no matter how short or mild a winter is, it’s always dreadful. between the late sunrise and the early sundown lies a short and grey smear impersonating a day. in school i got taught that every season has its own colour. winter is white, spring is green, summer is… i don’t know… yellow? for me winter was always grey and summer always bright yellow. maybe it’s because of the bright light everywhere or of the grass on unwatered lawns turned brown and yellow. but the image of a yellow summer was always with me. that and that humming sound. a constant hum of cicadas and high voltage wires. and the white noise in my ears when i got a headache from dehydration. when i tried to do an aquarelle for school depicting my last weekend it was a arrangement of yellow of all shades and lightness. but mostly very bright yellow.
a place to bury strangers use that hum to create a distanced sound that feels like a summer day. first pleasant and relaxing, then lulling you to a light sleep and before you know you’re worn out by the intensity and the omnipresence of that background hum. it gets you slowly.
that’s why they are not exactly like the jesus and mary chain. sure, the first thing that comes to mind when you hear a place to bury strangers is “just like honey” by the jesus and mary chain but “psychocandy”, the jesus and mary chains first album is more aggressive; attacking you with it’s overkill distortion and wears you out within the first two minutes. i always suspected their wall of noise to be the sound of heroin and only people on heroin could really like “psychocandy”. then i heard “darklands” and was disappointed by the literally “clean” sound. everything that made this sound for me was gone and i realized how much i actually like that psyche sound.
besides that shoegazing and heavy distortion both bands have in common what a place to bury strangers are lacking is the cold britishness, the angst and depression that the jesus and mary chain manifested in their sound. a place to bury strangers have a summer sound. even though they are from new york and not california.
a place to bury strangers myspace
Sonntag, 26. April 2009
Sonntag, 19. April 2009
rebuilding the rights of statues – tv show (hang the police)
i started reading wilson neate’s “pink flag” from the 33 1/3 band biography series. this one is, as you may guess, about wire. wire, like gang of four or devo, were always considered as the strange art students version of punk appendix to the early punk movement by me. punk in a very unpunk way. this book taught me that they were unpunk in a very punk way. it also got me to listening to wire again. and not just “12XU”.
wire were surely the first post punk band because even though coming from a punk background they tried to leave that behind right from the beginning.
and without this conscious decision to also expand behind the limits of punk by wire post punk would have been a failure. the music scene needed, and still needs, the punk attitude. but punk also needed the wire attitude to question the new rules.
bands like bauhaus or joy division would never have happened without punk but they could also not have happened within punk.
the next impact, almost as if not more important than punk was the internet. punk made creating music possible for everyone, no matter what his or hers musical skills were. the internet made distributing this music possible for everyone. and that on a level that is way beyond tape distribution. with platforms like myspace or last.fm you not only don’t need a record contract, you don’t even need any contact in places on the other side of the planet to get your music there. or from there.
i don’t remember what the initial tag was that led me to rebuilding the rights of on last.fm but i fell in love with their music immediately. tv show combines the bass lines of early bauhaus with the dissonant vocals of early siouxie and the banshees. both are delivered by liu min. whereas hua dong contributes with, and that unlike bauhau’s peter murphy, very detached, very sterile vocals and a dissonant guitar. what impresses my most is the complete absence of the merest hint of the bands origin. this song is definitely not what i’d expect from a band from peking. but it seems i have too recalibrate my perception of chinas music and art scene. a friend of mine who just returned from hongkong told me that peking is the place to be in china when you’re into underground music. so i’ll try to see what else might make it’s way into my headphones.
rebuilding the rights of statues just released their first full length and i’m curious whether the kept their style or went further post punk.
rebuilding the rights of myspace
wire were surely the first post punk band because even though coming from a punk background they tried to leave that behind right from the beginning.
and without this conscious decision to also expand behind the limits of punk by wire post punk would have been a failure. the music scene needed, and still needs, the punk attitude. but punk also needed the wire attitude to question the new rules.
bands like bauhaus or joy division would never have happened without punk but they could also not have happened within punk.
the next impact, almost as if not more important than punk was the internet. punk made creating music possible for everyone, no matter what his or hers musical skills were. the internet made distributing this music possible for everyone. and that on a level that is way beyond tape distribution. with platforms like myspace or last.fm you not only don’t need a record contract, you don’t even need any contact in places on the other side of the planet to get your music there. or from there.
i don’t remember what the initial tag was that led me to rebuilding the rights of on last.fm but i fell in love with their music immediately. tv show combines the bass lines of early bauhaus with the dissonant vocals of early siouxie and the banshees. both are delivered by liu min. whereas hua dong contributes with, and that unlike bauhau’s peter murphy, very detached, very sterile vocals and a dissonant guitar. what impresses my most is the complete absence of the merest hint of the bands origin. this song is definitely not what i’d expect from a band from peking. but it seems i have too recalibrate my perception of chinas music and art scene. a friend of mine who just returned from hongkong told me that peking is the place to be in china when you’re into underground music. so i’ll try to see what else might make it’s way into my headphones.
rebuilding the rights of statues just released their first full length and i’m curious whether the kept their style or went further post punk.
rebuilding the rights of myspace
Freitag, 3. April 2009
Miss Li - I Heard Of A Girl
music tends to have a very pessimistic view on it’s world. everything used to be better in the past. and owning really old records is mostly higher regarded than owning old wine. and no matter how old your oldest record is. the music of the year before was more candid, more honest.
i think my oldest record is “meet the supremes” by the supremes on tamla motown fron 1965. i do like it. i also like the early marvelettes and the ronettes. but i wouldn’t like to miss some more recent records as well.
then there is the trace of fatalism that all music is already composed and today’s artist are doomed to remixes and rearrangements of the existing sounds. and after the absolute deconstruction of music by genres like industrial or drone there seems to be no niche left to occupy. but as the technology progresses the means to produce music progress, too and by this the sound will ultimately change and even if the music structures repeat the songs will be new. and drone is not just a replication of industrial.
miss li comes into this “replication of the past” in two ways. first she is not the only miss li from sweden and the voice and some songs are not to dissimilar to lykke li’s songs. but where lykke li loses herself in ethereal sounds and susurration miss li here intersperses some ragtime and jazz. and yes, that’s the other way. her fourth album “dancing the whole way home” comes with a very swedish indie skeletal structure and a little jazz as garnish.
miss li myspace
i think my oldest record is “meet the supremes” by the supremes on tamla motown fron 1965. i do like it. i also like the early marvelettes and the ronettes. but i wouldn’t like to miss some more recent records as well.
then there is the trace of fatalism that all music is already composed and today’s artist are doomed to remixes and rearrangements of the existing sounds. and after the absolute deconstruction of music by genres like industrial or drone there seems to be no niche left to occupy. but as the technology progresses the means to produce music progress, too and by this the sound will ultimately change and even if the music structures repeat the songs will be new. and drone is not just a replication of industrial.
miss li comes into this “replication of the past” in two ways. first she is not the only miss li from sweden and the voice and some songs are not to dissimilar to lykke li’s songs. but where lykke li loses herself in ethereal sounds and susurration miss li here intersperses some ragtime and jazz. and yes, that’s the other way. her fourth album “dancing the whole way home” comes with a very swedish indie skeletal structure and a little jazz as garnish.
miss li myspace
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