A few good times in my life
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Yesterday, HMHB announced the release of their new album for next month. It certainly won't be the next big thing, but as heard on the pre-release single, but Nigel Blackwell stays true to his line. Short, grating songs with satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal songs. Good to have them back again.
Have a great weekend.
A few days ago Adam introduced us to Klangkollektor, a project by Lars Fischer, originally known as the drummer of Nuremberg's Psychedelic Cumbia band. His second album Dubtapes 2 inspired me to dive deeper into his music.
On Dubtapes 1 Fischer played all synths, piano, bass and percussion by himself and did also the programming, dub mixing and editing. The result are soundscapes for your head. Very good krautrock-Balearic psyche with a lot of dubby elements. Great stuff.
Yesterday the sad news arrived that one of my oldest friends died after a short suffering with lung-cancer. I met him in the early eighties when our pub was looking for a football team, where we played for many years. Most of the mates in our team were also DJ-ing at the pub. While many others surfed on the funk, jazz and soul wave me an he were the one who played new music. I remember that he first brought Tuxedomoon to my ears. A band founded in San Francisco by violonist Blaine Reininger in 1977 together with saxophonist and keyboardist Steven Brown in the burgeoning punk and new wave scene.
Tuxedomoon didn't got the credits in America they should have but in Europe with their first single No Tears. It was the song Chris introduced me to the band and became an essential part when we was on the controls. A song with a distinctive buzzsaw guitar, painfully distorted vocals and a thin, tinny beat prompted us to open our guests' ears to new music.
Over the next decades, together with the other core members Peter Principle and singer Winston Tong, they created a musical cocktail that used elements of classical music, jazz and rock avant-garde alongside their beloved synths. With In A Manner Of Speaking they released in 1985 an underground hit with less synths and a chords picking guitar and something of a new folk song.
During this time they wrote songs that were not only enjoyed by dark wave fans, because they created something unique in their structure and rendition.
Like the weeks before another eclectic mix of songs from times long gone by. Have a nice journey and good memories.
1967: Jefferson Airplane
1972: Tanya Tucker
1977: The Clash
1991: Jane's Addiction
1988: John Mellencamp
1970: Free
1992: The Cure
1984: The Style Council
1995: Prince & The Revolution
You can see how quickly the years go by by looking at the release date of albums that you liked right from the start and still feel happy listening to many years later. 40 years ago today, New Order released their third album Low-Life.
The album was released when the Iron Curtain was drawn across the continent. Even New Order had one installed at the time: instead of cities and countries, it separated their musical oeuvre from that of their predecessor band Joy Division. With their predecessor Power Corruption & Lies, the quartet broke new musical ground in 1983 and combined the old bastard indie rock with the new temptation in the form of the TB 303 bass synthesizer and the Emulator II sampler, which had to be fed with 3.5-inch floppy disks.
Seemingly effortlessly, New Order succeeds in fusing effervescent indie rock and shimmering dance pop, which is nevertheless clearly located in the underground. Their optimism and joy of playing also characterizes Low-Life: the promise of a golden future is already evident in the opener Love Vigilantes, which begins completely unglamorously with four snare drum hits and then places a melodica at the melodic center. Sunrise begins with a shadowy, wafting synth sound à la Atmosphere, before Peter Hook unleashes one of his golden bass lines and provides the counterpart to the synth thunderstorm.
With Elegia, they shift down several gears and present an almost meditative excursion into dark worlds before redefining electronic music towards the end with Sub-Culture, featuring hammering sequencer beats and a grandiose bass line.
New Order - Love Vigilantes
New Order - Sunrise
New Order - Elegia
New Order - Sub-Culture
Yesterday I featured the new song by Coyote and I mentioned that this song was inspired by Peaking Lights, a band I never heard before. Some research revealed that they are an American husband-and-wife duo who have been releasing music regularly for more than a decade. A few years ago they said goodbye to the West Coast to live in Amsterdam.
Each of the members, Indra Dunis and Aaron Coyes, started their career in various post-punk, goth and psychedelic bands before they decided to make music together. Their sound could be described as a lo-fi melange of dub, psychedelic pop and krautrock. In 2012 they released their opus magnum Lucifer and in the same year they released Lucifer In Dub with edits of their former album.
And yes, although they are not from Jamaica, they have a feel for how to make a good dub version.
Since Lucifer they still creates free-flowing, repetitive to narcotic dub designs with drums, Hammond, synths and voice.
I've to admit that I am a huge fan of Coyote, a long time running project by Nottingham DJ's and producers Timm Sure and Richard Hampson since I bought their album The Mystery Light back in 2021. Since then they released several albums, singles and remixes all refined with their own Balearic vibes.
Now they released a new song inspired by Peaking Lights, an American couple releasing dub inspired songs since more than a decade. Coyote thought that it would be a nice idea to combine their Balearic sounds with dub and some reggae borrowings. And this experiment works well. Some dubbed synths, spoken words over a steady flowing rhythm should be the soundtrack for a sunny Sunday.
