Girls In Synthesis To Release “Konsumrausch” EP

Noisy trio Girls In Synthesis are wonderfully described as looking “more like a terror cell than a rock group”. Lyrically they are dealing with working class experience of fragile mental health, social immobility, a sense of powerlessness, precarity, anxiety and the corrosive effects of a hostile society. Straight down the barrel vocal delivery from John Linger as he barks out “I’ve seen a glimpse of the future!”. Since their formation, the band’s output has taken in anarcho-punk, noise-rock, post-punk and electronic influences, without lingering on any of those genres. The definitive Girls In Synthesis sound is more than the sum of these parts.

More of a collective than a traditional musical outfit, everything is done in-house with the group’s collaborators. With an unparalleled live show, the band’s cult like dedication to their art has gained them a hard-core fanbase in the UK, with many following the group on entire UK tours. Their new release, Konsumrausch, an exclusive standalone mini album for German label Hound Gawd Records!, explores various sonic territories and expands on the group’s previous releases by adding further experimentation.

Konsumrausch sees recent singles Pulling Teeth and Enveloped cut on vinyl for the first time. The former is a 9 minute, tri-part post-punk opus, which flits from sludgy noise-rock to musique concrete and, finally, to a disco influenced four-to-the-floor, spoken word conclusion. This is accompanied by lyrics that explore political manipulation and the finger pointing by the ruling classes, but in a non-patronising, non-sloganeering way. The song has become a centrepiece for the live shows since its release.

The latter, Enveloped, is possibly the band’s most daring song to date. Based around an industrial-edged drum machine loop, the song swaps the usual splintered guitars for grinding, churning organ. It could possibly, or lazily, described as electro-punk. The bleak mood of the music is reflected in the lyrics, which deal with the narrator linking their own loss of self-worth with a foreseen view of the same happening to the human race en masse. The release also features three brand-new tracks in Bypassing, Interlude and The Engine. Dealing with the latter, The Engine retains the guitar-led edge of the early Girls In Synthesis releases, but strips back the layers of noise and feedback to leave a more skeletal, angular framework over which lyrics of anxiety, nostalgia and claustrophobia are explored.

Bypassing is another song rooted in electronics, rhythmically centred around a Western-style, cowboy gallop. Lyrically, the song cryptically explores the aforementioned destructive focus on nostalgia and mental struggle. Lastly, coming in at under a minute, Interlude can be perceived as an urban poem set to the aural surroundings of the narrator. With field recordings taken from London public transport and added unsettling synths and feedback, it presents a nauseous blend of high anxiety in the modern age. Konsumrausch was produced and mixed by Girls In Synthesis and recorded at the Gun Factory and S.I.C.K. Studio in London. The Konsumrausch EP can be pre-ordered on vinyl via Hound Gawd! Records & digitally through Bandcamp