Silver Ghost Shimmer, the collaboration between John Fryer and Pinky Turzo, has released one of the contenders for Album of the Year. Soft Landing is a lush, sensuous package, and “Suffocated” is one of its stand-out tracks. It has now been given the video treatment, and it’s all Cool Americana with abandoned housing and desert scenery. Turzo doesn’t break a sweat, although the guitar lines and her glances at the camera are hotter than a Nevada nuclear test.
The latest release from Finland’s Lau Nau is the album, Hem. Någonstans [EN: Home. Somewhere], which is also the soundtrack from a film of the same name. As with Lau Nau’s previous work, the boundary between modern classical music and experimental electronics is blurred in a haze of strings and chorus. The sounds make as much sense on a hot summer day, when the heat is bending the light, as on a frozen winter morning, when the sap cannot move in the trees, because they stroke your senses with the most sensitive of timbres.
If you want to immerse yourself in cold war counterculture, ground zero on Thursday, 9 July 2015 is the Sage Club in Berlin. Under the rubric, “Cold War Night Life,” a full evening of film and music is planned. B-movie, the tale of underground Berlin as told by Mark Reeder, provides the focus, and it will be followed by DJs across the multi-level club’s rooms. The event will examine the situations in both East and West Berlin, including the allure of the West for creative tourists like David Bowie and Brian Eno.
Before the party begins, a panel discussion will take place, moderated by Anja Caspary of Radio Eins. The panelists include Reeder (MFS), Dr. Motte (Loveparade founder and DJ), Ronald Galenza (East German club promoter) and others, providing a range of perspectives from key figures in the alternative music scene during the 1980s and 1990s.
See the event page for details (which include free admission before 22:00 hours).
It seems like only yesterday that John Fryer and Louise Fraser released Tales from a Silent Ocean, the first EP from their Muricidae project, but here they are singing back to the Sirens with another set of elegant tracks. Tears Are Stronger Than Waves is a collection that will transport listeners to islands of imagination, carried on the gentle wave(form)s of “Home” or swept away by the tidal surge of “Morphine.”
The journey begins with “Strange,” which echoes the mysterious resonances and rhythms of the sea while Fraser sweeps the air above into misty apparitions. As with Fryer’s previous work with This Mortal Coil, Muricidae is triple-distilled romanticism infused with essential oils of melancholy and euphoria. It’s a volatile mix, but the balance is maintained by allowing the individual elements to breathe: sounds swell and dissipate into vapour, revealing and releasing tension. Fraser’s vocals are sensual and rich, coming in waves.
With “Morphine,” Muricidae switch from sails to engines, cutting through the surf with diesel-fuelled riffs. One of Fryer’s strengths is his ability to navigate rock conventions without ever sounding conventional, so we find guitars yielding to synths in the middle 8 before reclaiming their space. This is music for wakeboarding by tattooed kids who don’t want to work as financial analysts but could if they wanted.
“Should I Stay” appeared in a different version on Tales from a Silent Ocean. Reworked by Fryer, piano and strings are brought into the foreground but synthetic brass and percussive elements provide additional dimensions. As with the other songs on this EP, it’s a reminder of the closeness with which Sigur Ros must have studied his earlier material. If there is more of this in the ship’s hold, we’d love it to be unloaded soon.
Tears Are Stronger Than Waves is available on iTunes and on Arena.
William Orbit claims that he can’t play piano, but much of his success is clearly dependent upon his keyboard expertise. The legendary producer and composer is best known for mixes made with synthesizers – reaching across the commercial scale, from Nitzer Ebb and Depeche Mode to Madonna and Prince – so, even if he doesn’t perform Beethoven sonatas on a Steinway, he clearly knows the difference between the black keys and the white ones.
Orbit founded his first band, Torch Song, in the caretaker’s cottage attached to the Centro Iberico squat that he shared with Laurie Mayer. Located within shouting distance of what later became Mute Records’ Harrow Road offices, and a venue for performances by the likes of Throbbing Gristle, Centro Iberico was an abandoned primary school that had been occupied by Spanish anarchists. As he accumulated equipment, Orbit was able to establish Guerilla Studios on the site, initially to record Torch Song’s output.
With the advance provided by I.R.S. Records for the first Torch Song album, Orbit was able to expand the studio’s capabilities and relocate it to a house on Blomfield Road in Little Venice. By investing in the studio, rather than putting the advance up his nose – as was the pattern encouraged by most labels in the 80s – Orbit was able to build up a solid commercial venture. As recording assignments came in, the studios moved with Orbit, settling for about a decade in a terraced house in Crouch End.
