A few good times in my life
Of course, not all albums have been mentioned in this short series, as they will probably appear in other end-of-year lists and deserve to. There were reasons why new albums by Nick Cave, Michael Head, Floating Points, Sprints, The Bug Club, Pye Corner Audio, Ducks Ltd. and Chelsea Wolf were not mentioned in the previous posts. But not because they are bad, but simply because they didn't fit into my concept.
But finally, just a few tracks that should not go unmentioned.
2024 was certainly a good year for music and I couldn't commit to a specific genre in this review. There were phases when I listened to a lot of new electronic music, only to return to indie rock in the broadest sense and then favor singer/songwriters again.
Bill Ryder-Jones, an English singer-songwriter from Liverpool, released an album this spring that captivates with its beauty. Excellent songs across the board, reminiscent of the psych-folk of Gorky's Welsh Zygotic Mynci on the one hand and featuring sweet melodies, melancholy piano and strange tempo changes on the other. The album will probably go down as another overlooked masterpiece.
This year also saw the return of old heroes after many years as well as new material from well-known and respected artists.
The year is drawing to a close and, like many others, I too have been reviewing the year in musical terms. In previous years, I have tried to compile lists of the best albums and songs. I abandoned this plan because I found it difficult to summarise the releases in a table. That's why I'm going to summarise the most interesting and perhaps best albums and songs for me in columns over the next few days.
Enough preamble.
Today is the last day before I leave for my annual holiday to Sri Lanka tomorrow. Most of my things are packed, the documents are ready and my Spotify library has been updated. The last album I've added is Michael Rother's 1977 debut, a krautrock classic on which Rother shows what he's capable of on the guitar. Jaki Liebezeit supported him on drums and Conny Plank produced it superbly. All the songs are played instrumentally and I will probably never get tired of their beauty.
I have prepared a few more posts, otherwise I'll see you here again in the middle of next year.
Take care and all the best.
Michael Rother - Flammende Herzen
Michael Rother - Zeni
Afrobeat was a musical style I discovered in the early eighties when a friend recommended an album vy Fela Kuti. I was enthusiastic about the music right from the start, as it also sounded very different from the music I was used to. Many elements of jazz as well as driving and hypnotic rhythms were the trademark and Kuti was their leader. Reason enough to give him some space in this series.
Fela Kuti - Sorrow Tears And Blood
If the press is to be believed, the next big thing is coming from south London. Fat Dog is the project of Johnny Hutchinson, who likes to perform in latex masks and makes a chaotic mixture of electro-punk, rock ‘n’ roll and industrial pop.
He is not afraid to incorporate borrowings from Bicep, Kamasi Washington and Depeche Mode into a song. Certainly not the future of rock, but energetic songs that fit the times and who knows, maybe the song will help end the wars around us.
Never thought that I would type words like Manchester's post punks are back with a new album. I liked the band in the eighties because they had their own sound between new wave, goth and death-rock. They disbanded around 1988 and a few years ago I heard that they are reunited and going for new material.
To be honest, I didn't heard any new song by them since they released Ghost Mechanic Nine their latest album a few weeks ago. And it seems the time stood still. And with their new songs and their raw sound, they manage to tie in with the eighties. The songs, which are sometimes rockabilly, sometimes psychedelic, offer powerful riffs, an unmistakable deadpan lyricism and that very special atmosphere somewhere between a dusty garage and an endless motorway. The dub elements in particular, which run like a common thread through ‘Ghost Mechanic Nine’, give the work a special flavor and are reminiscent of the band's origins.
Now that I have been retired for four months, I will be returning to my former workplace for the last time this afternoon. The reason for this is that every year the employer invites all employees celebrating an anniversary and those who have retired in the current year to an evening together.
Not that I didn't enjoy working and had many pleasant colleagues, but I broke off contact with many of them because it was clear to me that I could only start a new phase in my life if I had completely left the old one behind me. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to seeing familiar old faces again for a few hours and hopefully having some good conversations.
Looking back, I can think of many conversations in which I tried to broaden the musical horizons of my colleagues. Often unsuccessfully.
Zeltinger Band - Müngersdorfer Stadion
Belle & Sebastian - The State I'm In
Echo and the Bunnymen - Do It Clean (Live 1983)
Stiff Records were known for signing a lot of weird musical birds. One highlight was when they discovered Joe Carrasco in America and released his debut in 1980.
Joe 'King' Carrasco and the Crowns appeared on the scene as the reincarnation of Sir Douglas Quintet with their Tex-Mex sound. I liked their weird mixture of Tex-Mex, Rock and Roll, New Wave and Highschool rock, played with passion. It was only the sound of one summer but they had their time then.
