Tapete Vinyl, CD & Tape 141 Items

This is the regular LP version with 14 tracks. Please be aware of the limited double LP edition with 20 tracks that we offer.

An album title with not one, but two exclamation marks, meaning something akin to “what a palaver”as it primes the listener for songs like “Cinemascope”. Themes such as personal injuries (“Ich bin cool”), betrayal (“Mes copines”), personality deficiencies brought on by drug abuse (“Methedrine”), rage (“Hass-Satellit”), inflated opinions of oneself (“Brezel says”), suicide (“Le Spleen”), grief (“Dancing with a memory") and souls in torment ("Elektroschocktherapie") are presented in widescreen format in and often in the most entertaining fashion.

Françoise Cactus apparently once said of herself: "I am a linguistic artist who can live with the laughs". Which says it all really, although Stereo Total’s penchant for wordplay is not in evidence in all of the lyrics on this record. Many tracks here echo the rather more sombre, desperate songs she wrote for her first band "Les Lolitas". Nevertheless, the anarchic humour which we have come to associate with Stereo Total resurfaces on compositions like "Keine Musik" and "Einfach".

Musically, this Stereo Total disc, their twelfth, cannot be readily aligned with anything at all. If earlier albums resonated with influences from chanson, trash or disco to punk, rock’n’roll and NDW (German New Wave), Stereo Total have now arrived in their very own musical universe which pays no heed to stylistic devices, reminiscent of “rien de tout”. What we can say: Françoise Cactus excels in the art of 8-track cassette recording, thus creating an extraordinary sonic experience. Brezel Göring draws on his favoured array of instruments more likely to be found in the hands of children in households where a musical education is not on the agenda: plastic baby organ and dreadful mouse piano, accompanied by home-made guitars glued together by less than gifted artisans.

1. Stereo Total continue to make electronic music with flea market Casio sounds which fly in the face of what is generally accepted to be electronic music. Each musical instrument could probably be translated into social coordinates and in this sense, the tools of Stereo Total’s trade speak an unequivocal language.

2. Stereo Total continue to play LoFi garage rock music which makes a mockery of all the masculine clichés associated with guitars. When Françoise Cactus plays the drums, the rhythms of feminism, anti-professionalism and subversive dilettantism come to the fore.

Any attempts to pigeonhole Stereo Total are destined to fail. In the words of Flann O'Brien: "When shall we ever see their like again?"

A word to our younger readers: Stereo Total began making music before the internet existed, before the Euro, before Germany reunited and before there were even bands or music. They will probably still be playing when all that has been consigned to the dustbin of history. The group comprises Françoise Cactus, who spends her time as a radio presenter, author and artist between band sessions, and Brezel Göring, a man whose very choice of stage name was motivated by a desire not to be taken seriously by music and art scribes.

When they began making music together, they made it their mission to disrupt rules, to destabilize ideas. They may not have thrown European harmonic structure or 4/4 time out of the window, but they have certainly asked questions of every other aspect of musical and lyrical techniques. Lines like "you look good from the back", "love as a threesome", "I am naked", "I’m the young gigolo with a smoker’s lung " and "sex complex" are designed to repel serious music lovers whilst shocking them with sound engineering which falls well below the standards of mainstream listeners.

Following up on their critically acclaimed debut album 'Exit', the postpunk band A PROJECTION will release their second album 'Framework'.

Recorded by Niklas Berglöf at Redmount Studios in Stockholm, the album was mixed by the award-winning mix engineer Magnus Lindberg.

20 years of Tapete Records - Our first release, if memory serves, was in 2002. Damn, time flies so fast when you"re having fun. The world has changed a lot in the last 20 years but one detail has remained the same: We"re still putting out great music. That"s a bit reassuring, isn"t it? So we thought in our Tapete Building at Stahltwiete 10 in Hamburg-Altona: Let"s look back and start a series of good, old-fashioned, fantastic label compilations in the style of "Shadow Facory", "Tamla Motown Is Hot! Hot! Hot!" or "Wanna Buy A Bridge?"...something like that. And so here is "Intact & Smiling - The Weird & Wonderful World Of Tapete Records Vol.1". It wasn"t that easy to choose 28 out of about 5000 released songs, but what"s easy? Therefore a series. "Intact & Smiling Vol. 1" concentrates on the poppy side of Tapete Records, the basic tone is upbeat and uplifting. Can"t hurt these days. The title comes from the John Howard & The Night Mail song which says: "Intact and smiling, an independent soul, nobody"s slave". What could be more fitting? We would like to thank all the great artists who have released music with us over the last two decades, especially the bands and artists who have so kindly and unbureaucratically made available their great songs for this compilation. And of course a big thank you to you who listen to, buy and stream (well, yes) Tapete Records albums and songs. So close your eyes, open your ears, open your hearts, open up a bottle and step into The Weird & Wonderful World Of Tapete Records Vol. 1.