...Stereo Total

In the Stereolab: Imagine if ultra-cool French ye-ye girl Françoise Hardy was making weird electropop. And sometimes singing in German. Congratulations! You've just imagined the wonderful Franco-German duo Stereo Total, aka Brezel Göring (Germany) and Françoise Cactus (France). Göring and Cactus describe their own music like this: "40% Chanson, 20% R'n'R, 10% Punkrock, 3% DAF-Sequenzer, 4% Jacques Dutronc- Rhythmique, 7% Brigitte Bardot and Serge Gainsbourg, 15% Cosmonaute, 10% really old synthesizers, 10% 8-bit Amiga- sampling, 10% transistor amplifier, 1% really expensive and advanced instruments." The maths may not add up, but the music sounds fantastic.

If music be the food of love: Cactus and Göring met in early 1993 in a Berlin bakery and made their first recording (a 10-minute cooking recipe in which all the ingredients had sexual connotations) soon afterwards. Unsurprisingly, romance blossomed (and is still in bloom, apparently). They acquired a guitarist and the name Stereo Total, and in 1995 released their first EP, produced by none other than Alex Chilton. Five increasingly ambitious albums followed, as did an adoring cult audience. Over the years they've lost and gained several new members, but Cactus and Göring stayed with it, and are now the only members of the group. They're a hard working duo - Göring is always busy creating new instruments, while Cactus is a journalist and novelist. Göring has accompanied her on her reading tours, playing specially composed music while she reads from her latest works.

Sie sind Berliner: Stereo Total belie the myth that German music is all about dreadful power ballads and worse techno. Still based in Berlin, the duo have always collaborated with fellow Berlin musicians, and will play in Whelan's of Dublin on April 23rd as part of the Berlin Anticonformiste festival, along with fellow Deutsche electro artists Cobra Killer and Jeans Team. They've also just released their sixth album, Do the Bambi, another fabulous collection of strange, rackety noisy pop songs sung in both French and German by the angel-voiced Cactus. According to the band, writing in German on their website, the title Do the Bambi means "show me your lovely eyes under your long lashes and rescue me from the inferno of my ego and the whole tragic world!" And you thought it was just about dancing like a fawn

Anna Carey