[music, songs] May 14, 2002 at 11:03:00 PM CEST

Rolling Stone: New Voices #52 The monthly compilation CD by the German Rolling Stone arrived today. 16 tracks. A selection: Archive: Numb (from You All Look the Same to Me) It starts with the drum machine. One guy singing "I put a hole through you. You put a hole through me", the other one repeating "Numb". A track like a "descent into the maelstrom", getting darker and darker. Bluesier and bluesier. Trip-hop meets shoegazing. Massive Attack meets My Bloody Valentine. A whirl swallowing the listener. I am a psychedelic addict. Breeders: Off You (from Title WK)) Almost ten years after the Last Splash. After several withdrawal treatments the Deal twins are back. From power indie pop to minimal slow-motion guitar pop. Kim Deal's voice more fragile than ever. The Breeders have aged well. A movingly sad comeback like under barbiturates. They have got all the time of the world. "I am the autumn and the scarlet. I am the make-up on your eyes". Chuck Prophet: That's How Much I Need Your Love (from No Other Love) Ex-Green On Red guitarist in a Western soundtrack. "If I was a Cadillac you'd be my driving wheel". Sliding into Thereminia. Fuzzy keyboards leading us into an American desert. We don't need water there. Edwyn Collins: Back to the Back Room (from Doctor Syntax) Another long time no see. Edwyn the Scottish indie pop crooner is back as well. It was worth the wait. "Operating in the vacuum". Exquisite as always.

 
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[music, songs] March 19, 2002 at 10:21:00 PM CET

Mysterons After having followed the ILM thread Portishead - are we fickle or did they deserve to become dated so quickly? and having read Josh's recent post on them I relistened to "Dummy" as well. I was sure that the record would not have the same impact as in 1994 when I heard "Roads" on MTV and was completely overwhelmed by the tristesse and Verlorenheit (forlornness) emanating from that voice, the trembling synthesizer and the slow beats. I hadn't listened to it for a long time and back in 1994 I definitely had listened to it too often so that it had become one of those loved-to-death records. But I had a nice surprise. Especially the first track "Mysterons" with the extremely addictive slow drum machine rhythm which has a drum roll at the end did it for me. Already the start of that song is gorgeous. A guitar plays some ascending notes and the synthie sounds like a quacking duck. First the duck is quite shy and not too loud and then it bursts into some serious quacking which comes from scratching I guess. The song is then dominated by a low synthie sound layer. After a while the theremin (apparently only a patch on a minimoog according to this thread) joins in and produces some long beautiful sounds. They seem to come from the sky and remind me of the whoosh of a fast-blowing wind. Absolutely otherworldly. At the end of that song the drumming becomes very shaky and rolls like a thunder in slow motion. The less poetic technical term for this is reverb I think.

 
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[music, songs] March 2, 2002 at 11:05:00 PM CET

On repeat today I got hooked by the 5'51'' of We're Computerizing and We Just Don't Need You Anymore, the last track on the American Analog Set's 2001 release Know by Heart. Entangled into thick textures of acoustic guitars, brushed drums, xylophone, hushed vocals and synthetic humming. It felt like a slow descent deeper and deeper into the spiral of the snail-shell of the subconscious. After five minutes when the humming reaches its peak the song halts and turns into an enoesque synthesizer soundscape which fades out very slowly. The end could have been the wonderful start of a new album by My Bloody Valentine. This song is an addictive trip into psychedelic wonderland.

 
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[music, songs] January 20, 2002 at 1:08:00 PM CET

Coming late I am getting totally addicted to Everything You Do Is a Balloon by Boards of Canada. The 7' 34'' track has been on repeat today and yesterday for at least two hours. Boards of Canada are a duo from Scotland (probably most of my favourite bands come from there) and released Music Has the Right to Children in 1998. Their second album Geogaddi (ILM, MeFi discussions) will come out in Mars February. They make electronic music which is usually filed into the IDM (intelligent dance music) category. It is quite close to ambient and new age. Tangerine Dream, Brian Eno and the Orb are influences. Probably the most human electronic music I know of. It is mainly instrumental with some voice samples (often kids and women) knitted in. The track in question is extremely soft and dreamy. The beat is hypnotic and the melody line which is long and slow is absolutely enchanting. Like a soundtrack to a fantasy film. There is something very mysterious about this track. When I listen to it I have the feeling to walk in a misty snow-covered landscape with occasional glimpses of the sun when the fog clears for a moment. This kind of warm impressionist electronic music is not so far from Friedemann's chef d'oeuvre Indian Summer. Though where Friedemann is down-to-earth when he simulates natural late summer sounds Boards of Canada remain mystic. I still did not really get into the 100 seconds intro with the children piano. Some secrets should be kept for a while...

