An athlete from the former German Democratic Republic competes in the Olympic Games in 1972. Record label executives claim a new album containing electronic music was made specifically for East German athletes to train and excel at The Games held that year in Munich, Germany. AP Photo
An athlete from the former German Democratic Republic competes in the Olympic Games in 1972. Record label executives claim a new album containing electronic music was made specifically for East GermanShow more

New album has music originally made for East German Olympic athletes



Forty years ago, long before the fall of the Berlin Wall ushered in what certain commentators would call "the end of history" (more on that later), a fan of spaced-out cosmic music in East Germany got an unusual chance to make his communist part of the world a better, or at least fitter, place. His idea, bandied about in the early 1970s with colleagues at a sound studio in Dresden, was to make music to help train athletes for the East German Olympic team. "The music would be hypnotic," he said. "It would bring focus."

So intriguing was his idea that he was whisked away in a mysterious car and interrogated at an athletics camp outside Berlin, where state officials charged with making East German Olympians more imposing on the world stage were eager to hear about any new prospects to increase efficiency and effectiveness in sport. Would metronomic music, with the right rate of rhythm and a capacity to send training athletes into trance states, help in the cause? Maybe, maybe not.

Sounds were imagined and recorded in a studio on tape, with a mind towards the kind of so-called "kosmische" music popular in Germany at the time. It was the era of Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, and countless other cosmic groups who conjoined the otherworldly wildness of electronic sounds with a Teutonic sense of rigour and order. Machines figured prominently in the mix, and what is an athlete if not a ritualistic and regimented sort of machine?

It's hard to know how much the music made for training factored into Olympic success at the time, but its remnants can be heard on a new collection called Kosmischer Läufer Volume 1: The Secret Cosmic Music of the East German Olympic Program 1972-83. The first part of the title translates as "cosmic runner", and, indeed, the sounds assembled were strategically conceived for a "relaxed 5 kilometre run", with a brief opening passage for warm-up, an extended middle fit for a healthy jog, and a short tail at the end paced to wind it all down.

The ambient opening track, Zeit Zum Laufen (Time to Run), introduces a sense of celestial weightlessness before Sandtrommel (Sand Drum) brings in a metronomic beat. And what a beat - shaking from side to side while pushing forcefully forward, it sounds somehow sympathetic to the hesitance that besets the beginning of a run - the sense that a lot of energy is about to be expended. And to what end?

It's here that the exhilarating "motorik" sound of Germany at the time takes hold, with drums that fall into perfect sync with all the funky components of other stuff put to work overhead. Guitar played in galloping fashion, bass that is insistent on keeping its concentration, lots and lots of synthesiser - such are the elements employed on Kosmischer Läufer to make people run.

The fourth track, Tonband Laufspur (Tape Running Track), interestingly introduces a breakbeat that eases up the mind-erasing glide of everything that came before. It still moves at a swift pace, but the unsteadiness of it makes you think. Then comes a burst of guitar that drops into a chugging drone, much like the sound of stated English kosmiche aficionados, Stereolab. The guitar is crisp and clear, round and expansive and many-splendoured in the way it was recorded. It brings the energy level up again.

But wait - wasn't this recorded in 1972? How come other records from the period sound so distant and dry by comparison? And wait, now that we're taking pause to think - is it really possible that a story so grand could have gone unknown and unchronicled for more than 40 years?

The answer, for better or worse, is probably not. Prior to the Kosmischer Läufer release, it seems, mentions of the ostensible creator, Martin "Z" Zeichnete, in the omnipotent archive of everything online, amount to precisely zero. There's no mention of the programme or anything else like it, either. In answer to an email sending early word of praise and asking whether the Kosmischer Läufer music is really of the vintage that it claims, Drew McFadyen, of the label Unknown Capability Recordings, wrote: "Glad you're enjoying the music. You are free to think this release is real, fake, art, or nonsense, but it certainly isn't a hoax."

We've been down this road before, and recently. In just the past two years, the realm of electronic music has greeted the invented memories of Jürgen Müller, an alleged marine biologist-turned-hobbyist ambient-music composer, and Ursula Bogner, a departed German woman said to have made a private stash of great electronic recordings for herself in the 1960s. Neither proved to be verifiably real, but the sounds credited to them garnered much in the way of attention.

So what does it say about the state of music that reimagining the past would seem to be more appealing these days than projecting into the future? Wasn't electronic music meant to be in the progressive wing of things, the soundtrack with which to aid and amplify the thrilling (if also sometimes unnerving) sense of future-shock all around us?

