Comprised of Jan Jelinek (Farben), Hanno Leichtmann (Static, The Vulva String Quartet) and Andrew Pekler (Sad Rockets), three of the ~scape label’s esteemed old guard, Groupshow’s debut album ‘The Martyrdom of Groupshow’ offers less than the sum of its parts. They initially surfaced in 2005 as the band built to perform Jelinek’s ‘Kosmischer Pitch’ live, and the kosmische references remain, particularly a near-obsessive devotion to analogue synth sounds. The album is edited down from some ‘200 Gigabytes of improvised jam sessions’, but beyond that any obvious reference to digital sound processing is absent; instead we hear a collection of warm fuzz, bleeps and warbles, egged on by jazzy percussive rattlings on drums, cymbals and objects.
The sound then is closer to neo-Krautrockers Mouse on Mars and Kreidler than solo Jelinek, Leichtmann or Pekler, with strict loops rarely making an appearance. Instead they build repetition from scratch, constantly modulating these globules with frequent twists of dusty old dials. With titles like ‘The Future Looks Bright… Super Bright’s the retro-futurist tones and uneasy lounge arrangements seem obvious, like Curd Duca meeting Morton Subotnik, as for ‘Incredibly Comfortable Slippers’ where vintage blips morph from water drips into marimba melodies while hazy cymbals splash away in the background. Yet for all their nostalgia Groupshow seldom descend into kitsch, which is perhaps what they need. These remain experimental pieces, hardly a martini soundtrack but not entirely satisfactory as involved listening either.
Joshua Meggitt
