Hungarian Post-punk and New Wave.

I just moved to the St. Clair Ave. W & Bathurst St. area in Toronto recently and have been, of course, scouting out potential repositories of intriguing music (especially the stuff I like to post on here).

One of the first places I noticed was the Hungarian Book and Music store Pannonia, nestled in what appears to be a residential building, just east of Spadina Rd at 300 St. Clair West.

That led me to doing some research before going into the store--I thought some knowledge of Hungarian popular music and folk might prove useful. I've had a few negative experiences buying music based solely on the assertions of a store's staff, since it not always easy to convey my tastes to someone, as they have their own associations which impact their impression of my inquiries.

In my net-travels I stumbled across a few intriguing groups from Hungary which offered some nice takes on the late 1970's to mid 1980's sounds which loosely fall under the New-Wave and post-punk umbrella. Each group has their own blend of ingredients, including hints of No-waveish clatter, icy Factory Records-style bleakness, 4AD-label gauziness, psychedelia and Kraftwerkian zap.


Csokonai Vitéz Műhely (which InterTran translates to "Chocolate Valiant Manufactory"!)
This reminds of the music that it seems like Ariel Pink is trying to recapture. That slightly-ethereal, low-budget (perhaps recorded on 4-track) music from the 80's with plenty of unintentionally kooky synth sounds, and where the singer sounds like a lethargic ghost bellowing from the cavernous basement of an old house. Music for goths that were too lazy to put the white make-up and PVC pants on.




Trabant
Trabant is a bit like if the Young Marble Giants, the Sugarcubes and the Slits had a jam session. They're a lot less gothy than a lot of these other bands, eschewing echo and 'verb for a more lean punk-informed sound with hints of 60's pop, Joy Division drum kit sounds, and intermittent greasy synth sounds...








Vágtázó Halottkémek
These dudes are pretty evil sounding with hints of the Stooges, Hawkwind, and early Bauhaus. Gotta love this interesting cross-breeding of early 70's psych aesthetics with 80's post-punk spikiness...



Varga Miklós
It's very difficult for me to decipher the narrative of this video, but I like the weird party-in-dystopia vibe it has. As for the song, there's something quite unappealing to it, I find, but strangely, it's also quite likeable. The little changes to the more brisk parts are quintessentially 1980's, and the synth programming is deliciously dated. The singer's brand of hoarseness is not something you would've heard as much in Western European and American 1980's pop as well, which is neither good nor bad.


A.E. (Albert Einstein) Bizottság
Ever wondered what it would've been like if Blixa Bargeld had been the vocalist for the Birthday Party and was really into cheap flange pedals? Ok, I admit that I never considered that idea either, but these guys at times are a bit like that little recipe. The second clip especially shows the singers penchant for similar patterning of phrases to earlier Neubauten tracks. The background music is rigidly funky with that persistent airplane-engine sound whooshing away.

The last clip on here is just plain fucked. Initial it has a strange and cheap funereal vibe which subsequently explodes, or disintegrates? into this flailing party quasi-anthem... Weird.

Another touchstone with these fellows' mix of menace and perverse humour is previous End(-)Of(-)World Music featuree Yuri Morozov.








Mutant Sounds also offers an interesting record by Európa Kiadó here.