derTANZ - Kaktusz (Self Release, 2013)

I listened multiple times and with a lot of pleasure that Hungarian band's first album. It's for me, interesting, fun and easy to listen. But many elements can make the listening quite difficult for many listeners, minimalism, experimental aspects, unconventional singing, compositions often build around repetitions and suspensions, compositions more focused on structures, rhythms and tones than on melodies. So yes I like a lot that album, but it's probably an album that will be difficult for many listeners.

The singing is one of the most important element of the album. It is quite special, varied and audacious if not provocative sometimes. It reminds me The Book Of Knots, in particular their album, Garden Of Fainting Stars released in 2011. And for me this gives an Art Rock mood to this derTANZ's album. Beside the special singing and the experimental aspects, another element gives this album an Art Rock mood, it's the emphasized games on the suspensions in some tracks. It's even more emphasized than did The Book Of Knots that also worked on this aspect in some of their tracks. In fact it's sometimes very strange with tracks with a long blank pause that is surprising and makes you wonder what happen and wait for what follows.

The band links their music to Noise and to some quite noisy bands. It's not fully right. Originally Noise has been used a lot for adding aggressiveness. And its evolution increased this approach. So often Noise uses many walls of sound and a lot of high-pitched and mildly high-pitched tones. That type of sound assaults the ears. It even reached a paroxysm during the first half of the 2000's and I don't mean experimental bands. I have been quite a big fan of Noise up to extremes during that period. But gradually I became a bit tired of it and then, later, I discovered modern Garage. In Garage and even more in modern Garage there's still a lot of work on sounds garbage and dirt, but it's more diverse than just for aggressiveness.

If derTANZ had used a classical Noise approach I wouldn't have enjoyed this album as much. But they rounded a lot their noise, gave up to use too standard walls of noise, moved the noise to more deep tones, and gave up focus the noise on pure attack of the ears to develop instead a noise quite closer to modern Garage approaches.

In the end, it's for me a surprising and very interesting album between Post Punk and Art Rock with some Post Hardcore influences, and I know nothing equivalent. It could please to adventurous ears, and perhaps to fans of Post Punk, Art Rock or Post Hardcore. For the others I'm not sure, but try it seems to be a good idea.

It's a "choose your price" download at bandcamp. So don't hesitate to put 0 for a FREE download, or to support the artists you can put the price you want.