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the political commentator Francis Fukuyama proposed a new notion of "the end of history". It had nothing to do with the state of contemporary music, of course, but it did suppose to be able to identify "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution". (In political terms, that would be "the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government".)

Such an idea is easy to disregard as overly sweeping or hubristic in its sense of scale, but what if, in the simplest terms, some sort of "end of history" in music is nigh? With the future contracting out in front and the past so fully mined that fictional history now has to stand in for the real thing, is a sense of fated stasis upon us? Does envisioning such a state represent newfound freedom from hyperawareness of the past, or is it more a failure of imagination?

Many questions spring to mind, but one answer relating to Kosmischer Läufer is the same either way: it remains a great soundtrack with which to run. In that, it actually does slot in with real historical artefacts. One, just six years old, is 45:33 by LCD Soundsystem, which crafted a masterful extended-track electronic disco suite that plays around with the notion of messing with a runner's head. ("Shame on you," it coyly whispers near the start, just when the jogger's sense of accomplishment begins to balloon.) Questions relating to its genuine investment in running were answered by its having been commissioned, presumably to sell shoes, by Nike.

Before that, from a slightly different vantage, came Kraftwerk's famous fixation on bicycling. It was put to song in the early 1980s in Tour de France, complete with heavy breathing by a biker seeming to exert himself as the song rolls along, and group member Ralf Hutter has been said to have, earlier in his career, cycled up to 200km a day. "Cycling," he told an interviewer in 2009, "is like music. It is always forward."

Was he correct? Is music, then, like cycling? Does it always move forward - progress, mutate, transform - or does it sometimes pull up and spin its wheels?

Andy Battaglia is a New York-based writer whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, The Wire, Spin and more.

thereview@thenational.ae

The five pillars of Islam

1. Fasting

2. Prayer

3. Hajj

4. Shahada

5. Zakat 

The years Ramadan fell in May

1987

1954

1921

1888

APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)

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The specs
 
Engine: 3.0-litre six-cylinder turbo
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UK's plans to cut net migration

Under the UK government’s proposals, migrants will have to spend 10 years in the UK before being able to apply for citizenship.

Skilled worker visas will require a university degree, and there will be tighter restrictions on recruitment for jobs with skills shortages.

But what are described as "high-contributing" individuals such as doctors and nurses could be fast-tracked through the system.

Language requirements will be increased for all immigration routes to ensure a higher level of English.

Rules will also be laid out for adult dependants, meaning they will have to demonstrate a basic understanding of the language.

The plans also call for stricter tests for colleges and universities offering places to foreign students and a reduction in the time graduates can remain in the UK after their studies from two years to 18 months.

Directed by Sam Mendes

Starring Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay, Daniel Mays

4.5/5

COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
 
Started: 2021
 
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
 
Based: Tunisia 
 
Sector: Water technology 
 
Number of staff: 22 
 
Investment raised: $4 million 
Company profile

Date started: 2015

Founder: John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki

Based: Dubai

Sector: Online grocery delivery

Staff: 200

Funding: Undisclosed, but investors include the Jabbar Internet Group and Venture Friends

Difference between fractional ownership and timeshare

Although similar in its appearance, the concept of a fractional title deed is unlike that of a timeshare, which usually involves multiple investors buying “time” in a property whereby the owner has the right to occupation for a specified period of time in any year, as opposed to the actual real estate, said John Peacock, Head of Indirect Tax and Conveyancing, BSA Ahmad Bin Hezeem & Associates, a law firm.

How has net migration to UK changed?

The figure was broadly flat immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic, standing at 216,000 in the year to June 2018 and 224,000 in the year to June 2019.

It then dropped to an estimated 111,000 in the year to June 2020 when restrictions introduced during the pandemic limited travel and movement.

The total rose to 254,000 in the year to June 2021, followed by steep jumps to 634,000 in the year to June 2022 and 906,000 in the year to June 2023.

The latest available figure of 728,000 for the 12 months to June 2024 suggests levels are starting to decrease.

The burning issue

The internal combustion engine is facing a watershed moment – major manufacturer Volvo is to stop producing petroleum-powered vehicles by 2021 and countries in Europe, including the UK, have vowed to ban their sale before 2040. The National takes a look at the story of one of the most successful technologies of the last 100 years and how it has impacted life in the UAE.

