V.A. - Ba(a)d Schandau Express 2x12

The cryptic headline “Ba(a)d Schandau Express“ sets the stage for a tribute to two seminal bands of 1980s Eastern Bloc subculture who blurred borders between art and music. Cover versions and updates of key songs rekindle the bands‘ mystique, on two simultaneous EP releases. 

Vol.1 offers variations of songs by Hungarian art post-punk band A.E. Bizottság, founded 1980 in Szentendre and active until 1986. Their renown in the GDR scene rested on youth radio station DT64 airplay, an appearance in Gabor Bódy’s film Dog’s Night Song and not least the availability of the band’s albums at the Hungarian Cultural Center. And they even toured and were released in the West.  

The project was sparked by A.E. Bizottság’s appearance on a Top 15 LP list by Carsten Nicolai and Olaf Bender, in their guise as Diamond Version, in British magazine The Wire, back when both still jointly operated the Raster-Noton label. This mention stems from Diamond Version‘s origins in the idiosyncratic subculture of Karl-Marx-Stadt, today Chemnitz.

Bender, from 1989 to 1993 a member of the surprisingly popular Karl Marx Stadt scene electro-post-punk-absurd-pop band AG. Geige is represented on this compilation as Byetone, supported by Beate Düber and ex-AG. Geige singer Jan Kummer, who also lend their voices to track versions by drum´n´bass and dub producer LXC, in cooperation with Zonic Zound Zystem. Who´s Alter Ego LEN8 in turn joined forces with Underwater Agents to create a dub poetry variation of a poem by GDR underground poet Bert Papenfuß responding to lyrics by A.E. Bizottság. PUFF from Berlin play in-your-face, ear-splitting post-punk. And Felix Kubin, active since the mid-1980s as the master of futurist-disharmonious (anti-) pop, sprinkles a pinch of weirdo-tronics on top, his bi-lingual vocals nudging towards the dancefloor without any loss of complexity along the way.

Vol.1 is adorned by cover artwork by Jan Kummer, a reverse glass painting based upon an iconic photo of A.E. Bizottság, and includes a 12-page booklet with two essays by Tamas Szönyei and Dr. Claus Löser.

Vol.2 reverses the perspective and presents Hungarianized tracks originally by AG. Geige, founded in 1986 and who shared A.E. Bizottság’s gesamtkunstwerk aspirations. Új Bála, Prell, Rozi Mákó and Committee represent the current Hungarian electronic music scene. They are joined by Sickratman, a Zappaesque rapper with roots in prog-meets-world beat. His adaptation of AG. Geige hit “Fischleim“ (fish glue) resounds in a drum´n´bass-Killerremix by LXC. The highlight of this German-Hungarian cooperation is Chemnitz-raised producer Karl Marx Stadt’s AG. Geige variations featuring two A.E. Bizottság vocalists - László feLugossy and Kokó – performing the lyrics in Hungarian translation.

The cover artwork painting on Vol.2 is by Anton Garber, singer of PUFF who are featured on Vol.1. The 12-page booklet includes texts by Frank Apunkt Schneider and Krisztián Puskár.

The tracks by Felix Kubin, PUFF, Karl Marx Stadt and Új Bála are accompanied by very eye-catching videos. The Új Bála clip is a recut of the original AG. Geige video by Ina and Jan Kummer.

Ba(a)d Schandau Express is the final product of the EU project "One Million Steps Over the Border", in which Alexander Pehlemann participated, who runs Edition Iron Curtain Radio as an extension of his activities as Zonic, which includes various Zonic special books on subculture behind the Iron Curtain. Zonic, on the other hand, founded in 1993 as a fanzine for "cultural fringe views & moments of involvement" and meanwhile a presentation and publication platform, celebrates its XXX anniversary in 2023 and especially the special aspect of exploring Eastern European subcultures.

AG. Geige (1989). Photo: Volker Döring

From Alex Pehlemann, ZONIC

Your skin is like the sleepy surface

of water at daybreak

Which is reflected in the eyes of a customs officer in Bad Schandau

Your eyes like two small pillows 

(2 x)

