(Interview von Yannig im Frühjahr 2016)
Petrol
Girls kannte ich seit einiger Zeit vom Hörensagen, genau genommen
seit ich Sängerin Ren in Hamburg bei einem Konzert kennengelernt
hatte. Damals sang sie noch Background-Chöre beim Acoustic
Punk-Songwriter Mike Scott, der wie sie selbst ‘based in London’
ist. Von der Idee, eine Hardcore-Band mit feministischem Schwerpunkt
zu gründen, erzählte sie mir schon damals. Als ich Petrol Girls
dann das erste Mal in Hamburg beim La*DIY-Fest 2014 im Centro Sociale
sah, war ich trotz hoher Erwartungen äußerst Beeindruckt von der
Power, dem fettem Sound und ausgetüfteltem Songwriting der Band, die
die Qualität der ersten EP (die ja schon alles andere als schlecht
war) noch bei weitem übertraf. Auf dem Bananenterz-Festival in der
Flora 2015 haben sie diesen Eindruck in meinen Augen (oder besser
gesagt Ohren) sogar noch übertroffen. Inzwischen haben sie auf
mehreren Touren in UK und auf dem europäischen Festland schon
ordentlich von sich Reden gemacht. Da ich weiß, daß die Bandmember
einiges zu sagen haben, und die Band mit dem selbst gewählten label
“Feminist Hardcore” ja auch offensiv mit einer politischen
Haltung nach außen geht, habe ich der Band einige Fragen zu Musik
und Feminismus, DIY in London und Europa sowie der politischen
Situation in England gestellt. Aus dem Vorhaben, kollektive Antworten
abzuliefern, ist leider nichts geworden, daher stammen alle Antworten
von Sängerin Ren. Für Frühjahr 2016 ist eine zweite EP
angekündigt.
1.
The obligatory first question is of course the introduction. So if
you like, tell the readers of No Spirit fanzine about Petrol Girls:
who are you? Where are you from? Why are you in a band? When did you
start? Etc etc.
Petrol
Girls started in 2013 as a 3 piece for a house show celebrating
International Women’s Day. Joe joined Liepa and me not long after,
then we played with loads of different drummers and have stuck with
Zock who also plays in Astpai. We’re from all over the place -
Lithuania, Austria and the UK - but are loosely based in London at
the moment. I’d been playing acoustic for ages and was desperate to
do something heavier, then was just incredibly lucky that these three
incredible musicians wanted to join forces.
2.
You describe yourselves as a feminist Hardcore band. Now, feminism is
a very broad term with very diverse, sometimes conflicting opinions.
Would you like to explain more precisely what feminism means to you?
What issues are you addressing in your lyrics/speeches, what is your
outlook for feminist struggles in the early 21st century?
I
think about feminism as a plural thing, as loads of kinds of
feminisms. Even within the band we probably all have slightly
different takes on it. For me, feminism is something I need, to
understand why I am and have been treated in certain ways both inside
and outside the punk rock community and to empower me to fight that
shit. I’ve been involved in punk rock for ten years now, going to
shows, running shows, playing in different projects, touring, giving
bands somewhere to stay, feeding people and alongside all the awesome
experiences that keep me involved: I’ve been sexually assaulted
more times than I can count; I’ve been endlessly told to pipe down/
shut up, told that I don’t understand my own experiences; my
involvement and input gets erased from things all the time - my ideas
and input into so many different things are not credited (where a
man’s input would be); some men have tried to bully me because I
won’t blindly do what they tell me to; I’ve been sexualised,
silenced, harassed and intimidated in a scene that constantly pats
itself on the back for its ‘right on’ politics. So that’s why
for me it was important to make an explicitly feminist band because
there’s nothing like getting on stage in front of a crowd that
contains the people that have assaulted you or tried to silence you
and rage at them for 30 minutes. And even better, to meet and
identify with people who’ve had similar experiences, share an
understanding of why, and support each other. And that’s just
how feminism relates for me, specifically to being in a band.
Feminism informs the way I look at most things and is something I
still have so much to learn about. My feminism has become more
intersectional over the past couple of years as I’ve learnt more
about how race, sexuality, class, and so many other factors relate to
it, but there is so much more to learn.
3.
