Wir hatten es ja schon zuletzt davon: Chuckamuck sind zurück. Mit „Language Barrier“, einem neuen Album, das zugleich ein „Best of“ ist. 11 ihrer größten Erfolge, neu eingespielt und in acht Sprachen gesungen. Aus Gründen wird’s jetzt englisch. Beacuse: Language is a tricky business in Rock and Roll, especially for a German band. To resign oneself to sing in English, and be open to the dominant Anglophone music market whilst hoping your tunes resonate with local scenes and fans, not only risks billing a band as less unique, but also denies them the right of native poetry by applying their best-known language to express themselves lyrically.
In the greater music market, it has been acceptable to hear German in parodist stereotypes, such as the robotic nature of Kraftwerk or violent sexual imagery of Rammstein, which are consumable for international audiences. However, over the 14 year career of Chuckamuck, their expressions have varied from their teenage years as “punk rock Rimbauds” into teary-eyed mysticism, soulful desire, despotic vexation and much more. And as dedicated artists and lyricists, they have intimately touched their German speaking fans; however due to this language barrier, they have been frustrated to not share the full “Chuckamuck experience” with fans during their European tours with The Black Lips, King Khan and the Shrines, Beatsteaks, Demons Claws and The Strange Boys.
As founding member and main crafter of the Chuckamuck world Oska Wald says, “You originally think ‚its music, it’s going to be understood in any language‘, but Chuckamuck is so much more than our songs, it’s an enterprise of our art, animation, live shows, videos, comic books, an entire world we have produced”.
Which is leading us to the Language Barrier project.
In essence, this extremely ambitious project is a Chuckamuck “Best Of”, with remakes of pearls from different periods of the band since their inception in 2006, translated into 8 languages (Italian, French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, English, Hebrew and Japanese), recorded by bandmember and songwriter Lorenz with longtime Chuckamuck engineering pals
Thomas Götz and Max Power at O’tool Studio. Each song is impressively presented in its own unique video clip, defining the images and moods of the band. The whole project was produced over three years with a great deal of patience and heart.
Inspired by the efforts of the Beatles in the 60s, who saw it fit to record awkward versions of their early hits into French and German, as well as the wealth of worldwide 60s bands who recorded pop songs into a “third language” by naively and phonetically singing in English, Chuckamuck wanted to capture this excitement of reaching potential new audiences and actually being understood. Another big influence has been the flawless multilingualism of their Staatsakt labelmates, Stereo Total.
Text: Pressemitteilung
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