Kinderzimmer Productions – “Wir Sind Da Wo Oben Ist”

I don’t often post hip-hop ’round these parts. and not because I dislike it. it’s true that my exposure to it has been more limited than other genres. it’s also true that I generally tend to sway more toward the type of hip-hop that other noise/rock/avant/whatever fans like myself usually enjoy (i.e. Dalek, MF Doom, stuff on Anticon, etc). what originally intrigued me about these guys is the fact that they’re a German hip-hop group. what kept me coming back to them is that they’re an excellent hip-hop group, regardless of any (initial) language-related novelty.

call it a by-product of growing up in the 80s, but for a long time I’ve kind of unconsciously associated the sound of “good” hip-hop with a certain tone that comes out of most 80’s (and some 90s) models of Akai samplers. in particular, the older 12-bit and early 16-bit ones (up to about the S-3000). any idiot knows the MPC-series – which have those same sampling engines inside more of a beat-box housing – are pretty popular pieces of gear in hip-hop land. I really have zero idea what kind of gear Kinderzimmer actually uses for production, but there’s still a similar “grit” here that really comes close to those same tones… to my ear anyway. and that “grit” is what really endeared them to me.

as far as I can tell, this was the only major-label release from this group – the rest have been on smaller/indie labels. this one was released in ’02. I originally discovered them on another blog that has long since gone by the wayside – I won’t mention names in this case, for reasons that would be obvious if I did.

I can’t seem to locate any new copies available (though some sites are in German, which I can’t read) – if anyone knows otherwise let me know and I’ll remove this post. until/unless that happens,

get it here

and you can also enjoy some fun “interactive” activity with Kinderzimmer themselves here