Who actually decided that Punk is about 3 chords? The opener of Tan LeRacoon’s new album, titled “We Didn’t Come Here Just To Be Nice” drills straight into your brain with just one single stoic chord. “I Give Head” sings, hisses and snarls and sets the right mood for this record: a combination of Teenage Angst, nihilistic anger and activism. And what is “punk” anyhow? “Certainly not a genre”, says Tan, “if anything it’s about irritation”. Something he states quite often as it’s important to him – maybe because he lived this as intense as quite no other amidst the German music scene.

We might add a little bio crash course at this stage: who the hell is this Tan LeRacoon to begin with? It is the stage persona of the very real human being Tanju Boerue, who lived through several lives as Rock n Roll musician, Dubmaster, club owner and radio host (Elevator Music on ByteFM). With only 13 he published he published a humble punk fanzine, promoted first shows with 14 and tours with 18. He recalls kisses by Nina Hagen when he was 12 and Siouxsie Sioux when he was 14, spending youth days in London, playing in Nikki Sudden’s band with 18, being part of the London Glam revival, then by the end of the 80s enjoyed almost stardom in New York (a drug related major record company fail). Being friends with artist Vali Myers who suggested to form a band with Debbie and DeeDee (it never happened though), then turning to poetry and moving to LA. In 1993 he wrote a novel upon his mentor Timothy Leary’s motivation (self published years later in 1998), before returning to Hamburg, Germany and joining seminal freestyle-psychedelic-Dub band Das Weeth Experience for 4 years. After that things get really messed up: leaving rock n roll behind, the 90s became a non-stop rave, then doing electronica (as Tan U Sound, later he called his label by this name), and then touring the world with seminal electronic stars. In the early 2000s he opened now legendary club Hasenschaukel and started a family, before joining the Reeperbahn Festival for 10 years and going back on the road as international tour manager with artists like Ólafur Arnalds, Janelle Monáe or Agnes Obel. Inbetween he returned to the guitar first as Anarchist Folk Rocker (claiming to sound like the MC5 playing Woody Guthrie songs), then conceiving Tan LeRacoon as a musical unit.

A debut, the double album “Dangerously Close To Love”, was followed by a - successful - Christmas single and the tour de force, the wonderfully diverse “Funeral Parade Of Roses” in 2019, an international tour planned was grinded to a halt by Covid.
In 2025 Tan deleted all his music from Spotify, reasons are many and well known.
Please excuse this rather extensive excursion into the lively biography of the protagonist, but when listening to this record you should be aware that this artist has many a story to tell (yeah, invite him into your podcasts and radio shows!). And as he prefers writing songs these days rather than books he put quite something into these fascinating, musically wild and rampant, mesmerizing tracks on “We Didn`t Come Here To Play Nice“, whose style naturally cannot to be defined easily.

Tan: „We don‘t -no, we cannot - define ourselves by genre. Punk, goth, glam, who cares?” Or to cite alltime- prophet Lou Reed: “If you can’t play Rock and you can’t play Jazz, you put the two together and you’ve really got something”.
The press sheet for “Funeral Parade Of Roses” stated something like a „Goth-Psych-Folk-Punk-Rock-Soul-Bastard”. Wonder if this still is suiting?  “We‘re just a rock n roll band soundtracking my poetry. Which again does not really ask for a fine tune. Maybe that‘s why we are as intense these days. Because my words ask for such a sound.“

„We“? This points into the direction of the recent band line up &Racoonery, which also carries the burden of German punk history: Rudi Raschberger (Kotzbrocken, C3I) and Michael Meng (Punkenstein, Hullaballoo, Jam Today) as well as Americana-Steam Machine Malte Mertz (Golden Creek, Clara Bow).

As always with Tan LeRacoon the lyrics are worthwhile a more careful listen. While the last album was still carried by some kind of activist optimism, we now visit a weary anarchist who needs to regain his strength amidst fellow comrades. His words bite, scream, mourn – sad tales of gone friends, angry returns to teenage mayhem, setting the picture straight on – not only the music- industry’s bigotry. All this not in a bitter way, they sound like a society’s cry for help, a society that watches the individual drown.
Tan clarifies: “I am driven by frustration and anger in the middle of conditions that were already criticized 40+ years ago and where are we now? Systems of solidarity are abolished in favor of a system of growth that benefits only a few; a middle class, that once wrongly believed they could be part of the 1% if they only kowtow well and long enough and now realizes they belong to the depleted; corruption as in lobbyism is acted out in the open; the SDGs are well-meant but inconsequent in the implementation; all this in the shadows of “real existing socialism” and now the perception of “real existing democracy” and the worldwide rise of the far-right.

What is left is the creating of and living in independent communities. Still these communities rather try to be defined and identified only by itself, uniqueness by fencing and delimitation. But I do not feel well in a society that supports restriction instead of the normality of inclusion. Diversity as sustainability and antifascism among others is “moral” obligation and should be considered as a state of human normality, outside of small bubbles. I do not want to spend my time and energy by declaring who and what I am. I simply want to be without any definition, I want to love whoever I do, I want to be intimate without giving it a name. I want change to be accepted especially if it does not force anything onto you. And I dream of people simply respecting each other the way they are”.
The album’s shortest Song, „Needle Time Run”, doesn’t even need any words and clocks in at 29 seconds – these are a mere Punk n Roll hymn though. The most extensive song on the other hand, „See Us All Rise (UP!)” runs over 17 minutes, a journey through the landscape of a future society’s utopia – the album title is taken from here.

In this cut up from various sessions and therefore different musicians, all together chant these words at the beginning: „We didn’t come here just to be nice / We came to build a new paradise“. The music starts as some kind of psychedelic decent into this paradise. He calls it „Anarkopia- a self proclaimed state of mind, an anarchist freedom Utopia.”
A manifesto, Tan drafted to this song, declares: „In Anarkopia, people do not dream of a better world, or a better self or some self-optimization, in Anarkopia people live an utopian life and therefore are their better selves already. People in Anarkopia support each other to live this better self. Anarkopia is not a state, no nation, no country, not even a place. Anarkopia is everywhere, if you want it to be. It is a higher state of mind“. You might sense how this state of mind feels like if you are curious enough to follow this 18 minute trip all through to the end.

But Tan LeRacoon also gets to the point more dense: not always as consequent as with the mentioned 29 second track but also the Hardcore-meets-Freejazz stagger of “Quicksand” only needs 92 seconds. “Two Sides Of the Medal” on the other hand starts with a riff New York ca 1976 that leads all cliché ad absurdum, but instead of tiring punk-growl we get a calm and relaxed Tan singing.

„Return To Anger“ with its ecstatic four-minutes-thirty is a true Goth-Psych-Folk-Punk-Rock-Soul-Bastard, whereas „Tomorrow Is A Long Day“ lays open why Tans music sometimes is compared to Nick Cave in his wilder phases. „DoG“ again captivates the listener with Tan’s very own excentric phrasing which during the chorus sounds sweet and lovely, but inbetween seems to rise from a genius madman, purring, whispering, hissing and spitting and also snapping. Well, yes, this what we were promised on the outersleeve: „We Didn’t Come Here Just To Be Nice“.