NEW ALBUM "DIE REPUBLIK VON ESO"
OUT ON FEBRUARY 14, 2025
DRNTTCKS see themselves as part of a network of experimental German music projects that also includes bands such as ZEMENT, DATASHOCK, BALDRUIN and BRANNTEN SCHNÜRE. This scene is united by a preference for improvised soundscapes, hybrid aesthetics and reflection on themes such as esotericism, social criticism and the tension between seriousness and irony. And – so to speak – a provinciality that is almost 'conscious': with music not being the center of life and creative small businesses as a precarious tool for survival – but with music as part of life, a resolute alternative to escaping into the artists' ghettos of the media cities. These introspective qualities are combined on "DIE REPUBLIK VON ESO" – their first real studio album – with the ability to translate global themes into intimate, surreal soundscapes.
The album critically explores personal experiences of crisis, political alienation, the influence of new age mindsets and the connection of self-optimization ideologies with neoliberalism and fascism. This is also reflected in the cover artwork by Würzburg artist Laila Quist - political black magic between tin foil hats and Donald Trump, a bourgeois ball game in a surreal private thicket, Germany’s (wannabe) chancellors Scholz and Merz as cute little circus animals.
Consequently, the album's songs oscillate between hidden object pictures and genre paintings of society, transforming the common thread into an enveloping fabric. In the opener "Mindsetlohn", freejazz noise loops meet Wolf Eyes references and a bluesy guitar while a subordinate synth bass briefly summons the ghosts of rave as a counterculture. Middle-age persons who glorify the depoliticisation of the '90s and then end up in the streamlined "German Zen" which sounds as if Aaron Dilloway has had too much Prosecco. In "Ultrabewusst (In Dub)", cutting post-punk comes to the forefront only to be replaced by repetitive kraut and fragmentary no wave locked up in the "Sultans Of Gute Laune"'s den. Tech euphoria and provincial despair between Indietronica and Gold Panda are celebrated in the first song on the B side, "Forever Wasted In Lappendorf", before the 14 minute long closing track "Europa 3" draws you entirely into a trance-like fever dream that simultaneously invokes the endless present of the Berlin Republic and the end of the neoliberal age.
"DIE REPUBLIK VON ESO" has been recorded at Florian Helleken's Hersbrooklyn Studios where pals like ZEMENT and rehearsal room neighbours like AKNE KID JOE also refined their sound.