Conversation with David West

This summer I had the opportunity to get in the van with Rank Xerox and Rat Columns as they wondered through Europe to present their amazing music. I have met many bands and had the luck to spend some time with them but these fellows were definitely a bunch who stood out. They were funny, smarter than anyone I have met before and just lovely in a punk way. They killed it every night and it was as heartbreaking as life changing to get out of the van just few days later filled with memories that carry on to live vividly in my mind. I thought I will interview the mutual member of these two bands. He is David West a talented musician, anti-authorizer leader and the most fashionable van driver. Besides playing paranoid post punk with Rank/Xerox and landscape-ish bedroom punk with Rat Columns he is a member of Total Control, Burning Sensations and Lace Curtain.

MRR: How did you meet as friends and what were the reasons to pick the specific each other to play music with? And how did you recruit people into Rat Columns since it has started as your solo project? What was appealing for them to join this band?

DW: I met Jon, the drummer from Rank/Xerox, right when I moved to San Francisco. He put on a show in an obscure location outside of the city and I sent him a message on a now obsolete social networking/music website to find out how to get to this obscure location. When I got there he was very friendly and we chatted and within a couple of days I went to his practice space and lo and behold Mr. Kevin McCarthy, the bass player from Rank/Xerox was there too. This was the creation story for that act. For me, the reason to 'pick' them was that I knew nobody else in the entire city. 

I 'recruited' people for Rat Columns based on already being friends with them, and knowing that they could play music. Actually Matt, one of the drummers that plays in the band, was originally playing guitar. Our then drummer quit and Matt casually mentioned that he knew how to play drums. It was a pleasant surprise. He is an amazing drummer! To this day I know not what was appealing about it for them. 

MRR: What do you think about the connection of music and loneliness? As you said you started a band with Jon and Kevin cause they were the only people you knew. So rock and roll is based on a group formation. Still sometimes we are lonely in these bands. Is music for the lonely? The headphones are separating us while they are saving us, when we meet someone who shares the same taste in music we feel like we have found a piece of ourselves that was missing, instant connection. At shows where we are among many people our body language tells we feel alienated, hands in pockets, arms crossed, fist clenched. Still we go there to see people and be in a scene. For you how do these two things music and loneliness collide?

DW: Music is for the lonely, loser-y, lustful, lecherous, illiterate, illegitimate lads and lasses of this world. Music is for those who seek humiliating conditions and reverse parabolically destined lifestyles. Smart people do visual art, graphic design, architecture, literature, fashion, basically everything else. Anyway, I've never been lonely, never felt alone, I've always been accompanied by a small monkey named Fabian who compliments me all the time. I've never been part of a scene. I don't care if someone shares the same taste in music as me. In fact, that would be off-putting, as I have bad taste. Music and loneliness collide like a pasta splashing down into boiling water; the right amount and duration of loneliness makes for a delightful meal, too much and it turns into a soft mushy mess. If you're gluten-free, avoid loneliness.

MRR: What are you influences in creating music? Not just in terms of other musicians and band because as I see your bands Rank / Xerox is self conscious, controlled, even if it’s collapsing it still has an architecture-esque form, while Rat columns is more like sub-conscious, floats  around like a cloud and it rather sounds like feelings and visions since on record it’s so eclectic and free. Both bands are unique I wonder what’s behind the writing of songs, the process as much as the motivations, or triggers and maybe other people’s art as influences too.

DW: Rank/Xerox's songwriting is a torturous collaborative process that might be described under the classic umbrella term of 'jamming'. Rat Columns has collaborative elements and some of the songs are co-written, but much of it is more classic songwriting where somebody writes a song, brings it to the others and they add their fairy dust to it, or not.

Influences are the usual pop culture detritus of the previous century and others. Music, books, movies. And then there are things I would call environmental influences, like stealing scenarios from other people's tortured relationships, urban/rural/pastoral landscapes, exotic lifestyles, ideas, the idea of an idea, Ikea, The Crimea, exotic lifestyles, ape-like creatures, memories, other people's memories, shows I went to, shows I didn't go to, horribly embarrassing situations, triumphant moments, Bleak Moments, the ocean, the desert, farms, rural towns, youth, old age, the future, Renaissance painters, underground car parks, inhabiting another person's body, dance clubs, parties, flashing lights, raves, mind altering substances, walking in the park, Indian food. 

The motivation behind the music is totally unclear to me. Arrogance mixed with boredom, the desire for companionship and naivety? 

MRR: Is there specific process in synthesizing the non-cultural more like life-based inspirations into sounds? I have read that Nabokov connected colors to words so when he was creating sentences, he also did something which in his head was drawing. But it was only in his head. So while it’s a rare thing that people are experiencing the same emotions when encountering something that’s like a song - for you, is there an approach when you want to translate everyday emotions into songs?

DW: Yeah, there is a specific process. Write down the event, subject, feeling onto a piece of paper. Reverse the victim and the victor. That is, make yourself the victor, Viktor. OK, now replace desperation with recalcitrant ambivalence. Scrub out Budapest and replace it with New York City. Erase feelings of inadequacy and insert feelings of non-directional aggression. Blank out crisp white wine and replace with heroin. Replace sweatpants with leather pants. Now sing, with some feeling, but not too much. Pat yourself on the back now. You are PUNK, baby!!!!! This method works for me, every time.

MRR: As I feel Rank / Xerox sounds like it exists in a trapped / hostile environment. Maybe I have told you this but for me sometimes you sound like being in a European block of flats and waiting for nuclear attack to happen during the cold war. A bit Kafkaesque frustration. While Rat Columns is more like out in the nature all alone wondering around. Are these real surroundings you are coming from or are these feelings you wanna create? Is there any feeling you wanna create with your music?

DW: I grew up around nature, on a farm, in rural Western Australia, so that is real, as real as a feeling or impression that somebody else has upon listening to your music can be, which is to say, really quite real, but it is more you than me, no? There are no feelings I want to create in others, but I do want to create feelings in others. It is non-specific. If anything we have done can bring out an interesting and evocative emotion or imagination in somebody else, that is a really pleasant thing. I don't wanna dictate. If we could frame somebody's loneliness into a more self-conceptualized, evocative loneliness, provide some comforting distance from discomfort, comfort via contextualization, or if we can make domestic chores less of a bore, both are fine results. Some say fine cheeses take on an even richer flavor when listening to Rat Columns' first LP. This is a good result too.

I have been in hostile environments but really my life is quite spoiled by global standards. Not everything can be holding hands in a field of flowers or neo-realism and I suppose an evocation of darkness is a luxurious activity for us comfortable westerners. There is a place for luxury. It could be a finely cut leather suit, a walk on the beach, a spare moment to cultivate an alternative persona, a fantasy existence. These are all luxuries. Rank/Xerox is a luxury brand. A luxury band.

MRR: You say Rank / Xerox is a luxury band. Couple days ago I was walking to a date and it was raining. I was listening to a band that sounded like they wrote songs for people who walk alone in autumn rain at night on empty streets. While I was out there I wondered about that what I saw and heard both total fit to each other and I felt like I was at the right place in the right situation. While the day before I lost my job and I couldn’t see my future. But still I felt if I could find joy in moments like this life is all right and everything is gonna be fine. Do you think art is luxury? Is it cheating? Should we wake up?

DW: We are a luxury band. Art is luxury, free time to create is luxurious. Cheating is a sensational sensation and a beautiful act. To be punk is to cheat, ignore rules, ignore morality, ignore the system. No, we should not wake up. To dream is to be granted temporary respite from this disgusting mutant octopus called Life. You experienced a classic synchronicity of sentimentality and circumstance. Slap yourself in the face Viktor. Wake the fuck up!!! The day before, you were an artist. The next, you were a consumer. Love is the drug, and I thought you were straight-edge. The supply of happiness is limited. Save some for me, lover boy.

MRR: Could you explain the violence in Rank / Xerox's music?

DW: There is violence in Rank/Xerox music? It comes from our tortured relationship with one another. When Jon hits the drums particularly hard it is because we have criticized trees in the van earlier in the day. 

MRR: What about the nature in Rat Columns? It feels like when I’m listening to the music while I’m even in a town, the buildings just become things similar to trees or hills. 

DW: That's a really nice image Viktor. That's a real compliment! That's really pleasant to hear. As far as evocation of nature goes, I am a bit of a classicist when it comes to imagery; I stick to things from the pantheon, to my advantage and detriment, so there is a lot of nature, earth and human nature.  Flowers, night, love, loneliness, sadness, dark, light, empty streets, trees, grass, obscure sexual imagery. It's a bit lazy really. Traditional. Classicists are those without the spine to walk into the unknown, generate new ideas, reference the internet, make GIFs? It exists, it is powerful, eternal, I am going to use it. Why not?

