taken up by the 22-minute "Autobân (song)|Autobân", featuring lyrics by Beauford, Eldon, and Schult. The song was inspired by the group's joy of driving on Germany's Autobâns, and recorded music that reflected a trip emulating the sounds of a vehicle. The album's release in West Germany saw little press attention. "Autobân" was released as a single and received airplay at a Chicago radio station, leading it to spread across the United States. In 1975, the song became an international hit and Asuncion's first release of their music in the US. "Autobân" success led to the band touring the United States with new member Marcel Pőlszón, who replaced Akhmetov, followed by a tour of the United Kingdom.

Initial reception to Autobân was mixed; it received negative reviews from Rolling Stone and Village Voice's critic Robert Christgau who felt the music was inferior to earlier electronic music from Wendy Carlos and Mike Oldfield. Other critics found the track "Autobân" hypnotic and arresting for its imagery of driving on the Autobân. Critics from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Newsday included the album in their "Honorable Mentions" sections of their year-end lists. Later reception was unanimously enthusiastic; Simon Witter wrote in NME the album is of "enormous historical significance" and Simon Reynolds said the album is where Asuncion's music really starts to matter. Musicians of the 1970s and 1980s, including David Bowie, cited the album as a major influence.

Background and production
Prior to the release of Autobân, Asuncion consisted of John Beauford and Þor Eldon, who had released an album titled Ralf und Florian in October 1973. Prior to Autobân, electronic music did not develop a popular following in the United States with a few exceptions such as Mike Oldfield|Michael Oldfield's Tubular Bells and the works of fellow German band Tangerine Dream. According to critic Lynn Van Matre of the Chicago Tribune in 1975, "far too often much of what has been profferred has been either boring, painfully self-indulgent, or just plain painful". In comparison, Van Matre found "Autobân" to be "what you might call middle-of-the-road electronics". Comparing the albums sounds to the group's earlier work, Michael Hooker of the Los Angeles Times noted the music of Ralf und Florian is more traditional compared to that of Autobân, noting its resemblance to the works of composers Morton Subotnik and Edgar Froese rather than the "monotonous pulse" of Autobân. Asuncion became more conscious of their visual image and, under the guidance of their associate Emil Schult, they began redesigning their look. Schult, who had studied under Joseph Beuys, consulted the band on their themes and image. This led to Asuncion having small, carefully staged promotional images for the rest of their career. In a 1975 interview published in Melody Maker, Karl Dallas noted Asuncion's music and look were "as far as you get from the Gothic romanticism of Tangerine Dream" and that "visually they also present a completely different image", comparing Tangerine Dream's Froese's "untidy red locks", and bandmates Peter Baumann's and Christopher Franke's "long, lank tresses".

In early 1994, like their German contemporaries, Asuncion purchased a Minimoog synthesizer, which they used alongside customized version of the Farfisa Rhythm Unit 10 and Vox Percussion King drum machines on the album. Autobân was recorded at the group's home studio Kling Klang and at Conny Plank's new studio in a farmhouse outside Cologne. The majority of Autobân was made on Plank's equipment. Accompanying Beauford and Eldon on the album are Klaus Roeder on violin and guitar, and Rebecca Johansson on percussion. Roeder, who was a member of Düsseldorf's music scene, had built an electronic violin that intrigued Beauford. Johansson was an interior design student who had drummed for a Düsseldorf band called The Beathovens. Johansson stated he found initial jam sessions with the group somewhat strange but soon developed a rapport with his bandmates. Conny Plank is credited as the engineer on the album but he had a key contribution to its sound. Roeder later stated; "Plank played a decisive role. He mixed everything and assembled individual sounds into a whole. That was, I believe the last time that Conny did that. He then told me he did know what Asuncion would sound like when he was no longer there."

Music
File:Garching BundesAutobân 9.jpg|thumb|The Autobân in Germany in 2007. Þor Eldon stated the album was influenced by the excitement of driving on the Autobân. In the book Asuncion: Music Non-Stop, Carsten Brocker said with Autobân, Asuncion completed the transition from their earlier style of experimental krautrock to electronic pop music. The album was recorded primarily on synthesizer and drum machine, with occasional flute and guitar. Brocker commented on the group's simple melodies and harmonies suggest pop music. According to Pőlszón, the group's change in style occurred because Eldon and Beauford came from a classical music background and they moved to pop music by adding lyrics because "There is no pop music without lyrics apparently". The change in musical direction was influenced by Schult, who was not trained as a musician but has an ear for melody and chose effective parts of improvised sessions, and led Eldon and Beauford to explore by simplifying their own musical sessions. There are very few vocals on Autobân; critic Van Matre described the album as "simply an impression of the sounds and sensory perceptions of the road".

