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Cold War Nostalgia

by Hardtack Oak

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1.
2.
Biorobot 00:39
3.
Der Westen 01:30
4.
Space Race 01:06
5.
The Agencies 01:03
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
Downfall 01:31

about

This is a record that might have appeared first in 1987, or in 1993, 2000, 2015. The point is: it doesn’t matter. Despite its title, „Cold War Nostalgia“ is music with no direct historical context. It feeds itself on pure negativity – aggression, darkness, a fear of a future, a loss of control. It’s a punk record. The kind of punk that never made it to the museums and opera halls, but instead stayed in the margins, a music as self-referential as can be, representing only itself. A cultivated, ritualised emotional outburst. Listening to the twelve-and-a-half-minutes of mayhem that is „Cold War Nostalgia“, it is very clear that it makes prototypical use of the whole hardcore canon of feedbacks, blasting beats, guitar shreds, distorted screaming; initially, it was intended as a hats-off to japanese and northern-european hardcorepunk in its natal phase, but in its execution, it raises questions of authenticity and authorship. Hammer und Axt, the furious duo behind Hardtack Oak, could be in their late teens, although they aren’t, it’s just what’s associated with this type of music.

Today, one could assume that „Punk Won“ – because punk is nearly everywhere, sucked in and transformed by capitalism. Because punk is the answer to a question: „How can I deny my cake and eat it, too?“ It’s the perfect excuse and the easiest way how any and every white male can partake in capitalism without a feeling of guilt. Punk won because it mostly was made by and for a widespread elite: mostly white, mostly male, with access to instruments, communication devices, time, money. Nonetheless, it was a very pure, unaltered expression of primal fear, pressed into smart political slogans. Hardtack Oak is an exercise in expressing that, leaving out any traces of identity, reducing the music to its most functional parts. And in its reinterpretation, it delivers.

On the verge of new global wars, „nostalgia“ becomes many things: an updated version of the civilised west being hungry for aggression, and a striking resemblance of the mid-eighties, when any act of violence seemed possible. Nostalgia is also a cypher for keeping things simple: the lyrics sound as if being produced by a punk A.I., and yet, reading the lyrics to „Biorobot“ or „The Downfall“, it’s pretty clear that the eighties were just a warm-up for today’s global system re-entering an age of brutalism on all levels, from the interpersonal to large-scale politics. The war is on. Or, as Hardtack Oak put it: nationalism is all the rage – downfall.

credits

released November 9, 2018

All songs written, recorded, edited and produced by Hammer & Axt.

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Otomatik Muziek Germany

WE DO NOT ACCEPT DEMOS

OM Newsletter: otomatikmuziek.substack.com

Distribution EU: ANOST
Distribution US: The Business
Distribution Japan: Tobira

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