Released 26th February.

With the band’s tenth anniversary in their viewfinder, CAMERA are all set to push

the button on “Prosthuman”, their fifth studio album in February 2021. As befits

an age in which realities can change in the blink of an eye, from one day to the

next, the Berlin band nevertire of changing themselves, their music or personnel.

As Karlheinz Stockhausen noted: “New methods change the experience. New

experiences change man.” Taking this as their lead, Michael Drummer (the

drummer) and CAMERA surprise us once more on“Prosthuman” as they reinvent

and reformulate their sound without sacrificing the project’s identity which has

matured over the past decade. Less surprising is the fact that some record stores

give CAMERA their own section, alongside Krautrock pioneers like NEU!, Can and

La Düsseldorf. “Emotional Detox”, the predecessor to this album, was distinguished

by the presence of two keyboard virtuosos (Steffen Kahles and CAMERA founder

member Timm Brockmann). Finding replacements for “Prosthuman” was, as Michael

Drummer stresses, “a difficult process.” The two keyboardists had – indifferent

creative periods – formed the backbone of a band structure otherwise prone to

fluctuations. Decisive input came from an unlikely source: Tim Schroeder, who first

teamed up with CAMERA as aperformance and video artist on their six-week tour

of the USA in 2017. Over the course of various jams and recording sessions, he was

able to offer ample proof of his synthesizers skills. Alex Kozmidi, a musician and

composer with a flair for experimentation, completed the triumvirate on guitar,

with Michael Drummer adding his own guitar riffs here and there. Change and

friction can be useful allies in pursuit of creativity, something to which Drummer

has grown accustomed as the only ever-present member of CAMERA. The pleasures

and pain of isolation – suddenly a mass phenomenon in pandemic times – are well

known to the quasi frontman of the group. Over the years, he has spent many hours

alone or with a shifting cast of co-musicians in the band’s basement studio, beneath

a former factory site in a less than hip southern district of Berlin. Virus-induced

social distancing and quarantine measures that came into force during the recording

process (June 2019 to June 2020) thus posed no great challenge.