Negu Technic

 

NEGU GORRIAK – GURE JARRERA (Esan Ozenki ,1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8SUNJIB6vU&t=1457s

If you only listen to one industrial hip-hop punk collage album in a language you can’t place this fortnight, make it this one.  
 
Or, I don’t know, a different one, I have no frame of reference.  But, regardless of a complete lack of context, this record is pretty much the distillation of energy in music, and as such is a wonderful ride. The opening is a one minute car crash of block-rocking beats, clunky samples and what might be a keening Armenian duduk.  There are a few of these little interludes in the album, and they’re surprisingly the most enjoyable parts.  Some of the edits are so cleaver-clumsy I often couldn’t tell whether I was listening to the album or whether a YouTube advert had cut in unceremoniously.
 
The proper songs (for a given value of “proper”) are huge chunky rockers with a post-electro beatbox framework, which fall somewhere between Big Audio Dynamite and Ministry with a manic punk gurn.  There are moments when I’m reminded of acts as disparate as early Beastie Boys, Rage Against The Machine, Aerosmith and EMF, but Negu Gorriak will never be mistaken for any of them, as they bundle frenetically into each track as if thjey have to get the record done before dinner burns.  Like many foundational punk and rap artists, it feels as though the itching desire to say something has over-ridden any concerns as musically bourgeois as second takes or edits.  Of course, I don’t know what it actually is they are saying, but we figure it’s mostly pointed, and someone or -thing is doubtless the target of the (admittedly blunt) sonic weaponry.  
 
There are times when the sloppiness is frustrating – bringing in the robo-vox from “O, Superman” for all of 3 seconds before abandoning it is particularly mystifying – and times when the songs are such dumbass rock generica it’s only the sonic rawness differentiating them from the soundtrack to any beery frat party, but the experience as a whole is galvanising, which is what so much popular music is ultimately all about.
 
Final track “Euskal Herri Nerea” is a surprisingly tight piece of rubber-bassed ska rock, as if to prove that they can do it by the book if they choose, they just have other things on their minds most of the time.  Well, fair enough, mark us down as convinced: Up the revolution!  Or down!  Or whatever it is we’re supposed to think!