Filed under:Music,The Dickies — posted by I J Wilson on September 18, 2010 @ 12:24 pm
‘Nights in White Satin’ was a single from the Dickies 1979 album, Dawn of the Dickies. It wasa cover of the Moody Blues song of the same name.
The Dickies initially courted controversy with a picture of them dressed up in satin Klu-klux Klan robes — an idea that may have come from the play-on word title ‘Knights in White Satin’ that Giorgio Moroder had come up with for his own version of the song — but the picture was pulled in favour of a more sanguine photo of them dressed up in white tuxedos.
Although Stan Lee’s vocal-style was influenced by Joey Ramone, the Dickies had a greater level of key-changes and melodies, as well as a ska /Madness influenced saxaphone, giving their music a highly likeable sound.
Filed under:Music,Soft Rocks — posted by I J Wilson on August 26, 2010 @ 12:41 pm
Over the last five years, Brighton group Soft Rocks have been unable to put a foot wrong. After releasing a number of 12 inches - the Disco Powerplay and Chocolate Love series - and last year remixing MGMT‘s Of Moons, Birds and Monsters, the news is that they are currently working on a full album, this time entirely comprised of original sounds.
They have also just started doing a regular radio show “Live From the Bowels of Brighton” on Deep Frequency.
Below is the stunning Leave Your Earth Behind from the second Milky Disco compilation, which also came out as a 12″ and digital download on the Redux label. With synths in the style of Japanese group Kitaro, a tightly structured framework of rhythms and early-rave/deep-house repetitive dischords, Leave Your Earth Behind is a heavily-layered and complex track with a real driving-through-the-backstreets-at-night feel.
Filed under:Igloo Magazine,Music — posted by I J Wilson on June 17, 2010 @ 6:05 pm
The noble Prophet-5 synthesizer (picture courtesy of synthgear.com)
Igloo Magazine is an online magazine dedicated to the more unusual areas of electronic music: italo-disco, synth-pop, new wave, detroit techno, abstract and experimental genres, covering obscure labels and artists from around the world, and describing itself as ”focusing on electronic music that is unique and under-represented.”
In its tenth year — quite a feat for any website, especially one covering music, they have kept track of releases and profiled labels like Anna Logue, Das Drehmont and Aube, Belgium’s Flexx and New York’s Minimal Wave, as well as bigger labels like Warp and Environ; reviewed a range of international artists, from Australia’s Snog and Oren Ambarchi to Sweden’s Prins Thomas, Holland’s Novamen, and the Finnish experimental artist Mika Vaino. Igloo Magazine has also introduced its readers to new genres like chiptunes (way back in 2001), IDM and doombient, and has covered landmarks in the music industry like the demise of music retailing chains, netlabels and the impact of the ipod.
The strength of Igloo is its range of contributors, all with specialist knowledge, overlapping to create an expansive guide to interesting music. One of the greatest problems of the internet is its lack of original material; most of it is information repeated ad infinitum, pinched from traditional news websites, especially news about entertainment, music and movies.
Igloo Magazine is a rare bird in that it is has a high editorial standard (you’ll rarely find a typo), articles are well-thought out and researched, and discretion is used in the material they choose to review. Think of Wire Magazine, but on a shoestring budget.
Filed under:Music,Sally Shapiro — posted by I J Wilson on April 19, 2010 @ 9:45 pm
Coming out late last year My Guilty Pleasure was Swedish duo Sally Shapiro’s second album, a nice follow up to the successful Disco Romance of 2007. Producer Johan Agebjörn, drew heavily on his skills as an ambient artist (a solo album of his had been released on the Lotus Spike label in 2008), as well as his knowledge of old-school production techniques, like stuttering vocals, to create a highly atmospheric collection of new songs with Sally.
At the time of its release, German Label Permanent Vacation also issued two 12 inches of Miracle and Love in July, which featured excellent remixes by Bogdan Irkük, CFCF, and Bostro Pesopeo. Now they have been collected together, with some new remixes, for a digital EP release.
Tracklist:
1. Save Your Love (Lovelock Remix)
2. Looking At The Stars (FM Attack Remix)
3. Love In July (CFCF Remix)
4. Miracle (Bogdan Irkük Remix)
5. My Fantasy (Bottin Remix)
6. Jackie Jackie (Junior Boys Vocal Remix)
7. Love In July (Bostro Pesopeo Remix)
8. Swimming Through The Blue Lagoon (Boat Club Remix)
9. Let It Show (Low Motion Disco Remix)
Trailer for Midnight Express (1978); dir. Alan Parker, screenplay by Oliver Stone.
