Over ten years ago while on a summer trip around England and
Ireland, I thought I'd go and check out Bristol which at that time was
supposed to be a happening spot - the likes of Massive Attack called
Bristol home and there was reputed to be cool stuff happening. There
wasn't. Not even a tiny bit. The venues were either for pyscho alkies of
the ordinary kind or pyscho alkies of the student kind. In both kinds
of places there wasn't much happening of interest musically.
The lower town had trolling groups of racist piglets who had sport in
telling Japanese tourists to F*ck off. The upper town near the University
was a somewhat nicer place. Leaving aside the mystery of how some towns can
get like this and others escape, the highlight of the visit was bumping
into Kerstin who was from another place and passing through and who I'd
met in Shrewsbury... and who couldn't shed any light on any of Bristol's
mysteries.
All that is by the way of introduction to Tricky's latest album, Knowle
West Boy. Knowle West is a suburb of Bristol and is said to be not very nice,
and not very nice in Bristol is actually fairly horrible ... and that is
actually just the sort of thing you need for edgy, sharp statement if you can
somehow survive the rest of it. Tricky certainly did and he's been putting
out regular albums over the last decade while being mostly based in NYC and L.A. ...
which probably annoyed some people but his tone has remained much the same.
This release has some gas too - some of the tracks almost mini-operatic in
their changes and flow but without the pretension that "mini-operatic" might
suggest. There's lots of life here - problems, serene moments, frantic
moments, although the serene tends to be a heartbeat or two rather than a
settled-in mood. It's flawed as well in maybe a little too much trickiness
(sorry) on tracks such as Council Estate, or the somewhat flat guitar bits but flaws are life too, and music too - wasn't that what we liked about Punk or
some of the Indy stuff? All in all, it's worth checking out.
(thunderfinger)
I really hated MTV's Unplugged series.What was the point,
I thought, of taking someone like The Cure who's normal
oevre was crafted layers of distorted electric guitar, synth,
vocals and drums and sucking all the life out of it? Turning
it into muzak! ... wimpy nonsense for non-music people! And
no, I wouldn't listen to people who said that stripping things
back revealed the beauty behind the thing. What it revealed
was that some people will do anything for a buck and others
just didn't get it. Commercially it was a great success of
course, still might be for all I know.
And so I was mildly horrified to turn up for a night of
the iTunes festival in Berlin ... a night featuring
take-no-prisoners guitar rock from locals Jennifer Rostock and
Essex's own, The Subways ... to discover that The Subways
drummer, Josh, was sick, and that the remaining two, Billy and
Charlotte, were going to do an 'acoustic set'. Yikes!
Jennifer Rostock is a five piece with Jennifer (?) doing
the vocals and a lot of stage coverage. The locals are into to
them straight away but the earlier songs smack too much for me
of the Soviet-style pomp rock, with lots of overblown musical
statements and a fair bit of histrionics from the singer as
well. At the end of the set though we had some nice high-energy
rock that set most feet moving.
Then a gap while the stage people set up for The Subways. I
was hoping to catch a word with them and thought I would if they
appeared in the public area (which Jennifer Rostock did). I
thought, if they were closeted backstage there was a good chance
they'd be working on what they were going to do and wouldn't be
particularly thrilled to see me. They didn't appear outside
and so after a beer on the terrace by the river,I went back in.
Not completely acoustic was the first good news. Charlotte's
bass guitar and amp were onstage plus an acoustic guitar and
chair for Billy. A Swiss girl asked me what they were like and
I said 'who knows?! normally they rock more than somewhat'. They
were onstage as kids and their combination of rocking
seriously and pleasant innocence (no fake world-weary cynicism)
drew a lot of fans to them - kids and adults. A few years later,
they've been around the block a few times but the patina remains
much the same, and the idea too, although the actual music is
beginning to get more complex and a few of these sorts of songs
will appear on the next album due sometime this year.
The actual gig wasn't too bad. It was, as it had to be,
different. Billy sat and played and sang and yelled and
Charlotte danced about doing her bass lines and yowling the odd
line or two into her mic. She looked cute as a button as usual.
