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.

 

EyeSea - Blue Ten

Blue Tapes have done it again.  The label received a lot of deserved attention for Katie Gately's 'Pipes' single last year, a track that provided one of the major highlights of the 2013 festive fifty when it unexpectedly snuck in at number 19.  Even had they left it there, they would already warrant recognition as one of the finest conduits innovative music of our time, but they clearly don't intend to.  For that we can be extremely grateful, especially as this EyeSea release isn't far behind the Gately one in terms of quality and easily on a par in terms of musical audacity.

It's another vocal-only affair, this time appropriating the unlikely tag of 'a capella death metal' to give the world what will surely prove to be one of the most original things - musical or otherwise - you'll encounter anywhere in 2014.  Even more than anything else that Blue Tapes have put out, Blue Ten shreds your expectations as much as your senses: hearing the rabid growl of a death metal vocalist without instrumental accompaniment raises the hairs on your back and plays merry hell with your sensibilities with scant regard for how open-minded a listener you might like to think you are.

There are ten such gems on this release, each one stylistically similar and yet bewilderingly different.  It's from the same series of vocal studies as the Gately release, but there any similarities end.  The power of the aforementioned artist's 'Pipes' was in how it somehow martialled the most sparse and rudimentary elements to produce something that was, for the most part, oddly melodic.  There's nothing melodic here, only a pugilistic vocal line that pounds your senses into willing submission while your head jars to the guitar line you know ought to be there but which, shockingly, isn't.

I'm playing 'Stuck 2' from the release in my March Dandelion Radio show.  You can grab a copy - as usual, it's a cassette only affair, from here.  If you're missing something in your life at the moment, it's probably this: and even if it isn't, it'll certainly take your mind off whatever it is. 

Harry Cloud - Red Barn

LA's Harry Cloud is at it again.  His Cry Now, Cry Later EP with Cops was one of the highlights of 2013 - if you like music that slides muddily around your brain, soaking up here and picking up bits of mental debris there until what you end up with is a massive pile of amazing stuff that's half them and half your own fragmented, blasted preconceptions - which I do.  

Now he's back, with another NYOP release on his bandcamp site and, if anything, it's an even more volatile and arresting collection, spanning as it does a bewilderingly broad spectrum all the way from woozy introspection right the way through to manic bursts of  energy.  Exactly what you'd expect from Harry Cloud, only moreso.

My favourite of the six tracks on Red Barn is the longest, 'WOrmhole', mainly because it seems to cover every inch of that spectrum and somehow make room for several more besides.  You can hear it in my February show on Dandelion Radio.  Because it's Harry Cloud, I can't leave it there though, so I've got the arresting melancholy ache of opener 'Dermatillomania' coming up in my March show, which starts streaming on Saturday.

Harry Cloud is necessary because, should I forget, he reminds me that the world is a crazy, warped and utterly irrational place and that I should like it for being just that.  Red Barn may be their most crazy, warped and irrational record yet and I find myself utterly devoted to it.

Qualchan - All My Friends Are Going Visceral

I'm generally OK at pub quizzes but one thing I'm really bad at is identifying tunes from brief extracts or intros.  That's probably why I struggle to identify anything that finds its way into Qualchan's All My Friends Are Going Visceral release.  Or maybe it's because he draws the whole thing together so brilliantly that you stop playing any guessing games within seconds and just let the magnificence of it wash over you.  Which is how it should be.

All My Friends Are Going Visceral is almost nineteen minutes of chopped up extracts and loops of all kinds of material: it feels like it shouldn't hang together at all well and that, in doing so, it defies some kind of musical logic.  That's a hugely liberating experience.  I've no idea whether Qualchan just piled it all up instinctively or whether he took weeks painstakingly stitching this veritable sonic patchwork quilt together.  If the first, then he possesses an astonishing level of artistic instinct; if the second, he is a brilliant musical craftsman.

It's probably a bit of both.  All My Friends Are Going Visceral is split over two 'sides', both around nine and a half minutes in length and the whole release is available as NYOP here.  You can hear 'Side A' in my February show on Dandelion Radio, streaming at various times during this month and discussions are underway hopefully for Qualchan to do something for the show in the near future.  Give this release a try, but leave your preconceptions somewhere else, because this is unlikely to be like anything you've heard anywhere else.

Dementio13 - VTOL

Yes, one of the most prolific and consistently excellent electronic artistes of our time is back again, and he's not alone.  VTOL, the latest masterpiece from Dementio13, aka Paul Foster, consists of a collection of collaborations with a bunch of other artists, many of whom he's worked with on and off before.  And the result?  Another triumph.

