Ahead of tomorrow (23rd February) album launch, we spoke to Basque country post-punks Belako about their ten favourite punk records. The album,‘Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence’, was led by the singles Render Me Numb, Over the Edge and ‘Maskenfreiheit’, and is being jointly released Belako Records, El Segell del Primavera and [PIAS] (for the international market).
They are a band on the up as well, and will finish 2018 with a world tour under their belt – over twenty concerts, a dozen countries, 3 continents – as well as a new album to boot. They’ve picked a determindly wide spectrum of songs, using their own definition of ‘punk’ and from a wide variety of places and sources.
Check out the list, here
- “Son The Father” – Fucked Up . A progressive song with multiple landscapes that puts you into trance.
- “Art Star” – Yeah Yeah Yeahs . Still wondering why this one isn’t considered as one of their top tracks.
- “Cuidado” – Eskorbuto . Catchy funny anthem of radical basque rock.
- “Eh txo!” – Hertzainak . One of the first punk bands in the basque country using basque language.
- “Somebody” – Dreamwife. Strong and determined lyrics against gender violence. “I am not my body I am somebody”.
- “Hostieja” – Yellow Big Machine . One of our favorite bands, this song is a discharge of adrenaline, and we watched it live when they played it for the first time as an improvised theme.
- “The Answer” – Savages. You can be a punk and be creative with the melodies of the voice at the same time.
- “Your Brain Is Made Of Candy”- Mourn. Mourn have everything that we like and this song is an example of elegance and punk attitude, the way it begins and ends.
- “Smoko” – The Chats. Not much to add.
- “I’m a Victim Of this Song” – Pipilotti Rist. Probably not taken as “punk” by most people but we used this cover of Chris Isaak to jam when we started to rehearse and scream and go mad around it.
‘Render Me Numb, Trivial Violence’, is out tomorrow (23rd February) via Belako Records, El Segell del Primavera and [PIAS]
