Guignol

TO CONTACT GUIGNOL, PLEASE EMAIL guignol at guignolband dot com



guignol [geen-yol ] = literally, in the parlance of the treacherous French, a puppet, or figuratively, a tale of the macabre and fantastic either petite or grand.



"Brooklyn's Guignol is the best bet for Barbez's crew of hard-working, hard-playing world-music mutants to finally party crash the art-punk party at Death By Audio.it's a crew that truly understands punk rock energy and Eastern Bloc flutter--nailing the rapidfire bluster of Taraf De Haidouks and the one-two-one-two blast of klezmer, Guignol has the speed and energy of your favorite hardcore band. For their second album, "Fight Dirty", they teamed with Philadelphia gypsy-crusters Mischief Brew to beef up their sound even more--an unrelenting burst that includes the occasional raspy pop song next to their usual annihilating klezmercore." - Village Voice



"'Fight Dirty' is easily the most purely entertaining album of the year." -Delusions of Adequacy



Village Voice

"Brooklyn's Guignol is the best bet for Barbez's crew of hard-working, hard-playing world-music mutants to finally party crash the art-punk party at Death By Audio. With a line-up that includes Hold Steady keyboardist Franz Nicolay crushing an accordion and local clarinet rock star Peter Hess (World/Inferno, Slavic Soul Party, Balkan Beat Box, etc.), it's a crew that truly understands punk rock energy and Eastern Bloc flutter--nailing the rapidfire bluster of Taraf De Haidouks and the one-two-one-two blast of klezmer, Guignol has the speed and energy of your favorite hardcore band. For their second album, Fight Dirty, they teamed with Philadelphia gypsy-crusters Mischief Brew to beef up their sound even more--an unrelenting burst that includes the occasional raspy pop song next to their usual annihilating klezmercore."



Punknews

"If you're guessing that this disc is one hell of a ride, go ahead and pat yourself on the back.Guignol and Mischief Brew are no doubt taking punk to places it's never before ventured."



Philadelphia Examiner

"[An] all-encompassing umbrella of carnivalesque gypsy punk, wild klezmer, and red wine-soaked Romany jazz.triumphant, uncompromising, both old-timey and modern, rustic and urban, traditional and unconventional, culturally rich but inescapably domestic, complete with anthems for the working class proletariat and hymns for the constitutionally different and instinctively defiant. “Fight Dirty” is an album whose sixteen songs would be just as welcome at a Renaissance Festival in northeastern Pennsylvania as any one of the cramped and sweaty punk venues throughout the world, at an Eastern European gypsy encampment as a down n’ dirty house show in Jersey, at an anarchist rally in Portland as a hobo gathering near a ramshackle rail yard in New Mexico or a bizarre circus sideshow."



".by operating within the realm of centuries-old European traditions and then taking that music into a punk setting, they've created something that sounds at once completely familiar and completely new." - Artnoise



"Eerie accordian pieces with art-house stylings.” – CitySearch



“Hard-hitting klezmer quartet with accordion, clarinet, tuba, and killer drumming” – The New Yorker



“Esoteric and edgy performance rock” – Boston Globe



“Guignol serves up a combination of punk, jazz, folk, tango, klezmer, cheap red wine, woolly pinstriped suits, newsboy caps and one waxed moustache." - Times of London



.but you knew that, you crafty little buggers. What you’ve got here is not really one of those bands puffed up with self-importance with some political or countercultural snake-oil to sell. Why there’s not even a singer! What you’ve got here is the raucous, theatrical, spastic and melodramatic soundtrack for singing grifters, murderous marionettes, and grease-painted gutterballs. It’s an oom-pah wedding, squealing and lyrical, that hits like punk rockers and sings like a gypsy camp.



Guignol played its first shows in February 2002 under the name the Nothing Machine, backing up the fire-breathing, maggot-eating Lucky Devil Circus Sideshow from Coney Island every weekend at CBGBs. Since then we've opened for bands including Annie Anxiety, Against Me!, Gutbucket, Barbez, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and more. Our self-titled debut, recorded with Danny Shatsky at Vibromonk Studios in Brooklyn (Firewater, Gogol Bordello, Big Lazy), came out in 2004 on Third Story Records; followed by the Guignol/Nanuchka split EP "Drink The Best Wine First" in 2005 and the full-length collaboration "Guignol & Mischief Brew Fight Dirty" in 2009 on Fistolo. We're playing a squat, punk rock flea market, or dingy basement near you.