A major heatwave has been spreading across southern Germany for several days and 37 degrees is expected today. It looks like summer has arrived in full force. As every year, the newspapers try to present us with the ultimate summer hit, but these songs usually don't appeal to my taste.
My suggestion would be the new song by RAYE, a London-based R&B/soul singer and songwriter who has been on my radar for a while, but I haven't found the time to feature her here yet. Together with Mark Ronson, a British producer, she has now released a song that is convincing in its nonchalance and laid-back soul. The subtle use of horns allows RAYE's wonderful voice to shine.
The first few notes immediately make you think of Amy Winehouse in her prime, but that's probably down to Mark Ronson, who produced Amy back then. Nevertheless, it's a soul-pop classic from this year.
First of all, it's good to know that The Feelies are still around and that they haven't lost the desire to release new material. It was unexpected to hear that they released a new album full of cover versions the recorded during the last decades until now.
All songs have the typical touch of the band: fast played twangy guitars over a hectic drums ans inspired by The Velvets and Lou Reed. I loved them from the first time I listened to Crazy Rhythms a ground breaking albumback in 1980.
Now they covered songs by Patti Smith, Neil Young and Iggy Pop and made them sound like one of them. Some may say who needs another couple of cover versions and I say probably only me and other nostalgics who have always liked this sound.
Swiss industrial band The Young Gods are back with a new album. To be honest, I forgot them although I always liked them in their early days around the mid eighties. I expected nothing but the same dense sound carried by massive guitars, which they characterized at the time.
However, it is surprising that the album is so diverse. Powerful drums set the pace and industrial guitars run riot. Samples and electronic sounds also blend harmoniously into their sound. Perhaps the best album in this genre this year.
Last year The Bug Club appeared on my radar on the recommendation of JC, sadly too late for my year's end list. I enjoyed their album On the Intricate Inner Workings of the System because this Welsh duo brought back the lightness of indie songs in a time when everything has to be perfect.
Now they return with a new album and they are still searching for the perfect melody. Their sound is a symbiosis of driving guitars, pointed rhythms and lyrics that look at the everyday with subtle irony.
The Bug Club deliver a record that doesn't give a damn about conventions. Garage rock meets lo-fi indie, punk pop meets anti-folk. I've rarely heard anything so charming this year.
A few days back I came back to an album that I didn't listen to without any reason for many years. The Lonesome Crowded West was the second album by Modest Mouse before they signed to a big company. Modest Mouse were at these days an typical American band somewhere between the Pixies, Meat Puppets and early Pavement. Their songs cannot be assigned to any particular style. Too many musical influences can be recognized without any particular one dominating. Trucker Atlas is one of them. A rolling bass and simple drums form the basis for guitar riffs and screamed vocals. The song progresses constantly and inexorably until a break occurs and the speed is suddenly reduced and the focus is on improvisation. Probably one of the songs I would play if I were driving through America's West in a convertible.
These days Leeds based record label Paisley Dark Records release a new song by Jay-Son, a DJ from whom I never heard before and some research has not made me any smarter. Anyway, it's a kind of chugging, slow shuffle for a late night dancefloors. Added with some breaks, acid electronics and spoken words he created a hypnotic mood. Surely not the next big thing but far too good to be overlooked.
In a week where it feels like a music legend has died every day, it's good to look at newly released music again. A few days ago Hugo Nicolson, a British music producer and DJ, who worked together with Andrew Weatherall on Primal Scream's Screamadelica and also with Julian Cope, David Holmes and Shack released a new EP Black Stick.
On three songs and one edit he takes us to a journey with layered with acid synths, deep basslines, and emotive melodies. A little tour de force on prog-house and kosmische motorik beats but always with a warm sound.
Yesterday the sad news arrived that Brian Wilson died at the age of 82. Music lost with Wilson and Sly Stone two fantastic artists in only one week - what a mess. Brian Wilson was the head of the Beach Boys which was famous in the sixties and gave us unforgettable surf songs in the 60's.