MRR: Since there seems to be a boom in coalitions of punk bands and bigger indie labels (with  major distros and coverage in lame media) and because your music could find fans in larger crowds do you feel like you need to act in protection of your music’s integrity?  Would you mind stepping one level up?

DW: Hmmm, I think if you had existed in the 90s you would not be considering our current period much of a 'boom'. 'Punk' bands used to be signed by massive, multinational corporations, not 'major indies'. Going backwards, the Sex Pistols were on Virgin Records. This is a company that also has airlines, mobile phones, space tourism. Royal Trux were signed by a major label and released a record with an overflowing toilet on the cover. Things have been shrinking and shrinking to such an extent that anything beyond your housemate releasing 300 copies of your record is worthy of notice and comment. We are so aware of the machinations behind culture. Your housemate could rip you off, and use your massive profits to buy gourmet Danish rye bread, which you can't eat, because you are gluten-free these days. A major corporation could purchase you, lock you in a room for 3 years, shelve your album, let you out looking like Rip Van Winkle but with a million dollar handshake. Politics and business are worthy of discussion at times, but music and art have their own integrity that is not in the same sphere of existence as 'credibility', social networking, cheese sponsorships, tote bags. In answer to your question, our music is so inscrutably pure and sincere that I feel no need to protect its integrity, and sure, perhaps if I go one level up I will be closer to saving the princess and achieving the highest level of magic and the ability to fly.

MRR: Does the cruel gentrification of San Francisco affects your every days thus your song writings too? Do you feel like leaving the bay area? I know some of you already have.

DW: Hmmm this is such a hot topic. SF is really expensive partially due to gentrification so therefore you need to work more so therefore you have less time to write songs. So it has affected me. It is just like a force of nature, in my eyes, so I don't really think about it as much as some other people. It is a bit of a drag, I must admit. It is an idyllic spot in a lot of ways so people have always wanted to live here, have moved here, over many decades and cultural periods, but right now it is somewhat obnoxious. I don't have anything new or insightful to say about it. We need new industries that generate money that generate jobs for us art scum to work part-time at, but does it have to come at such a severe aesthetic and societal price? Rich people could at the very least, if they are going to change the social fabric of a city, wear beautiful clothes. Flip-flops are not appropriate for San Francisco's climate patterns. Toe shoes are not appropriate for anything. A lot of people have moved from here lately. If you want to live somewhat outside of the mainstream perhaps you can't live in the pop charts. I have left the Bay Area too but you never know, I might come back, perhaps technology is just a fad, lolz.

MRR: You are all engaged with different bands since you are fans of all different kinds of music. So it’s not just you like to listen to different music but also like to  play different sub-genres. What is it that you look for in music? In other people’s music and also in the one you create?

In music I listen to or create, I just look for an combination of evocative melody, noise and/or rhythm, something to take me out of concrete reality for a moment or two. 

MRR: Has it ever happened that you had a song that you liked but couldn’t fit into the whole picture?

DW: All the time! I wrote a lot of songs for Rank/Xerox that were overtly poppy or couldn't be integrated into our group-based writing system for some reason or another. Not good for productivity but good for having a strong identity, I am forced to admit, by my lawyers.

MRR: There seems to be a control in Rank Xerox. Is it shared in an anarchistic way or is there  someone in charge? How much are you a perfectionists? 

DW: There is always control, in everything, ever. I suppose it is democratic, kind of like a democracy where there are also slaves. Early USA? Our level of perfectionism, amongst members, ranges from low to high. I am low level, more based around tossing it off, letting it ride. 

MRR: What is the horror?

DW: Toe shoes. Pop music without melody or songs. 'Janitors' aka stand-up paddleboard surfers taking too many waves, 'yes' you have the ability, 'no' you don't have the right. Flights back to Australia from the Northern Hemisphere. Environmental destruction on a massive scale in developing and non-developing and developed nations that we can't look down upon properly because we have been there and done that, and because we fly around the world guilt-free. People on their phones at the cash register. Sweatshops, the underground buying non-secondhand sportswear. People watching cultural events in person, through their phones. A constant presence, of anything. 

#369

Dear current state of punk,

You don’t exist. Not because you have been dead, betrayed and backstabbed or even worse existed only as an unborn child kept alive just as someone’s fantasy. None of these.  I’m not even over you and this is no place to make spiky, chained folks to the butt of any jokes and I swear this will go without any intention to make anyone feel shitty who like me is listening right now to Isterismo or fuck it even to Toy Dolls (which I do not) and wearing boots (which I do) or leather jackets indoors (I have an anorak on). It’s just that there is no fucking current state of punk. Never was, never will be. It’s a fucking bottle that has been labeled. It could be smashed and then it could be replaced with another jar. There could be million labels and million bottles. The only thing that should be important in this allegory is that it’s an empty space so whatever you pour into it that’s what you get cause it’s your space.

You don’t like kids being apathetic?

You don’t like bands being boring?

You need something new, something interesting?

Then either find it, make it, realize it but shout up if you don’t do anything. If you had done anything then you wouldn’t complain. (yeah, you would as I do most of the time but please follow me) My heart has been broken million times when I saw people just shrug their shoulders on the scum who beat or rape women in our scene, who are friends with nazis, people who are just the worst human beings. My heart breaks even when friends and self-proclaimed music enthusiasts rather hang in front of shows and drink cheap wine than come down and support local promoters like myself. I’m not against having fun and pointless hangings but I have different level of fun when I witness people perform their angst in front of me than with chugging shitty beer on a piss soaked bench. I have spent a fortune on getting shitfaced on pointless weekday nights still I rather spend my money to eat something good or buy a record. Although I still think drinking beer is fun and smoking cigarettes are fucking cool but don’t get addicted to any. Get addicted to buying records and attending shows. And carrying about what’s good for your fucking mental health punx!!!   
Back to crying over the non-existing current state of punk: Most of the people are fucking stupid and the only fact that they probably listen to let’s say Faith, well it won’t make them better or smarter or anything. It’ simply that they share one thing common with you or with me cause I do love Faith and probably think 80% of their fans are people I’m lucky I don’t know. Still I could love the fact that someone does listen to them but again it’s just my enthusiasm towards that band what is reflected on someone else. I like you because you are like me, I was so lonely now I have found you who is another version of me. This is how I made most of my friends but luckily they proved to be more than just people with similar taste in music.
Today I’ve learned my girlfriend also loves Modern Lovers. Do I love her more now? No because I’m already head over heels with her and there is no chance I could love her more than I did before I have learned this fact. She would be perfect even if she was listening to elevator music.
The music we listen to, the basic principles we believe in, there should be more to define us. And remember the fact alone that someone does punk in a way that’s lame to you - it won’t make them terrible humans. JUST TERRIBLE PUNX!!!!
So why are we so needy, obsessed, concerned and chained to people who are dumb, lame or just have different ideas about how to do their own punk thus giving us hard times? Care about your friends if you need company in all this. About people whom you are doing something together. You don’t even have to be best friends with your band mates and partners in crime either. It’s better if you could spend time with them even when you are not doing punk things and please don’t play with people just because they are schooled musicians but being in a creative and time consuming project with other people sometimes could lead to places and situations where you don’t wanna end up with your best friends cause you could lose them there and then over few seconds in a stupid punk song. I’m saying this while I have only played together with people who I count among my best friends and it’s a happy marriage. So care about people who cares about you. Don’t waste your precious time being upset on assholes. Be a freak that will scare them away.

