Forced Exposure

Geri Reig is Der Plan's debut album (originally released in 1980), but not their first release. An EP, recorded with the aid of an Electric Memo dictation preceded Geri Reig. But the band is not very keen on reissuing this early work. Why did they call themselves "Der Plan," actually? "A concept which has something to do with the capacity of people to think and shape their future" as Plan member Moritz Reichelt, alias Moritz R®, once explained. Der Plan at that time comprised Moritz Reichelt, Frank Fenstermacher, Robert Görl and Chrislo Haas. Their music was menacing, fragmented noise rock, still with guitar and drums, but far removed from the typical (rock) music of the period. When Görl and Haas departed (to form DAF), guitars and drums also disappeared from Der Plan. New on the team: Kurt Dahlke alias Pyrolator. This was the line-up which recorded Geri Reig in Reichelt's Düsseldorf office with a two-channel tape machine. Geri Reig is a punk album in the truest and best sense. New, threatening and, at the same time, humoros. While other bands of the era stamped with the seal of "punk" played a faster and harder version of 1950s rock and roll or 1960s garage rock, Der Plan, like a handful of contemporaries such as The Residents or Throbbing Gristle, not only rejected traditional song structures but jettisoned the whole instrument list. That's punk for you! Allied to a deep aversion to rock music and the cliché that goes with it, was the wish to create something of their own. And Geri Reig is certainly idiosyncratic: fragments and songs, raspy and fragile, melodies and interference, ambient sounds up front in the mix. Fine in theory and -- rare though it may be -- excellent in practice. And it just gets better: the album was well-received. Moritz R®: "As if everyone had been waiting for it."

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