And no-one walked out - in fact it was a very supportive
audience - more power to them.
And so, The Subways semi-unplugged wasn't too bad. But this
wasn't a gimmick: It was an effort to provide some sort of show
and where the difficulty of the conditions created both a little
danger onstage and quite a lot of involvement off it.
Kudos to the people at Radial System V for creating a nice
atmosphere for the festival as well.
(thunderfinger)
Rimbaud was a French poet from the mid and late nineteenth
century. He was a child prodigy lumped with the Fauvists for
his vivid and exciting work which didn't resemble the usually
more mannered poetry of the time, and which led to him being
called, much later, the father of modern poetry.
He ran away from home a lot and ended up going to Paris from
his home near the Belgian border after sending Verlaine one of
his poems. He was invited to come and stay and the two
became lovers. Together they roamed the netherworlds of Paris
getting drunk on absinthe and generally being rowdy, abusive
and unpleasant - a certain kind of rock 'n' roll tour. Amazingly
enough, Verlaine's marriage survived this but not his
increasingly violent behaviour later - He even shot Rimbaud in
the wrist at one stage.
Rimbaud spent a little time in London living in Camden and
hanging out at the library of the British Musueum (free pencils!) and then wandered Europe by foot. He gave up writing
poetry at 21 or so - he was totally sick of being broke, for one thing -
but kept up writing letters and ended up as some sort of
agent in Africa and with a relationship with a local woman. He
died in Marsailles, aged 37, from something nasty, with his
sister Isabelle by his side.
It's a short, somewhat sad story. As far as the rockers go,
Jim Morrison of the Doors was a big fan and no doubt based
some of his antics on those of the man who went before - or at
least the theory of the thing - shock and horror with literary
pretensions. He might also have felt a kinship from the fact
that both had military fathers who were at least distant.
Rimbaud's father decided after a posting that he didn't even
want to see his family anymore and went off to live by himself. Who can know if Morrison's last days in Paris
involved some kind of Rimbaldian search and destroy mission?
He was, by all accounts, sick of being a rock star and there's
no doubt he wanted more serious recognition.
Another link comes through Television guitarist Tom
Verlaine just because of the name he chose for himself and
certainly, his angular, semi-minimal guitar work had great
beauty and an obvious yearning to be closer to art then a
yelled-over three minute thrash. At first glance it might not
be apparent why the name Verlaine should be chosen at all but perhaps
it was the louche loser thing that said 'Punk' quite clearly.
What of today? The Babyshambles guy certainly has the excess
thing covered (and excess by itself is merely that) and shows
threatening signs that he'd like to be taken seriously. Time
will tell on that one but right now it looks like the Libertines
might be a close as he'd come, and that isn't that close.
But what about the "art" thing generally? Some people with
binary brains (off-on, black-white) like to think that the only
valid sort of "popular" music is their sort - trash pop, classic
rock, music with deep lyrics, music with no lyrics.. whatever.
Of course, all the strands are valid - they just are - like it
or not! And then what people see as a shambles at one time
might be seen as art at another, like Rimbaud.
(thunderfinger)
Electronic folk? It covers a wide range, doesn't it.
You can have same as it always was, except louder. You
can have a psychedelic trip or you could have something
that resembles the folk tradition with a little
electricity more as an afterthought. For purists, there's
nothing to be said other than 'bogus!'. For other people
there might be something, depending on how it goes.
Joanna Newsom is a pleasant night out in this way
and London's Hush the Many is as well although both are
somewhat more complex musically than the folk tradition
would allow or maybe it's better to say the academic folk
tradition. Still, folk is more (or less) than just what
folk are listening to at any given time. It has historic
roots in both style and substance and the style is
understood to be simple. When you start to hyphenate,
anything goes of course, and the only thing the performer
is really interested in is whether anyone will come
along.
