Plunge into: Mangel Records

Read Time: 4 mins

Over the last five years, this young Berlin label has been putting out a slew of excellent DIY releases. Though rooted in punk, Mangel – a self-deprecating title meaning ‘lacking in’ or ‘a lack of’ – isn’t simply a punk label. Their vision is broader, but always grounded in DIY as an ethos, with easy parallels to post-punk labels like Rough Trade and Small Wonder. A love of format and art shines through everything this Berlin label does. In a city with a rich history of punk and post-punk (see Iggy in Berlin, early Ärzte and Totenhosen, Malaria!, Birthday Party, Einstürzende Neubauten… the list goes on), it’s refreshing to see a label like Mangel break through the prescribed contemporary wisdom that Berlin equals Berghain.

The label was featured in a recent Arte documentary, DIY-Punk: Selbstausbeutung für die Kultur, about the DIY scene in Germany – which, I’m ashamed to say, is where I first learned of them, despite having lived up the road for the past 17 years (always late to the party). Since then, however, I’ve been trawling the depths of their back catalogue like a dogged fisherman. At the time of writing, it stands at a portly 38 releases! 

Mangel is a four-person operation, run from a small Berlin studio space by friends Anne Sophie, Denes, Martin and Oskar, who also play in the bands Liiek and Pigeon. In the opening rush of the Arte documentary, Martin states (in German): “Naturally, in capitalist logic, running a label like Mangel is complete self-exploitation, as we personally earn nothing from it.” It’s that sacrificial passion which shines through every release. So, here’s a little rundown of some of my favourite finds to date…

Blumes – Wondering Why

The latest release on Mangel, Wondering Why by Blumes, is a pastoral 10-track LP of breezy, beautiful lo-fi music, tottering to and fro somewhere between musical behemoths like Grandaddy, Pavement and Lambchop – but without much of the slack Americana that was often the calling card of that scene. Though Blumes (Leipzig-based artist Alexander Günther) generally sings in English, there are times when a soft hint of German accent or phrasing creeps in, such as in the refrain of the opening song Lack of Light, when he croons: “darkness only, is a lack of light.” I adore this – it’s authentic and honest, and adds so much to the music’s character, just as Nico’s voice did to the Velvet Underground. The marriage of Casio-sounding synths and vintage drum machines on the melancholic pop of Another Try, and the more experimental forays of Forgotten Apples and Untitled, are excellent.

Die Verlierer – Notausgang

Though some might see the follow-up to 2022’s eponymous debut album as a nostalgia trip, I take it as a continuation of true punk. If we consider punk as traditional protest music, in the way some Irish folk is protest music, Die Verlierer are among the best around. There are shades of post-punk, most notably in some of the guitar effects, but this is raw, saturated, no-posh-bollocks punk rock that feels as though it’s been beamed in from another time. In many ways, it’s a perfect reaction to the current cultural obsession with tech-futurism. It’s refreshing to hear a band bring something like this out: something honest, something human – something I’m 100% sure was not created by AI!

It’s a cruel irony that much of the subject matter suits the sound. Nowhere is the sense of history repeating itself clearer than in the title track, where the lyrics – seemingly about the German Republic’s slow lurch towards ultra-right politics and an ever more likely AfD takeover – declare: “Ich leb’ im falschen Land und in der falschen Phase / I live in the wrong country and in the wrong time.”

Giulio Erasmus – Second Attempt

An album of top-shelf, off-kilter, dub-kissed brilliance from the son of Factory Records co-conspirator Alan Erasmus. Less Factory than classic Rough Trade, this record can stand shoulder to shoulder with great works by The Pop Group or early Scritti Politti, its rhythms soaked in dub, bass heavy and discordant electronics. The vocals, seemingly recorded down a phone line, take the form of almost indecipherable ramblings: haunting, filled with strange melodies. It’s the sort of music I imagine Glam Damage creating in Jeff Noon’s ’99 book Needle in the Groove, where music is sampled onto a globe of liquid and remixed with a shake. There are echoes of The Happy Mondays’ Yes Please period, 23 Skidoo, Iggy Pop, Maximum Joy, and even early Beck – but all shaken up and mutated.

For more musings, music and middle-aged leftist rants, subscribe to our monthly updates.