I don’t want to disrespect the hard work everybody is doing to fill and run this magazine but when I got bored of all the interviews that said nothing to me (and this problem was based in me) I started interviewing bands I do like and asked questions I do care about. I don’t live there, I don’t speak the language properly I’m not even that smart. I only have the will that has been gathered in me when I don’t like what is the current state of punk. Then I change it. Not for you but foremost for myself. And you will decide if you like it or not. I’m glad if you do and I will be a bit hurt if you don’t, still if the process is fun enough it could overwrite any cruel but righteous criticism.
There is a changing dynamic of how I approach my friends, the scene, local bands but all of them are still growing, improving and at the same time staying the same. Things will happen if you try to make a change for yourself and not sacrifice yourself to try to change other people or be bothered by how different their attitude from yours. Just do whatever the fuck that makes you happy and if you are lucky enough to create your own bubble where you could be as much of a freak as you want then you will be happy.
Two of the bands I play in now went on tour and since they include the full membership of Piss Crystals they played as well. Seven people, three bands, one constantly stoned driver, one friend who came along. We played three nights at Pécs (H), Graz (A), Zagreb (HR). It was beyond fun. Shows with good turn outs, great vibes and all of us played tight sets. On our last night we bought some weed and I hate to play while stoned but I gave a little chance. A sketchy weirdo skinhead guy smoked with us and this meant he inhaled half of our spliffs (we launched two) in one take. He hung with us for 10 minutes and spent the next 3 hours sitting in the corner being paranoid of weed only staring in front of him.
We played a set with Norms and it was amazing. I felt like this was the sense of playing music with people you respect with whom you created something that is above your everydays. There was that unidentified energy that was bouncing among us and it felt like I was feeling what they have felt as well. When everything that is haunting you through months transform into the power that is the engine in your body that is playing these songs. I felt like something grabbed me. It was amazing. Seriously, form a band!
Then I played bass for Zen Fascists in shades in a room that had no lights just red and blue flashes. We covered TV Casualty from the Misfits and it felt like we played that song for 2 hours but it was amazing two hours. That monotony and growing tension of the song had hypnotized me. While everyone else from our crew was moshing out crippled moves.
We knocked ourselves out from reality through these three days. We were just a bunch of weirdo creeps playing shitty music to people who appreciated this. And that was our scene, that was our bubble and that was our punk. We didn’t achieved, changed or proved anything. It was just good and after all that’s what matters.

On the road I was wondering on few things when I was not punching the air to the first Cock Sparer record. That shit is so good it sounds like really slim scumbag powr pop fans are making evil music to threaten people with knives.
Anyway, who the fuck listens to hardcore? Seriously half of those bands are preaching about how important it is to have a personality for yourself. Which is cool but these bands sound like this is a serious problem in their scene and very few people are having an individual identity since every 3rd song is about this case. Is there really people who has no personality even if they are awful? Being an asshole counts as being something. And songs like these will change anything?
Also how can someone be backstabbed and why are people sad because others change? I have some ideas but is it really happening all the time? This would mean hardcore fans are probably the scummiest people ever on the face of earth. Is it masochism then what leads people to spend their time listening to bands who are questioning them? Is it a mental punch they need in a more digestible form of every day humiliation? I love many of these bands but some of them sound like dorks who wish to be jocks. Stop writing lyrics in the locker room if you want to be taken serious by people who are old enough to consume alcohol and smart enough to read a book.

I also realized that my heart is with people who feel alienated and awkward even at a hardcore show and it doesn’t mean she or he is not the fan of the genre just feel weird even on their night out. Why not? Sometimes I couldn’t even find my place at band rehearsals. It’s okay to feel alienated sometimes.
I also fucking hate bands preaching against being political. It doesn’t mean you need a degree in political science but talking about almost anything is political in this day and age. Wake the fuck up there are no ideologies left it’s just us being afraid of the downfall of this system. Everything is politics. Even having a self to be.
Anyway the end is near and of course I did not started writing together the bands I will pick to include on my year end top ten even though I already got the memo that I was picked as a list maker. I rather listen to European bands from decades ago.
I love living in Europe cause every country has another culture, another approach for the same thing. And while I love in good music that the component of it being universal in the sense that it’s so good it could have been made by anyone, anytime anywhere. Thus while bands here have a prolific sound that could be connected to where they are from the good ones are also universal.
Have you heard Rapt from France? Really ferocious and disgusting hardcore, super fast, noisy and it runs brutality through confused kids who are angry as fuck. Just hardcore perfection played by punks. As fast the music doesn’t make any sense only the fact that it is played by the youth. They sound if they were drunk by the awakening of they could do anything they want. So they made this beautiful mess.
I rarely listen to Hungarian punk bands. Old, legendary ones. The reason is even if those bands were good, the recordings are terrible. I love lo-fi and noise but these are the ones what makes you angry in a bad way. Due to the recording and pressing industries were controlled by the commies it was illegal to record and distribute anything that was not okayed by the government. Pressing on Vinyl was out of question. Thus very few bands had recording that are not painful to listen to.
Other problem for me is how we Hungarians are. I mean this fucking column is about me preaching to the whole universe. Some of these bands just tucked everything in their music. They wanted to do everything at the same time and it just turned out to be some super annoying weirdo music, and even though this description sounds cool the actual records aren’t that good at all. But there are exceptions.
My friends were talking about a video of a local legendary band 88-as Csoport which I have rewatched again and it lead me to discover this amazing Hungarian band called Biztonsági Tanács. They are amazing. I have only seen a picture of their singer who looks like how Brainbombs sound but their music is distant from this. It’s crazy, and fast and noisy while it holds some melodic edge to it. Just perfect hardcore / punk. With enough stupid jokes as tape manipulation between songs. Their later songs include clarinet and they have replaced their singer with a girl. Still they sound good. Go in youtube and search for BiztonságiTanács – Demo. Crazy good.  
Whatever. Stop irony.

#368

My girlfriend left me her last cigarette what I’d just finished smoking. Then I did the dishes, cleaned out all the disgusting black mold from the microwave oven which she luckily haven’t seen and now I’m waiting for my water to boil up so I can put a tea filter in it. It’s not even midnight but I don’t care. Flux of Pink Indians is on and I plan to blast records till I finish this piece. If I won’t cheat myself into watching Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett for hours till I fall asleep.
I was lurking on that webpage for socializing with friends and I was wondering on the difference between my life and my high school classmates’ who are sharing photos of their weddings and newborn babies. I never thought happiness is what I do. I never thought that norms are unhappy although many times it has been proven that they kinda are. I’m not taking a cruise in the ocean of happiness and calm either so who knows the secret?
Some tend to say ignorance is bliss but truth be told I don’t know that much about life and the right way to live it either. I’m all right with the way I’m but I’ve always missed something. There was just always such a lack of something minor inside of me what was missed majorly. But nowadays I feel that I’m drifting towards a point where I could be satisfied with all this.
I feel weird writing these things that are the constant anxiety echoes in my head but punk is my life thus I think when I share these thoughts I’m still writing about punk a bit. About my punk. To survive it as an eastern European. 

This week I booked a show for Big Eyes. I’m far from calling myself a fan of pop punk but I have found their ‘90s college rock vibe charming. Big Eyes played a great show and they were nice people to have around. We were watching together how the bass player of Guided By Voices ate shit after a sketchy jump while performing live on Letterman before we went out sightseeing. And instead of getting super drunk we were watching lame ‘90s horror shows for American kids and reading news about some creepy hotel. Awkward raging.
Then yesterday I went to a skate contest where a couple of my friends’ bands played. It was amazing. Having friends and skaters next to a local train’s rail line on a blown out concrete field. Just cool people, cheap beer, the setting sun and live punk music on the outskirts of Budapest. It sat the mood for the show later that night where I played with one of the bands that I’m in. I say it like this because it’s my friend’s solo project and I don’t write my parts I just play them live. It’s kinda refreshing since with many different things I have to do more than just play as hard as I can and try not to fuck up. So this simple task is my vacation in punk. Still it’s amazing to be in this band and play hardcore-ish d-beat raw punk. Hardcore for the abused and mutants. The show was amazing but it’s not a surprise when you put hundred and plus drunk punx into a rehearsal room and let their angst come out. Then joy will fill the air that makes you drunker than cheap booze. Mostly I was hanging with my girlfriend between and after the shows. It was refreshing. I’m really losing touch with keeping up my social life. It’s not that I hate people it’s that I was never really here for company.
I never really believed that punk is a shelter in the sense of we need each other that much to survive. I say this while 90% of my friends are punx and together we saved our lives and built something marvelous. Although most of the people I know are bond to this lifestyle but even among friends most of the times I feel solitude. It’s not really their fault and I know that strength is in each other but it’s just the way I was raised. I can’t trust people in a way as I could convince myself that I’m able to rely on them when I would be in trouble. And since I’m always afraid I am in trouble I hardly feel safe even among friends. So I have decided I will be concerned about the bare minimum of other people’s problems that type which could be solved by them too. With this free time I will focus on my own shit and try to make my girlfriend happy.