Based on the true story of Billy Hayes, Midnight Express was a huge film of the late seventies. Starring Brad Davis, it was the story of a young American who was arrested for drug-trafficking in Turkey and sentenced to 30 years in a squalid prison. It won two academy awards and co-starred John Hurt and Randy Quaid.
Although Oliver Stone, who wrote the screenplay, later regretted the way he and director Alan Parker had portrayed the Turkish authorities, Midnight Express still deserved the accolades it received: It was a well-made story of survival, emotional isolation, and the horrors of getting lost in a system, wherever that may be.
The film also contained some great suspense sequences: the opening scene of Billy trying to pass through the Turkish customs with drugs strapped to his chest is harrowing, as is his final, fateful escape from the prison, hinging on a gesture.
Midnight Express was also one of those films where the soundtrack left as much of a mark on its audience as the film itself. Like the theme by Vangelis in Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, or the Warsaw Concerto from the 1941 film Dangerous Moonlight, the soundtrack to Midnight Express was deeply emotional, with two distinctive themes that echoed throughout the film.
The first was the ’Theme from Midnight Express’, a repetitiously haunting melody that Moroder had written on a computer and a klavier organ. It has become one of the most sampled themes in hip-hop — up there with Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express and Good Times by Chic.
The second theme was ‘The Chase’ which accompanied Billy as he ran through the backstreets of Turkey, pursued by an American bounty-hunter. Because of its driving tempo, eight-and-a-half minute length, and catchy melody, The Chase became a huge hit with the dance community: It was a great example of the use of a high-pass filter (a synthesizer function) to build tension over time, a technique that would be used on everything from acid-techno to commercial dance for the next thirty years.
Midnight Express was also the first full-length electronic soundtrack to receive critical acclaim, winning both an Oscar and a Golden Globe in 1978 for Best Original Score. At the time, Moroder was already famous for his pioneering work with Donna Summer (creating the infamous ‘Moroder Bassline’ on I Feel Love) and these awards only strengthened his position in the music industry, allowing him to continue working as a film composer, as well as a producer.
Below: Giorgio Moroder performs Chase live on German TV in 1979, with his newly won Oscar (starts at 2.13).
Pretty in Pink: Emil Schult’s design for the Gropiusstadt EP (Aube009)
Electronic musician, Roland Sebastian Faber, although based in London, has always been strongly connected with the Düsseldorf label, Aube, since its inception in 2007. He worked as their audio engineer for their first release ‘Hold Me’ by Jupiter Black and Fred Ventura.
Although known under the pseudonym Kinky Roland (as well as a gamut of other aliases) he has worked on everything electronic from speed-garage to dark-wave synth-pop, and has a massive number of remixes under his belt.
However, some of his most highly regarded releases have been under his birth name, Roland Sebastian Faber, where he has gone back to his musical roots of melodic synthesizer music, found in the work of Klaus Schulze and the Berlin School of Electronic Music, and French composer Jean-Michel Jarre.
His first 12″ on the Aube label, Hommage An Die Jugend Europas (Homage to Europe’s Youth) in 2007 got great reviews, and ranked very highly in the Cybernetic Broadcasting System’s annual polling. He followed this up a year later with another 12″ on Aube, Wettkampf Der Moleküle (Race of the Molecule).
Faber uses original analogue synthesizers to create his sound, and they’ve long been a part of his life: he received his first synthesizer as a present from his parents when he was 15; and he’s gone on to master their use on both a technical and musical level. Some of the best elements of his music are his key changes; the subtle use of little ‘sound effects’ to enhance the atmosphere; and his ability to keep the listener engaged in a progressive musical experience — the trademark of his idol Klaus Schulze.
His new EP ‘Gropiusstadt’ takes its name from a housing estate district within Berlin, designed by the late German architect, Walter Gropius, who was the founder of the Bauhaus school.
The first two tracks of the EP have a strong Pink Floyd influence: Löffelkinder is an ultra-smooth track, slightly funky, with delayed guitar riffs, and heavily-reverbed female vocals. It’s a perfect blend of electronica and traditional instrumentation, and has a great sophistication in how it all fits together.
The second track, Gropiusstadt, is very reminiscent of Shine On You Crazy Diamond with it’s combination of shimmering synth pads, and solo guitar; but it’s well blended, and has enough of Faber’s trademark synth arpeggios to keep it original. It’s also got some great filmic moments too, with string sounds supporting the melody.
