Supersempfft: Roboterwerke LP (Bureau B)

It's 1979, the future has arrived... and it's got the giggles. This re-released oddity is an electronic concept album about a mellow tuba-playing frog transformed by a mad scientist into a star-surfing superhero. But that's not the most remarkable thing about it. Roboterwerke sees various German studio-heads experiment with their brain chemistry and a 'revolutionary' new drum machine to create music which doesn't give a monkeys about genre distinctions or muso credibility. It's too busy having a ball.

Parts of this may sound like Giorgio Moroder or Air, but its anthemic synths and rubberised grooves are constantly mutating - and there is no fear of being cheesy. Lounge, pop, AOR, proto-electronica, Utopian exotica, folk, prog-soul, calypso - it's all grist to the mill. Recorded in the late disco age, it has waved goodbye to the hairy old krautrock era. These chaps are still definitely taking the drugs but are now freaking out on the dancefloor. The result is an unclassifiable melange that could sit in the record box of DJs playing sets of downtempo, exotica, techno... you name it. This album is happy to flirt with 'bad taste', it's Bootsy Collins meets Button Moon. And as for the vocals: phew!

Our trip starts with the title track: pinging and boinging space noises decorate driving, anthemic synths and plodding cosmic disco beats. The result is an airy space fantasia replicating that 'flying through the galaxy' feel. Weirdly enough, this proto-techno doesn't sound dated. We Found It Out's bonged-up R 'n' B features vocoders and introduces the first of its comic book-style main characters, a mad scientist with big plans...

Pipedreams on a Lilypad is a lovely bucolic interlude, with medieval lute-type sounds, birdsong, church bell and Spanish guitar combining for a 'first Orb album'-style blissout. We meet our superhero-to-be, the grooviest frog in the galaxy. Let's Beam Him Up sees the album move through the gears with rubbery synth-bass and alien voices singing in falsetto - it's high-NRG space-boogie meets Space Invaders. Follow-up I'm Gonna Make You Big features disturbingly sincere-sounding AOR vocals. This robo-electro anthem glides by in stately fashion, with the scientist pledging to the frog: 'I'm gonna make you big my friend / Please keep cool...'

Side two commences with Be a Man You Frog. There's a definite 80s film soundtrack, computer-game-meets Miami Vice feel to this driving, anthemic, number. Then Supersempftt's syndrums, clicking percussion and squelchy electro-bass describe our hero's transformation. He's delighted - and who wouldn't be? ('I fly like a rocket / with the universe in my pocket'). The tune's electro-calypso style is a definite turn-up for the books. They just about get away with it.

It's almost time for the victory lap. Out Of Time meshes skippy disco with high-pitched, almost Bee Gees vocals ('I'm gliding through the sky / On a magic butterfly'). And loungey closer The Best Thing Is To Get High is fairly self-explanatory....with added tuba.

Roboterwerke is quite something, a goofy stoned-out witches stew that really doesn't work on paper. But for all its unlikely musical juxtapositions, the album is a pleasingly light and frothy concoction that slips down easily, leaving you with a smile on your face. And you've gotta give thanks to an electronic concept album that doesn't take itself too seriously. They realise that this stuff is supposed to be fun.

It's space, Jim, but not as we know it... 3/5