Slut

Slut, an indie rock outfit originating from Germany, came together in Ingolstadt in 1995. Its founding quartet—Christian Neuburger on vocals and guitar, Rainer Schaller on guitar, Gerd Rosenacker on bass, and Matthias Neuburger on drums—channeled a melancholy rock aesthetic on the 1996 debut For Exercise and Amusement, issued by independent label Stickman Records. After extensive touring built a dedicated audience in 1997, the musicians returned to the studio with a fifth member, keyboardist René Arbeithuber, whose earlier work in Pelzig had already overlapped with Rainer Schaller. The follow-up Interference, released in 1998, displayed greater refinement and meticulous production values than its predecessor. In 2000 the band supplied two songs to the soundtrack of Hans-Christian Schmidt’s film Crazy, slowly attracting attention from larger audiences.

Their major-label debut Lookbook appeared on EMI/Virgin in 2001 and introduced a more pop-oriented direction laced with additional electronic textures while preserving indie-rock foundations. Single “It Was Easier” earned substantial radio airplay, after which an extensive German tour preceded the 2002 album Nothing Will Go Wrong. All We Need Is Silence followed in 2004 with a markedly minimalistic approach, the same year the group received an art award from its hometown.

In 2005 the musicians joined a stage production of Berthold Brecht’s Threepenny Opera; enthusiastic response prompted them to record the material for a potential album release. The Kurt Weill Foundation in New York halted the project at the last moment, even though the CDs had already been pressed and prepared for shipment, ultimately restricting the band to an EP containing five of the thirteen tracks under the title Die kleine Dreigroschenoper (The Small Threepenny Opera). StillNo1 surfaced in January 2008 and abandoned the restrained palette of its predecessor in favor of a wider sonic spectrum.