Norway’s current best export, Highasakite, have revealed an acoustic version of “Samurai Swords.” The original appears on their current album, Camp Echo, in an electronic form. Their unplugged effort shows off their roots, as a lovely complement to the album version.
Jennie Vee is one of our favourite singers. Whether playing alongside Courtney Love or warming up for Echo & The Bunnymen, Vee is the picture of East Village glam (even if she is on the left coast these days). Her own material is fabulous dreampop, and she takes a great picture. On top of that, she’s Canadian by birth, has a Scottish last name and boasts Finnish roots that once provided the name for her early punk act.
What were the odds, then, that she would connect with John Fryer for his Black Needle Noise project? The spiritual successor to This Mortal Coil, BNN is the acid that eats metal, the enzyme that dissolves flesh, and the vapour that swallows light. Fryer, who is best known for his production and mixing work (yeah, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, He Said – his name is on all of your records), has been talent-spotting singers for the BNN collaborations, so it’s our good fortune that they have come together for “Heaven.”
Fryer’s instrumental track grinds in the lower registers; lifted only partially into the light by the doom-gloom vocals of Vee. This is one of the darkest BNN tracks to date, and it is spellbinding in its intensity. Don’t listen while operating heavy machinery – there is no need, since they are already doing that, and it can’t be safe.
John Fryer‘s Black Needle Noise project has picked out many of the best singers from a number of different scenes. The legendary producer and songsmith, who is best known as one-half of This Mortal Coil’s permanent line-up and for his studio work with Depeche Mode, MARRS, Clan of Xymox and others, has been on a tear, working up new songs with spirit, space and sensuality. Featured vocalists and lyricists for BNN have included Jarboe, Elena Alice Fossi and Attasalina, who have impressed Fryer’s songs with new shades of feeling.
BNN’s latest offering is “Warning Sign,” featuring Kendra Frost. The London-based singer is normally found with a bass guitar in hand, alongside fellow bassist Ayşe Hassan (also of Savages), in Kite Base. We spotted the duo warming up for Hannah Peel at an intimate show last year, but it was their video for a cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Something I Can Never Have” that brought them to Fryer’s attention.
Fryer produced the NIN original, and when he got wind of Kite Base’s version he was taken by Frost’s treatment of the vocals. An invitation to work on a BNN track followed, and the resulting transmission from Fryer’s studio is a mighty signal from the North. The stylisation of This Mortal Coil is the resonance of Fryer’s soul, and it continues to flow into BNN: “Warning Sign” combines the lightest synthetic filaments with flying shards of guitar and depleted uranium beats. The sonic alchemist that he is, Fryer seamlessly blends ecstacy and agony, holding them together with a touch of reverb.
Frost’s contribution is outstanding. Her lyrics are a raw description of anxiety, reduced to its purest elements. Her voice betrays no sense of panic, however, as it flows in layers, soars over Fryer’s driving rhythms, or stretches out to reveal rich textures. Fight or flight might be the normal response to a warning sign, but the better one here is to listen and enjoy.
We first heard this song at Hannah Peel’s storming live show in East London last year, and now it’s coming out with studio spit and polish. The whiskey-drinking Peel describes it as a song written to comfort a friend, and it certainly drapes you in smooth curtains of sound that take away all the pain.
Kari Berg is not just a singer, actress and model. The Swedish vocalist (Ashbury Heights, Chaos All Stars) is also an anti-bullying activist. As a project leader for Sweden’s “Rätten till sin identitet” (EN: “The Right to Their Identity”), Berg is highly visible in work with youth in subcultures who face oppression and violence for liking their own music and fashion. RTSI is similar to the UK’s Sophie Lancaster Foundation, a charity set up following the unprovoked murder of Lancaster and her partner in Lancashire.
To support RTSI’s work, Berg has collaborated with Yves Schelpe from the Belgian band, Psy’Aviah, to create this song and video. The title, “It’s Just Words,” refers to the gossip and slander that is used to marginalise people who simply wish to be themselves. The story in the video was inspired by “Promenaden” [EN: “The Promenade”] by Emelie Engwall, taken from the RTSI-published book, “Våra Berättelser” [EN: “Our Stories”].
“It’s Just Words” is a great groove for the weekend, but it’s got a serious message, too.
LINKS
Rätten till sin identitet
Kari Berg Web Site
Psy’Aviah Web Site
Sophie Lancaster Foundation
The annual pagan fertility festival, dressed in Christian disguise, has been and gone; but, for those who weren’t into taking part, there is this sleek, YMO-influenced track from Norway’s Pieces of Juno. “Valentine” is about being not being someone else’s Valentine or having to make someone else yours. The first track from Juno’s forthcoming EP, Frisson, nevertheless has the feel of a sine romance. Is that because of the cinematic qualities of the track or because of the deft interplay between the vocals and beats? Hard to say on first listen, but repeated plays make the heart grow fonder.
If Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen got together at David Lynch’s house, the result might be this cinematic, poetic, flowing and dark track from Mute’s latest signing, On Dead Waves. “Blackbird” is the first release from the band, which appears to be a collaboration between Maps and Polly Scattergood, also on the Mute roster, and it heralds deep things to come.
A frontal assault on your senses, “There Is No Authority But Yourself” shakes you from your PBR-fuelled complacency and kicks you out onto the dancefloor with old school EBM patterns. From her forceful, electro-Amazon vocals, we’d say that Joanna Rein’s not compromising, so you’ll need to let someone else feed your sourdough starter and get your heavy boots on. You’re not a trend-following, peer-pressure absorbing hipster – you’re the Authority. And there isn’t another one but you.
On paper, New Order‘s re-emergence on Mute is a marriage made in Heaven. The departure of Depeche Mode left Mute without a flagship act, and New Order’s path into the stratosphere had run on a zig-zig path that was essentially parallel to the Basildon trio’s own. They even used the same record plugger for many years. The link-up allows New Order to maintain an indie base while getting the label’s full attention, which can’t be good for smaller acts like Polly Scattergood but will give Manchester’s best export long-term presence.
Bassist Peter Hook has left to pursue a Joy Division/New Order tribute project of his own, but that works out well for fans: New Order (Official) don’t play much from the back catalogue, so Hook’s New Order (Provisional) – also called Peter Hook & The Light – fills an enormous gap. Although some fans can’t accept a New Order without him, the reality is that it is Bernard Sumner’s voice and songwriting that is at the core of the band now.
“Restless,” the first single from Music Complete (Mute), arguably comes across better in this Agoria remix than in the original version: Sumner’s voice is even more fragile and languid with the synthetic bass and orchestration behind him. This is promising, indeed.
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.