Sometimes I feel the 90's often get a bad name unfairly, and I do not just mean the old age with adult diapers and Alzheimer, but also the decade's musical production. Being a man prone to right wrongs, even when I have actually been proven wrong, Terminal Sound Nuisance has often been a safe space for 90's punk records that are ignored or discarded to the £2 record bin, the pits of Hell for a record. This common dismissal of an objectively very rich decade is somewhat curious and maybe revealing of our modern mood. I am the first to admit that some 90's bands (it was also, after all, the explosion of emocore) did manage to seek new heights of musical atrocities, no mean feat considering the 80's birthed the New Romantics trend. Of course, the 80's always get a free pass, even the shite music recorded during this decade (cough cough Grave New World) can now be ironically enjoyed but the 90's are judged harshly. Perhaps the period needs its Stranger Things to be appealing again?
90's punk was an intensely creative period and literally dozens of subgenres solidified meaningfully or popped up during that time period. A lot of the DIY network we still deal with today was originally built in the 90's and taken care of afterwards. The decade was also the last days of pre-internet punk - what I love to refer as the Prelapsarian Era - and by the mid-00's the unstoppable march of social media on our listening and creative practices began for real, like an epic hog taking a dump on your mum's favourite flower bed. Absolute 80's worship was not as common and generic yet (except for Discharge worship obviously), and a lot of bands claimed that they wanted to do something new, which was perhaps a little paradoxical when one considers the amount of similar-sounding eurocrust or Swedish d-beat bands, but then you did have some genuinely free punk music. Nothing should be idealized but nothing should be overlooked. The 90's remain too undocumented or unloved and this series, like many before, is also about showing some appreciation to bands that toyed with the original anarcho sounds and took it into a new decade
Enter Stracony from Kołobrzeg on the Baltic sea, one of the best bands that took a classic 80's UK anarcho variation and used it to create their own sound. If you are a cynical, perpetually angry bastard, you could say that the band suffered from the Portland Syndrome, a condition that implied that if you were from a cool punk city (usually from the U$ of A or Japan) you would get much more acknowledgement than if you happen to be from the arse-end of the world (aka a poor country), even if you played exactly the same music. Nothing to do with Portland per se but at the time I brilliantly synthesized this theorem, Portland was all the shit and anything coming out of there was applauded. It can easily be replaced with New York, London or Paris nowadays - assuming your sole musical ambition is to play a Fred Perry fashion show - and the place can be a record label too. But then, some 25 years later, what does it matter? Punk has always been made up of trends, fashions and is ruled by the cult of hype and instant fame like all aspects of cultural life. One just has to be curious and keep in mind that punk is an international movement and not just a showcase for egos and if people want to miss good music because it does not come from the right place, so be it.
Stracony were quite popular in Poland and the distribution of their Uważajcie - Bomby Wiszą Nad Waszymi Głowami album was good since it was released on Tribal War Records in 2000, the label being based in Portland at the time (lol I know right!). The Tribal War connection definitely made me buy the album. I was closely following the label's production and always loved the releases, and still do for the most part, and the striking cover left little doubt as to the band's sonic stance and politics. It was also a time when I realized the international quality of the punk scene and completely embraced it. Polish punk was massive and it made sense to give it a go for that reason as well. To this day, I still believe that this work is one of the best anarcho albums of the 90's and an unsung classic, like most old-school anarchopunk records of this era (with some exceptions which we will see).
Fun fact: the first time I met my future wife in 2017, we actually talked about Stracony. Her being Polish and very knowledgeable about the scene, we started chatting up about Polish punk bands and I did my best to impress her with my astounding expertise. Little did I realize that my appalling pronunciation led to some misunderstanding and at times she stared at me like I was just making up bands with strange names. One of the bands I could not pronounce the name of properly was Stracony (the gold medal in my terrifying attempts went to Insekty Na Jajach). Later on, after I described the Lp's cover, she finally understood my mumbo jumbo, and confirmed that the band was very popular and pretty much a classic. Ironically "stracony" means "lost". You cannot make that up.
But let's get back to the record. I found the Love and friendship Ep in the ¥300 record bin at the Punk and Destroy record store in Osaka (it was originally the record's actual price). It might seem like an odd location to find a Polish anarchopunk record but the Ep was released on Peace Punk Records, a short-lived Japanese label from Tokyo that released materials from Social Genocide, Dios Hastio and Peaceful Protest (could there be a connection?), so the presence of Stracony was not extraordinary. The production on the Ep is much rawer than on the very clean-sounding latter album and it confers to the songs a very old-school youthful vibe, so that if you don't know the band you could very well believe the year was 1985. The influences are quite obvious early Chumbawamba (especially in the changes of danceable beats and the versatility) and Alternative (in the positive punk energy) immediately comes to mind. Crass is not completely out of the picture but in terms of comparison Stracony would be a dynamic, spontaneous and a shambolic teenage take on this music monument, which, from my perspective, is a massive compliment. I just love the impetuous genuine energy of the music, of the snotty angry male/female vocals and the catchy hooks in the songwriting (yes, even the reggae part) are irresistible. It just sounds fresh and unself-conscious. You can sense the band just believed in what they were doing and you cannot fake that. No recording date is included but the six songs of the Ep actually appeared previously on a tape entitled Nowy System and released in 1997 on Qrva Sistema, a prolific tape label in the 90's. There is no release date either for Love and friendship but my best guess would be 1998 but correct me if I am wrong.
At that point in their "career", Stracony were sonically not far at all from another Polish band that also worked on that Chumba-meets-Crass-Records sound called Kanada. This band's run was short (from 1989 to 1991 I think) and they were apparently not very well-known so that it would be difficult to assess that Stracony had been in some way influenced or inspired by an older band with a similar music (old-school UK anarchopunk with mixed vocals in Polish, a bit moodier maybe), but whatever the answer is, the fact is rather fascinating. The last number of the Ep is an instrumental with some trumpets, an instrument that I generally avoid at all costs in punk music but actually works (it would be used a lot more on the Lp) and, well, Armia and their horns were also brilliant so maybe Polish punks are just good at arsing around with them. The Ep comes in a DIY foldout cover with the lyrics about religion, revolutionary violence, the traditional Polish family or NATO being translated into English and Japanese.
This is a little jewel of sincere and bouncy old-school anarchopunk and should be a part of any decent collection if you are into that sound.
this zip is empty:(
ReplyDeleteIt shouldn't be, I checked and the link is still working. It's right at the bottom of the review, underlined in white (I had some editing trouble shall we say).
Delete