As pioneers of electropunk and techno, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (DAF, which means German-American Friendship) are regarded as one of the more innovative bands in new German music. Their song lyrics were provocative and minimal, featuring unusual synthesizer sounds set to cool drum beats and rejecting common song structures. The duo was founded in Düsseldorf in 1978 by Robert Görl and the Spanish-born Gabi Delgado-Lopez. The two had met a year earlier through the local punk scene. Together with three other musicians, they released their first LP Ein produkt der DAF in 1979. The album featured the sound that DAF became known for: electronic minimalism, which led the group to be associated with contemporary acts like the U.K.’s Throbbing Gristle and New York City’s Suicide.
DAF’s music became even more rhythmic on their second album Die kleinen und die bösen (1980). This was followed by the provocative single Der Mussolini (probably DAF’s best-known work to date) featuring lyrics that emphasized confrontation and minimalist beats that reduced the stiff marching style and thundering speech of reviled fascist dictators to a novelty dancefloor craze. Visually, their homoerotic leather outfits fit in well with the early synthpop duos of the day (OMD, Soft Cell, Blancmange, Cabaret Voltaire, Wham!) even though they never belonged to that scene. Overall, DAF’s style proved to immensely popular and made them one of the five biggest-selling acts in Germany in 1981.
By 1982, the group was finished. DAF’s final album Für immer was released after they disbanded–although today both Delgado-Lopez and Görl claim they never formally disbanded. The reason for ending the group was musical, explained Gabi-Delgado in an interview, and in his estimation the minimalist concept for the band had run its course. In the mid-1980s, however, the electronic music scene came to be dominated by DAF epigones. Their influence outlived their existence and inspired entire electronic (sub)genres like Detroit techno, Chicago house, German techno, industrial, and electronic body music (EBM).
This according to Das ist DAF: Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft: Die autorisierte biografie by Miriam Spies and Rüdiger Esch (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2017; RILM Abstracts of Music Literature 2017-46785). Also find the entry on Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft in Das Gothic- und Dark Wave-Lexikon: Das Lexikon der schwarzen Szene (2003) in RILM Music Encyclopedias.
Listen to a compilation of DAF songs below.