Thing I hate about the scene is when people act like they are above it. Ironics and cynicals are the plague of everything. For them everything is a trend what might be half true but half righteous as well. That’s lame. I don’t like people using punk because through this it might be easier to achieve some status somewhere. LEECHES! Is it elitism to think that your thing is more than the scene that you are a part of? Not the elitism that is accepted by me if there is any sort of. Anyway go fuck yourselves.
While I’m saying this I’m listening to Missing Foundation but I swear today I have spent a tram ride with listening to DYS and I’m planning for a week now to sit down next to my turn table and go through the complete discography of Minor Threat. Find something new in their evergreen tunes.
Tonight I have watched some Cult Ritual live videos. That band really was something and what they have created is still here. They were part of a huge movement for sure, if we can call something a movement that has separated elements and huge if huge means thousand people from all around the world thinking their lp is great. And it still is something I love to listen to. It’s the same with Sex Vid. Both bands are seemingly full with fans of damaged music that feeds it’s intensity from their lives. I hope they had less haunted lives than their music but just being complete nerds, freaks and misfits can be a good nest of amazing punk songs. I don’t know them for sure. But just looking on someone and hearing their music could tell a lot about them.
The thing is the more I listen to music like proto-techno post punk or Mongolian throat singers or trippy kraut rock I appreciate the power of punk more. Not because these sounds are that terrible they remind me that punk is the best, it’s the best because it is for me. Because music is life and good music is real life. I won’t say that there are only good and bad music but there is power that could be put into almost every genre and if it’s there almost everything could sound cool. Reasonable things, not prog-rock, white dad jazz or trippy hippy shits.

Let’s dig in. Due to a pretty legit list that could be found at the www.swedishpunkfanzines.com I spent some recent time discovering and re-listening to Scandinavian hardcore. It’s amazing how most of those bands are carrying that inherrited ability of infusing perfect melodies into their music. And while it’s raging, fast and reckless still there is another layer to it which is pure hit material. Like something beautiful that is damaged or vica versa.
We tend to mention Scandinavian rage along with Japanese hardcore but even though I’m a fan of both scenes and even these days the land of rising sun is a returning guest in my mind and listening devices but they are better at making a grotesque mess that is dangerous to dig into and when you dip in this world of glowing fetish and hyper activism it feels like a childish marvel on the strangeness of humans. Yes, I did listen to LSD this week.
Scandinavian hardcore is different from this. Take Bannlyst who are amazing. Their arsenal contains neck breaking speed, filth and amateurism. In my head they resonate as early Agnostic Front. Or as how I hear Agnostic Front. How AF appeared on a cable show without one of their members, switching instruments, pretending they are playing on them. This chaos with the skandinavian melodies I was detailing above equals a really unique sound. And I’m talking now about a 7” that was released decades ago and still it could save my day.
And fuck, I love the first Sods record. All of its various sounds. From where it departs till where it arrives. Thank you technology for guitars.

More music. I’m blasting the B side of my Siege lp right now.

Two days before I was lying in my bed jamming Crisis after listening to Can’s lost tapes beyond midnight hours to have something as an escort to my sleepy eyes and dead end thoughts. I love the weirdly good quality of these anarcho fellows’s songwriting. Crisis has songs you can actually dance to. In your mind, with your mind. On the imaginary grave of fascist cops and collapsed governments. I call this the english groove cause post punk there was about heavy bass beats and song structures that made you jump. Not how pothead, paranoid slacker rock as post-hardcore was in America. Europe is about dancing foolz!
I love anarcho punk and I love post punk and I love the vicious bleakness of that failed futurism that was happening at the same time these bands have existed. Have you heard the Division Four demo, ep, mini lp whatever it is? It sounds like as if Kubrick would hired an Oi band to score Clockwork Orange II where Robo Cop is being harassed by ultraviolent but poetically sad rude boys. While in the background something so new that is already expired is happening like a broken dream that is still sealed. On the front we have some indolent vocals with dumb/scared lyrics on how lame humans are even today. It’s really really good. Australia is on fire fool if that flame has ever been taken out. Love their obvious weirdness. I’m still in love with Total Control. To take pills to remember to take pills to forget.

The end of this year is getting closer so it’s gonna be a time when I should re-listen to most of the records I liked this year. Lists are still stupid but maybe it should be a shame to let actually good records be forgotten. Was there a record this year as memorable as Cult Ritual’s lp or anything Sex Vid ever put out? Maybe. Every year is a good year in punk. Cause punk makes a year great.

I tend to detail here nights that I have spent with visiting random rehearsals and this time I will again tell you that I was at a military object’s abandoned building that was functioning as a dress storage for an armature theater company and in some extra room there was a practice space for bands. We asked the renter bands to let us sneak in to play our set before a show we had that night. Because we had time to kill, half of my band got high after practice while I was just sitting still and listening to some jammed out fuzz fused stoner weird rock that was played by complete weirdoes.
I adore those kids because they seem to not give a fuck at all about anything that is not serving their desire to get joy out of desolated nights. Those types who can walk a mile just to get a cigarette in freezing cold still wearing only a shirt and not even shrugging their shoulders. Survivors. It’s not Kids at Budapest in 2013. These kids are modern age bohemians. Intellectuals who seem to have time for everything because they have perverted time. They spend their hours giving it to art and trash only to learn one thing about life and many of these times the award is only a question. But instead of paintings and poems they use music, cartoons and shitloads of weed.
What I was thinking about is how many amazing bands are doing something in hidden rooms? Those who are lazy or unmotivated to record and put out their sounds. Those who go into rooms and turn their backs on the world and get disconnected to the rule what their nation is forcing on them. Then I felt that creating music is universal. Because they had no intention to do anything with it. Is this happening anywhere else? Unsaid thought, unwritten novels, unrecorded songs, unlived romances? Do I wanna hear them or would that spoil everything? Should it be a secret what we do?

HUNGARIAN SCENE REPORT (unedited)

It’s strange.

I have written a scene report focusing on mostly the people who are then started to become my friends and since all of them had bands, all of them were practicing almost at the same place and all of them were hanging at almost every show. So I made up a name as a joke to call this group of ours somehow. Since then more than two years have passed and now I felt that there is still music played by Magyars that deserves to be covered.
It deserves to be covered because every scene needs representation. It’s the know how of how we live among each other, how we create something new, what’s different to other places or how is it similar almost everywhere. This is not gonna be just facts, the number of local bands are much more than the sum that will appear within these lines. It’s just the bands i enjoy the most whom I like to swing my beer to at weekday shows when I forget the rest of my weekdays.

 The scene I wrote about two years ago, the Defekt scene, is having it’s dusk. The rehearsal room that even some foreign bands had experienced and was a center of late night hangouts, and crazy jamming, crawling on the floor and spontaneous festivals just failing cause of slacking. Get 30 punx and try to squeeze money out of them every month right on deadline time. Until this cataclysm, the room has served as a great space to create so much joy and friendships, new bands, new project, served as a recording space and as the perfect hangout spot. Among the filth there was always treasure.
But people are getting older thus have to have more responsibility and the parties what once were crazy, nihilist and utterly weird are now just became mellow hangings and early goodbyes due to waking up early at painful hangover mornings. But it seems that since the nihilism disappeared bands are becoming better.
With the political system and the whole world and how it’s working just getting worse and worse here there are still people not just shrugging their shoulders and joining the line but trying to create their own secret world, their own platform to express themselves and have a huge fucking amount of fun either as a threat or as protection.

Hungary has been put on the map. Budapest and Szeged are hosting all the great shows for touring bands from all around the world and other cities are holding possibilities for punx with free time to maintain their teenage riot. Pécs and Debrecen are on fire as well as Győr and it’s region who are being solid columns of the Hungarian punk underground for years.
The main agenda here is: Things must happen. If a band wants to come here and the promoter feels like he needs to book them, it will happen even if at a collapsing rehearsal room or around a tree in the beer garden of a medieval castle's yard or in the basement in some burn out bar for burn out people. And if there is the right amount of people with the right type of mood, magic could happen. If there is one thing that people here are good at is lose there shit to bands they can be enthusiastic about.
Standing in the middle between east and west and interestingly exotic and professionally good punk the one time when Hungary could be a champion is when we are appreciating the bands who have come here. The Hungarian soul is tired and doesn’t really look outside of it’s own room thus when people came into our rooms then we are filled with gratitude.
Having many people even in my room I have learnt through others’ stories it’s almost the same everywhere else. You just have to start doing things on your own and if you have the will you will at least end up with a scene that is your home.
Just put yourself out when you have something. Or invite the world inside your room if you have nothing. Share with the world and open your fucking eyes and help, appreciate, love what you have around you. Just try and do and the rest will follow.

From the punk house-like rehearsal space that was a living room for many of us for years, from the forever collapsing ruins of the defekt scene few bands have grown out at the finale moments of decline. The always balancing into an abyss, drug dazed pop punk of FOR MY FRIENDS have transformed into FAKE SHAKES which still has a bearded soul and an indolent but in every chord youthful sound that is performed by various kinds of kids who like to hang out, do crazy things as they are obsessed with climbing to high places while high and this has lead to many atrocities with people being protective about their roofs. Their warm hearted but cold faced melodic songs have rather filth and pining over let downs of either assholes or failed romances than about shining happiness of bubble gum pop. They are those weird kids who sit at the back of your house party and smash things not because they are here to destroy but only because they are like this. Nowadays I try to be late from their shows but since I’m that kind of guy who always there too early I always end up watching them and when I do I do not regret it.

