MATA HARI is a band based in Montpellier (France) active since 2016. Their music is the result of a combination of Post Punk, Garage Rock and Punk influences like Joy Division, The Clash, Frustration or IDLES. Building Site was interpreted, composed and written by; Paul Gauloise (Bass, Synth, Vocals), Téo Blanc (Guitar, Bass, Vocals), Jonathan Gisbert (Guitar, Vocals), and Jacques Pernet (Drums, additional Guitar on "Factory"). Below is a review/interview from a French blog, translated to English, so apologies for any grammar issues.
English punk is obviously a main source of inspiration
both from a sonic point of view but also in terms of attitude. Compared to
their first EP, the compositions and even the new version of “John Difool”
contained in “Building Site” no longer bother with any artifice or superfluity,
and go straight to the point. We're in awe of it for our greatest happiness,
starting with these slats struck by the implacable and imposing bass drum
tandem ("Factory"), these lacerations of guitar chords, energetic and
unstoppable ("John Difool“), these cervical twists undergone through the
layers of keyboard, vicious and aggressive (“Castle”). Everything is dirty,
nervous, very far from Pro Tools. This invigorating and invigorating EP is
overflowing with generosity, drooling, sweating, imperfections, excess,
frustrations (literally and figuratively on “Castle”!), and of course rage.
There are certainly several ways to consider rock, the most common favours the
celebration of Christian icons, objects of all desires, in a creative
verticality that sometimes has more to do with tyranny, individualism and
egocentrism. Conversely, at MATA HARI, punk seems to be a collective cry from
the heart, a refusal of the norm, a middle finger to well-meaning, in the line
of the Clash, the Slits, the Dead Kennedys, of Joy Division and closer to us,
to the Parisians. Together, united like the fingers of the hand, for better and
for worse (and therefore here the best), these three turbulent urchins (joined
by two fanatics of the same species on these recordings!) rightly remind us
that their music is above all to be a story of envy, desire, sincerity, passion
if not a pretentious business carried out by undrinkable arrogant poseurs, whose
ultimate goal would be - height of artistic schizophrenia - to make the cover
fashion magazines!