Hanin Elias
No Games No Fun

LA RECENSIONE

In 1991, she met Alec Empire in Berlin, and together they formed Atari Teenage Riot, creating a new genre of music, Digital Hardcore (DHR). A genre that, according to them, was meant to unite all the youth subcultures, without differences and rivalries. "The kids are united".

This was followed by intense years of activity with ATR, memorable live shows with long pauses between songs to give time for the Atari to reload data for the sequencer, and her dancing and screaming on stage with incredible presence. Beautiful.
In 1997, she became a mother and realized how she was treated because of it. She read a lot about feminism. She created the "Fatal" manifesto in 1998, from which the Fatal-Recordings label was born.

This is the second solo album after "In Flames (1995-1999)"... Post-post feminism presented with the seduction of a new Bettie Page. Sexy.
But if in "In Flames" the Atari influences with distortions and programmatic cacophonies were still visible, here it is now an electro pop album, where distortion is a light decoration laid on the tracks, an ornament.

The collaborations on this album command respect. The music of "Spirits in the Sky" is written by Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten, as indicated by the initial noise citation, although it then leads into a decidedly goth keyboard.
"You Suck" is written together with Alec Empire and is the most Atari-like song, but only for the repetitive sloganeering, the fast rap, although it then majestically opens into a diatonic progression. In the title track, J Mascis appears, playing guitar and drums without springs on the resonant skin, and it is a structured song, even if the guitar becomes repetitive, Hanin sings with a beautiful voice and a lazy gait.
Our favorite is "Falling," a beautiful electro pop. "you always make me sad, you always make me mad".

The other tracks are produced by C.H.I.F.F.R.E. There is no lack of politics in "Rockets Against Stones," introduced by pure and cacophonic distortion of crazy programming over which Philip Virus plays the guitar, the second live band member along with C.H.I.F.F.R.E., but it is only an episode.
"Wanting A Machine" is a whispered industrial nightmare.
Throughout the tracks, her nursery rhyme-like slogans, which read awkwardly in the booklet with their stumbling English but, when listened to without much attention, do their job admirably. Her voice almost always ends up in the "red" on the mixer, breaking the scale.

A great album, although undecided between pop and the purest intransigence, meaning it's a masked pop. Between the 80s, 90s, and the 00s.