“WITH THE TITLE OF THEIR DEBUT ALBUM, THE PETER MUFFIN TRIO CERTAINLY DOESN’T REACH TOO HIGH: NOT ONLY DO THEY MAINTAIN THE HIGH QUALITY STANDARD OF THE NUMEROUS PROJECTS FROM THE NERVE ENVIRONMENT, THEY ALSO PUT THE CONTROVERSIAL MEGA PIT IN DANGER OF COLLAPSE.”– KULTURNEWS

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TRACKLIST

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An allen Tagen

Supercool

Wir sehen uns morgen

Winter

Zu tun

Melancholie

Ich kann nicht warten

Immer im Weg

Fehler

Falsche Richtung SUV

Stuttgart am Meer

WATCH & LISTEN

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Story

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That you can still experience that! As perhaps the first press person ever to be able to write this sentence: “‘Stuttgart 21′ is finally complete!” However, this is not about the construction debacle station of the same name, but about the debut album by the Peter Muffin Trio “Stuttgart 21”. A title about which singer and guitarist Julian Knoth says: “It’s about self-empowerment. It’s all so abstract that you have to ground the term again and put it on a punk record.” Bassist, co-singer and video artist Caroline d’Orville and drummer Philipp Knoth both say they find the title “really awesome and really shitty at the same time”.

Although “Stuttgart 21” is a debut album, the Peter Muffin Trio has a lot of backstory: the three are not just artists of integrity in Stuttgart, whose work has an impact beyond the Swabian region. Of course you know Julian from Dienerve, where he plays bass, sings and writes songs. And also as Peter Muffin, because under this name Julian released an EP called “Me and my 1000 friends” produced by Die Nerven colleague Max Rieger in 2017 and at the beginning of the year the wonderful mangy bedroom noise EP “Dose Scheisse”. Philipp, Julian’s brother and neighbor at the same time, is also no stranger to the bustling Stuttgart music scene: he played in the bands Karies and DieNERS, for example, and is currently active in bands such as Timbeau and Yum Yum Club. Caroline d’Orville, Cali for short, is also the singer, guitarist and songwriter of Zirkel – a band that she runs with visual artists from the environment of the Stuttgart Art Academy ABK. In 2017, she single-handedly designed and produced the great video for the Peter Muffin single “Here I Remain Standing” for Julian.

“Stuttgart 21” underscores what Stuttgart has proven time and time again in recent years with bands like Dienerven, Karies or Human Abfall: That this indie and punk guitar thing can also be clever, mangy, art-school, AJZ-compatible and can manage free from mackerism. That there is punk that dares well beyond three chords and three liters of beer – without despising that DNA. The songs stagger between jazzy vibes (“Analle Tage”), punk snot (“Supercool”), nerve-wracking attitude (“I can’t wait”), self-doubt-is-in-the-house-indie- Gloom (“Melancholy”), singer-songwriter sound (“Zu Tun”) and love-hate relationship set to music (“Stuttgart am Meer”).

Julian says: “There are some lyrics on the record that are more personal than anything I’ve written before. I don’t write alone for Dienerve and we have a special text language that deliberately keeps a lot of things vague – which I like very much. But I always wanted to get away from it all a bit with Peter Muffin. With Philipp and Cali at my side, I now have a great, very familiar working atmosphere, where I might also dare more. I’ve also been writing in German for a good ten years now and I’m starting to get the feeling that I know what I’m doing. There is a big break lyrically between ‘Dose Scheische’ and ‘Stuttgart 21’, on the one hand because I’m really in there as an alter ego, on the other hand because the Peter Muffin Trio should be very direct and personal. But it has a lot to do with trust. In what you can do yourself and what others can do.” Cali also confirms this: “Back then, I often had the feeling that I was cramping up when I was making music or making art. When the three of us rehearsed together, almost every time I managed to switch off my head and let myself fall into this extreme energy. I’m usually super critical of my own releases, be it video art or music. And when we went to the studio for ‘Stuttgart 21’ for the second time, there were songs where I didn’t even have the bass melody ready – and they both just said: ‘You’ll think of something.’ That’s how it was.”

The 11 songs of “Stuttgart 21” were created during two stays at the Bear Cave Studio in Cologne with Nicolas Epe, who also produces the screenshots and illegal colors, for example. Julian tells: “I met Nicolas when he was at a concert of ours with the screenshots. When we wanted to record with the trio, I just asked him. He immediately suggested that we visit him in the studio without obligation and see how things are going. That was in autumn 2019 – and after this session we already had five songs ready. He was more than a producer. The way he develops ideas and contributes his skills in the electronic field was something special. Once he even played bongos – it made a sound I’ve never heard before.” Philipp adds: “Yes, it was really great with him. He doesn’t say that much, but always says the right thing at the right moment.” Julians conclusion: “Without him and his mix, ‘Stuttgart 21’ would be a punk record – and now it’s kind of more. post punk? Punk 2.0? No idea.” And it doesn’t really matter. Because: awesome record.

“Stuttgart 21”, the debut album by the Peter Muffin Trio, will be released on June 25th, 2021 on Glitterhouse Records.