Trabants

Only the future knows whether Boston's Trabants made a commercially savvy choice by disseminating a record of scorching surf rock during one of the snowiest winters in memory. Will attendees at the release show later this month (January 28 at Rosebud, natch) buy music that reminds them what it's like when it doesn't totally suck outside? For that matter, how will those accustomed to the roller-coaster punk of local power trio Ketman react to Trabants' instrumental retrophilia? Although a change in style and method required a rebrand from Eric Penna - assisted by his regular Ketman running buddies and a few others adding auxiliary spice- it seems the same underlying philosophy applies to both bands. Ketman pluck a concept out of the æther of their collective unconsciousness and turn it into a punk song. Trabants cull a mood from something like a spaghetti western or a Frankie-and-Annette flick, establish a riff to serve as its appropriate avatar, and blow it up with solo freakouts and slow-burning crescendos. More often than not, the results echo songs everybody remembers from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack by otherwise obscure cats like the Lively Ones and Dick Dale. I suspect that's pretty much the idea. - The Boston Phoenix

Recently the Deli called Rhode Island’s Kid Chocolate a surf rock group that “shouldn’t be pegged as a retro act.” If that statement disappointed the beach partier in you, then look no further than Boston’s Trabants. Their album Highwire Surfing is a coast through classic-sounding surf riffs featuring requisite saxophone and flute appearances and retro organ chord progressions -- 100% instrumental. In true surf rock form, Trabants borrow melodic ideas from a variety of cultures, including Western cowboy music, Elvis-y tonk, country rock, Russian folk music, and Henry Mancini-like orchestral hooks (think Pink Panther theme). The group really pulls off the retro act, sounding every bit out of the 60’s, down to the last reverb adjustment. (They deviate somewhat humorously from the act for a harder-rocking, but no less simple hometown anthem called Swampscott Stomp.) In all, a fun frolic of an album great for when you’re looking for a refreshing, un-ironic take on a sound from another era.

--Alexander Pinto

- The Delhi Magazine

The other day, I’m sitting on the ragged couch in my living room still looking for a band to write about and running out of time.

Outside, Boston is being rocked by the first blizzard of the winter. I go out onto the porch, to smoke. There is already a good amount of snow on everything, and it’s coming down heavy still.

I can see people moving about on the street: huddled and bunched up against the relentless wind and cold blowing snow. It looks bleak.

For one reason or another, I think of cold war-era East Germany as the figures shuffle along looking harried and oppressed. I think of the old Soviet Union. I think of Poland of course, and the Czechs and Hungarians, battling the winters of eastern Europe.

It is shortly after that the opportunity to write about Trabants, and their soon-to-be-released album Highwire Surfing presented itself.

I simply could not refuse, given the circumstances.

A surf-rock band, named after an icon of the iron curtain. An automobile so prevalent that they can still be seen to this day in that part of the world. The writing was on the wall. You can’t go around ignoring things like this; you simply can’t overlook the synchronicity of it.

“They’re cool little cars,” said Eric Penna, the band’s primary songwriter and guitar player, of the bands namesake. “I saw them all over eastern Europe. I travelled out there, and I would see them all over the place. They look like they would cost about $2000 or something like that. They’re almost made out of plastic.”

The moniker was selected with a certain eye towards the irony of a band playing surf-rock, a genre that ranks just below mom, apple pie, thinly veiled imperialism and baseball on the Americana scale, named after a symbol of central planning and the Soviet bloc.

“It was a little bit tongue-in-cheek,” said Penna of the bands name. “We’re playing surf music and what’s more American than that? But we have an eastern European name. It doesn’t really make sense ... it’s kind of funny.”

What better way to beat the stir-crazy desolation of a withering, New England blizzard than with a band that plays surf rock?

A shot of irony: the Trabant automobiles during the soviet era often cost more used than they did new because of the often long waiting times for new vehicles.

Much like a communist era Leipziger, Penna and Trabants understand the value of vintage stuff.

They really don’t make ‘em the way the way they used to.