Hadamansky bill themselves as electronic folk from the
Carpathians. What could that mean? The punters waiting for
the gig to start weren't much of a clue as they included
punks, students, your standard model beer monsters, and
quite a few who looked like they'd just arrived from
Eastern parts, as well as people who looked like they were
after a bit of a knees-up and didn't much care where or
what it was as long as it was loud and had a beat.
The five piece (or occasionally six) immediately tell
us what they're about when they start playing fast and
loud dance music from eons past. It's the celebration of
some free moments, maybe even a special event. In the
style of gypsy bands, there's quite a lot of skilled and
fast trumpet playing as well as electric guitar, bass,
drums plus a muscle-bound frontman who looks a little
like a modern imagining of Genghis Kahn in a good mood.
After a little of this hell-for-leather stuff they
break into more psychedelic things and there's a high
standard of play throughout. The change doesn't seem to
result in much in the way of raised eyebrows. Beers are
being quaffed and people are dancing as best they can in
the solid crowd.
So, maybe more for the World bin than the Folk bin and
maybe not the thing for sleek urbans either. Thanks to
Henning Kuepper for taking us along.
I'd better give Bleepfest Berlin 08 a plug as well.
This runs from 8pm or so on Friday 28 March, through
Saturday starting about 5pm going until late, and then
Sunday is a chill/ambient/BBQ day starting at 2pm and going
until 11 or so. There are artists from all over and it's
usually a very groovy event - Three Days of Peace, Love,
and Electronica!
(thunderfinger)
I came across NYC Rock by Mike Evans just recently even though it's
been in print since 2003. It covers NYC music from the 1900's on and
aside from anything else gives some kind of style-guide to the changing
times with the emphasis, unsurprisingly, being on rock and variants.
Aside from his assertion that NYC is the world's melting pot which is
probably a hundred years out of date, there is a lot of interesting stuff
here - the whole punk/new wave/no wave thing, the uncomfortable
relationship between business and art (as it always was and will be), and
the nexus between a lively experimental scene and the availability of
suitably out-there clubs to show them off and introduce them - for which
read "cheap rents" as being a major factor. What of Bloomberg/Guilianni's sanitised
no-smoking NYC of today? Life is still there, it just moved outwards much
as it has in London..
Evans also has words to say about the idea that the UK was the home of
Punk. But actually, the UK was the home: NYC was the birthplace but band
after band found they couldn't sell any records in the USA or even find
places to play beyond the limited boundaries of a few clubs at home. The UK
at the time
provided them with both as well as critical appreciation.
The story gets a far as The Strokes, who never excited me as much as
most everyone else, but still they did actually make a lot of people very
excited. Today or a few days ago, from all accounts (I don't know, I
haven't been there for years) Hip-hop fusion from the Bronx, with people like
CocoRosie, is having a moment in the sun... but they don't get a mention.
There are a whole lot of people that do, however, and the final bit is almost
a trainspotter's guide to bands that were big in the 'urbs ... it's a
little apt to make your eyes glaze over, but you could find someone special
that's right in your line as well.
Speaking of New York, I was sent a single the other day called New York
from a band called Cheap Hotel. I'm not sure that they are from NY but they
well could be. They were billed as Punk which seems to be now talk for
anyone with a little indy energy. Punk, for me, means chaotic energy, not
necessarily Black Flag but certainly elements of that, a certain raggedness.
Cheap Hotel aren't that at all, not on this single anyway. That doesn't
make them bad either - they have a nice riff going and they do have energy
but Punk they are not.
Lastly, if you're into indy electronica, and if you're going to be near Berlin,
Germany over March 28, 29, 30 you should check out Bleepfest Berlin 08 as
there will be talent there from all over.
(thunderfinger)
Not so long ago Britney Spears had a new album out and there were
quite a few nice words written by critics in the everyday media -
angst of artist leads to best effort in years - that sort of thing.
And then there were people who wrote something like - Jeez, gimmie
a break, the Spear had as much to do with the creative content of
the recording as she did with the weather in Moscow.
