“It has not been definitively proved that the language of words is the best possible language” -Antonin Artaud
If this is your first time to hear about Chuckamuck, there's a good reason for that: This is a reach-outproject, beyond thepersonal and commercial barriers that exist for a European band that sings in theirown mother tongue.
Language is a tricky business in Rock and Roll, especially for a German band. To resign oneself tosing in English, and be opento the dominant Anglophone music market whilst hoping your tunesresonate with local scenes and fans, not only risks billing aband as less unique, but also denies themthe right of native poetry by applying their best-known language to expressthemselves lyrically.
In the greater music market, it has been acceptable to hear German in parodist stereotypes, such asthe robotic nature ofKraftwerk or violent sexual imagery of Rammstein, which are consumable forinternational audiences. However, over the 14year career of Chuckamuck, their expressions havevaried from their teenage years as “punk rock Rimbauds” into teary-eyedmysticism, soulful desire,despotic vexation and much more. And as dedicated artists and lyricists, they have intimately touchedtheir German speaking fans; however due to this language barrier, they have been frustrated to notshare the full “Chuckamuckexperience” with fans during their European tours with The Black Lips,King Khan and the Shrines, Beatsteaks, DemonsClaws and The Strange Boys.
As founding member and main crafter of the Chuckamuck world Oska Wald says, “You originally think'its music, it's going to beunderstood in any language', but Chuckamuck is so much more than oursongs, it's an enterprise of our art, animation, liveshows, videos, comic books, an entire world wehave produced”.
Which brings us to the Language Barrier project:
In essence, this extremely ambitious project is a Chuckamuck “Best Of”, with remakes of pearls fromdifferent periods of theband since their inception in 2006, translated into 8 languages (Italian,French, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, English,Hebrew and Japanese), recorded by bandmemberand songwriter Lorenz with longtime Chuckamuck engineering pals
Thomas Götz and Max Power at O'tool Studio. Each song is impressively presented in its own uniquevideo clip, defining theimages and moods of the band. The whole project was produced over threeyears with a great deal of patience and heart.
Inspired by the efforts of the Beatles in the 60s, who saw it fit to record awkward versions of their earlyhits into French andGerman, as well as the wealth of worldwide 60s bands who recorded pop songs into a “third language” by naively and phonetically singing in English, Chuckamuck wanted to capturethis excitement ofreaching potential new audiences and actually being understood. Another biginfluence has been the flawless multilingualism oftheir Staatsakt labelmates, Stereo Total.
A few elements make this project really special. Firstly, as a Berlin band, Chuckamuck employed the