Crutches
Jan Frisch_git, bass
Olga Reznichenko_keytar, synths
Laure Boer_monochord, electronics
Valentin Schuster_drums
CRUTCHES elevator music for claustrophobics‚ Tounge-in-cheek acrobatic punk with metric ambivalence seriously coming your way to sandblast well settled habits of reception.
The band switches from drones to funky 5/8 to jazz ballad to indie pop satire to speed metal and is held together by the melodic and rhythmic trademarks of the composer, portraying themes like the gentle and the merciless, plagues and computers, particle physics and assembly lines to name a few. The pieces are delicate interwoven rhythmic structures, adressing aesthetics of machines and satirizing styles and clichees, painting a picture of our multilayered,
New Album: FOUR LTTR WRDS
confusing, overwhelming and also comical present with the use of sound. The music is based on deeply carved out compositions and performed in alternation with free parts, sharpening contrast between the static and droney with the unforeseen and unhinged, hanging dangerously loose on hidden threads, then coming together at just the right moment, holding the audience on their toes, while pulling a leg or two every once in a while.
“The so-called Four Letter Words do not have a good reputation in America, as they often stand for dirty content. Fuck, Cunt, Crap, Dirt, Shit, but also Funk, Beat, Rock, Punk and Jazz. The Leipzig-based band Crutches are now setting a series of four-letter combinations to music that are not quite as ill-reputed as, for example, Fare, Core, Free or Frog. The music itself is all the more impressive. 'Four Lttr Wrds' is a crude mixture of jazz rock, metal, math rock, punk, kraut rock and noise that is deliberately unbalanced so as never to be predictable. Some things seem dystopian, others conciliatory, but nothing opportunistic. Even if the song titles are not overtly provocative, the songs are always subliminally
based on an attitude of rebelliousness. Crutches are typical representatives of what is probably the most musically rebellious German jazz community in Leipzig at the moment.” _Wolf Kampmann, Jazz Thing, 2025