Schiach

 

Schiach is a quite mysterious German band claiming to be from Schkeuditz and which has been around since 2017 or something.

When I discovered the band in 2018 my mind immediately associated it with a label, Phantom Records, and with another very German band, Pisse. 

Indeed both bands got a very German touch, the main thing being the German language of course and the second thing being a strong sense of offbeat humour...

 

 

 And that's where the "mystery" comes into play.

All the songs from the 2018 LP are written and sung in what looks like Bavarian dialect or Bairisch (it's important to know that the south of Germany, Bavaria in particular, is famous for what other Germans consider as a very weird accent and is then source of countless jokes; we all have in our countries places where people speak "funny" right?) and from what I have read here and there it's not clear if this record is some Bavarian irony and/or German humour (?).

Claiming to be from a small town close to Leipzig (super far from Munich) it could actually be both.

As my German is definitely not good enough to understand the whole joke I will let the German speakers distinguish what is humour and what is not and let them decide if it's funny or not. 

 

This being said let's go back to the music!

Schiach is playing a great mix of upbeat post-punk and minimalist punk rock. 

A super sharp guitar sound, nice round bass lines in the background,  slamming drums, barking vocals with nevertheless a clear and clicking sound... the lot is delivering super tensed but super catchy songs.

The true (or fake?) Bavarians also know how to take a classy break with tracks like Gammler which catchy bass melody will make your head shake and your bum twist.

  This album got an 80s vibe all right... in the way the vocals sound ? in the way the whole thing sounds ? do we care ? No because this record will not bore you for a second from the start to finish. Expressing various feelings, from suppressed anger to sadness (Olle Gleich Schiach) through all the in-between mix (Leit, Ja Mei), your brain will not be stuck on one note and is it not what we are all looking for in a LP in the end? A variety of mixed feelings to slightly disturb our brain chemical balance ?

 

In 10 tracks the band wrote one of my favourite record of 2018 and at the time I included it in my Best of 2018 playlist. 

 

 

 

So you can imagine of excited I was when I heard that a new album was on the way two years later. Released once again on Phantom Records, 2 (great title) comes to the world only as a tape for now.

 

 

 

Well this not at all what I was expecting. 

Since the first note of  Des G'Schiagta Recht it's clear that the atmosphere has changed... a lot more melancholic, a lot more electronic as well. The band (which seems to be a duo scattered between Leipzig and Vienna after all) has chosen to keep the shout vocals but to change almost everything else: "Tchüss!" super guitar riffs, "herzlich willkommen" weird 80s drum machines, synths and dodgy late night clubs atmosphere!

 

Well if you've read a few of my reviews you may have noticed that my tastes in terms of new wave / Cold wave / EBM and all lame 80s goth / industrial music are very clear... NO WAY!... for most of it at least.

So yes it's not surprising that I am not seduced at all by this new album except for Feiawea and Disziplin which got a bit of the first LP clicking energy. 

 

  These 9 new songs will probably please a lot of people but not me unfortunately. I will never criticize a band for evolving, I really believe that change should not be avoided but embraced on the contrary, but sometimes it just does not do it for me at all (ok a loooot of people love Blitz's Second Empire Justice for example, I don't).

 

Too bad. There is still the first LP anyway! 

 

 

You can listen to Schiach on Rien à Faire #16.

 

 

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Arson

 

Just a quick one about Arson from Leeds, UK, which released this tape earlier this year.

 

Featuring ex-members of several UKHC bands like Perspex Flesh, Mob Rules, No Form, Whipping Post, The Wound, The Flex and others that history may not remember, Arson has won the ugly qualifier of all star band on some other pages... Qualifier that I will of course refrain of using here.

 

Savage Butchery is, as its name clearly states, not a love song compilation.

I mean these guys have obviously dedicated a big part of their life to the search of the ultimate expression of musical brutality and have made this demo an important milestone in that honourable quest. 

 

  Arson is not making super fast / super short hardcore songs but in the contrary quite "long" and well structured tunes with several breaks and rebounds. And I like when it goes a bit beyond the 1, 2, 3, 4 go! all the way.

No super heavy or modern 90s vibe here either, it could actually sound a bit "weak" (for a hardcore record), the guitars are not too distorted and the drums are definitely pounding it but in a not so in-your-face way... The vocals are probably the most straight forward part, in between cavemen roars and out-of-breath screams the singer is delivering energy and anger with a touch of meanness; yes there is a bit of Rollins in all that.

In the end Tom sings in a less "cavernous" way than in Mob Rules and it sounds better in my opinion.

