BRD Underground | Long live weird beauty!

The myth surrounding the music of the New German Wave goes something like this: At the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, the German-speaking music scene, until then firmly in the stranglehold of the Schlager (pop) genre, experienced a veritable explosion of forms. People cheerfully experimented with anything suitable for producing sound; hundreds of bands and projects sprang up in West Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, but also in many other cities and even in Hanover. The magic, however, was short-lived; in 1982, singer Markus signaled its end with his hit single "Ich will Spaß" (I want fun). What remained of the NDW was idiot-happy West German pop music, system-stabilizing and penetrative. In the niches, however, people continued to muddle along, and everything that tried to connect to post-punk in this country fell back on the famous first wave.

Many bands that were influential back then have now, if not been forgotten, at least been pushed to the margins of pop history. For the past few years, the Hamburg label Tapete Records has been reissuing albums from the beautiful fringes of pop history, thus rescuing them from oblivion.

Starting with three chords, something is mixed freehand that seems joyfully tense.

-

Most recently, a large part of the complete works of the Hanover-based band Der Moderne Man and further albums by the band SYPH were released. Both bands sound very different, but have two things in common: First, their radical freedom of form. It's clear from both Der Moderne Man and SYPH that they don't care about genre boundaries, or at least they weren't worried about them. And second, they take punk as their starting point – and have added certain strands to it, thus anticipating what would come later.

The band Der Moderne Man only released two albums: "80 Tage auf See" (80 Days at Sea) (1980) and "Unmodern" (1982). Now, a new compilation, "Jugend forscht," is being released, bringing together the singles, EPs, and demos from 1980 to 1983. "Jugend forscht" is also the best imaginable title for this music. It's the name of a technology competition for young talent invented by the magazine "Stern" in the 1960s. In the case of Der Moderne Mann's music, the joy of experimentation, the abstruse, and the lovingly crooked is still quickly conveyed to listeners, even 45 years after its creation.

A good place to start is with the "Disco Song," beloved by John Peel and played several times on his famous BBC show. It speaks about everyday life to a stoic bass and offbeat guitar: "At home I dress up/ then I go to the disco/ there I pick up all the girls/ I'm happy to accept the consumerism." It's almost a German translation of Gang of Four's song "At Home He Feels Like a Tourist." Everyday occurrences are often the subject of these lyrics, but their, if you will, urgent banality also makes them seem cryptic. The everyday and the general are rather remote in these songs. The "Telephone Song," for example, is about someone calling somewhere but dialing the wrong number.

Musically, this is early post-punk. Starting with three chords, they mix things together freely, primarily reggae and dub, but this doesn't create a relaxed atmosphere; rather, because everything is presented in a slightly clumsy manner, it comes across as rather lustfully strained. In this sense, Der moderne Man were closer to The Pop Group , whom they probably also knew, than to The Clash.

In 1982, their final album, "Unmodern," was released. It was better produced and more ska-oriented by popular standards, and in the wake of the NDW boom, labels began to take an interest in Der Moderne Man. In 1984, WDR broadcast a concert by the band. Nevertheless, the band ended that same year. What remains is a collection of wondrous songs that no longer sound "modern," but are always surprising and full of strange beauty.

The band SYPH, led by singer and guitarist Harry Rag, took things even further musically. The Solingen-based band is known and loved for crisp art-punk hits like "Zurück zum Beton," one of the most covered and quoted German punk songs, and "Industrie-Mädchen." But already on the second side of their first album, the band drifted into musical wonderland with tape loops and Krautrock riffs.

The albums "Pst" (1980), the fourth album "SYPH" (1981), and the compilation "Punkraut (1978 to 1981)" have now been re-released on Tapete. On "Pst," the song form still dominates, although the stripped-down post-punk aesthetic is distorted by a forced, i.e., artful amateurism. This can include deliberately poorly played guitar solos that stretch throughout the entire piece, off-key "oooh-oooh" chants, or a bass line or riff that comes in half a beat behind the drums. But the countdown here is still "one, two, three, four."

Things are different on the self-titled fourth album. The three short pieces and the two 18-minute pieces "Der Nachbar (lange Version)" and "Little Nemo" don't leave much of the early work left. "Der Nachbar," for example, can already be heard in a three-minute version on "Pst." On "SYPH," a repetitive, moldy smear remains, which runs through the entire album in various forms. With their fourth album, SYPH may not have produced unlistenable music, but they certainly don't care whether anyone is listening or not. In this sense, too, even in its most psychedelic and twisted moments, it's more punk than, say, Die Toten Hosen, although they still exist.

Der Moderne Man: "80 Days at Sea," "Unmodern," "Jugend forscht – Singles, EPs & Demos 1980–1983" (all Tapete/Indigo) SYPH: "Pst," "SYPH," "Punkraut 1978–1981" (all Tapete/Indigo)