Also, looking at your lyrics, it is clear that you are not a
one-topic band and not all songs address straightforwardly feminist
issues. Have you ever felt that this label might be limiting at all
(not meant as a criticism, I think it’s very appropriate to make
this kind of distinction within this very male-oriented
scene/society)? Do you feel like you’re being booked into certain
kinds of events or get certain foreseeable reactions because of this
label? Is „feminist HC/Punk“ a scene of its own now with several
new bands emerging in the past few years, and the older ones getting
back together?
To
me, describing ourselves as feminist is a starting point. Feminism is
just one kind of politicisation from which others naturally happen.
It colours my entire world-view.
It
certainly means we end up being put on specifically feminist shows,
and sure there’s some kind of feminist HC/ punk scene but its not
one thing, it exists in little pockets everywhere, so I guess its
more a genre than a scene in that sense. But we play in many
different kinds of spaces, and something interesting I noticed is how
I alter the way I express my feminism according to those spaces. I
love playing feminist shows because we can assume a certain level of
knowledge and chat about more specific feminist parts of the songs on
stage and have really great in depth conversations with people about
feminism at the show. But then personally, I totally get a kick out
of playing in really macho environments as well, especially now we
have this song Phallocentric and I get to tell them all how bored I
am of penis-centric sex, art and music.. mwahahahaha.
But
yes, for sure we have songs that are about other ideas. When we
started Petrol Girls, most of my activism was around specifically
feminist issues, then I had a shit time with mental health and was
pretty inactive, and now I’m more focussed on the current border
crisis - and this totally has an impact on the kinds of lyrics I
write. And it doesn’t mean we as a band think feminism is “less
important” or that we’ve “moved on” - feminism informs our
approach to most situations.
4.Musicwise,
what are your influences? Hardcore, like feminism, is a very broad
term. I hear a lot of early 90’s post-HC influence, but there’s
definitely more to your sound. But what is it?
We
all listen to quite different stuff. Liepa and Joe for example are
into proper mathrock stuff with mad time signatures like Delta Sleep,
TTNG, Edit Your home Town.. I guess I can say that collectively as a
band we’re influenced by bands like Refused, War on Women,
Propagandhi, G.L.O.S.S., Priests, Rainmaker, Paint It Black, Bikini
Kill, At The Drive In - there’s loads! Also, FLEETWOOD MAC.
5.
So totally NOT early post-90s HC… hehe. How do you go about writing
tunes? Are they fully written by one person and you just arrange them
together, or is it a collective process?
This
has developed over time and I think this is where Liepa and Joe
deserve full riff machine credit. We have two main processes, one
starts with lyrics and grows from there, the other starts with a riff
and builds from that. The second way is much more challenging for me
but its interesting how the words for the lyrics come out as sounds
and rhythms first then take on meaning, whereas the other way starts
with a way more concrete idea of what the songs about. The lyrics
that begin as sounds and rhythms first tend to be more open, maybe
about a kind of feeling like alienation, whereas the songs that begin
as lyrics tend to be about a specific issue or idea - we just wrote a
songs around “Its my body and my choice” for example. I think
both are valid creatively and politically.
6.
One last feminism and music related question: I think you’re
deliberately referring to Hardcore as a scene, as opposed to Riot
Grrrl (I believe Ren told me this once). What do you think of Riot
Grrrls legacy in retrospective, now that it’s getting caught by the
90s-retro-craze and academic books are written about it? Is your
preference to be labelled Hardcore just because of personal taste, or
is that a more far-reaching decision?
Petrol
Girls is not a Riot Grrrl band. Riot Grrrl is just one of many many
things that we draw influence from, I think it’s incredibly
limiting that feminist bands tend to be described as Riot Grrrl, it’s
insulting both ways: it washes out Riot Grrrl which has a lot more
specific features than just feminism and punk, and it boxes women in
punk into one category.
I
think it was when I watched “From The Back of the Room” that I
saw this perspective - until then I thought Riot Grrrl was all I had;
all I could identify with. And I guess this says a lot about the way
documentaries and books decide what the history of a scene is,
especially in terms of more marginalised groups. As part of that
group it can have an impact on what you perceive as possible. I
remember reading Typical Girls - the Slits Biography and it having a
massive impact on the way I thought about making music.
I
guess we defined ourselves as hardcore, or now probably
post-hardcore, to emphasise the heavier and politicised nature of our
music.
7.
Coming from London, the proclaimed mother town of the Punk movement,
can you tell your opinion about what the scene is like there in 2015?
