music

I am not entirely sure what the story of this documentary is. I do not think I heard of it before I noticed a screening on the 2025 Wave Gotik Treffen program. It seems that the documentary was funded with a crowdfunding and that the people who invested have already received their DVDs. The website of the label that released the film sells a “collectors edition” limited to 200 copies, which are: “a leftover item from our crowdfunding campaign”. Also tickets to a 12 June 2025 screening in Malmö are still available in the webshop, so it seems that the film premiered at the Wave Gotik Treffen (8 June 2025). IMDb.com says that the release date is 8 November 2024 though.

Anyway, a documentary about the rise and fall of Cold Meat Industry. It is mostly the story of Roger Karlsson (later “Karmanik”) (1965-) told by himself (in an interview) with additional information through interviews with people such as Tomas Pettersson (Ordo), both Peter Anderssons (Deutsch Nepal and Raison d’Être), Peter Bjärgo (Arcana), Håvard Ellefsen (Mortiis), Jouni Havukainen (In Slaughter Natives), etc., but also with people whose connections I do not really see.

I was quite in the middle of things, but on the other hand, it seems that I was not. Like I wrote before, I learned about CMI when Mortiis got in contact with Karmanik. I asked Roger if he was not afraid to become part of the black metal trend by that signing. He was not. The documentary shows that he was, but that there is more to that story. Mortiis certainly was a catalyst.

Karmanik originally was not from Linköping (pronounced “LIN-shə-ping” by the way), but he moved there as a punk. Experimenting with electronic music, he learned about other people who experimented with electronic music as well and in the end, he founded Cold Meat Industry. The label grew and the documentary is full of funny anecdotes and recollections of artists. There are stories about the first shows and festivals, growing friendships (“Karmanik family”), etc.

After a while it seemed that some of the artists had more potential than Karmanik could muster by himself in his basement (and later upper floor) and when after the signing of Mortiis the entire label and its artists entered the limelight, things became too much for Karmanik. It was around the same time that I started losing interest in the label and I did not really experience the tensions, bands that left the label or simply stopped and the bankruptcy of CMI in 2011. This was not only a ‘business thing’ though.

The viewer gets a very personal and very heavy look into the life of Karmanik himself. His oldest daughter is one of the interviewees. We hear about Karmanik’s drinking problems, breakdown, depression and his tiredness of living. This coincided with a growing dissatisfaction of some of the bands and in the end, CMI simply ‘bled out’.

It was only a few years later that a young Pole, Vlad Janicek of Death Disco concert promotions, wanted to celebrate his 30th birthday with a CMI reunion and this became the 30 years CMI festival in Stockholm in november 2017. No quarrels, no reproaches, just a party that saved Karmanik’s life and made some of the artists that had stopped, realise that people from all over the world were still interested in their music.

The documentary consists of interviews (in English, dubbed and subtitled), interesting archival material (video and photo) and weird news snippets the reasons for which elude me. There is some information that was new to me, but there are also things that I wonder why they are not included or mentioned.

I do not know how you have to get to see the documentary, but I guess/hope that there will be a regular release sometime soon.

An interesting documentary which gives a not too often seen idea of what goes on in the heads and lives of people involved in ‘dark music’. Recognisable and therefor not an easy watch.

Currently, the 2025 edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam is runnning and since Covid-19 they also have an online program. A part of the online program consists of films that have been featured on the festival before.

In “A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness” we more or less follow Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. The first third of the film is filmed in some sort of summercamp or commune which appears to be placed in the Finish countryside. Living in wooden cabins, sharing a sauna and having conversations, we follow a group of young adults and some of their children. There are long shots of nature and the like.

The second third focusses on Lowe as he makes a solo walk through nature. It seems that this part is shot in Estonia.

The third part is a black metal concert in a small place in Oslo. Lowe is a guitarist and occasional vocalist in an unnamed band.

Slow, minimalist, somewhat interesting.

London 1980’ies. Some Bowie fans want a place where they can express themselves and they find a club for Tuesday evening dance nights. “The Blitz” soon becomes a little scene, a bit of a queer and proto-gothic club.

