Mstation Pop etc Commentary, Reviews
pre Dec 04 reviews are here
- 33Hz
- A new format: June 06
- AFX
- AMPOP
- Acoustic Set
- Afrobeat
- Agoria, Spinach Girl
- Arctic Monkeys
- Art of performance
- Art of the DJ
- At the Lake
- At the Lake
- Autechre, Untilted
- Autumn/Fall pop etc
- Babyshambles
- Baxter Drury
- Ben Harper
- Black Eyed Peas
- Blues Explosion, Crunchy
- Bovaflux
- Broadcast
- Cadillac, Magnetic City
- Can Labels not Suck?
- Can, Unlimited Edition
- Carpathian ....
- Catskills Sampler
- Ch3vy
- Chk Chk Chk
- Chok Rock, Big City Loser
- Clearlake, Amber
- Client, city
- Coldplay, X and Y
- Collabs 301
- Commercial Women
- Cornershop
- Crazy Girl
- Creative Shambles
- DJ Corner
- DJ Corner and House Mix download
- DJ Tom Baker -- DJ Corner
- DJ corner June
- Decemberists
- Diefenbach, Glorious
- Disco Heaven
- Domino Sampler
- Dr. Who: Volume 1 and 2
- Electric Six, Vibrator
- Embrace, A Glorious Day
- Emetrex, Wish Me Dead
- Erasure, Here I go ...
- Exploring Europe
- FBC Fabric and Reindeer, It's not ...
- Fall Pop, dance etc
- Fire Engines
- Fisk Industries
- Four Tet
- Four Tet, Smile Around the Face
- From Russia with love and beats
- Fujiya & Miyagi
- Futureheads, Decent Days and Nights
- Goldfrapp
- Goldfrapp, Number 1, Beautiful
- Gravenhurst
- Gravenhurst, The Velvet Cell
- Guns and Lollipops
- Hed Kandi
- Hed Kandi 50th
- Hedkandi
- Holding hands out the back: The Autons
- Hood, Outside Closer
- Hush the Many
- Husky Rescue, Country Falls
- Husky Rescue, New Light of Tomorrow
- I suppose that somewhere here there are
- Ian Gillan
- Icky thumps and Bad Bananas
- Indochine
- Infadels, Can't Get Enough
- Infadels, Jagger '67
- Jackson and His Computer Band
- James Holden
- Jamie Liddell, Multiply
- Jamie Lidell, Multiply
- Jane Birkin
- Jeans Team
- Jimmy Edgar, Bounce Make Model
- July 06 Pop World
- KT Tunstall
- Lawrence, The Night Will Last Forever
- Layo & Bushwacka!
- Liars, Drum's Not Dead
- Little Man Tate
- Lou Barlow
- Louise Attaque
- Low
- Melnyk
- Metal existance
- Miles Davis ... sorta
- Moby Live DVD
- Moby, Hotel
- Moby, Lift Me Up
- Moby, Slipping Away
- Moby, Spiders
- Mutts, Life in Dirt
- Myspace World
- NYC Rock
- Natalie C June 2005
- Nate James, Set the Tone
- New Order DVDs
- New Order, Krafty
- New Order, Waiting for the Sirens' Call
- New RSS system and Feeds
- Nick Cave, Warren Ellis
- Nightwish, Once
- Nizlopi
- Noise Hurts
- Noise music and other stuff
- Octavarium, Dream Theatre
- Paper Cut Moon
- Peyton
- Placebo
- Plantlife, The Last Song
- Popkomm Berlin 08
- Prefuse 73
- Prefuse73, Surrounded by Silence
- Prince
- Puppetmastaz
- Queurelle
- Raumschmiere
- Residents, Animal Lover
- Revolve promo CD
- Richard Hawley
- Richard Hawley
- Richie Hawtin
- Rimbaud and Rockers
- RollDeep
- Rolling Stones
- Rough Trade Shops Counterculture 2004
- Royale Deluxe
- Royksopp
- Royksopp, 49%
- Rythmes Digitales
- Secret Machines
- Shortwave Set
- Simon Fisher Turner
- Smog, A River Ain't Too Much in Love
- Sonic Art
- Spektrum
- Stereo Sushi
- Steve Angello
- Stonebridge
- Stonebridge, Freak On
- Subways, Oh Yeah
- Subways, Rock 'n Roll Queen
- Summer Pop
- Tears
- Templin, 5
- Test Icicles
- The Mutts
- The Residents, Commercial Album
- The Streets, Could Well Be In, Radio edit
- Trabant
- Trans Slovenia Express
- Tricky things
- Twisted Disco
- Ukrainian Music
- Village Orchestra
- Warp artists DVD
- Wilco
- Woody McBride
- beautiful new born children
- various, Back to Love, Hed Kandi
- ˙ūD e p e c h e M o d e
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Fri, 02 Mar 2007
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)
Volga - band website
Lollipop Shop -German Label
Lumberton Trading - English Label
Ausland
[]
permanent link
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