The third track, Morgengrau, is more low-key than the previous two, and has a dark electro feel, like the early work of Anthony Rother;but unfortunately, it does not stand out the same way the first two tracks do.
But it doesn’t really matter: this is still a great release.
Some of his traditional synthesizer sound also comes through in his work with Keen K — an old school friend from Germany — as the duo Starcluster. Their output so far hasn’t been prolific, but almost everything they have touched has turned to gold.
They started out by remixing Jupiter Black’s dynamic and humorous tribute to Giorgio Moroder, We Like Moroder in 2007, but their first major release wasn’t until 2008, when Aube released the self-titled Starcluster EP. It featured Smoke and Mirrors with vocals by Soft Cell‘s Marc Almond; but the stand-out track was Winter of Ice, a stand-alone song with a verse and chorus structure, andan instant addition to the canon of dark-wave music, in the spirit of bands like Laibach and Death In June.
As a live act, Starcluster also are high-achievers: they have a clear, tight sound, which is always a difficult thing for electronic artists to achieve, given the multi-layered and heavily sequenced nature of electronic music.
The good news is that there is a new EP from Starcluster to be released later this year by Aube, as well as another 12” from Roland Sebastian Faber — possible even a full album which his music deserves.
BEHIND THE LABEL
The Aube label is run by Michael Künzer, a Düsseldorf native, who has also been active in the music scene for a number of years. He is better known as Michael Black, one half of Jupiter Black, and one half of Unit 4, who released Bodydub back in 2003.
Michael describes aspects of Aube’s sound as “future-retro”, warm electronic music created with analogue instruments — a move away from purely using 1s and 0s, finding an accord with the pre-digital age of Jean Michel-Jarre, Alan Parsons, and Mike Oldfield.
On the Aube books are a diverse and international range of artists: the already mentioned Roland Sebastian Faber and Starcluster, but also the Dutch duo Elitechnique, who create New York-style disco, The Fascination Movement, a Seattle based synth-pop outfit making music in the vein of early eighties new-wave/new romantic artists; as well the vocal talents of the British singer Marc Almond and the Italian singer/producer, Fred Ventura.
From L-R: Artist Emil Schult, Marc Almond of Soft Cell, and artist Marc Brandenburg
But it’s not only musicians that Aube is harnessing; visual art plays a big part in the label and Michael works in close association with two German artists: Emil Schult, who designed album covers for Kraftwerk through the seventies, and the Berlin-based artist, Marc Brandenburg, who creates photo-realistic pencil drawings. He has also used the work of the British based commercial airbrush artist, Syd Brak, for the Jupiter Black releases.
There are many new releases on the horizon for Aube in 2010: Michael has almost finished a new Jupiter Black release with Fred Ventura; he has also teamed up with Roland Sebastian Faber to put out a release as Alba; as already mentioned, the new ones from Starcluster and Roland Sebastian Faber, as well as a full album for The Fascination Movement. — And if we’re lucky, there will also be a ‘Best of Aube’ somewhere in there.
Gropiusstadt is due to be released in February 2010.
Listen to the audio version of this article with music from the new EP:
Filed under:Music,Roky Erickson — posted by I J Wilson on December 10, 2009 @ 6:34 pm
If not, have a look at this great lo-fi clip for Night of the Vampire by Roky Erickson and the Aliens.
Incidentally, I recently finished “Eye Mind: The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators” and it was a fantastic book; like a novel, it followed the highs and lows of all the different band members, the adventures they got up to, with significant insights into their music and personalities; and like a novel, you don’t want it to end.
Filed under:Music,Roky Erickson — posted by I J Wilson on October 28, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
I am currently reading a great book on the legendary guitarist/singer Roky Erickson and his band the 13th Floor Elevators, called “The Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators: The Pioneers of Psychedelic Sound” by Paul Drummond.
Growing up watching horror films at his local cinema, a love of horror crept into most of his music, with titles like I Walked With a Zombie, a tribute to the classic RKO film by Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton (who also made Cat People and The Leopard Man) and Bloody Hammer. It all made a full circle for him when his song, Burn the Flames, was used in the soundtrack to the Dan O’Bannon 1985 horror comedy Return of the Living Dead.
The book also explores his family life growing up in Austin, Texas; the early music scene that lead to the fullblown psychedelic movement in San Francisco; and the band’s experiments with LSD, and the problems that came with it.
A lot of his music has been re-issued and there is a couple of good compilations available. There was also a documentary made about his life in 2007 called “You’re Gonna Miss Me”.
