Schwabinggrad Ballett: Schwabinggrad Ballett

This album consisting of seventeen pieces, lasting 45 minutes has some real brilliant tracks and some very good, but half of it is rather a mediocre and unfinished effort. Normally I would complain (as it is really irritating to hear unfinished songs from a group that is able to write brilliant ones), but now I definitely recommend this album, as it is so fresh that is really rare nowadays. It slaps the listener gently but still you can feel it is a slap.

We have here a lot of things: circus music, marching music, protest songs, Brechtian songs, wild folk, punk; and a little taste here and there from techno, electronics, free improv and the aggreable feeling of the early Industrial's "make noise with whatever is at hand"-attitude. Colourful and diverse, but unified with an overall anarchist attitude: what is important is not the results, but attacking everything, finding the subversive moment in pop(ular) music, or the moment that can be turned subversive. They do it easily, with no apparent effort, and don't seem to bother themselves with the rest - very healthy attitude, provided that the listener also can enjoy it: and as I said, most of the time I do enjoy it, sometimes very much.

The opener Under Control is totally awesome: the intro of the strings, the "dark gothic" bassline, the austere male vocals, the female choir that can convey the horror and the extasy of being "under control of a mighty force" (as the lyrics goes); plus how the drums enter after the second minute, and the spicy little screams of the strings... It could have been a perfect dark hymn, but it has a real nice twist that no goth who takes himself seriously could swallow. But indeed taking themselves seriously is not the business of Schwabinggrad Ballett.

Another fine song is ICE Bertolt Brecht with its melody in the mood of ironic spleen (yes, that seems to be a contradiction) and the rythms made with various objects, and some guitar and sax hidden in the background.

There are lots of instrumental songs with great stylistic variety, some of them are strong and/or funny; the weaker ones are in the second half of the album, but maybe I get tired a little bit by the time I get there.

Schwabinggrad Ballett seems to be curiously close to Laibach, even though seemingly nothing could be farther from the music that works only when played with a wooden face, than the wide but bitter smile of the anarchist clowns mocking everything. The base of similarity is the research for the political content of popular music, avoiding the easy and dangerous seduction of writing a parody.

The group's main interest doesn't seem to lie in making albums, but I hope they will do others and fulfill the promise of this debut release. I think we deserve it (in at least two senses).

(You can learn more about the group at their website, info in English can be downloaded from here. Schwabinggrad Ballett is published by Staubgold. This review is a translation from Hungarian published on Ultrahang.)