Grauzone

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