A calorie is the amount of energy that’s needed to raise the temperate of a liter of water by 1 degree centigrade; but I’m no dietician. I learned that from listening to Telepherique’s “Zivilisatose.” I had never heard of Telepherique, but the German band has been around for over twenty years and released many, many CDs. “Zivilisatose” is spacey, Krautrock-toned thematic techno and it’s about fast food! Seriously. Hence the calorie facts I learned. You can tell something’s up right away; the album begins with a choppy, electric synth riff and a loop of soda slurping through a straw followed by a sated “aahhh” -the kind of deep-quench soundbite popular with fast food commercials. You may wonder if the exponentially irritating “ba da ba da daaa” McJingle is lurking around the corner. The music on the rest of the CD is passable enough, but the looped samples at the foreground of all this sci-fi-ish techno (all about obesity, fast food, diabetes, etc..) are not to my taste- if you’ll pardon the pun. Not that I’m a fast food advocate, but is an hour plus anti-junk food snyth opus really so essential? Unless this is the soundtrack to another fast food = decline of civilization documentary I would have enjoyed the music more without the samples. 6/10 -- Mike Pursley (16 December, 2009)