Another new music from Bristol. Dubkasm, a long time running DJ project are supported by Tricky for their latest single. It's a deep industrial cut with the words spoken by Tricky. Metallic rhythm meet dub and a gloomy atmosphere. Not expected but fascinating in it's way.
It's December again, the year has gone by far too quickly and my escape to warmer climes is imminent. I'm putting together my musical review of the year and then a new name is announced to me via several channels.
Sam Fender is an English singer/songwriter from Newcastle upon Tyne who seems to have struck a chord on the island with his catchy indie-pop songs backed by lush horns. People Watching is a stadium-ready song with a beautiful melody that should stand for success and can inspire crowds. Somehow it sounds as if Fender has listened to too much Born To Run and left out its rough edges. Nevertheless, a song that is above average in the pop sector.
Another eclectic piece of German electronic music at the end of the month. Schlammpeiziger is the pseudonym that Cologne-based musician Jo Zimmermann has adopted. He has been tinkering with electronic sounds, mostly based on a Casio and beatboxes, since the 80's.
In the meantime, he has expanded his spectrum and added guitars and effects to his sound. Most of the tracks on his new album Meine Unterkunft ist die Unvernunft (my accommodation is unreason) have the charm of late Krautrock and remind me of the best moments of Ash Ra Temple. A beautiful and calm album that convinces even on second listen.
It is often said that 1979 is a golden year for music and it is true. There was a new band to discover almost every week and I found it difficult to make the right choice from the plethora of new releases in my favorite record shop.
So it was clever that the B52's debut album stood out from the crowd visually. The cover shows the group in an edited photograph against a bright yellow background; faces, hands and feet are photographed, while the clothing is printed on. The beehive hairstyles of the two singers Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, who also gave the band its name, were also striking.
The band's music, which moves between pop, rock, dance, surf, punk, new wave and retro, was exceptional. Rocky guitar riffs on a low-tuned Rickenbacker, reminiscent of a science fiction film from the 60s, a keyboard mixed in and the alternately melodic and shrill vocals of the singers created a unique sound that has lost none of its appeal even after 45 years.
The B52's - Dance This Mess Around
The B52's - Planet Claire
The B52's - Rock Lobster
A few weeks ago, Mogwai announced the release of their new album for the end of January. Two songs were released in advance, which I listened to several times and which left me with an ambivalent feeling.
On God Gets You Back they need almost three minutes to find their sound. Until then, flutes, cymbals and an ethereal voice pave the way for a dominant bass and guitars. Not a bad song, but overambitious and not of the class I'm used to from Mogwai.
Towards the end of October, a friend recommended I listen to Spectre's latest album AM-DRAM, as he thought it was one of their most exciting releases. It took me a while to find the time to do this.
Spectres are one of the many bands from Bristol who have been in the alternative/experimental scene for 14 years. Their songs are all based on massive droning guitars, joined by a dirty bass and driving drums. The fact that they can also integrate great melodies into their songs makes the record even better. It looks like bands like this are springing up all over the UK. And that's certainly no mistake. Obviously this is the band's last album and that would be a shame, because they certainly have potential.
I have relatively few singles in my collection. This is partly because I thought they were too expensive for the time and partly because LPs were easier to get hold of. That only changed when the first 12-inches were released.
I bought one of my first singles when I was 14, when some local DJs were selling off parts of their collection. I can't say why I bought Rubber Bullets by 10cc, probably because I liked the song and still like it today.
The year is drawing to a close and over the last few days I've been looking back on my musical life. I can't explain why various albums have come to mind in this context that were released several years ago but gave me a lot of pleasure at the time.
So I came across the debut of The Long Champs Straight To Audio again. Welsh producer Lloyd Jones made it into my review of the year with this album.
The album has everything that electronic music expressed at the time: forward driving beats, clever electronic parts, a little synths and guitars and everything put together in an absolutely listenable way. In retrospect, another overlooked album.
The Long Champs - Next Stop Nowhere
Anja Plaschg aka Soap&Skin is currently one of the most interesting musicians from Austria. Two years ago, she played at a festival in Austria where she exclusively performed cover versions. This gave rise to the idea of recording a complete album with versions by other artists. Instead of just re-recording popular hits, she dug deep into music history to find the right songs for her.
Plaschg knows how to give her songs/interpretations a dark, minimalist and melancholic flavor that gives you goosebumps in the best moments. It takes a lot of self-confidence to cover a song from David Bowie's last album and recreate it with monotonous beats, horns and a combination of industrial and folk elements. However, the respect for the original is not lost at any point. The song was also excellently realized in their self-designed video. In short, one of the most beautiful cover versions of this year.
