De Staat

Langsam und besinnlich geht bei De Staat gar nichts. Nicht einmal ein Jahr ist vergangen, seit die Holländer Wait For Evolution auf uns losgelassen haben, und schon steht mit Machinery das Nachfolgealbum in den Startlöchern. In der Zwischenzeit haben sie ihr Möglichstes getan, die Konzertbühnen der Welt zu erobern, und sind mit begeisterten Rezensionen von überallher zurückgekehrt. De Staat, sollte man meinen, können gerade gar nichts falsch machen, nur schneller, lauter, wilder und besser. Die an Rockstar-Arroganz grenzende Selbstsicherheit des ersten Albums scheint auch auf Machinery nicht verloren gegangen zu sein.

All I See beginnt genau dort, wo Wait For Evolution aufhörte: Mit röhrenden Gitarren, testosteron-getränktem Geschrei und jeder Menge Energie. Und doch ist das dieses Mal weit mehr als nur Rockhelden-Zitat. Der Stakkato-Gesang scheint die überbordende Instrumentierung regelrecht auszubremsen und gewinnt dadurch an Bedeutung – De Staat haben eine Botschaft, auch wenn es eine typische Selbstdarstellungsgeste ist: „All I see is how we roll now!“ Dass das Ganze an Kaiser Chiefs, also die neueren Rockhelden, erinnert, unterstützt diese Botschaft nur. De Staat sind hier und jetzt. So einfach ist das.

Und so ist das ganze Album eine überdrehte und spannende Geschichte. Selbst Tiergeräusche (die man auf einem Titel namens Old MacDonald Don’t Have No Farm No More nun wirklich erwarten kann) und die wildesten Elektronikklänge tun der Hörfreude keinen Abbruch. Im Gegenteil: Der Hörer selbst wird irgendwann so überdreht, dass er oder sie früher oder später mit sich selbst Wetten darüber abschließt, was wohl als Nächstes kommt. Und das ist so einiges: I’m A Rat mischt traditionellen Kehlgesang und Keyboardklänge mit beinahe bedrohlich wirkender Elektronik zu einem garantierten Mitstampfer. Tumbling Down verzichtet ganz auf Tradition und steigert sich zum Kampf zwischen Mensch und Maschine, und Psycho Disco wird durch einen unerklärten Riss im Raum-Zeit-Kontinuum einfach immer schneller.

Was auf Wait For Evolution begann, haben De Staat mit ihrem neuen Album untermauert: Diese Band hat so viele Ideen, dass einzelne Alben bald nicht mehr reichen werden. Bei De Staat geht einfach alles, ob geborgt, geklaut oder selbst zusammenphantasiert, und heraus kommt immer wieder ein beeindruckendes, und oft ziemlich wahnsinniges Resultat. - alternativmusik.de (German)

Mit einem Knall eröffnen die Niederländer von De Staat ihr Zweitwerk. Wer die Musikkaskaden mit hysterischem Sprechgesang übersteht, erlebt einen Schwenk zu beschwingtem Pop-Schmelz. Daraufhin komplett vom Wahnsinn befallen, ähneln sie vertrackten Charakteren der Marke Cloroform und Fantômas. Weiter geht der Ritt auf Pfaden, die marginal an The Heavy erinnern. Deren dreckiger Funk-Soul-Rock wirkt gegen die Anwandlungen von De Staat jedoch plötzlich handzahm und aufgeräumt. Mit angeknackstem Funk, Achtziger-Elektronikwahn und Neunziger-Industrial-Anleihen, wahnwitziger Musikalität, die sich am Blues und Traditional ebenso ergötzt wie an Indie-Pop und Nischenmetal, zeigt "Machinery", dass zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn kein schmaler Grat ist. Dieses Album ist vollkommen wahnsinnig UND genial.
- unclessallys.net (German)

