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viewing 1 To 11 of 11 items
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CD
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BORNBAD 172CD
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The relative classicism of Frustration's sixth album, Our Decisions, quenches the thirst of fans whose reputation is well established. Their music is driven by an initial desire that is sufficiently complex that its expression is never a repetition. Frustration doesn't teach music history, but that doesn't mean they don't know where they come from. One of the great joys of listening to a band that's had time to figure out what it wants is that it plays together. The keyboards have six strings, the drummer has a mediator, the bass sings, no one's pulling their punches, and it shows. No doubt there are plenty of presets on his synths, but Fred Campo had to rip out what wasn't being used, and the result: no lasagna of layers, it's played like a scraper. If this is your first knife, be confident: the quintet crafts its blades with the savoir-faire of a Thiers cutlery factory. For snobs who roll on the floor when English is sung on the wrong side of the Channel, two tracks in French, "Omerta" and "Consumés," remind listeners that Fabrice Gilbert sings in an interlanguage that has kept the best of both idioms. It's the perfect way to savor his acid, no-holds-barred rants, which cut a swath through this "generation of apathetic truffles/fantasizing about assholes full of money." Produced in-house at Mains d'Oeuvres, premixed by guitarist Nicus, mixed by Jonathan Lieffroy, with Krikor on mastering: there's been a bit of a shift to port since their last album, So Cold Streams. The sound is less radically cold wave, and seeks a balance close to the instruments (the guitar plays inside your face, closer is in). There are traces of Indus on the drum skins of "Riptide," tunnel produced like a banger, and sung like new wave. Anne, from the Rouen combo Hammershøi, sings in German on "Vorbei," a rare moment of pause in this very intense record. The cardio-packed drums of "Catching Your Eye" recall the joyful drone of "Shades from the past," an instrumental from their first album, and confirm, if confirmation were needed, that Mark Adolf forms a formidable tandem with Pat Dambrine on bass. "Secular Prayer," which closes the album, confirms that Frustration are as much in the Ian Curtis family as they are in the Ian Dury family: it takes great care not to take themselves so seriously with such success.
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LP
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BORNBAD 172LP
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LP version. The relative classicism of Frustration's sixth album, Our Decisions, quenches the thirst of fans whose reputation is well established. Their music is driven by an initial desire that is sufficiently complex that its expression is never a repetition. Frustration doesn't teach music history, but that doesn't mean they don't know where they come from. One of the great joys of listening to a band that's had time to figure out what it wants is that it plays together. The keyboards have six strings, the drummer has a mediator, the bass sings, no one's pulling their punches, and it shows. No doubt there are plenty of presets on his synths, but Fred Campo had to rip out what wasn't being used, and the result: no lasagna of layers, it's played like a scraper. If this is your first knife, be confident: the quintet crafts its blades with the savoir-faire of a Thiers cutlery factory. For snobs who roll on the floor when English is sung on the wrong side of the Channel, two tracks in French, "Omerta" and "Consumés," remind listeners that Fabrice Gilbert sings in an interlanguage that has kept the best of both idioms. It's the perfect way to savor his acid, no-holds-barred rants, which cut a swath through this "generation of apathetic truffles/fantasizing about assholes full of money." Produced in-house at Mains d'Oeuvres, premixed by guitarist Nicus, mixed by Jonathan Lieffroy, with Krikor on mastering: there's been a bit of a shift to port since their last album, So Cold Streams. The sound is less radically cold wave, and seeks a balance close to the instruments (the guitar plays inside your face, closer is in). There are traces of Indus on the drum skins of "Riptide," tunnel produced like a banger, and sung like new wave. Anne, from the Rouen combo Hammershøi, sings in German on "Vorbei," a rare moment of pause in this very intense record. The cardio-packed drums of "Catching Your Eye" recall the joyful drone of "Shades from the past," an instrumental from their first album, and confirm, if confirmation were needed, that Mark Adolf forms a formidable tandem with Pat Dambrine on bass. "Secular Prayer," which closes the album, confirms that Frustration are as much in the Ian Curtis family as they are in the Ian Dury family: it takes great care not to take themselves so seriously with such success.
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7"
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BORNBAD 142EP
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Two unissued tracks from Frustration's last album So Cold Streams (BORNBAD 123CD/LP).
