Oska Wald

Oska Wald of Berlin garagesters Chuckamuck and member of punk combo Die Verlierer, on his solo outing – Motel Reno (17/3/23 Bretford Records) – situated on a purgatorial stretch of the Highway to Hell, where the amenities include cable TV, a door mat for dusting off your cowboy boots, running water that works most of the time, a bed with a pillow and a couple of blankets with mysterious stains – well, okay, so not much, but enough to launch a series of dreams both good and bad… Named in homage to the legendary US underground filmmaker George Kuchar, who would spend his vacations from teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute each year at the same run-down motel in the middle of Kansas’s tornado valley, where, with little more than a selection of fast food outlets, a camcorder, and his own vices to pass the time, Kuchar filmed what would come to be seen as his masterpiece: the Weather Diaries, a series of absurdist videos documenting the minutiae of his wasted time. While intimations of outer space proliferate Motel Reno, the subject matter here is ultimately the inner space of Oska Wald, who, like Kuchar, has a knack for turning the banal and everyday into the stuff of eternal weight and fortitude. It’s hard to imagine the Berlin music scene without Wald. Not only has Chuckamuck been one of Berlin’s most popular bands since its inception more than 15 years ago, influencing many other bands in this country and being named as the german equivalent of the Libertines or the Black Lips with their gloriously sloppy liveshows and irrepressible energy, he has also contributed significantly to the underground scene of the capital with his unique comics and poster designs.