If you're into super straight forward in-your-face hardcore with smart song structures but a deafening sound... well Arson is for you!

 

   

You can listen to Arson on Rien à Faire #15.

 

 

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Girls In Synthesis

 

picture by Jamie MacMillan

 

Girls in Synthesis is from London and has been around since 2016.

I really hesitated a lot before starting to write something about the British trio, since the beginning these guys have had a proper marketing approach of their music production, they are on all the social media you can think of, they have released a number of very limited (and collectable) vinyl EP's, their music is on all the big streaming platforms, they made a LOT of videos, all their artwork and visual aspect are extremely professional... well you see what I mean, they manage very well (too well some would say maybe) their "career" and don't need a guy like me to "promote" their releases... 

Well that is very true... and then I realized that the point of this blog was to talk about the bands I find interesting and I find Girls in Synthesis interesting so... here we go!

 

GIS (as the hype says) has been created by John Linger from Neils Children and Jim Cubitt from Big Skies with a really clear idea of what it should sound and look like. Yes the whole "artistic" aspect (musical and visual) has been clearly defined in order to create a coherent atmosphere as a whole. These guys are not amateurs.

As they already have quite a discography mainly made up of EPs and singles I will focus only on Pre​/​Post: A Collection 2016​-​2018 and Now Here's An Echo From Your Future.

 

So this LP released on Louder Than War in 2018 and on Harbinger Sound in 2019 is actually a compilation of their three previous EPs (Suburban Hell, We Might Not Make Tomorrow and Fan The Flames released on Blank Editions in 2017 and 2018) and of their very first release, the digital only The Mound / Disappear.

Fourteen songs in total which appear in chronological order.   

I think you got it now... the black and white pictures, the lonely poses on the Thames banks, the no-smile policy... yes we're talking post-punk here!

Stomping mid-tempo drums, heavily distorted bass lines, telephone booth effect vocals... there is some heaviness in the deranged punk rock of the Londoners, especially in the first tracks. Can't you feel the cymbals' industrial vibe in Disappear ?

The main "goal" is to keep the atmosphere cold and distant but not in a cold-wave way: Suburban Hell possesses a smoldering heat of frustration and violence reminiscent of the dark ale stained bar counters of a working class oi! band like Last Resort for example...

Yes the main subject is probably the frustration and anger of a betrayed British class... which class? the one which believed in progress and social justice probably...

From that point of view Girls in Synthesis is the product of its time, like Bad Breeding and Cool Jerks can be in their own genre.

With We Might Not Make Tomorrow the band lets grow the repetitive and noisy side of industrial music into some kind of nursery rhyme which "joyful" choir singing underlines the total opposition with the dramatic meaning of the lyrics.

There is never joy underneath. 

 

It goes even further with Sentient which gets so loud and noisy that it's not so far removed from the Seattle 90s sound as it was resurrected by bands like Metz.

But no it goes back immediately to some heavy post-punk with the beautiful Splinters and Rust, one of my favourite track of the album, and Tainted, a gem of tensed industrial end-of-the-world lullaby...  

With Fan The Flames the band keeps exploring the musical field of industrial collapse but with an added touch of melodic vocals (as in We Might Not Take Tomorrow), which is confirmed in the surprising You're Doing Fine, a beautiful piece of mental disturbance with a yet less "classic" post-punk mark than in the previous tracks.  

 

Of course when you're British and play post-punk you won't be able to avoid the same gloominess as the 80s bands that created the genre. Girls In Synthesis knows this but doesn't try to avoid it. Yes Internal Politics' bass line refers obviously to Joy Division and it's so obvious that it sounds more like a clever way of saying: "Ok somebody is going to say something about Ian Curtis so let's force the comparison and get over it"...

But the three Londoners are definitely going forward, firmly positioned in a modern approach of the sad observation of the modern condition... the similar condition, but in a probably even darker time, that was driving Ian's words...  

Girls in Synthesis is not your local post-punk band, they play a very heavy and noisy kind of music which takes us far from the 80s dogma without rejecting any of its principles. In a time where joy and hope are not really the most trendy feelings, GIS is another beautiful track in the soundtrack of modern collapse.

Now Here's An Echo From Your Future was released in summer 2020 on Harbinger Sound and is the first full length of the band.

It actually includes a few songs of the two EPs released late 2019, Arterial Movements (which is opening the LP) and Pressure.  

Well Girls in Synthesis is not making an easy kind of music to talk about. In the previous record there was quite some change between the first and the last tracks and for good reason, almost two years passed between them.

