The Pruttipal Index

Comes in a deluxe gatefold case, with artwork by Pruttipal and Bananskolen booklet. What is – or rather: what could be – a “Pruttipal Index”? In books, libraries and databases, an index is usually a concise overview or inventory. It suggests that this album could be a mini-encyclopedia of the work of its makers. In economics, indexes are measurements of the current state of an economy; which, in the case of this album, could be a vitality metrics of the Goodiepal & Pals/GP&PLS/BananSkole collective that produced it. In semiotics, an index is a sign that functions as a trace (like smoke as an index of fire). Because of their technology, vinyl records are indexical (with their grooves being indexes of sound waves), but in addition, this album could also be seen as a series of sonic traces, or footprints, left by the various activities of GP&PLS and Pruttipal over the eight years of their collective existence
On this album, these traces can be heard literally: in references to the collective’s anti-racist refugee activism on the borders of the European Union and activist dance moves (from which many of the melodies on this album have been taken), their open and non-hierarchical school BananSkole, their lived friction with the institutional art system (which escalated during their residency at Copenhagen’s contemporary art institute Den Frie), as sometimes casual field and home recordings, and sometimes as highly produced studio recordings, featuring the voices of many of the collective’s members, including the children
There is, audibly, an eclectic stylistic mix of theater, group improvisation, choirs, folk music and children’s songs, campy-ironic modular synthesizer electronics, highly-produced art rock and no wave jazz, heavy metal, techno, punk and catchy Scandinavian dance pop tunes interspersed with mock-conspiracy podcasting. Much of it could be called functional music derived from collective social performances to be reused for new collective social performances