Definitely German, probably from around 1990. Beyond that I know not. "Bad Effect" takes the idea of a pop-song structure whose chorus has no words to its logical conclusion: every single chord change, wiry guitar riff and papery drumbeat makes you think, "Hey, the song was already good, but I guess now it's about to kick in!"
Drake is apparently some prog-rock studio virtuoso; not awfully surprising, then, that I hadn't heard of him, though he fits nicely into my record collection alongside Rob Crow (whom his voice sounds like, and who also likes 50-second songs), Frank Zappa's denser soundtracks, Yes's Relayer and They Might Be Giants' "Fingertips". Drake's palette of tricks seems only about half as big as this record requires; if you listen attentively, it'll exhaust you a quarter of the way in. That's fine, though-- you tune in and tune out at your own pace, noticing different sections of the record on different plays. It makes surprisingly good background music if you like the sounds of banjos being plucked and clattery junk being drummed on. (Lucky me!)
Doesn't take much to ruin a fragment as short as each of these, and some of them grate on me for what I admit are stupid reasons-- Drake pronouncing evil "eeeeeeeville" (was that ever funny?) or constantly using the word "certain" even when it's superfluous ("a certain house" or "that house" would both be fine, but "that certain house" sounds wrong to me). Still, a lot of fun, plus (issues of novelty aside) Drake seems to know exactly how far he can push the musical hyper-condensation in a given track.
[Listen to excerpts on Drake's page or buy it from ReR Megacorp USA.]
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timeasmymeasure
