With their unpredictable live performances and songs such as Zurck zum Beton and Industriemdchen, S.Y.P.H. caused a ruckus at the end of the 70s – as one of the bands that began to write lyrics in German around Dsseldorf’s Ratinger Hof. Right from the start, the band broke with genre-conformist expectations and borrowed from rock, punk and kraut just as much as from Dadaism and the reality of everyday life.

After the first album and several singles (re-issued on Tapete Records in December 2024), the band produced two more albums – Pst and S.Y.P.H. (album 4) – together with CAN’s Holger Czukay. Tapete Records is now releasing both albums and a collection of previously unreleased rarities – Punkraut 1978-1981.

This compilation contains rare and previously unreleased recordings from the first three years of the band’s history: The songs Blech and Mondpogo, performed live at S.Y.P.H.’s first concert in Dsseldorf’s Carsch-Haus in 1978 and five recordings made in nearby Solingen between 1978 and 1979. There are also three studio recordings from the Hamburg Container Studios in December 1981 – recordings from a time when the band had finally abandoned punk as a musical genre as well as the influence of interim producer Holger Czukay and had found a style all of their own. (Kurt Dahlke, DAF)