The Orb again. There are less artist releasing so many albums during their 35 years lasting career. Last week their latest album Prism was released. Looking at the cover my first thought was that they move towards Pink Floyd because it reminded me much at Dark Side Of The Moon with it's switched light beams. But listening to the album it has nothing to do with the psychedelic pioneers of the late 60's. Prism is another album that sprawling, genre-bending work that shows their creativity in electronic works. It is an album you should listen to and not just hearing to enjoy all facets of their music. They travel from dark ambient sound over reggae to dub and drum and bass. An album that surly will played more than once at my place.
A few days ago, while I making a safety copy on an external hard drive, I found a song by Sinner DC an electronic band from Geneve and remixed by Sonic Boom and shows a downtempo version of this song. A song that flows easily to my ears and it's far ahead of it't time more than 10 years ago. A song that torn between post-indie rock and a bit of shoegaze-techno. But something that made me investigate for more.
In ten comment section of my yesterday's post I got a message by Ernie from the fabulous blog 27 Leggies. Reading the title, he expected to hear/read something about some blue-eyed soul by Razzy Bailey. I'm glad that he wasn't disappointed that Ian Hunter appeared. So here is this Northern soul classic. When I listened to this song once again after years it made me looking for more gems from this era because if you started with one of these songs it takes a long time to stop because with every song you will find more and more classic tunes. Enjoy.
I was surprised when I got the news that Ian Hunter is going to release a new album and I can't say what I expected to happen. For those who don't know him, Hunter was the founder of Mott the Hoople, a British rock band that was quite successful in the early seventies. They were a part of the glam-rock scene but with more keyboards and guitars and very close to David Bowie who owned them his song All The Young Dudes that reached higher places in the charts. Originally I was afraid it was going to be another album that nobody really needed. But Ian surprised me by demonstrating that he is still capable of writing great songs that are reminiscent of the Hearbreakers on the one hand and celebrate classic English songcraft on the other.
Listening to him made me want to step back 50 years and listen to the old songs by Mott The Hoople and I have to admit that they didn't lost it attraction after all these years. And Ian's humor was shown in the credits to Alice, when he called the brass section a Reeperbahn saxophon.
You might know that the gathering with JC and Dirk had to be cancelled due to the strike on public traffic last Friday. But I decided to go there because my hotel was booked and I had the time to spent a few days in these cities again after long years. I enjoyed exploring Düsseldorf again and following the comments over at JC's place and went to Rainking Records probably the best record store there and found some gems I was looking for since a long time. At this store I got aware that Deep Purple released their live album Made In Japan exactly 50 years ago and I took this as an occasion to listen to this record at my place after ages. Deep Purple were the kings of hard rock at my very young days and played at every party I was in my teen years and I grew up with their sound until punk and new wave appeared. To be honest their songs were somewhere over arranged and Jon Lord's synthesizers are often too much but they are still the link between blues inspired rock and the upcoming heavy metal scene. And Lazy is still a song you can listen after all these years because it has everything they are famous for.
Today's song is from German DJ and producer Aksel Schaufler aka Superpitcher. Born in the early 70's in Laichingen a small town on the Swabian Alb (which is the place where I was born too, by the way) he moved in the mid 90's to Cologne and worked since than for Kompakt label and became a resident DJ in various Clubs in and around Cologne. This song is from a Kompakt-compilation a few years ago. A song with a beautiful rhythm, fantastic guitars in the back and a real feeling for desert music in a way Ennio Morricone used to do.
This song came to my ears a few days ago when I was listened to Austrian radio and they featured some new music. It is a song by a genre I am not familiar with but this an example how rap could work for me today. KAYTRAMINÉ is a long going project by Canadian DJ and Producer Kaytranda and Portland based rapper Aminé with a little help by Pharrell Williams. They remixed songs of each other during the last year and now they are going to release their first album. This song flows smooth over a lively beat and a bit of oldschool house and Aminé's words fit to this sound. An unexpected highlight that I can't get out of my head.
During the last weekend I saw a documentary about the life of Shane MacGowan with The Pogues. Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan, singer-songwriter and frontman of the legendary Irish-British band The Pogues. Born on 25 December 1957 to Irish parents in England, he grew up in Tipperary, Ireland. In his youth, he moves back to England with his family at a time when the Northern Ireland conflict has torn a deep rift in British society. In London, Shane is admitted to the venerable Westminster School at 14 thanks to his literary talent. But the Irish boy with the crooked teeth and the strong accent remains an outsider there. After attending a Sex Pistols concert in 1976, Shane knows what he wants: to become a musician!
"I was always at the right place at the right time": From the niche of punk, Shane managed to give his compatriots a widely audible voice in the heated atmosphere of the Northern Ireland conflict, with a force and lack of inhibition they never had before.
Now documentary filmmaker and punk companion Julien Temple has created a memorial to Shane: a firework of intimate footage of British punk culture from Temple's own archives and previously unreleased material. In his film, Temple evokes the rise and fall of a snotty genius who catapulted himself out of his own band with his excesses and ended up in a wheelchair, only to finally celebrate his 60th birthday as a lavish party on stage with new teeth, old humour and greats like Nick Cave and Johnny Depp.
I saw him several times from his first tour with Pogues until he couldn't stand and sing because he was drunk as hell and Joe Strummer had to replace him on stage but I always liked him and his music. There could be many songs that should be featured but I decided for a song he recorded with a Sinnead O'Conner and maybe the best duet ever. Two beautiful Irish voice together in a great song.
