[music, artists] January 25, 2004 at 10:56:00 PM CET

Califone have a new record out. Heron King Blues. You can stream four tracks over at the Euroranch. I missed last year's critically acclaimed Quicksand/Cradlesnakes. I love Califone's fascinating mix of folkish music and technology. There lies an incredible force and innovation in their work. It never sounds like computer music at all but extremely lively and intense. But there has always been one thing hampering my appreciation of the music. And that was Tim Rutili's mumbled voice. I find it unnerving and annoying. It turns away the focus from the music as it lays itself on top of it. At the same time it seems totally devoid of expression, bored. That really is a pity as the music is about the most exciting out there today. Somewhere between Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits around Bone Machine.

 
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[music, artists] January 16, 2004 at 8:14:00 PM CET

For all those who missed German Punk and New Wave

Trend is a band from the heart of Germany making music somewhere in between Gang of Four, Fehlfarben and Jesus Lizard (they are fans I think). Fehlfarben you probably missed. They were the best German band ever and they reunited recently. Anyways check these two mp3s (via chill):

• Das Produkt
• Scharfe Kanten

 
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[music, artists] December 27, 2003 at 12:12:00 PM CET

Für mich waren Drogen immer etwas Heiliges und sollten deshalb nach Art der Indianer gebraucht werden, nicht bloß zum Spaß.

Patti Smith in einem langen Interview mit Willi Winkler in der Süddeutschen.

Translation: Drugs have always been something holy for me and should therefore be used in the manner the Indians used them and not only for fun.

Exhibition of her drawings and poems in the Haus der Kunst in Munich up to February, 29th: Strange Messenger.

 
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[music, artists] November 26, 2003 at 7:28:00 AM CET

Dancing about architecture

How would you describe Miles Davis trumpet sound?

Somehow none of the adjectives/descriptions used by the contributors to this ILM thread I started last night convince me. Some more words I can think of: poignant, glacial, piercing, lucid, like burning ice (that sounds more appropriate than frozen lava), like a roaring lion kitten exposed on the moon.

Like a lot of music I love Miles Davis trumpet sound makes me completely defenseless. It opens me up.

Wittgenstein variation: Wovon man nicht reden kann, das muss man hören (what you cannot talk about you have to listen to).

 
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[music, artists] November 10, 2003 at 11:17:00 PM CET

turn on, tune in, and drop out

Did you know that there is a band which has put more than 300 of their songs online? I didn't up till two hours ago.

The Brian Jonestown Massacre were founded in San Francisco in 1990 by Anton Newcombe and mates (apparently more than forty members passed through the band). Their name is a composition of the name of the short-lived Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones and the Jonestown Massacre in French Guyana which was a mass suicide of 913 members of a sect led by Jim Jones in 1978.

The BJM make droneful psychedelic music heavily influenced by the Stones/Beatles/Pink Floyd circa 67/68, Roky Erickson & the 13th Floor Elevators, The Velvet Underground, Love, Spacemen 3, Jesus and Mary Chain, Primal Scream, Ride and many others. I have just been listening to 14 (of 17) tracks from their brand new album And This Is Our Music which are on their site. A nice appetizer for newcomers to the band is the aptly titled addictive ambientish instrumental You Look Great When I'm High.

Unfortunately the links to the tracks of their shoegazer album Methodrone from 1995 don't work but their Stones tribute Their Satanic Majesties Second Request is fully downloadable. On Give It Back Newcombe's voice sounds pretty much like Syd Barrett's to my ears. Somewhere I read that he sang a little bit like Robert Smith from The Cure on later albums.

In the ILM thread taking sides: brian jonestown massacre vs. dandy warhols the BJM fans were much more active than the Dandies' aficionados.

With most of their œuvre in the public domain BJM seem like the Linus Torvalds of rock music. Is this the future of music? Somehow I doubt it, seeing that their commercial success has been very limited up till now. But they definitely must love music a lot to share it with the world.

 
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[music, artists] October 30, 2003 at 11:45:04 PM CET

Robert Wyatt 1st compilation tape

A little late. Just the songs. Up to ca. 1985. Comments maybe later.

The End of an Ear

• Las Vegas Tango (Part I) (1)
• To Caravan and Brother Jim (6)

Flotsam Jetsam

• Moon in June (excerpt) (2)
• Symbiosis: Steadfast (edit, 3)
• Matching Mole: No 'Alf Measures (4)
• Slapp Happy & Friends: A Little Something (7)
• Obert Tancat I (14)

Rock Bottom

• Sea Song (1)
• Little Red Riding Hood Hit the Road (3)

Ruth Is Stranger than Richard

• Song for Che (4)

Nothing Can Stop Us

• Born Again Cretin (1)
• At Last I Am Free (2)
• Shipbuilding (6)

Mid-Eighties incl. Old Rottenhat

• Te Recuerdo Amanda (2)
• Amber and the Amberines (4)
• Pigs ... (in there) (7)
• Alliance (9)
• The United States of Amnesia (10)
• The Age of Self (13)
• P.L.A. (18)

 
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[music, artists] October 15, 2003 at 1:07:00 PM CEST

An evergreen question

Did they or didn't they? And if they did was it illegal, immoral etc. etc. ILM thread of the day:

The KLF burn a million quid: my theory...

