The Latent Space

 

Today is Halloween and this means October is over and we start into a new month. A month that brings us back in spring when we had the great lockdown and the life stood still for weeks. Now it is autumn and everybody told us that the pandemic will return bigger than before. We used to wear masks and consider simple rules of hygiene and keeping distance. But lots of people ignored these and now our government decided a so called lockdown light where the bars, pubs and many businesses with direct contacts to customers are not allowed to be opened for the next month. I am not sure that it will succeed while lots of people having their parties at home and we still have to go to work every day. I try to make the best out of it and stay at home for the next weeks and see what will happen especially in America's voting next week.

Berlin based electronic pioneers Mouse On Mars announced a new album for the next weeks and what I heard makes me curious for it. It is good that there is a reliance to them with their anarchic mixture of sounds that oscillates between uncontrollable chaos and meticulous arranged structures. Maybe the soundtrack for the next weeks.

Monday's Long Song

 

Amsterdam label Night Noise released the other days an EP by Gueva. I have to admit that I have no idea where he comes from or what he produced but Disco Not Die is one of these electronic tunes that can make the start into a new week make more simple.

Keep Me A Space

 

Sometimes it happens a song appears on random play from my mobile phone and I can't get him out of my mind. The last song that came to me this way is the new song from Glasgow's indie-rock band Glasvegas. Released a few weeks ago as an appetizer to their upcoming album it is a song I can't get out of my mind. It may be James Allan's baritone that reminds me to Scott Walker or just the sound borrowed by Phil Spector, JAMJ and the Beach Boys that fascinated me. Anyway just a great song for a Sunday morning.

Bremen Nacht Run Out

 

A few days ago I got the information that an expanded edition of The Fall's The Frenz Experiment will be released and I took this for the reason to listen to their record from 1988 once again. It might not be the best one by the Fall but there were a lot of great songs like Victoria or There is a ghost in my house on it. But I still like the song that was first released on the German pressing about Mark E. Smith's adventures in Bremen. This song has all I love The Fall for - a dominant bass, guitar phrases in the back and MES more telling a story than singing a song.

The Fall - Bremen Nacht Run Out

Jose Padilla 1955 - 2020

 

Yesterday the sad news arrived that Jose Padilla died last weekend at the consequences of bowel cancer. Padilla got famous when he was DJ-ing in the mid 90's in Ibiza's Cafe Del Mar. He was maybe the first one that played soft flowing electronic sounds while the visitors of the bar was watching the sunset. His compilations of the so called chill-out sound were often played in pubs and bars during the end of the last century and he was part of the Ibiza sound. His musical taste was documented on the first compilations when he brought  Andrew Weatherall and A Man Called Adam to a major audience.

Rest easy Jose.

Jose Padilla - Agua 

Purchased (Not Only) Because Of The Cover

 

I remember very well when back in 1980 I was in my local record shop grubbing in the new arrivals when I first hold The Feelies debut album in my hands. Looking at the cover I couldn't believe that a record by high school kids could be found between the new ones by Dead Kennedys, David Bowie and Joy Division because I supposed it was another high school band playing traditional rock. Also their outfit was far away from what we used to wear that I was going to ignore the record if not the owner recommended to give them a listen. And indeed I was infected and got me a copy. I still love their jangly guitars,their Velvet Underground inspired avant-pop and their fusion of post-punk and forthcoming alternative rock.

The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms

The Feelies - Fa Cé La

The Feelies - The Boy With The Perpetual Nervousness

Monday's Long Song

Copenhagen based experimental pop-/dance-trio Whomadewho (named after a LP by ACDC) returned with a new EP Synchronicity III with more beats than before. It is another great release by Cologne's Kompakt label that shows how today's electronic dance music could be. The members of this band come from different musical backgrounds like rock and jazz and the band is famous for playing life with Daft Punk and LCD Soundsystem. This EP is the result of four collaborations with other artists. For me the best track is their collaboration with Mexican DJ Robelledo. Metronomic drums, short guitar licks and a reluctant bass makes this release better than many other during the last months.