As a composer and arranger he was always looking for the perfect pop song and back in time the Beach Boys were competitors with the Beatles. Presumably this competitive pressure led him into drugs and depression, from which he did not emerge for a long time.
His legacy is that he wrote songs with godlike harmonies and songs that are very close to a perfect pop song. No he can sing together with his brothers Dennis and Carl in heaven.
Last year French producer and DJ Antoine Harispuru aka Golden Bug released his last album Piscolabis II, a weird mixture of disco-dub, electronica and psychedelic. During this year he released step by step remixes of the songs from this album.
The last one is the rework by Froid and it makes the song darker and a bit more flutes and spaced out than the original without leaving the guitar work by Lionel Limiñanas and the distorted grooves too far behind.
This weeks song comes from Babe Ruth, a band from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. A band named after one of the earliest baseball idols in US. A left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox who was famous for more than 700 homeruns.
They released their first album First Base in 1972 and it was a hybrid of late 60's blues-rock and prog with often long lasting improvisations. They didn't have success in their homeland but get well known across the ocean and Germany. They didn't had any hit but their well known song was The Mexican a song where they pick up some Ennio Morricone tunes and a sparkling guitar. Joke is another example that prog could be worth a listen.
Last Thursday around midnight I returned from my trip to Bristol for BlogCon 25. While the start on Monday was more than bumpy after my flight was postponed to the next day because KLM booked another plane with a lower capacity, I had a wonderful time with great people. I really enjoyed hanging around with you for a couple of days, having great conversations and exploring Bristol with all of it's highlights and pubs. Thanks to all of you bloggers for welcome me with open arms. You are fantastic. And thanks C, Alyson & Roddy and John for the gifts. Finally some songs from our youth you might remember.
This early morning I am moving to #BlogCon25 a gathering of bloggers you might know well. For me it is another blind date of meeting mates I know from the blogosphere during the last years. I am sure we will have a great time in Bristol and for me it would be a highlight of the year. There will be no more posts until next weekend and here are some videos of artists from this place. Enjoy and have also a great time until next week.
Another obscure single, released by Gothenburg's Höga Nord Rekords came to my ears these days. Tecwaa, the musical project by York based producer and DJ Paul Fawcett. Always & The End is a chugging piece of psychedelia, deep house and dub. Sometimes it seems that a sitar is playing all over the song that fits perfect to the hypnotic groove of this song. An artist, worth to dive deeper in his output.
Yesterday was the funeral of my friend of many years. The funeral service was fitting for his life and we friends gathered afterwards for a final toast to him. Nocturne by Mark Lanegan was the last song he requested for his funeral.
It's always a good day to remember the music of the Beta Band. Formed in Edinburgh almost 30 years ago, they have surprised us with their musical diversity. Someone once described them as post-rave lo-fi psychedelic art-rock-pop and that's not even wrong. They've incorporated their influences on their There E.P.'s and pulled off the near impossible.
SWC once wrote for an ICA about She's The One: I'll put in as simple as it ist. She's The One is the sweetest, most smile inducing an best song the Beta Ban ever made. After all this is a simple song, that chant (a common theme, you will find). A song which gains more power with each repetition, than takes your focus so much that the climax almost burst out of nowhere. A brilliant way to spend eight and a half minutes.
Tonight is the final of the German Football Cup, which would be nothing worth mentioning if VfB Stuttgart didn't get the chance to lift the trophy once again after almost 30 years. Stuttgart played a sensational season last year and finished second to be allowed to play in the Champions League this year. Which they did more than passably well. These additional games and bad luck with injuries meant that no more than 9th place was possible this season. All the greater the chance of being able to play internationally again next season with a win. Which, with all due respect, should be possible against an opponent that was promoted to the third division last week.
Today's song is from Viper Patrol, a band I don't know much and I couldn't find much more about them that they released their songs via Berlin's NEIN label. They are active since a couple of years and move on the ground of post-punk disco. Stickem convinced with a pulsing bass, echoed guitars and bleeps. An unexpected find.
