Grauzone.

I've been out of action on the music blog for such a long time because I simply didn't know where to go with it, but now I know... I will take the obscurest bands I can find from Belgium, Italy or in this case, Switzerland and paste the wiki entry for these bands...


At the end of 1979 Marco Repetto (drums) and GT (bass) left the punk band Glueams, to form together with Martin Eicher (guitar, vocals, synthesizer) a new band called Grauzone. Martin had already supported Glueams on their single mental.





They gave their first concert in March 1980 at the club Spex in Berne. Martin's brother Stephan Eicher (guitar, synthesizer) and Claudine Chirac (saxophone) supplemented the group temporarily in live appearances and recordings. After ten concerts, four singles and an album the group split up at the end of 1982.

GT and Marco Repetto formed together with the former Glueams guitarist Martin Pavlinec and the drummer Dominique Uldry, the band "Missing Link", later "Eigernordwand". GT supplemented the futurism oriented performance group "Red Catholic Orthodox Jewish Chorus" around performance artist Edy Marconi, in which occasionally Marco Repetto also played. Later the group changed their name to "I Suonatori". Stephan Eicher started a successful solo career. 1988 published Martin Eicher his solo-EP "Spellbound Lovers". Marco Repetto started in 1989 a new career as Techno and Ambient DJ, musician and producer (a.o. mittageisen v2).



The band is most famous for their 1981 hit "Eisbär" ("Polar Bear"), which was later covered by the French band Nouvelle Vague. The single went to #12 in Germany and #6 in Austria. Another track that was played a lot in dance clubs in the eighties was the instrumental Film 2.



That is the extent of my knowledge about this band... I first heard them when they popped up on Hot Chip's DJ kicks compilation a few years ago, since then I have heard Ivan Smagghe airing them and  Andrew Weatherall played them at a night I went to far too long ago, I have since discovered that they are a pretty awesome post punk 80s band but because they never really got out of Switzerland I never got to listen to them until the internet had well and truly happened. but it kicks shit out of Kajagoogoo or Flock of Seagulls. In certain places they sound lots like Public Image ltd, Gang of Four, and you might even expect that Kele from Bloc Party may have a record or two by them. In other places they sound like the goth techno you would expect to hear at the Panoramabar in Berlin or London's Fabric. It is also uncanny how much they sound like Joy Division.














Part of the magic of exploring a band like this is that they were people who lived directly in the embers of the second world war. These were guys born into the threat of nuclear war, they didn't have the same experiences of the 80s that Britain did and as a result the music sounds different not only in terms of the language barrier, but the production values, emphasis on rhythmn and song structure is vastly different to Duran Duran and Bananarama. Soft Cell and the early Human League material is the only tangible connection to the British music that was happening at the time, but more at the forefront were Wham and Culture Club, the latters wading in on politics was 'War is stupid, People are stupid'... Thanks for that Mr George, now I think you'd better be off because there's a rentboy chained to your radiator.