Free and legal MP3 from B. Fleischmann (Yuletide electronica with a provocative story)

"24.12." - B. Fleischmann
     And here's another not-quite-typical holiday song. You won't hear a lot of out-and-out electronica on Fingertips, not because I have anything against the sound per se, but because by and large I find the genre lacking in what I will, with apologies to S. Colbert, call "songiness." We get a lot of beat and texture and neato sounds but often each track emerges like something sliced out of the electronica-o-matic machine, without an individually compelling sense of structure, arc, or storyline.
     While "24.12." has its quirks--there is no chorus, either musically or lyrically, and nothing really resembling a hook--I still feel that Austrian Bernhard Fleischmann has delivered a fully realized song here, and then some. Unusually for electronica, this one is rooted in the lyrics, so don't miss them: it's a holiday story song of an unusual nature. The male voice--not Fleischmann's, but a guest vocalist who goes by the name Sweet William Van Ghost--sings only the song's prelude, setting up the situation and the character who then steps forward to sing the rest of the song. I won't give away the premise, but I will note that Marilies Jagsch, the woman who sings in the song's second half, is not who she appears to be, character-wise. And it may well be that twist that gives this strange song its depth.
     In the middle of the nuanced electronica ambiance, the one central, recurring motif you will hear is the most musically unsubtle thing imaginable: a descending C scale, played note by note on the guitar. And yet by kind of hiding in plain sight there, it lends the subtle air of holiday song to the tale, as that descending line, in other contexts, carries the distinct flavor of Yuletide about it. (It's a tricky thing, using the unsubtle subtly.) "24.12." is a song from Fleischmann's latest album, Angst is Not a Weltanschauung!, released in November on the German Morr Music label. Weltanschauung, by the way, is one of those wonderful, not entirely translatable German compound words; the overall title means something to the effect of "Fear is not a worldview." Which is itself a great message for a not-quite-typical holiday greeting card, I'd say.