“Collectors of Pop is like a pink piece of cake that you've always wanted to bite into. Featuring twelve
songs as colourful as a Wes Anderson film, as snappy as those slogans at a Muhammad Ali press
conference and with melodies soft as a kiss from Princess Di”, is how the Darmstadt indie pop duo
Woog Riots vividly describe their new album “Collectors of Pop. ”
“The truth about Planet Earth is a bad truth, ” sang jazz pioneer Sun Ra. Woog Riots, comprising
Silvana Battisti and Marc Herbert, found this racism-related song to be apt in many ways and included
a cover version in their newly released pop collection, with Sun Ra's avant-garde free jazz piece
translated to 3-minute minimalist pop.
Elsewhere on the album the self-styled collectors of pop sing about the Japanese painter Yayoi
Kusama, Bob Dylan and the Italian cycling legend Francesco Moser. On “Riverboat to Amsterdam”,
the album's obvious hit, they deal with Silvana's job as a riverboat cruise manager, a professional
experiment which has since ended! In "Post Covid Honeymoon" Woog Riots embark on a description
of their wedding trip, a highlight being a concert by Swell Maps C21 in Edinburgh. Singer Jowe Head
(Swell Maps, Television Personalities) provides an unmistakeable presence as a guest on this
particular recording. The second cover version of the album, an interpretation of "The Angel of Death"
by Hank Williams, closes this Woog Riots' pop kaleidoscope.
Woog Riots love 808 drum sounds, synths à la Kraftwerk, the rhythm guitars of Young Marble Giants
and the vocals of The Moldy Peaches, with additional ingredients like Otamatone, Stylophone and
singing saw added to the musical mix.
The recordings for "Collectors of Pop" were made between 2020 and 2024 in their living room
recording studio in Darmstadt, surrounded by their record collection, favourite books, and films to
watch during session breaks. Sometimes there was even some pink cake. Dates for the final mixing of
the individual songs with Lolo Blümler (Ironbar Studios) regularly became pop happenings, especially
when Jörn Elling Wuttke was present at proceedings as a musical advisor!
This, the seventh Woog Riots album, will again be issued on the band's own label "From Lo-Fi to
Disco!". Silvana and Marc have previously released the "Beatlesque" Modesty Blaise from Bristol
(UK), Knarf Rellöm's Umherschweifende Produzenten and The Spaghetti Wings from Hamburg. You
can read about Woog Riots' earlier period with the legendary label What's So Funny About / Zick Zack
in Christof Meueler's book about Alfred Hilsberg "The Zickzack Principle".