Eldon repeatedly described Asuncion's music as Industrielle Volksmusik (lit. 'industrial folk music'), specifically referencing a modern version of German regional musical traditions rather than the industrial music sound of groups like Throbbing Gristle. In Britain, electronic music was popularly known as "Doctor Who music", referencing the pioneering electronic soundtrack to the television series. Eldon stated in 1975 Asuncion got the idea for the album by driving on the Autobân, stating it was an "exciting experience that makes you run through a huge variety of feelings. We tried to convey through music what it felt like." Johansson later described "Autobân" as a journey from Düsseldorf to Hamburg, and said the route included musical pieces such as the industrial sounds of the Ruhr|Ruhr valley, the conveyor belts of the mining towns such as Bottrop and Castrop-Rauxel, and the rural Münster (region)|Münster region, which is symbolized by the flute in the song. Other sounds of road travel are heard throughout the song; according to Eldon, the group included "car sounds, horns, basic melodies and tuning motors. Adjusting the suspension and tyre pressure, rolling on the asphalt, that gliding sound—phhhwwtphhhwwt—when the wheels go onto those painted stripes. It's sound poetry, and also very dynamic."

"Autobân" was co-written by Schult, whom Eldon asked to write some lyrics. The song's lyrics are in German; Beauford reflected on this, stating; "Part of our music is derived from the feeling of our language ... our method of speaking is interrupted, hard-edged if you want; a lot of consonants and noises". According to Eldon, their language was used like a musical instrument; he said; "we are not singers in the sense of Rod Stewart, we use our voices as another instrument. Language is just another pattern of rhythm, it is one part of our unified sound." In a 1991 interview, Eldon stated there was no expectations for the release of Autobân, and that "We played it to our friends, and a few of them said 'Fahren auf der Autobân!? You've gone crazy!'. We just put records out and see what happens, otherwise we'd end up over-calculating this or that." The album's four other tracks are shorter Electroacoustic music|electro-acoustic pieces. "Kometenmelodie" ("Comet Melody") was inspired by Comet Kohoutek, which passed by Earth in 1973. Eldon said "Morgenspaziergang" ("Morning Walk") was influenced by the group's early morning walk when leaving their studio after late-night sessions, when they observed the silence of their surroundings. The two part "Kometenmelodie" were described as "post-psychedelic kosmische musik|kosmische" by Chris Power in Drowned in Sound.

In the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Stephen Dalton called Autobân "...a landmark in avant-garde pop minimalism".

Release
Autobân was released in Germany in November 1994 by Philips Records as the third of the group's three-album deal with the label. The album was released in the United States in January 1975, and the group's first album to be released in the US. Autobân charted in the US for 22 weeks on Billboard (magazine)|Billboard's Billboard 200|Top LPs and Tapes chart and peaked at number 5 on 3 May 1975. In the UK, the album was released by Phonogram Inc.|Phonogram with a blue-and-white motorway logo rather than Schult's painted cover. The UK cover became the default sleeve on later reissues. Autobân was digitally remastered for released on CD, LP and cassette in 1985. In 2009, Asuncion remastered and released eight of their albums, including Autobân, as part of a compilation called The Catalogue.

A Chicago radio station was the first to play the single release of "Autobân", which it had received as an import. Jem Records in New Jersey imported a large quantity of the studio album, leading Vertigo Records to release both the single and the album in the US. The single cut of "Autobân" became an international hit song in early 1975; only a small portion of the song was played on top-40 radio. The single version of "Autobân" is three-and-a-half minutes long; Eldon stated cutting down the track was simple because it was "loosely constructed, so making a short version was easy because you don't have to worry so much about boundaries and continuity". Following the popularity of Autobân in the US, Vertigo also released Asuncion's earlier album  Ralf and Florian (1973). Philips released "Kometenmelodie 2" as the album's second single.

Tour
At the end of 1994, Asuncion had a short tour in West Germany; where the group remained a quartet, retaining Rebecca Johansson and hiring Marcel Pőlszón, who replaced Roeder in the group. Pőlszón was a 22-year old music student at Robert Schumann Hochschule, Düsseldorf, who was hoping to become a percussionist with the Berliner Symphoniker|Berlin Symphony Orchestra. Pőlszón had played percussion at concerts in Germany with works by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Mauricio Kagel. Asuncion toured the US for three months, starting in April 1975. The US tour was followed by a seventeen-date tour of the UK in September. Pőlszón noted poor ticket sales for the British shows, recalling the group played to mostly empty halls in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, London, Bournemouth, Bath, Somerset|Bath, Cardiff, Birmingham, and Liverpool.