Even though the documentary presents The Blitz as if was the primal soup of gender fluidity and the 1980’ies sound of music, similar things were -of course- happening in other places as well, also in the UK.

The Blitz was more the birthplace for the wave of pop music with Visage, Boy George and Spandau Ballet, while other similar scenes stayed more underground.

The documentary consists of interviews and old footage and makes it clear that a lot of things that we see today, were already there a few centuries ago. Also obvious is the enduring (and still present) of David Bowie and punk music. The Blitz started to lean towards more electronic music such as Kraftwerk.

This documentary is mostly about a song, but of course it had to also be a documentary about Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) who wrote it.

Cohen was a Canadian Jew who was fond of his heritage. He was a poet who, by the time he was 30, also started to put his poems to music. Soon discovered, his star rose rapidly. Yet he remained -as he said himself- in the margins of popular music.

As a musician Cohan was of course a singer/songwriter with slow, often minimalist and melancholic music. Most characteristic are the lyrics, and Cohen’s deep, warm voice. The documentary has video images of Cohen’s entire career as if he had a cameraman in his surroundings for the entire time. We get a peek into his private life, there are old interviews, people in his surroundings were interviewed as well.

And so we get to the famous song “Hallelujah” with which Cohen had struggled for seven years. By the time he was quite the name in the music business. He had released his material on the big, American label Columbia. “Hallelujah” was part of an album that Columbia thought was not good enough to release though. The song initially did not made it to the big audience, but Cohen did play it at live shows. The song was very religious / spiritual, but since he had so many different verses and kept coming up with new ones, at shows Cohen would sing a much more ‘secular’ version, sometimes even ‘naughty’.

Then John Cale sang the song. He made a mix between the ‘spiritual’ and ‘naughty’ lyrics. His version became better known than that of Cohen. Again later Jeff Buckley made the fame of the song rise to the stars. Especially his untimely death seems to have helped making it a cult-song. When it was used in the popular movie “Shrek”, the whole world appeared to be in love with the song. Cohen himself went in retreat in a Zen monastery and was off grid for several years. After that he made his comeback, he did shows world wide in spite of his rising age. “Halleluja” was a permanent part of his repertoire.

Besides the story of Cohen, you get the story of the song. Several sing/songwriters have been interviewed. Which version did they first hear? When and how did they adopt the song, etc. It has been covered countless times in many different forms ever since.

Geller & Goldfine made a nice documentary in which you get to know Cohen and learn how his song made an impact on the world.

Late 2015, early 2016 there was a David Bowie exhibition in Groningen. My girlfriend was curious so we got tickets. Before we got to the date we made a reservation for, Bowie passed away (on 10 January 2016). You can imagine that it was impossible to get tickets for the exhibition after.

I do not remember all that much of the exhibition. I mostly remember images of shows, but Bowie was much more than just a musician. He painted, made experimental movies, played in plays and movies and what not. “Moonage Daydream” is a quite kaleidoscopic affair. It is unclear to me what elements were made by Bowie himself, but the images are experimental, weird and sometimes dark as well.

Focusing mostly on the 1970’ies and 80’ies we see a man compulsively trying things new. He purposely moved around the globe (from the UK, to the USA, to West Berlin) to see if that would affect his personality and thus his art. Also we see Bowie playing with sexuality and gender. When he you think how big an artist Bowie was and how many living rooms he entered with his androgynous and transgender look, it is extra weird that such things still are ‘issues’ today.

But, music, film, we see him painting, there is a lot of old footage, snippets from interviews, etc. Do not expect an informative and chronological summery of Bowie’s life. Some questions are left open and I -for one- waited in vein for the moment that Bowie appeared in Twin Peaks. He seems to have quite a few things in common with David Lynch, so it is not strange that the two knew each other.

Not your everyday artist, at least, not for the whole for his career. Still very successful. Neither did he -like many others- crush below the weight of success. Perhaps he so strongly wanted to keep developing that success or not were of no matter.

A beautiful and colorful documentary about one of the more interesting pop artist of recent times.