Well, I can't say I've ever taken her seriously but she did deliver
a part of the performance and this puts me in mind of Marianne
Faithful and Broken English. That was a wonderful raw and ragged
thing that was written up as an MF effort. It wasn't. MF remains
good at the same things as Paris, Britney etc, yawn, etc - that is
to say, self-publicity and kiss-and-tell and that sort of thing. In
fact Britney's latest is straight out of the MF playbook. Who was it
behind Broken English? Barry Reynolds.
And then there's Kylie, who apparently had a fair bit to do with her
own effort and received little credit for it except for being on the
UK's Honours List - which might have been for being a Gay icon but I
think it was for being entertaining. Yes, well, why not? I
remember a few years ago being totally amazed at the amount of hatred
and invective that was being heaped on her by her fellow Aussies
(who make a fine sport of mean-spirited envy). That's like hating a
daisy - not the most interesting flower perhaps, but one with a
little charm and one that wouldn't rouse too much passion with normal
people... either for or against. In a way, she's an update of Olivia
Newton whatsit, who a Rolling Stone reviewer once described as
"the sound of white bread singing". chortle.
Are these two the mainstream? Are we there yet? I don't know really
but they are certainly more mainstream than most anything else I've
talked about lately. They certainly are commercial.
And then there's Amy Winehouse. She's newer than the other two but is
travelling a very old road just the same. She's allowed of course
even if that road seems headed for the Devil's Crossroads ... or is
it away, after? Lots of people are liking her atmosphere anyway, and
the tabloids are happy to have someone else to write about. There is
something there too. When she was first around there were mentions
of Janis Joplin and I wrote a few scathing words at the time as her
voice isn't in the same league as Big Brother era Janis. But that
comparison was odious anyway, and a red herring. 2008 could be
interesting as Mark Ronson has talked about "wall of sound".
Updated Phil Spector, with some roughness and soul could be
interesting.
(thunderfinger)
A while ago I had a few uncomplimentary
words to say about the last Babyshambles
album and having just heard the latest one,
I thought I'd give you an update: it's
better - not love it to bits, can't do
without it better, but better all the same
with some nice dirty guitar and some
original-sounding songs.
The reason I mention them at all is just
to highlight the problem of being original
and having something to say, both musically
and lyrically. There are plenty of bands who
don't aspire to this at all - they tack
themselves onto a genre, and away they go,
hoping to get laid a lot and maybe even get a
buck or two... until they grow up, when they'll
get real jobs. I'm not sneering at them at all
but my interest generally lies elsewhere.
Do the BS (sorry, couldn't resist it)
belong in this grouping? I think they're
groping to get out of the grouping and maybe
when they're Teenshambles, they'll have found
a voice. The fact that they're looking and
groping commends them a little.
In contrast to this are people who hardly
seem able to do the commonplace. They stand
up and sing, or whatever, and many people
don't have a clue what the hell they're
talking about - that's the downside (in
commercial terms anyway). The trick, of course,
is to have a few accessibility handles that
people can catch onto. Mstation interviews
one such this month, Jessie Evans who, amongst other things, finds
interesting places to put her sax playing -
including artpunk bands.
The good news for all of us is that there's
actually quite a lot of this sort of thing
out there. You need to find it, and then you
need to lack the need for hype to say it's
alright to like it. In other words, thinking
for yourself is good, even though it can be
time-consuming.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Peace
and Love, dude/tte.
(thunderfinger)
There's an album out from Nightwish called
Dark Passion Play which has a sticker on it
proclaiming them to be the best Metal band of
all time. This could well be true, I suppose.
Listening to this album, it seems a little
like light opera - Gilbert and Sullivan or
Andrew Lloyd Webber for people who drink a lot
lot of beer. I imagine the conversation
amongst the band was quite similar to a legion
of big guitar bands from the past who had
sudden urges to do art and maybe similar to
the one that pursuaded a band of old East
German rockers (think long grey hair,
gum chewing mean looks, and some almost cool
single coil noises) to appear in front of one
of Berlin's orchestras in the Gendamenmarkt.
Though maybe this last was a simple case of
deciding to take the money while it was there.
In the other cases it had more than a little
to do with wanting to get out of those black
jeans and into a white caftan.