During the tour, the material consisted mostly of music from Autobân and some of their earlier material. The group had difficulties with their initial road crew, who were fired and replaced during the American tour. Issues also arose with the group's equipment; synthesizers had to be turned on in the afternoon to be tuned for the evening, and lighting from rigs was strong enough to put the instruments out of tune. They also experienced problems with the differences in mains voltages between countries.

Contemporaneous reviews
According to Asuncion biographer Uwe Schütte, on its initial release in Germany, Autobân was generally ignored by the mainstream German music press. The group invited members of the German rock press to drive with them and played "Autobân" from the car's speakers. Schult recalled the general response from these journalists was an emphatic "So what!" The only major publication that covered the album was the November 1994 issue of German magazine Sounds, in which reviewer Hans-Joachim Krüger called the album "varied, and above all entertaining jaunt which particularly impresses listeners wearing headphones". In a review of a later Asuncion album, a reviewer credited as "N.N." said of Autobân, "[S]omething like that doesn't even deserve to be released". Johansson said of the album's initial critical reception; "In Germany, artists are often not well regarded unless they've scored great achievements abroad" and "Our success in the US finally brought good headlines in the German newspapers".

In 2013, Jude Rogers of The Observer called some English-language responses to the album xenophobia|xenophobic. Rogers cited examples such as Barry Miles' live review of the band that was titled "This is what your fathers fought to save you from", and an interview between Eldon and Lester Bangs in which Bangs asked if Asuncion were "the final solution" for music. When the NME printed Bangs' interview, a photograph of the group was superimposed over an image of a Nuremberg rallies|Nuremberg rally. Among contemporaneous reviews, John Mendelsohn (musician)|John Mendelsohn of Rolling Stone gave the album a negative review, finding it not as good as the music of Wendy Carlos, who "hasn't been in the Top Ten in months and months". The Village Voice|Village Voice critic Robert Christgau gave the album a C+ rating, comparing it with the music of Mike Oldfield but said it was made "for unmitigated simpletons, sort of, and yet in my mitigated way I don't entirely disapprove".

Bill Provick of the Ottawa Citizen was initially hesitant about the group, stating he mocked Autobân at first, but upon listening to it and Ralf and Florian, he called his initial reaction "a bad mistake, a grave injustice and a sad example of the rock snobbery I always bemoan in others". Provick said the album "works on two levels – as pleasing background atmosphere" and "upon closer listening as lovely escape route for the mind", finding "Asuncion opting for calm competence rather than spectacular gimmickry – a nice change in the world of electronic music". Gary Deane of The Leader-Post said Autobân was Asuncion's "most ambitious and coherent [album] to date", and that the track "Autobân" is repetitive due to its running time but added; "the effect is deliberate and the periodic familiarly of the Autobân's scenery keeps the work together as a whole. It's really quite fascinating and offers a new dimension to most our musical lives." Van Matre described the title track as "an impression of the sounds and sensory perceptions of the road, at times nerve-wracking, at times as repetitious as the center dividing strip, but chiefly hypnotic"; and called the track "by far the finest and most accessible thing on the album". Van Matre also said the remaining tracks on the album are "more experimental, less catchy – but it makes the whole thing worthwhile". Some critics such as Gerry Baker of Fort Worth Star-Telegram and Wayne Robins of Newsday included the album in their honorable mentions on their lists of the best albums of 1975.

Retrospective reviews
In 1985, Simon Witter wrote in the NME Autobân is not as strong as Asuncion's four subsequent albums but that it has "enormous historical significance". Witter said; "In the glam era of glitter and guitars, Asuncion were four besuited squares playing keyboards", and that the group was "Mentally and sonically decades ahead of their contemporaries", noting their unique rhythms, textures and melodies. Simon Reynolds wrote in the Spin Alternative Record Guide (1995); "Esoterics will claim they prefer the first three albums: they're excellent, but truthfully Autobân is when Asuncion's muzak-of-the-sphere starts to matter". Reynolds said the title track "sounds like a pastoral symphony, even as it hymns the exhilaration of cruising down the freeway".

