The New Günter Pröpper on:

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Le Mont Ventoux  (> the single)

..Although it is not an every year venue at the Tour de France, the Mont Ventoux is a symbol like no other for the most famous bicycle race of the world.
A moonlike bald giant of glowing white stones, without shadow, unbearable hot in summer, shelterless freezing in winter.

A mountain of contrast and antithesis, from a forest at its foot the racers step into the light and take up the challenge against the mercilessness of the sun.It is a place where like on the moon it would be senseless to be, wasn't there the ideas of man and with them the media. Just like one seems to burn in the torturing reflection of light and heat in summer, so one would freeze to death in winter. So what for should somebody climb this mountain with his bike, in order to ask which question to the life, to challenge which judgment?
All that race is about becomes visible here, the mountain symbolizes the sufferings of the Tour de France, on the verge of breaking the limits which distinguish the game, the sport from the serious struggle of life. It symbolizes the simultaneity and/or double game of illusion and reality or illusion and truth, sometimes blurring sometimes unmasking in a cruel way. 
Like in the most notorious case of the history of bycicle raciing, the death of the former World Champion Tom Simpson in 1967. In the yellow jersey, filled with drugs for doping, he knew his only chance to defend his lead against Poulidor and Jiminez was the early escape. At the mountain he collapsed. The others passed by.

Naturally a recording like this cannot deny associations with the Simpson story. But hard evidence is not given in the words. The character remains metaphorical.

In the construction of the piece the 'Flow' of the cyclists is inheritent, the superficial regularity and monotony, which becomes more vivid by closer observation.
The almost same big bigger cycles each consist of four only superficially identical fractions. Irritating and worrying is their differnt length. (Those again consist of three parts with little events to cope with).

The question after the sense of the obsession about the perfection of the human machine finds itself here in the question of the necessity of forcing metric equality in music. Breaking it in the pop radio context in 2001 is challenging the question of the inevitability of machinasation of music like the one of sport in the same moment. 
 

Underpainted by the rumbling of an imaginary summer thunderstorm, shaken from the hits of the road, the racer is now alone with himself and his thoughts around his most difficult task, the attack on the victory which will remain, the question after his life.

Like the Tour de France, the recording must either fascinate, hypnotize, or bore. Depending on the observer who either experiences the race as an eventless eversame rolling along to the eversame sound of the bicycles or does not feel the length at all, is seized by the dramatics of waiting, waiting for the moment to come when at the mountain suddenly a driver escapes and the dynamics of the race come into being. 

Eventually the racer is helpless: he asks his legs to win, in the struggle against fatigue doping becomes hope, neutrition. He knows the verdict is to be spoken today on him, his career, his life. 
At the mountain of decision, merciless exposed by the media, hideless illuminated by the sun.
The determination of challenging actively ('I attack, my only chance') starts to give way to the anxious question of luck, an answer which is only passively awaited or can be.

Is it the mountain who chooses or is it the racers who conquer. A philosophical question which opens up a bigger metaphorical context and takes the recording beyond sport...