There are records that shake hips, and there are records that shake thought. Der Tanz Aller is definitively in the second camp - though its rhythms might still twitch the nervous system like a ghost limb. Felix Kubin, longtime cosmonaut of the weird and electro-futuristic, steps into historical and choreographic terrain here, composing a score for LIGNA’s participatory performance of the same name, inspired by Rudolf von Laban’s radical “Bewegungschöre” - mass movement choirs aimed at reshaping society through collective bodily expression.
But forget euphoric mass communion: this is not a call to rave. It’s a prickly dance of ideologies, a sonic archaeology of 1920s utopias, and a confrontation with the ghosts of mass politics. Kubin doesn’t offer comfort. He offers structure, fragmentation, pulses that stutter like broken machinery, brass blasts that echo through hollowed-out gymnasiums of failed dreams, and percussion that seems more concerned with organization than release. There’s Orff-Schulwerk in the bones, but it’s filtered through militant estrangement.

Each track is a thematic node: DÄmonen der Zerstreuung stalks the psyche of a distracted public, Masse Mensch trudges through the ambiguous territory of social cohesion, Kreuzzug der Maschine channels industrial-age hubris into militarized motion, and Der Tanz Aller - the title track - feels like a ritual for the vanished possibility of utopia. Not coincidentally, several tracks originally accompanied pre-recorded texts and instructions, further underlining their function as performative tools rather than mere listening experiences.

What Kubin does here is subtle and methodical. His approach resists spectacle. He offers space - both literal and conceptual - for collective movement, for reflection, for ambiguity. In this space, choreography becomes ideology made flesh. And while some might be tempted to draw connections to club music’s collectivism, Der Tanz Aller reminds us that not all dancing is escapism, and not all rhythm is liberation.
Ultimately, this record is a monument - not to nostalgia, but to tension. It remembers a time when bodies moving together were imagined as blueprints for new societies. And it asks: what happens when those blueprints are misread, co-opted, or abandoned?

File this under sonic architecture, anti-fascist resonance, and the ongoing struggle to imagine a world beyond performance. You won’t dance to it - but you might move differently after hearing it.