As I've said on more than one occasion, the most pleasing thing about Dementio13's work is its sumptuous variety: not for him an easily tagged album of trance or synth-pop or drum n bass; instead, you're likely to find all of these and much more thrown into a pot heaving with vitality and groaning with epicurean delight ('epicurean' in the original, philosophical, sense, that is) under a heady mix of disparate ingredients.

So, add into the mix a whole load of partners, all of whom make great music in their own right, and you get an even denser, even more desirable outcome.  Pixieguts, who usually works with Paul as Cwtch, brings her enigmatic vocal stylings to 'Rodeo Days', while that fine modern troubador Ian Thistlethwaite adds a delightfully laconic touch to 'Self-Doubting Thomas'.  

There are contributions also from Douglas Deep, Alone and Alun Vaughan, all of which add further delightful range to a collection that's as fun to listen to as it is absorbing; a reaction borne out even further by the galloping 'Alcohol', which brings Snippet to the party, a cheerfully rampant eulogy to booze that, placed between a couple of fine tunes featuring Dementio13 on his own, enforces the feeling still more than this is Paul Foster at his most playful: while a sense of enjoyment is hardly rare when listening to this remarkable artist, it's given a certain centrality when company join him at the production table.

Finally, it's only fair to give particular attention to the three collaborations here with Nita Disaster.  Her vocals always lend something gorgeous and almost transcendent to his work and here perhaps more than ever before.  'Pollution' is my personal favourite of the year so far, by anyone, and it features in my February show on Dandelion Radio; the three tracks, plus another, will all appear in an exclusive session mix they've done for my show in March.

But there's no need to wait for that.  Get VTOL as NYOP here and get yourself an invite to a great party where partners are optional, but inevitably bring something very important to the proceedings.

Gyratory System - Utility Music

Previous Gyratory System albums have certainly received their share of acclaim but this, the third from the London-based three piece, may well be their best yet.   It's one of those releases that renders attempts at classification almost distastefully crude, which is why so many attempts to describe it end up taking in a curiously wide spectrum of references, from krautrock to jazz to psychedelic to electronica and all the way back again.

This is, ultimately, electronic music, but while so much of what gets placed under that term sadly appears to regard the production of electric sounds as an end in itself, Gyratory System use it to explore realms too often unexplored in what might broadly be termed popular music: there are elements of neo-classical probing here, and a restless experimental spirit that results in an album that manages to combine the celebral and the rhythmic in a way that shouldn't work, but does, constantly.

I'm playing the sub-ethnic throb of 'AAA' as the opening track in my January 2014 Dandelion Radio show.  It's an ideal way to start the year, teeming as it is with rich and extraordinary juxtapositions.  But you could say that of the album as a whole, which works as a brilliantly evocative template of possibilities than as a mere collection of tunes.

I've got the excellent 'Lackland' scheduled to feature in February.  It's a current favourite, but this is an album I'm sure I'll be discovering new and brilliant things in throughout the year.  Utility Music is out now on the Soft Bodies label: get it as a download here and check out the Soft Bodies website for their other releases and other fascinating stuff.  

Drive With A Dead Girl - Alma Ata II

During December, I tend to indulge myself in the retrospective pleasures of the year's releases more than is usual, or perhaps desirable.  That, along with the pastime of listening to Xmas tunes while getting pissed, can get in the way of discovering any great new releases if I'm not really, really careful.  That would be a shame, particularly in the case of December 2013, where an unusually high number of excellent releases managed to negotiate the pre-seasonal obstacle course outlined above and make their way into my life.

Although a good case could be made for the excellent Guerilla Toss album, the best of these releases for me was unquestionably this, from French band Drive With A Dead Girl.  Hailing from Lille, fortunately the band bypassed my naturally indolent state and got in touch about the release, which managed very quickly to oust those nostalgic afternoons spend listening to Merry Christmas From Fortuna Pop or Ya-Style Christmas from my schedule.  

No doubt they'll return at some point, but for now Christmas has long gone and I'm still listening to Alma Ata II, six slabs of entrancing noise that are filling the long winter evenings with unfeasible regularity down our way, and probably annoying the kind of neighbours who need to be annoyed.  Among them sits the unquestioned centrepiece, the seventeen minute plus 'Fabulous Tank', a multi-faceted beast of  track of such textural variety that it can take over your life without you even realising how long you've been listening to it.

But it's unreasonable to ignore the other delights on offer here, all of which take a common template, where rampant guitar and drums underscore Alexia's enigmatic vocals, and yet manage an appeal very much of their own.  I'm playing opener 'Deseado' in my January show on Dandelion Radio, which should give you some idea of what I mean.  But don't stop there: you can get the whole album as NYOP here.