As a bonus one of the best versions of a classic Velvet Underground tune.
Some new electronic music to start into the weekend. These days Exeter's Mighty Force label released a record by Reverb Delay, a band I never heard before. Searching for the band in the internet I could only find links to an electronic module that reproduces sounds with a time delay to improve the spatial sound of music. On the one hand, this is used for live performances in order to better balance the loudspeakers and, on the other hand, it is a popular product for mixing recordings in the studio.
The Storm Has Passed is an almost nine minute long journey to dubby spaces with a steady flow. Someone called this music ballacid and this describes the music best.
After two years Cari Cari, one of my favorite bands from Austria, released a new song. Since 12 years Stephanie Widmer and Alexander Köck are running their vintage project. I saw them several times during the last years and always was astonished how a two-piece band could make room-filling sound. Only some drums and Köck's guitar that sounds like escaped from an Morricone soundtrack are their trademark.
And they show again that you don't need much more than some great guitar chords, a steady rhythm and good vocals to make one of the finest songs since a couple of weeks.
It happens that I occasionally run out of inspiration for this little blog. I usually grab my external hard drive and scroll through the individual files (which I should have reorganized a long time ago). This is how I came across an album that I haven't listened to for a long time and has never been mentioned here.
After working together on and off for years, Brian Eno and John Cale released their only album Wrong Way Up in 1990 and concentrated on songwriting. After a good decade of pushing himself musically to the limits of the esoteric, it seems to have done him good to record a semi-electronic album with Cale.
Nothing and nobody sounded like this back then. Eno makes the synths shimmer and twitch, Cale plays a funky guitar and shows that a viola can only be beneficial to the music. Ultimately, it is a forgotten masterpiece that set the standard for pop songs.
Brian Eno & John Cale - One Word
Brian Eno & John Cale - Lay My Love
Brian Eno & John Cale - Spinning Away
Brian Eno & John Cale - Been There Done That
Sometimes it only takes a little note to remember a band that you have already forgotten. The Pains of Being Pure At Heart have reunited and will be playing several concerts in Spain and Portugal early next year.
TPOBPAH released their debut album in 2009 and set new standards with their version of indie-pop. Although they are from New York, they sound very British. On the one hand, they fuse the melancholy lyricism of The Smiths with the pop of My Bloody Valentine hidden behind powerful walls of guitars.
What remains of them are softly noisy, incredibly catchy three-minute songs with their boy-girl vocals about the worries of young people. And still worth playing again from time to time.
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Everything With You
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Come Sunday
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
When Spiritflesh's first full album with the same title came out in 2018, I had never heard anything like it and still haven't. This is a unique piece of British electronic music that blurs the boundaries between club music and doom with its radicalism.
In Bristol, two DJ's, Julian Raymond-Smith and Boris English have locked themselves in a basement with gritty dub techniques that spread across post-punk, drone, doom metal and techno shards to open up new worlds. All songs are based on tribal rhythms over which they lay bleebs and spherical sounds.
A dark journey into a world of dangerous sounds that will make you shudder with pleasure. Another piece of experimental music that made it into my annual review, but was unfortunately overlooked by most people.
Spiritflesh - Beneath The Clouded Veil
Like every Friday, my digital inbox is overflowing with promotions for new releases. I follow a few artists and record labels on Bandcamp but over the last few weeks more and more bands have been contacting me directly asking for a review on my blog. I usually delete them completely but occasionally I do them a favour and listen to their releases. Again, the mail is usually deleted because the music doesn't appeal to me.
One exception this week was Bravo Johnson, the pseudonym of Spaniard Ricardo Amurrio, who, according to my information, now lives in Los Angeles. He describes his music as a sound that combines beat poetry with folk, blues and American guitar music.
And he's not even wrong about that. Original rock ‘n’ roll with good guitar parts that also feels at home in Americana. Nothing really new, but songs that are best enjoyed live on a Saturday night in a smoky pub.
Justin Robertson is back with his new project Five Green Moons. With Moon 1, Robertson moves away from acid house and takes a different path. Much is reminiscent of the best times of PIL, On-U-Sound and post-punk. Powerful bass lines characterize the sound, everything flows and enchanted voices appear from somewhere in the cosmos.
The songs have a dark undertone in common, but they emanate a fascination all of their own. You have to listen to the album several times to understand why it is one of this year's highlights.
Mostly recorded when Antoine Bellini and Romain Hervault worked as a duo in Lyon combining drum machines, electronic post-punk with the robotic grooves of Cluster and Neu! The result was a dark industrial sound, far away from many things I listened to this genre. An album that combines the spirit of krautrock with dub with its electronic minimalism.
