Situated at the nexus of house, techno, and post-punk, the Israeli duo Red Axes have been delighting the more discerning...
The post ‘Let’s Hope There Will Be Some Evolution of Humankind’: Pioneering Israeli Music Duo Red Axes Reflect on Oct. 7 Hamas Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
Dori Sadovnik (l) and Niv Artzi of Israeli techno duo Red Axes. Photo: courtesy of Red Axes.
Situated at the nexus of house, techno, and post-punk, the Israeli duo Red Axes have been delighting the more discerning aficionados of electronic music for nearly two decades with their witty, whimsical, and unapologetically rhythmic offerings.
The breadth of their influences and their musical range becomes evident upon listening to a Red Axes playlist, spanning their breathtaking cover version of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” a Goth classic originally released by Bauhaus, as well as dancefloor-friendly tracks like “Shabak Shalom” (a personal favorite), “Shelera,” and the new single “Goodbye Mary,” from their latest album “One More City,” which sees the duo — in the words of a blog post on the website of London’s legendary Fabric nightclub — “returning to the jamming, rough-edged post-punk ethos that first kicked off their own creative collaboration.”
But these days, the pairing of Niv Artzi and Dori Sadovnik aren’t thinking overly about music or touring. As with most Israelis, their thoughts and emotions have been overwhelmed by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7. For Red Axes, the massacre at the Nova music festival in Re’im was particularly painful, striking at the heart of a vibrant Israeli dance music community they themselves helped create.
“My genes are bubbling,” Artzi told The Algemeiner in a telephone interview from his Tel Aviv home on Monday. He is, he explained, an Ashkenazi Jew, many of whose relatives either perished in Auschwitz or fought with the anti-Nazi partisans during World War II. “I am thinking about our grandparents, our history,” he said. “Our people are all the time in this kind of survival mode, which is taken to extremes, that’s mostly what I’m feeling. And I’m hiding from social media, it’s so noisy, so many voices, and no one takes a moment.”
An additional source of hurt was the studied, even contemptuous, indifference of much of the dance music world to the atrocities. “What happened took place at an electronic music party for peace,” Sadovnik said. “I said, OK, I’m sure people will talk about it, our friends, it will be a huge thing. But it wasn’t at all. Then after a few days, it felt like everyone is attacking us, and now Israel is to blame.”
Sadovnik confessed to being “surprised” by the cold response, even though he knows that “artists are very afraid to speak for Israel, just to give sympathy for Israel. But the fact that the [dance music] media — Mixmag, Resident Advisor, some of the radio stations — didn’t talk about it amazes me. I have no words.” Instead, the duo encountered what they characterized as blunt, unthinking sloganeering that elided the humanity of the victims, both Israelis and the 25 other nationalities present at the rave. “I see people talking about Zionism,” Artzi noted with a dismissive laugh. “Why the f—k are you talking about Zionism?”
Red Axes had been planning to fly to Belgium a few days after the massacre for the opening date of their “One More City” tour, but they canceled the excursion. “We had a meeting, me and Dori and our manager, we all expressed our feelings, it was clear that the situation is bigger than Red Axes,” Artzi said. “We concluded that a tour was not relevant now, we would not play as we want to, and we don’t want to feel forced.” Moreover, he added, “most of the cities where we were playing didn’t feel that welcoming, so there was some fear for ourselves.”
A Red Axes live show. Photo: Courtesy of Red Axes
The duo did decide to make their sense of betrayal public, however. “We’ve always felt grateful for the privilege to be part of something this big,” Red Axes declared in an Oct. 25 Instagram post. “But now it feels like something’s changed since the horror of Oct. 7.”
The post pulled no punches. “This is the scariest time to be Jewish since the Holocaust, but for others, it seems like business as usual,” it continued. “Nothing to see here.”
The band then asked how it was possible for “a hipster from Berlin who’s never even been here [to] tell us from behind an Instagram account to ‘go and learn history’ when we’ve been the ones living it?” They urged the “international music community to wake up … Stop blindly following trends and supporting causes that have been taken out of context. Talk to us. Hear us.”
The silence abroad has been matched by a flurry of activity among musicians at home. “We put together a compilation for the people from the festival with more than 60 artists, and we’re gonna give the money to help those who survived,” Sadovnik said.
The “Bring Them Home” compilation, dedicated to the more than 200 hostages seized by Hamas terrorists during their rampage, includes contributions from Israeli dance acts like Infected Mushroom and Astral Projection — stalwarts of the psychedelic trance scene that defined the Nova festival — as well as DJ-producers like Yotam Avni and Asher Swissa along with Red Axes themselves. Proceeds from sales will go to the newly-formed Nova Love and Light Movement, whose tagline reads, “We Will Dance Again.”
The Nova movement’s goal is to assist the festival’s survivors with financial help and rehabilitation through the construction of a “therapeutic center” with accommodation facilities. “The primary objective of this strategy is to facilitate a swift and comprehensive return to ‘normalcy’ — our true and resounding victory against terrorism,” the movement stated.
For Red Axes, though, the outside world will cast an ominous shadow from now on. For the last 20 years, Artzi points out, Israeli artists and DJs have been fixtures at club nights, parties, and festivals around the world. Now, he added, the entire community is in a “highly emotional state.”
“We will be processing this trauma for at least two generations,” Artzi reflected. “You find yourself as an international musical artist, this is a community you are a part of, and yet you feel a bit alone. You ask, ‘Is this my home?’ Of course, it’s not everybody, there are some who speak with me. Let’s hope after this huge darkness, there will be some evolution of humankind.”
Purchase “Bring Them Home,” a compilation by 60 Israeli music artists to aid the victims of the Nova music festival, by clicking here. You can make a donation to the Nova Movement’s rehabilitation efforts by clicking here.
The post ‘Let’s Hope There Will Be Some Evolution of Humankind’: Pioneering Israeli Music Duo Red Axes Reflect on Oct. 7 Hamas Massacre first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