Filed under:Music,Records — posted by I J Wilson on October 16, 2009 @ 9:58 pm
Something old, something new: a couple of synth-disco classics, John Carpenter’s The End and Italian group Automat–along with new entries to the field, Radio Cosmos’ second compilation Synthesize Me, and Jupiter Black and Fred Ventura’s Hold Me on the Aube Label
Journalists have been talking for years now about how the internet has changed the music industry. One of the most recognised changes has been the massive drop in CD sales as a result of internet downloading. However, there has also been many small positive changes in the way people consume music. One of them has been the growth of independent labels focusing on vinyl only releases. These labels are pouring their own money into producing elaborately designed records with original artwork and releasing them in limited runs, usually no more than a 1000.
One of these labels, Radio Cosmos based in France, recently put out their third compilation LP, Synthetic Memento, a follow up to their 2008 release Synthesize Me and SynthStation in 2007. It is hard to believe that only 300-500 copies were ever pressed of these records. They feature original sci-fi artwork by comic artist Gil Formosa, and original tracks, some of which are stunning. These are the kind of releases that quickly become collectors items.
At the other end of the design scale is UK-based label Dissident Distribution, releasing music in a similar vein, but with minimal features: single-sided 12” discs, white sleeves, and a black and white label - and none of them available as a digital download.
Dissident also have a remarkable non-presence on the internet: their only point of contact is an email address on the record label. But like Radio Cosmos, they only press a small number of records at a time - 100-200 - and so far, most of them have sold out.
Although dance music and more underground genres like punk never moved too far from vinyl releases, a lot of others did for a good part of the nineties. Vinyl only seemed to creep back in with the lounge-music scene in the mid-1990s, when labels like Crippled Dick Hot Wax began sifting through stock-music libraries for obscure movie music, issuing what they found on vinyl compilations for DJs and collectors.
But the actual large-scale re-emergence of vinyl over the past three years probably has a lot more to do with the younger generation’s taste in music collecting, than anything else. Perhaps disillusioned with the ephemeral nature of mp3s and wav files, they have become interested in vinyl.
And a couple of things have helped to give this momentum.
Firstly, there is tonnes of old records out there circulating in second-hand stores, record fairs, op-shops, and garage sales that can be picked up cheaply, allowing listeners to easily build a music library for themselves. Secondly, vinyl itself is an attractive medium (rarely will you see a CD stuck up on a wall as a decorative feature), and its large sleeves showcasing original artwork and liner notes make record collecting a pleasurable past-time.
This trend has encouraged the major record labels to start releasing vinyl again - certainly not on the same scale as a few decades ago, but enough to keep people happy. Though vinyl sales reached their lowest point in 2006, with each year since, the number of sales have significantly increased.*
Another major change to music is how transient the formats have become. A piece of music is no longer linked to a dedicated shell like a CD or a record, and can end up on any number of storage devices. For many artists, this can be quite discouraging: they spend so much time making the music that they don’t want to just throw it away on a nondescript format.
Despite its limitations - easily scratched, hard to transfer to other formats, and awkward to play (compared to computer files) - vinyl has a great lastability: people are still finding and collecting discs from the 1930s, making it appealing to artists in the same way that acid-free paper is to authors.
Vinyl has made a comeback through the work of dedicated labels, collectors, and the artists themselves, and at the moment is helping to redress the balance lost with the decline of the CD - a balance between the resourcefulness and immediacy of internet downloads, and the sense of pride that comes with owning a material object like a record.
And these small runs are a brilliant model for the future: don’t make more than you need, which leaves the possibility for represses, and saves resources. And in both social and economic terms, this is the way to go.
*According to the RIAA 2008 Year-End Shipment
Dissident Distribution’s no-frills labelling and Flexx’s colourful centrepieces by Belgian designer TineZ
The West Coast Sound of Holland was a name given to a collection of Dutch electronic musicians making music influenced by early eighties italo-disco, New York electro, techno, and a variety of other musical strands, like movie soundtracks. Although the name was coined in the earlier part of this decade, many of the artists are still very active, and have been joined by new artists, inspired by this sound.
In 2004 there was a documentary made about them called “When I Sold My Soul to the Machine” featuring interviews with proponents of the sound, like Alden Tyrell, Guy Tavares, I-F and Legowelt, with footage of parties, and the infamous Viewlexx Tower, home of the (now defunct) Cybernetic Broadcasting System. Originally released as a DVD, this documentary is available as a free download from the ISTFH Foundation, a non-profit organisation for the audio-visual arts based in the Hague.