For anyone who’s ever tried it, it’s astonishingly hard to pretend to be something you’re not. It’s like continual method acting, only with no script or direction. Whether it’s trying to integrate with a mysterious group smoking Gauloises and discussing abstract art at university or attempting to impress that pretty girl at work reading Baudelaire, you can usually get away with a few well-rehearsed remarks, but before long you’re backing into a corner, sweating profusely and trying to explain away your confusion between Kandinsky and Nijinsk. It’s the same in music. If a band attempts to creep into a musical field that they haven’t at least tentatively spread their roots towards in the past or that they don’t have a reasonable understanding of, the results are typically shocking. For example, when Radiohead decided to go all electronica on our asses with Kid A, they had at least developed a genuine respect, understanding and careful appraisal that helps to cover their strides into No Man’s Land. Conversely, when Keane tried to go all Eighties electro-soul on us because it was simply a new direction and a backlash; the world simply vomited and went back to sleep.

Holland’s De Staat however, will have no such concerns. They’ll never try too hard. And thus, just like the kid in your GCSE class who never had to comb his hair because it always fell perfectly and just so happened to suit any form of clothing thrown at him, De Staat are effortlessly brilliant. Their second record Machinery showcases a flagrant and wonderful disregard of any particular pigeonhole, box or label. Their policy of flinging not only the kitchen sink, but also the water meter, the piping, and most probably the reservoir valves at songs works because De Staat know and understand their territory and quarry perfectly. And its sheer ease of movement suggests that De Staat weren’t trying to make friends with the cool kids in the schoolyard; they were the ones hosting auditions.

From the opening football bugles and Doctor Who psychedelia of opener ‘Ah, I See’ (a song Kasabian have summarily tried and failed to write on several occasions) and the addictive minimal clang-stomp of lead single ‘Sweatshop’, the template is set: if it sounds good and it’s coherently executed, it’s in. Though this scattergun approach too often results in angular, uncomfortable listening, the biggest compliment one can pay to Machinery is that despite its rocks and boulders, it flows with surprising chemistry and coherence: the dark Beefheart blues of ‘Old Macdonald Don’t Have No Farm No More’ comfortably snuggled with the sweeping pop echoes of ‘I’ll Never Marry You’. But it’s the record’s final third, when they finally lose any sense of making a vaguely sane record that the dirty fun really kicks in. ‘Psycho Disco’ and ‘Serial Killer’ are an absolute riot: a pure delight of dense excursions to Waits-town and Cave-ville, all full of smoke and industrial machines whirring. Only at the conclusion, the dragging epilogue of ‘Back to the Grind’ do they show any sense of fatigue, but by you’re your brain is politely asking for a rest anyway. The sheer invention of the record justifies its existence alone.

Essentially, De Staat belong in a weird, labyrinthine world of their own. They don’t sound like anyone else and they don’t want to. The greatest skill is the ability to filter out bullshit and construct something that has both intellectual value and wide-eyed, sweat-drenched, Bond-villain diabolism. There’s often a debate about the polarity of 'intelligence' and 'fun' in music; almost as if it’s impossible to cover both sides of the coin with one clenched fist. De Staat are proof that it’s perfectly possible. - Drownedinsound.com

One of the biggest dangers in music journalism is hyperbole – either succumbing to it or producing it – and so press releases must be treated with the utmost caution lest you be led astray by their wildly over-eager praise and deeply emotive adjectives. However, the press release that accompanied De Staat was enough to arouse interest and if the comparisons drawn (Nick Cave, Captain Beefheart, Queens of the stone age) only draw part of the picture, well we can forgive them for getting hung up on the big names.

Actually, the first name that springs to mind when checking out De Staat’s excellent second album ‘Machinery’ is the Butthole Surfers. That is old Butthole surfers (before they got all screwed up by electronic gizmos on ‘weird revolution’) when they released singles like ‘Pepper’ and hard rock belters like ‘the lord is a monkey’ and, in the same vein, De Staat are genre-hopping Gremlins of the first order who take in the eclectic, grand slamming funk of Beck, the dance grooves of Kelis’ ‘Milkshake’, the horny soul of QOTSA via “Make it wit chu” and the lost, gothic romanticism of Nick Cave often within the same song.

