haujobb mastermind Daniel Myer is one of the most prolific artists in the electronic music scene, and he's dropped another perfect disc on the listening public. Myer is joined by vocalists Thorsten Meier (for the harsher tracks) and Wolgag Thrumbs (for the smoother, more melodic tracks). Cleen is the outlet for Myer's strange abstract versions of Synthpop and EBM, this disc falls in the middle ground between the spacy minimalism of haujobb's ninetynine, and the beat terrorism of haujobb's Freeze Frame Reality. Standout tracks include Sunburst, Restore, North and Stronger.

This is one of the few times when a band's side project is as good as the main band.

While certainly not among the best work Daniel Myer (haujobb, Dots & Dashes, NEWT, Myer, Hexer, S'Apex, Architect, Scope, HMB, R:A, Cleaner, G-flow, Aktivist, Appendix... what else, and does he sleep?) has produced, this is his little venture into popmusic. He managed to recruit a fairly talented singer for this release named Wolfgang Thums (Photik Sonar) who's chiorboy voice spills over the music. This record is like futurist pop music... people 10 years from now will begin to write songs like this. Tracks like "Freaks" and "Sunburst" and "Separate live" are prime examples of songs that "get stuck in your head" in a classy depeche mode, kind of way.

Cleen, a side-project birthed in part by one portion of the Haujobb equation and one Thorsten Meier, was actually something that went without a lot of recognition. Its somewhat a sad fate, too, because a lot of what they did in the electronically friendly, not so club trendy, arena of sound was something I actually found myself quite fond of. Had it not been for accidentally finding Cleaner (the baby of Meier after he and his companion parted ways and, in actually, this band with a name changed to avoid anger between the two)I would have missed out on this album and much of what is akin to a soothing ride on electro-tides with vocals that are wonderful to listen to.

While there are a few songs with tempos strong enough to call dance, mostly everything here is actually more of that odd reality when people get together and simply want to make good electronic music. The first track, "Sunburst", is actually one of my favorites, with all the crucial pieces of a catchy song coming together and taking over. It has the music that builds into a song you can remember, odd sounds sometimes flashing across some minimalist's beat-ridden path, and vocals that sound wonderful in their complexity. Part melody with a slight side of distortion, they are actually catchy and they actually grew on me pretty heavily after a time. The second track, "Freak," is an equally catchy number, although its more of a melody piece with some scattered sounds and a beat that allows a little development over the duration of the song. I like some of the ways it was engineered, too, the fashioning of it coming from a few varied pieces and making an interesting whole. "School was just the right place to perfect the expression of spitefulness in your face" sticks in my head a lot, and the message of the song, sung in a most beautiful manner, is hard to discount. "Transparent" is another track with excellent vocals, beautiful beats setting atop those sonically crafted mountains, and a nice sound that seems to stick with me when I listen to it. It has a slow-but-hectic main tempo, with lots of sounds crammed into as little a parking lot as possible, and it makes for good listening. Also noteworthy is the mostly musical "Did You Forget" that sometimes brings the line "Did you forget something" to the top to get caught in my listening mind, the totally beatstricken "separate live," and the faster tempoed, still hectic and yet darker sounding "restore."

All in all, the album is solidly constructed and is something that reminds me of Haujobb when they were doing alot of their interesting work beat-wise. It has solid vocals, a lot of catchy songs that make up for a few redundant ones, and its something I think most people that appreciate Metropolis-Records releases and the talents of those names mentioned will find appealing. Its disappearing into oblivion, too, and is perhaps an album you'll kick yourself for if you let it fade away.