SPIELT NOISE BOYS (vinyl)

Description

Taken from a cassette released in 25 copies in 1980, these tracks, haphazardly recorded on a dictaphone and stolen equipment, already hint at the success Stephan Eicher would achieve with his brother the following year and the Grauzone project (remember their hit "Eisbaer"). In short, puny synths, haunted vocals, and drum machines suffering. At 16, Stephan Eicher moved to Zurich and joined the F+F school, an alternative and radical version of the Beaux-Arts. He became familiar with video techniques, determined to become a filmmaker. In parallel, he organized happenings and Dada concerts with a small group of friends called Noise Boys, which only lasted a few months. He then tried to reproduce some of the Noise Boys' repertoire alone, reinterpreting them through spontaneous recordings on a dictaphone; with a Roland Promars keyboard, a Korg MS20, and a sublime CR78 Beat Box that he ran through a Big Muff distortion pedal to get the right gritty sound. He then ironically titled the cassette from this improvised session "Stephan Eicher spielt Noise Boys." This marvel contains seven tracks, which are the ones you find reissued here. In 1980, following the Zurich youth movement in which Stephan Eicher participated, he founded the electro-industrial band Grauzone with his younger brother Martin (one couldn't speak of techno-pop at the time). With the hit "Eisbaer," Grauzone achieved real success (600,000 singles sold). In 1983, Grauzone, whose signing with major label EMI had been a mistake, was already moribund, and Stephan gently began his shift towards pop music with a first album, "Les Chansons bleues," but that's another story...