Search - Katzenjammer Kabarett :: Grand Guignol & Varietes

Be it death-rock, electro, punk or cabaret, they are here to charm you, seduce you, and leave you merrily twitching to their infectious songs.

atzenjammer Kabarett, a young French four-piece, returns with their second release - Grand-Guignol & Variétés- and a firmer pop approach mixing incredible stories and catchy melodic hooks. Be it deathrock, electro, punk or dark-cabaret, they are here to charm you, seduce you, and leave you merrily twitching to their infectious songs. About the musical style, perhaps the best is to guess it for yourself! Mary Komplikated's sultry vocals ride atop their Dadaesque, Avant-Garde blend of sounds: the din created by Herr Katz, Klischee and Mr. Guillotine.

On this follow-up to their 2006 debut (reissued on Projekt), Katzenjammer Kabarett (this French band with a German name and English lyrics) shows their sensibility for the diletante and frivolous aesthetic of several past movements. Their compositions revel in varied and various collages, utilizing electronic, pop, deathrock, and classical-music sounds as well as traditional cabaret songs generating the peculiar atmosphere one probably found in old fashioned Lieder (the German art songs from the Nineteenth-century). A considerable part of their work comes from second-hand elements borrowed from several preceding movements and styles, but whose signs had been systematically altered and distorted. Thus, the music composed by Klischee, supported by H.K..'s lyrics and Mr. Guillotine's necessary pragmatism, creates an alchemy with the carefree Miss Mary K's voice and theatrical singing which embodies all the magic, the cynism and the absurdity of the hangover cabaret.

Katzenjammer Kabarett arrives at a furiously modern sound still colored with electronics but more baroque - it can speak to and charm anyone. Grand-Guignol & Variétés nevertheless devises an embroidery of unheard and original melodies. Fresh and more mature, the album offers a new serial of songs with efficient melodies, though often with complex structure (breaks, surprising beats, dissonances), and strange lyrics tinted with cruel and absurd realism merrily sung. No longer are we mere listeners as Katzenjammer Kabarett carries us to their weird universe. However Grand-Guignol & Variétés is not a rejection of reality but rather transforms it into new dimensions by introducing non-mimetic, non-realistic artful constructions instead of faithful imitation, by the use of ironic distancing, by denying emotional identification and by portraying contrast (for example in "Hidden & Sick," Little Henry's tragic end in contrast to the music).