derTANZ - Vatta

I've written about derTANZ before.  On the one hand, they're one of many Budapest bands who are doing remarkable things with a broad punk mindset at the moment.  On the other, they're completely different from any of the other groups from that city that have been getting airplay on my Dandelion Radio show over the past couple of years.

I don't want this to sound like a put-down of those other bands, some of whom produce a full-on trash/hardcore/noise rock onslaught I love almost to the point of insanity, but with derTANZ you get more.  There's plenty of noise here, but its overlaid with elements of psychedelic experimentation and improvisation that stand above practically anything else coming out of Hungary at the moment.  Last year's Kaktusz album ably showcased their unique aesthetic, and now Vatta has come along to show us more.

There's a more slick feel to the production on this album but thankfully that's not diminished their appeal one bit.  The songs alternate from doom-laden low moans to frantic blasts of anger with many shades of grey in between: sometimes the tempo and mood can fragment and rebuild within the same song - as in the remarkable 'Slow Tilt' - while the near-a capella of 'Elvis Left The Building' illustrates this band's penchant for challenging their listeners' expectations and winning hands down.

I'm playing 'Beginner's Bible' in my April show, which may well be my favourite track on the album, but this is a collection that works best as a whole rather than via snapshots or excerpts.  You can pick it up here: it's name your price and, should you choose to chuck a few coins into their bowl, you can be reassured this band will be putting them to very good use.  To be honest, I'd have been perfectly happy with a re-hashing of Kaktusz, but Vatta has bravely chosen to build on and extend the template and, in pulling it off so brilliantly, derTANZ are more than worthy of the half an hour or so of your time it takes to appreciate this fine album.

Return to Hungary: Another Overview of the Magyar Punk Scene

Last spring I gave a bit of an overview of some of my favourite things happening in the Hungarian music scene which, at that time, seemed to be more active in terms of exciting guitar-based music than any other country in the world.  I'm pleased to say that, almost a year on, things don't appear to have died down at all and my March Dandelion Radio show contains some new discoveries along with recent releases from some long-standing favourites.

I'll start with another mention for Amstatten Bedroom Punk, one of the first bands to get me intrigued about what was going on in their neck of the woods and a band (?) about whom I still know little.  Every now and then they put out a release on their bandcamp site and every now and then I get just a little bit more excited about them.  They put a two-track single there back in January and I feature something from that in the show: the sleeve photo (left) contains a rather unnerving image of two masked figures apparently kidnapping a small boy.  It encapsulates the strangely sinister element at the heart of the band, a certain enigmatic creepiness lurking below the magnificent noise they create.  I'd like it if they put more stuff out, but then these fleeting glimpses of their strange world are part of what makes them so irresistibly appealing.

Another band I got very excited about last year were PFA, whose last album I included in my list of favourites of 2014.  They're back with a new EP, called Army Of Pigs, and it's another triumph.  From Veszprem, they're very much at the play-it-fast-and-loud-and-either-you-get-a-nosebleed-or-we-do end of the punk spectrum and they do it pretty much better than anyone else around at the moment.  I'm playing 'Children of the Safety Pin' in the show, a track that times at just over a minute and is the second longest of the ten tracks on the EP, which gives you some idea of the kind of dizzy rush this band specialises in.

In Fuck Like Bunnies, from Budapest, I've found someone who generate a similarly dizzy rush, but whose work contains something of the sinister undertones of Amstatten.  Obviously you can't resist a name like that anyway, but don't be fooled into thinking this is some playfully irreverent, designed to shock in an infantile way comic-book punk band.  Anything but.  They put out a split release with Tragedia in 2012 and their recent Nema Jelenlet EP is, as far as I know, the first we've heard from them since then (first I have anyway).  I play EP opener 'Egig Emelt Falak' in my March show if you need to get a better grip on what they sound like than the one I'm struggling to provide here.

Also from Budapest, Tumo also play loud and hard but with an almost gothic hearbeat pounding away beneath their abrasive skins.  Their self-titled album, the sleeve photo of which consists only of a chimney, throws up ten tracks of caustic noise rock that, like so many of their compatriots, weave an enigmatic edge into what appear initially to be fairly classic punk structures.  If, like me, you missed the album they put out last year, which is almost self-titled, you might want to correct your error and check that out too.