So, anyway, this thing from Nightwish is
not the HM we might love or loathe - the
cartoonish riffing for one thing is well back
in the mix and there are all sorts of other
more effete things scooting around in there.
This is what you might expect from a Concept
Album.
HM itself has a huge following right
through Europe complete with mythology like
the story of the Belgian event where beer
drinkers are lined up drinking and peeing
simultaneously. Basic is the word we want
here - along with smelly. Belgium is also
famous for techno parties where you pay
something like 10 or 15 Euros in places like
Lille in France, and then get bussed to an
unidentified building in Belgium where you
can drink all you want for no extra, and get
pounded by techno of differing quality.
Understandably, this is a popular way for
students to lose a weekend or two.
I can't be too rude about HM though. The
sheer basic exuberence of big guitar with the
volume on 11 can lead to moments of primal
exaltation.
Next it's France. This place has always been interesting as it
never really featured in the days when Rock mostly ruled but has
really become a force since the advent of electronic dance music -
this is forgetting, of course, the Chanson style, and people like
Edith Piaf from long ago. You could make an argument that people
like Charlotte Gainsburg, with her smooth Pop, is actually more of
descendant of Piaf than of Elvis.
France didn't really get Rock (and no, I'm not forgetting Billy
Halliday ... or is it one "l" ... who seems to be keen to be known as
a Belgian these days) for a variety of reasons which I won't go into
here as I'd have to write a book. Not that the French weren't
appreciative of visiting real rockers: they were and are.
These days there's almost a French school of production in
the electronic area, and it's smooth and clever, and has witty
asides and frequent eclectic inclusions. We'll talk more of this later.
Germany, or rather Berlin, is interesting. Back in the days of
Faust, the local label had to be dragged, kicking and screaming,
into releasing them as they really didn't want to be diverted from
what they saw as their only business: shifting Bert Kaempfert and
endless oopmpah bands. Things haven't changed much at all on the
commercial front. And even in the Alternative/Indy world a lot of
the labels seem to be suffering a severe case of head-up-bum.
The artists world is something else again, with a lively
scene where all sorts of genres, and far-out sub-genres get by
with a little help from their friends and the hugely important
facts of relatively cheap living and open attitudes - the scene
not just consisting of locals but of people who have come from all
over. I've mentioned all this before but saying it twice can't do
any harm.
Finding these people in shops somewhere else is just about
impossible unless you live in one of the world's major cities where,
even these days, you might find at least one shop that specialises
in out-there stuff with "out-there" merely being defined as something
that's not from a Big Music label. The best way to find them is to
look around somewhere like Myspace, and then support the acts by
buying from them directly.
Going back to the business of Rocking, there are, of course, lots
of people who don't want to rock at all and lots who couldn't if
they tried. Rocking isn't just a matter of tempo, timbre, and feel. Just like
the Blues, there are subtleties all through the thing that separate
the real from the fake.
(thunderfinger)
Can you believe there was a time when it
was almost actually cool to be part of a
record label? Some were way cooler than others
naturally enough. Right now I'm just getting
my head around EMI's takeover by one of
those private equity companies - the sort of
people who's decision making is spreadsheet
based and who are on the lookout for
undervalued assets and gouging opportunities.
One of their first statements was they'd
have to prune artists who weren't paying their
way. Oh boy. I won't bother to explain to
people who don't know the music biz why this
is a gauche and cretinously stupid thing to
say. I'll just point to the backdoor where
some of these companies are going to disappear
soon, and say "there it is buddy, I hope
you're the first through it" Although a
dead tie with Sony BMG and Universal would be
even better.
Let's give them all a little advice, shall we?
1) When you insult artists, you insult we the
consumers as well. You've been quite good at
insulting the consumer as it is... and without
us, guess what? Goodby-ee. And yes, you are
running out of cretins and twelve yo's.
2) You need to have some decent product. True,
you do have some but you need more.
3) Short termism just makes you look like
parasites (see 1). You need to have proper,
long-term relationships with artists where
you invest in them and help them grow. This
is the way it used to be and it worked
moderately well.