Today is my birthday and I'm 66 years old. In my younger years, I could never have imagined that I would be this old. But with a bit of luck and a positive attitude towards life, I'm now closer to 70 than 60. I don't want to complain about the age either, because in the end it's just a number and says nothing about the person, no matter what they've been through.
When I was looking for a song with 66 in the title, I kept coming across the classic Route 66, but I didn't want to use it today. Instead, my choice fell on a song that Linton Kwesi Johnson released on his second album Bass Culture, which has lost none of its luster even today.
Street 66 told of a raid on a house party where revelers were ready to meet violence with violence. This was no fantasy: reggae dances were frequently broken up by police, batons drawn. After one such invasion, Dennis Bovell suffered a spell in jail on charges later dismissed on appeal.
On this day in in 1946 George Best was born in Belfast. He is best known for his successful career at Manchester United. Best, who is equally strong with both feet, combined the typical strengths of a winger in the form of great pace and acceleration with a strong goal threat.
He had his best time in 1968, when he won the European Cup with Manchester United. Unfortunately, he had problems with his alcohol consumption throughout his life, which ultimately cost him his life.
In 1987 Leeds' Wedding Present released their debut album George Best. Still a classic in fast indie rock. David Gedge wrote pop anthems that never stop working, songs whose lines could not be more honest. Sometimes soft and quiet, sometimes beguiling and loud.
I couldn't resist to feature With 66 Years, a very famous schlager by Udo Jürgens (please don't blame me, Dirk) from the seventies. Jürgens is a classic trained piano player who had several hit singles 50 years ago. In this song he describes that live is starting when you turn into 66.
Exotic Gardens is the side project by Peaking Light's Aaron Coyes. Recorded during the pandemic days the album shows his excursions into the fields of psychedelic, dub and haunting guitar lines. The songs are more raw than before but it makes them more interesting. The almost 10 minutes on Organize Your Movement has everything that makes him different to others. Wonderful bass lines meet Roland 303 meet industrial noise meet post-punk and finally meet dub. Well worth a listen.
In 1976 David Bowie released Station To Station an album that marked a transition for him. While he explored the soul and funk path on Young Americans and before he made Low with Brian Eno he released an album that wasn't an easy cost. Many people couldn't deal with this album at these days because it was unexpected that Bowie explored krautrock and the sound of Neu! and Kraftwerk. The title song is split in two parts. Starting slow with a hypnotic march and industrial noises it turns into a majestic groove that lasts for the rest of the song. The song has some kind of beautiful, intensely romantic melancholy that still grabs me after many years.
Working Batterie is a ne collaboration by New York based producer and multi-instrumentalist Pierre de Gaillande and Minutemen's Mike Watt. Batterie is the French word for drums and so many of the songs starts with them played by different drummers and Watt's joins with his bass. It is a mixture that spreads from pop-rock to jazz-punk and many in between. It is always great to hear Mike Watt playing the bass and at the best moments it remains to Watt's joyness of experimentation. Get more here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Exeter's Mighty Force label is one of those you can trust if you are looking for new electronic music, acid house and techno. Formed as a record store and label in the early nineties they stopped at the end of last century and took a twenty-year hiatus to return to releasing new and almost always great music as a record label six years ago. At the end of last year, they released a highlight with the Reverb Delay record.
The Storm Has Passed was the outstandig song from their album, an almost nine minute long journey to dubby spaces with a steady flow. Someone described this music as ballacid and the he was right.
Now Reverb Delay returned with a new EP with various remixes of Horizontal Rain by Reverb Delay's Marcus Farley and Paddy Thorne. He transformed the the Detroit inspired dub-techno into a space journey with warm synths and and an atmospherically rhythm.
Escape Pod is one their new songs, where they move with rattling drums more into an intensive dub-techno that would fill every dancefloor.
A few weeks ago Red Snapper released their new album Barb And Feathers. Formed in London in 1993 as a instrumental band and in the beginning, they played straight jazz with double bass, sax and guitar, sometimes infused with Beth Orton's voice and new sounds for the time.
