Opening the album with possibly the most commercial track FUNFUNDVIERZIG have ever released isn't a bad marketing ploy. While generally speaking the DUNYABÉLÉ album is a great listening experience, "Nubdade" is the jewel in it's African crown. Released slightly late for the flash-in-the-pan interest in African guitar combos, and with only Indie reviews to bring it to attention, it missed the canoe as far as commercial success goes, but hey, those who have it can sing along and slow dance to it's Reggae-esque riddim till they drop. A lost classic. It's followed by the long-in-the-tooth-but-still-working-hard JAMAICA PAPA CURVIN whose gentle, ever-so-slightly political lounge-Reggae has been distancing him from his BONEY M roots for some years now. Apparently popular in Germany, CURVIN has kinda limited his audience by the languid nature of his music. This particular track sounds as if it would have been at home playing on JOHN PEEL back in the early Eighties. Naive in many ways, but that's not a bad thing. Bygone age stuff, but enjoyable all the same. THE LIONS were latecomers to FUNFUNDVIERZIG's catalogue. "Big Slave Rider" follows the same chunky, warm mix of CURVIN with much the same tempo and style. MIGHTY V slips into the jetstream of the previous two pieces, and feels entirely at home with a much more Rappy churn of voice, a breathless Toasting style which seems to have disappeared into musical history now. GRACY AND THE HERBMAN BAND always were great lightweight Reggae with tons of commercial hook and GRACY's velvet seduction voice which on "Just You" seems a tad less breathlessly siren-like. Still great pop music. THE VISION hold up well against the previous tracks, once more reiterating that soft German Reggae deserves a much wider market which, unfortunately it seems to have been denied. From this point we venture into other areas of FUNFUNDVIERZIG's interests. DOMINIK VON SENGER's "Track Of Sample" forms a good bridge between the more obvious genre of Reggae and more experimental realms, with it's Jungle drums and bass creating a moving, mildly danceable riddim, while all manner of synthetic splutters and whizzes combine forces with Prog guitar over the top, creating a busy, active track. DUNKELZIFFER, featuring former CAN members take us to a more mystical East with "Oriental Cafe" set against hard and heavy drumming (courtesy of Mr. LIEBEZEIT I believe) - an active, edgy track which is far more insistant than most of their softer lounge material. FOYER DES ARTS I could never totally get into. Here, on "Ratschlag Eines Reformierten Herrn", with, I believe MAX GOLDT on vocals they come across like a less cold KRAFTWERK combining forces with a German-speaking DAVID SYLVIAN. Not a bad track, kinda encouraging me to revisit their sound - mellow and hooky, with only the language barrier preventing them having wider appeal. ELECTRIC SOURCE, one of the more obscure acts on the label come next, with their "Plantation" - a sort of slow Funky Souly piece owing as much to the Neo-Electronic school of people like AUTECHRE or ATOM HEART as it does to older styles. Well-formed and easy on the ears. "The Emissary" is the track they have chosen to represent their favourite Cash Cow SLEEP CHAMBER. Stripped-down, minimal, experimental, this hardly gives the listener an example of what SC's average sound is. However, it does kind of fit into the now-transforming atmosphere of the album, Ambient and drifty except for the overdriven kick drum double beat. KLANGKRIEG come next with "Der Schönste Tag", a soft-as-dustfall background loop over which gaspy female voice and strident keyboard punctuation combine in a disquieting atmosphere of barely-hinted-at dread. MAX GOLDT's experiMental approach is full to the front with "Gestern Erst, Heut Jedoch, Ob Morgen Schon? Oder: Mein Herz Steht In Flammen Oder: Ein Alter Kaputter Kühlschrank" - small, edged in electronica, this has a certain harmless eccentricity to it, which is difficult to compare with anyone else - imagine RESIDENTS being musically proficient and singing in uneffected voices, yet retaining the weirdness? That may give you some clue. The penultimate track is "Westblok" by BOURBONESE QUALK. BQ never really followed a linear career - they'd change styles with superhuman leaps, rather than small steps. This is a kind of Eastern-tinted instrumental Funk set to a strange Industrial beat. You might be mistaken for thinking ENO had a hand in the production of this album, as it has the hallmarks of his work on albums by BOWIE and TALKING HEADS. The album closes with the most far-out artists on this label (sorry KLANGKRIEG, but that's the truth) SCHNITZLER + THOMASIUS. This track "Animato" combines a soft Classical background of what sounds like haunting clarinet, over which they throw crashing weirdness as punctuation. Fairly passive for them, it does however bring the album to a conclusion without any artist having broken an overall warm atmosphere with only occasional moments where stark intrusion of noise occurs. Good stuff - the label seems to have now disappeared, but what they did, they did well. Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.