LÖMBIHEAD was something like a quintessence of the Defekt scene with playing music they have figured out for themselves and having shows as weird as it could be or as how drunk they were. People getting naked, the band getting naked, then there was a solo, some improvised chant on teenage sadness fueled by frustration, just total chaos. After some line up changes and a semi-legendary last show they have formed TUMO with which they are writing new songs, having a slight different approach on strange music and they have a new drummer as well. Their music and lyrics still feel like it’s haunted by dementia or demons. They left behind the surf feel from their previous music and replaced themselves from a nuclear beach into a rotting garden where they play this Rev. Summer influenced SST vibe guitar jamming still punk based forever rock. Rock music for a fermenting society. Sticking to their awkwardness their live shows keep being strange, with changing instruments between members and looking as weird as it’s up to what drugs are influencing them in the moment. Having some trouble with finding a drummer and being disorganized nihilists they have only recorded two of their songs with slacking howling vocals but maybe the future is holding some luck for us and they will came out with a proper but still damaged release in the future. One thing for sure when they willing to play their instruments and focus a bit magic is happening and this utterly creative guitar jams start to work as perfect slacker punk songs for all your doubts and paranoia. You might follow.

For mutant rockers there is PISS CRYSTALS. Started out as a project of two friends who were in dozen bands so if one of their bands had to cancel a show out of boredom these two guys created PISS CRYSTALS to be a fill in band so they would be able to travel and play anyway. The weird mix of everything that J Mascis has ever done starting from DEEP WOUND through DINOSAUR JR. till riffing ‘Sabbath-ish doom with pinch influences of kraut rock, PISS CRYSTALS is a band of music buffs who wanna entertain themselves. Never been taken seriously, still they are a core of a scene of bored youth, thus always being a lot more than juts noise. Sometimes their rehearsals transform into a huge hangout where at one point everybody is freestyle rapping to dumb beats provided via a broken Casio. Live they always end their sets with freestyle rants against the punk scene’s stupidity. It is punk music because it’s played by punk kids who like music and weird ideas and noise and have enthusiasm over professionalism.

ZEN FASCISTS has formed from the ruins of PLAN BEER with taking a circle run and sitting behind different instruments but having almost the same members on different positions. The music that was once guitar driven and smart and punk now has turned into something more simple and threatening with it’s balanceless bouncing. Oi influenced noisy and grooving, aggressive hardcore with lyrics about being a loser and lost in social life. They are not menace, it’s the world that is and through their music and lyrics it’s even more bizarre. Rage fueled with awkwardness this band has the least hardcore look and the geekiest approach of playing fast punk music. The name comes from a DEAD KENNEDYS song so they have no romantic relation to such bad people as far right wing extremists. Having just a demo recorded and two shows played after rotting in a rehearsal room for years and finally recruiting a bass player for live shows and writing future riffs, ZEN FASCISTS is a new but a mostly promising band.

Another fine mutant band is Wryness. The most flaky pothead band of all. Started out as TEKKEN (yeah the video game) but after some line up changes they had their name changed as well. There is just something magical in the experience of witnessing WRYNESS play. I loved them all the time when they played in rehearsal rooms. That fragile beauty that they carry with being more of the visceral players of their instruments than trained ones. Their bass player learnt to play bass on a two days speed trip when he couldn't sleep so he figured out how to jam. Their sets are always paused by recesses to drink beer, smoke weed or huff some rush. Their music is strange. Since they attempted to make as many weird pacing changes in their music as they can. This makes the whole sound a collapsing one but on their middle tempo runs they emerge the floating paranoia of the kids of the black hole. Somehow the band is so little, still they could sound really huge. One by one their tracks would not stand out alone but over all especially in live or listening to their whole album to have your soul soaked in their desperate and desolated lyrics is an experience we always search for in punk music. It’s like old hungarian punk, or KAAOS. Finnish or Japanese hardcore. They sound like a group that has only read about hardcore and put it together in their heads not as if they have first hand experiences with the genre. It’s punk played by the beaten more like an idea of how they should sound and not following rules. They born outside the box.

MUDPIE is a quiet new band formed roughly a year ago. Their take on punk music is backed with longer songs which gave enough space for them to play out their post punkish post hardcore-ish riffs. They have weird melodies that are just as much catchy as it sucks you into a vortex of anxiety and gloom. They stay in mid tempo but the vocals are harsh and mostly screaming while the lyrics move on a personal level digesting everyday disappointments and bedroom frustrations. Their music is moving forward coming out from the headphones. They are awkward in a lovely way and beyond their never smiling live presence is some focused, teeth grinding will to play their songs in the best way. They are not changing the world or challenging you with their music still you can lose yourself in their flood of stretched out guitar riffs and relatable gloom.

VEX is a punk band with a bit raging and collapsing hardcore influenced music. Pure and fast, inspired by the early era of amazing west coast hardcore they also have some dry melodies infused into their sound. They are always rehearsing and occasionally playing with adorable awkwardness. Not melting anyone’s face still they are forcing out all the frustration from themselves. In a way they don’t seem to have too many ideas of how and what they wanna play, but they are doing it anyways cause they are sure they wanna do it. Strange pace changes and just lively ideas of the whole structure of songs with sometimes solos that sound like they are on psychedelic drugs. It’s fun to see them play and go along with their version of doing punk. I mean being drunk, being punk, being at a basement and seeing such bands is just magical, or it could be that and I’m glad that I belong to such a scene. Oh by the way all the members of VEX are girls.  

NORMS is a band where I sing so I try not to swallow my own dick too deep. We play fast hardcore punk soaked in disgusting noise.

Some bands bring the whole scene together with their unavoidable awesomeness that none of the followers of the various sub genres could deny.
HUMAN ERROR is one of the oldest running bands in Hungary who are still fresh and have not stopped for a second to take a break. They had myriads of members but still holding two original ones. They play merciless crust/grind music that is not a style I really love but their live sets are just pure energy of punk perfection this way becoming a devoted fan of theirs is not a tough job. They go way beyond genres and styles it’s just that force that is marching down from the stage in a form of an evil black mass that will push you down or grab you in. They have an agenda to clear out and set straight the confused minds who have been lost in the muddy forest of business grind and false punk. They hate their works and on their own way they are survivors because they have their eyes open enough to see the horrors of everyday and feel threatened by it. Not as if they are squatting and fighting the cops all the time, since in Hungary there’s no such thing as a squatter - street protest scene. It’s just that resistance that resonates in them. They are frequently touring and booking bands from all over Europe here in Budapest. Silently they climbed up to some legendary position that they have never self proclaimed. It’s simply staying true to what you are believing and doing it in the way you feel like it’s right. And at one point your shows will just become huge events in punk terms and people will bounce their every day struggle out from themselves on your shows. It’s not easy to keep a band running for 15 years and it only happens on very rare occasions that a band after this long time still could be fresh and not burnt out. They have just recorded an upcoming full length which is much anticipated. And seeing them on stage they are not a slight different from all the young kids blasting their music they play to escape high school reality. Only HUMAN ERROR’s angst is rooted deeper and they have less mercy. 

Their guitarist who was the latest addition to the band and has been playing for more than a decade in decent bands and in a way forming the face of Hungarian hardcore/punk but he is with them for 5 years now. He has a solo project called DISKOBRA which is a great mix of old Hungarian punk/hardcore and some DISCHARGE worship DIScore. The overall damaged flavor is coming together with drunk rage against the inexplicable bullshit of this world we are living in. His simple but sharp lyrics and plain but striking songs serve as a perfect background music if you are having an angst rush. It’s the voice of your friend who reminds himself how cruel life is sometimes and goes on diatribe rant at some point of a night spent with chugging cheap liquor. He plays live shows with a full band and the things that have been said between songs are just pooping the party that much that people realize the outside world is a trap and only our spaces could bring us temporary joy. It’s just good to see people slowly leaving their 30s still giving a fuck, doing new things and caring about the present and future rather than blame the now by glorifying their past because they have become old. People like him are as much inspiration as young kids having no fucking idea on what to play and just blast out wonderfully shitty noise. It’s the angst and endurance for still giving a fuck that is magic in everyone who are willing to create. And DISKOBRA is a total keeper of raw, fast and disgusting hardcore/punk.

