The Harlequin The Robot And The Ballet-Dancer – Sven Vath – May 15th, 1994, Eye Q Records,
The Harlequin The Robot And The Ballet-Dancer is the second album from Sven Vath, released on Eye Q Records in 1994.
This nine track release ranges from ambient to more traditional Frankfurt-style trance
and is the follow up to Sven’s 1992 debut, Accident in Paradise.
Sven Vath should be a name instantly familiar to fans of electronic music. An early pioneer of German techno, he rose through the underground scene to enjoy huge commercial success both at home and abroad.
From his early club days at the famous Omen in Frankfurt, through labels like Eye Q Records and Harthouse, right up to his current Cocoon project, Sven Vath’s reputation as a DJ and tastemaker is matched only by his boundless energy.
This energy also translated into his status as legendary party monster banging out blistering trechno sets at furious BPMs with a parallel consumption that would make even Ricardo Villalobos blush.
Course nowadays younger ravers are more likely to know him as “Papa Sven”, the non-threatening elder statesman of techno slash yoga pose Instagrammer. I guess it’s for the best, if Sven didn’t hit the brakes a bit he’d likely be dead by now.
Course there’s always been too Svens. I’ve witnessed sets where he was relentless it and left me half dead, while there were others which bored me senseless because he was too busy hanging out with the cool kids who don’t like breaking a sweat.
I’d be on the sidelines urging him on, but he’d ignore me. Perhaps it’s because, much like Moog synthesisers, I’ve spent years mispronouncing his name and he was punishing me for it.
So yeah, turns out his surname doesn’t rhyme with bath.
Age probably also explains why I much prefer that pre-Cocoon era Sven Vath, the rampaging Teutonic trancenpanzer from the 90s.
All the more surprising, then, when 1992’s Accident In Paradise was released, which ranged from low key tribal trance to baroque ambience, not to mention the brooding minimalism of the title track. It was an instant classic, albeit one that completely upended expectations. We were expecting nosebleeds.
It was collaborator Ralf Hildenbeutel who helped Sven find that cinematic sound he was looking for.
A classically trained musician, composer and producer, Hildenbeutel has a long list releases and movie score credits under his belt.
He was also a member of trance group Cygnus X (of The Orange Theme fame) and collaborated with another big name in German techno, Chris Liebing.
But arguably his longest and most fruitful collaboration in techno was with Sven Vath. Together they released classic tracks as Barbarella ahead of their work on Sven’s debut album, Accident In Paradise.
Hildenbeutel would return on The Harlequin The Robot And The Ballet-Dancer, expanding those classical influences even further.
My understanding is that this 1994 follow-up was intended as a concept album, split into three distinct sections, each representing the titular characters.
The harlequin being childlike and playful, the robot being well, robotic, and finally the ballet dancer sequences, built around elegant orchestral arrangements for piano and strings.
It’s this final section I love the most, with Ballet Fusion, in particular, being one of my personal favourite tracks of all time.
Sven Lake
The album begins with a beatless ambient piece simply called Intro followed by Harlequin Plays Bells, a slow and steady slice of melodic techno.
Now, before I continue, just a word to the wise. I’m inclined to call a lot of this stuff trance because this is exactly what I consider to be trance in the traditional sense, melodic but slow burning, building gradually, that original Frankfurt sound, Eye Q Harthouse, etc.
For me trance begins around 1990 with seminal tracks like Age Of Love and ends around the summer of 1995 with the peak of Platipus Records.
Everything that follows from 1996 onward, Armin Van Burren, etc, I don’t call this stuff trance, I call it wank.
So, when we get to track three, The Beauty and the Beast, that’s a perfect example of what I would consider to be trance.
Coming in at just under ten minutes in length, it’s a slow burn that doesn’t really find its flow until around the five-minute mark, when it really begins building momentum, but still has further to go before it peaks.
Because, you see, the essence of trance is that it’s something deliberate, resembling the gradual process of entering a trancelike state.
It’s not an instant-hit of sugary euphoria, but rather a reward system built on repetition, with each layer bringing new levels of understanding.
As mentioned previously on my Dubnobasswithmyheadman review, the notion of “progressive” music and related genre names like trance have become so bastardised that they now exist as the polar opposite of what they originally were intended to be.
Trance music was not devised as instant gratification gimmick tracks built on predictable patterns, melodies and identical sound pallets, but rather as introspective, compositional puzzles to lose yourself inside of while each new clue unravelled before eventually reaching that sweet crescendo.
