For a particular kind of committed Internet Seeker, news of a TRABANT LP will no doubt elicit a few lusty groans and darken the odd conspicuous area. A collective formed in communist Hungary in 1980, centred around the anti-authoritarian creative activity of co-founders Gábor Lukin, Marietta Méhes and János Vetö, and with connecting ties to Vig Mihaly, and by association famed-director Béla Tarr, the TRABANT mythos has been in circulation for some time without the band actually really ever releasing much - until now, I think we can list their discography as a single 7" tied to a film you've probably never seen. Don't attribute it to the usual destructive forces of lassitude, indifference or the kind of comical bad luck that seems to befall dysfunctional musicians more often than most - film scores were the only way around authoritarian Communist measures to control cultural production and dissemination, and TRABANT measured their value by their independence and, it would seem, their self-sustainability. There's apparently over a hundred recordings in existence, a decent number already present on YouTube and most of which have been reportedly preserved and archived by Lukin with a view to future release. That future is now finally here and the reality is that this record could have ended up being very different to the one we have in front of us. Should things go well, I'm sure we'll see more TRABANT collections appear down the line. For now, what Purge have collated is a markedly compelling primer. At just nine tracks long, some of which are substantially lengthier than others, we're afforded a version of TRABANT that presents both sides of the coin, time-stamping their music within a broader understanding of early 80s underground culture while also stating their unique properties. There's a broadly new wave feel to a number of the tracks that Méhes sings on, that sense of pulling from pop's broad lexicon with a punk-driven iconoclasm. Elsewhere, particularly as the run times extend and the arrangements become more ornate, the band recall the kind of artrock we might associate with Cale, Reed, Ayers and Nico. Since it's all sung in their native tongue, the effect is decidedly more alien than what might ordinarily be expected, communicating a thrilling sense of the other, but also - and I'd suggest perhaps most importantly - a self-determining feeling of freedom, resistance and desire. Cult doesn't even cut it: from whatever language, time or locale, there's few better central tenets. Edition of 300.
