janek0
07.04.05, 19:02
Przeklejam z allmusic.com (recenzja płyty The (International) Noise Conspiracy
When the 21st century arrived, there weren't many communist governments left.
Cuba, China, and Vietnam were still communist, but formerly communist
countries throughout Eastern Europe were embracing free enterprise; and the
overwhelming evidence suggested that capitalism, although far from perfect,
was a much, much better system than communism/socialism. Inevitably, all of
these political developments would have an impact in the music world. The fall
of communism throughout Eastern Europe encouraged a lot of new pop scenes to
develop there, and some of those scenes favored unapologetically capitalist
imagery. Polish pop of the 1990s, for example, was full of female singers who
dressed like supermodels and looked like they were on their way to a trendy
restaurant on Hollywood's Sunset Strip or Manhattan's Park Avenue. And the
ironic thing is that while pop artists in a once-communist country like Poland
seem to be going out of their way to flaunt their capitalist images and thumb
their noses at the communists who used to be in power, you can still find some
rock acts in Western Europe who stubbornly hold on to Marxist ideas. One of
them is the (International) Noise Conspiracy, a Swedish band that pushes a
very Marxist agenda on Survival Sickness. This is a band that praises Che
Guevara, says it seeks to "destroy bourgeois culture" and "smash the
neo-liberal agenda" (presumably, they dislike liberals because liberals are
essentially capitalists). But once you get past all the tired, antiquated
Marxist rhetoric, you'll find that these guys deliver some incredibly
infectious, if derivative, rock & roll. Blending punk with the influence of
1960s British Invasion bands like the Kinks and the Who, the Conspiracy remind
us how captivating simple, basic, groove-oriented rock & roll can be. You
don't have to agree with the band's politics to find Survival Sickness hard to
resist.
by Alex Henderson
