popanz
SMILE (Köln, Siluh)
w/ Die Anstalt (Berlin, City Slang) + Silk (Köln / Düsseldorf)
Gun-Shy Record Release Show
Samstag, 23. Januar 2027
Gebäude 9, Köln
Einlass 19:00, Beginn 20:00
pres. by Bandup, ByteFM, Musikblog, Kulturnews & drift
With their new album Gun-Shy, US-German noise-rock band SMILE capture the energy of their live performances on record. Anyone who has seen the band, whose members now live in Amsterdam, Berlin, and Cologne, perform live will be familiar with the unrestrained stage presence of singer and performer Rubee Fegan.
On Gun-Shy, the band, working with producer Olaf Opal, have managed to capture precisely that intensity while preserving the rawness and immediacy of the album’s creation. Alongside studio recordings, the album features demos from Fegan’s hometown of Albuquerque and so-called “first takes” that have been left in their original form. Rather than polishing spontaneous ideas after the fact, SMILE give them room to breathe. Noisy guitars collide with haunting melodies, while Fegan’s voice shifts between urgency and vulnerability. It is precisely these contrasts that give the album its dynamic energy.
Gun-Shy reveals a band that has continued to sharpen its distinctive sound since its debut album Price of Progress, without losing any of its unpredictability.
https://bandofsmiles.bandcamp.com/
Emerging in 2023, Die Anstalt are a Berlin-based post-punk and minimal synth trio who quickly established themselves with a blistering fusion of early EBM, synth-punk, and classic post-punk. Their sound channels the grit and tension of 1980s industrial subcultures while feeling unmistakably contemporary. https://dieanstalt.bandcamp.com/album/die-anstalt
https://thebandsilk.bandcamp.com/track/salt-pepper
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Gun-Shy Albuminfo (by Annika Henderson)
No SMILE on command.
SMILE deliver punk, noise and beat-driven tales about gritty, raw reality, dressed in post-rock drag; masked in animal heads, thick eye-liner, fishnets and shocking hot pink; smothered in siren guitars. No filter, lock-jaw; they don’t plan on letting you go. Once you’re in, you’re in, like a secret society, cloaked in old school, DIY and punk values, where release and community are key. They invite you into their world, to link arms, unmask, transform and be set free. “What spaces are built for emotion these days?” They ask.
The five met in the DIY punk scene of Cologne, Germany and started making music during the vacant hours of covid. For them, music is about getting off screens and into rooms. “The DIY scene is about making music with your friends, a space where everyone can participate”, affirms Max Schmidt, bassist in the band. Anti-establishment and anti-marketing; this band value music over content. “If we are not getting the clicks, we are probably doing something interesting.” they tell me.
SMILE don’t shy away from the truth, they scream about it, in their seductive yet somewhat schizophrenic narratives, sung, spoken and screamed by Albuquerque-born performance artist, Rubee Fegan. The feminist, anti-capitalist narratives call for rebellion, a rejection of misogynistic values, yet all the while waltzing with the very human woes of rejection, love and bare vulnerabilities. Knife sharp, they cut through the Botox layer of pseudo-reality, to reveal what’s beneath. Authenticity is key for SMILE, who tend to use demos and first takes in their output, in an effort to stay as close to their live sound as possible. “SMILE is best when you are in a room with us, sharing the space, feeding off each other’s energies; creating something together for one time only. There’s somethingspecial about live music in general; a body of music in a room. You can share emotions with others feeling the same or have your own experience.” Rubee Fegan tells me.
Citing Fugazi, Slint, Cindy Lee, Women, Life without Buildings, Sonic Youth, Moin and Aleister Crowley as influences, these art/music-school 90s kids grew up on a diet of Limewire, crappy mp3s and band shirts, living in small towns, where the youth club was king or queen, providing the oxygen and platform to perform and start bands. “The stage was so low to the ground that it made you feel like you could be part of this.” Sebastian Lessel tells me.
Catering more to atmosphere than traditional song-structures, their cinematic songs often started out with a buzz word from Rubee Fegan or with drummer, Marius Szarnych providing a pulsing beat, which they’d all jump on to, adding their own twists and turns. At times, lead singer Rubee Fegan would leave the room (In song ‘Gotta Run’) and the band would continue playing, taking the listener to a whole new sonic universe, resulting in complex and intriguing musical journeys. “We want to go places where the music makes us feel uncomfortable. When it makes us feel uncomfortable; this sounds weird, chaotic, dangerous; this makes it interesting.” Lars Fritzsche tells me. This album certainly feels like a voyage, where the listener is looking out of the steam carriage window, at the fast-changing scenery, loud and brash, sometimes dark with burnt out cars, clattering trashcans, cheeky basslines, and other times with a campy glittery twist. They recorded with the help of Olaf Opal, best known for producing the early, punkier and raw, The Notwist albums.