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CD
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BORNBAD 123CD
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During the 1990s, wherever you lived in France, there was a handful of bands you could see five or ten times a year. In the most remote and rural places of the country, they inspired tons of kids to start their own band or fanzine, to go for something different. It was more than just music. It was a spirit, an idea. And in the last ten years, in France, no one encapsulated them better than Frustration. Somewhere in most remote and rural places of the country, some kids still need to look at the world with a different perspective. But still, no one was expecting a record such as So Cold Streams. At this stage, Frustration could have easily played it safe releasing a record basically identical to the previous one, intense, abrasive, honest but with no risk. They could have continued to fill the venues with no complaints. But right from the very first seconds of "Insane", a humungous electro-punk monster that wouldn't have been out of place on a 1988 EBM EP, you realize that things aren't gonna go as planned. Instead of setting up a comfortable routine, Frustration recorded its fifth album as if it were the first, like a bunch of guys who've been playing together for six months, who have nothing to lose and a ferocious will to bite. Of course, the post-punk shenanigans are still there (martial drums, elastic bass, hit-and-run guitars), but So Cold Streams is full of a brand-new energy, raucous lyrics, and full-on audacity. Listen to "Brume", an industrial nightmare with lyrics screamed in French. Or the poppy and intimate "Lil' White Sister" which sounds surprisingly like the Smiths or Echo & The Bunnymen. Or the insane "Slave Markets" on which the band invited Jason Williamson, half of Sleaford Mods -- a band that was pivotal in Frustration's new found youth. "Sleaford Mods is a band that, musically and humanly, gave us a real boost," explains Fabrice Gilbert (vocals). "They gave us a real sense of freedom, it allowed me to really say everything I wanted to say in my lyrics, to talk about extremely intimate subjects as well as much more general things, whether it be political or social."
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LP
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BORNBAD 123LP
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LP version. During the 1990s, wherever you lived in France, there was a handful of bands you could see five or ten times a year. In the most remote and rural places of the country, they inspired tons of kids to start their own band or fanzine, to go for something different. It was more than just music. It was a spirit, an idea. And in the last ten years, in France, no one encapsulated them better than Frustration. Somewhere in most remote and rural places of the country, some kids still need to look at the world with a different perspective. But still, no one was expecting a record such as So Cold Streams. At this stage, Frustration could have easily played it safe releasing a record basically identical to the previous one, intense, abrasive, honest but with no risk. They could have continued to fill the venues with no complaints. But right from the very first seconds of "Insane", a humungous electro-punk monster that wouldn't have been out of place on a 1988 EBM EP, you realize that things aren't gonna go as planned. Instead of setting up a comfortable routine, Frustration recorded its fifth album as if it were the first, like a bunch of guys who've been playing together for six months, who have nothing to lose and a ferocious will to bite. Of course, the post-punk shenanigans are still there (martial drums, elastic bass, hit-and-run guitars), but So Cold Streams is full of a brand-new energy, raucous lyrics, and full-on audacity. Listen to "Brume", an industrial nightmare with lyrics screamed in French. Or the poppy and intimate "Lil' White Sister" which sounds surprisingly like the Smiths or Echo & The Bunnymen. Or the insane "Slave Markets" on which the band invited Jason Williamson, half of Sleaford Mods -- a band that was pivotal in Frustration's new found youth. "Sleaford Mods is a band that, musically and humanly, gave us a real boost," explains Fabrice Gilbert (vocals). "They gave us a real sense of freedom, it allowed me to really say everything I wanted to say in my lyrics, to talk about extremely intimate subjects as well as much more general things, whether it be political or social."
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CD
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BORNBAD 087CD
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Frustration, the caring big brothers of the French indie scene, are closely intertwined with Born Bad's rise to fame. Their pathway in itself is symbolic: hailing from the garage closed circuit from the '90s, they gave up the tattoos and brilliantine rock to try something different - at the crossroads of punk and cold wave, of Métal Urbain, Killing Joke and Joy Division. The five fellows, not particularly renowned for their technical skills, found themselves invested with a peculiar grace, becoming avant-gardist just as they were entering their forties, and showing the way to a whole generation of bands that suddenly became aware that it was possible. Empires Of Shames is the third album by Frustration. They crushed mountain chains on Relax (BORNBAD 008LP, 2008), uncovered new continents and rainforests with Uncivilized (BORNBAD 046CD/LP, 2012), so it's only logical they now project to terraform Mars planet with this album that celebrates their return to a cold hostility that echoes the one of punks going by the name of a Polish capital city (Warsaw). "Dreams, Law, Rights And Duties", "Just Wanna Hide" and "Excess" are punches in the knees as signs of welcome from Fabrice, whose voice wanders from a Curtis-like spleen to a cockney spit. If "Arrows Of Love" sounds like the album's break, this mesmerizing Smiths-like ballad turns into a proletarian anthem, one of the peaks on the album. "Mother Earth In Rags" will undoubtedly be a hit, given its harangue as baroque and dramatic as a speech from Lenin; "Cause You Runaway" shows that the lads have also listened to James Murphy; and "No Place" is a synth-punk-noise gem that will generate one hell of a pogo at the end of their next concert. Frustration is now this fully grown-up lion that has no intention of ending up as a bedside rug. This is the only reason why we agree to give in to music, this intrusive thing that never asks for our advice. The rest is just a background noise of conceited babbling saturating the feed of our souls.
