From Spain, but living in Brexit Britain, comes Fox Gunn. We caught her performing with Sweden’s Agnes Hustler in London recently, and she impressed with her self-assured vocals and melodies. This song is about a break-up she went through, but it is not a sad thing; it is about the level of insight she has into her former partner’s experience. It is a great introduction to the former Lulalong singer, who will be going places with bangers like this.
Filmed within walking distance of Cold War Night Life Towers, in Highgate Cemetary, this video from Melaina Chole features a soundtrack based on waves of endless feedback. It marks a change for the Aux Animaux songstress, Godze Duzer; leaning into territory otherwise occupied by acts like Sun O))) and Anna von Hauswolff – both inspirations for the debut EP from the project.
The witch pin of the title is the thorn of the Blackthorn tree, which was believed to have been used by the Devil to take pricks of blood from His followers. There is an air of pain, longing, and despair in the track’s dark ambience. The delerium of angst finds a way through the Nordic melancholy. The Groke is among us.
Lau Nau, the award-winning Finnish composer and performer, has revealed her latest album, 5×4. Named for the characteristic five-note, four-track playback of the Buchla synthesiser, it represents five years of periodic experimentation with the series 200 machine housed by Elektronmusikstudion (EMS) in Stockholm.
Released by Fonal for Europe and Beacon Sound in the US, the album features eight tracks developed by Lau Nau using only the Buchla, a spring reverb, and her voice. The vinyl release comes packaged in a cover featuring fluorescent inks, and Fonal have a limited edition signed by Laura Naukkarinen with a UV-sensitive pen.
Naukkarinen says of the album:
I’ve been composing for five years at Elektronmusikstudion’s Buchla. When I started the project, I wanted to compose about the change in the living conditions of plankton in the Baltic Sea and the variation in their biomass, but soon the logic and sound of the instrument took me with it. I started composing music for marine life, forgetting all the strict boundaries of the subject. The world of crustaceans and zooplankton opens up in the music: darkness and the light filtered by the eutrophicated sea alternate under the surface, the salinity of the sea varies and the turbidity of the water makes the observations soft and without contours.
What goes through the minds of dictators, oppressors, and authoritarians? We will never know, but we can wonder. Lithuania’s Alanas Chosnau and Manchester’s Cultural Ambassador to Germany, Mark Reeder, raise the question that is impossible to answer but vital to ask.
Claes Bang will be immediately familiar to television viewers from his role in the series, Bad Sisters. In that context, he played an abusive douche who managed to insult everyone around him. The Danish actor also starred in The Square, Ruben Östlund’s Oscar-nominated film about a thoughtless curator. The problem-ridden characters played by Bang might not generate much sympathy, but his musical side-line is more endearing.
This Is Not America is Bang’s studio project. He has recorded a number of tracks together with Marina Schiptjenko (Page, BWO, Vacuum), with whom he worked on The Square. A real-life gallerist at Stockholm’s prestigious Andrehn-Schiptjenko, she also has some musical side-projects, including the Riviera-tronica duo, Julian & Marina. The two clicked, and Schiptjenko joined Bang to record several tracks in a Danish studio.
The latest EP from This Is Not America includes one solo track from Bang and two together with Schiptjenko. This one is not a million miles from the Pet Shop Boys; particularly in the chorus.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Sweden’s legendary act, Twice a Man, have released a tour of their output between the years 1982 and 2022. The material is collected on Songs of Future Memories, a 3-CD compilation from Germany’s Dependent label, with two new songs and thirty-two from the band’s extensive back catalogue. The physical edition also includes a 72-page hardcover book with notes from Ecki Stieg.
The importance of Twice a Man to Swedish and European pop and theatrical music cannot be overstated. From the point at which they transformed from Cosmic Overdose, at the insistence of New Order’s promoter, the band has led from the front; both in terms of their styling and in their messages about the social and natural environment. They might have changed their name, but the group – organised around the core of Karl Gasleben and Dan Söderqvist – didn’t give up their affinity for psychedelic soundscapes or explosions of surrealistic energy. Instead, they set up structures within which new sounds could be formed and social concerns could be channelled.
As this compilation shows, Twice a Man have taken a much wider perspective than many of their peers; adapting to the shifting sands of fashion while maintaining a Brechtian distance that prevents them from being pigeon-holed. Are they prog or new wave? For the theatre or the dancefloor? Do they look at internal psychology or social movements? The answer is: any and all of the above, depending on the moment. There is no one truth about Twice a Man, but there is an organising principle to their material: it isn’t like anything else.
From the proto-techno of “Russian Tractors” to the pulsing symphonic movements of “High in the Clouds,” this collection is a master-class in European electronic music. Spanning forty years of work, Songs of Future Memories draws on an exceptional tradition of experimentation and composition. The two new songs presented here, “Lotus” and “Dahlia,” emerge from that crib impressed with a unique inheritance. Twice a Man remain a work in progress.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The latest album from Kanga, You and I Will Never Die, comes out on 26 March 2023. Until then, we have this to dance to: a charged, sleek-but-dirty electronic instrumental and vocals that remind one of Curve at their best.
