SMAR SW - non-schematic suicide - Brum interview

Two words of introduction. In this interview, Mr. Moderator decided to write his own versions of the answers, which do not always correspond exactly to what we talked about. To give an example, Mr. Moderator writes: "We parted ways with our previous drummer SIKOR - he was good in his own way, but he was not able to cope with the new program" In reality the conversation was that Sikor does not play with us because he moved to Amsterdam and in his place came Elephant, who is a good drummer, but Mr. leading described it in his own way. And so it is with this interview. While the sense is more or less preserved, many of the phrases are not my words.

BRUM: Your latest release, Consciousness, was widely perceived as a betrayal of your punk roots. When creating the material for the album, did you really intend to escape punk classifications?

YOGURTH: No. Why? After all, the message hasn't changed compared to even Let's Fight for Our Rights. We've been trotting out more or less the same issues all along, only that we're looking for more interesting ways to express them.

BRUM: However, in your search, you seem to have gone beyond the proverbial three chords allowed by the Polish punk audience. Another thing is that with your previous releases, you were one of the main culprits in drawing that line. What has changed in your perception of punk?

YOGURTH: Nothing has changed at all. For us, punk has always been some kind of attitude, not a kitschy environment. We played straight pounds because we didn't know how to do it any other way. We looked this way and not that way because it suited us at that moment. Content was always the most important thing for us. Rebellious content, meant to break some patterns, anarchist content, of course! The form, on the other hand, is indifferent. To some people three chords may be enough, to others five hundred! Why limit yourself? At least for me, music is a way of self-realization, and I could no longer realize myself today by recording ten albums identical to Let's Fight for Our Rights. You are right that people accuse us of commercialism. Only that this is the fault of, among others, magazines like your Brum where you write what a punk should listen to, how to look.... This is nonsense, after all, punk can have no standards. By definition, it is supposed to break norms - including musical norms. Look, POISON IDEA is a punk band, EXTREME NOISE TERROR too, and how differently they play. I sometimes wonder if a bigger punk than most of the bands signing themselves to punk is not np.... NEUROSIS? In every sound of this band you can feel how much they have to say. Unfortunately, a pathetic pattern persists in people. Punk is for many SEX PISTOLS or THE CLASH, everything faster is already hard-core, everything more trance-like is industrial. Absurd! Punk is a message and an attitude, and that hasn't changed with us and won't change for sure.

BRUM: What is particularly surprising when listening to Consciousness is the sound and the free, as if partially improvised compositions....

YOGURTH: "Improvised" is not a bad word. There were simply lyrics, there was a certain idea to convey.... We thought it would be silly to squeeze such nice words into a colorless pitu - pitu. That maybe it would be better to make a little effort and find sound equivalents of the energy of these words. And so it stayed that way. We played it loose, as it came to mind, as he imagined, as he felt the expansiveness. The same when it came to sound. It was supposed to be dirty, snotty, striking.... acutely like the lyrics. A good example is Skowyt. Brilliant lyrics by GINSBERG and now the question is how to play it? I came up with a few riffs, some better some worse, but all of them kind of out of place. Until I finally made the association. What is Moloch like? It's known - filthy, disgusting, lame.... etc. and so I played. By the way, a big nod to our producer ANDRZEJ KARPIA, who simply sensed the mood and left us complete freedom in the studio.

BRUM: You mentioned GINSBERG's Hiss. You used another poem on the album, namely WOJACZK's Poem. What made you choose the works of exactly these artists?

YOGURTH: Coincidence. We were somewhat familiar with WOJACZK's works - everyone probably knows them - but we passed by them rather indifferently. Once we got a whole bundle of various poems from a buddy, just like that, maybe we would use something. At first we were rather reluctant to sing other people's lyrics, we felt that we would say everything ourselves best.... However, just these two: Skowyt and Wierszyk had an amazing kick to them, they said what we felt, which we certainly would never have given in such a way. In general, I consider Skowyt to be one of the best lyrics in the world.

BRUM: You sing "...our no future is a rejection of (...) so-called normal life". Aren't you worried that for most of your potential listeners this means at most the consumption of cheap wine before a math lesson? To whom do you direct your songs?

YOGURTH: I think everyone has to go through a period of downing a jabol or something else "before a math lesson" and there's no point in dwelling on it.... Besides, let's be honest, out of this flock of twelve-year-old punks only a few will survive, for whom the idea of anarchy, more or less broadly defined, will be installed in their heads for life. Perhaps to them we are directing our pieces, perhaps to all those who are able to open up at least a little to certain seemingly obvious issues.... This is by no means about the whole world getting one big Iroquois! It's about making sure that Mr. twelve year old punk, or twelve year old non/punk, in years.... let's say forty years, should not say to his kid: "Son go to war. it's an honor, you'll be a hero". So that your teenage punk, in as many years will not have metamorphosed into a silly old devotee! People should destroy stereotypes, not in dress or even behavior, but in thinking. Although. I sometimes wonder if we don't direct these records of ours to ourselves.... To somehow shatter our patterns, to have a clear conscience...? However, no matter how you look at it, we are probably setting a good example. Although judging by the sales of Consciousness, fewer people are taking advantage of it.