From that base, Orbit started a label, Guerilla Records, with Dick O’Dell (formerly of Y Records and now at Mute) in 1990. Over a period of five years, Guerilla released dance records by Orbit’s own Bassomatic project, React2Rhythm, Billie Ray Martin, Shape Navigator and others, mainly in a progressive house vein. The label’s biggest successes came from Orbit’s own work, and particularly the single, “Water from a Vine Leaf,” which is the first recording to feature vocals from Beth Orton.
With some cash in the bank from the success of “Water from a Vine Leaf” and the Strange Cargo III album from which it was lifted, Orbit was able to take a little time out in California. In 1997, prompted by her label, the call came from Madonna to work on her Ray of Light album. Although Orbit had become a regular choice for remixes of Madonna singles, his elevation to a production and co-writing role took him into the big leagues. Widely regarded as her finest release, Ray of Light was darker, cooler and earthier than Madonna’s previous work, shot through with icy strings and Orbit’s trademark percussion sounds. “Frozen,” the first single, topped charts around the globe, and the awards and royalties started to pour in.
The house in Crouch End was exchanged for a California base, but Orbit didn’t rest on his laurels. He moved on to produce Blur’s 13, which included the hit single, “Tender,” and found himself playing the role of band psychiatrist. The group was wracked with emotional tensions, which Orbit had to reconcile in order to get music down on tape as recording moved between London and Reykjavik. The experience took its toll, and in 1999 he shifted gears and re-released Pieces in a Modern Style, a computer-arranged take on classical and new music tracks that he had originally put out in 1995. Orbit’s version of Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” caught the attention of Ferry Corsten, who reinvented it as a trance track which rapidly took over the global dancefloor.
In parallel with his commercial work, Orbit continues to pursue his interest in classical music. His composition, “Orchestral Suite,” was performed in 2007 by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and Manchester Chamber Choir, and Pieces in a Modern Style No. 2 was released in 2010. Orbit released the “Orchestral Suite” recordings on Soundcloud in 2014 as Orbit Symphonic, and Soundcloud also became the release channel for Strange Cargo 5.
While his studio caravan has taken many trails and his style has evolved, one constant with Orbit has been the impulse to experiment. He was one of the first to make use of the internet to create interactive tools that fans could use to create their own mixes of his solo work. In 2013, Orbit experimented with a video channel, purchasing video equipment and releasing a series of humorous and experimental videos on Youtube, and in 2014 he launched a spoken-work show at the London Electronic Arts Festival (LEAF). As the selection of tracks below shows, the urge to create and to touch others through art is at the heart of everything he does.
10. Orbit – Feel Like Jumping
Orbit’s first, eponymous solo album is one that he now treats as a learning experience, but this 1987 release is of more than passing interest. “Feel Like Jumping” hints at the dub sounds that he would shortly marry to house music for his Guerilla Records releases, while showing off the respect that he shows to vocal performances.
9. William Orbit – Scorpion
Orbit’s first home was on I.R.S., the label started by The Police’s manager, Miles Copeland III. The relationship with Copeland was a fruitful one, allowing Orbit to put out both Torch Song and solo material. The sound of this instrumental, from the first Strange Cargo album in 1987, is a futuristic hint at what was to come in dance music.
8. Torch Song – Prepare to Energize
Behind every successful man, they say, is a woman. In Orbit’s case, that would be Laurie Mayer, whose own career has received less recognition but is impressive in its own right: she has co-writer credits on Madonna’s “Falling Free”, as well as this track from 1983, and was essential to the launch of Guerilla Studios. You can also find Mayer’s fingerprints on recordings from Baby Ford, Bassomatic and Robbie Williams, among others.
“Prepare to Energize” was the first single from Torch Song, the project that Orbit began with Mayer and Grant Gilbert at Centro Iberico. Gilbert was to drop out, and his place was taken from 1985 by Rico Conning, formerly of The Lines. Collaborators with Torch Song would include Brett Wickens (Spoons, Ceramic Hello) and Jah Wobble, who themselves worked together on a single called “Between Two Frequencies,” but the project went on hiatus between 1987 and 1995.
7. Malcolm McLaren – Deep in Vogue
The Sex Pistols’ former manager, Malcolm McLaren, was a master of the cultural mash-up. It was McLaren who sent Adam Ant out into the world with the idea to mix a “dandy highwayman” image with African drumming; who crushed New York’s nascent hip-hop sound with squaredancing; and who mixed classical waltz music with dance styles cribbed from gay clubs before Madonna had heard of voguing. Together with Mark Moore, Orbit set about mixing “Deep in Vogue” from Waltz Darling, which resulted in the classic “Banjie Realness” mix in 1989. McLaren was so impressed that an edited version was used on the album, in place of the original version.