 
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[music, songs] November 5, 2001 at 1:45:00 PM CET

Postscript to favourite song question I have to be a little more precise concerning my last post. With favourite song I mean the song that has touched you most in your life. And by touched I mean that the lyrics have made a lasting impression on you. Could you also be so kind to include a small explanation of the song and its effect on you?

Some words on Nick Drake's "Road": The first time I listened to this song was in Spring 1980 and I was sixteen years old. I think it is the only song of which I know the lyrics by heart (I have got such a bad memory). And I did not learn it by heart but the lyrics were so strong that I could not forget them anymore after I had listened to them the first time. Nick Drake is singing about different ways of how to live your life. Of course he also sings about himself and the blues (as a state of mind) which has dominated his short life. I always wanted to "take a road that'll see me through" but I am not so sure now if I have succeeded. I did not "take the road to the stars" that is true and it is a road which has never interested me at all. The "road" is definitely my favourite metaphor in song lyrics. And roads have an end in themselves for me. Of course they lead from A to B. But the fascinating thing about them is the stretch in between. When you have left A and have not yet arrived at B. That is where I am at this moment.

 
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[music, songs] November 4, 2001 at 1:44:00 PM CET

A blog is an island I have started writing a weblog a couple of months ago. It was very exciting in the beginning. Discovering that people were discovering that I wrote something on the internet available for everyone. Watching the number of visitors grow, hitting the 100 mark (visitors per day). Getting feedback from people (who had read my blog) via email or in the forum (though this is really a sad and inactive place, I do not know why but even regular readers of my blog still have not discovered the forum link below every post). As you (as a regular reader) will have discovered by now this is just a meta post. I have nothing to say. Just one thing. I need more feedback to continue this exercise. Please tell me your favourite song of all times. Deadline next Sunday, 11th November. Naturally all posts/mails will be published. I tell you mine beforehand. It is Nick Drake's "Road" with the song line:

"You can say the sun is shining If you really want to I can see the moon and it seems so clear You can take the road that takes you to the stars now I can take a road That'll see me through"

Still listening to: Pinback: This Is Just a Pinback CD. (if you have never bought a cd purchase this record. I guarantee it won't be a wallflower in your collection). BLISS. Light years better than this Beach Boys release everyone has been talking about for more than thirty years called Pet Sounds which is one of the top ten overrated albums of all times. I just write this as someone from the techno/electronica generation referred to Pinback's music as being similar to the Beach Boys which it is obviously not.

 
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[music, songs] August 19, 2001 at 2:24:00 PM CEST

The song I just needed
I was just listening to a couple of mp3 tracks I recently downloaded. Mp3s have become my first source of information on new music. Usually 80% of all the songs I download by unknown bands are average and not very interesting pieces of alternative music.
But sometimes I stumble upon jewels. Like the song Alcohol by the Skydivers. As always in the beginning I just listened to the melody. I was hooked immediately and the song has been playing on repeat for the last half an hour. Extremely light slightly melancholic guitar indie pop with a small dose of psychedelic mushrooms which made me think of the Field Mice and Flying Nun bands from New Zealand like Jean Paul Sartre Experience. Somehow I know this slightly nasal and grave voice of the singer. He sings like someone else. But who?

Then I started trying to understand the lyrics. And this line kept sticking in my head:
"Every time I look at you
I have to lie
And tell you that you're fine"

I started understanding what this song was about. The title which I had not taken notice of made sense now. The name of the band which I had misread as "varied sky" (divers in the French meaning) suddenly seemed like a coincidence. They are from Washington DC and you can download Alcohol and some other songs here.

 
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[music, songs] June 18, 2001 at 3:33:00 PM CEST
What has been going on lately? Not a lot actually. We have phantastic April weather in June again. Somewhere I read the global temperature was rising. Not so in Germany, at least not in summer. Summer should be called rain around here and if the lakes or rivers had the current air temperature (below 15 degrees Celsius) it would be much too cold to swim in (sorry about the English, it is not my mother tongue as you must have guessed by now, but I hope you get the picture).
So music-wise I was slightly positively surprised by the new Radiohead of which I heard extracts tonight on the radio. Some quite far-off stuff. And the name Amnesiac is so much cleverer than this stupid title Kid A :). I liked Thom Yorke's voice much more than before where I found it annoyingly thin and weepy. Now he seems to use his voice as an instrument. There was this quite conventional song Knives out where his voice was really sad. It sounded as he had understood the deep sadness of the world. That song really caught my attention. Impossible for me not to listen. I felt like a moth flying into the fire.
 
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