Abfahrt is German for “Departure”. It was and is a German record label, the creation of Torsten Fenslau.The track “Come Into My Life” (sometimes called “Come Into My Live”) was licensed to the influential Guerilla Records in 1993. The track had originally been issued the year before by Torsten on his own Abfahrt label. The Guerilla version benefits from a better cut than the original release. It was released on Guerilla with a radio edit, an Orbital remix and Exploding Plastic Inevitable remixes (Exploding Plastic Inevitable was David Holmes, with Jagz Kooner and Garn Burns).
Fenslau's collaboration with Jürgen "Nozie" Katzmann yielded excellent results on the first Abfahrt release, "Alone (It's Me)", which appeared as early as 1989. Arguably one of the first ever trance records, "Alone" illustrates the oft-forgotten fact that new beat and trance were indeed close cousins, and; Katzmann's vocals are regarded to have worked very well on that track."Come Into My Life" is another story, though. Listen to the Radio Edit for a string of clichés so cringe-making that even a C&W singer might have rejected it.
Interestingly, Guerilla's label manager Dick O'Dell apparently had big plans for Abfahrt. In autumn 1993, he said “No one knows anything about them. So, I’ll be able to invent them, play around with the irony of the whole pop thing for a bit. KLF have done that better than anyone else and this will give me a chance to indulge that side of me.” However, those plans came to a sudden end with Fenslau's untimely death some months later.
Digging around, I found that the original Abfahrt release included a mix that didn’t make it to the UK. It is an instrumental - the Breathless mix. I never knew it existed, let alone heard it. But if anyone reading this has, I’d love to hear it.
Abfahrt - Come Into My Life (Radio Edit)
Abfahrt - Come Into My Life (Exploding Plastic Instrumental)
