Shaka Ponk

It was in Paris in the early 2000’s that the guitarist C.C. and the designer Frah laid the foundations of a collective, looking to accommodate the basic ingredients of the best of rock’n’roll flavored with multimedia. From the sounds and imagery that they conceived was born a very separate universe. At the center of this universe reigns a synthetic laughing monkey, Mister Goz, whom they soon adopted as their mascot and from which they formed their logo. In 2004, the band settled in Berlin, a city in full cultural effervescence, where they consolidated a process that mixed music, graphics and video. This however, did not spare them hard times or the blues of an empty fridge. Entrenched in a bunker, they created songs for a first album, Loco Con Da Frenchy Talkin’, which was released in 2006 on the Edel label. Concerts throughout Europe were to follow, playing as the opening group for gangs on the hardcore scene; an expedition that brings them back a year later, hardened, more resolute than ever, to their starting point : Paris.

Born of a trip between a group of friends passionate for new technologies, Shaka Ponk has been, for the past few years, a mutant rock band that explores the virtual to better root itself in the real. As proof: more and more concerts, larger concert halls and an ever growing audience. Geeks, social network addicts or dropouts of the globosphere, Shaka Ponk federates a growing community of young “citiwebens” as avid for music as they are for images, and dead set on enjoying it to the full. On a 3rd album accompanied by several clips, Shaka Ponk pursues its hectic adventure on this open frontier between instruments and software- produced sounds. Its title, The Geeks & The Jerking Socks, refers to a scene from the film American Pie wherein a young student is caught by his parents as he’s watching a pornographic movie in his room, his penis shoved inside a sock. Some of the songs on this album stage this theme of sexuality by proxy which is foremost a furious acting out; assumed and durably exhilarating.