music

I had to unplug some audio equipment from my amplifier and when reconnecting everything I, of course, had to check if everything worked again. For the recordplayer I used a picture 7″ of Amber Asylum, for my tapedeck the 1996 demo “De Laffe Denker” (‘the cowardish thinker’) of Mildreda. I did not immediately remember what kind of music it was. The demo opens with a slow, pompous industrial track, slightly reminding of In Slaughter Natives. After that memories come back soon. Mildreda made that rather typical slow and dark electro with those typical vocoder vocals. It was quite nice to hear it again. When looking if there would be any information about this demo on the www, I noticed that Mildreda is back again and only a few months ago put their demo online for free download. It’s a small world afterall.
Currently I am playing the “Raining December” demo (2000) of the Russian Stillife, a not too entertaining mix of soft electro and darkwave. Also this band still seems to be around.
I have a lot of demos from about 1992 to 2002, perhaps I will have a closer look tonight!

She is a bit of a stranger in my collection. “Back To Black” is one of the few pop albums in my collection, more specifically, one of the few contemporary pop albums. Soul, not my kind of music, yet her “Rehab” got my interest and when listening to the rest of the album (and the extra disc) I came to love Amy Winehouse. She is probably the pop artist that I play most. I may have music of most of the rest of the ‘club 27’, but I seldom listen to music of the rest… Hm, with probably many I hope that the recordings for the third album are good enough to be released.

On their Facebook page, the Danish band Parzival says that they are looking for concerts. Now there is a band that I would like to see live. Perhaps with one of those “old style EBM” bands such as Pouppée Fabrikk or so. Organisers (especially in the Netherlands, Belgium or the far West of Germany), get in contact with this wonderfull band!

Great news. Maska Genetik released a cd through Galakthorrö and Haus Arafna has a new title too. Get in contact with Galakthorrö for these great items.

A few weeks ago Markus of Steinklang needed either more space in his house or money, but he sent around a list with items from his personal collection to sell. I got myself a few nice items. The 2004 “Pulse” 7″ of Geneviève Pasquier, the 1999 7″ “Littleton” of Thorofon (there was some more Thorofon material on the list, but I did not want to buy it all, I have to mind the wallet too), the 2002 10″ “Die Sender Müssen Schweigen” of Anenzephalia, the 1998 “Riefenstahl” compilation (unfortunately there appears to be a boring, normal double cd), the 2002 compilation “Transmissions Of Hatred” (a lot of noise that is not of my taste, but Ex.Order is on it and also Operation Cleansweep) and the 2004 “Hau Ruck! Festival II” picture 10″. Perhaps I forgot something. It was a good occassion to see if my recordplayer still works, I do not use it all that often.
Last week Tesco had an overstock sale and I ordered myself some more old stuff. Hopefully it will arrive some time soon.

Did you know that mr. Doctor is actually named Mario Panciera and that he wrote a book in 2007? The book is not hard to get, but very expensive, about $ 200,-.

A while ago I got a little book of Leo Blokhuis. Blokhuis is a Dutch music journalist and a walking pop-encyclopedia. In the book he gives the stories of certain songs that we all know, but that all have a history. “House Of The Rising Sun” to name one. Blokhuis traced back the first versions of these songs and tells about the artist, how they found the song, how others came to sing it as wel, etc. In this way you get stories of early blues, rock or folkmusic. However I might not like the music, I do like reading about the people who made it. It is especially nice to read about the early days of later great artists. In any case, since I myself have a history of some 15/20 years in certain underground music movements, I thought that it might be nice to write a bit about that. These “stories” will give a little background and a personal twist, but will be short and thus contain holes. Perhaps I will begin globally and ‘zoom in’ a little more later. Time will tell how long I will like to write these little stories, but the first two can be found when you hover your mouse over the “music” link above and click “stories” from the dropdown. Perhaps these stories will be even more interesting with some interaction, so do not shy to share your own experiences.

I receive the Enfant Terrible newsletters. In the last one a DJ-set was mentioned. There appear to be four of them available for free download from RobotDJ.net. To my surprise mix four opens with Haus Arafna and Thorofon. Of course (with the compilation cd in mind) the rest is “minimal”, danceble, slightly technoish, but reminding of old-style EBM sometimes. Nice to play now and then.

After a 4cd box with old Arcana albums, Cyclic Law also releases a box with 4 albums of Sophia. These albums are “Sigillum Militum”, “Herbstwerk”, “Aus Der Welt / Seduction Of Madness / Death, Dumb and Blind” and “Spite”. Of course you can read reviews of almost all these albums here. I do not have all the material of disc 2, but to buy a whole 4cd set for two minis is not a real option either. What might be a better idea of mr. Bjargö is to release recordings of that brilliant ‘best of’ show of Summer Darkness 2010!