Brant Bjork is one of those musicians who enjoys a good reputation in the scene but is largely unknown. Growing up in Palm Desert, California, he devoted himself to surfing and played in a band from a young age, which Josh Homme later joined.
In the beginning, he hid behind the drums and founded the doom rock band Kyuss to play psychedelic-inspired Black Sabbath heavy rock. After a couple of albums he left the band and formed Fu Manchu, where he developed stoner rock for himself.
In 1999 he released his debut Jalamanta where he played all instruments and became his masterpiece for me. An album filled with psychedelic blues songs and it became the blueprint of stoner rock. This album is probably the link between heavy rock of the late 60's and as he called it low-desert punk.
Today's song isn't really new, but was released last year. English Teacher released their first album, and it's still well above average compared to other releases from 2024. It contains great songs that fall somewhere between post-rock, shoegaze, and noisy riffs.
At the end of the week, the album was re-released, this time featuring various remixes of all the songs. Particularly outstanding is Daniel Avery's rework, which transforms The World's Biggest Paving Slab into a hypnotic, powerful structure.
Another remarkable remix comes from West Yorkshire's Working Men's Club that gives this song a bit of a post-punk touch.
Jo Bartlett released a couple of days ago a song in which she recites the history of a club she often visited and also performed at. That inspired me to write about clubs that became regular venues when I was much younger.
Many of them no longer exist or have reopened elsewhere with a new concept. In the early 1980s, Stuttgart was a city that offered many unknown bands from Great Britain and the United States the opportunity to perform in small clubs. This was partly because there were promoters at the time who offered these musicians this opportunity and did not focus too much on profit. One of these promoters was Stefan Siller, a radio presenter who brought the right bands to Stuttgart at the right time with Paul's Music.
One of the first clubs in Stuttgart to embrace punk and new wave was the Mausefalle in the city center. In earlier times, it was a cabaret opened by Werner Finck, one of the most famous cabaret artists of the post-war period, who ran it until his death in 1978. The Mausefalle was located on the first floor on Tübinger Straße, right next to a strip club with the lovely name Natalie-Bar. It was quite funny to watch the club guests line up on the left side of the stairs while the nightclub guests on the right watched them sneak past bashfully.
I was lucky enough to see Dexy's Midnight Runners there at the time, when they were still performing in their sailor outfits, The Fall in 1981, Ruts DC, who combined punk and reggae with their powerful sound, and Trio, who were one of the first to make new wave with German lyrics before they became commercially successful in the NDW. ZK, who actually called themselves Zentralkommitee, were a bunch of brats from Düsseldorf who could barely play their instruments and were guests long before they filled stadiums as Die Toten Hosen.
I took some time off over the last few days and went to a skat tournament in Ingolstadt with a friend. My father taught me this card game decades ago, and I played it often in my younger years. But it's a huge difference when I, as an amateur, want to compete with professionals. Fortunately, I hadn't forgotten everything, and the lessons I had to learn the hard way were kept to a minimum.
Back to blogging reality and a short series about songs that have houses in their titles. Let's start with X, a band from Los Angeles. They were filed under punk-rock but they included more stiles like rockabilly in their sound. In This House That I Call Home is from their second album and one of my favorites from 1981.
The House Of The Rising Sun is a classic recorded by innumerable artists. I prefer the version by Sinead O'Conner from 1995.
Let's finish today with a classic by Blur without any further words.
It's always the same with bands that release an album again after several decades: I wonder whether there's still a need for it or whether they still have the magic they had back then.
Manchester's Chameleons (they left out the “The” and Mark Burgess now calls himself Vox) were iconic in the early 80's and their debut is still on rotation at my place. For me, the impression is ambivalent. It's a contemporary development of their guitar sound, although some songs have clear weaknesses, are too sprawling, and on some songs the drummer can neither keep nor find the beat.
Take this two songs and probably one more and you will be pleased. There will be no memory of the rest at the end of the year.
In 2003 German musician and composer Ulrich Schnauss released his second album A Strangely Isolated Place. He was a long time member of Tangerine Dream, a late krautrock band making experimental electronic sound for which the time was not yet ripe.
At the beginning of the new century he moved to London and was inspired by the first shoegaze movement and has incorporated them into this album. The result was an overlooked album with a lot of ambient combined with some guitars ans sometimes influences of trip-hop and worth to give them a listen.
Various music magazines are currently hyping Geese, a band from Brooklyn, New York as the latest discovery. I couldn't help but listen to their latest album, Getting Killed.
From the very first song, it becomes clear who is supposed to be the focus here. Namely, the voice of singer Cameron Winter, which ranges from nasal pleading to clownish bellowing and thunderous force. It's so disturbing that you have to pull yourself together to get into the music. It's so diverse that it can't really be classified into any genre. Sometimes it's a simple blues riff, sometimes 60's soul, 80's guitars, or a sampled choir.
Once you get used to the voice, you realize that this record has a lot to offer.
