That release with the absurdly long title -'Make ‘Em Pay (!): Homemade Napalm = Gasolin Or Fuel Oil + Nondetergent Soap…'- is peak late-80s/early-90s Swiss noise culture: confrontational, cryptic, and deliberately uncomfortable in both concept and presentation.
It came out in 1990 as a tiny 7-inch on the Schimpfluch label, pressed in a run of around 300 copies, which already tells you the deal: this wasn’t meant to circulate widely, it was more like an artifact passed between people already deep in that underground network. The recordings themselves were captured live in Zürich in March 1990, not in a studio, which lines up with the whole ethos -documenting actions rather than polishing “tracks.”
The project behind it, Vehikel & Gefäss (& Ventilator), was basically a collision of three key figures from that scene: Rudolf Eb.er, Joke Lanz, and Marc Zeier. These weren’t just musicians in the usual sense. Eb.er, especially, was operating in a zone that mixed ritual, performance art, and sound as a kind of psychological intervention -less “songs,” more like controlled breakdowns or confrontations staged through audio. Lanz, through his Sudden Infant work, brought in that hyper-physical, almost violent approach to sound collage and turntable abuse, while Zeier added another layer from the same experimental network.
That title isn’t a joke or edgy decoration either -it reflects a broader tendency in the scene to pull in imagery of destruction, bodily processes, and taboo subjects. The whole Schimpfluch orbit thrived on pushing listeners into uneasy territory, blurring lines between sound art, endurance performance, and what you might call anti-entertainment. The collective itself started in Zürich in 1987 as more than just a label: it was an umbrella for actions, radio broadcasts, collaborations, and a kind of shared philosophy built around extremity and critique of “safe” culture.
Within that context, this single feels less like a standalone release and more like a snapshot of a moment -one of those live “actions” frozen onto vinyl. The A/B sides are just dated fragments (like “90-03-23”), which reinforces that idea: you’re hearing documentation, not compositions in the traditional sense.
Zooming out, this sits right in that early wave of European noise and musique concrète hybrids that rejected both rock structure and academic electronic music polish. It shares DNA with stuff like early tape-collage scenes, industrial extremes, and performance art happenings where the boundary between artist and audience could get pretty thin. Schimpfluch releases in general -often in tiny editions with bizarre packaging- feel more like conceptual objects than records, and this one fits that pattern perfectly. So yeah, not an easy listen, not even trying to be one. More like a document from a scene that wanted to test how far sound -and the people listening to it- could be pushed.
Label:
Schimpfluch – SH 16, Schimpfluch – sh 16
Format:
Vinyl, 7", 45 RPM, Limited Edition
Country:
Switzerland
Released:
1990
Style:
Noise, Experimental, Industrial
Tracklist:
A Live-Akcion 90-03-23 5:13
B Live-Akcion 90-03-21 4:22
DOWNLOAD HERE