6. Erasure – Supernature
Originally the B-side to Erasure’s 1989 single, “You Surround Me,” “Supernature” was a cover of the classic eco-disco track by Cerrone. Mute Records were one of the masters of brand extension, releasing slightly different versions of singles to maintain sales momentum, and Orbit’s remix of “Supernature” appeared on the follow-on, limited edition release. It’s a great example of Orbit’s remixing skills, lifting the song to heights that even Richard Branson hasn’t visited.
5. Bassomatic – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Bass
By 1990, the London house music scene was in full swing and Orbit unleashed Bassomatic onto the dancefloor with “In the Realm of the Senses” and “Fascinating Rhythm.” Things got really interesting, however, with the Pink Floyd-inspired title track of the band’s first album, which featured a number of classic Orbit tropes, including bubbling sequences, ethnic flute sounds and celestial pads.
4. Kraftwerk – Radioactivity
Kraftwerk are notoriously precious about their legacy, so the choice of Orbit to rework their iconic track, “Radioactivity,” for 1991’s The Mix, was hardly accidental. Orbit provided two mixes, and this one appeared only on a 12″ vinyl release. It’s more of a bionic splice of Orbit and Kraftwerk than a simple remix, fusing the former’s percussive dance sensibility to the wiring of the original.
3. S-Express – Mantra for a State of Mind
Orbit’s collaborations with Mark Moore are the stuff of dancefloor dreams. Although Moore’s project, S-Express, had achieved its commercial peak by the time this track came out in 1989, “Mantra for a State of Mind” is one of its most enduring releases. Orbit and Moore were joined in the studio by Rico Conning for the “Elevation Mix,” a transporting, mind-expanding version that was well ahead of its time.
2. Madonna – Frozen
The story goes that Orbit’s computers kept breaking down during the recording of Madonna’s Ray of Light album. Madge’s patience was rewarded, however, as the sessions yielded the most sophisticated and dramatic material that she has put out to date. “Frozen,” the first single, stunned critics upon its release with the purity of its vocals (Orbit doesn’t do Melodyne) and the emotional tension drawn from Orbit’s machinery.
1. William Orbit – Water from a Vine Leaf
Taken from Strange Cargo III, “Water from a Vine Leaf” was co-written with and featured a vocal contribution from Beth Orton, with whom Orbit was in a relationship at the time. They also worked together on Orton’s first album, superpinkymandy (released only in Japan), which included a different version of another collaboration, “She Cries Your Name,” than the one that made it onto the award-winning Trailer Park.
Beate Bartel was born in West Berlin. At the end of the 1970s, when she had just left her teens, punk and new wave influences were making their mark on the Walled City and fuelling a counterculture that had been encouraged by liberal welfare rules and exemption from military service for its residents. Bowie and Eno had drawn on the local atmosphere for the former’s Berlin trilogy, but they were tourists looking on. It fell to German youth to express themselves and the conflicts they experienced: trapped between two superpowers; confronting their country’s past and its scars on the present; growing up with things to say that couldn’t be whispered. What emerged was a succession of pioneering bands, who, in the search for a German musical form that matched their conditions, created innovative sounds and styles. Bartel found herself at a cultural Ground Zero, where anything could happen and usually did.
Although most closely associated with Liaisons Dangeureuses, the band she formed with Chrislo Haas and Krishna Goineau, Bartel was a key participant in the M-projects that involved Gudrun Gut and others: Mania D, Malaria! and Matador. These were bands made up of women who formed a creative nucleus for German post-punk and electronic music. Their songs were often brutal – as Bartel noted in an interview at the time, more brutalist that the sounds being made by their male counterparts – but also capable of a lighter touch. As the tracks collected below show, the experimental impulse could lead in different directions with equal success.
10. Mania D – Live in Dusseldorf
Mania D began in 1979, when a small group of German women connected to fulfil Karin Luner’s idea for an all-female band. Luner, a drummer who had been part of the New York arts scene, first raised the idea with her friend Eva Gößling. They were quickly joined by Bartel on bass, Gudrun Gut on synthesizer and Bettina Köster on sax and vocals. The band found their sound through improvisation, and within a short time were playing as far afield as New York. The line-up shrank as Luner and Gößling planted roots in America, leaving the remaining members to form Malaria!
9. Einstürzende Neubauten – Live in Kunstkopfstereo
Another Berlin resident, one Blixa Bargeld, had the idea to form his own band, and the members of Malaria! were drawn into a nascent project called Einstürzende Neubauten. For the band’s first ever show, at Berlin’s Moon club, there were as many women on stage as men. They left soon after for other projects, but the brutalist template was set. This recording was issued in a limited edition cassette tape by Bettina Köster’s clothing shop, Eisengrau.
8. CHBB – Metal
Bartel connected with Chrislo Haas, who had left Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft, to make a limited run of C-10 cassette tapes in 1981. They put out the tape under a name formed from their initials. CHBB didn’t make further releases, but did go on to form Liaisons Dangeureuses.
