S.Y.P.H. - Harbeitslose FLAC

FUNFUNDVIERZIG seem to be releasing mainly CAN-connected albums these days, so this is a little different. Twenty five small songs (makes you think of early WIRE, and indeed their music has at least similar wordplay, layering main spoken voice against a variety of vocal acrobatics). And when I say 'small' songs, there's a fat, compressed sound to what happens here - as if they had kicked THE CURE out of their "Close To Me" cupboard and used it as a live recording studio. It's kinda a cross over between early Art School Punk, Progressive Improv. and a hint of local band Folkiness, along with some interesting experiments.

Clean and neatly tailored this is not. There's a rough, ragged edge to most of the pieces here, yet it thrives, alive with experimental electricity, most expecially with the vocals. True progress, evolutionary advancement, hell - life, is a rude, ruddy, bruised and broken thing. It's how we became the dominant species on this planet - forget the idea of it being a Divine gift to a favoured creation, forget our assumed intelligence, we tore the crown from other, maybe more deserving life forms by sheer brutality and an unlimited capacity to visit pain upon others. Birth - painful for the mother, but utterly traumatic for the child - is a similar transition. Yet we need to be born, need to rip free from the cosy comfort of the womb. S,Y,P,H, make their way into the world clawing and biting, climbing over the bodies of others with a total disregard for manners or grace.

Maybe it's the German accent, but this reminds me quite a bit of SPRUNG AUS DEN WOLKEN's albums "Round And Around" and "The Story Of Electricity/Pas Attendre". And here and there brings FUNFUNDVIERZIG's MAX GOLDT to mind - a similar humour to the voice (if not the words).

"Ich Brauch Dich" seems torn from MARK E. SMITH's vocal scrap book, an energetic sprawl as unco-ordinated as a self-righteous drunk setting the world to rights.

Rough red raw it may be, but S,Y,P,H, have enough ideas to keep you both entertained and puzzled for a long time to come. There's little in the way of 'tune' here, but they more than make up for that with insane enthusiasm and a vitality which more honed bands seem to lack (there are moments which sound like the neo natal screams of Psychobilly - a music which seemed afire with a similar vivacity). The lack of spatial placement takes nothing away from it - somehow the narrow tube of sound concentrates the energy rather than displacing it.

Originally reviewed for Metamorphic Journeyman.