“Everything I used to record (Highwire Surfing) was old, except for the computer I recorded it onto,” said Penna. “My amp is old, I had all vintage mikes ... and the technique we used to mike the drums was with only two. The way they used to do back in the day. I wanted to see how well I could create that analog feel ...”

Trabants features a deftly reproduced vintage sound, recorded almost entirely using old gear, and the result is a sizzling retro surf sound that would have probably been deemed subversive enough in East Germany to warrant attention from the Stasi.

Consisting of Penna, Joseph Marrett (bass) and Mora Precarious (drums) from the acclaimed Boston band Ketman, along with Bryan Murphy, lead singer of The Shills, another local band which has been lauded by critics, and Kevin Corzett on trumpet and tenor sax respectively, Trabants is a project that has been a long time in the making.

“I’d always wanted to do a surf project,” said Penna.

The band formed in order to aid a friend in filling a show according to the guitar player.

“It was kind of a spur-of-the moment thing on an idea I’d had for a long time,” said Penna.

The album, the first for the band as currently constituted, is set to be released on January 28, at a show with fellow surf-rock outfit Beware the Dangers of a Ghost Scorpion, at Rosebud in Somerville’s Davis Square. A third, as yet unknown, act is likely to be added to the bill as well

Highwire Surfing consists of 13 tracks and comes in at around 32 minutes in length. There is no time for dalliance here: this is mostly up-tempo stuff. There are a few slower interludes, but by and large, this record begs the listener to at the very least, furiously tap a foot, if not just spontaneously begin dancing feverishly and with great abandon outright.

“The record started out as just a couple of songs that I’d recorded because I’d become obsessed with the concept of recording in mono,” said Penna. “I’ve always liked old school vintage recording, and always kind of aimed to record that way, but I’d never mix anything in mono ... you have so much less space ... everything just has to be much more focused.”

Kicking off with the title track, and through the Quentin Tarantino-meets-the Russian mob bounce of “St. Petersburg Shake,” the soul soaked horns of “Easy Does It” and the irresistible “Cinecitta ’65,” the first four tracks on the album barely give a body the chance to catch their breath.

The next song, “... And the Morning After,” allows a momentary respite, as the pace slows a bit, but not for long. “Undercover,” a song reminiscent of 1970s detective movies with its built-for-sleuthing sound, brings things back up, but “El Dorado” brings things to a head. The relentless rhythm of the track is infectious, and is sure to have the Rosebud patrons in a frenzy on January 28.

Another favorite of mine was “Berlusconi Shake,” a rollicking track that somehow sounds exactly the way I envision the life of Italian Prime Minister cum millionaire playboy Silvio Berlusconi: soaked with booze and filled with fast cars and faster women. Full of cash stuffed envelopes and dubious back room deals, most likely taking place at some Adriatic resort town somewhere. Ah, Silvio ... I am green.

The record concludes with “Highwire Walking,” a song that feels like it just stepped out of a hotrod on the side of a highway in 1950s America, ran a comb through its greasy hair, spat on the road and lit a cigarette, all while someone’s daughter, watching out the window of a passing car, just developed a dangerous eye for the “bad boy” type.

“Highwire Walking” is like The Fonz.

The Album is a good time all around, and passes my personal measure as well: it sounds absolutely dynamite on headphones (the big fuckers, not ear-buds mind you). It is well worth checking out at www.trabants.bandcamp.com, or www.myspace.com/trabants.

So let’s break the spell of all this rat-bastard commie snow with some good old surf-music from the US of A, huh? Although January 28 is still a ways off, it’s a good bet that the weather is going to suck. Pop over to Rosebud in Somerville and catch the album release show. Unless of course, you are a commie. In that case, we know who you are and where you live. Watch your step, because we will be ...

- Boston Music Live

Although history has conveniently painted 1960s guitar pioneers the Ventures into a bit of a novelty “surf rock’’ corner, the fact remains that rock ’n’ roll probably wouldn’t be the same without them. Masters at stringing together melodies from all corners of the world into three-minute pop gems, the group rode a brief high tide of instrumental pop music into the glory days of the early ’60s that included maestros of all stripes, from Burt Bacharach to Duane Eddy.