7. Liaisons Dangeureuses – Etre aussi ou danser
Liaisons Dangeureuses was one of the most important electronic acts, alongside the Haas-less DAF, in the early 1980s. Its only album combined proto-EBM with more experimental tracks, shot through with the vocals of Krishna Goineau. Released in 1981, it benefits from Conny Plank production and is regularly heard in DJ sets to this day.
6. Matador – Angel
Bartel and Gut reunited for another M-project, Matador, in 1987. With Manon Pepita, they organised a heavy, post-punk sound across three albums. This track is from the first album, A Touch Beyond Canned Love.
5. Thomas Whydler – Traumania
Bartel performed on Thomas Whydler’s Soulsheriff album in 2007, playing guitar and adding effects. Whydler, the drummer for Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, brought Bartel back to add magic on his 2012 release, On the Mat and Off.
4. Myra Davies – Hanoi
Myra Davies, an art historian, was working in Vancouver, putting together acts for Expo ’86, when she came into contact with the Berlin alternative scene. Credited by Nivek Ogre of Skinny Puppy as his “art mentor” and the person who “took him off the streets,” Davies was instrumental in organising an Expo-connected show by Einstürzende Neubauten. She started releasing her own music, and her 2008 album, Cities and Girls, includes this track with music by Bartel.
3. S.Y.P.H. – Traumraum
Bartel has recently re-emerged as a remixer. She took part in a 2012 remix compilation for the German punk band, S.Y.P.H. Other recent remix projects include the Swedish duo, Fatal Casualties.
2. Matador – Pushing
A song from Matador’s third and final album, Ecoute, “Pushing” shows the band crafting material from found sources around a tense rhythm track with an effect that is paranoid and claustrophobic.
1. Liaisons Dangeureuses – Los Ninos del Parque
Liaisons Dangeureuses is best known for this immortal track, which was recorded by Conny Plank and released in the UK by Mute Records. It has been remixed by Gabi Delgado of DAF and sampled a million times by lesser acts.
Vive la Fête are one of Belgium’s most exciting bands. Their live shows are blistering, high-energy affairs. This is a recording of their full performance at the 2015 Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival in Leipzig.
Gary Gilmore murdered two men and was put before a Utah firing squad. His last words were a Christian blessing, but they are remembered in popular culture as “Let’s do this.” His corneas were donated for transplants, and this act inspired The Adverts’ classic punk hit, “Gary Gilmore’s Eyes.” TV Smith of The Adverts has now teamed up with Martin Bowes of Attrition for an updated re-telling of the tale.
Slovenian art-subversives, Laibach, have announced that they will play two dates in the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on August 19 and 20, 2015. We’ll believe it when it has happened, but in the meantime the group has revealed their poster for the shows (right).
The band, which has established a reputation for subverting propaganda imagery, is an unlikely choice for a performance on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Korean peninsula from Japanese militarism.
Here’s a clip from their Spectre tour:
Diskodiktator is best known for the contrarian anthem, “Just Say NO to Democracy,” but Johan Billing’s main project also churns out remixes and remakes of classic poptronica. Four years ago, Diskodiktator Electric Orchestra & Friends produced a remake of S.P.O.C.K’s Five Year Mission. Like Senor Coconut, the tracks were re-imagined in unexpected musical styles; in this case, with a pronounced jazz-lounge bent. Now, to mark the 20th anniversary of another S.P.O.C.K album, Alien Worlds, Diskodiktator Electric Orchestra is back with a new collection of remakes.
Alien Alien Worlds is more clearly electronic than the previous effort; more Shultze than Puente. Indeed, if Jarre or Schnitzler were to have created a S.P.O.C.K cover band, it might have sounded like this: ping-pong delays, sweeps and Theremin warbles stretching and distorting the feeling of the original tracks into a space-lounge format (coming soon to a cantina near you). As a former member of S.P.O.C.K, Billing has lived with these songs for a long time, and his approach suggests tension bred by familiarity. Does he love them? Does he resent them? Perhaps both, as the transformation is in places more experimental than attractive. This is no shrine to the original material; but, while being broadly faithful to it, the tracks here test its elasticity to a greater degree than on Five Year Mission.
What made the original S.P.O.C.K songs so enduring was composer Eddie Bengtsson’s instinctive feel for pop structures, which were OMD-class, even if the subjects were lifted from cult sci-fi. Slowed down and put into another mode, they can start to sound less iconic than ironic, but there are clever moments here: Billing is a talented programmer and performer, and on tracks like “Astro Girl” he provides a setting that is closer to R&B than classic poptronica. One test of a quality song is whether it can be performed in a different style: one day, someone is going to make a million dollars with a country and western cover of Yazoo’s “Only You.” The transposition works here, too.
Alien Alien Worlds is on iTunes.