Dutch Futurismo — Festival Of Misfits

Dutch Futurismo’s Festival of Misfits is part of a series of releases by Hungarian-born artists and musicians Éva Polgár and Sándor Vály. Working with Nea Lindgren and Mikael Jurmu, Polgár and Vály constuct music from instruments built from scrap materials from the streets and waste bins, with slightly manipulated spoken word vocals.

This 9 track album is recorded using just one microphone, and yet the sounds are perfectly balanced across the mix. This is, for me, where the postives end.Unfortunately, this album does sound just a little staid. It’s kind of Dada for Dada’s sake. The brutality and aggression of early Test Dept, SPK and Einsturzende Neubauten (all exponents of metal bashing) are sadly lacking. This is more like Stomp with frills.

I think my main issue with this is the desire for the artists to explain the art to you in their songs, there’s an issue there that smacks of pretension for me. This whole project just sounds like an arts council funded 6th form project. It is nice gentle metal bashing mixed with spoken words that have a guttural edge to them (however, I think this is more due to the accent). And I think that’s another problem. Its far too Nice. No metal should be hit nicely, you may as well ask James Last to cover Merzbow!

The promotional shots of the band show balaclava’ed and topless men hitting metal – I’m not suggesting we have to work with a stereotype here, but that image certainly doesn’t look like an all frills ensemble to me. I’m expecting something which doesn’t happen – aggression: testosterone fueled and painful to hear. This is album is like asking Blixa Bargeld to ballet dance Swan Lake in a tutu as the Prima Ballerina! IT simply wouldn’t work. (Mind you Blixa Bargeld would probably try his damnedest!)

In conclusion either I’m missing the point or this is, as I mentioned before, art for arts sake. Either way, this makes it artless in my opinion.