Gustave Tiger are a rather different proposition. Their Mitanni Mares album

originally surfaced at the end of last year and its palette draws as much on indie and psychedelic influences as it does punk, a mixture that conjurs up an intoxicating brew nonetheless.  Their 'Thompson Springs' contains an irresistable melodic flavour that I find it hard to get out of my head - again, it's something you can hear in my March show.

All of these releases are available as NYOP from the bandcamp links provided and all are deeply worthy of your attention.  As I've already indicated, you can hear a track from each of them in my March Dandelion Radio show, streaming at various times through this month.  If you like what you hear, tune in again in April because I've got a track in there from the stunning new album from derTANZ, possibly my favourite of all current Hungarian bands.  Until then, enjoy what's on offer here and I'd advise you to check out as much as you can from what's easily Europe's most fascinating punk scene at the moment because there are bound to be things out there I've not happened upon myself yet.  If you do, please let me know because I can't get enough of this stuff.

 

Best Albums of 2013: 10. P.F.A.

10.  Less Talk More Oi! - P.F.A. (Self-Released)

Of all the great things that came out of Hungary in 2013 - and there were many - my favourite was this, a masterpiece of curt punk diatribes from this Veszprem band who manage to cram 26 songs into 28 minutes, leave you breathless, panting, wanting more and in no doubt that the shit that goes down in their country has a distasteful universal resonance and that they've nailed it perfectly.

Titles like 'Closet SS' and 'Carnivore Punks Fuck Off' give you the general idea, while 'Piss Puddles of Hell' probably deserves to be recognised as the best song title of the year - and the content doesn't disappoint either.   There are two one second tracks here too: in fact, they come in as only a fraction of a second which is why bandcamp lists them as 00:00.  The whole thing is an angry melee of some of the best raw punk I've heard in years.  

NYOP here.  

Best Albums of 2013 - Number 19: derTANZ

19. Kaktusz - derTANZ

As in 2012, there was plenty coming out of Hungary to get excited about this year.  One of the very best was this album from Budapest experimental punkers derTANZ, an album of blistering yet meticulously channeled noise, recorded entirely live.  Probably best summed up by the comment Sand left on the album's bandcamp page: "Strange album, after many listenings I still can't pinpoint it well, but I like it a lot.  It is strangely easy to listen and captivating."

Well put, Sand.   The album's available as CD or NYOP download from here.  

A timely reminder, too, that there are now only ten days left to vote in the offiical festive fifty at Dandelion Radio.  Tell us your three favourite tracks of the year here.  

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derTANZ - Kaktusz

derTANZ are Árpád Gulyás (bass), Ákos Tornyos (drums), and Gábor Kovács (vocals). They play harsh, minimalist music with a bleak cynical attitude, addicted to distorted bass guitar sounds, and broken drums as well as analog electronics, influenced by the chaotic post punk of The Birthday Party, the tribal rhythms of the Swans, the abstraction of Scott Walker, the noise-rock of the Jesus Lizard, or the free jazz hallucinations of Moonchild. 

Their debut album,  Kaktusz in April came out last month and was recorded live during a two day session in an empty, post-socialist community house of a small Hungarian village, Érsekvadkert.  The final result is a grotesque psychedelic trip, an inner country site dressed into drones and noises.

  

Clearly, Hungary has featured a lot in my recent Dandelion Radio shows, but if you're expecting something along the lines of the raw punk attack of compatriots like Mudpie or Fake Shakes (the latter also feature in my show this month), then expect again.   The fifty minutes of this collection surges and falls like a gigantic rollercoaster, combining passages of nerve-shredding speed with slowed down interludes are no less powerful.  

It's all about the energy, and again by that I don't mean an undiluted power barrange.  The consistent menace about the collection comes from its undulating variety.  It's as if the early-Ruts quake of opener 'A Statue' shreds itself and into a big-bang scatter, populating the rest of the collection like some Babel-like diffusion of chaos.  The sinister voice-over that kicks off 'Terror Mirror Terror' comes on like Vincent Price backed by early PiL at their sparsest, building into a violent barrage underpinned by a rumbling bass line that's one of the few omnipresent elements in this diverse catalogue of aggressiveness.  

