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Die Tödliche Doris - 28-Apr-05 04:03 PM
The deadly Doris, Berlin's most expressive and chaotic outfit. Their music is merely an extension of their everyday life, there is a wealth of activity going on, in and around their two fine LPs - both available on Zick-Zack. The trio consists of Wolfgang Muller, Kathe Kruse and Nikolaus Ufermohlen and their desire to stay outside of the accepted rock tradition is well in evidence on their live performances. (On occasions they have got three other people to perform so that they can see what they look like). Outside of music, Muller has also written a book 'Geniale Dilletanten' which explains music through different people's eyes and features Borsig, Frieder Butzman, Einsturzende Neubauten and a large wealth of talent.

Ptôse Production - 26-Apr-05 01:38 AM
Ptose Production, the group, began in '79 when they recorded a cassette album and gave it away to friends. The response was so good that they decided to set up PPP and release more tapes. As their reputation grew people from all over the world began to write to them. Thus began the series of releases 'Assemblee Generale' as well as their own material. PP's music is strong and electronic but with humour and a definite commercial bent. Their regard for electronics is nicely balanced against 60's guitar style which occasionally verges on the funky (note their version of Tom Tom Club's 'Wordy Rapping Hood').

Felix Kubin - The Tetchy Teenage Tapes Of - 08-Apr-05 09:19 PM
„ Step into my trap, for we’re all insane“
(Die Egozentrischen 2, 1982)

The idea for the release came about as I was making a minidisk recording of German electronic music, for my friends of SKIPP label and as a gag mixed in some of earlier pieces on tape. My answer to the question, of what it be, knocked them off their feet: “And the high voice… that’s YOU?”
Once they asked me if I had any other material, I sent them a load of pieces, of which they then chose their favorites for a CD. For the planned LP version for A-Musik of Cologne, we followed the same pattern. So different were the results, that this lead to two variations for “Tetchy Teenage Tapes”. The cut amount From LP to CD lays around the 50%.
I’m quite aware that my “Teenage Tapes” represent a load of nervous wreck. As I on rainy Sunday afternoons in the living room, with the help of my 4 track recorder, several synthesizers, an extra large and lousy electronic home organ and a drum computer, recorded I was far from a voice brake. With this music I wasn’t about to impress neither girls nor people of my same age. That what I did was defined as “idiot music”. However there was a small circle of friends whom my action stimulated, who also wanted to then make music. It had to sound weird and experimental. As a consequence, an absurd scene of kid bands evolved, in my suburb outside of Hamburg, with names like “Voll die Goennung”, “Intensive Styroporsymbole”, “Rekonstruirtes Relativpronomen” (no misspelling and no translation) and “Universum”; excluded mainly from the public. Along with these many a funny instrument came to use of hand, from mini Casio keyboards to old beat-up acoustic guitars all the way to objects totally foreign to music such as rulers, night-stand lamps and detergent-box drums. One of the most original inventions was the so-called “Dosophon” (Can-o-phone). A drum set composed of tin cans for candy, by my co-musician Stefan Mohr, whom I then performed with in several small clubs and galleries, as the “Egozentrischen 2” (“Egocentric 2“). By more or less coincidence, we came upon in 1983, the punk-pope Alfred Hilsberg. He saw one of our concerts at the Hamburger Hafenklangstudio and was impressed to see how we managed to, within 20 minutes, chase all visitors out the hall. Hilsberg offered us many gigs at his festivals, for example: “In der Hitze der Nacht” (“In the heat ot the night”), 1985 with Rainald Goetz, Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, Dietrich Diederichsen, Kosmonautentraum, Hometaping Is Killing Music and others. We gladly accepted. For years he had promised to bring out our record, by his renowned label Zick-Zack, but we came two years too late. He had too little money for big experiments. The dream of German underground music had already been dreamt. When I now hear these old recordings, I get a little dizzy. I was a hyperactive child, which can be heard. The pieces are way too fast, especially considering that in the 1980’s the common fuck-tempo was 120 BPM and not, as now days, 125 BPM. The time wasn’t then yet quite ripe for Speed Metal and Gabba. Therefore, however, the readiness to listen to nerve exterminating music was greater back then, than it is now. This stuff was, in any case, not fitting for use in restaurants and hotel elevators. Today less than ever.

The lyrics also make an unusual feeling come over me. What must have been going through my mind there? Meanwhile, I’m certain that kids function like mediums in séances, they soak up every happening of their point in time in a twisted, yet clairvoyant manner which in turn is sent back to the outside world. That this sometimes manifests itself as a nightmare lies in the psychoanalytical tradition of Surrealism. This Surrealism was acted out on the behalf of naïve pride. We were monster kids of monster times. We considered ourselves young foreskin of Anti-pop, who grind accumulated aggression and the information floods of our environment away through music.
Along with this came that at the beginning of the 1980’s a unique feeling of freedom and confidence came about the German underground scene, triggered by Punk, Neue Deutsche Welle, the Berliner Geniale Dilletanten and many other factors. A do-it-yourself climate, which set lot’s of energy free never letting a single doubt over its actions come about.
So let us dive into the old ocean of resentment and old listening habits, only to scream along with every wrong tone, much like ripped out sirens after the electric Grandmother.

Felix Kubin
Hamburg, 9.9.2002

translated by Barbara Brockhaus

Y Pants - Y Pants - 12-Mar-05 12:34 AM
Here’s another 99 records classic. The Y Pants are nice. They meet every year on each-others birthdays. They’re New York’s answer to the Raincoats with better production. Instruments used here include Toy Piano and Baritone Ukelele. Branca did this record (not Bahlman) and I believe it’s been reissued with other Y Pants stuff on a CD recently. So check it out….

Arto / Neto - Pini, Pini / Malú - 12-Mar-05 12:34 AM
Subject of a famous anecdote in which Blixa “swamp-rat” Bargeld accosts Arto “then grown-up” Lindsay after a NYC Neubauten gig and screams (distorting smack-tortured face) “I have Pini Pini.” The quote wrongly relayed in one un-namable publication (The Wire) with the record title in question as “Penny Penny”.

What a mad record! Neto (who he?) delivers a bizarre story about a woman (the Pini in question) getting married to a “bull-cow’. All the while Arto is having random epileptic convulsions on his guitar in the background. There’s a secret partner to this record on Marion Brown’s Geechee Recollections LP. Get your coat and get hunting!