 
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[music, artists] October 2, 2003 at 1:08:00 PM CEST

Mark Kozelek is back as Sun Kil Moon!

As usual I am a litte late on this, I suppose. Mark Kozelek, mastermind of thee one and only sadcore band, the Red House Painters has a new band called Sun Kil Moon and their album Ghosts of the Great Highway which is due for release Nov. 4th on Jetset in the US is already circulating in cyberspace. According to this review it is a return to form after the slightly disappointing Old Ramon.

Mark apparently gets obsessed with boxers dying in the ring on the new album. The song Duk Koo Kim is about this Korean lightweight champion who died after a fierce fight with Ray Mancini in 1982. It was already released with a live and a studio version on a sold-out 10'' by Vinyl Films a while ago. If you are really desperate to listen to this heart-breaking song in the vein of the early RHP you can subscribe to the Yahoo! Group mistress and search the archive for "ftp server" and read the first couple of result posts. Afterwards you should of course buy the 10'' as soon as it becomes available again...

P.S. There is a longish interview with Mark Kozelek plus review of the new album over at Splendidzine with three songs from the new album in audio stream: Gentle Moon, Pancho Villa and Salvador Sanchez.

 
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[music, artists] October 2, 2003 at 9:48:00 AM CEST

Okkervil River

is a river close to St. Petersburg and the name of a band of school friends from New Hampshire who relocated to Austin, TX. Sean was the first to bring them to my attention but somehow I didn't connect immediately to their brand of opulent melodramatic sadcore alt-country somewhere in between the Palace Brothers, Mark Eitzel and Sparklehorse. When I listened to the four songs from their second album Don't Fall in Love with Everyone You See which can be streamed here at Euroranch the singer sounded in places like a fusion of Bright Eyes' Conor Oberst and Daniel Johnston to me. Will Sheff, the singer, lets himself go completely and switches into a pretty irritating almost shrieking falsetto in Kansas City. And then I was in for a coincidental surprise on the last track Happy Hearts. It is a duet with Daniel Johnston himself. Is there anything more moving in the world than the mentally disordered Daniel Johnston singing in his children's voice

Later I found out that Okkervil River had played in the Dreikönigskeller in Frankfurt last Sunday. Oh God what a loser am I? In any case there is a new album out called Down the River of Golden Dreams which can also be partly streamed at the Euroranch link above and which didn't click with me yet but last year's record is definitely on top of my wishlist now.

I'll end this post with a small anecdote of their concert in Vienna last night. Again it is from Euroranch (German translated by me):

 
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[music, artists] September 26, 2003 at 11:30:00 PM CEST

I hope I'll never end like that

Only yesterday I read about the suicide of Ian MacDonald (it's already more than a month ago), a music critic who wrote Revolution in the Head, an encyclopedic book with small essays on every song the Beatles ever released.

In the obituaries it was implied that he killed himself as he had been deeply depressed over the state of the world in the past two or three years. And I immediately thought, what? Why should anybody finish his life for such an almost philosophical reason especially if he is already 54 years old? That must be a false excuse brought forward by the family, the truth must be somewhere else, somewhere in his private life, in his relations to others. I read about him on several websites but only one weblogger (and music critic) had the same idea as me. Ian Penman wrote a wordy stream-of-consciousness entry in his Pill Box where he made clear that MacDonald's problem probably wasn't the current state of the world but his own loneliness stemming from his glorification of the past and incapability to link to today's cultural and musical scene which definitely is not per se less valid than that of his beloved 60s. That's old fart thinking in the most narrow-minded way. MacDonald had locked himself up from the world in his cottage on the English countryside. And there is no way you can survive on this planet as a complete hermit without love.

When I reread MacDonald's entry on Across the Universe I was surprised by the harshness of his verdict. This is one of my favourite Beatles songs, the last song I ever wept to, almost ten years ago (it was more of a catalysator, a love story had just ended). MacDonald calls it a wailing, baby-like evocation-singsong (retranslated from German). I can only feel pity for this erudite critic who knew much more about music than me but whose knowledge apparently hampered his appreciation of beauty.

The long essay on Nick Drake he published just before his death is another indication that there was something wrong with this man. He knew Nick Drake personally and interprets him in a school-book fashion I admire and detest at the same time. In hindsight the article is like his own requiem but the analysis is extremely aloof and there is not one word about himself feeling the same alienation to the world as Drake. What struck me the most was the interpretation of the moon as "the magnetic pull of attachment to materiality" in Nick Drake's lyrics. That seems so plain wrong to me. My favourite Drake song Road from Pink Moon didn't get mentioned of course and the lines I will never forget refute his thesis:

I think it is absolutely futile to try to categorize Drake's lyrics as MacDonald did. They are not rational. They are universal.

 
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