Boston has had legions of maestros of its own since then. One of the hardest working in recent times has been guitarist Eric Penna, who’s led the post-punk group Ketman through several phases in the last eight years or so. Penna’s a walking encyclopedia of rock history, but it’s taken even this obsessive fan beyond his 30th birthday to dig past the last 50 years to find his latest calling: the five-piece go-go party of Trabants.



“It’s funny that just last August, Elvis’s first record suddenly blew my mind,’’ Penna laughs. He had also just recently chanced into a Ventures binge at a dingy New Orleans used record shop. “I thought, wait a minute, I had to go through all of that just to find this record and go, Oh, this guy Elvis’s record is pretty good.’’

Penna, seated in a booth at the appropriately kitschy Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown, recounts the way Ketman’s gloriously spastic punk shape-shifted into the rock time machine of Trabants. It comes to a head tonight when the band releases its first album of dusty-sounding woody wagon cruisers with a show at the Rosebud Bar in Somerville.

Trabants got its start a couple of years ago on whim. A friend’s band was coming through town and needed a show — Ketman was already committed, so Trabants was born. It was a new name, but the band members stayed the same: Joe Marrett on bass, Mora Precarious on drums, Bryan Murphy on trumpet and Kevin Corzett on saxophone. They cobbled together a set of surf classics, added a few obscurities, and they were off.

The first show was a blast, and what followed was a relaxing year for a band accustomed to music as frenetic and tightly wound as Ketman’s. “You can almost eat dinner to Trabants,’’ Penna says proudly.

Logistically, it gelled with fantasies the band had been having for years. Corzett says the new incarnation made them flexible with booking. “On old tours with Ketman, we’d get offered these roadhouse gigs on off-nights where they’d want us to play all night long,’’ he says. Ketman gets the straight-up rock shows, while Trabants can handle any takers.

And so there were extended nights at Charlie’s Kitchen, a monthlong residency at the Plough & Stars (where half the audience indeed sat at tables and munched on appetizers), and even a New Year’s Eve gig at Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, where the band got grandpas and 4-year-olds dancing in the aisles.

The cover set grew to two hours or so, expanding to include a psych jam called “Juke Boxes Chez Saidani’’ (by Philippe Sarde) that Penna found on a French film soundtrack compilation to a Stevie Wonder soul platter written in Italian (“Passo Le Mie Notti Qui Da Solo’’). But new music was on the way, too; Penna began recording a batch of originals at the group’s Allston practice space.

The debut Trabants album, dubbed “Highwire Surfing’’ and recorded in old-fashioned mono, is a testament to the power of old-school rock ethics, from its sparse arrangements to its trippy delay. There’s sputtering spring reverb on the guitars, crisp melodies, warm drums, and sly horn lines all over the place. Penna pulls elements from spaghetti western soundtracks such as wheezing harmonicas and sound effects piped in from Telstar satellites. The only twist is in the names; Penna’s affinity for Cold War Eastern European ephemera in Ketman carries over in such song titles as “St. Petersburg Shake’’ and “Zubrówka,’’ the name of a Polish vodka banned in the States. “Trabants’’ themselves were small East German cars ubiquitous throughout Soviet bloc countries.

“Eric was a taskmaster for authenticity while we were doing the record,’’ says Corzett. “I had some homework. I knew the big names, but I’d never gotten super into surf music, so I listened to a lot of original recordings that he gave me.’’

Whatever details Corzett and the rest of the band found to grab onto, it worked. “Highwire Surfing’’ feels like some kind of lost masterpiece, which is fitting for a genre built on lost masterpieces and musical hand-me-downs.

In fact, it might be the music’s deep-down place in rock DNA that makes it work so well. “I’ve heard it said that songs like these are like pebbles in a creek,’’ says Penna. “Like the water has been flowing over them for so long that they become perfectly round.

