X Marks The Spot

Obaro Ejimiwe, better known as Ghostpoet returned with a new album these days. It's a pearl in new releases this year with it's comforting spooky atmosphere. He's the one that combines the best of 80s New Wave and the Tricky-based sound of Bristol. Sometimes I think Linton Kwesi Johnson appeared in a new robe. A good example is his new single. Recorded with the singer Nadine Shah he gives us a reduced and relaxed song with a sad TripHop atmosphere, early dark New-Wave bass and some picked electric guitar to his whispered and spoken words.

Bristol

Over at the Austrian radio station FM4 the French producer and musician Marc Collin presented his latest project Bristol live. You might know him as the producer of Nouvelle Vague when he covered punk and New Wave songs into a Bossa Nova style. Now it seems he's on the way to give great songs of the TripHop era a new face. He picked out lot of my favorite songs and made a very own interpretation of them. It's not only covered - these versions show the great respect he has to this songs and he reduces them to their basics. Often with soft drums, a picking guitar that fades into psychedelia and an accentuated bass.

You can watch the limited live stream only for a few days here.

Battle With God

Maybe one of the finest female voices in rock/pop comes from Sweden these days. Many artists try to express their very own feeling for sound in their music. One of them is Jenny Wilson - an artist that works in music business for a long time. Now she's becoming successful in Sweden with her latest album 'Demand The Impossible'. She's got the skills to move in very different kind of genres. Sometimes she's in to pop, then into a special kind of TripHop and than to switch into urban club sounds. Her latest album was released in Sweden two years ago - now we got the chance to listen to it. Not the worst thing that this country can give to us.

Hell is around the corner

On my way home from work an announcement has struck me. It was an advertisement to a party downtown in our local cinema, where a DJ will play only music which was well known in the 90s. Because I know the DJ I can imagine what kind of music will be played. None of the music in the 90s that was new or innovative will be played. It's quite sure, that you can hear song of them boygroups like N'Sync, Take That, Boys II Men, New Kids On The Block, also tracks from some girlgroups and seriously Europop like Captain Hollywood Project, SNAP!. And if they in the mood for dancing he'll play some Ricky Martin, Jennifer Lopez and Lou Bega.

But I'm sure he won't play any of that songs of this decade that really impressed me. The 90s are filled with real great sounds - nearly every year a new sound. Trance, TripHop, House, Rave, Jungle, Drum 'n' Bass had much more influence in my musical development than any song you could hear over German radio stations. This is one reason why I quit listening to the radio.

Tricky - Hell is around the corner