Are there still many bands and venues, and how many people are
attending gigs? Any exclusive insider tips we should have heard of?
I
always feel like in London there are many different scenes that
interlink. There’s so much going on that it can be really
overwhelming! DIY Space For London opened a few months ago, and is 5
minutes cycle from where we’re based in London, which is awesome.
They had about 2,000 people sign up as members in the first couple of
months so there’s definitely loads of people interested in shows.
Personally I feel like I got stuck in a part of the London scene that
I wasn’t really that into musically just because of my friendship
circle, then stumbled across this whole other bigger and way more
diverse part of the community where the music is way more interesting
to me and I feel loads more comfortable. I feel like that can only
happen in a city as big and busy as London.
8.
You all live in one house that serves as a social space for gigs and
other things as well. While it is quite common for this to happen in
bigger towns in Germany, it doesn’t seem to be the case in the UK.
Would you like to tell us more about your space, how it came about
and what you do there? Also, if you know or like, can you tell us
some things about collective/cooperative housing in the UK in
general? Is there a lot of it and how easy or difficult is it to make
it happen?
Yeah
the other 3 now all technically live in the rented house in London
where we’ve run shows for the past 4 and a half years, I just turn
up and demand feeding and cuddles from time to time. Its a rented
house and still hosts house shows when everyone living there feels
like it. Its just a lucky situation - cheap rent for the area, an
oblivious landlord and a massive kitchen. If you’ve got any kind of
space you can make some kind of show work. I used to run acoustic
gigs in the kitchen of my university halls - there’s always a way.
The bigger battle there was a feminist one. Now you’d never see an
all male line up there and feminist issues can be openly and
comfortably discussed. Thank fuck. There are lots of other houses
that put on shows, I guess the one we’re based at has been going
for a while and has a bigger space so earnt a bit of a reputation. I
just always say to anyone who’s interested to just have a go and
ask your mates to help you.
9.
The UK is currently facing major austerity measures and restrictions
of human liberties. This has lead to several protests and riots, with
big student’s protests in 2010 and the well-covered Tottenham riots
in 2011. How is the social climate now that the Tories got
re-elected? Is there grass roots organizing to counteract the
austerity measures or any notable political movements you’d like to
tell us about?
A
few days after the Tories got re-elected, this time without the
Liberal Democrat coalition, over 1,000 people gathered at very short
notice in a lecture theatre in central London in direct response to
the result, and took part in the first Radical Left Assembly. This
was an acknowledgement of the unrepresentative and undemocratic
nature of the current UK political system, and that with the Tories
in charge things are set to get pretty bleak. And yeah things are
pretty spectacularly bleak. And it doesn’t just affect UK citizens.
Fuck I don’t even know where to start. Bombing, fracking, cutting,
privatising, detaining, deporting.. and some people are resisting,
collectively and as individuals. But we’re not organised enough and
there aren’t enough of us.. yet. And so many people, especially our
generation, are suffering mental health problems, and can’t even
scrape a decent living, and are always in a state of work or ready
for work, marketing every aspect of our lives. I feel like real, face
to face, rewarding, collective, supportive, inclusive organising is
the only way we can even begin dragging ourselves out of this
bullshit.
10.
Other things you are involved in that you want to spread the word
about?
I’m
not sure how best to speak about it at the moment, but I see the
current border crisis as a key historical moment, and feel like the
way we are responding to it will define the nature of our society for
years to come. This is a good update on what is happening in Calais,
but of course this is only a small part of the picture that is
physically close to where I’m based.
and
it’s weird that I’m taking up so little space in this interview
with this issue when it’s so fucking huge.
11.
You have toured both the UK and Europe several times by now. How were
the reactions in general? Everybody’s always asking for the fun
parts, but which were the shittiest gigs you had to play so far? Tell
us about the dark side of touring!
No
honestly it is actually always awesome. Its an incredible privilege
to be able to do this. To have this freedom of movement - fuck! For
me personally, because of the privilege I experience of being on
stage, being asked my opinion, getting to perform and release my
aggression and anger, men don’t fuck with me so much.. so my
experiences of obvious sexism are pretty minimal these days. I think
other women, and certainly I as a younger and less visible woman,
have a different experience.
12.
When can we expect a full Petrol Girls album?
Within
the next year!!! We’re going to Graz to record for two weeks in
March. OHOOOOOOOO I’m excited.
13.
Any last words?
CONSENT.