cabaret / variété / panopticum
2006, Danse Macabre

reviews (in german) are also found within the discography on Das Ich's site.

The new opus of the living legends of gothic is an interesting album, which combines the early dark influences of the band together with the more progressive approach they featured on the previous “Lava/Glut”-cd. After the some more folk influenced debut song DI renew with their dark bombastic musical content perfumed with a real dramatic character. The complexity of the writing remains once more an essential item of their work while the global production features some outstanding effects and electronic wealth. Bruno Kramm already shows off an amazing range of ideas and influences. The some more electro-minded “Opferzeit” might sound in contract with the neo-classical influences of the “Cabaret”-song or the gothic soundtrack like “Zuckerbrot und Peitsche”, but it simply features the open-minded aspiration of this album. In a more traditional style “Cabaret” delivers some more great songs like “Paradigma” and “Macht”. The “Nahe”track features an interesting duo in the vocals. The female guest vocalist adds a captivating and classically trained touch although this isn’t my favorite song! This is another impressive production coming from the hands of the German gothic pioneers!
side-line.com

Listening to a new Das Ich album is much like seeing an old, familiar face around your dinner table or down the pub, whichever suits you. The effect is much the same. You ask questions, you wonder how they've been since you last saw them. Everyone laughs at how little everyone has changed.

Then they begin to answer you. "Cabaret" is a journey through the darker regions of the human mind with numerous detours into lurid fixations, twisted saudade, nihilistic relationships with one's own psyche and along the way, some deliciously fucked up dancefloor missives.

Once the first percussive jackhammer clotheslines you in "Moritat", it's over. You have no choice but to let "Cabaret" play out. "Macht" clearly shows the menacing persona of Das Ich. This band is larger than life. They are no longer just releasing albums. They are decisively showing that they are indeed, artists, in the truest sense of the word.
This is a much cleaner sounding album than "Lava" was. If it bears any resemblance to what they've done in the past, it is only because of how unique their sound is. I mean really, who the hell sounds like Das Ich but Das Ich? Nobody else out there is working in even the same vein as Kramm and Ackermann are.

People seem to have forgotten this band (especially here in the US) ever since "Egodram". They are no longer the press darlings that everyone wants to know everything about. And it's just as well given the fickle and pathetic state of things in the "scene" these days. There's no magazine backing them, no duplicitous label aligned with the press over-stating their abilities. There is only the music. And that is what matters.

Das Ich continue to do what they do best: put out music that is both challenging and unconventional without slipping into self-parody. That's one hell of a tightrope to walk but I can think of no other duo more suited for it. Aces again, boys.
Peter Marks, releasemagazine.net

The godfathers of dark electronic music have done it again. Just two years following Das Ich’s successful album Lava, the duo of Stefan Ackermann and Bruno Kramm present their follow-up which has no comparisons. The remarkable dark Cabaret delivers naughty sound escapades in multiple cynical interpretations of a basic theme centered around the costumes for marionette theatre. For the album, Kramm’s usual electronic chamber orchestra was accompanied by a large variety of vital sounding acoustic collages. This deviates from the usual electronic blend of Das Ich by producing songs which allude to a twilight somewhere between claustrophobic reality and unchained phantasmic atmosphere. Ackermann’s vocals range between incantations and distorted madness to draw the listener through their visit to the nightmare theatre, giving them a joyride through their darkest emotions. Next to hymnic song jewels like “Atemlos,” “Paradigma” and the radical minimalistic dance floorer crusher “Opferzeit” the album also ventures into experimental sound collages with songs like “Fluch,” lead by guest vocalist Marianne Iser’s erotic opera-like vocals. It excites and terrifies as the album reaches its climax with the title track “Cabaret.” Point blank Das Ich pose the questions “What is imagination and what’s destiny? Where does reality end and where does madness begin?”
metropolis records

coming Summer 2010:
KOMA