PPOdd

A band for which little is known, despite having released four records during the 80s. Their members kept changing, as did their sound, incorporating both electronics and real instruments.

Talking about DIY deconstruction, the pompously/cheekily named the Galactic Symposium are the best in showcasing post-punk triumph of the amateur/anti-virtuosic. As they say themselves, the band “was formed by mistake”!

Geile Tiere consisted of two permanent members and a number of guests to create their dissonant new-wave, typical of the bizarre Berlin NDW sound.

A short-lived experimental project by the very prolific David Cunningham, with sound-artist David Toop and a series of guest musicians who would move to become the cream of the UK experimental underground.

A multimedia art / industrial music project from Germany that released a number of tapes and videos in the early 80s.

Strange duet from San Francisco mixing minimalist electronics, schizophrenic spoken word, found sound and postpunk messthetics creating unbearable Reagan-era angst-driven nightmares.

A conceptual synth-wave oddity from Manchester other that Frank Zappa introduced in his radio show. Their second single was a conceptual joke since it was purposefully badly pressed to be unplayable.

Geza X is as close as bizarre post-punk gets to having a “star” in the Syd sense. Geza played relatively strange punk, but with raucous performances and a rock’n’roll lifestyle.

Gina X was one of early-80s disco’s most bizarre/new-wave-friendly acts. Although frequently listed amongst 80s-disco (possibly as they were Cologne-based), Gina X shared more with the nonsense/dada-friendly experimental end of NDW.

The Girls are one of the poppier bands featured in this site, yet they had to be included, as there is something so pure in their starry-eyed pop, that they are almost bizarre full-circle! If they don’t manage to make you smile, you must be a fairly miserable sod.

Simple, minimal pop-synth song-writing, a bit like pop music having gone unreasonably non-self-celebratory. Sort of destined to be a lost single.

Bristol’s Glaxo Babies are a very important band, not only because they were one of the first bands to fuse punk and funk/jazz, but also as members of them were involved in other great post-punk bands as The Pop Group, Maximum Joy and Liquid Liquid. Hopefully they will be studied by future generations.

Gorilla Aktiv are an example of the home-taping generation that was massive in Germany in the early 80s. They originally released cassettes only, although their work was re-released in 2005. They are one of the more strange minimal-electro bands of the time.

An obscure band from Toronto, the Government are a wonderful paradigm of the meta-dadaist post-punk/no-wave sound, using a solid rhythm section base, guitar details for syncopated accents and spoken text about some technological nonsense.

This Swiss act’s only LP is from 1985, but their minimal wave was too pretty to leave out.