Das Vodkalied
By Pankow
I'm Italian. In Italy, we tend to glorify only musicians with enormous popularity and to talk about them only if they sell millions of albums or end up at the top of some non-Italian charts (most of the time South American Charts, because of our Latin language, except for the rock band Måneskin which is currently having a totally unexpected worldwide success that's tough to explain).
Pankow should be very popular in Italy, but they aren't. Only true electronic music lovers know them or have ever heard about them. If you look around the web, there isn't much information about the band, especially on Italian press and websites, but they have been one of the first pioneers of EBM, alongside Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (D.A.F.), The Normal, Suicide, Die Krupps, Killing Joke, and Throbbing Gristle to name a few.
Historically, they should have had an important role for their contribution to developing an entirely new music genre in the early 1980s.
The band was founded in Florence, Italy, by fm (Maurizio Fasolo) and originally played a sort of new wave music inspired by bands like Joy Division. With the arrival of singer Alex Spalck, Paolo Favati on samples, and Alex Gimignani on percussions, the band changed the sound and released Throw Out Rite, the first album in 1983.
Released by the Italian label Electric Eye, the album's opener Das Vodkalied is the track we are talking about today. Despite being an Italian band, the song's lyrics are German and filtered through Echoes and Delays. The hypnotic drum beat became one of the main characteristic elements in Industrial compositions. It represented a perfect link between the early experimental research behind the 1970s electronic music and the dance floor, which is one of the main aspects of the development of EBM alongside style-defining synthesizers, including Korg MS-20, Roland SH-101, and A.R.P. Odyssey.
The band had more success abroad than in Italy. Especially after their tours in Germany and after working with English producer Adrian Sherwood, who had already worked with bands like Depeche Mode, Einstürzende Neubauten, Skinny Puppy, and Cabaret Voltaire. Even more, the following two albums produced by Sherwood defined Pankow's sound and brought the band to join Wax Trax! Records, one of the most influential American independent labels in the 1980s.
Based in Chicago, the label released albums by other EBM bands like Minimal Compact, Front 242, Underworld, Meat Beat Manifesto, Front Line Assembly, Young Gods, Sister Machine Gun, My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult, and many more until going bankrupt in 1992. Wax Trax! was bought by New York-based T.V.T. Records during the same year, with founders Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher retaining creative control of the label until it was discontinued in 2001. In 2014, it was re-established by Julia Nash, daughter of co-founder Jim Nash.