4) People in the aggregate tend towards what
they consider to be a fair price. When prices
are too high more people steal. Most of the
piracy on the internet consists of sales you
would never have made anyway. The point here,
in case you missed it, is that your prices
are too high, or to put it another way ...
5) You need to offer percieved value. Crummy
CD packaging with next to no info
persuaded people that the packaging didn't
matter much anyway and, what the heck, they
might as well get digital files from Apple or
from the band themselves. Somewhat weirdly,
you've created this level playing field
yourselves by your greed and shortsightedness.
6) Good luck!
(thunderfinger)
It's an eternal artists quandary - how do you keep
yourself interested if you're doing the same ole shit,
year in, year out. Take the White Stripes for example -
that raw, powerful, and sparse, big single coil guitar
sound rocked but good on their early albums. It's why
people came out in large quantities and declared them
saviours of the world.
And now I find myself being like those people I
don't like who can never accept any new stage from any
artist, and especially one they like. There's lots of
history in this too and lots of people who failed to
join transitions - and lots of people who joined later
and were sneered at by the originals. I know, you can
think of lots of examples of this as well, but let's
name some anyway - Dylan's going electric was a pretty
big one... and then his going religious another
although, soundwise, it was just smoother. The Beatles
went from being basic beat monkeys to psy-preachers and
lost me and gained two gazillion people in my place.
Bowie did a lot of changing, but musically? And I mean
big changes here - so let's give him a couple. The
picture is confused a little when artists make changes
that boost their popularity hugely... which leads on
to issues about the goodness of anything, especially
popularity.
Well, Mr. Stripes has had an itch or two. One of them
was apparently calmed by moving to Nashville where he
says he loves the do-anything-for-a-buck mentality.
Crass commercialism? Bring it on! You can't blame him
though. He was totally sick of indy poseurs - who are,
like most camp followers, always whispering
conspiracy and always on a super-sensitive hunt for
signs of non-belief in The Code.
Icky Thump isn't about crass selling-out though. It
is about more complicated mixes - and about a
blurring of the original simpler musical thoughts to
enter a land many have entered before. The crucial
question to the listener (other than where that album
name came from) is does all this added stuff make any
sense? Does it grip? You know my answer. To me it seems
like part of a continuum of dilution.
(thunderfinger)
Holding hands out the back: The Autons
Last September or so Mstation heard a track
from the Autons called Snakes which really rocked
along and had the sort of drive reminiscent of Punk but
without the odious posturing and with quite a lot of
musical skill. The song went along to get some very
favourable mentions at the end of 06.
Since then there's been a record deal with Zip, an
album release (right about now), and an album "repressing" on the strength of pre-orders, and some
hopes at least of a European tour as they are popular
in the lands beyond the Channel. They are from
Portsmouth in the UK and have had supportive press there - which is all kind of nice. Also nice is that
this is no pre-fab A&R wank package of pretty-pretties.
Actually, I personally quite like pp's but there's no
need for them to actually make a noise and most of
them could do with stylist changes. But anyway, I should
hasten to add, there's nothing bad looking about the
Auton guys - they just don't have those tell-tale
marketing department droppings around them.
So, you won't be surprised to find that the label isn't
one of the mega's but I'm not going to beat up on them
here: Breaking new bands is hard work even if you have
a vision of the whole picture. Short-termism brought
on by maximising shareholder's wealth often has the
by-product of conservatism and so it's quite likely that
this weeks new band from them is likely to actually be
version 1034.1 of something else. But not always. Just
mostly.
Not that the Autons are blazing a new trail but it is
on a trail away from the usual stuff and it all has a
refreshing immediacy about it despite holding hands out
the back with forms that aren't commercial du jour. But
that's what accessability is about, and the balance
between this holding of hands and an artist's fevered
futurism determines whether the punter shrugs his shoulders
in complete perplexity or fixes a wide grin on his face
right from the start.
