WL//WH Premiere GRAN BANKROTT
The city feels soft and oily. Movement becomes torture. Let the others work. We lie there, the window wide open,… everything is out of butter.
Austrian post-punk experimental artist based in Vienna, Florian Tremmel returns, under his Gran Bankrott moniker, with the fourth part of the series “Die Singles”, entitled “Butter”, following “Tanzbein”, “Kapital Egal” and “Woanders”, an in-progress mini-album box-set consisting of 6 songs/videos in the form of Vinyl, CD, Zine, and Poster, scheduled to be released in Spring 2022 via fellow Viennese independent label Numavi Records.
The release will be accompanied by an exhibition curated by the visual artist David Visnjic.
Gran Bankrott delivers anthemic post-punk/new wave tunes channelling edgy Gang of Four drive, mid-period Wire droning art-punk melodicism, swirling synth-laden new wave, sprinkled with a touch of leftfield no-wave insanity and dubby and funky echoes from the Y Records catalogue.
“Butter” is laced with cryptic atmospheric lyrics that bloom a city consumed by sunflowers and the sound of a boys choir, to enhance an extraordinary stream of consciousness, where everything is soft like “Butter.”
A heady ebb and flow of groovy rolling crispy percussive patterns, persistent swayed penetrating guitar melodies, dense snaky pulsing basslines, swept by swelling gusts of icily hissing synths and flashing bright chords over huffy, frustrated male vocals to shed a caustic, aloof melancholy into the absurdity of modern dystopic delusions.
The cinematic video, WL//WH is pleased to premiere, created by David Višnjić and Berivan Sayici, builds a Sci-Fi mystery using a disturbing alien abduction scenario. Tall golden fields of prairie grass consume a solo traveller whose trek for gasoline leads to an otherworldly experience. Alternate dimensions of insight curve light reflections into optical illusions to set the mind’s eye of imagination on fire with surreal atmospheres. Creative costumes (Thomas van der Jeught and Berivan Sayici), an eerie UFO lab setting and dramatic acting skills, reminiscent of the X-files, evoke powerful thoughts about the spectacular universe, learned helplessness, and the role of human experimentation in a hidden system’s agenda.
Keep up with Gran Bankrott:
Video part written by Catt Gillette