Sheebaba Have Released A New Single

German proto-punk/experimental duo Sheebaba have released Bigbull, a single that announces upcoming Bruit EP. You can read more about the single and EP below.

“A song about becoming someone else through potion (whatever that may be). Are we really more like our real selves when we “loosen up” through alcohol or other drugs? Or do we become a distorted version of our true self? These are the questions that are being raised lyrically over the repetitive distorted drum loop, culminating in a powerful choir that ends with the phrase “and I become myself” …whoever that may be. The laughing sample that plays during the outro is taken from Elvira Weishaupt’s Slaughterhouse Monologue in “In a Year of 13 Moons” (1979) by R.W. Fassbender.“

“Sheebaba’s body of sound seems like a concrete potion poured in a fishnet suit. With bruit, the duo somehow unveils a synesthetic tonality that paints plain but uneven textures of industrial glitch, fuzz and noise. Along the way, they synthesize both textual and tonal fragments from a wide-ranging tableau of pop music history, film and everyday life. By the refreshing juxtaposition of all these fragments, paired with multilingual speech, an enigmatic narrative patchwork emerges.

With the previous single release of big bull, this can already be heard. It is marked by merging distorted and somehow dissonant chords over an equally distorted and repetitive drum loop. Blended with a lyrical layer touching on questions of losing as well as becoming of identity, the song culminates in the lunatic laughter of Elvira Weishaupt’s slaughterhouse monologue taken from Fassbinder’s “In a Year of 13 Moons”.

Though fueled by the rough and crooking pressure of machines, their sound formations do not escape the desire for organic tone. Driven by repetitive percussion, distorted pleasure and chanted narration, some tracks inevitably urge you to stomp along. At other times more restrained or even broken beats give way for calmer, drifting melodic and vocal layers, just to disrupt these fragile tonal structures again. Once distorted and uneven, once subtle and almost soothing, Sheebaba’s bruit offers genre-bending proto-wave between kitsch and noise that stings the listener with visions of a lost future.“

Bruit is being released through Katalog, 2022.