Customer Reviews

Solutions for a Small Planet

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's sad that this group is pigeonholed into the "electro/industrial" genre by the media, most critics, and even fans. If you enjoy electronic music, or even modern music in general, once you give this album a few spins there is no going back. Haujobb began their career in the early ninties, sounding more like a Skinny Puppy or FLA knockoff, but they quickly got off that track and have been wonderfully innovative ever since. Gradually, this band IS being discovered; I recently attended their show with futurepop darlings VNV Nation in Los Angeles and the venue was packed with a couple thousand people. Haujobb played their set before the headliner VNV Nation, and got a better crowd response, which is almost unheard of!

Musically, this album is hard to pin down. It slightly reminds me of Photek, Portishead, Matthew Herbert, Front Line Assembly, and maybe soundtrack stuff like you'd hear in Alien movies. Like Portishead, this album takes grip of time and has its way with it. It's dark and futuristic like the best FLA albums, and much of it is tight, spacey drum'n'bass. But in the end these comparisons fail, because Solutions For a Small Planet is just so unique.

This album is for the futurists of futurists (AKA Accellerationists)... as digital and analogue as music can get, and still retains that human feel with pianos, saxophones, offbeat drum'n'bass, very "brave new world" lyrics. Every song seems to be a ridulously true statement about humans relationship with technology... phrases like "virtual masturbation", "no stationary living spaces, no static structures, mobility junkies", "jacked on the wire to a thousand billion degrees." Reminds me very much of a soundtrack to 5th Element or something. haujobb create magical music

About the Band:
Considered an industrial music giant, Germany's Daniel Myer and Dejan Samardzic typically puts out music that at times can be described as traditional electronic body music to much more experimental dark ambient techno. In addition to making use of both vocals and electronic created music, the prolific band is often considered a significant influence on many other industrial and electronic bands.

About the Album:
The hour and ten minute long album is considered by many Haujobb fans to be one of Myer's and Samardzic's best. Released in 1996, the album came at the mid-point of their long music careers, and shows the maturity and quality one would expect from electronic music veterans. A number of the tracks are completely instrumental, with others having minimal vocals or voice-overs including for small portions of the tracks. While I like the instrumental pieces, I tended to prefer the tracks where Myer's cool vocals were much more prominent.

Some tracks I recommend:
- Nature's Interface
- Journey Ahead
- Clockwise
- Depths
- Sub Unit One

This is one of my favorite Haujobb albums, but I tend to prefer to listen to it on quiet evenings at home alone. The majority of the album is rather subtle in its approach, having a more atmospheric feel. A number of the tracks, most notably Journey Ahead, on this album tend to please patrons of industrial club dancefloors. The Cage Complex is also notable because it includes a saxophone.

Sideprojects:
Architect, Cleaner, Clear Vision, Cleen, HMB, & Newt

Similar Artists:
Ah Cama-Sotz, Black Lung, C/A/T, Empusae, Forma Tadre, Frontline Assembly, Halo_Gen, Gridlock, Mlada Fronta, Sleepwalk, This Morn' Omina

this was the disc which showed the world that haujobb is unstoppable. it's nearly 4 years old, and it *STILL* sounds futuristic. Tracks like Distance, AntiMatter and Transfer seem to transcend genre, dark and smootth, while Rising Sun and Cleaned Vision's frenetic beats are hard dancefloor fodder. There's no reason to NOT buy this cd.

Haujobb is a good band, although the material varies in quality too much to be called great. Nevertheless, there are some really outstanding tracks on this disc, and if you were to buy only one Haujobb album, I'd recommend this one.

This cd makes very good use of whatever stereo equipment you happen to possess; I'm extremely impressed by Haujobb. If you like Skinny Puppy, you'll like Solutions for a Small Planet.

While I originally didn't like or understand their move to electronica, this album caught on pretty quick and stuck with me for a long time. This is really one of their better albums (#2 in my head), and is a must-have for anybody interested in Haujobb.

These songs are subliminal and stick with you for a while. You realize at some point that they're just great songs. They're a little soft, and I miss the Industrial side of Haujobb, but this is definitely one of my most cherished records. Just as good if not better than Homes and Gardens.

haujobb is the most amazing electronic band to come out in years.. this album is by far haujobb's best, and i believe it is a close to perfect album. sub unit one, depths, nature's interface, all amazing tracks.

In a genre that was until then bogged down with the black-clad Rudy Ratzingers and Claus Larsens of the world, SFASP was a catastrophic push forward, pulling in elements of drum'n'bass and ambient into an otherwise creatively stale form of music. The vocals are undistorted and subdued rather than gothed up, and this works to incredible benefit. The sci-fi/Blade Runnerish theme of the album works well for it, despite not being exactly the most original idea in the world(lyrical theme is hardly the fruit of the album, which is altogether and uniformily the music.) It has a few very well done aggressive moments, but is surprisingly serene on the whole, Myer and Samardzick(I don't remember how to spell the guy's name) choosing a more soothing mode of sonic delivery than in previous albums, neither of which can hope to compare to Solutions. I strongly suggest you buy this one first if at all interested in Haujobb, and Cleaned Visions or Ninetynine if interest persists. Their first two are nothing more than the conventional psuedo-puppyish tripe that SFASM succeeds by trampling over.

I must confess this is the only cd by Haujobb i own, though I've listened to some songs from the other albums; and I think this is Haujobb's masterpiece. If Homes & Gardens was more EBM oriented, with -it's true, though it sounds strange if we listen to "Solutions...", "Freeze Frame Reality" seemed a bridge from the first and this magnificent opus. What i don't quite understand is the friend who compares Haujobb and Neubauten; they have nothing to do, nothing at all; both are really brilliant at their styles, but very very different; and neither Haujobb tries to sound like Neubauten, nor obviously the other way round; "Solutions for a Small Planet" is a work completely electronic, only comparable in its brilliant use of electronic landscapes and rhythms with 'FLA' or even 'C-Tec'; the songs here really flow through your ears, easily and full of nuances which make it delightful listening to it with headphones; Maybe i don't like the opening track a lot, but 'Antimatter', 'Journey Ahead', 'Deviation' or 'Nature's Interface' are really good electronic songs; The voice is not as good as De Meyer's, for example, but it's ok and well inmersed in the music; Only two things make me complain about this album, which make me think this is not a complete masterpiece: sometimes the songs sound too cold, the voice too restrained; and the album is a bit too long, and I think there're 3 or four songs which could have been easily left out as b-sides in singles. But on the whole this is a very good work, enjoyable and easy to listen, even though that doesn't reduce a bit its plenty of nuances and sound complexities. If you really like electronic music, i would recommend you (though that's just my opinion, of course) to forget a bit about Chemical Brothers and all that stuff and try Haujobb, FLA or Noise Unit.