Mandy, Indiana – not from Indiana, not named Mandy. The band name might be the most unimportant thing about this now-quartet international project, unlike their music which is amazingly close to the zeitgeist, still being ardently strident and passionately powerful. Their new record URGH might be the most highly anticipated record of the first quarter of 2026 and it proves all the expectations to be underestimating their capabilities!
In the 90s the most dangerous German band seemed to be Atari Teenage Riot, the hyper electronic trio of Alec Empire, Hanin Elias and Carl Crack, who became famous because their music sounded like the soundtrack to a time which saw the disenfranchising of national states and a certain kind of united mankind as a real possibility and not as a mere theoretical construct as we do now in 2026. Whether we like it or not, but nationalism and its dark, evil twin fascism has brought us nothing but harm and death, destruction and hatred. One of the most dangerous things about Atari Teenage Riot in hindsight seems to be the universal truth behind songs like ”Deutschland (Has Gotta Die!)” (from the in Germany banned Future of War) was not their musical radical character (all tracks are programmed on a “computer” from the late 80s) but their urgency – one could feel that this here was somewhat important, that something bigger was happening right in our midst.
This feeling plus the electronic nature of their music is one of the most obvious parallels between ATR and Mandy, Indiana. But while Alec Empire and his companeros were going for the maximum kill (overkill?) by trying to combine breakbeats, Drum’n’Bass plus shrill samples and electronic riffs, Mandy, Indiana’s most likely companions are Harsh Noise and somewhat Vaudevillian Neo-Classical. Sounds strange, yes, but the most important thing is: The whole record makes sense. It is coherent and cohesive, but in a non-complying, uncompromising way. A French rap part in the middle of an Electronic tribal meets Dance track? Yes - ”ist halt so” (German for “that’s the way it is”</i>)! A song ending that sounds like those carousels at the fair? ”Sevastopol” makes it happen! An Indian beehive intro? Check out ”Dodecahedron”! A real HipHop meets EuroDance sextrack with a strong riff outro? Man, ”Magazine” got you covered!
One must always remember one thing about this band – when founders Valentine Caulfield and Scott Fair met roughly ten years ago she was enamored with his idea of not writing a kind of music that would be particularly for a kind of genre or its audience, but to make music really appealing to people from all walks of life and background. On URGH (which is what a German person usually sounds like when vomiting) you can hear that – the only genre I might consider for all its vastness and openness towards everything else is Jungle as the best stuff from that genre broke rules by the dozen on any track.
So she loved his open attitude and he loved her voice and presence and yes, there is hardly a voice nowadays which one is so automatically drawn to as Valentine’s, particularly because she has that certain je ne sais quoi in her voice, well, wait, yes, it’s the French pronunciation of things, of course in her mother tongue but also in general. Beyond that pronunciation there is also an ever-present kind of elegance to her intonation, even when she is breaking character and screaming.
The record is very much a record of and for 2026 but I am pretty sure that, just like many ATR songs, the tracks will still hold up in 30 years and not only as a testament of their time but also to the true talent of their makers!