'The Trap' (which features in my May show on Dandelion Radio) may initially resemble 'Holiday in Cambodia' but the similarities are soon dissipated as the bass drum comes in and a shrill siren of a guitar fizzes like a looming Molotov cocktail behind the vocals.  The energy of 'Waveforms of the Dirt' is more like that of Sisyphus trailing his rock with a purpose, raising a defiant finger to Thanatos.  This is a band that glories in its immense burden, transforming it into heavy layers of monstrous, delightful sound.

But it doesn't need to be intellectualized.  What we have here is visceral, its energy diffused throughout the collection but never reduced.  Behind it lies a deft craftmanship, the art almost of an avant film maker weaving his tales in sound.  Fittingly, the album's longest track, The Garden', is like a horror novella recorded in soundtrack-only form, with a extreme temporal variety that, like that rollercoaster, slows almost to a deathly stop in passages and builds to dramatic barrages of noise in others.

You can pick up a copy of the album for just $1 at the band's bandcamp site.  It's become a feature of my reviews to consider how the truly rewarding often costs so little, but this collection and this band illustrate that better than most.

Hungarian Punk - I can't get enough

Regular listeners to my Dandelion Radio show will be aware that, for the last year or so, I've rarely been able to get through a three hour programme without playing something new from the vibrant Hungarian punk scene.

For some reason Hungary - and in particular Budapest - seems to have generated a whole slew of great bands who are combining the best of that original punk spirit with something a bit different and idiosyncratic and it's making for an explosion of hard-edged guitar music with qualities quite unlike those from anywhere else in the world.

There may be a reason for all this, but there's no point me speculating because I don't know what it is.  All I know is I keep finding punk bands, discovering they're from that part of the world and, in about three-quarters of cases (which is a tremendously high proportion), realising that they sound quite unlike any other band I've heard.  Which is saying a lot, because the vast majority of punk I find elsewhere tends to be uninspired, unoriginal and formulaic.  Why is Hungary different?

Maybe it's something to do with elements from an eastern European country that were prevented from flourishing fully at the time of western punk's flowering coming to the surface and fusing with an alien spirit to produce something new and different; maybe, as with Japan a couple of decades or so ago, the bands themselves have an unabashed raw love for what they do that's untainted by the cynicism you often find among British or American practitioners of what is, after all, a pretty well-mined seam of music; or maybe there's something about Hungary, something deeply immersed in its rebellious socio-economic spirit that came to life so dramatically in the fifties and which now resonate through the music of so many remarkable bands.

Whatever it is, its most consistently brilliant recent practitioners are probably Opus Null, although it's a close thing. The brash brilliance of their Alkotmanyos Anarchia album thrilled me even more than any other Hungarian album last year and their follow-up split release with Szijj Ferenc continued to showcase this remarkable band in all their unrefined, ragged glory.

But before I'd even discovered Opus Null, I was thrilling to the sounds of Amstatten Bedroom Punk, a band whose style has a more experimental and slightly darker edge, as displayed on their unpronouncably brilliant vxcfsxa EP which was followed up last summer by the even more experimental (with free jazz bonus track) Epische Krankheit release.   After this the varied Hungarian punk gems seemed to swarm in from everywhere - the existential sub-Joy Division mood pieces of A PART, for example, whose Tavol mini-album reached our grateful ears in September last year, or the murky thrash of Wormkids whose fascinating and sinister Inzen album remains, as far as I'm aware, their sole creative outpouring.


And it hasn't just been about Budapest.   Check out the excellent Youth Violence, from Savarra, whose anti-establishment diatribes come hard and fast in the speed-rush that is their self-titled EP, or Veszprem's P.F.A., whose Pigheart album from last year has recently been followed up with the, to these ears, strangely named Less Talk, More Oi album, which has firmly embedded itself into my heart as one of the best albums released this year and placed that band, for the moment, even above the venerable Opus Null in my affections.

It doesn't stop there.  Check out the surf-punk of Summer Schatzies or the off-kilter delights of R. Vomisa Caasi; and in my Dandelion Radio show this month, you can hear a demo from the full-on Back Off!! while coming up in April I'll be playing a demo from Mudpie, something from the self-titled Diskobra album and of course a track from the P.F.A. release mentioned above.


Mudpie

The great thing about all this is that I know there are still bound to be many more gems as yet undiscovered.   I look forward to showcasing as many of them as possible in forthcoming shows but, until then, check out the links in this article - almost all of them are available as free download - and get yourself acquainted with the most productive and fascinating punk scene for many decades.