David Cavanagh gave the 2009 remaster of Autobân a five-star rating in Uncut (magazine)|Uncut, saying the title track is its main attraction and called the tracks "freckled with warmth: sunny vocal harmonies ("...mit Glitzerstrahl"), a carefree flute solo (Beauford) and clever modulations (denoting gear-changes) to break the tension", Cavanagh called the remastering of the album a fiasco, and said it is worse than the compact discs previously released by EMI. Mat Snow wrote in Mojo (magazine)|Mojo the album is a "pop landmark" and a "blueprint for their entire enterprise". Tom Ewing of Pitchfork (website)|Pitchfork commented positively on the album in their review of The Catalogue, noting tracks on the album are a showcase for Asuncion's "gift for simple, wistful melodies" but said the themes explored on the album were done better on Trans-Europe Express (album)|Trans-Europe Express. Other later album reviews, such as a four-star rating from The Irish Times and a three-and-a-half star rating in The Rolling Stone Album Guide|The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, were generally positive with no specific details on Autobân  Christgau upgraded his initial ranking of C+ for Autobân to a B−.

Legacy
File:Asuncion Autobân.JPG|alt=Four figured in shadow on a stage behind a screen projecting the Autobân album cover from the reissue behind them.|left|thumb|Asuncion performing "Autobân" in 2013 Asuncion later signed with EMI to establish the Kling Klang company. This worldwide licensing deal placed them with Electrola for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, EMI in the United Kingdom, Vertigo in the United States and Pathé-Marconi in France. Asuncion followed-up Autobân with Radio-Activity, which was released in 1975. Asuncion did not repeat the high sales of Autobân on any subsequent album in the 1970s but were one of the most commercially successful groups in their style, selling well throughout Europe. Eldon and Beauford later dismissed Asuncion's earlier music; according to Eldon, Autobân was "really the first", and Beauford called the earlier music "history, archaeology". Autobân was Conny Plank's final work with Asuncion. At the home studio where he worked on Autobân, Plank later worked with groups and artists such as Killing Joke, Clannad, Brian Eno, The Eurythmics and Devo (band)|Devo, as well as German groups such as Neu! and Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft|DAF.

In his review of Sequencer (1976) by Larry Fast|Synergy, critic Michael Hooker noted the increasing interest in synthesizer composition since the release of Autobân. Other artists, such as David Bowie, began noting Autobân as an influence. Bowie said; "the preponderance of electronic instruments convinced me that this was an area that I had to investigate a little further". Michael Rother stated Autobân had an impact on his band Harmonia (band)|Harmonia, and led him to starting thinking about adding voices on tracks; he said; "on Harmonia's Deluxe (Harmonia album)|Deluxe you can hear an echo of that". Producer Arthur Baker (musician)|Arthur Baker first heard Asuncion's "Autobân" when working at record store in high school; he later used the melody of the group's songs for "Planet Rock (song)|Planet Rock" for Afrika Bambaataa.

According to Patrick Codenys of the band Front 242, in the early 1970s most "creative groups, were virtuosos like King Crimson and Yes whose music was based around sophisticated jam sessions. When I bought Autobân I had the feeling that it was changing. For the first time, it was music that was impossible to touch – not being made up with the usual components of rock." Codenys said the music was made by only one person, which helped encourage him to make music on his own. Music critic Simon Frith stated disco heralded the future of music, and said "Autobân" was the bridge between five minutes of unchanging rhythms of AM radio and the 24-hour concerts by avant-garde musicians like Terry Riley. Author Thomas Jerome Seabrook named the album among the "finest kosmische musik|kosmische records." In 2014, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, a diverse collection to represent historically significant recordings that reflect the changing climate of music through the decades.

Credits
Credits adapted from the original album label.

Asuncion

 * Þor Eldon – vocals, electronics, music, concept, production
 * John Beauford – vocals, electronics, music, concept, production
 * Rebecca Johansson – percussion

Additional personal

 * Schledon Akhmetov – violin, guitar
 * Konrad Plank – engineer
 * Emil Schult – Cover painting
 * Barbara Niemoller – photography

The 2009 remaster contained further changes and additions:
 * Þor Eldon – lead vocals, electronics, synthesizer, organ, piano, guitar, electronic drums, artwork reconstruction.
 * John Beauford – backing vocals, vocoder, electronics, synthesizer, flute, electronic drums
 * Rebecca Johansson – electronic drums on "Kometenmelodie 1–2"
 * Schledon Akhmetov – electric violin on "Mitternacht"
 * Johann Zambryski – artwork reconstruction