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LP
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BORNBAD 087LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Frustration, the caring big brothers of the French indie scene, are closely intertwined with Born Bad's rise to fame. Their pathway in itself is symbolic: hailing from the garage closed circuit from the '90s, they gave up the tattoos and brilliantine rock to try something different - at the crossroads of punk and cold wave, of Métal Urbain, Killing Joke and Joy Division. The five fellows, not particularly renowned for their technical skills, found themselves invested with a peculiar grace, becoming avant-gardist just as they were entering their forties, and showing the way to a whole generation of bands that suddenly became aware that it was possible. Empires Of Shames is the third album by Frustration. They crushed mountain chains on Relax (BORNBAD 008LP, 2008), uncovered new continents and rainforests with Uncivilized (BORNBAD 046CD/LP, 2012), so it's only logical they now project to terraform Mars planet with this album that celebrates their return to a cold hostility that echoes the one of punks going by the name of a Polish capital city (Warsaw). "Dreams, Law, Rights And Duties", "Just Wanna Hide" and "Excess" are punches in the knees as signs of welcome from Fabrice, whose voice wanders from a Curtis-like spleen to a cockney spit. If "Arrows Of Love" sounds like the album's break, this mesmerizing Smiths-like ballad turns into a proletarian anthem, one of the peaks on the album. "Mother Earth In Rags" will undoubtedly be a hit, given its harangue as baroque and dramatic as a speech from Lenin; "Cause You Runaway" shows that the lads have also listened to James Murphy; and "No Place" is a synth-punk-noise gem that will generate one hell of a pogo at the end of their next concert. Frustration is now this fully grown-up lion that has no intention of ending up as a bedside rug. This is the only reason why we agree to give in to music, this intrusive thing that never asks for our advice. The rest is just a background noise of conceited babbling saturating the feed of our souls.
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12"
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BORNBAD 062EP
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Includes remixes of "Dying City" by Frustration, off of their album Uncivilized, by some of the best French electro producers (Kap Bambino, Arnaud Rebotini, Blackmail, and Dick Voodoo). Comes in a generic black disco-bag.
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CD
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BORNBAD 046CD
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Born Bad Records presents Frustration's second LP. The beat is cold, cruel, and static, the bass player plays as if he had been paid twice, every track tastes like those glasses you drink down before paying your dues to the human race and Fabrice Gilbert's voice drips down on the whole thing with heart and gusto. In other words: shit is brutal. Fifty tons of black terror throwing ice shards on the streets of dead cities. Frustration is not your average indie/punk/post-whatever unit, especially in France. Despite little to no press and virtually no support from the mainstream media, this Parisian gang plays sold-out shows all over the country and has sold over 10,000 copies of their previous record. The reason is quite simple: in seven years, Frustration built an audience that is as diverse (punks, clubbers, skinheads, rock dads, workers, new wave amazons, temporary secretaries, fashionistas, you name it) as it is loyal (you will see most of their crowd at every damn show) and massive. An audience attracted by intense, sincere and bullshit-free records played by a bunch of intense, sincere, and bullshit-free dudes. And that's about it. No mystical soup, no boring deals.
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LP
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BORNBAD 046LP
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LP version. Born Bad Records presents Frustration's second LP. The beat is cold, cruel, and static, the bass player plays as if he had been paid twice, every track tastes like those glasses you drink down before paying your dues to the human race and Fabrice Gilbert's voice drips down on the whole thing with heart and gusto. In other words: shit is brutal. Fifty tons of black terror throwing ice shards on the streets of dead cities. Frustration is not your average indie/punk/post-whatever unit, especially in France. Despite little to no press and virtually no support from the mainstream media, this Parisian gang plays sold-out shows all over the country and has sold over 10,000 copies of their previous record. The reason is quite simple: in seven years, Frustration built an audience that is as diverse (punks, clubbers, skinheads, rock dads, workers, new wave amazons, temporary secretaries, fashionistas, you name it) as it is loyal (you will see most of their crowd at every damn show) and massive. An audience attracted by intense, sincere and bullshit-free records played by a bunch of intense, sincere, and bullshit-free dudes. And that's about it. No mystical soup, no boring deals.
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LP
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BORNBAD 008LP
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2008 release. Powerful, potent songs yield a brutal post-punk sound. Just imagine Warsaw meets Wire meets The Fall and you will already have a good idea of their musical universe. Add to their explosive cocktail the tension of retained violence and madness, a real singer who knows his craft, agitated, spasmodic drums that make the drummer of ESG look like Christian Vander of Magma, and degenerate keyboards that will leave your head aching. You will realize that Frustration is the antithesis of those lame art-school boys who are allegedly the new media-friendly "return of post-punk."
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viewing 1 To 11 of 11 items
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