Of course you all know Michael Nyman for making the music to (all) films of Peter Greenaway. He will perform at the Cross Linx festival that will take place in Enschede (19/3), Eindhoven (20/3) and Utrecht (21/3). The “cross link” is between classical music and pop and the pop-part is for the Belgian band Zita Zwoon. We bought our tickets some time ago and I look forward to hear Nyman’s music live.
I enjoy listening to the Last.fm tag-radio “electroclash”. It contains bands such as Vive La Fête!. Apparently there are quite a few more of such bands that mix (drum)computer rhythms with guitars, strange singing and a punky attitude. Last week I ran into some more by a strange coincidence, since I saw a “disco punk” cd on a list of one of my usual music dealers that normally do not sell such popular kind of music. The band is called Noblesse Oblige and they have a nice blend of electronic music, punkrock and a bit of gothic and wave; quite a bit like Vive La Fête actually, but later albums seem to have more of an own sound. Noblesse Oblige has a male a female singer. When I looked up this band on Last.fm, I ran into two very interesting other bands. One is called ADULT. (with dot), who have released nice but rather typical electroclash, but also nice and raw electropunk. Very nice are Motormark who have a great dirty and raw electropunk sound that I think will appeal to people who like the later recordings of The Prodigy. All mentioned projects seem to be couples by the way, or at least, a men and a woman who alternally sing with slightly distorted vocals. Nice!
Last week I got this email:
Hi guys!
I thought as fans of Jason Forrest you might want to check out him
re-inventing the Dr. Who theme… as well as 41 other
cryptically-titled tv theme…http://www..peppermillrecords.com/pm010
PK
I downloaded that “The Box” ‘3cd’ compilation, but it is not really my thing. Very silly remakes of old (tv) tunes. It is not really the CRD kind of breakcore (but Forrest keeps up hope), but much slower and more tranquil and not even always with crazy beats. A few tracks are well done, most are say too silly for my liking. I have not yet tried any other Peppermill release, but if you want to try some free, strange and silly music, you might want to have a look at Peppermill.
Yes, you read that right, Aphex Twin, Venetian Snares, Squarepusher and many others are coming to Eindhoven. From 2 to 13 April the annual STRP Festival is held. Free for the larger part with all kinds of art, performances, exhibitions, installations, etc. Last year the festival was opened by the Chemical Brothers. This year for the opening weekend names such as Laurant Garnier, Michael Mayer, Morgan Geist, Luke Vibert, Birdy Nam Nam and Yuksek and those I opened with are attracted. First I heard about Aphex Twin and Squarepusher. In my hurry I ordered tickets only for Saturday (€ 34,-!) instead of the whole opening weekend (€ 57,-), but fortunately Aphex Twin is sceduled for Saturday, for the others no day seems to have been set, so I can only hope that Squarepusher and Venetian Snares will also play on Saturday (but I think that is unlikely). In any case, how often do you get the change to see such projects live and even at the same festival?
Well well, the Strp festival has anounced interesting names for their opening weekend. A whole range of experimental “IDM” projects will play on 3 and 4 April. I accidentally only bought tickets for Saturday (already € 34,- per ticket!), the night that Aphex Twin plays. Squarepusher has not been put in the schedule yet, but I can hardly imagine that they would put him on Saturday too. That would be great though!
Anyway, more info: Strp.nl.
Last weekend I ran into a couple of breakcore projects on Last.fm that could very well have been released on Cock Rock Disco. Both did in some way (compilation and album), but there seems to be much more neurotic breakcore out there than the crazy stuff of CRD. Both Mochipet and Otto von Schirach have great tracks in the Last.fm Kid606 ‘radio’. Mochipet sometimes seems to do breakcore/hiphop, a bit like Antipop Consortium, but both Mochipet and Otto von Schirach make completely over-the-top and impossible-to-listen-to breakcore on most other tracks that I heard.
There is so much crazy music out there and since there seem to be so many projects and labels in this style, I suppose there is also a large audience that listens to this stuff.
