The most accurate "impossible" label for Ankitoner Metamars might be crooner electronica... This new adventure by Spanish alternative/experimental music veterans Anki Toner (Superelvis) and Javier Piñango (Cerdos, Mil Dolores Pequeños, Destroy Mercedes, Druhb) combines obscurity, radical leaps from melody to noise (and back) and a rock attitude in songs that wink at Leonard Cohen, hypnotic improvisations and ultramelodies that might turn out to be obsessive violent rhythmic processes one step away from Suicide, ot the noise of Whitehouse or Borbetomagus. Electronic rock built on loops, combining physically generated sequences (after all they can play) with good old appropriation.
Ankitoner Metamars is almost the first public activity from Anki Toner in 10 years. It is also Javier Piñango's return to rock (in the most basic, less formal, meaning of the word), after years of work in the field of minimalist-experimental-electronic music. And it is also the first time they work together (if we don't count guest appearances in each other's former records) since they live 600 kms apart. So this is a project in which comebacks, reencounters and distances have set up the field for a "different", hybrid, voluntarily undefined approach, in which we find music (played, recorded, sampled, cut and pasted, assembled and sung), noises, lyrics, loops and melodies, all of which are treated with the freedom found in those who only trust their own intuition. These two guys no longer try to plan what they are going to do, they simply do it. Then come astonishment, fun, surprise, anger…
This album, recorded between Barcelona and Madrid, is planned as an LP, with two sides. It features seven tracks, one of which is a cover of Leonard Cohen ("Hallelujah"). And no, it is not a deconstruction-reconstruction of the song: it is the kind of cover that tries to be faithful to the original song, at least until it finds that the song explodes in a crescendo of harmonicas, despair and sound that's swallows the track.
The rest? From the ever-changing succession of sequences in "Reality" to the obsessive claustrophobia in "Emotion" (featuring Lydia Lunch on vocals), there is time to wander quite near pop borders ("Kaleidoscope"), insanity (in the hypnotic loop that feeds "My Name Is": My name is NOT, My name was what your name will be, My name is what your name was...) or even rock paths ("Get Around", a rewriting of an old Destroy Mercedes song, bared from its original psychodelia and electronically refilled with classic rock'and'roll iconography "Brian Wilson, Highway 61, Light My Fire" and some other kind of rock "Comelade and Pierre Bastien").
The final track of this album could be no other that the eight-minute-long "What Is Love?": organs, static harmonies, silences, voices that scrape and romanticism that explodes and explodes and explodes.
Ankitoner Metamars, a project specially conceived for live shows, is what it is… and could hardly be any other way .

www.myspace.com/ankitonermetamars

• ANKITONER METAMARS (CD, G3G Records, 2007) (Also released online by Rithmomachia, free full quality download: http://www.archive.org/details/rtm01)

Discography (selection):

Anki Toner

Superelvis:

• KISS ME WHEN YOU DANCE (Triquinoise, 1991)
• EN CASO DE DUDA, ROCK'N'ROLL (Ayunt. Barcelona, 1991). Primer premio de la Biennal de Joves Creadors del Ayuntamiento de Barcelona. WRONG SONGS (Por Caridad, 1992)
• NECESSARY LIES (Por Caridad, 1994)
• HAPINESS IS STUPID (Por Caridad, 1996) Elegido "Mejor disco del año" por la revista Rock De Lux, e incluído posteriormente en el monográfico "Los 100 mejores discos españoles del siglo XX" por la misma revista.
• HAVING FUN ON STAGE (Por Caridad, 1998)
• WHAT ABOUT BEAUTY? (Hazard, 1999)

Javier Piñango

Cerdos:

• CERDOS (Triquinoise, 1990)

Mil Dolores Pequeños:

• LADY LAZARUS (Por Caridad, 1992)
• SOUL SHACK (Por Caridad, 1994)
• MADRID CAPONE (Por Caridad, 1996)

Destroy Mercedes:

• VOLUMEN UNO (Por Caridad, 1996)
• VOLUMEN DOS (Por Caridad, 1997)
• NEW ORBIT NEW LOVE (Experimentaclub/Vitaminic, 2001)

Druhb:

• CONE OF SILENCE (Geometrik, 2002)
• DOCTOR MABUSE (Hazard, 2005)
• MIRADOR BB AA SSION (Hazard, 2005)
  
• OB_JET (EP, exp_net, 2006)
• VARIATIONEN (LP, exp_net, 2007)

Reality ain't what it used to be

All of the things I was sure of
They sure were wrong
Sure I was too young

Emotion

And the limits that we fight
Aren't the limits that we find
But the limits within which
We learn to survive

And one day you realize
It's not sex but desire
That rules the world

Some things change, some remain

Look at me!
Keep looking
Don't cry

Some learn to make love
Some learn to desire
Some learn to forget
Some learn to remind

It takes years to get here

Same as it ever was

My name is

My name is not

My name was what your name will be

My name is what your name was

Kaleidoscope I hear you what you say
Kaleidoscope I hear you calling
Kaleidoscope Baby

Kaleidoscope Can't you hear me calling
Kaleidoscope I call your name
Kaleidoscope Baby

Revolution on TV
Cunnilingus, sodomy
Join the party, make me free
In this so-called democracy

At the circus, at the race
In balloon or lost in space
in the sun, under the rain
Comelade and Pierre Bastien

By mistake or by your name
Nevermore or once again
On purpose or in vain
Merrily or with some pain

Light my fire, steal a car
Throw the dice, play your cards
Kill your idols, send me far
A happy end or a false start

Take me where the west was won
Wait on highway 61
Look at me, I'm on the run
Like Brian WIlson having fun

Get around, I get around

What is love?
What is it all about?

I wish it were with you my baby
I wish it were with you my girl

Love is in the air
Love is everywhere
Love is to be found
Love is all around
Love is all you need
Love is warm & sweet
Love will get you high
Love me day and night
Love is always right