And while this track is certainly showing its age (and why wouldn’t it after three decades) the slow-release intensity is as good an example as any of how true trance music should be made. Producers take note.
At just shy of 13 minutes long, Harlequin’s Meditation is another lengthy ambient piece which wears its influences on its sleeve. You can hear Brian Eno and David Bowie in here as well as obvious nods Ryuichi Sakamoto while the childlike bells and music box motif of the Harlequin section continues throughout.
Birth Of Robby begins the robot section of the album, starting a slow ambient piece which continues for around a minute and a half before we get some percussion and low rumbling bass. It’s an odd mixture of sweet and trippy with gradual layers of arpeggios and polyrhythmic textures added in over the course of its ten-minute length.
Robot is pure deep German trance with clear Kraftwerk influences. As its name suggests, this one veers more towards the mechanical than the melodic, with deep drainpipe flanges and minimalistic percussive flourishes.
Though now past the 30-year mark, and very much of its time, it’s still a solid tune and remains one of the more compelling pieces on the album.
Ballet Romance is a complete 180, veering more into orchestral soundtrack territory, before merging into Ballet Fusion, my favourite track off this album and one which I have very fond memories of from my yoof.
I originally bought the Ballet Fusion EP back in the summer of ’94, which also had remixes from Der Dritte Raum, Speedy J and David Holmes.
And while those remixes were great, the epic intro of the original still gets me every time I hear it. Those soft, emotive pads, the hypnotising piano melody, that sad clarinet type sound, the gentle bells… few tracks have had such a profound effect on me when I was young.
Still has that effect now as I listen back, a sense of melancholic nostalgia dragging me all the way back to that summer of 1994.
As it builds, pulling us out of that sad place before taking us someplace else, the percussion begins, the high hats emerge, the groove pulls itself together and shakes off the sorrow to begin a tom-fuelled tribal workout.
When those pads return they take on a whole new meaning, what once was sad has suddenly become uplifting as we rush, full steam ahead, into classic 90s trance territory.
Honestly, if you can’t tell already, this track is the main reason I’m including this album today. Hence I’m going to include a few different versions of it.
First of all, to put us in the 90s mood, here’s the short MTV-friendly version, complete with swirly-wirly fractal tunnels and cheesy Lawnmower Man visuals – as was the style at the time.
Second, the track in its entirety, with the full intro mit dem ivorytinkelin von Ralf Hildenbeutel, absolutely ausgezeichnet!
The album then finishes with Ballet Dancer, the third ballet-themed track in a row, and again you can hear Hildenbeutel’s influence on this one quite strongly.
It’s an orchestral ambient piece based around piano and strings with additional melodic elements floating around in a thick reverb suspension and it’s something that could easily work on a movie soundtrack, even now 30 years later.
As with the previous track, it’s a high watermark for the artist generally, I’d easily put this one up against Aphex, Orbital, FSOL or any contemporary you care to mention, it’s stunning.
Finally, as a bonus – don’t ever say I don’t give yee guys nuthin’ – I wanna include this, which is the Speedy J remix of Ballet Fusion from the EP I mentioned earlier.
Have a listen and wait for that sublime pink noise filter effect at the end of the intro section (you’ll know it when you hear it) and you can thank me later. Gorgeous.
Papa’s Got A Brand New Bath
While a lot of people, myself included, are inclined to put Sven Vath squarely in the “business techno” box these days, that doesn’t mean I didn’t idolise the guy back in the day.
It was primarily on the strength of his first two albums, my undying love for the criminally underrated Ballet Fusion EP plus a steady stream of high octane mix tapes from his early 90s sets. That and his reputation as a proper badass.
In a sense that reputation hasn’t waned. The man’s still going strong, still running a label, still putting out tracks, still headlining festivals while refusing to compromise on his vinyl-only policy.
And, though it’s been a while since I’ve caught him play, I know he can still bring it, depending on the mood he’s in, the party he’s at (and the company he’s keeping.)
Personally, though, I’ll always be drawn more to that younger, more reckless yet experimental Sven, who was finally coming into his own as an artist and eager to push boundaries to demonstrate his musical range.
Finally, in case you’re wondering, over the years several Germans have corrected me (because that’s what Germans love to do) as to my pronunciation and I can reveal his surname is actually pronounced Vaith, as in rhymes with faith, but I’m going to go on mispronouncing it anyway because I’m too old to change.
So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to dig out my copy of the Ballet Fusion EP and go listen to Sven Vath in the bath.