“You take a song like ‘Raunchy’ — you know, one of the first rock songs. It’s so simple, but when you play it you can just feel its age. You feel how easy of a suit it is to wear, it fits everybody so well.’’

For audiences, the feeling’s mutual. Says Penna, “One thing I’ve learned from this band is that people will forever dance to ‘Wipeout.’ ’’

- The Boston Globe

Trabants' debut album "Highwire Surfing" has been nominated for best instrumental album by the Independent Music Awards.
- The Independent Music Awards

by: Barry Thompson

Only the future knows whether Boston's Trabants made a commercially savvy choice by disseminating a record of scorching surf rock during one of the snowiest winters in memory. Will attendees at the release show later this month (January 28 at Rosebud, natch) buy music that reminds them what it's like when it doesn't totally suck outside? For that matter, how will those accustomed to the roller-coaster punk of local power trio Ketman react to Trabants' instrumental retrophilia? Although a change in style and method required a rebrand from Eric Penna - assisted by his regular Ketman running buddies and a few others adding auxiliary spice- it seems the same underlying philosophy applies to both bands. Ketman pluck a concept out of the æther of their collective unconsciousness and turn it into a punk song. Trabants cull a mood from something like a spaghetti western or a Frankie-and-Annette flick, establish a riff to serve as its appropriate avatar, and blow it up with solo freakouts and slow-burning crescendos. More often than not, the results echo songs everybody remembers from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack by otherwise obscure cats like the Lively Ones and Dick Dale. I suspect that's pretty much the idea. - The Boston Phoenix

Trabants: Surfing and the Iron Curtain
by Andrew Jeromski
The other day, I’m sitting on the ragged couch in my living room still looking for a band to write about and running out of time.

Outside, Boston is being rocked by the first blizzard of the winter. I go out onto the porch, to smoke. There is already a good amount of snow on everything, and it’s coming down heavy still.

I can see people moving about on the street: huddled and bunched up against the relentless wind and cold blowing snow. It looks bleak.

For one reason or another, I think of cold war-era East Germany as the figures shuffle along looking harried and oppressed. I think of the old Soviet Union. I think of Poland of course, and the Czechs and Hungarians, battling the winters of eastern Europe.

It is shortly after that the opportunity to write about Trabants, and their soon-to-be-released album Highwire Surfing presented itself.

I simply could not refuse, given the circumstances.

A surf-rock band, named after an icon of the iron curtain. An automobile so prevalent that they can still be seen to this day in that part of the world. The writing was on the wall. You can’t go around ignoring things like this; you simply can’t overlook the synchronicity of it.

“They’re cool little cars,” said Eric Penna, the band’s primary songwriter and guitar player, of the bands namesake. “I saw them all over eastern Europe. I travelled out there, and I would see them all over the place. They look like they would cost about $2000 or something like that. They’re almost made out of plastic.”

The moniker was selected with a certain eye towards the irony of a band playing surf-rock, a genre that ranks just below mom, apple pie, thinly veiled imperialism and baseball on the Americana scale, named after a symbol of central planning and the Soviet bloc.

“It was a little bit tongue-in-cheek,” said Penna of the bands name. “We’re playing surf music and what’s more American than that? But we have an eastern European name. It doesn’t really make sense ... it’s kind of funny.”

What better way to beat the stir-crazy desolation of a withering, New England blizzard than with a band that plays surf rock?

A shot of irony: the Trabant automobiles during the soviet era often cost more used than they did new because of the often long waiting times for new vehicles.

Much like a communist era Leipziger, Penna and Trabants understand the value of vintage stuff.

They really don’t make ‘em the way the way they used to.

“Everything I used to record (Highwire Surfing) was old, except for the computer I recorded it onto,” said Penna. “My amp is old, I had all vintage mikes ... and the technique we used to mike the drums was with only two. The way they used to do back in the day. I wanted to see how well I could create that analog feel ...”

Trabants features a deftly reproduced vintage sound, recorded almost entirely using old gear, and the result is a sizzling retro surf sound that would have probably been deemed subversive enough in East Germany to warrant attention from the Stasi.

