Just for the sake of completeness, and it’s also quite amusing: The Fall tour descends into chaos. Or not quite as much.
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Turns out somebody put the recordings of The Fall’s 25th BBC session online. It can’t get any better than that.
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If you feel like listening to some truly wonderful music, download your full Belle and Sebastian concert from just a few days ago here.
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If you go here, right at the top you’ll find some of the best music ever recorded.
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I’m a big fan of The Fall, for reasons which are not all that obivous. I got immense enjoyment out of this article, which describes how somebody tries to find all former members of the band. Excerpt: “I was worried by the fates of the disappeared. In particular, Karl Burns - who was hired and fired nine times between 1977 and 1998 - seemed to have vanished after punching Smith on stage in the New York meltdown. Several former members worried that he was dead. Some suggested he had ‘moved to the hills’ in Rossendale, Lancashire, but appeals to the area’s local papers produced nothing. Riley suggested I ‘try the prisons’, which led me to Ed Blaney, who indeed left the Fall because he was sent to prison (‘Dangerous driving,’ he says). He hadn’t seen Burns either.” Enjoy!
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German electronic music group Kraftwerk made the future (and being a stiff robot) sound cool. Undeterred by the fact that now that we live in what used to be the future it doesn’t look all that cool Kraftwerk have just released something like a “best of” album in the form of a live album, which can only be recommended.
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If you’re as sick of the same old (or supposedly new) “alternative” rock posers as I am, check out British band Electrelane. Their new album was just released - excellent!
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The consumer is nothing but a cash cow to be milked, and if there is one industry where this statement is particularly true it’s the so-called entertainment industry. Over the past years, record companies have re-issued old music on CD, adding the occasional snippet that really nobody needs. Worst offender in this respect are record labels dealing with jazz: They have inundated the market with re-issues that cater to the freak market - those 0.1% of jazz fans who actually like to listen to about 37 unfinished takes of the same song. Given the usual lack of “outtakes”, the “pop” market has instead opted for re-issuing “remastered” CDs that sound exactly like the original albums (unless you belong to those 0.1%… you get the idea). Matador Records has been quite the pleasant exception to this whole re-issue scam. After re-issuing Pavement’s Slanted and Enchanted with two dozen extra tracks (get this, jazz fans: Two dozen extra tracks and no screwed-up takes!), they just re-issued Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain with an additional two dozen extra tracks. Well, if they keep doing this we will actually be able to ignore how Steve Malkmus, Pavement’s former front man, is turning into an “alternative” Lou Reed.
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I really don’t know where this fits in and you’ll only be able to really enjoy this if you understand German. But in any case check out Einstürzende Neubauten frontman Blixa Bargeld reading from the Hornbach catalog - that’s like Nick Cave reading from the Home Depot catalog, say. (seen at swens blog)
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If you’re into stereotype (who isn’t?), Einstürzende Neubauten offers all that you could hope for from a German band - and more. The name consists of two fairly long words that are both entirely unpronouncable, one even having an umlaut. The singer has a horrific German accent, and it seems like he has no sense of humour whatsoever. And large parts of the music are people banging on all kinds of metal like those teutonic knights that, we’re all sure, still lurk in every good German’s cupboard. Thing is, though, that lately (where lately means something like over the past decade or so), Einstürzende Neubauten have been working on something entirely different. I personally find those early industrial noise orgies a bit straining and tiring; but there’s very little of that left now. Instead, despite of their continued use of all things metalic everything is very restrained, very atmosheric, and quite fascinating.
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Pan Sonic’s new work “Kesto” - a 4CD set - might be some of the most ambitious and impressive electronic music made so far. I’m not very good at reviewing music so let me just link to two reviews: 1, 2.
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Heavily rotating (digitally): this live set by electronic music genius Squarepusher. Might not be everybody’s cup of tea, though. (found on swen’s weblog)
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Ohmygod, the songs from the 1988 Peel Session are online.
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I’m very impressed by Richard Devine’s new album “asect:dsect” (why does non-mainstream electronic music almost always come with über-nerdy titles for songs and albums?). Those interested in more details about how he does his music and about his background might want to check out this interview or this article.
