Phone Line


Wet phone graphic in Milan, Italy

This is dedicated to all of the people waiting in line to buy a new telephone:

Having taken his drink he felt a little better. He noticed the phone off the hook in a bleary sort of way and very likely didn’t remember what he’d been doing with it. So he just walked across and put it back in its cradle. There is something compulsive about a telephone. The gadget-ridden man of our age loves it, loathes it, and is afraid of it. But he always treats it with respect, even when he is drunk. The telephone is a fetish.

- Raymond Chandler. The Long Goodbye, 1953.

Dopplereffekt – Cellular Phone
Released in 1994, back when cellular phones were the size of a car battery and only important people and drug dealers had them. A few years later, Dopplereffekt delivered the classic electro album (of which there are only three or four), Gesamkunstwerk. Despite the nomenclature, Dopplereffekt is an unmistakable product of Detroit and, true to form, electro-mastermind Gerald Donald avoids photographs, constantly juggles aliases, and generally makes it impossible to write anything concrete.

Related: Check out Infinitestatemachine for a detailed review of Dopplereffekt’s recent Dublin show + an interesting post (and scuffle) about techno mythology over at the terrific Test Industries.

07.14.08  |  Uncategorized  |  citations, shopping  |  Tweet It
One Remark
  1. jacob says:

    what would you say the other classic electro albumsd are? I really like Gesamtkunstwerk.

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James A. Reeves is a writer, designer, teacher, and law student. He's currently finishing a big book about America, available on W. W. Norton in 2011. He lives in New Orleans.
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