Low

 

No, this posting has nothing in common with David Bowie's fantastic album from 1976. It is about the new song by Nick Murphy who reanimated his alter ego Chet Faker. After a couple of years travelling through the world an recording at places where he was inspired he returns with a new album that will be released in a few months. I always liked him and his falsetto voice and featured him on these sites and I have to admit that I almost forgot him. But now he comes back with a soulful song with warm claps and a soft flow with insights of an older man. 

Just because I feel low right now
It doesn't mean all that I've got has run out

Look, whatever, I'm good
It's doesn't mean that I'm perfect
Still I gotta find purpose
In whatever I've done
Like whatever I should
Doesn't mean that I'm worth this
I don't know if it's worthless
Just to sing a damn song

The Revolution Of Super Visions

Another week filled with too much work is over and at last I will find some time to listen to music. One of those songs that I came new to my ears this week is the first song from Jane Weaver's upcoming album Flock. It is a kind of funky song with a mid-tempo groove, a repetitive heavy bass with a Prince inspired rhythm guitar that builds a perfect basis for Jane's voice that makes me curious for her new album

FIRE RECORDS · Jane Weaver - The Revolution Of Super Visions

Monday's Long Song

 

Back from Hamburg with many impressions and more knowledge about labor law I start working again not knowing what will happen while the numbers of infected by Covid 19 rises daily. Now my home county is declared as a region at risk what means that we have to ware masks and avoid gatherings more than 25 persons. Many people suffering about those rules because they won't accept them or they deny them. They not willing to use this mask to reduce the risk of infecting other persons. Sometimes I think people realize the danger when the are involved in their own family.

Austin's experimental space and psychedelic band Thousand Foot Whale Claw released a new pulsating new song with acoustic guitars, live percussion that takes you into to another place in spaced out music.

A Brief History of Hamburg School Part 3

 

Inspired by bands from the first wave at the end of the century a second wave of Hamburg school appeared on the scene. Learned by guitar based indie-rock many bands refined the sound with string or horns but always on the basement that other groups have prepared. The classification of Hamburg school has come to a trademark for indie-rock with German lyrics. The most successful band of this genre might be Kettcar because they are the best examples for German lyrics with guitar inspired indie-pop.

Kettcar - Landungsbrücken raus

Also named should be those bands:

Lassie Singers - Leben an der Bar

Virginia Jetzt - Dieses Ende wird ein Anfang sein

A Brief History Of Hamburg School Part 2

 

The second wave of Hamburg school presented new bands developing the original guitar based indie sound. Sometimes they changed their crudeness for a more melodic style. But still using cryptic lyrics that are hard to understand what they want to explain. First of those bands named should be Die Sterne. I remember when some of their funk and soul influenced songs were part of the sound of a summer in the early 90's.

Die Sterne - Widerschein

Tocotronic were those band that brought post-grunge like Dinosaur Jr. into this genre. Over the years they established as pioneers of Hamburg school. I liked them and I also was impressed by their live appearances. 

Tocotronic - Kapitulation

Tom Liwa and Flowerpornoes brought melancholia into this guitar based sound. Formed in Duisburg in 1985 they sung on their first albums in English and started years later after they moved to Hamburg singing in their native language. Their musical cosmos spreads from psychedelia, alternative rock to folk. 

Flowerpornoes - Planetenkind

A Brief History Of Hamburg School Part 1

 

For the rest of the week our worker's council sent me for a further training in labour law and communication and collaboration to Hamburg. So I had the idea to create some posts about the so called Hamburg school. It is a synonym for musical movement started at the end of the 80's until the mid 90's. Developed by new wave the bands combined elements of indie-rock, punk, grunge and pop and became an important part of German youth culture and made a new self-conception in using German language in popular music.

At the end of the 1980s, a German-language music scene was created in Hamburg, whose bands had no record contracts and did not release it anything. Only with the founding of the label L'age d'or in October 1988 this kind of music got a platform. One of the first acts that were signed was Huah! Formed by Frank Möller they made their very own thing between punk, hip-hop and soul. Sadly they never got the critical acclaim they should have.

Huah! - In einem 3000-Seelen-Dorf

Another band from Hamburg that never made great success was Kolossale Jugend. Named after Young Marble Giant's epic album Colossal Youth. This was guitar based indie rock, as it was so intense and reluctant at that time only American or British groups got it. 