Lyrics: István Ef Zámbó

E. Bizottság Jegkrémbalett, LP, 1984

Bad Schandau, located near Dresden on the Elbe, was the GDR border crossing station en route to Hungary by train. On the return journey, Bad Schandau often proved to be a bottleneck, when guards confiscated Western records purchased in Budapest, a place of longing regarding subcultural products, because of suspected anti-socialist content. Naming a project like an express train speeding between places and times as cultural transfer, connecting the sounds of the 1980s with those of today, after that (non-)place was obvious, primarily because the Hungarian post-punk band A. E. Bizottság immortalized Bad Schandau in a song, albeit with an additional “a.” Their LP Jégkrémbalett, released in 1984 on Hungarian state label Start and on which “Ba(a)d Schandau” can be found, was the departure point of the idea to create "Art Pop Tribute" cover versions. This was then triggered by a Top 15 of Diamond Version's favorite records, published by the renowned British music magazine The Wire in June 2014. Carsten Nicolai (aka Alva Noto) and Olaf Bender (aka Byetone), who as Diamond Version had just released an LP on the legendary Mute label and were still running the Raster-Noton label together back then, listed Jégkrémbalett at the top of a tasteful selection, higher than Heiner Goebbels, Danielle Dax, Arvo Pärt, Jon Hassell, Fela Kuti, The Stranglers or Supermax. This shouldn’t be overrated, but it did inspire me to ask if they wouldn't like to provide musical re-contextualization of this choice which likely drew a blank with most Wire readers. Lo and behold, the desire was there and in the case of Byetone, eventually also the necessary time and energy to implement it. As can be heard on Vol.1 of Ba(a)d Schandau Express: A. E. Bizottság’s anti-hit "Szerelem, Szerelem" reimagined as "SZRLMX (Detox Version)," although the original track was actually on Bizottság’s 1983 debut album Kalandra fél‼.

The fact that Olaf Bender came and stayed on board became all the more important when the EU project "One and a Half Million Steps Over the Borders" requested a German-Hungarian theme that could establish a link between the social upheavals of the 1980s and today. This offered an additional viewpoint, and an appreciative approach from the East German side, in Bender’s case as a latecomer member of Karl-Marx-Stadt absurdist electro-pop band AG. Geige, was joined by a Hungarian one, albeit which required no back story. While A. E. Bizottság was a relevant touchstone in GDR underground circles for the weird and wondrous, no one in Hungary knew AG. Geige - or anything at all from GDR subculture (apart from rare contacts between GDR and Hungarian punks or the Points East label mates Kampec Dolores and Der Expander des Fortschritts). However, A. E. Bizottság’s relative fame was not only due to the availability of their records at the East Berlin Hungarian Cultural Center. The band was also featured in rare but influential screenings of Gábor Bódy’s film Dog’s Night Song (1982), which also introduced the wild phenomenon of the punk-shamanistic Rasenden Leichenbeschauer aka Galloping Coroners aka Vágtázó Halottkémek. Even broader outreach began in 1986, when the youth radio station DT64 created a forum for punk, post-punk and other offbeat sounds with the program Parocktikum, which played the band multiple times; their debut Kalandra fél, based on live recordings, was even broadcast once in its entirety for hometaping in the DT64 series “Im Konzert” (in concert).

The respective final stops thus feature two seminal formations from Hungary and the GDR that were active in the 1980s with rapidly growing success, both operating, albeit in very different ways, in a multimedia mode between visual art, experimental film, performance and post-punk sounds: A. E. Bizottság, founded in 1979 in Szentendre near Budapest and active until 1986, and AG. Geige, founded in 1986 in Karl-Marx-Stadt and disbanded in Chemnitz in 1993, two groups with lasting posthumous fame whose protagonists became influential figures in the field between art and sound. Their histories and the zeitgeist of the time will be explored more in-depth by the respective texts in the EPs.

It is important and wonderful that the Ba(a)d Schandau Express succeeded in staging some nice interaction effects. The lyrics were translated into the respective other language; A. E. Bizottság lyrics had in part already been translated in 2013 for issue #20 of the Zonic Almanac. The lyrics on the EPs were even performed by the ex-vocalists: Kokó and László feLugossy of A. E. Bizottság or Jan Kummer of AG.Geige, respectively.

Kummer also contributed as a visual artist. In addition to his visual version as a reverse painting on glass, which adorns the cover of Vol.1 and is based on an iconic photo by Attila Pacser, there is also a poetic one, courtesy of poet Bert Papenfuß, active in the GDR underground, who provided an appropriately enigmatic response to the text of the A. E. Bizottság classic "Milarepaverzió." The album concept was generally flexible: in addition to the (rather) East German variations there is a contribution from Felix Kubin, who, hailing from Hamburg, could even have seen A.E. Bizottság live on a western tour organized by the later Vágtázó Halottkémek manager Dietmar Lupfer.

Furthermore, some AG. Geige versions were created by non-Hungarian artists, but all had at least some Hungarian participation. Karl Marx Stadt varies Karl-Marx-Stadt sounds was too obvious not to do. The fact that the Hungarian contributions come primarily from the current Budapest electronic underground, adding a generation-bridging dimension to the cross-border one, is mainly thanks to Lucia Udvardyová, co-founder of the Easterndaze platform, who activated her local networks.

Finally, for me personally, Ba(a)d Schandau Express also brings an audiobiographical arc full circle, because the two A. E. Bizottság LPs were the first records I owned with off-beat sounds. I bought them in February 1987, although I didn't have a record player yet. At about the same time, AG. Geige crashed my provincial world via Parocktikum, and I also soon ordered their cassettes on the klangFarBe label, which AG. Geige mastermind Frank Bretschneider was running illegally.

So I am ever grateful for these formative contributions to my pubescent confusion, which amounted to neo-dadaistic leaps of distinction and still keep me going today.