A happy outcome is worth waiting for, says an old German proverb. If there's even a grain of truth in it, then 1997 should be a good year for ESKIMOS & EGYPT. After all, since the early Nineties the band has been breaking new musical ground, and now everybody's talking about it: the ultimate fusion of rock and techno. And after the big breakthrough for acts like The Prodigy, Underworld and the Chemical Brothers it must be about time for ESKIMOS & EGYPT to be shown the respect they deserve.

Flashback, Manchester in the late Eighties, Economically the former industrial capital of the North of England is in the doldrums, but its citizens haven't let the recession get to them. While Londoners are still dancing to rare-groove sounds of the Seventies in flared trousers, Mancunians are already discovering house music and techno. The first illegal raves get underway in the fields and woods, and the whole city is on fire. Guitar bands like the Happy Mondays or the Stone Roses discover the scene for themselves and shape what will later be called Indie Dance. But while their musical opening is limited to being remixed by the most-in-demand Djs or having them play their records during the warm-up, one band is going somewhere. ESKIMO & EGYPT fire their drummer and buy themselves sequencers and computer equipment. The former New Wave outfit built round musicians Christopher O'Hare, Mark Compton and David Cameron turns into the first true dancefloor band.

In 1990 ESKIMO & EGYPT release their song „The Power Of G'n'R", which can be seen as a blueprint of their sound. In it a hard techno beat comes up against samples from the Guns' & Roses anthem „Sweet Child Of Mine". The One Little Indian label, which has already discovered mould-breakers Sugarcubes (Björk's former band) and The Shamen, give the pyramid and igloo dwellers a contract, leading to singles like „Don't U Do It" and „Welcome To The Future", which sells over 35.000 in Germany alone.

Germany is good. With the release of their debut album „Perfect Disease" in 1993, the quartet play German venues for the first time and prove to be an instant crowd-pleaser. Thanks to their energetic performances they are booked at the most important major raves and take top places in the „best live act" reader category in all the techno magazines. No wonder, because how can all those faceless techno formations entrenched behind their synthesizer towers and twiddling their filter knobs compete with the show staged by a real live sweating power combo?

Then comes what Mark describes as a „traumatic" period. Their little label One Little Indian is fully occupied with the career of their million-sellers The Shamen. ESKIMOS & EGYPT want out of their contract, but first the band has to pursue a long legal dispute. Not till the end of 1995 are the Brits free again, and then with one bound Motor is at their side: the Hamburg label gives ESKIMOS & EGYPT a world exclusive signing. But the comeback is slow off the ground. The band has a complete album ready to go, but „Rest Is Silence" is never released. Produced during the long legal wrangle with One Little Indian, the material has gathered dust over the years; anyway, it shows the band as rather quiet and modern Eskimos are back on a really hard kick.

And so, after the release of a new version of „Welcome To The Future" with remixes by Celvin Rotane at the start of 1996, it's back to the studio. The first result is the single „Obsessional Love", released at the start of May this year, „Obsessional Love" is the acoustic depiction of the dangers of an excessive passion, a tour de force with evil, twisted vocals and any number of fantastic breaks - a real return to old form for ESKIMOS & EGYPT. It is followed by a combined tour with Rammstein, which is not so wide of the mark, because after all both band share the studio engineer Mark Stagg. Only logical to have an E & E remix of the song „Rammstein", which the Berlin metal men really love.

However, the whole sound cosmos of ESKIMOS & EGYPT is revealed only by their new album „Kamikaze". Here we see that the band has closely observed the latest trends on the dance scene and blended them with their own established qualities. A title like „Human" combines chunky hip-hop drums with crossover-reinforced chants. „I Know" teams classic songwriting skill with what the drum'n'bass scene has found out about sound. Nor does the band neglect its political side. The sample collage „Born Again" wittily sends up the new world order elevated to a universal standard by self-styled champions of morality and religious zealots. The eleven titles that go to make up the new long-player reveal impressive energy, power greater than the sum of its parts.

So: look out, you Johnny-come-latelys, here come the fathers of techno-rock crossover, and their „Kamikaze2 sound is more dangerous than ever...