Pletyka Pletyka demo cassette
The three women of Budapest’s PLETYKA are all in their thirties, and for two of them, it’s apparently the first band they’ve ever played in—as a thirty-something female punk who followed a very similar timeline and path to finally making music myself, I’m instinctively drawn to fellow late bloomers, and this demo is totally inspiring. When you have a delayed start, it can be so easy to feel like you’ll forever be left behind while struggling to catch up with those around you who weren’t as disadvantaged by time, but the flip side of that coin is that it typically offers one more time to develop a focused creative vision, and the disconnect between experience/ability and intention almost always yields far more interesting and engaging results than technically skilled replication ever will. PLETYKA’s sparse, hypnagogic post-punk echoes the great (and seemingly already forgotten) mid-2010s UK micro-scene of bands like EDIBLE ARRANGEMENTS, ALISON’S BIRTHDAY, and MEN OH PAUSE, with spectral chants (in Hungarian), brittle drums, cavernous bass, and layers of quavering synth buzz to plumb the deepest recesses of your subconscious. And a WIRE cover?! So dreamy. Yes, the rhythms are shaky and halting at points, but those imperfections and lack of polish are exactly what give the songs their glow—it’s an honesty that can’t be faked.