While I am typing these word I watch the quarter final of Champions League between Manchester City and Bayern Munich. I have to admit that I don't like any of those teams and I am steady watching the game. Our players, who are highly praised here in Germany, are showing what they can do today. Just playing along and not having the opportunities in the first half to keep the game open. No matter how it ends, I'm more on City's side than Bayern's. Anyway this is a new release by Duncan Gray and another great electronic release by him. Warm synths and an easy flow that can make you an easy start into a new day.
Andy Bell, Ride guitarist and songwriter, has taken another musical journey with Essex-based duo Masal and is going to release another new album next month. As far as I know it will be an instrumental album with four meandering tracks that combines Andy's guitar with analogue synths and harp. Almost everything from him is worth to listen to but with this songs he adds to his musical influences the way Vini Reilly used to play his guitar. A perfect combination what was and what could be.
Today's song is by a band I've never known before since I listened to it on a new sampler by Cherry-Red records featuring songs from the shoegaze/dreampop era. Drop released Within And Beyond as an EP in 1991 and sadly I couldn't find more information in the internet about them. When I listen to their songs I think Drop were just another overlooked band from this genre/era. A band that could play in the same league like Ride and Spacemen 3 because their sound is similar with brilliant guitars inviting you to a short trip into space. Like living in a lava lamp, beautifully slow and quick moments, shifting into another thing.
It seems a little bit seldom when Susanna Hoffs appear on this pages only when she had released another album with cover versions. Not that she had a great appearance with her band The Bangles in the mid 80's but she went off my radar when the band split. The Bangles/Hoffs were one of those (girl-)bands that had the power of post-punk and the abilities to transform them into the best pop-songs in this decade. She started her solo-career with two albums that wasn't really bad but no ones to remember. She came back to my mind when she started her collaboration with Matthew Sweet and the series Under The Cover running for three albums until 2013. They've chosen songs from various decades spanning from the 60's to the 80's and all of them I enjoyed when they were released. And now she's back with The Deep End another album filled with cover versions spanning from Billie Eilish and Squeeze to the Rolling Stones. Not her best album with cover versions but if you like her voice like me she can't fail.
As said once before, the best thing in cover-versions is that you remember the originals. So it is with Black Coffee In Bed another terrific song by Squeeze the masters of turning short stories into pop-songs.
From time to time I think I should go backwards and listening to country/Americana. I can't tell the reason why but I feel kind of safe listening to this genre. There are less albums in my physical library but many more on my external drive. One of those artists I always can play again is Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen. Formed in Michigan in the late 60's they were the opposite pole of blues and psychedelic based music in these days. Their music was influenced by country, rhythm & blues, rockabilly and prepared the floor for country-rock and Americana. Not only because they used electric instruments and their live shows. That they are a good live band you can see on these songs.
You notice how quickly time flies when it's Easter again. The year has barely begun and is already a quarter over. So it's time to pause, calm down and get back to the basics. And that is exactly what I have planned for the next few days. To get out into nature and take several walks to visit places I haven't been to in far too long. A soundtrack for this walks will be the latest release by Coyote. Nottingham's DJ's and producers Timm Sure and Richard Hampson payed tribute to their favorite sound and added dub and reggae to their Balearic beats. The result are two songs with a relaxed mood and a beautiful flow.
From time to time I go back in musical history to sound I used to listen to almost 50 years ago. It was the time when new and fresh sounds came to my ears and my local record dealer recommended a new band to me. Radio Birdman were an Australian rock band formed in 1974 in Sydney and later filed under punk-rock. For me it was in these days nothing more or less than classic rock songs played very fast. But this was exactly what I needed in these days. Listening to their songs today sentimental memories from these days come to my mind and I think Radio Birdman are the link between rock 'n' roll and the new kind of music that became famous in the next decade. Their legacy that they brought a kind of aggressive sound into the Australian music scene.
It is almost 40 years ago when Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins formed from the ashes of Bauhaus formed Love And Confusion, a band that tried to transform the energy of post-punk and underground rock into another kind of popular music. That they hadn't the possibilities for a greater career was in the fact that they weren't able to write great pop songs. Nevertheless, they have a place in history because they covered a song covered a Motown classic by The Temptations and transported it into a gothic-style mood and a song that was massive inspired by glam-rock kings T. Rex. I came back to them when I played a CD the recent days I got as a gift to my 30th birthday and I enjoyed listening to this after decades. All in all another band you should remember from time to time.
Last year Rich Ruth (aka Nashville-based multi-instrumentalist Michael Ruth) released his superb album I Survived, Now It's Over, a superb mixture of neo-jazz fusion and experimental psychedelic music. His influences spread from Santana to John McLaughlin's cosmic attitudes and the sounds Tortoise gave us decades ago. His ambient influences were best shown on It's The Water. When I thought I Survived... was a studio album and can't work live I was proved wrong by the release of the live album from a concert for the release of I Survived... at his label Three Man Records. If your ears are willing for a new sound, so give him a chance.
Sonntag, 2. April 2023
Another weekend where I had to watch a football club stagger into the second division. The last few games were already unwatchable, so I have little hope that Stuttgart will remain in the Bundesliga. Past mistakes of only signing young, fast and talented footballers who are in no way up to the demands of the first division are taking their revenge. What the club's management, which is only out for self-promotion, is doing to an entire region cannot be described in words. And here, another change of coach (for the third time this season) shows absolute helplessness.
That is why it is better to write about something pleasant. James Holden, a London-based DJ, musician and producer, released a solo album last week, the first in a long time. The title Imagine This Is A High Dimensional Space Of All Possibilities says a lot about what we can expect on this album. An epic collage of his musical influences ranging from early techno to krautrock and psychedelic influences. For me, it's a little pearl in the totality of electronic and organic music in the albums released this year.
