Carambolage

★★★★ Carambolage TAPETE. CD/DL/LP

Germany’s turn-of-the-’80s answer to The Slits.

Against the grain of the

Neue Deutsche Welle, with its sanitised upgrading of punk aesthetics, Carambolage had audible edge: they coalesced around hippy radicals Ton Steine Scherben, for whom drummer Britta Neander debuted on percussion in the mid ’70s, and whose axe hero, R.P.S. Lanrue, was Carambolage singer Elfie-Esther Steitz’s elder brother. Lanrue and TSS mainman Rio Reiser produced this self-titled debut from 1980, which packs a contagious joy in carving out a challenging female voice from estimable post-punk skills. “So ladies and semen, are you ready? Time to go shopping,” spits Steitz

auf Deutsch on the anticonsumerist City-Großmarkt. Elsewhere, skittering beats and Angie Olbrich’s hooky basslines throw the madcap frontwoman into ever-spiky, Ari Up-esque relief. Two further LPs, also reissued by Tapete, saw their rough edges smoothed off, but the only thing that separated Carambolage from Kleenexstyle adoration abroad, surely, was the language barrier.