Kolossale Jugend - Bessere Zeiten

Another label that released bands from this genre was Alfred Hilsberg's What's So Funny About. Blumfeld's first albums were released on this label. Blumfeld are probably the ones that got success in these days. Their sound, originally strongly influenced by guitar feedback, turned into a more pop-oriented sound after the band was reshaped in the mid-1990s. The most important feature is the interleaved German lyrics, partly performed in voice vocals by the singer Jochen Distelmeyer, which combine their own emotional worlds with social criticism in pictorial language.

Blumfeld - Ghettowelt

Monday's Long Song

 

The Woodleigh Research Facility is the name adopted by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh to channel the creative partnership that began 30 years ago and, in recent years, flowed as a torrent of cosmic techno-funk and space invader electro at their Facility 4 studio. From time to time new songs were released - most of them are wonderful as ever. This one shows how great these releases can be. 

The Woodleigh Research Facility · We Are Not The Objects

Blue Hearts

Bob Mould is back with his new album Blue Hearts. 14 songs with one exception all und trhee minutes and sometimes it seems to my it is like a lost Hüsker Dü record. As expected, the guitar was dominated and pushes the songs forward. And Mould is still a close observer of what is happening in the world. What he see is making him angry and he find the right words in American Crisis :

I never thought I's see this bullshit again/To come of age in the Eighties was bad enough/We were marginalized and demonized/I watched a lot of my generation die/Wake up every day to see a nation in flames/We click and we tweet and we spread these tales of blame/Here's the newest American crisis

Beyond The Mirror's Imagew

 Since a few years Tom McDowell released under his project Dream Division a few albums filled with analogue synthesizer sounds. His latest from 2019 Transcend was one of my favorites last year because he created a unique sound that I listened often to. Now he is back with a new album that will be released at the end of this month. It seems that he is focused now in movie scores. The songs I heard reminds my on old Italian horror movies or the soundtracks by John Carpenter. The sound continues McDowell’s characteristic analogue synth soundscape sound, but with the added bonus of beats driving the rhythms and the occasional heavy guitar sounds.

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Another Forgotten Band

Following yesterday's post I remembered another band that impressed me much in the early 80's. Nyah Fearties were a Scottish music band from East Ayrshire who created a unique brand of anarchic folk music in the early 80's. Wikipedia tells:

Combining the rich traditional music and storytelling culture of its native Ayrshire, with a jarring punk ethos, madcap humour and improvised acoustic instrumentation (though usually amplified), the band made a significant contribution to the British folk-punk scene of the 1980s and 1990s.

It often tested live audiences with a feedback-laced aural assault, more akin to experimental rock groups like Velvet Underground or The Jesus and Mary Chain, than an acoustic folk act. In addition, Nyah Fearties were known for utilising all manner of improvised and imaginative musical paraphernalia.

They were not another folk-punk band like The Pogues or The Men They Couldn't Hang. Their music was more raw and grounded than the other ones I named. A perfect mixture of classic folk ingredients added with heavy influences of northern industrial sound. I once saw them live in a very small venue close to my place and it was one of those concerts you went to expecting nothing and you get recompensed with an unforgettable gig. 

As far as I know Nyah Fearties means not afraid of anything - if I am wrong please correct me.

Nyah Fearties - Radiation Reign

Nyah Fearties - Flight o' the country boy

Nyah Fearties - Hills of New Galloway

Purchased (Not Only) Because Of The Cover

 

A few months ago I started this series featuring albums that impressed me with a great cover art and fantastic music.  I stopped it because I thought it is enough but there are a lot more albums to feature. So I decided to continue this series from time to time. 

In 1983 Violent Femmes appeared with their self titled album on the scene. The cover shows a three-year-old girl looking curiously into a weathered window. And as I saw the cover the first time I was as curious what kind of music the cover contains. Gordon Gano's folk-punk grabbed my attention from the first chords of Blister In The Sun. 1983 brought a lot of great albums but this one was on heavy rotation in this year. In autumn of this year I was lucky enough to see them live in a small venue in Tübingen together with my youngest brother. We both were fascinated by the semi-acoustic gig where they played all the great songs from the first two albums.

Violent Femmes - Blister in the sun

Violent Femmes - Add it up

Violent Femmes - Gone Daddy gone

Violent Femmes - Kiss Off