Consisting of Penna, Joseph Marrett (bass) and Mora Precarious (drums) from the acclaimed Boston band Ketman, along with Bryan Murphy, lead singer of The Shills, another local band which has been lauded by critics, and Kevin Corzett on trumpet and tenor sax respectively, Trabants is a project that has been a long time in the making.

“I’d always wanted to do a surf project,” said Penna.

The band formed in order to aid a friend in filling a show according to the guitar player.

“It was kind of a spur-of-the moment thing on an idea I’d had for a long time,” said Penna.

The album, the first for the band as currently constituted, is set to be released on January 28, at a show with fellow surf-rock outfit Beware the Dangers of a Ghost Scorpion, at Rosebud in Somerville’s Davis Square. A third, as yet unknown, act is likely to be added to the bill as well

Highwire Surfing consists of 13 tracks and comes in at around 32 minutes in length. There is no time for dalliance here: this is mostly up-tempo stuff. There are a few slower interludes, but by and large, this record begs the listener to at the very least, furiously tap a foot, if not just spontaneously begin dancing feverishly and with great abandon outright.

“The record started out as just a couple of songs that I’d recorded because I’d become obsessed with the concept of recording in mono,” said Penna. “I’ve always liked old school vintage recording, and always kind of aimed to record that way, but I’d never mix anything in mono ... you have so much less space ... everything just has to be much more focused.”

Kicking off with the title track, and through the Quentin Tarantino-meets-the Russian mob bounce of “St. Petersburg Shake,” the soul soaked horns of “Easy Does It” and the irresistible “Cinecitta ’65,” the first four tracks on the album barely give a body the chance to catch their breath.

The next song, “... And the Morning After,” allows a momentary respite, as the pace slows a bit, but not for long. “Undercover,” a song reminiscent of 1970s detective movies with its built-for-sleuthing sound, brings things back up, but “El Dorado” brings things to a head. The relentless rhythm of the track is infectious, and is sure to have the Rosebud patrons in a frenzy on January 28.

Another favorite of mine was “Berlusconi Shake,” a rollicking track that somehow sounds exactly the way I envision the life of Italian Prime Minister cum millionaire playboy Silvio Berlusconi: soaked with booze and filled with fast cars and faster women. Full of cash stuffed envelopes and dubious back room deals, most likely taking place at some Adriatic resort town somewhere. Ah, Silvio ... I am green.

The record concludes with “Highwire Walking,” a song that feels like it just stepped out of a hotrod on the side of a highway in 1950s America, ran a comb through its greasy hair, spat on the road and lit a cigarette, all while someone’s daughter, watching out the window of a passing car, just developed a dangerous eye for the “bad boy” type.

“Highwire Walking” is like The Fonz.

The Album is a good time all around, and passes my personal measure as well: it sounds absolutely dynamite on headphones (the big fuckers, not ear-buds mind you). It is well worth checking out at www.trabants.bandcamp.com, or www.myspace.com/trabants.

So let’s break the spell of all this rat-bastard commie snow with some good old surf-music from the US of A, huh? Although January 28 is still a ways off, it’s a good bet that the weather is going to suck. Pop over to Rosebud in Somerville and catch the album release show. Unless of course, you are a commie. In that case, we know who you are and where you live. Watch your step, because we will be ...



- Boston Music Live

Matt Parish, Globe Correspondent / Jan 27, 2011

Although history has conveniently painted 1960s guitar pioneers the Ventures into a bit of a novelty “surf rock” corner, the fact remains that rock ’n’ roll probably wouldn’t be the same without them. Masters at stringing together melodies from all corners of the world into three-minute pop gems, the group rode a brief high tide of instrumental pop music into the glory days of the early ’60s that included maestros of all stripes, from Burt Bacharach to Duane Eddy.

