Still believing in ANOK: Life's a Riot! "S/t" Ep, 2001

Our flat is small. Housing is a very relative concept depending on where you live. A small flat on the outskirts of Paris is not the same as a small flat in Berlin, Dublin or Acapulco (I can only assume, I have never set foot there). When I started Terminal Sound Nuisance in 2012 I lived in a 9m2 room - the word "flat" sounds a bit like a hyperbole in that case - with a shared "bathroom" - a bathless room, in the broad sense of the term - in the corridor. Once, I found actual shit on the bog's wall, not the most pleasant discovery on a Monday morning especially since I was pretty certain it was not mine. I have always suspected it was the girl's next door, she looked very tidy and wore far too much perfume but I could sense she despised me a great deal, probably because there were times when I blasted Atrocious Madness a bit late at night. But like the size of flats, late Atrocious Madness is relative. Then I miraculously got a full-time job which allowed me to move to a palace-size flat of 11m2. I still did not have my own bathroom and there was clearly fart maniacs using the thing too but I never found any shit on the walls. I did uncover a filthy pair of knickers though. And a proper bum sleeping in the shower. The poor bastard was cold and I just did not have the heart to kick him out. To be fair, while he was at it, he could have actually used the shower because his feet stank like a dead hamster. 

A few years later, finally, my partner and I moved to a staggering 22m2 flat with our own bathroom (to this day I still like a bourgeois for just being able to take a dump without having a knobhead waiting and sighing loudly in front of the cubicle while playing Candy Crush on his phone, pure evil that). But I am not here to talk about my dull housing adventures. I am just running out of space for new records. I am well aware that it is basically a first-world problem but still, it means that I have to get rid of records I don't need (but how do you even define this notion?) or just don't listen to (again, does listening to a single-sided once four years ago counts as "not listen to"?). And I have to admit that Life's a Riot!'s Ep usually ends up in the "records-I-will-probably-store-in-our-tiny-and-already-packed-basement-but-still-might-play-once-before-just-to-make-sure" and each time I play it again, I realize how good it is and blame myself for even considering banishing it to that dreadful spider-infested place. I still have to make room and it breaks my heart so that I end up buying new records just to feel better about the loss. First-world problem, I told you. Did I mention I also own an offshore record collection?

The story behind the acquisition is both sad and heroic in that it makes me look like a saviour of unloved punk. Ages ago, a friend of mine was getting rid of some Ep's he no longer wanted (records he had himself been given if I remember correctly) and being a kind-hearted charitable fellow, I agreed to take the records under my wing. I think we can safely say that I am Paris punk's answer to Gandhi, the main difference being that I still have (some) hair. The internet is rather quiet about them but here is what I have been able to gather. Life's a Riot! (a reference to Billy Bragg I presume?) were a Finnish band active in the early 00's and I think it might have been some sort of side project from the people from Diaspora (Joakim, Mari and Jossu also played in that band). In any case it was made up of people involved in many local bands ranging from Alakulttuurin Kusipäät, Pax Americana, Scumbrigade (Joakim was from Sweden) and even Tampere SS and Kuolleet Kukat (for the drummer Juha who sadly passed away in 2004) which accounts for the band clearly knowing what they are doing.

But what exactly were they doing then? Helsinki's Life's a Riot played energetic anarchopunk with male and female vocals blending the classic UK sound of bands like Alternative, Hagar the Womb or The Sears, the more modern approach of Harum-Scarum, Mankind? or Jobbykrust and I can also hear a touch of Californian peacepunk like early Resist and Exist or Media Children. The opening number is a case in point with its Zounds-like introduction followed by overlapping vocals (anarcho spoken words over angrily shouted slogan) and then a fast and pissed phase. I love how the vocal polyphony and variety of flows and textures work within the songs, it never sounds forced (even the accents sound pretty British) and it confers a delicious catchiness that really makes the Ep stand out. It is, objectively, a strong record so that it feels very odd to see the ridiculously low price of the Ep on discogs. I realize the belief that discogs reflects the quality of a record is about as delusional as believing you could become a Tik Tok influencer while you're already 43. If anything, discogs reflects the popularity of a record at a given time which does not equate the substantial quality (although it can) and in this light it is needless to point out that Life's a Riot! can be said to have been almost completely forgotten and that their tuneful, dynamic brand of old-school anarchopunk did not really fit with the punk's trends of the early 00's. Rejoice, you can get the thing for the price of a bag of crisps (and not even the fancy organic middle-class brand, just the regular one you can eat remorselessly at 1am after the gig). 

Had Life's a Riot! been around later they would have probably been a popular band - maybe playing K-Town and being offered records on fashionable labels - as there was a renewed interest in the old-school anarchopunk sound (which must be seen in parallel with the UK82 revival I reckon) from the late 00's on, possibly caused and encouraged by Ian Glasper's work, the Overground anarcho compilations and the works of labels like Demo Tapes. 00's bands like Surrender or OK? and 2010's ones like Vivid Sekt, Dogma or fellow Finns 1981, in their early days, are not dissimilar to what Life's a Riot! were doing (the same could be said about Stracony, which we tackled last time). 

The Ep's cover displays the old picture of a dog wearing a gas mask (it was quite the thing during WWI) but I have always thought it looked like a chameleon or some kind of weird lizards. The record has a foldout cover and the lyrics are about the grey zone, Big Brother and Buenaventura Durrutti. It was released on Witchhunt Records - the band's own label that put out records from Diaspora, Mushroom Attack or Unkind - and Les Nains Aussi, a label from Grenoble, that cryptically translates as "dwarves too", that must be saluted for still being very much active.

Don't be a poser and grab the Ep, yeah?

Life's a Riot!