Kite Base are back with a new video to promote their new album, Latent Whispers. Out now!
Miracle Waves (Remix) by Kite Base on VEVO.
The scene outside of George Michael’s house in North London reflects the love felt for him by music fans. Hundreds of bouquets, messages and pictures have been left by visitors. Even the dust on his car, parked forlornly outside the residence, has been rubbed to leave messages. We took some pictures to share with fans.
Order at stormingthebase.com for North America and artoffact.com for Europe.
Rational Youth still write melodic electronic music with infectious hooks. That makes the legendary Canadian band something of a rarity, in a world where wannabe DJs and flesh-baring attention-seekers get all the airtime.
Their latest offering is a 12” EP, loaded with new songs and a cover of Psyche’s “Unveiling the Secret.” There’s not a nipple in sight and no Boiler Room shenanigans – just catchy poptronica. There aren’t many other songwriters who can turn them out like Tracy Howe, and the arrival of Future Past Tense is more of a distraction than the latest selfie from Jeezus’ wife.
The track we can share today is “Western Man,” a politically-charged piece for the end of the empire. Howe’s never compromised on either the music or the message, and he’s in top form here.
LINKS:
Buy the EP at Storming the Base
Twice a Man have revealed their new single: “Here Comes the Rain,” lifted from the Presence album, appears in both an edited form and as a remix from Denmark’s esteemed Leaether Strip.
A brooding, moody and dramatic minor-key masterpiece, “Here Comes the Rain” is one of the stand-out tracks that appeared on our chosen Album of the Year for 2015. Leaether Strip’s version digs into the bassline and plays with the groove, yielding a more austere yet decidedly funky interpretation.
Silent Wave, the Gothenburg-based combo of Tildeh Hjelm, Martin Öhman and Hans Olsson Brookes, has revealed a slick new video for their current track, “Dancing Away from You.” It comes ahead of their debut London show on Sunday, 3 April 2016, and shows the band’s indie-electro influences to the full. Silent Wave’s spirit animals are, on this evidence, Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead and My Bloody Valentine.
Silent Wave perform on Sunday, 3 April 2016, at “The Swedes Are Coming!“. The event will be held at The Lexington in Islington.
Krister Petersson, the musician and record label master, is reported to have died at home in Sweden. Petersson is best known for his roles in Vision Talk and Chinese Theatre, as well as Melody Lane, De!Funct and Mordor, but he was also a prominent Italo music fan in the Nordic scene: the act and label SwedIt, which he started following the break-up of Vision Talk, was a contraction of “Swedish Italo.”
The news comes as a double blow to fans, as new dates had only just been announced for a relaunched Vision Talk, reuniting Petersson and vocalist Richard Flow (who is also known for his work in Machinista). A new recording, “Come with Me 2016,” had been released on Soundcloud in January 2016, raising expectations.
A dedicated father, the last post on Petersson’s Soundcloud account was a version of “Incy Wincy Spider.” Petersson leaves behind five children and two stepchildren, a monumental legacy of electronic music and a community deep in shock.
The legendary voice of Jarboe, the former Swans singer, appears on the latest release from Black Needle Noise. “Vexation,” which was co-written by Jarboe and the equally legendary BNN man, John Fryer, is a darkly uplifting single that is destined to fill the college radio airwaves.
“Give the kiss and shake the fist,” she sings. Jarboe’s voice is rich and resonant, but you know you’re in trouble if you make eye contact. Put your selfie stick away. Fryer’s guitars grind like the loins of two lovers, and where the friction leads is beyond question.
Dreampop heroine Jennie Vee has announced a series of dates for live shows in the UK and revealed a new video. Vee, whose Spying album was one of the highlights of 2015, returns to Britain for a tour that kicks off in Edinburgh on 27 February and wraps up in the capital on 9 March 2016. The full list of dates is:
Edinburgh (Bannerman’s): 27 February 2016
Birmingham (Sunflower Lounge): 29 February 2016
Glasgow (Hug & Pint): 1 March 2016
Reading (Purple Turtle): 2 March 2016
Oxford (Purple Turtle): 3 March 2016
Colchester (The Bull): 4 March 2016
Manchester (Soup Kitchen): 5 March 2016
Brighton (Sticky Mike’s): 8 March 2016
London (Water Rats): 9 March 2016
The tour comes hot on the heels of the release of the video for “So Hard,” one of the stand-out tracks from Spying. As usual, Vee is in fine form.
The London premiere of B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin comes at the end of the London Short Film Festival. B-Movie is a full-length feature, but why quibble when it’s the capital’s first chance to see this ecstatic celebration of Berlin music through the eyes of Mark Reeder?
Reeder is the intersection for a lot of pathways in music from the late 1970s onwards: as Factory’s man in Berlin, he put on Joy Division’s only Berlin show; he managed Malaria and made slasher films; the electronic records he sent back to Manchester put Bernard Sumner on the path to the dancefloor; he promoted subversive punk shows in East Germany and made mates with musically-inclined dissidents in Czechoslovakia; he started the first trance label, MFS; and he was British TV’s go-to resource for all things Berlin. There is a reason the same picture of him appears in the competing narratives of Joy Division and New Order written by Sumner and Peter Hook.
The producers were already preparing a film about the music scene in West Berlin when Reeder’s story became the red thread for the film. The critical moment came when he turned over his own collection of material: Super 8 films; tapes from The Tube and other British TV programmes; and material from films he had appeared in. By chance more than design, Reeder had found himself in the right places at the right times, and his multimedia scrapbook provided the core for a compelling narrative. Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld, Gudrun Gut, Bettina Köster – many of the key artistic forces from those days appear in the assembled material, along with the music that defined that period. Woven together with dramatic recreations and forgotten footage, their stories are part of an unforgettable Cold War collage.
In a way, B-Movie is a paen to the Wall. It was the Wall that penned in Germany’s outcasts, draft dodgers, artists, junkies, runaways and punks. It made the cauldron within which the city’s creative energy seethed. In their clashes with the Federal Republic’s police and the Democratic Republic’s guards, Berlin’s squatters and songwriters asserted their defiance with little respect for convention. No one would ever want the Wall back, but the soundtrack made in its shadow was second to none.