I have known Last.fm for a while, but I hadn’t really ‘worked with it’ until recently. I finally got a laptop (cheap second hand) which I connected to my amplifier so now I can play all the music that I have digitally too more easily. When I was looking for a proper internet radio and I couldn’t find any, I stumbled upon Last.fm again. I only knew this website for having popular music and it has suggestions for similar artists. This could be a nice way to discover new music. Then I noticed that almost anything has a “radio”: artists, ‘tags’, etc. “Radio” is a compilation (often virtually infinate) of tracks that users connect to a certain tag (musical style) or artist. This function is truely amazing. I play music that I would never buy. In the weekend I find myself playing old punk (The Clash, Sex Pistols), not too fast, but not too slow, nice music for a drousy Sunday morning. Last.fm has an enormous amount of music, most bands are on it and it can be nice to see what other users connect to a certain band. Just a test case (but a serious one): Devil Doll, what would be “similar artists”? The line names Fields of the Nephilim and Elend, yea right. The “radio” has much more interesting things to offer though, since it is filled with all kinds of old, strange and sometimes surprisingly nice progrock. Another such test: Diamanda Gallas. Similar artists are Einstürzende Neubauten and Nurse With Wound, uhuh. The “radio” also presents avantgardistic electronic music, but also experimental opera and vocal music, like Laurie Anderson and a magnificent song of Amy X Neuburg. What about Nicholas Lens? For a great many years I have been looking for something that comes just a little near this magnificent music, but without succes. “Nicholas Lens radio” has experimental modern classical (of course), but a bit too many ‘classical classical’, but a surprise (inspite of the name) are for example the OperaBabes, who combine opera with modern electronics.
This morning I started with rockabilly, because I was curious what it sounds like. Ehm, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, isn’t that just rock’n’roll. No problems with r’n’r, but I expected something modern, so I continued with psychobilly. That’s already more like it, this is more punk and the bands go from pretty old to pretty new, not bad! Apparently it is a small step from rockabilly to horror punk, ah, punk again with a nice gloomy horror sauce and …. gothic? Damn, these vocals sound quite gothic now and then and then I even noticed a tag “gothabilly“! Never heard of it, but I love it! Somewhere between rockabilly and death rock/batcave and I even noticed a great band that I thought had long passed: The Coffinshakers! I have their 95 and 96 demos, they claimed to play “vampiric country music” and I loved it, but after some vinyls I lost them. What they call country actually sounds a bit like rock’n’roll, but I think the same of Johnney Cash now and then. Anyway, nowadays they are put under the banners of rockabilly, psychobilly and of course gothabilly, there are even three gothabilly compilations (98 to 00 or so) one of which has The Coffinshakers. Cool!
Last.fm is truely amazing and just fooling around has made me known a shitload amount of musical currents and bands that I never heard of, from “chamber rock” to the weirdest avantgarde experiments from the 60’ies to the present day, modern classical, all kinds of weird old music. I have a difficult musical taste, but there is so much music that there is even a lot that I like.
Two minor points about Last.fm are that you can pick a certain song of a certain band to play (band’s pages usually have 30 second snippets) and there’s no fast forward.
Last.fm seems quite an ultimate website for music lover. Do not look for the newest or the new and they might not have everything (neither does Discogs.com), but they have pretty damn much!
I got this email today. Not really my kind of music, but perhaps you are interested.
I’m wondering if you’d be interested to hear my recent album… I’m not so sure how to classify it… original/folk-ish/acoustic music… a sparkling/melancholic/eclectic mix based around acoustic guitar, double-bass and vocals, with a variety of other instruments woven through.
I could mail you some mp3s… or you can download some songs online at my Sonic Bids page:
http://www.sonicbids.com/TomBoltonOr, if you let me know your address I’ll mail a CD to you.
Regards,
Tom Bolton
(Melbourne Australia)
Industrial metal from India? Hm. I don’t really intend to review metal, neither do I enjoy having to figure out how to download an album, but the Myspace tracks are not even that bad. Just read on if I caught your interest:
Hello
We’re Rat King from India and we hope to get our new CD (“The Plague of Hamelin” – A concept album based on a distorted version of the Grimm Brothers’ classic “Pied Piper of Hamelin”) reviewed on your zine. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of copies of our CD and so we’re trying to promote it through mp3s. I don’t know if you have strict policy against mp3s but I’m attaching a link to the whole album anyway.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TSZF7FOL
Here’s hoping you dig it.
Thanks
Deepakhttp://www.myspace.com/raatkeeng
The new Sistrenatus album is called “Sensitive Disturbance” and seems to be due for early next year to be released on Cold Spring.
However the earlier project Funerary Call was buried, it has revived because of a request of a new album. The new material is more industrial/noisy than ‘ritual’ and you can listen to some excerpts on the FC Myspace.