Ellen Allien - New Life [Album Review]
By Fofi Tsesmeli
Ellen Allien by Stini Roehrs
Ellen Allien is standing as one of the defining figures of global electronic music. A central architect of Berlin’s post-Cold War techno movement, she was pivotal in shaping the city’s sound and identity through visionary DJ sets, exquisite productions, and her influential B-Pitch Control label. Since 2018, as the head of her second label, UFO Inc, she has given a platform to a raw and rougher side of techno, always fostering new territories for exploration.
“New Life” is Ellen’s tenth studio album (including the groundbreaking “Orchestra of Bubbles” with Apparat). For this one, she chose carefully calculated introspection. Recorded between Berlin, Ibiza and Miami, the album unfolds a rich canvas of forward-thinking techno, darkwave semantics and hypnotic rave euphoria. Across its immersive soundscapes, bird songs, cosmic transmissions, and crashing waves coincide with oscillating, undulating rhythms, while her spoken-word passages interfere like subliminal messages from another dimension. “New Life” is a broad and deeply human record that accosts social fragmentation, ecological collapse, and the failures of contemporary systems we blindly trusted, not as a desperate realization, but as an inevitable course of their existence. She counterargues all these with hope,
regeneration, and calls for collective action - yes, it is possible.
“Steh Auf” is a masterclass of gender-bending synths. “Mein Herz” is a relentless expression of darkwave elemental ingredients - the title is no surprise - her heart always throbs somewhere around there. “Bella” is a rollercoaster of emotions lingering from darkness to light. “Wonderful Moment” is a reminder that Ellen can move elegantly to deeper techno states in the same way she channels her bangers.
“New Life” is Allien’s most politically charged and emotionally resonant work to date. What I have always admired about her is her consistency and her unapologetic status in the trajectory of electronic music. When other people grasp on to the current in order to remain relevant, she shows an alternative path: staying true to who you are, musically and personally. The choice of the cover feels the opposite of random: Ellen Allien stands bare, outwardly in front of you, showered by a beam of light shining on her, through the prevailing doom. She is not exposed as a sign of vulnerability. She is an utmost force of the nature that surrounds her.
ELLEN ALLIEN - NEW LIFE (album cover art)
Ellen Allien. Photo by Stini Roehrs