The departure of Ian Craig Marsh and Martin Ware from the Human League was engineered by their record company and manager to allow the act to develop in more commercial directions. The first two albums from the Sheffield-based electro pioneers had been received with enthusiasm by the cool crowd, but they weren’t paying the bills back at Virgin HQ by themselves. A plan was cooked up, therefore, to kick Ware out of the band he had created and have it continue based around the singer he had brought in.
To his credit, Marsh was prepared to follow Ware out of the door. Instead of creating a new version of the League, they diversified. First, they went into music production, setting up the British Electric Foundation as a vehicle for working with other artists. They also founded their first “client.” Heaven 17, with a mate of theirs who was working as a snapper in London, but that is a story for another day. For our purposes, what matters is that the BEF production team released a cassette of electronic music that continued the lineage that had started with The Future, moved into the Human League, and emerged with the ambition to take synth music into the mainstream.
Music for Stowaways was specifically created for the compact cassette tape. Sony had given their portable music players the name, Stowaway, before settling on the genre-defining Walkman. Ware and Marsh loved the idea of the device, and they went into the studio with some friends – including Adi Newton and Glenn Gregory – to create a single-format release with early adopters in mind. With eight tracks, the original March 1981 release was a glimpse into the future.
In 2023, Music for Stowaways is getting an expanded edition release on two other formats: vinyl and CD. The track listing is set out below.
MUSIC FOR STOWAWAYS
LP | CD REISSUE
TRACKLISTING
A1 | 1 B.E.F. Ident
A2 | 2 The Optimum Chant
A3 | 3 Uptown Apocalypse
A4 | 4 Wipe The Board Clean
A5 | 5 Groove Thang
A6 | 6 Music To Kill Your Parents By
B1 | 7 The Old At Rest
B2 | 8 Rise Of The East
B3 | 9 Decline Of The West
B4 | 10 A Baby Called Billy
B5 | 11 Honeymoon In New York
B6 | 12 B.E.F. Ident
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
Jean-Marc Lederman’s concept albums are a diverse set. Experimentation is at their core, but so is a cinematic sense of space and time. Whether exploiting the unpredictable qualities of The Bad Tempered Synthesizer or exploring the aquatic world of Night Music for Seahorses and Manatees, Lederman creates collections of stories in sound.
Soul Music for Zombies is the latest project from Lederman (Fad Gadget, The Weathermen, Kid Montana). Over eleven songs, it mines a rich vein of soul and blues; testing their elements in combinations with industrial, electronic and ambient tracks. If Screaming Jay Hawkins had access to a bank of synths, he might have come up with a take on “I Put a Spell on You” like Lederman’s, but only if he had spent decades absorbing the back catalogue of Front 242. Laurie Anderson is name-checked in “O Super(wo)man (nod to Laurie),” but Lederman hasn’t left the tracks: the song features a loop over a dance beat that belongs more to Soul Train than the Barbican.
Emileigh Rohn (Chiasma), Lederman’s partner on the recent Rage! album, appears for “The Music Walks Again.” Subtitled “The Robert Johnson Story,” the track features guitar samples and a take on the Faustian transaction undertaken by the influential guitarist. The Johnson origin story has a strong pull that reaches through the decades, but does the Dark Prince do similar deals for VSTs? Has Lederman met him at the intersection of Leopold II and Rue de Ribaucourt? That has been left to legend.
Soul Music for Zombies isn’t another version of Moby’s Play or Recoil’s Bloodline, but it shares their respect for the sounds of the original American underground. It also tests combinations of other styles, in a very European collision designed for both the undead and the living.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What is the point of pain, if not to lead to healing? Andra Day’s “Rise Up” is about dispersing the clouds of doubt and despair; finding the fighter inside who gets you back on your feet and ready for another round. It is an inspirational and stirring song, which helped win a Grammy for its creators.
It has been given an adrenalin shot by John Fryer’s Black Needle Noise project. Lisa Kekaula (The Bellfrays, Basement Jaxx) takes lead vocals; shaking the foundations with an uplifting, gospel-infused turn that is full of confidence and drive. Fryer’s instrumentation is perfectly-formed scaffolding for Kekaula’s performance; allowing her voice to ascend to heights of power and emotional clarity. The Pixies made a career of the quiet-LOUD template, but Fryer has repurposed it for piano, strings and hand-claps with a joyousness that will move hearts.
Fryer’s history (This Mortal Coil, Fad Gadget, Nine Inch Nails, Cocteau Twins) proves that this is not just a happy accident. “Rise Up” is part of a long line of songs that the legendary producer has invested with a delicate power, balancing on a knife’s edge between the energetic and the ethereal. The tension is electrifying, and in the chorus Kekaula’s voice floats and winds like the arc from a Tesla coil. Fryer’s magic box harnesses the power, but make no mistake: it is inside you, too.
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]