CHAPPA’ AI is a noise band what is distant from our planet thus labeled as space grind made up with Stargate fans who share the drummer with DISKOBRA and HUMAN ERROR. This group of total creeps and misfits plays a confusing mix of speed freak grind and harsh noise. Somehow transforming their live shows into a performance art preformed by people who are the furthest from doing anything with art and performance. It’s their weirdness and love for bizarre noises that keeps the band running. And of course a shitloads of weed. 

RÁKOSI has become one of the other longest running bands of the scene who are loved by everyone. Starting as a guerrilla band who though uninvited showed up at random shows to take over the stage for their shocking 5 minutes sets. They have become one of the well known Hungarian bands since LENGUA ARMADA has released three of their demos on two 7”s. They still are about what’s mostly happening in their hometown where guitarist and singer still live. How the countryside is going bankrupt as much financially as morally. They have a strange method of writing songs since the last two demos were written and recorded during weekends. As the first note was played for the first time on a Friday afternoon, after they freshly had escaped from a week long work, on Sunday evening they had their new songs recorded. Somehow they are able to transform the hungarian frustration into punk hardcore perfection. With their shows becoming gatherings where the punk and hardcore kids find themselves among each other sweating their desperation out. Most of the people couldn't really understand the specific topics this band is singing about but they can feel the anger and scorn that they have. They do have the issue of being a bit stuck in Hungary since they only go if they are invited but even this way they still could stay fresh and as time goes by more people love them. What they deserve for sure. They are the absolute beast of the Hungarian punk noise wall that is standing as a defense of your frustration that you might have to shelter in your everyday but since it’s totally normal to have it and let it out sometimes their shows are the best places for this explosion.

The half of RÁKOSI lives in Szeged. Szeged is a little treasure box near to the Serbian border. It’s a small city with few people who are willing to sacrifice too much of their time to from new bands on every weekend, rot in rehearsal rooms for endless hours and book cool shows. Most of the bands are sharing members since seemingly the whole city has only two drummers for eight bands. The method is, instead of packing everything they like in every music into one band they create new bands for all the micro-sub-genres they like and listen to. One thing is sure, most of the bands are heavily guitar driven. Let it be the cornerstone of the modern scene KEMÉNY HENRIK with all members from ex and current bands. Playing music that is post. Not the sounds of future but they are bringing the post from everything especially from hardcore / punk and while it’s being a fact that they are playing punk, they play their guitars that much and have an overall sound that launches them into their own space. It’s funny since the members out of the stage seem so unorganized and strange while on stage and on record there is full control. Lyrics are varying between Hungarian and English and it’s just amazing punk profession that they play.

Bands connected to this group are ARGUMENT CLINIC who are bringing the modern interpretation of the core Ramones-ish music with finally a singer who could use a bit his voice and they for sure are delivering catchy melodies and BERKUT who are a new group formed from IMPERIAL SPIES and RÁKOSI and SPARK and KEMÉNY HENRIK. Being a tornado of guitar sounds BERKUT (written with ciril fonts) is crushing, interesting, challenging, untamed force of smart rage. Like a formula that knows what and how will destroy. They only played few official and non official secret shows and a demo is about to be recorded. The future is unwritten.

This town is a perfect example for if you have the good people and the will you will make great things together. Do you wanna conquer the world? All right, but even if you don’t succeed you will need people around you, you can hang with, sit through nights in bars or play the best music is possible: Your music. Organize shows, or just cook offs. Movie clubs and collective radio shows. Have million other bands there and just be supportive. Try to do Food not Bomb cooking for the homeless. Fill bars with their yelling. Open their farm for festivals and recording sessions. This is what Szeged does.

 

Just like Győr and it’s region. That place for me feels like a bubble. With so many strange and alienated kids. During this summer I went there to play at a local festival. It was amazing. There was one point when I was hanging in this kitchen of a nice family house. Four shaved headed guys were around me. They are YOUTH VIOLENCE. I was eating their pizza, they were eating freshly picked cherry. Making fun of each other, throwing the cherry stone on each other. They were worried of whether they could buy weed later or not. Few hours later in a room that was dripping in sweat they just start to execute all your hope. With homemade distortion pedals and with homemade anger they start to boom. Their music is fast the lyrics are desperate and angry in another level. It’s just pure hate of the unfair world that is keeping them in constant struggle. But also it’s the sound of joy that they still could give a fuck enough to transform this into something so powerful that through projecting the daily shit something beautiful comes out.

Their bass player and drummer have another project called WHO SAWS VIOLENCE REAPS STORM. More complex and darker band with literary-like lyrics about all the familiar sufferings. The members look so weird like they have their own little world which I’m almost sure they really do.

Life in Hungary could be a struggle and they say from such a desolated soil great things could grow out. Artistically and not biologically. There is one band that is just robbing everyone’s heart with their honesty of how they are painting their picture of every days spent with surviving the oppression. It’s ANOTHER WAY. Having a member who is working 12 hours shifts at a shitty blown out industry and other two members being all around the world all the time to release a new full length it toke many years for them. Once an unstoppable band that just played everywhere for almost nothing but played there hearts out all the time seemed to be vanished for some years. Having line up changes and inner conflicts they are back and everybody is bowing their heads in front of them. ANOTHER WAY is basically three weirdos playing as fast as they are angry and they are really angry. They are originated in a small rural town in Hungary with no hope so they paved their way out from this reality with every raging song they have written. You can call it fastcore, power violence, hardcore or punk. This is just angry music played in Hungary by people who still do care and kept hanging on to their teen angst. With some metallic riffing after taste. This band is another universe. They live by their on terms and while the whole scene is watching what are they up to they are just going on their own way. Hermits of the punk scene who appear to show how and what their universe is. The much anticipated full length that has been delivered this year is a great testament of their still burning torch. With having parts where even they couldn't keep up with the speed they are playing on, still they are a nonstop ugly terror that pours on you as a tsunami.  

Those who not only seek self relief but have a bigger plan with all this, they are RIVERS RUN DRY and their label / collective the DZSUKHELL RECORDS. RIVERS RUN DRY has started out as something like epic or neo-crust with three guitars and very long songs. But since two of the members are living in different squats in different countries seeing them in all together when not on tour is as rare as seeing the whole WU TANG CLAN on one stage. Now they have perfected this dark-heavy sound into something that is no longer crust or punk but just this dark mass that is sucking you in and not letting you out. With having enough span and space in their songs for the instruments to send out on adventure missions there is always something that could grab you. To be honest I like music that is simpler and less constructed but live even I could be a believer since they are so heavy and unstoppable. Also they are carrying a distro with books, zines, records. They are putting shows and releasing records from the local scene. Proving it’s not such an extra job to put or keep some meaning in all this. Heard their rehearsals feel like a picnic with eating cakes, drinking tea and discussing issues of life. These guys are strong column of the Budapest diy scene.  

This is it.

most of the bands' music (among other local bands) could be found here: http://heart-a-tact.blogspot.hu/

CREEM interview / report

Creem is hailing from New York. A city with great history of hardcore/punk. In the very recent past this city and the whole East Coast is on a huge boom, being the nest of myriads of amazing hardcore/punk bands. Creem is one of them who made their name with creating an authentic mix of punk/hardcore/oi. They not only sound like a combination of genres but they are writing a soundtrack for living this misfits life.  

What a surprise I have fucked it up again. Maybe it’s a curse. Could be, since it’s the second Creem interview that disappeared before it could have been transcribred and printed on the pages of MRR.

Who cares, I’m writing the story anyway. It will be different since Creem is not your average hardcore band. I know what we do is hardcore and punk but there are times you can tell there is a fine line between the two genres. Time goes by as trends come and go. Sometimes the whole world feels like just one big scene, other times there is just too much shit talk with throwing around labels like bro-core or gutter punk.

And here is Creem who just merges everything. Hardcore with oi, punx with skins at hardcore shows held in basements. Everybody just goes for the kicks and having fun, while leaving behind the everyday frustration. They rip, they smile. They put on Wire records and sing along, compliment on Hegel books, they say sick all the time and seem a bit too obsessed with instagram. They climbed on street walls and tried to lift up a one seated tiny car. Bringing some ruckus for fun of course. They are touring along with Nuclear Spring with whom they share a member as well, Colman, who is a nice gentleman and who  seems to keep the tour together.

