DAAU
Tub Gurnard Goodness

DIE ANARCHISTISCHE ABENDUNTERHALTUNG

“Steppenwolf” is a novel by Herman Hesse in which the protagonist, at the brink of suicide, a victim and slave of everyday life, meets Erminia, the pleasure in person, the inner journey, and in the tragic and violent finale discovers the sentimental eternity that goes beyond the body and reunites with the soul. From this work, the DAAU, a group from Antwerp, Belgium, take their name, teetering between klezmer and contemporary classicism with all the energy of rock and the magic of improvisation.

DAAU debuted in '94 with the same record label as Deus and Zita Swoon, "Tub gurnard goodness" is their penultimate album, clarinet, violin, cello, and accordion intertwine with each other creating a fusion of styles that bring innovative and unexpected results.

The tracks of the album follow each other bare, passionate, and mysterious as if they were the soundtrack of a Hitchcock film in a gypsy atmosphere, a film where people dance, laugh, sing, and above all, feel emotions, the threadlike and film-like structure of each piece evokes grotesque and earthly visions that belong to everyday life.
Energy, passion, exuberance, and beauty thicken in a fragrant and warm atmosphere where rock, jazz, gypsy, reggae, and even trance lightly touch each other carnally, inspiration and compositional intelligence stimulate the imagination in a natural and rhythmic way, despite using few percussions.

Non-conventional music, such that would dissolve a contract with Sony, music for the soul that brings out sensations dormant in reality, countercurrent clouds that bring rain and storms, modern but timeless, a return to roots, close to animal needs, light years away from today’s tele-cinematic reality, a fugitive plunge into the night, finally far from business and mediocrity.

"My goodness! Poetry" is a modern bolero, the violins sing anguish akin to Vivaldi and Zappa in a heartbreaking crescendo, an extra-urban and extra-temporal vortex, "A funny little feeling" is reggae, Angelique Wilkie's voice floats among European melodies, Jamaican rhythms, and dub percussions, "In my midnight skies" is the second sung piece, a western afterhours highlighting the musical madness and unpredictability, "2+2=5" is a cover of Radiohead that clashes with Quintorigo at a gypsy party, "Is this it!" recalls the atmospheres of the Banda Ionica, as in an Easter procession in southern Italy, "Catfish blues" has nothing to do with Jimi Hendrix but recalls its genuineness and determination, "Two fast dreams" kinesthetic and vibrant closes leaving the listener absorbed and enchanted.

T.G.G. is an intimate and seductive work, shining and striking, a small world.