Opening with the slamming “Ah, I see” which has a massive bass rumble, sub-rave repetitive sound effects and guitars which are channelled from a heavy metal concert, it’s as if Primus and the Butthole Surfers have magically got it together and reappeared after a decade in the wilderness and the result is electrifying. Torre Florim’s mercurial vocals sit at the heart of the thing – like Gibby Haynes he adopts whatever character suits the song, often sounding completely different depending upon the musical backdrop his band decide to provide as we quickly see on the second track; the bonkers, brilliant slice of twisted alternative pop-funk that is “sweatshop”, a track that references Outkast, Kelis and Beck without missing a beat or sounding in any way contrived. It’s mad as a fish in willies, but a huge amount of fun. Moving swiftly on without pausing for breath the band lurch into “I’ll never marry you” which is so Nick Cave-esque you have to pause to make damn sure you haven’t popped in some weird-ass alternative compilation into the CD player instead especially as the chorus sees the track segue blithely into pure QOTSA territory complete with falsetto and languid guitars. However, this is De Staat and they can only remain serious for so long which is why the insane “Old Macdonald don’t have no farm no more” (which sounds like a martinet Sergeant-Major singing a marching song to a skeletal, bass-laden dance track) appears immediately afterwards and sends the lunacy, and genius, levels into overdrive.

If ‘I’ll never marry you’ contained elements that were QOTSA, ‘I’m a rat’ is pure Josh Homme sleaze, with a creepy falsetto backed by a gentle, groin-rocking groove that suits the bedroom far better than the dance floor although it may prove effective in either, and you start to wonder if maybe De Staat are trying to replace Barry White as the bedroom crooners of choice. If that is there aim, however, they hide it well when they unleash deranged tracks like ‘keep me home’ which is dark, brooding and sounds like Black Rebel Motorcycle Club playing the soundtrack to one of David Bowie’s cocaine-induced nightmares complete with haunting gospel-esque backing vocals and lush instrumentation. Upon fading out through a haze of feedback and unsettling noise ‘Tumbling down’ resets the band’s groove via a mechanistic drum beat and Blur (13 era) style harmonies – sort of how you imagine 13 would have sounded if it had been produced by Trent Reznor and Saul Williams while ‘Psycho disco’ sounds more-or-less exactly as you might imagine it would sound!

With paranoia seemingly creeping in to the band’s set, ‘rooster man’ is a fantastic slab of twisted stoner groove that suggests that the initial high of the first few tracks has now diminished to a vague, sweat-soaked sheen of paranoia that makes for unhinged, but utterly addictive listening. Huge slabs of synth crawl over the bass-led groove while the vocals shimmer under the layer of reverb that attempts to smother them. If hell has a disco, this could very well be its spectacular soundtrack. ‘Serial killer’ brings back the funk, although it’s a dark, twisted funk far from the half-assed, dull, pop-infused funk of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers and it sounds quite brilliant. Final track ‘back to the grind’ lives up to its name by referencing Beck’s “soul sucking jerk” in terms of attitude and sheer visceral thrill with huge slabs of grinding rhythm shooting through it.

De Staat, it has to be said, are quite, quite brilliant. While it is a given that they will not appeal to the more metal-minded readers who visit SonicAbuse, for those who have a hankering for the days when Mike Patton would bounce between Loveage, Tomahawk and Pepping Tom, when Butthole Surfers provided the soundtrack to Beavis and Butthead and when Primus ground out twisted sl - sonicabuse.com

My word. What we have here is clearly one of the most disturbing, wide-ranging, downright delightful collections to have hit human ears in recent months. The second album from one of The Netherlands’ most curious rock exports is a record characterised by its wonderful poise, mad experimentation and massive balls.

