The Bremen band Les Rabiates relies on vinyl, namely 180 gram, black vinyl of the highest quality. Last year, the band already released a mini-album in LP format with “Destination Unknown”. Now, the second coup follows with “Le Monde est à toi” (released on the Bremen label Fuego). Mind you, it is a mini-LP that runs at 45 rpm, so only contains six songs and has a playing time of a good 23 minutes.
For anyone who just wants to put the beautifully designed LP in their display case, “Le Monde est à toi” also contains a voucher for an MP3 download of the material.
Les Rabiates is the band of Achim Gätjen, who was the head of the literary, ambitious, wild jazz formation Swim Two Birds for a long time. With a significantly reduced personnel, this gradually became Les Rabiates, which has existed for around five years. Initially they pursued fragile jazz ideas. The quintet has now become a kind of film noir band that oscillates between dark rock music and chanson, and mixes a pinch of blues feeling into the whole thing. The surprise on the first vinyl LP was that Achim Gätjen, actually a saxophonist, picked up the vocal microphone with a deep voice that reminds you of other men with sandpaper. He also had an effectively feminine, dark counterpart at his side in the form of the Spanish singer CaLi.
On “Le Monde est à toi” they have now become a finely tuned singing duo that sings songs like “A long Goodbye” in a Raymond Chandler style, and with Howlin’ Wolf’s classic “Do the do” they open a door to the blues, but at the same time alienate it. Les Rabiates manage without a bass, the necessary deep tones come from Michael Berger’s analogue keyboard museum, Andy Einhorn plucks the warm and delicate guitar and Jens Ahlers is on the drums. Occasionally you can also hear a few deep saxophone touches from Gätjen. A nice LP for the late hour.