With the Autons we have electro melded with
something of the punk ethos especially in the urgency
and phrasing of the vocalist. There'll be a few
smiles around on June 4 when the album is released.
http://www.myspace.com/autonsland
(thunderfinger)
People in the future might come to wonder how it
came to be that such a large crowd of artists
could possibly have gathered in a place owned by
such a right-wing enemy of human dignity, such an
enemy of truth even. If these people of the future
have progressed even slightly in terms of what they're
willing to put up with in the way of justice, they
will scoff a little and say "typical! Just as their
record labels took most of the money for their releases,
here they all were, busily playing their music and
supplying other content, and all the money from this
goes to someone else!"
Yes, well, they would have a point wouldn't they?
All the same, this sort of overview needs to be
leavened by the other reality of the thing - a huge community
of musicians, music lovers, scenesters, and just plain
folks. The amount of music to browse, from all over the
world, is prodigious. All you need is a starting point,
someone you like, and off you can go, bouncing from
friend to friend. Not all of it is exactly wonderful but
wonderful is there aplenty. There are big label bands
there with their tens of thousands of friends, and a
sort of obvious feeling that the band themselves are
nowhere near this place, and then there are huge
numbers of pages with little-known acts who are
definitely somewhere close.
The big label bands are there because their labels
said they had to have a presence (a relatively cheap
way of marketing to a very large crowd) and the
smaller ones are there both in hope and also for the
nice sense of community there. If you look through the
friends and see mostly other artists then maybe you
have a clue that something is going on.
The future and the past are here - the past quite
clear but the future enjoyably clouded. Do A & R
people cruise here? Evidence seems to suggest they
cruise the download numbers which is exactly what you'd
expect from the "product" mentality.
You can bypass them here (and in numerous other
places on the web). You can excercise your own right to
a piece of the future. My recommendations? Well, I'll
just list a random sampling of my own friends (and no, I'm not there
as thunderfinger, and yes, I was an artist long before I
thought about writing about it)...
... and check out their friends as well. There's
high quality something there for almost everyone.
(thunderfinger)
From Russia with love and beats
I'll continue the theme of Eastern music while people
and things of interest keep popping up. The other night
I was at a club called Ausland in Berlin where the
Russian band Volga were due to play. Showtime was supposedly
around 10pm but the crowd knew better and didn't roll in
until after 11 and pretty soon we had some music. One of
the club owners said the lateness thing was a problem in
Berlin in that, quite often, people wanted to start at 1
or 2am - no problem for partyers but a problem when you're
trying to attract ordinary people with money in their
pockets who have jobs to go to the next day.
There was a big Russian and Ukranian presence at the gig - sleekly groomed businessmen with pretty women and
a more alternative-looking crowd with interesting hats and
the like. There is somehow an air of the mysterious and
exotic about them and maybe also at this gig there is a
celebration of Rodena - of Motherland, and of that thing we
know so little about in the west - Russianness - that
thing that exists at the end of a moderately straight line
between Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Putin. A place (in
our minds) of stoic peasants and louche party-girls, of
endless wilderness, of criminal-oligarchs, and of that
perfectly ordinary and pleasant person standing just over
there.
The band itself is no cookie-cutter outfit either - in
its looks or in its music. The singer is an ample woman with
short black hair and a screeling voice which goes between
soft and nursery-like and a wailing tribal screech which
could summon the warriors or the demons from the wooded
areas at the edge of town. What she was singing exactly, I
had no idea, as it was in Russian.
The totality of the sound includes machine beats and
sampling from a
Mac laptop, percussion and an interesting stringed instrument, a pair of CD DJ decks and an abundance of effects
pedals which were used on most everything. Sometimes there
would be a ballad-like song but maybe with a certain
ironic wryness about it and then there would be something
with pounding beats which would set the dancers off into
little individual celebrations. The girls were especially
good at this - no cookie-cutter dancing!
One such, a very
tall blonde with the beauty of a goddess comes from the
Ukraine and was brought up in Southern Germany. In her
movements, in her fineness, and in her mystery and her
pride there is a story of the whole gig.
With any luck, on the podcast page, will be a track from
Volga.