On the basis of ‘Machinery’, De Staat are a difficult bunch to pin down. One minute the Nijmegen four-piece sound like Seasick Steve hanging out in a dusty field with Interpol, only for the next track to have them coming across like The Fall at their most biting. To take two polar opposites as examples of what they can pull off, ‘Sweatshop’ is like a dirty blues-rock hoedown with added cowbells and synths for good measure, while ‘Old MacDonald Don't Have No Farm No More’ is what would result if James Brown was reincarnated as a member of Kyuss and started bossing Josh Homme around.

It’s nigh on impossible to identify the band’s full range of influences without going into a ramble of dissertation-like length. All that needs saying is that their rhythms are unsettling, their confidence is tangible and their songcraft, although unpredictable, is utterly compelling. Hell, how many bands can sound like they’re inducing the spirit of the Deep South and yet on the same album still produce songs that sound primed for the disco? Not many.

Torre Florim’s unpredictable manoeuvres between melody and snarl keep the listener on their toes for the duration, admittedly within a selection of tracks whose broad scope may prove to be too broad for some. For everyone else however, this should go down as an LP to be praised for its admirable sense of ambition and unconventional touches of brilliance. In the slightly bonkers climate of March 2011, it’s fair to assume that De Staat have been at the Tigerblood.

- thisisfakediy.co.uk

Chimaerical musical combustion from the Dutch Psycho-Funk rockers...
Imagine if someone bottled perfection? Well, this is what its soundtrack would be.
And it would smell like Brilliant Sex and Strawberries and Sunshine...
But it would mainly sound like this...
10/10



Oh. My. Dear. Lord.

Never in all my days have i put an album into my CD drive or stereo and been hooked from almost the first note... I've enjoyed music with immediacy and grab-you-by-the-balls brilliance before... My iPod is full to bursting with music that is both Fringe and Mainstream that wowed me within a song or two - but DE STAAT are one of, if not the, first bands to steal my attention and soul and forever undying love from the first note of the first song - on the first time of pressing play...

Mark my words with all the seriousness of a terrorist in a ticking wife-beater - this band are a bit bloody good.... a Bit bloody Fantastically good.

Blowing your mind with opening track AH, I SEE - with its guitar and bass mid-8 recital of the footballs crowd favourite chant of DA DA DER DER DA DA DA DA DA DEE DUM - and its almost preternatural take on a gothic Elvis verse-chorus-verse song structure - opens you up and fills you with feelings of warmth and love and general radiant brilliance...

It then continues falling head long into a funked up Sexy Psycho-Billy female fronted sexual fairy tale nursery rhyme SWEATSHOP - before breaking into Queens Of The Stone Age riffing desert rock with third track I'LL NEVER MARRY YOU - and you realise for 6 or 7 minutes - you've literally not breathed in - you've been sat with a blue face and a stupid smile - mesmerised at how awesome this whole thing is...

Track four - OLD MACDONALD DON'T HAVE NO FARM NO MORE - well, if you aren't sold by this point - with its synth and bass heavy Deep South Evangelical choral arrangement - and its pure beating heart is by far one of the songs of the last decade.

It takes a lot to sway me for a perfect score. I am a bastard for finding faults regardless of how small. And you must do something fucking spectacular if you want me to grade you with the perfect game... Well, DE STAAT - well done.

You have purchased prime real estate in my playlist for a very long time... And when you come to England to play, i am taking EVERYONE I HAVE EVER MET... You're that bloody good.

Don't take my word for it...

Afterall, who the fuck am i?

Go. Buy and let the soul you have protected and held for so long with crooked, gutsy strong armed security be stole from right under you - by what can only be referred to as a bunch of charming, musical genius, disarmingly brilliant Motherf*@kers...

