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Tracklist: “Control” * “Crossfire” * “Let’s Drop Bombs” * “More than Us” * “Machine Drum” * “Dead Market” * “Lost” * “Soul Reader” * “Little World” * “Membrane” * “New World March” * “Echo”

Read Viva Music’s review of Haujobb’s single “Dead Market” here | Order “New World March” from here.

Haujobb “New World March” – Viva Music Album Review:

The new world march begins today 11.11.11 with the release of Haujobb’s “New World March” album with Zweieck Recordings/Basic Unit Productions,. Beside Daniel Myer and Dejan Samardzic, several other artists joined their efforts in the project: Covenant’s Joakim Montelius, Paul Kendall, Achim Faerber, Sebastian Ullmann, to the result of a very impressive album. Our expectations were already geared up with the June release of their single “Dead Market”, but listening to the album (which, as you will see, cannot happen just once) provided way deeper insight into a musical universe worth settling in, in the coziest and most empathetic manner. It flows naturally, and it is heavy with feeling. There are no extraneous things in the album, and lyrical content is impactful, though it is kept at a minimum: no fancy embedded and subordinated clauses, proof of the fact that you don’t have to be verbose to get your message across.

There is a lot to like about “New World March”; and its release is beneficial to our musical landscape of today. It plays heavily on sound symmetries in both a classical and modern inspiration, and it takes things to a level of acuity that makes the listening experience at the same time personal and global.

It all starts with the premise track “Control”; in the quiet fiber of which lie perils unknown and in which fears are at a boiling point. Enigmatic and driven by images that promote a deadend of civilization (“prime time screenings of dying souls”, “the ultimate list of information”, “a point of meaning and no return, of no term”), “Control” very much embodies what the album is about; a hardboiled vision of the discontents of our current affairs, which we fail at, and which we tend to overlook while blinded by issues that are, in the very end, totally irrelevant for our lives. The sturdy vein of “Crossfire” follows a similar pattern, and is depicted in similar hues; however, the track is a standalone musical piece, the strength of which is derived in the tight knot of both instrument and lyrics. It is the narrative point of the album in which the ‘new world march’ is introduced; the one which ‘lingered an eon’, and in the delay of which it swept numerous dramas of various intervals and various degrees of emotion. The elegance and simplicity of the track vies with its straight to the point message, and its responsiveness to a layer of unaddressed issues that drive our world despite our efforts to make it a better place. “Let’s Drop Bombs”, an alert, explosive track that finds its way in the album at the most opportune and most plausible moment, is a wonderful composition, and its beat sounds really exclusive. It does not, however, stray aloof from the listener, but engirds them in a hypnotic, amenable and up for grabs atmosphere. At an extreme end point from the quiet, smoldering feel of “Control”, the proposition made by “More than Us” is of a hyperbolical lover image; “she is atomic petrochemical genocidal bad news/she is consumer oriented globalized and inhuman/ her name is hidden under layers and layers of pseudonyms”. The lover image, emphasized by the night scene in which sleep is induced, rivals with a deeper meaning of the song, in which we go to sleep fascinated by things that do not matter, and which keep us captive in a cobweb of wishes and needs that keep us down instead of making us fasten the pace. “Machine Drum” is a good piece, and its role in the march becomes obvious as the music advances to a musical floor of unleashed emotions.

“Dead Market”, the multifaceted silhouette of which we were blessed to listen to before in the June single release follows, and its piecing up in the album structure shows how pertinent the musical proposal made by Haujobb actually is, and how contemporary. At the same time a rough diamond and a chiseled down masterpiece, “Dead Market” is a reminder of the deplorable lord-serf relation in which we will always follow despite our discourse on democracy and pursuit of happiness. A soundtrack for an era that most likely shows the sings of its own end, “Dead Market” was a wise choice for a single album appetizer, and its power is not at all dimmer in the context of the album. “Lost” sounds equally enthralling, and its presence in the album heightens the level of perception of the listener. Just like the song says, it is only with a “reformatted mind and soul” that we can actually enroll in the new world march, and the inevitability of feeling lost and insecure in realms as diverse as spirituality and economy, is an omnipresent, devouring emotion, that takes the floor without us being able to make the slightest gesture. The infiltration of fear in the musical theme is as evident in the ensuing “Soul Reader”, in which the purveyors of evil in the world, bearing allegorical names such as ‘mind reader’, ‘trash feeder’, ‘soul reader’ fight over the most efficient form of control, overlooking their own downfall. Matched with a very catchy musical background, “Soul Reader” well stands next to “Dead Market” as a Viva Music favorite track from “New World March”.

“Little World”, in itself a lullaby for a dying universe, moves swiftly between two poles of quietude and perkiness, with deep and intimate harmonies catching on the listener; and that’s just before the “Membrane” breaks, revealing the hidden wounds, singling out the weaklings and creating an ad-hoc contingency plan for the survival of those who are put down constantly by forces beyond their control. The track that gives the album title, “New World March” is a grandiose production, for which “Membrane” paved the way with a clamor of a universal advance. “New World March” is just as philosophically sound as the rest of the album, but its message is more outspoken and heftier; and its echoed by “Echo”, the closing piece of the album, a vibrant and nostalgic musical production, the speechless sprouting of optimism from the ashes of fear and past oriented regimes.

“New World March” is a very elegant album, and thick with meaning. Unwilling to sugarcoat reality in any of its current representations, it finds the musical stylishness to get a message across in a call to everyone who believes that times of changes that come in small doses should be thwarted by a major change, that encompasses all, and everyone. Enjoy!

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