Category Archives: music

Music 2017

In 2017 I reviewed 12 releases of that year. Three of them got a 4.5 (out of 5) rating: “Kainskult” of Trepaneringsritualen, “The Place Of Dead Roads” of Ex.Order and “The Developing World” of Am Not.

Every time I listen to “Kainskult” is seems to be getting better. So perhaps I should say that this album is crawling to a five out of five. This is certainly the album of 2017 to me. What helps a lot is that it is by and far the best album of Trepaneringsritualen so far. The other two albums that I mentioned are also great, but both Ex.Order and Am Not have releases that are even better.

Wave Gotik Treffen 2016

The first time I went to the Wave Gotik Treffen in Leipzig, was the disastrous 9th edition in the year 2000. It took a couple of years before I went again. Recent years I went annually. The WGT is so big and varried that there is a lot to see even for me. I have no big interest in the ‘general gothic scene’, the dress-up parties (but I guess when nobody did, the WGT would not have the atmosphere as it does now) and most of the music would never find its way to my stereo, but like I said, there are always enough concerts to visit. So what did I see this year? Continue reading →

Still an addict

Not much music reviews recently, but I am as much a music addict as I used to be. It is just that I do not run into new things that I really like very often. I listen to a variety of music styles nowadays. My ‘usual’ or ‘old’ scenes do not present all that many interesting releases. I am curious about the upcoming Sophia (but not so much that I went to see them live), a lot less so about the new Der Blutharsch. New releases of ‘old labels’ (Cold Spring, Cyclic Law) are not often groundbreaking to my ears. Even ‘new labels’ such as Beläten and Aufnahme + Wiedergabe do not seem as interesting as when I just discovered them.

Nowadays I like to listen to X-Wave Radio. Most music is not great, but almost none of it is really bad and I like the easy tunes of “minimal wave”. When I play music myself it can either be a rock thing like A Place To Bury Strangers or The Dead Weather, or something more noisy (Ex.Order, Operation Cleansweep), but I can just as well feel like playing some breakcore, tekno and recently old-fashioned thrash metal (listen to Trash Zone Radio).

But something I did not know and great? Not so often. Is it me growing old?

I do not visit a whole lot of concerts these days. There are not many things that I really need to see (if there is anything at all), but the Wave Gotik Treffen is growing to be a yearly event for me and I am surely going to see Thorofon there this year!

Consumer Electronics vs Sleaford Mods

I have known the name Consumer Electronics for a long time. ‘Some old power electronics project, probably sounding like Whitehouse and Merzbow’, I thought, so I never paid much attention. Recently I am digging through the old industrial past and Consumer Electronics proved to be even older than I thought. I listened to “Estuary English” on Deezer and actually liked it a lot. Not earcracking power electronics, but ‘listenable’ noise with extremely aggressive vocals, screamed with a lot of cursing and swearing. The album starts with ranted ‘minimal wave’ and gets more and more extreme in music as the release continues. The vocals and lyrics are so filthy that the smile on my face grew with each track. Continue reading →

Distel and ‘the new music’

Before Bandcamp and Soundcloud became the way for new bands to present themselves, they used Myspace. I never used Myspace much, but one time (in 2008/9 or so) I was searching around a bit and found out that there is a Dutch project that tagged itself “angstpop”. I liked the music a lot, but even saw him/them live before the debut 7″ came out in 2010. Continue reading →