Boston has had legions of maestros of its own since then. One of the hardest working in recent times has been guitarist Eric Penna, who’s led the post-punk group Ketman through several phases in the last eight years or so. Penna’s a walking encyclopedia of rock history, but it’s taken even this obsessive fan beyond his 30th birthday to dig past the last 50 years to find his latest calling: the five-piece go-go party of Trabants.

“It’s funny that just last August, Elvis’s first record suddenly blew my mind,” Penna laughs. He had also just recently chanced into a Ventures binge at a dingy New Orleans used record shop. “I thought, wait a minute, I had to go through all of that just to find this record and go, Oh, this guy Elvis’s record is pretty good.”

Penna, seated in a booth at the appropriately kitschy Deluxe Town Diner in Watertown, recounts the way Ketman’s gloriously spastic punk shape-shifted into the rock time machine of Trabants. It comes to a head tonight when the band releases its first album of dusty-sounding woody wagon cruisers with a show at the Rosebud Bar in Somerville.
Trabants got its start a couple of years ago on whim. A friend’s band was coming through town and needed a show — Ketman was already committed, so Trabants was born. It was a new name, but the band members stayed the same: Joe Marrett on bass, Mora Precarious on drums, Bryan Murphy on trumpet and Kevin Corzett on saxophone. They cobbled together a set of surf classics, added a few obscurities, and they were off.

The first show was a blast, and what followed was a relaxing year for a band accustomed to music as frenetic and tightly wound as Ketman’s. “You can almost eat dinner to Trabants,” Penna says proudly.

Logistically, it gelled with fantasies the band had been having for years. Corzett says the new incarnation made them flexible with booking. “On old tours with Ketman, we’d get offered these roadhouse gigs on off-nights where they’d want us to play all night long,” he says. Ketman gets the straight-up rock shows, while Trabants can handle any takers.

And so there were extended nights at Charlie’s Kitchen, a monthlong residency at the Plough & Stars (where half the audience indeed sat at tables and munched on appetizers), and even a New Year’s Eve gig at Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, where the band got grandpas and 4-year-olds dancing in the aisles.

The cover set grew to two hours or so, expanding to include a psych jam called “Juke Boxes Chez Saidani” (by Philippe Sarde) that Penna found on a French film soundtrack compilation to a Stevie Wonder soul platter written in Italian (“Passo Le Mie Notti Qui Da Solo”). But new music was on the way, too; Penna began recording a batch of originals at the group’s Allston practice space.
The debut Trabants album, dubbed “Highwire Surfing” and recorded in old-fashioned mono, is a testament to the power of old-school rock ethics, from its sparse arrangements to its trippy delay. There’s sputtering spring reverb on the guitars, crisp melodies, warm drums, and sly horn lines all over the place. Penna pulls elements from spaghetti western soundtracks such as wheezing harmonicas and sound effects piped in from Telstar satellites. The only twist is in the names; Penna’s affinity for Cold War Eastern European ephemera in Ketman carries over in such song titles as “St. Petersburg Shake” and “Zubrówka,” the name of a Polish vodka banned in the States. “Trabants” themselves were small East German cars ubiquitous throughout Soviet bloc countries.

“Eric was a taskmaster for authenticity while we were doing the record,” says Corzett. “I had some homework. I knew the big names, but I’d never gotten super into surf music, so I listened to a lot of original recordings that he gave me.”

Whatever details Corzett and the rest of the band found to grab onto, it worked. “Highwire Surfing” feels like some kind of lost masterpiece, which is fitting for a genre built on lost masterpieces and musical hand-me-downs.

In fact, it might be the music’s deep-down place in rock DNA that makes it work so well. “I’ve heard it said that songs like these are like pebbles in a creek,” says Penna. “Like the water has been flowing over them for so long that they become perfectly round.

“You take a song like ‘Raunchy’ — you know, one of the first rock songs. It’s so simple, but when you play it you can just feel its age. You feel how easy of a suit it is to wear, it fits everybody so well.”

For audiences, the feeling’s mutual. Says Penna, “One thing I’ve learned from this band is that people will forever dance to ‘Wipeout.’ ”

- The Boston Globe