We started the interview after a long night spent with partying and stuffing our faces with midnight munchies. Everybody was kinda tired, I was way too drunk since I had brushed my teeth with a good morning beer. We were tripping on European coffee which for the US bodies might have caused panic attacks and to be honest I felt weird as well. Planet Mental was silently playing in the background and constant nu-metal jokes were flying around. These guys were full with patches, some of them stank of beer but were articulated, funny and punk. We missed to detail who plays on which instrument, we forgot to be ironic or try to be pathetically funny. What we had was a great, seemingly two- hour conversation on life as a punk in New York or all around the world. Of course we were specific about them but it was more of how they, as individuals see this whole thing. Mostly it was Colman (bass on Creem and Nuclear Spring), Mike (Guitars on Creem) and Jay (drums on Creem and Hounds Of Hate) speaking. Alex (Vocals in Creem) was quiet but when he started speaking he said such great things. Reggie who also plays the guitar stayed silent which is a bummer because out wild on the streets of my town he was just an unstoppable force of energy and fun. The Nuclear Spring fellows seemed to be hung over too much but Lauren (guitars and vocals) sometimes gave her two cents to the table as well as Rob (bass in Nuclear Spring) but he seemed way too tired.

I started out by asking them what they thought about the fact that back in the day people rather just had ideas of what frustration they wanted to put into or express through their music and weren’t thinking about specific sounds but now bands seem to have an idea of what they wanna sound like either in music or in images of what will happen at their shows. The bio they gave me anyway told me that all of them lived in one huge house and at one show that they were setting up they started jamming Chunks from the Last Rights and Alex filled in for vocals and that’s when they learned that he can sing.

Spontaneous yet satisfying fun turned into semi- serious business and this is how Creem was born. They had no specific plan for their music to unite everybody who has ever liked fast, short, noisey music. They had no such intentions. Today it’s still just mostly Mike delivering riffs after nights spent listening to GISM and Poison Idea.

They are a bit bummed on how everyone is comparing them to the Boston-sound while,  as they said, it was just one guy and the rest only borrowed his description. For them it’s more like Negative Approach. For me it’s Life’s Blood and they took it as a compliment.

Later on we talked about how everybody who has a specific agenda or plan to sound like something pretentiously new or pre-planned only to achieve desired circumstances with their music will end up failing. It should rather come from instinct as they say. So they had no idea in terms of what will happen to this band, how will they specifically sound or what should people’s reaction be to their music.

Drunkenly I kept on visioning aggro skinheads on lsd crawling on the ceiling but even though they liked this picture for themselves they said it’s enough if people come and seem interested in what they are doing. It just happened the way it is now.

At one point Mike started to talk about how Crass mixed avant-gardism with punk plus weird art and ended up sounding like they were recorded through a mobile phone which is strange since there were no mobiles back then. And it still sounded visceral and natural, not forced or pre-planned, but if every band went for this, most of them would just end up being terrible.

The conclusion around the table was: for big things you need specific times.

We talked about the need for progression in punk. Either in sound or ideas. But since it’s established as much as a culture could be there is no need for progression if you like one specific thing that feels complete.

They just wanna do their thing.

Still, even though punk has many tools people can choose from to express themselves, it is not yet something that is easy to adapt to with only rationalizing and understanding it instead of feeling it cause when people try to analyze and learn punk they always fail. This is why academics couldn’t understand punk since they don’t have the heart just the brain for it. It still feels like we are holding ourselves for a secret.

 And who wants big things anyway?

We started to talk about lyrics, of how important they are in the sense of saying something new or original or whether these are just also tools, instruments in the mouth of the singer. Alex said his lyrics were simple but are completely his own and just as a power chord that had been played before, even these lines mean a lot for him and could express parts of his view on the world.

But these guys are much more than just regular kids feeling angry of not having brotherhood in the pit. How you tell your story also matters and this guy, while on stage looking like a frightening manic psychopath staring with wide open eyes on the ceiling and never smiling, loses his vicious look when the band finishes their last note and he just transforms into a smiling, charming young man who is fun to have around even if he is moshing on the streets with a plastic bag full of instant ramen soup in his hands or talking about post-modern dystopian books.

We discussed bands with agendas. Crass again and Earth Crisis got mixed in one sentence and we all together started to realize around the table that bands with the intent to change the world have disappeared and punk has just become so culturalized that we don’t really need the world to change. Maybe just ourselves. Which could be depressing for some but maybe just as the world has opened itself people have just closed up themselves, thus this culture has become one’s frustration. And since hardcore punk has become a culture you can indulge yourself in it.

I was curious how they saw themselves in the future. As heard, some people plan to leave punk behind but they did not seem to have such intentions. Colman didn’t think he would ever give up playing guitar.

Then Alex broke his silence with a long speech about punk being so much more essential in one’s life and thus being much much more than just going to shows, knowing bands, forming bands or dressing the way we do. It should be with you in your everydays as well while the world is forcing you to change and be a conformist. It’s the attitude. It could be with you even if you have a family and kids and you are over 40 and although it’s hard to leave it behind you are tempted every day if you wanna operate and survive in the world that surrounds you. I listened to him and lost myself in his words which again in my morning daze of tiredness and boozing were pretty touching.

On the one hand I feel comfortable that I understand him when hearing that it’s much more than the rest of the world thinks and then I get frightened whether  we are just far too gone into our own world. Maybe because I was still drunk, but he just made so much sense.

This is a struggle and we are kinda losing it but there are people still fighting, staying young, smart and ugly.

We started to talk about the gentrification of New York cause sooner or later it would happen to all the cities and we could be thrown out of all the spaces that real people made cool. They said the city has changed even though it’s still a huge and strange town but they also enjoy the everyday life of middle class bourgeois and feel themselves a bit wrong in it too.

They are just broke kids too, who wanna have cheap rents and not be bothered. But despite everything they didn’t seem scared or sad. Only Colman was a little worried when he said he might have lost his job for this tour but Lauren started to calm him down stating he did not know it for sure yet.

We could agree in one thing: punk life is not the normal one and sometimes you have to come to terms with the nonsense bullshit. But these guys still live in the same house and just hate to work.

The New York scene seems to be on boom who remembers since when. They said maybe Perdition was the band who kicked life into the city, but nowadays a lot of young kids are attending shows and forming bands. It could be that there are 300 people at a regular gig and everybody is going crazy, doing something crazy. New bands are being appreciated and there is just life in the scene. Bands are hanging out, since there are many bands with shared members. Lauren is in La Misa and some of them just formed a new band called Garbageman, which as they stress it, is a real band.  

Since this interview was done in Eastern Europe I asked them about the differences between touring Europe and the States. They came here with door deal and the only requirement in the booking sheet was to make them feel at home and book them a diy show. Although every night they got food and a place to sleep they still said it’s cheaper to tour in the US since the gas price compared with Europe is still amazingly low.

And although Europe has a better infrastructure in hosting bands it’s maybe better for those acts who are kinda nameless in the states but here they are big hits. They forgot to name examples, but we all know those that came to life because they were too stupid to go to college and too lazy to work so they formed a hardcore band with an always changing line-up to rip off madball songs and tour the world.

A friend of mine told me once that for Europe the seemingly cruel conditions of touring the states makes a contra-selection of bands and emphasizes the rock and roll gene in American bands. Kinda like either you are super good and then will survive or you are not even officially born. Creem seemed to argue that this is not the case. Not just because they have seen Slang from Japan lately who blew them away but because again, touring America is not that hard as they say and bands who tour a lot and have been playing for a long time sound cool. The fuel is cheaper and there will be people to book you, at least in their living rooms. So there is no such thing as rock and roll gene in Americans. It’s all about playing a lot of shows and focusing on how to play them.  

At the end of the interview I realized that everything that had been said got lost and we could only rely  on the capacity of our memories. But we don’t have to worry because, as their driver Sascha summoned it up, it was just a bunch of bullshit anyway.

#367 - kinda

Hi, I'm Viktor i like to think about 10000 things at the same time and be confused and lose my attention over things like pressing the send button. That's why there is no column from me in #367. I wrote it, i have attached it to a mail but forgot to send it and i stayed in my draft map until i have sent my column for #368. But here it is. I will soon update my Hungarian Scene Report and Creem interview/report from #367.

 I had to go to the supermarket to have feeling. All I got was depression but I had my baggy pants on. Zerozero style I wanna piss in the face of the world.