I became aware of this record when my youngest brother copied it for me and raved to me about the then new sound mix of dub, jazz, post-punk, techno and trip-hop.
The album has two different parts and on side one they celebrate a faster sound. Ban-Ti-Do starts the record with a Lust For Life-esque rhythm with a surf guitar and horns that reminds me to the best days of Pigpack and ends with a cover version of Bowie's Sound And Vision.
Side two is a collaboration with David Harrow an English music producer, DJ and multimedia artist. He might be known as the producer of Anne Clark in the mid eighties. This side is more an excursion in reduced electronic sounds. Red Snapper take the chance to combine their music with the Harrow's experiences from his collaboration with Jah Wobble and Andrew Weatherall. Mostly smoothly flowing rhythms with dub and reggae influence.
And as mentioned here is a song from their early EP with Beth Orton
Over the past few days, I have been cleaning out my inbox and getting rid of garbage and superfluous advertising. I couldn't resist to gave some advertising a listen and discovered Dame Bonnet, a Berlin-based new wave/post-punk collective.
Various searches don't reveal much more about this collective than that they largely follow in the footsteps of The Cure and try to reproduce their spirit in a cool electronic sound. Which they have succeeded in doing quite well with this song.
Since the beginning at the month SWC is running over at No Badger Required a superb series about protest, rebellion and rabble rousing. As a member of the jury I named him my personal protest song. I struggled but after all I didn't named Sonic Youth's Teen Age Riot.
In the summer of 1988, the outcome of the US presidential election the following November was still completely open. US President Ronald Reagan was not allowed to run again after two terms in office; George Bush (Senior) was to run for the Republicans. His opponent on the Democratic side was Michael Dukakis, a former university lecturer of Greek descent, who tried to present himself as a hardliner and was to fail colossally.
It was against this backdrop that Sonic Youth released perhaps their most important album, Daydream Nation, which they originally wanted to call Reagan Nation as an allusion to the US president's “Reaganomics”, which drove more and more people into poverty by cutting social benefits. Teen Age Riot was a call to revolt, with many songs revolving around the intolerable conditions that could be seen on the doorstep in Manhattan.
Kim Gordon repeats Spirit Desire forever before Sonic Youth's ultimate riff kicks in and finishes with distorted guitars and feedback.
Today's song appeared as a bonus track on the reissue of The Amateur View, the third album by To Rococo Rot, originally released at the end of the last century. To Rococo Rot were a post-rock trio from Berlin formed in 1995. Very quickly, they mixed analog effects with warm, electronic drones and mechanical percussion to create a sound that slowly creeps into the ear and doesn't want to disappear again.
I don't know if this song a real new one or just a song that didn't make it onto the record at the time. But it doesn't matter if you discover their music through this record.
John Peel invited them three times for his sessions and they showed that their sound works very well live. Prado is one of my favorite songs from her album mentioned above.
From time to time I look across the border to Austria to see what's going on there musically. There are a lot of successful local bands there at the moment who are exploring the pop and rap heaven in their own language, but they rarely touch me.
I became aware of Catastrophe & Cure, an indie band that has been active since the late noughties and has now released a new album. While they used to try to find their sound with electronic elements, they now rely on a big guitar sound.
C&C sound rougher and more unpolished than usual and yet their guitar sound still sparkles. Much is reminiscent of another shoegaze record, but for me their songs are the search for the perfect pop song. Which may be an ambitious goal that they have come a good deal closer to with their songs.
Richard Fearless announced an new album by his project Death In Vegas after almost ten years. The Contino Sessions from 1999 was highlight in electronic music because their were used real instruments and filled with great songs. So my expectations were high when I listened to his new songs.
I can't judge the whole album because only two songs were pre-released but what I heard made me want to listen to the others. Fearless returned to minimal industrial techno with a cinematic drone sound. A pulsate rhythm starts and electronic synths add taking over the guidance without leaving the ground and take you to a mystery ground.
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