Mastermind Jayênne, who significantly left his mark on the beginning techno scene 15 years ago, ranges with his new band XPQ-21 in electro-punk fields, where Nina Hagen and Billy Idol might be named as reference. After an almost 4 years lasting creative break XPQ-21 is back with a downright luxurious designed A5-high gloss-double CD-package, including a 28-page booklet. This fourth album release fittingly entitled Alive again cleans up and runs the charts up and down.
Most important is of course the first CD including the new Alive album, although here can be found a track too (White And Alive as clubversion from 2002 released album Chi) that is rehashed.
Alive shines with homogeneously flowing, partly merging compositions with opulent running times, thrilling beats on one hand and spherical sound cascades and interludes on the other. Almost every song is a hit and fills dance floors. I personally would like to point out of course White And Alive, the cynical meant Jesus Was Gay (great outro) and Sonne, the club crushers In Your Eyes and Beautiful and the ambient/trance-like dreamcatcher and closing track Changes, plus both of the bonus tracks Bumble Bee and The First One.
What I actually miss is the cited punk attitude, although Dead Body reminds of Billy Idol (the only track), but I’d better like to refer to Sigue Sigue Sputnik in this matter.

Second CD contains 16 remix versions of 5 XPQ-21 tracks from various artists. Here I like most the Dead Body versions of Dope Stars Inc. (that rock) and Alice In Videoland, the Beautiful remixes of Funker Vogt and Skinjob and the short version of In Your Eyes.
All things considered Alive is musical and visual and absolute tidbit I can recommend unreserved!