Feb

27

ROBERTO DELGADO Meets Kalinka LP

February 27, 2008 |

One might be forgiven thinking there is a vocalist on ‘Roberto Delgado Meets Kalinka’; the title would suggest so, and the cover, featuring a beautiful barefoot woman asprawl in a rowboat would appear to support this assumption. Unfortunately the truth is a little more banal - ‘Meets Kalinka’ is a Delgado disco album based principally on traditional Russian folk songs, re-arranged by Delgado, with a few nods to Russian influence in pop music - ‘Midnight in Moscow’, ‘Nadja’s Theme’, and of course the syrupy ‘Lara’s Theme’ from ‘Dr. Zhivago’. It is Maurice Jarre’s populist melody that is the defining influence on Wende’s arrangements, albeit not the stunning melancholic theme of the film, rather the pretty stylings of the Ray Conniff Singers - sweet strings and a sanitized chorus conjuring visions of of a romantic Russia untouched by Cold War fears, Russian winter, or any other nastiness; pleasant, uplifting, bland.

There are no production credits on the album, but it is impossible to believe that Wende’s long-time collaborator Udo Bowien had anything to do with it - this record lacks the snap and immediacy of their work together. Delgado had fallen out of public favor by 1979, and was trying hard to ingratiate himself with a new audience. The back cover has a rare photo of the group, all decked out in white suits like a vanilla Bee Gees backup band, while the production is perfunctory - the drums thud and plod mechanically, the horns lazily charted, only the choir seems reasonably interested in what is going on. The moog-enhanced Midnight in Moscow’ is a minor highlight (and even the weakest Delgado albums have minor highlights), but otherwise this is a sorry entry in the Delgado catalogue. That it only was released in a few territories, and has never been reissued on CD, is the only reason it will continue to have some value for Delgado completists; casual fans should look elsewhere to find why the recordings of Roberto Delgado are in such high regard by fans of the German Schlager wave.


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