LP

On their third album "Feast", the Viennese trio Prototyper develops a sound that combines the uncompromising energy of grunge with thoughtful lyrics. Jürgen Bauer’s fat bass provides singer and guitarist Martin X. Forster with the foundation for both noisy and catchy melodies, the right amount of distortion and feedback guaranteed. And with Tin Achter, Prototyper has a fast-paced powerhouse on drums: both funky and heavy, as if the dancefloor were the band's most natural biotope.

Examples? The single release "Move" or "Odd One Out“, another song with hit potential. Guitar, bass and drums keep melting, hammering and shaping the white-hot songs until every edge is sharp as a razor and the surface shimmers deep matte.
Prototyper thus create a compact and fat alternative rock with biting, emotional and very personal lyrics: pain, anger and no compromises - here they find their soundtrack for the year 2023. "I can't bear the thought of leaving my bed / I can't go out cause this world is a drag / I'll just stay inside as long as I please / Not every day is one that I want to seize."

Therapy? with their album "Troublegum" or the Foo Fighters emerge as shards from the past. Not as teachers, but as partners in crime. And again and again the Melvins aka the masters of brute beauty, act as a coordinate system.

Produced by the band and mixed by Martin X. Forster, “Feast" is an even more personal statement on the insanity of the world, on the struggle with one’s own ego and shows how fresh rock can sound today if it also has something to say. "We all dance to the algo-rhythmic song / our feckless leaders cheer us on / no one knows what's right or wrong".

"Feast" shows Prototyper as a hungry, playful band that welds precision with emotion, and groove with force. This is not an album for in-between, it has not been recorded to be consumed on the side, „Feast" is an intense wall of sound and thoughts that leave a door for your ears and your brain to sneak in. 

It was a little over eleven years ago that Jacques Defoe first staggered into Thomas Pronai's recording studio, tucked away amidst the rolling vineyards of Austria's eastern border. Defoe had spent half a lifetime wandering the aural wasteland some place between Brian and Tony Wilson, a Surfariad from Manchester to California, honing a virtuosity that most agreed was better left unheard. But Pronai, a veteran producer and a legend of the Austrian alternative music scene, did hear; and his quick ear knew that behind the howling and disparate strumming lay songs of a quite different order.

And so began a partnership, a steady honing of a sound, a style, an idea. Defoe would bring a handful of melodies, lyrics and the occasional chord change; Pronai would shape them, layering sound upon sound, sculpting a lucid sonic vision from the hazy flashes played before him. The eight tracks of magnetic tape became the canvas for a touch of genius; or, at the very least, a touch of hubris.

Defoe began to contribute lyrics to Pronai's various projects, Bo Candy and The New Mourning, as the two melded musical styles, genres and tone: from Surf to Alt. Country, New Wave to Folk Rock. Session after session passed, and the sound began to gel: "It's the Surfaris meet the Velvet Underground", quipped Robin Wills, guitarist and songwriter of the fabled Barracudas on hearing the early takes. At long last the vaults could hold no more: some forty tracks yearning to be set upon the world.

Tantalising fragments saw light of day: “City til I Die” (2017) a limited edition charity single that honoured the cavernous speakers at Exeter's St James Park; and “The End of the World”, a contribution to Kool Kat Musik's Compilation for the Ukraine (2022).

And now the debut LP of Defoe & Pronai holds thirteen of the very best: songs that tell a story of a growing understanding, a merging of visions. Two musicians from quite different worlds present a record that is international and cosmopolitan, and yet so very local; spanning genre, mood and time, yet quite cohesive; cynical, but imbued with hope; philosophical and frivolous; trivial and transcendent. A touch of hubris indeed. 

LP Ltd. Numbered

VÖ: 06.10.23

Red Vinyl 

Die Band Locomötive ist über die Jahre gereift und möchte zeigen, wie facettenreich Glam Metal sein kann. Produziert wurde das Album von Stephan Kutscher. 

Ltd. Silber/rot splatter  2LP numeriert