B |
 |
Selber (self) was founded in 1996 by Roger, Raffi and Silvano. The trio rehearsed its way through Industrial-Hardcore and Industrial-Punk before it started to develop his unique brand of bleepy noises, chloroformed sounds, staggering rythms, disturbed guitar-chords and the speech-singing. Although the sound hasn't got to do anything with it anymore Selber stayed true to the punk-roots and to the sweetest lie in rock-history ever: "anyone can play guitar". Consistently the band is named after the Silvanos youngest sister who used to shout as a little kid "I want to do it MYSELF": Roger is not a classical musician that's way he uses a sampler. Silvano cannot sing so he shouts and whispers himself through imagined melodies - only Raffi can really play guitar. And just to top it and make sure the band has chosen the right name the three Swiss founded their own label and burnt their first album "Selberattack" at home. (But of course, not anyone can "play" computer so there were friends who helped with graphics and designing the Selber-page.) On "Selberattack" you'll find narcotic songs, stadion-fakes and rough and angry outbursts of sheer inner terror as the band decided to portray of what they see as the very end of a strictly neo-capitalistic society: it is a look into the gutter of neurotism, lonelyness and the sudden realising one has lost his mind while trying to make a decent career (or as Silvano asks: isn't it a sign of the times people say you have to invest in love as if it was a share?). "Selberattack" is a combination of the six songs from the "toxic delicacies" demo-EP as well as six new ones including "ausgeträumt" the ironic lament about it all as last song. Looking at the backgrounds the three couldn't be much more different and they also have their own projects going. Roger is rooted deep in the eighties-underground, avantgarde and experimental (as Eskimo65 he works on industrial/ambient instrumental tracks) but is a fan of Nick Drake too. Raffi loves punkrock runs his own band The Cadizier and keeps on touring in Germany and Switzerland while Silvano's musical taste reaches from Tango to Industrial and from Motörhead to Tom Waits - but as complete non-musician he 's writing short stories and lyrics in his spare time. The odd Swiss are self-chosen business-losers: "If we hadn't our own label and if we wouldn't pay for this record ourself you wouldn't be able to listen to that music. There are very few people who love our music but we even get played on radio and we'll do 100 copies of this record. If we can get rid of them it will be a success everything beyond that is far from what we can imagine. We get reviews in Russia and in the States too and it doesn' t change much. But in times of post-grunge-crap and techno-shallowness we are proud of that fact. We are ourSelber we hope you're too." Selberattack (release 1.9.2000) only available on Selberspace Records Roger Meier: Sampler |