The perfect antidote to today’s over-produced, uninspired pop music, Grauzone Festival links classic post-punk and new-wave bands with a slew of contemporary artists who embrace the genres’ original anarchic ethos.
30-31 January – Melkweg, Amsterdam
The Fall
With enough former members to line a block and a frontman as confounding as Mark E Smith, the continued existence of prolific Mancunian post-punk pioneers The Fall is nothing short of a miracle. Thirty-nine years and 31 albums in, though, The Fall remain as abrasive and electrifying as ever.
//www.youtube.com/embed/56dxJjXbnjg
D.A.F.
What The Fall are to British post-punk, Deutsche Amerikanische Freundschaft are to German new-wave. Considered by some as the grandfathers of techno, D.A.F. have blazed a trail of industrial electro-punk lashed by cracking satirical prose since 1978 and show few signs of letting up.
//www.youtube.com/embed/jDQPVXUegPs
Trust
After parting ways with Austra’s Maya Postepski, Robert Alfons has released a second Trust record this spring called Joyland: a collection of ostentatious synth-pop that feels almost like a guilty pleasure. Rarely have doom and gloom been so thrilling.
//www.youtube.com/embed/cu438gwa4uE
Camera
Although their brand of psychedelia is absolutely enthralling, Berlin-based trio Camera are one of those bands that fall victim to lazy music journalism: because of that one time they jammed in a subway station, they’ll ve for ever dubbed ‘Krautrock Guerilla’. So you should go see them and get your facts straight.
//www.youtube.com/embed/dZ_697psKxE
Helena Hauff
Known for inducing heart palpitations with her intense assemblages of acid, EBM and electro, Helena Hauff would now like you to dance. Proof to this is her latest EP, Shatter Cone, out via Lux Rec, which translates her signature sound for the dancefloor.
//www.youtube.com/embed/uAcni1Xlp0Y
For more information and tickets: www.grauzonefestival.com