This LP makes more sense as a whole for sure which does not mean it's monotonous at all.

Loud, noisy, brawler, disturbing, insane, disorderly, beautiful and terrible... that's all these 10 songs are and even more!

Yes this album cannot leave you unmoved, there is so much at stake, so much that has to be so "densely" expressed! 

 

 

 

Is it still post-punk shore that we see in the distance ? Or it's noise rock island already ?

I am not sure the GIS ship got a clear destination on the log book but is for sure sailing a raging sea.

From the scratching and screaming instruments confronting the hurricane to the solid punk rock base of the hold, GIS is holding fast, bringing the energy higher and higher, step by step, petrifying the scared to death passengers... it is intense yes but it nevertheless remains deeply connected to the "depressed" atmosphere of its post-punk background.

Luckily there are some lulls in the storm, the heavy and unsettling Human Frailty and Set Up To Fail which insane saxophone, scratching guitar noises and heady drumbeats take us into some shallow waters that have been sailed numerous times by The Ex, giving a new definition to the words unsane and insane...

 

To be honest it took me some time to really get into this album, it's so dense, so thick, so full of abrasive feelings that it takes some time to fully digest it.

But it's definitely worth it... 

Girls in Synthesis are also quite famous for their intense live shows where they sometimes bring the music directly to the middle of the crowd, breaking down once again the borders between band and audience...

Maybe I will see that by myself one day, if concerts ever start again...

 I really hope I will!

 

 

N,J'Oi!

You can listen to Girls in Synthesis in Rien à Faire #14.

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Moth

 

 

picture by JAMIE WDZIEKONSKI

 

 Moth are a young band from Melbourne, Australia, that haven't been around for long, their first release being one year old.

Ok so it all started as the solo project of this guy, Darcy Berry, who plays drums in Gonzo (which last year album is pretty cool by the way) and U-Bahn (not my thing).

Darcy also creates a lot of visuals for bands from the Melbourne/Geelong area under the name Moth Creative and writes (wrote ?) a visual art zine called Conscript.

Ok it's not really true when I wrote that the first release was one year old, Darcy had published a few years before (2015 ?) another demo which does not have much in common with what came next. So I am not going to spend any time on it.

 

In 2018 though he released Initial Object, a 12-track tape out on Weather Vane Records, which can be considered as the first Moth release.

A drum machine, a synth, some distant vocals with a lot of echo to give a post-punk vibe... Moth is not hiding its industrial / post-punk influences, well didn't Darcy define it as Technological paranoid discordant robot rock after all?

Yes there is some kind of a Z-movie atmosphere in this tape, like the soundtrack of a kitschier (if that's possible) version of Forbidden Planet.

Ok ok I am being mean, there is a lot of good in these tracks and it's interesting to discover where the band comes from.

Released in November 2019, this 5-track demo is the first "official" release of the band.

I would like to cal it pure high paced mid-tempo modern rock but I know it does not mean anything... anyway it's not really different from the previous demo but with way better songs cohesion and improved energy.

It's a demo all right so it does not sound really good and in the end 4 tracks out of 5 (except for Interlude which I find a bit boring anyway) will be recorded again so I guess that Darcy was not so happy with the result.

 

With Machine Nation, Moth is taking a big big step forward, it's the band first release on vinyl and it got out on Marthouse Records in Australia but also on Polaks Records in Europe.

 

All songs written & performed by Darcy Berry hum ok Darcy but there is a real band behind you now, some members of Kosmetika, Alien Nosejob and Body Maintenance have turned a solo concept into a proper live act right ?

Except for 2021 which was already on the demo (but was re-recorded as a longer version), this EP deliver 3 new tracks of very good post-punk.

 

 

 

  What strikes me at first and what I really enjoy is that the synth is getting a lot more discreet! Moth is now a very efficient post-punk act without all the weird cheap Science fiction sounds. Darcy is still playing with a very British approach of the vocals (damn it reminds me so much of some not-so-politically-correct 80s British oi! bands, in the vocals only of course!); the sharp guitar riffs and powerful song construction are now adding real value to the now "classic" Moth formula.

Of course the synth is still here but it's part of a whole, helping the songs take some consistency and not taking over the melody as it happens too much unfortunately.

Veeka Nazarova from Kosmetika delivers great singing in Russian on Jealousy which adds variety to the record without completely changing the formula as she manages to keep a similar way of singing. A very good song.

 

 

This EP brings the band in the big league, I would say that they get closer to the sound of already established bands like Collate.

