From the liner notes by Henryk Gericke & Robert Mießner:
‘The band Die Frechheit (lit. “the cheekiness”) went about from 1988 to 1990. It was the successor to two East Berlin bands: Kein Talent (“no talent”) and Keine Ahnung (“no idea”). In the GDR scene from the mid- to late-1980s, Die Frechheit took up a rare position: surrounded by greyscale post-punk and experimental sampler compositions, winsome guitar pop and angular hip-hop, the band chose to play psychedelic prog wave. Its music was marked by a love for breaks, tempo changes and an attention to detail. The songs of Die Frechheit are highly sensual if always teetering on the edge of catastrophe, in a field where darkness turns into gloom. Known as Handtasche (“handbag”), the singer Andrea was a unique specimen from the scene around bands such as Freygang, Die Firma or Ichfunktion. Her lyrics combined a punk-like anger with the disillusioned weltschmerz of a Paradise Lost generation which had become deaf to the GDR as a Promised Land. The late 1980s are regarded by some GDR chroniclers as an unconstrained bohemian utopia, which they were only to a limited extent. After her exit from Die Frechheit, Handtasche formed the two-woman band 3tot. Boriz put in a fleeting performance with the Wartburgs für Walter. And drummer Christoph Schneider switched first to Die Firma and then to Feeling B. He ended up where cheekiness would turn into perpetual provocation by any means available, namely in Rammstein…’
The tapetopia series, using the original layouts and track lists, publishes cassette editions from the GDR underground of the 1980s, especially from the “walled-in” scene in East Berlin. More than three decades after their initial “release”, most of these tapes have yet to be heard on either vinyl or CD, even though they made an audible mark in the canon of GDR subculture. Despite the tiny original editions of the time, many of the bands were considered cult in countercultural circles, which made them highly suspect in informed circles.’