Exploring Der Plan and their pioneering “electro-schlager” synth-pop
While original German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk were at work on 1978’s The Man Machine in their Kling Klang studio, Düsseldorf became the breeding ground for another pioneering electronic group without the name recognition but no less inventive. A leftfield nucleus to the city’s synthpunks such as DAF and Liaisons Dangereuses, experimental art-collective Der Plan unwittingly kickstarted the wave which would be later dubbed Neue Deutsche Welle, a tag abhorred by industrial belligerents Einstürzende Neubauten but accepted with wry humour from the Der Plan trio.
Moritz Reichelt harboured little affinity with Kraftwerk, however, professing to only become aware of them on the cusp of their Computer World LP and was even less indebted to the Krautrock heritage before them. Reichelt, along with founding members Frank Fenstermacher and Kurt Dahlke, who also make music as Pyrolator, looked over to Daniel Miller’s early work on the fledgling Mute Records label, Throbbing Gristle’s subterranean electronics and the discoloured acid-punk conjured by San Francisco’s Chrome.
Punk’s insurrectionary independence resulted in Ata Tak, the underground label dedicated to issuing their unique albums as well as choice cuts from likeminded Düsseldorf electronic mavericks.
“I was a painter before I started making music,” Reichelt told Electronic Sound in 2017. “When we first thought about live gigs for the group, painting was always an option. I saw the stage as a place on which things could be seen as well as heard.” What Der Plan did share with Kraftwerk was a keen embrace of a visual identity that existed in tandem with their idiosyncratic and inside-out pop—painted cardboard sets and cubist masks coating their elasticated synths with a thick Dadaist gunk.
Their early minimalist set-up wrought incredible results. Working with only a mic, tape recorder, and a Korg MS-20 synthesizer, Der Plan crafted an alluring alloy of kaleidoscopic acridity like an electro-mulch between Suicide and The Residents. 1980’s debut Geri Reig and the following year’s sophomore Normalette Surprise established their skewed synth sound from the word go—sinewy sequencers, sped-up vocals, offbeat field recordings, and a misshapen barely recognisable pop sensibility bobbing in and out of its mangled post-punk.
As the 1980s evolved, Der Plan’s ironic fangs sunk deeper into Germany’s musical nostalgia. Labelling their music “electro-schlager”, the trio viewed their avant-garde pop as merely a continuation of Germany’s ever-evolving chart terrain, as in keeping with tradition along with 1960s easy-listening and the operettas that dominated German airwaves before the War.
Tounges were in cheek, however, ‘schlager’ imbued with specific cultural connotations to sentimental retreats to a safer and more conservative musical middle-of-the-road, a universe away from the NDW that seized West Germany’s countercultural fringes. Humour had never sounded so upending and subversive.
Der Plan continued to craft their electronic collages before announcing a hiatus in 1992. Cycling through various incarnations with shifting personnel, the classic trio returned for 2017’s Unkapitulierbar, and the resurrection of lost Ata Tak tapes of material finally compiled for 2021’s Save Your Software. In a musical climate where analogue synths are lauded once again, lo-fi artists litter Bandcamp, and punk has been stretched into egg and synthy permutations, signs of Der Plan’s deconstructionist electronics run deep in an independent underground of their making.