 

 

Moth's latest release, the self-released Modern Madness tape, really fits in the 7" continuity BUT with a step backward. The whole idea is a bit strange as 3 out of these 4 tracks were already on the demo, so yes Moth seems to become quite good at making new stuff out of old recipes.

Of course everything has been re-recorded and shortened a bit, which is probably why they sound so new. Yes the songs are the same but, first it sounds a hell lot better (that hi-hat on Modern Madness!) and second the energy is completely different which is why this tape is closer to the 7" than to Initial Object.

 

 

  Unfortunately it's the new song, Work, which fails to convince me... it sounds like a track from the demo or from Initial Object... which would actually make sense as the other tracks are originally from the demo but what I mean is that it sounds like it was actually on the demo...

Anyway that's the second solid release of the band in a few months only, well done!

You can listen to Moth on Rien à Faire #16.

 

 

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Cheap Meat

 

Just a short one today about this tape released on Discontinuous Innovation in early October.

I could not find much information about Cheap Meat, with band members scattered between Philadelphia and LA I was not expecting it to be their first release but I am not sure. I have found a couple of demos (one from 2015 and one from 2017) from a band with the same name but it sounds really different (and is quite bad to be honest) so it's hard to say. 

You can also imagine how hard it is to find anything relevant on the big messy World Wide Web with a name like that...

Anyway let's focus on Let's Eat, the recent 4-track tape. 

The first noticeable aspect of this release is undoubtedly its extremely ugly artwork. I mean in the long and beautiful history of DIY music production there has been a lot of competition (A LOT) but this one is definitely one of the worst I have seen for some time and it's worth noticing.

This is being said it is not the (main?) reason for me to write about it today. No because Cheap Meat's music got something quite interesting. 

 

 

  Cheap Meat is a female fronted band which immediately made me think of three bands : The Ex, The Slits and P22.

I mean listen to Something At Bard... in the mid-tempo song construction there is something of the band from Amsterdam, especially from the last period (since Catch My Shoe), and it's far from being a bad comparison (I love The Ex).

Ages got a The Slits' vibe in the vocals and the jumpy mid-tempo construction (the bell!). A great song about the difficulty of starting relationships or maybe just about terrible relationships...

 

But the most obvious comparison is probably with P22, yes in Cheap Meat there is something from the resigned, slightly depressed, feeling that pours out of the Los Angeles based band's songs... (and the artwork is not their strong point either). You can feel it very strongly in Pretty in The City and Face Me.

Face Me is an interesting song about online stalkers (that's what it is about right?) or just about men fantasizing about women from their social media, turning them into sexual objects (which is the same in many cases).

 

 

  In conclusion it's a quite interesting short release from a mysterious band.

Let's see what comes next!

 

N,J'Oi! 

 

 

You can listen to Cheap Meat in Rien à Faire #16.

 

 

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Kaleidoscope: New 7"

 

If you're not new here you may have read my enthusiastic words about Kaleidoscope at the end of last year.

And as you have not, here is a chance to check the Decolonization 7", their latest release. 

Back on D4MT LABS after After the Future (their beautiful 2019 LP released on La Vida Es Un Mus and Toxic State), Kaleidoscope is once again jumping straight in the political side of punk with this 5-track 7".

Yes that's what modern anarcho-punk is: tensed, highly political and not-so-clichés from the musical side...

Some would call it hardcore punk, I don't think it's so accurate. Kaleidoscope got its own sound, its own vibe, and that's what important bands have the power to create I guess, a new dimension in the music reality. 

 

 

  The band from NYC has, since the beginning, managed to translate the most tensed and harmful mental states into music... To me these songs are the soundtrack of the fifth burnout of a small time office worker, the playlist of a heart broken lover's panic attack, the internal lullaby of agoraphobic 5-year old kid lost in Grand Central on a Monday morning, the mental break down's melody of a violent midlife crisis...   

 

 

Yes Kaleidoscope is all that and even more and they prove it on Girmitya, a beautiful  "ballad" about the Indians labourers sent to the Fiji, Mauritius, South Africa, and the Caribbean by the British authorities to work on sugarcane plantations during the time of the colonies.

Jumping on the throats of empires and all kind of exploitation systems, Kaleidoscope has a lot to say, a lot to denounce... I am not 100% behind the "new" decolonization movement the US and the UK have seen popped up over the last couple of years, but I get the point. 

Kaleidoscope is a great band, an important band of our times.

And I hope it will keep proving it to us.

 

You can listen to Kaleidoscope in Rien à Faire #16.

N,J'Oi!

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