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MP3 Monday: t(i)nc

Fan the Flames: A geezer recollects Refused - By Morgan Short, Sep 28, 09

MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever).

The (International) Noise Conspiracy formed out of a bunch of other pretty cool Swedish bands, not the least of which is this band called Refused. The singer from this band, Dennis Lyxz¨¦n, was the singer from that other band, Refused, who are often cited as the most seminal and important punk bands of the '90s. Despite only having a few releases and being around for only seven years, if you bring up this band in certain circles, peoples' eyes light up with wistful reverence and invariably this line follows: "Fuck, they were so awesome. I remember the first time I heard The Shape of Punk to Come."

Refused came about at a time when punk rock was dominated by that certain style of skater punk -- galloping drum beats, pick scrapes, simple melodic and anthemic chord progressions, and jump kicks -- trail-blazed by the likes of NOFX, Bad Religion, and The Descendents, among others. That style was really huge in the '90s, and there was almost a template established from which hundreds of other bands followed, and when a few of the newer bands from that background achieved large-scale mainstream success -- Green Day, The Offspring, Goldfinger, and Blink 182 -- that style was really cemented into the popular conception of what punk rock was. Green Day was on the cover of Rolling Stone representing what "punk" was.



So swinging the pendulum back from the lighter, apolitical (largely apolitical, rather -- there were lots of exceptions -- hello, Propaghandi), skate/pop/mall punk coming out of the West Coast was this band, Refused, who were not only representing what was going on in Sweden at the time but also tapping into the simmering undercurrent of hardcore that was being mostly disregarded in the States (coming from bands like Earth Crisis, Nation of Ulysses, and Ink & Dagger). With The Shape of Punk to Come (a riff on Ornette Coleman's 1959 album, The Shape of Jazz to Come), they brought back a metal-ish complexity to punk, an overt, hyper-pissed off Marxist political agenda, and even a few digital elements to their music, which not many bands were doing at the time. The Shape ended up as an overt political statement on the responsibility of punk and music in general.



Shortly thereafter, they proved to be too pissed off to even hang with each other, and they broke up at the height of their fame, much to the disappointment of everyone who saw their radical innovations to the punk genre as a reclaiming of by-gone authenticity. Refused demanded all their images to be erased from popular media and splintered into a couple other bands, including t(i)nc. Interestingly enough, the band broke up right when Nu Metal was getting huge -- Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, POD, and Papa Roach -- and several Nu Metal bands claimed them as a key influence in their music (Crazy Town even covered that "New Noise" song -- an insult as grave as if a white supremacist Skinhead band covered Marvin Gaye's "What¡¯s Going On"). When asked about Crazy Town, Lyxz¨¦n was pretty direct:

"If someone listened to The Shape... and really understood what we were thinking about they wouldn't be in Crazy Town and they wouldn't think the shape of punk to come was to add a DJ to a metal band. If they really loved Refused, they missed everything that was important about that band." (quote from: The prp)

Out of the smoldering, few-months old ashes of Refused came this band The (International) Noise Conspiracy in 1998, who, despite sharing the same Situationist / Marxist agenda, are a more straight-ahead rock band with big garage rock influences, and with tendencies towards more varied instrumentation and rhythmic stuff. Of course, that's overly simplistic, and there's been a few directional changes for t(i)nc over the years. Despite, however, being a pretty decent and interesting band in their own right, t(i)nc will forever be associated with, and compared to, Refused, thanks in part to old bloger-types who will never forget -- Never! Not ever!

Throughout their career t(i)nc have always been on the edge of huge mainstream success and riches, and sort of at the genre boundaries of punk, dance, garage, and indie rock -- and everything in between -- which is probably the way they want it. Five albums and extensive touring over the years has even seen the band do fly-by-night shows in China before, and they're back again, brought in by Yang Haisong of PK14 to play at the Modern Sky Festival. They're coming to Shanghai under the aegis of Hans from LAVA|OX|SEA and IndieHeartAttack.com to play at Yuyintang on October 1.

And it's going to be massive. Don't miss it. Here's a couple of (International) Noise Conspiracy songs to get all pumped to.

From the album, Capitalism Stole My Virginity.



From the album, The First Conspiracy.



***

The (International) Noise Conspiracy are at Yuyintang October 1. Tickets are 100rmb at the door. Support from Duck Fight Goose, The Offset Spectacles, and Crazy Mushroom.

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