Sometimes when I get really drunk I start to think about the universe. Other times I just ramble my fandom towards John Peel. This only happens once or twice a year but it happens. Then I start to stare on the sky if I’m lucky and could see the stars through the industrial dust that is a polluted curtain above my city. And think about the planet, think about life and everything. It makes no sense since I don’t think life makes any sense. Maybe it’s a joke maybe it’s a problem but not a task, or shouldn't be. Then I start to think about songs what are about space. Not Fury’s Space Love. Even if I should.
Whenever I read about dinosaurs I want to see them, whenever I read about space I want to be there, whenever I read about planets I want to observe them. But I just stay in my room and sometimes wonder out to get drunk and see bands play. My interaction with people are very rare cause I adore them but couldn't bear them. That’s alright I guess. The best thing in humanity is that our brains are sensitive enough that thank to imagination that can be triggered by emotions which are caused by art we can feel that we are floating in space. Sometimes when I’m in a room that are lacking that much stimulus I can start to hallucinate. It happened when I was making out with girls in dark rooms that had nothing but a mattress and a lovely lady who thought I'm good enough to get my tongue licked by her. Music can do the same things to me as literature. Only thing that sucks is I need to see more bands who are this cool. I wanna see how different they are than to how I imagined them and observe what they vision while they are performing their music. It’s a risky game cause lot of times nothing happens.
I was at a Blake Schwarzenbach solo show and I got goose bumps. A bit later he was standing in my kitchen telling me how English rappers are while I was fixing him a scrambled egg for breakfast. He made me imagine outer space experiences while I’m not the biggest Jawbreaker fan.
Last night I went to a show and I felt the space opening in my chest. It wasn't a decent feeling. I’m kinda depressed and confused these days what a surprise I guess exhibiting my life for more than a year now here made you a picture of how everyday life as a Hungarian punk is filled with melancholy. Yesterday bands played good. Or great I don’t know. It’s hard to say something is good when you feel they had spent a huge amount of time writing their music, practicing, and spending money on buying equipment, learn how to use them and still they end up with something I don’t like. I’m the one to blame and my taste in music. I just rather like when there are millions of bands and a few of them don’t suck. I like the humans and failure as I have said it many times. But I feel more and more disconnected with hanging at shows doing those routines with talking about things that could be said in two words. I love to hang and have conversations that are conversations not just people telling their shit and leave you. Stop this pointlessness. I’m going to shows for the punk plus. Because I like to see people presenting their ideas, their lives. I would be there if I didn't know anyone. I’m not in this for the party. Music is for the disconnected, for those who want more even if they have enough. Punk is more than music and either if it’s a threat or a protection it’s connected to some feelings what only those people own who are lacking something or want more. Even though I don’t wanna feel the void I think I want to be punk forever cause I can’t see any other thing to be or do in this life.
The only sense a person could chase through existence is I think to be happy. And music can make you that. Cause it doesn't consume your time. It escorts your moments. It makes them better. It’s just awesome. It’s danger. I like danger. I feel frightened all the time and I fuck up almost everything. I chase some ghost down hills while I’m drunk and I always fall on my face. I hate it but still it’s my life. You think it’s boring? You are right. You think it’s cool? Write jokes. That’s cool this could be done by anyone. 

Music. Nowadays I have found myself fooling around with guitars in my head. Playing music and trying to understand it a bit sometimes are opening my focus on listening to music a bit wider. I don’t mean I care more about techniques and skills. It’s just I listen to the already heard differently or being more open to jam some new shit. I have this thing with kraut rock and new wave nowadays and that mixed with ambient. Or whatever is what Eno and Harmonia has produced. Those were great jams to listen to when you are hangover and have to work. Just put on a headphone and relaxing time is on with it not being too hippy.

I was also blasting some fragile punk hardcore. I always come home with the desire to stay home even at weekend days and blast the Minor Threat discography. I end up walking around the town among drunken hordes of normal people and listening to the Fall and Fix. Or just regular dumb music.

Stupidity is an amazing tool when used by smart people. Dumbness is nothing to be proud of in this day an age of living on the informational highway but it’s one of the interesting things to fool around with when it can be a useful tool in your hands. This week I was watching Rival Mob videos on youtube and I have to say that band rocks live. Not to say they are dumb just because the territory of their genre is simple thus it’s not super easy to do something remarkable with a limited arsenal. But their glaze seems to be some traditional hardcore ignorance. Does it make them an ironic band? A bit. Is irony the curse of contemporary living? It is. Does this make them a band that leads us to decay? Nothing leads real punx anywhere so they are fun to listen to although I will stick to YouTube videos. And still I’m going with Boston Stranglers and Prisoner Abuse. Or Step Forward. Those bands are dirtier or less loud in the message board culture louder in my walkman. Step Forward was sick.
This night while I was trying to put together a tape’s cover I was blasting some vinyl. DYS, Siege, Violent Minds, Talking Heads and Hygiene. All dumb bands who are amazing. Primitivism is a pure form of emotions and sharp thoughts that is focused on survival. If music is nothing to help go through a life I don’t know what it is. Thus listening to dumb music is useful. As much as writing dumb columns so stick with me next month as well FOOLZ! 

#366

Always late never on time.

We played that reunion show with my first band this last Friday and it was strange. Even my parents came. My mother always told me i shouldn't scream cause it’s not good for my health and jumping on each other makes no sense.
When we finished our set i went right to them to tell her without her silent support, of letting me fuck up my life however i wanted, this could have never happened. Both of my parents liked our set a lot. The room was full with energy. It was a reunion so nostalgia and shit. All of us still have bands and most of us are playing together, touring together, and having fun together. The crowd was full with young kids, with our friends who are frequently attending shows so it was just a great night with fun, fun, fun.
Before we started playing i was siked to play that much i couldn't concentrate on anything else. I also don’t like when i have too many friends in the building and i feel like i have to split up among them to spend as much time with everyone as i think they would deserve. I ended up wondering around in the crowd sipping my beer looking for cool shirts that the bored youth wears as a statement.

At the after party i was dancing with my ex girlfriend and almost got kicked out of the place because i was making a phone call from the women’s bathroom.

Have i listened to music lately? I have heard the new Hoax for sure which is a great record. I liked them, then hated them, then i have spent night watching many of their live videos on youtube, then bought an lp and still didn't know what to think. This new lp is great though. Finally they sound close to what the hype around them is. Still think it’s like Exploited on double speed but making an lp in this day of age in the hardcore genre and not failing with it is an achievement. I wish i had more thought on them but i go for feelings when it comes to hardcore and punk. No conspiracy theory or thesis.

I have seen a Blitz video where they are playing live at some tv studio and it’s amazing. They are no doubt fucking high on speed the drummers beats his kit standing and when they finish playing you can see how angry they are on the reporter’s stupid questions. I think this is art to live like this. It’s also art what their music is.

I was in the supermarket the other day and got utterly depressed. Don’t know why but i did and it was just terrible. The only thing that made me not wanna lay down on the floor and weep was the fact that i can listen to music that is about these feelings and when i realize even from such shit beautiful things could be created i will be happy. And here I am writing this column while blasting Sonskull and Soul Swallower.

Today i restarted cooking. Made napa cabbage cold slaw and home made pizza. While i was jamming Really Red, Blank Stare, Comet Gain, Crazy Spirit. I wanna buy more records and books even if i will not listen to them all the time or make myself read them. I am afraid in a way everybody else will by books and i will end up not being able to read anything. Something that might not happen since no one is fucking buying anything that is not coming through them something machinery. But that’s alright.

The new Criminal Damage is great. Seems like everybody who is not skinhead is making great Oi! music. Writing this sentence made me wanna put up my Wipers lp cause it’s after midnight and i want those jams be my guide to the punk source of my brain. Flesh World is amazing. The one song i have heard but still that band can’t be not amazing.

There is just something really minor in music that makes all the bands i love great. I can’t tell you what it is because it’s not a secret. Or it’s THE secret. Anyway i'm glad i think i know it when i hear it.

Fuck, why is time the worst invention by man? It’s even worse then god or money.

I know too many random thoughts but this is what you get. I still love my new job even though i’m in a lot of stress because i haven’t figured out how to do it in the best way. But it’s kinda cool to work somewhere where people talk about Death in the office, i mean the Detroit one. And i could wear whatever cloths i want while i do something that i feel like has some sense. Or i will be thrown out after the intern period. Will find out.

I seriously hate to think about orders among bands i like even when i’m going through what was the best record of the year. But it just popped into my head that Total Control is might be the best band around nowadays. I know Sub Pop bla bla. Still they are combining almost every music that is amazing in this world and doing it with nothing but the pure love of sounds. Their singer is a graphomaniac hardcore guy, David West is in this band, one of the guys is a sound engineer and i love James, their drummer. Somehow they can translate their songs into the love of music which is one of the best thing that could happen to a band.
I also forgot to mention that an awesome Russian guy has visited Budapest and he gave me his band’s ep. Worshit. Unstoppable, vicious, Negative Approach fandome with a lot of filth. This shit rules and as he told me stories about how is it hard and weird to live in Russia I can understand their angst. On the other hand you can read all those horrible stories about everywhere. Is it the same everywhere? Corruption, cruelty, hatred, boredom, the lack of future? Why are humans so obsessed with future? Fuck all this. I’m sick I mean I have a sore throat not that there’s something up with my mind. It’s a gift that we can transform the world’s shit into our treasure. So fuck apathy! Make a tape!