Yesterday's post has tempted me to once again Urgh! A Music War, a film from the eighties. Director Derek Burbridge's concept is simple in principle: go to concerts in London, New York and elsewhere and film the current punk, wave and reggae scene.
The result is a fantastic overview of this music from both sides of the Atlantic. I can still remember having to drive to the next bigger city with some friends to see this film. Some of the artists were known to us by name, but very few of them performed in southern Germany at the time.
After this film, each of the three of us had a band that we particularly liked and bought a record from them as quickly as possible. For me, it was Echo and the Bunnymen and Gang of Four, who I have followed faithfully ever since.
It was in 1982 when me and a couple of friends made a break from work to take a five-week round trip through the western United States. It was a great experience for us to explore the country in a motorhome to get to know all the sights that the country has to offer.
The last days of our journey we spent in Los Angeles and I couldn't resist to go downtown in a record shop to buy me some albums. I found a little shop away from the main road and and it looked a little threatening from the outside with the visitors. Nevertheless, I entered and was greeted by a concentrated load of garage rock.
I was overwhelmed by the power this band had and asked the owner for their name. He told me that they played Roman Gods, the debut album by The Fleshtones and recommended it to me, not only because he saw them live a couple of days ago. And indeed, it is one of those albums that stamped garage rock. The Fleshtones are deeply rooted in Rock 'n' Roll with the power of punk. Sharp guitars, a bit of organ and the voice of Peter Zaremba made them worth listening to.
The Fleshtones - The Dreg
The Fleshtones - I've Gotta Change My Live
The Fleshtones - Stop Fooling Around
They proved that they can also impress live at their performance in Urgh! A Music War and also years later when I was able to see them live in Germany.
Serge Gainsbourg has always been an artist who knew no boundaries and knew how to provoke with his music and lyrics. He achieved his masterpiece in 1971 when he released his concept album Histoire De Melody Nelson.
It is basically a setting of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita, which tells the story of the paedophile relationship between literary scholar Humbert Humbert and 12-year-old. Gainbourg's story begins in a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, the man at the wheel daydreaming in his luxury vehicle until he loses control of the car and hits a cyclist. His gaze falls on the spinning tyre and the rolled-up blouse of the girl lying on the ground. Melody Nelson has red hair, Serge Gainsbourg whispers to the audience, red is her natural colour. Serge Gainsbourg has just described his Lolita experience.
So far, so good, but what does the album have to offer musically? The orchestral arrangements and the constant changes in dynamics mean that the listener is absorbed by the songs, most of which are only spoken or whispered. The interplay of floating bass, dry drums and a few guitar chords in Melody anticipates trip hop to a certain extent.
Serge Gainsbourg - Melody
I haven't found many new songs this week that are worth talking about. What has fascinated me, however, is the debut album by Nick Höppner, owner of the Ostgut Ton label and Berlin Berghain DJ and Alex Kassian. The two met during the pandemic and developed plans for an album, which has now been released under the name H.A.R.D.
It is an album away from their club activities and convinces with songs that have clear references to krautrock, ambient and guitar-driven music. With its slowly building and effects-laden dreamscape, Circles could be from the better days of Tangerine Dream.
As almost every year, Andy Bell presents us with a new album and a new collaboration. This time it's Timothy Clerkin, a record boss and producer who reworked a GLOK song years ago. The two allegedly first met at Andrew Weatherall's funeral and have stayed in touch ever since.
It was to be expected that an album would come out that once again shows the spectrum that Andy Bell can integrate into his music. From a tribute to Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized on The Witching Hour with fuzzbox and an acid-house-rock, this song stands out.
What a day it was yesterday. America has decided to entrust a convicted criminal and ultra-right populist with the leadership of a nation. In Germany, the governing coalition that has been in place for three years has finally failed after they couldn't really agree on how to solve our current problems and Stuttgart deservedly lost in the Champions League.
In order not to have to think about these topics all the time and before I sink into depression, I listened to a piece of electronic house that was released a few days ago at the end of the day yesterday. Laghi is the project of Ribeirao Prato, a Brazilian producer who takes the listener on a spherical journey with his electric beats and hypnotic groove.
A few months ago Transmission Towers, a two piece band from Liverpool released their first album Transmission One. I liked the outstanding track Everything, a mixture of tribal rhythms, some acoustic guitar and synths in the background and the hypnotic singing of Eleanor Mante but sadly this song went off my radar.
I got aware of this album again when Sheffield based producer Richard Barratt aka Crooked Man remixed the whole debut. He transforms the post-punk inspired original into a percussive hypnotic piece of electronica by replacing the guitars with drums and buzzing synth lines. Anyway, another overlooked song from this year.