BRUM: Sometimes one encounters the opinion that Polish punk of the 1980s was an intellectual movement, which, by the way, is what distinguishes it most from Polish punk of the 1990s....

YOGURTH: That's right.

BRUM: You just touched on the subject of pacifism. It seems to me that you have not presented this issue clearly enough on Consciousness. On the one hand you say that: "by not being part of the war you are taking the only possible step..." on the other hand: "it is force and not passive resistance that will smash the hordes of fascist miscreants"?

YOGURTH: I am against hippie-style pacifism. Some dullard will give such a hippie a slap in the mouth, and then rape his girlfriend, and he will what, at most cry or black out from despair! After all, it's pathetic! You can't be completely passive.... especially today, when at every corner you can get a scythe, or feel a gnat to the head. No one, and certainly not such trash, has the right to interfere in your life! Hook up - give it back! However, violence should not be glorified. One should not look for it oneself. One should not ordain such nonsense as patriotism or the military as a virtue.

On the other hand, as far as the text I am Strong is concerned, for me it is such a reprieve.... desire to have so much will to live in this way. Simply put.

BRUM: Since the Jarocin riots, and the material Walczmy o Swoje Prawo (Let's Fight for Our Rights) promoted as if on its wave, the only thing known about you is that you recorded Świadomość. How does the band function? Does the supposedly reviving "Rzeszów scene" also include SMAR SW activities?

YOGURTH: The Rzeszow scene? I remember, there was something like that in the 1980s - 1984 and thereabouts. That, however, has not existed for many years. There are bands playing but they don't form any cohesive environment. No, no, there is no "Rzeszow scene." And the functioning of SMAR? As usual. Some rehearsals, once in a while a concert arranged by friends.... Nothing special. Unfortunately, we don't have any man who would organize more concerts for us, and getting from Rzeszow to the other end of Poland costs a lot. Sometimes we simply can't afford to play. Now we play rehearsals a little more often. We parted ways with our previous drummer SIKOR - he was good in his own way, but he couldn't cope with the new program - Elephant came in his place, and we are now finishing new tracks.

BRUM: What direction will you go in this time?

YOGURTH: We will simply develop the idea of Consciousness. Loose associations, playing under the atmosphere of the lyrics.... Since virtually all the lyrics will have the same title "Suicide" - the whole thing should be quite consistent climatically. We want to diversify the background a little: congas, maybe violin.... We'll see. For now, in rehearsals, the songs seem faster and probably sharper. However, it's hard to predict at this point how they will turn out in the studio. Certainly, whether one likes it or not, it will be the ultimate departure, beyond any pattern.

BRUM: When do you plan to enter the studio?

YOGURTH: January? Maybe February?

BRUM: Thank you for the interview.

Interviewed by: W. Wysocki, Photos: R. Dziedzic

Text excerpts used in the interview:

Suicide

city, mass, machine, mammon, mass media, bums, walls, deadness

In dark concrete holes

Blinded people cry for space

children of office buildings deprived of a view

noise, crowding, plastic paranoia

mass consumption of big industry

widespread illusions of collective psychosis

ubiquitous advertising of manufactured trash

prepared reality

mirage of success, uniform forms of behavior

common decision to lose consciousness

monopoly of meaning, emotional impoverishment

medieval belief in one's own rightness

crowd respects masks and false personalities

all reactions devoid of spontaneity

deceived mass of human cyborgs

in a cocoon of seemingly safe illusion

I am watching the spectacle of a joyous march to slaughter

it is already too far to turn back

and from the starting point to go another way

lost victims of faulty evolution

lepers nursing their disease

social primitives connected to the network

brutal violence masked by progress

subtlety of form will not hide barbarism

social evolution has not occurred

technical development is not evolution

better and better tools for primitive purposes

overgrown by our ability to construct

we enlarge our scale of suffering

watching the show....

de-brained cyborg

stupefied by the incessant trance

of consumer onania

fulfills the role of a link

propelling in the collective effort

powerful aggregates of economic prosperity

of sprawling and perfecting aimless structure

emotionally dead people infect you with their deadness

the human mind defends itself against self-discovery

from the heroism of non-egoistic life

from responsibility for the world

taking on the face of

wallpapered with panoramas of hollywood slaughterhouse

watching the show....

someone brutally entered your head

someone brutally occupied your thoughts

now you look through their eyes

now you think with their thoughts

unnatural behavior

unnatural reactions

unnatural ecosystem

unnatural ecosystem

artificial moral principles

artificial religion and sin

bondage-shaped mechanisms of power

have taken control of the human population

powerful apparatus creates appearances

it is still the same tyranny

deceitful fucking mystification

millions of deceived produce their deception

voluntary guards of their prison

passing the highest sentences on themselves

coupled apparatus effectively eliminates

the natural expression of human personalities

belonging to a race and nation

here is the system of creation of human reproduction

in the fetters of duty incapable of choice

in the thrall of the ideals professed by society

here is the crucified humanity

crucified heading towards the cross

suicide.... no... purification...

• 0 comments
  No comments yet
• write comment 
  comment