Die Tödliche Doris
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Die Tödliche Doris (translates to "Deadly Doris") was a German performance art and music group based in Berlin. The group was active from 1981-1987. The band members, Wolfgang Müller (1957-), Käthe Kruse (1958-), and Nikolaus Utermöhlen (1958 -1996).
Die Tödliche Doris was part of the Geniale Dilletanten movement, a sort of merger of the New Wave and Punk scenes, together with for instance Einstürzende Neubauten. The head of the band, author, musician and artist Wolfgang Müller wrote the book Geniale Dilletanten (Ingenious dilettants) for the MERVE-publishing house.
Instead of constructing an identity, which is an essential part of an image of a band in Pop-business, Die Tödliche Doris challenged this structures and called it a "convention" or "stereotype". So Deadly Doris tried with each music piece and music production not to follow a "style" or "image", while Doris brothers from Einstürzende Neubauten building up a strong image.
After a Maxi, 12inch, the first LP of Die Tödliche Doris, named: " " compiles 13 tracks: a "funny" song is followed by a real "serious" one, all differences of styles/characters united, but strictly separated from each other.
The following project breaks the convention of normal record-producing. The box "Chöre & Soli" (1983-84) looks like a 5-Vinyl-LP Box, but contains 8 small doll-records, a doll-recordplayer with battery & booklet. The songs last just 20 seconds and are in low quality. This box is for record collectors today one of the most searched items. The plan of the band, that no reviewers compare the music from their first LP with the next project, succeed. "We want to become the most independent band of all independent bands - even independent from a usual record player." Wolfgang Müller said in an interview.
The band's fourth album, Unser Debüt, was perceived as a new wave pop album. It was published in 1984, while the most independent bands in Germany want to become popular, a successful part of the mainstream. This record pick this out as a central musical theme. The music tries to sound "opportunistic", "ambitious", tries to "please" the audience. So it got a lot of bad reviews. Only writers in Belgium and Canada wrote, that the music of this LP is a "parody about commercialism and conformance".
One year later, the LP sechs was published, the opposite of Unser Debüt. Very puritan, abstract music, very artistic and hermetic. So there were some review, where writers thought, that the band want to come back to their "experimental" roots again.
In fact, both records were recorded at the same time in a studio. They both belong together and their tracks have exactly the same lengths and they are full of relations between texts, sounds and contents.
One year after the LP sechs was published, Die Tödliche Doris published a poster, where they announced having produced a complete independent, uncommmercial record, the "first invisible record of the world". This happens, when you play the album Unser Debüt simultaneously with the bands sixth album on face A or B. Hereby creating an additional, invisible album in between "Unser Debut" (4) and "sechs" (6), the 5th.