(thunderfinger)
One of the strands to do with Eastern European
bands was that it used to be physically dangerous,
even life-threatening, to just get up and play
some rock music. While the officially sanctioned
bands played a mixture of sacharine love songs and
over-blown pomp rock, the others ranged as wide as
the imagination would go. Quite often they weren't
overtly political but their view of life went to
somewhere else - dadaesque, art-punk, grind groove,
and sometimes accompanied by grainy Super 8 footage
cut to be art rather than a record.
Quite often though, it wasn't so much the content
of the concert that counted, it was the fact that
the concert took place at all. Both the musicians
and the concert goers were brave to an extent
that is quite humbling for a Western musician -
OK, if you wipped out your willy like Jim
Morrison did in Miami, you could expect some
hassle in some parts but of a different order of
magnitude entirely. Being disappeared and tortured
or killed wasn't and isn't on the menu. We're
talking about music here, not George Bush, his
ugly henchmen, and their foes.
Maybe we might have expected those bands to be
so out-there as to be from another planet, freed
as they were from ordinary commercial constraints,
and, just as in the West, there were some. But
mostly the whole point of the thing was to play
Western-style rock music because it was that that
was censored and forbidden - information wants to
be free!
Now things are mostly completely different although
there is a different form of censorship at work -
economic necessity. In the old days pretty much
everyone was guaranteed the basic necessities of
life and there was time to make music. Now,
frequently there's not. That, and the general order
of things have led, at the least, to a certain
nostalogy, and a wish that the thieving scum who
steal the very roads from the people will be
dealt with in a particularly nasty way.
It's a long way from there to here, even if the
macro-view inclined might say 'same as it ever
was!' with power concentrated in a few hands and
a great disparity between rich and poor (which is
beginning to describe some countries in the west
quite well) but music is part of the detail and
that detail is rich with imagination and skill...
proto-punks might say there's too much of that
and that the construction can outweigh the
message. Sometimes - for sure. It wasn't unknown
that conservatory trained musicians would (sort of)
rock out as an act of rebellion.
From the Plastic People to Lollipops! The Plastic
People played in the Czech republic in the old
days and organised quite large concerts which were
treated like ... raves in modern Britain! ...
except more so. There are various tracks around.
Or you could go and see Groma and his group
Eternal Rest play their sophisticated music with an
occasional tinge of Industrialism in Sevastopol.
This stuff is great for people who absolutely must
be listening to things that no-one else has heard of.
Or, somewhat more easily you can check out a label
like lollipopshop which specialises in Eastern
European music and has a fair proportion of Polish
acts. Run by Henning Kupper in Berlin, this is an
indy label par excellence - an expert guy who wants
to get good stuff out there where people can hear
it. Sending money his way doesn't pay for PR droids
or private jets: it pays for more of the same, food
on the able and a few beers at the cafe. The sort
of band names you might come across are Magic
Carpathians Project, Oranzada, Volga, NU, Korae
Orom, Uzgin Over, Trottel Monodream, and many more.
(thunderfinger)
Mstation Pop etc Commentary, Reviews
pre Dec 04 reviews are here
Mon, 01 Sep 2008
Sun, 06 Jul 2008
Wed, 30 Apr 2008
Mon, 24 Mar 2008
Fri, 29 Feb 2008
Tue, 05 Feb 2008
Mon, 03 Dec 2007
Thu, 01 Nov 2007
Sat, 29 Sep 2007
Fri, 31 Aug 2007
Tue, 03 Jul 2007
Sat, 02 Jun 2007
Fri, 04 May 2007
http://www.myspace.com/hushthemany
http://www.myspace.com/8bitweapon
http://www.myspace.com/paarvoharju
http://www.myspace.com/strawberry
http://www.myspace.com/conilmusic
http://www.myspace.com/zofka
http://www.myspace.com/thesubways
http://www.myspace.com/fe_bac
http://www.myspace.com/ziaspace
Fri, 02 Mar 2007
Volga - band website
Lollipop Shop -German Label
Lumberton Trading - English Label
Ausland
Sat, 03 Feb 2007