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“the first vienna vegetable orchestra plays music exclusively on vegetable instruments: carrots and cucumbers instead of guitars and drums. or, with their new cd automate, a cuke-o-phon and radish- marimba instead of laptop and sampler. the music presents a transfer of electronic music pieces and structures to the instruments of the vegetable garden. […] after the concert, the stage is left to the cooks who then work the instruments into a tasty vegetable soup which the audience and musicians consume together. the concert’s audience thereby has the possibility of once again enjoying what they have just heard, examining any remaining instruments more closely and conversing with the musicians.” You know this sounds quite amusing and all but the music is actually really good.
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Occasionally, there’s a post about what’s in my CD player. There has been a lot of hype about what they call “new rock” over here in the US. I don’t really know what the “new” in “new rock” really is supposed to mean. If you think about it musical categories are fairly stupid. Anyway, thing is there are quite a few British bands that’d deserve as much hype as The White Stripes, say, or The Strokes - even though you can’t say for sure whether you really want to wish somebody hype; it’s almost as if you wish them cholera. So who are the bands frequently rotating in my CD player? First, there’s Ikara Colt (there’s an excellent inofficial site here), whose first album I have been listening to for a while now. Their second one is due out in April 2004 I heard. Electrelane just released their second album (that features fairly excellent art work/photography). And then there’s British Sea Power. Browse their sites for audio and/or video clips.
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On the new Johnny Cash boxset “Unearthed”, there’s a cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” that Cash did with Joe Strummer. You want to listen to it here.
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Ever wanted to play with a theremin? Try BBC’s virtual one! (this thru the weblog currently known as 12.s)
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Another recommendation - provided you like somewhat experimental electronic music: So have just released their first album which is also called “So”. There’s a sound sample on that page so you might want to give it a listen.
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“Despite this album being in the planning stages for over a year, it has suddenly found a whole new position in the world. Instead of being seen as a personal soundtrack to western society’s deliberate and malicious empirical ambitions, it feels defensive in its attacks on an America so tragically transformed. I do however see a link between the position we find ourselves in now and the attitudes and aspirations of the influential anti-globalisation movement. Whilst it would be disrespectful and dangerous to trace a direct link from the behaviour of large corporations to acts of terrorism, there is now such a mass of evidence to show how the relationship between commerce and state has become so deeply entwined, it is impossible to imagine western governments acting in matters of war where there isn’t the promise of profit.” - Read Matthew Herbert’s texts and download his album for free!
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Twelve Years after their last release, a remix album with the unsurprising name “The Mix”, and exactly twenty years after the release of an EP called “Tour de France”, Kraftwerk’s new album, “Tour de France Soundtracks”, is out. There is a German saying “Der Berg kreisste, und es ward ein Mäuslein geboren” (“The mountain was pregnant, and a little mouse was born”) and this pretty much sums it all up quite nicely. Here we got our little mouse.
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“Kraftwerk are one of the few bands in history who genuinely bear comparison to the Beatles. Not because of their sound or their image, but because, like the Beatles, it is impossible to overstate their influence on modern music. It’s the five albums they made between 1974 and 1981 that really matter: Autobahn, Radioactivity, Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Computerworld. In their clipped, weirdly funky rhythms, simple melodies and futuristic technology, you can hear whole new areas of popular music being mapped out. Kraftwerk were so far ahead of their time that the rest of the world has spent 25 years inventing new musical genres in anattempt to catch up. House, techno, hip-hop, trip-hop, synthpop, trance, electroclash: Kraftwerk’s influence looms over all of them. It’s difficult to imagine what rock and pop music would sound like today if Kraftwerk had never existed.” (story) PS: That thing about the Düsseldorf accent is just not true. Kraftwerk never used it.
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I remember how my life changed when I listened to Mrs Miller for the first time. My musical innocence was gone. Now comes Wing and it’s like Mrs Miller coming alive again. Make sure you check out her rendition of “Yesterday Once More”.
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I rarely link to music even though it is very important for me. I listen to music a lot. Lately, I have been mainly listening to two German groups, To Rococo Rot and Tarwater. Their labels have a few songs you download for free - the songs go very well with looking at that contemporary German photography I linked to over the past few days. To Rococo Rot: From Dream To Daylight, Telema, Mit Dir In Der Gegend Tarwater: All Of The Ants Left Paris, Tarwater vs. Rechenzentrum - Treptow
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