Gentilesky: Dream 
Out Now
Italian-Turkish punk outfit releases their second album, reclaimed feminine rage front and centre, shortening the gap between 17th-century subversive art and modern radical expression. MK Bennett hosts.
You may well hear the pensioners talking about this new thing, this feminism. Remind them that women’s lives have always been made irreparably worse by men’s behaviour, no matter how brightly they shone. Artemisia Gentileschi is an extreme and salient case in point. Contemporary and very much an equal of Caravaggio, she was nevertheless expected to follow the same old traditions, bound by dumb design. Her story is an echo that still reverberates because it still lives as a constant in the world. She did get revenge, of a sort, culturally at least. Her paintings of biblical scenes that relate to her own life are already significant but knowing her history adds a sense of brutality to the context. The greatness of the art is not diminished by the horror of its reality; it is arguably magnified and as sadly relevant as it ever was.
The band, slightly different spelling but wholeheartedly on the same wavelength, release an album of angular excellence that is both 1985 and 2026 simultaneously. Post punk in the Gang Of Four sense but resolutely punk in the rebel sense, these are the songs of defiance and hard fought wars, internal and external. Chasing The Light reveals itself as glory, a syncopated run at the legacy of The Minutemen that is perfect in its evocation of a Minneapolis rehearsal room circa Reagan’s second term and is all the more mighty for it. You can virtually smell D. Boon’s deodorant. Upbeat and manic rhythm meets some magnificent bass lines, chords shattering into each other as the vocals overlap and the drums skitter away like water across a hot plate. Think of it as a sort of feminist hardcore, fueled by estrogen and moral indignation instead of shouting and violence.
Money Making meets early Beastie Boys and early B-52’s halfway; the refreshing lack of overdrive and distortion means everything is clean and clear, pushing forward but pulled by horses, dragged into the light and squinting. That near mathematical angularity is present as a constant, never stopping to stand still. The cut is absolute, no unnecessary frills, no fat on the meat, just line after line of precision and grace. In this case, there’s an air of the much undervalued Rezillos, albeit a more serious incarnation of them. The world is burning after all; there’s little time left for the frivolous.
One Way Out adds more Slits/Raincoats flavour to the mix, the bass once more happily to the fore, the hook of “I’m not addicted to you..” building towards a fevered pitch before returning to that revolving-door bassline and magnificent scratch guitar. The cyclical brilliance of the arrangement resolves itself so perfectly that you will immediately rewind and listen to it. Morning Regret, with its London Calling monolithic guitar line and mini snare rolls is an urgent and rapid blast through confusion and accidental adulthood. As with the whole album, there is so much going on that you cannot pin down any one influence definitively. Jah Wobble pops up with some Public Image reference, but it’s already gone, a whispered note, up in smoke.
Heavenly Body is a reminder that we are modern, post or otherwise. Excelling in that punk funk that Gossip reinvigorated with its clipped riff and upright bass, it is another short, sharp stab of sweetness and vigorous beats. It also has more dynamics than a Russian gymnast, despite it only just breaking the three minute mark. They are the musical equivalent of running a marathon whilst reading a book, exhausting yet educational. Dreamland is X-Ray Spex covering Andy Gill while Wire watch on admiringly. Another rhythmic masterclass and breathtaking in its firework display of non-violent opposition. It just never sits still.
Back In The Days is a feral and ferocious blast of fresh air and melted paint, the splintered glass shards of guitar spraying into the ether, turning into a traditionalist romp through the punk yearbook via 1970’s Talking Heads. Never less than invigorating with a middle eight of rare splendour. 1000 Kez meanwhile, is so punk it becomes jazz, a hyper-aware run through any number of musical sub-divisions of old school hardcore, from Husker Du to Bikini Kill via Boss Hog and Babes In Toyland. Back In The Days and the final song Why allow the band to spread their wings a little, let the pace settle and the songs breathe some. Why especially digs into the dystopian minor chord atmosphere hinted at consistently all the way through and its arrangement reflects its depth, as the haunted and near gothic guitar slices its way into the night sky. It brings the end up to modernist thinking too, with the shoegaze revival already here and the wounded vocal echoing into the fade.
It wears its Minutemen hat proudly and righteously but it is vastly more than the sum of its parts. There is so much to marvel at here, whether the technical brilliance or the way it ties its strands of art together so neatly, as subtle as a razor cut, its lower-case European intellectualism worn as a badge of punk rock duty. Its Tenebrism as relative to its aesthetic as to its sounds. Clutch these frontline warriors of immeasurable cool to your heart as soon as possible.
Judith is still slaying Holofernes.
Gentilesky’s Instagram | Linktree
All words by MK Bennett, you can find his author’s archive here plus his Twitter and Instagram
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