DE STAAT.
Welcome to my top ten favourite bands...
I'm sure The Badseeds, Metallica, Queen, Jeff Buckley, Tom Waits et al will enjoy your eclectic fucked up company...
- subba-cultha.com

De Staat (‘The State’) is the most spectacular newcomer Dutch rock had to offer in 2009. Their debut album, Wait For Evolution - which started out as a solo project by singer and songwriter Torre Florim, baffled critics and audiences alike, and the five-piece from Nijmegen performed for sold-out clubs all over Holland. “It’s a dream come true”, says Florim.

Last year, The Staat rocked Noorderslag 2009 in spectacular fashion, garnering rave reviews and generating an avalanche of word-of-mouth support. It lauched the quintet from Nijmegen right to the top of the Dutch rock scene; and turned Staat frontman, singer and principle songwriter Torre Floris into a house-hold name. So it comes as no surprise that ‘the Dutch rockband of last year’ will play Noorderslag again for this year’s edition.

What kind of year was 2009 for De Staat?
Torre Florim: “The weirdest and one of the best years of my life; for all five of us, I suppose. It started at Noorderslag 2009. Life hasn’t been the same since. It has turned us into nomads and I quite like that.”

So what has changed?
“Now my life is centred around making music. Obviously with De Staat, but in collabaration with outside people as well – producing bands, writing songs with different partners.”

You toured the UK in the Fall of 2008, supporting dEUS. How did that come about?
“In 2008, we played the Lowlands festival. I approached [dEUS frontman] Tom Barman and gave him a De Staat button and later on a copy of our album, hoping we could support dEUS at Amsterdam’s Paradiso venue. To our surprise, they asked us to suppport them on dEUS’ UK tour.”

2009 was a very succesful year for the band. How do you follow-up on that?
“We aim to play more abroad. This year we will be playing the Glastonbury festival in Engeland. And we will be working on the second album. We recorded the first one at home. The new album should top that triple time, I’ll produce it myself. I will not use older and unrecorded songs, I’ll write new ones. The new album will be different from the first one.”

The sound of The Staat stands out from most Dutch and continental rock bands. Is that a frequently-heard comment?
“It certainly is. People call our album ‘not Dutch’. I don’t know what that means. It’s a compliment, I suppose. It means we found a niche, which is a good thing. ‘Not of this world’ would be even better.”

Where do you find your inspiration for that ‘not Dutch’ sound?
“People call our music stonerrock, which it isn’t. However, I have been drawing inspiration from bands and singers that have created their own niche, like Queens Of The Stone Age, Tom Waits, Howlin’ Wolf and Battles.”

Your expectations for 2010?
“I have no idea. I hope we will be playing festivals all over the world. And I want to find a nice place to work on the second album. That’s my wishlist for now.”

Saturday 16 January @ Buma Cultuur Zaal, 01:00 - 01:45
www.destaat.net
www.myspace.com/destaat

Source: musicXport.nl / Alfred Bos - Dutchsound.nl

Upstairs in the smaller bar area of the Thekla we find our discovery of the festival. De Staat, a five-piece from Netherlands with an almost militarian feel make a great stompy noise that the check-shirted skinny-jeans brigade lap up. Big Jeff, a well-known face (and hair) is in attendance which is usually a sign that we're going to get a good gig, and the band appreciates his hand-banging performance at the front. Reminding me of their Benelux neighbours Deus, De Staat have just released their debut album in the UK, some 18 months after its release in their homeland, and with a Glastonbury performance coming up it could be a surprise hit for them. I, for one, will be ordering a copy. - efestivals

De Staat at Stealth which was probably the highlight of my day. The Dutch five-piece are a garage rock band that thrashed their way through the set with head banging and epic guitar solos similar to Queens Of The Stoneage. Then infuse cheekiness with humour and you have a great band in the making. Think the energy of Eagles Of Death Metal and The Hives with a mix of noise rock, and you have a band who know they’re bloody good but can have fun with it too. Then add a cowbell and a theremin and you have my new favourite band. - Leftlions.co.uk