ABKK -- Ronny/Mörker
Ronny / Mörker
EMFD, 1981
Although bands like Suicide, Nervous Gender, the Stranglers, and the Screamers, among others, made extensive use of synthesizers during the early days of punk, the instrument was always somewhat suspect among the scene's tasemakers and its appearance on a recording was more often a sign of a group's movement towards new wave than an expansion of the boundaries of punk. Still, the relatively prohibitive attitudes towards atypical instrumentation within the punk world did not prevent some of the scene's more experimental bands from effectively incorporating synthesizers into their music. The downside to the synthesizer, of course, is its tendency to make recordings sound like they were produced by tinfoil-clad B-actors pretending to be living on a forlorn space station in the distant future. Then again, the upside to the use of the synthesizer is that it tends to make recordings sound like they were produced by tinfoil-clad B-actors pretending to be living on a forlorn space station in the distant future. Indeed, ABKK's "Ronny / Mörker" disk sounds like the sort of music Jenny Agutter's Jessica 6 might listen to on her way to Carousel in Logan's Run if she were a punk rocker.
Of the two tracks, "Mörker," despite the good folks over at Killed By Death Records making a compelling case for favoring the A-side, may be the better punk song. This isn't to say that "Ronny" with its positively insane synthesizer and tight, energetic rhythm isn't an awesome recording in its own right, especially with vocals evoking the best of Op-era Kjøtt, but "Mörker" dispenses with the weirdly sci-fi vibe of the title track while maintaining the same darkly techno feel in a more pogo-friendly mode. Regardless, the disk is solid through-and-through and stands out as one of those exceptional records that, had it been released by a British or American band (and, accordingly, to a much larger listening public), could easily have been regarded as a genre-expanding recording.
Sobriquet Grade: 88 (B+).
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