Read part three: the age of the electric vehicle begins

Read part two: how climate change drove the race for an alternative 

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MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FINAL RECKONING

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Simon Pegg

Rating: 4/5

RESULTS

Bantamweight: Victor Nunes (BRA) beat Azizbek Satibaldiev (KYG). Round 1 KO

Featherweight: Izzeddin Farhan (JOR) beat Ozodbek Azimov (UZB). Round 1 rear naked choke

Middleweight: Zaakir Badat (RSA) beat Ercin Sirin (TUR). Round 1 triangle choke

Featherweight: Ali Alqaisi (JOR) beat Furkatbek Yokubov (UZB). Round 1 TKO

Featherweight: Abu Muslim Alikhanov (RUS) beat Atabek Abdimitalipov (KYG). Unanimous decision

Catchweight 74kg: Mirafzal Akhtamov (UZB) beat Marcos Costa (BRA). Split decision

Welterweight: Andre Fialho (POR) beat Sang Hoon-yu (KOR). Round 1 TKO

Lightweight: John Mitchell (IRE) beat Arbi Emiev (RUS). Round 2 RSC (deep cuts)

Middleweight: Gianni Melillo (ITA) beat Mohammed Karaki (LEB)

Welterweight: Handesson Ferreira (BRA) beat Amiran Gogoladze (GEO). Unanimous decision

Flyweight (Female): Carolina Jimenez (VEN) beat Lucrezia Ria (ITA), Round 1 rear naked choke

Welterweight: Daniel Skibinski (POL) beat Acoidan Duque (ESP). Round 3 TKO

Lightweight: Martun Mezhlumyan (ARM) beat Attila Korkmaz (TUR). Unanimous decision

Bantamweight: Ray Borg (USA) beat Jesse Arnett (CAN). Unanimous decision

Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.

Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.

Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.

“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.

Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.

From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.

Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.

BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.

Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.

Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.

“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.

Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.

“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.

“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”

The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”

ICC Women's T20 World Cup Asia Qualifier 2025, Thailand

UAE fixtures
May 9, v Malaysia
May 10, v Qatar
May 13, v Malaysia
May 15, v Qatar
May 18 and 19, semi-finals
May 20, final

Winners

Best Men's Player of the Year: Kylian Mbappe (PSG)

Maradona Award for Best Goal Scorer of the Year: Robert Lewandowski (Bayern Munich)

TikTok Fans’ Player of the Year: Robert Lewandowski

Top Goal Scorer of All Time: Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United)

Best Women's Player of the Year: Alexia Putellas (Barcelona)

Best Men's Club of the Year: Chelsea

Best Women's Club of the Year: Barcelona

Best Defender of the Year: Leonardo Bonucci (Juventus/Italy)

Best Goalkeeper of the Year: Gianluigi Donnarumma (PSG/Italy)

Best Coach of the Year: Roberto Mancini (Italy)

Best National Team of the Year: Italy 

Best Agent of the Year: Federico Pastorello

Best Sporting Director of the Year: Txiki Begiristain (Manchester City)

Player Career Award: Ronaldinho

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Countdown to Zero exhibition will show how disease can be beaten

Countdown to Zero: Defeating Disease, an international multimedia exhibition created by the American Museum of National History in collaboration with The Carter Center, will open in Abu Dhabi a  month before Reaching the Last Mile.

Opening on October 15 and running until November 15, the free exhibition opens at The Galleria mall on Al Maryah Island, and has already been seen at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum in Atlanta, the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

 

Honeymoonish
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UPI facts

More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions

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Dust and sand storms compared

Sand storm

  • Particle size: Larger, heavier sand grains
  • Visibility: Often dramatic with thick "walls" of sand
  • Duration: Short-lived, typically localised
  • Travel distance: Limited 
  • Source: Open desert areas with strong winds

Dust storm

  • Particle size: Much finer, lightweight particles
  • Visibility: Hazy skies but less intense
  • Duration: Can linger for days
  • Travel distance: Long-range, up to thousands of kilometres
  • Source: Can be carried from distant regions
The five pillars of Islam

1. Fasting

2. Prayer

3. Hajj

4. Shahada

5. Zakat 

Lexus LX700h specs

Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor

Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm

Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm

Transmission: 10-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km

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Price: From Dh590,000

THE SPECS

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Power: 420kW

Torque: 780Nm

Transmission: 8-speed automatic

Price: From Dh1,350,000

On sale: Available for preorder now