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„I’m proud to say I’m still a sponge.” Shilpa Ray about her influences
But at first, the most important thing:
Brooklyn based singer songwriter
SHILPA RAY is on EURO TOUR!
She’s going to perform in Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, BUDAPEST JUL 22, Slovenia, Serbia, Kosovo, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Croatia and Italy. Exact dates and places
In her music you can find blues punk rock and roll soul gospel and beside conventional instruments a harmonium and sometime a pedal steel guitar:
Some people say her music is a mix of Blondie, Cramps and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins. Her singing style is often compared to Patti Smith and Nick Cave. Some years before she toured with Cave as supporting act and backup singer, even he was who released her first EP after her band Happy Hookers disbanded. Even more she recorded her version of Kurt Weil/Bertolt Brecht song Pirate Jenny with Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for a compilation album.
As a child of an Indian immigrant family she learnt to play the piano and harmonium but was banned from western type music but later she became a goth girl. Her first band was the bass-drums-harmonium trio Beat The Devil where she wrote all of music and lyrics already. Her music is so entertainingly eclectic that I felt the need ask about her influences. She says:
I’m proud to say I’m still a sponge in the sense that I can absorb a lot. At the same time with a question like this I never know where to start. I obviously love music my tastes have a fairly wide range. I’d say my biggest influences are the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed, Arthur Lee
Classic Punk, Hip Hop especially old school Hip Hop, Industrial/Noise, Soul, and Old Bollywood music from the 60s and 70s. Lately I’ve been really into Broadcast and Ministry. Ha! Who would ever put those two together? I don’t know, it’s just where I’m at:
I like other forms of art as well. I used to be a dancer so that comes in to play a lot. If I can’t move to my own music then what ‘s the point? I do like to read and do it often but in short form. Something I can get through in one sitting like poetry, essays, short stories rather than a novel. I’ve got a short attention span. I love streaming TV shows. I’m all about it, especially if the writing is witty. I recently watched Fleabag and Killing Eve. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a damn good writer.
Cooking is another big one for me. I love to cook and I love to eat. Most studio engineers I know are big into cooking. It makes sense to me cause making a record and making a well balanced meal is kind of the same thing. Anytime I’m at a mixing session I often wonder if the track has been over spiced. I love going to museums and looking at art. I like the theatre a lot to. This is all starting to sound like a profile on some Tinder app. Are you gonna swipe left or swipe right?
On The Spot with Xeno
at the darkest hole of Budapest
– Hi! Are you Xeno or Oaklander?
– I’m Xeno.
– What are your favourite Hungarian music?
– Korda.
And after a short discussion with Oaklander she said:
– Új Látásmód Fúzió, Alpár, Koyanisquatzi, Hungarian Dracula*, but last year we made a live radio show with our favorite Hungarian music for the London based radio station NTS. It contains Katalin Karády, Új Látásmód Fúzió, Csermanek Lakótelep, Alpár, Trabant and Pal I, Prince Esterhazy of Galántha, Palatine of the Kingdom of Hungary, who also was a composer and wrote numerous cantatas:
*Very strange. I did not hear the name of Koyanisquatzi in the past 15 years. It was a great ritual rock band in Szeged in the late 80s and early 90s. And for the first time I got news about the darkwave band Hungarian Dracula from same place and same period like Koyanisquatzi.
Anyway, XENO & OAKLANDER are a cold minimal synth pop duo from Brooklyn. They are on European tour now.
A NEW IMAGE OF WOMANHOOD
Influential three women fronted NY city post punk band BUSH TETRAS were founded in 1979 by guitarist Pat Place after leaving the no-wave group James Chance and The Contortions. They brought funky dance songs and vocal rhythms to the freaky outsider punk scene. The band’s trajectory as jagged as one of their own solos. They broke up in 1983, reunited for a short time in the mid-90s and second time in 2005. Since they have released two albums and the third TAKE THE FALL is coming in April on WHARF CAT RECORDS (US)
They charted „a new image of womanhood – spiky, uncompromising, androgynous, sarcastic, tough and too clever by half” by journalist and musician Vivien Goldman.
Look at this picture! This is a noise rock and roll band
Yeah, it’s a noise rock and roll band called HONEY
and I think you should play this song
from their second album on WHARF CAT RECORDS (US).
Now, I suggest listening to their debut
take a ride on your physical and mental borders
3 fine NORTHERN SPY RECORDS artists touring in Europe
together and also separate
in Hungary, Czech, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Holland, France, and UK
ZS – far from the music, or a super joint on a pin bed
and also HORSE LORDS, play western African x American folk hardcore jazz
and there is a beautiful red cat on their FB page,
and there is CLOUD BECOMES YOUR HAND too,
plays pop music at least compared to the previous ones.
But maybe I just say pop because they sing.
BUT TOGETHER JUST in BUDAPEST APRIL 8 and LONDON APRIL 20.
ALL TOUR DATES ON NORTHERN SPY WEBSITE
Wharf Cats
Brand new releases of great little record label
WHARF CAT RECORDS (US, NY, Brooklyn)
PALBERTA is Ani, Nina, and Lily. I strongly agree with they say about their music: „You wanna wabbada? Wap wap wap dabbada? You see that mabada? ding ding dack dabbada?” New album Bye Bye Berta.
HOLY MOTORS from Estonia. When I listened to them first I thought this song could be in a David Lynch film. But Jim Jarmusch was who lent their music for his film Mystery Train. 7″ single.
CARSON COX, SAM YORK & AUSTIN BROWN: Cox from new wave pop band Merchandise, York from raw rock band WALL and Brown from indie punk band Parquet Courts make disco music. 7″ single.
TROPICAL SKIN BYRDS, no wave punk trio with ZZ Ramirez (Ukiah Drag, Destruction Unit), Sean Halpin (CRAOW) and artist Nina Hartmann. EP.
SNAKEHOLE, noise rock hc-punk duo under the influences of w33d & $A+aN. Debut album Interludes of Insanity.
UROCHROMES, a duo with drum machine. Influences: Chrome, Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, Flipper, Flesh Eaters, Stick Men With Ray Guns. EP with a fine new wave disco remix.
Early Iron Maiden Today
What was the Iron Maiden in the early ’80s today it is the Zig Zags
from 7″ vinyl on Famous Class Records (US)
EURO TOUR MARCH – APR Ger, Bel, NL, UK, Ire, Fr, Sp, It, Au, Swi, DK, Nor
Funny, like the Butthole Surfers
PC WORSHIP is a band, solo project & collective of musicians, trimming steadily on the outskirts of punk, while enlisting methods of new music and free improvisation.
A journey through alternative rock, experimental tape manipulation, downer punk riffs and long form improv-based psychedelic instrumentals.
This time musicians from Liturgy, Guerilla Toss, and there is the complete no wave trio The Dreebs.
So funny, almost like the Butthole Surfers
New album Buried Wish on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)
Lizard Music
Classic heavy metal hard rock á la Judas Priest Iron Maiden Motörhead Metallica’s Kill’em All with total punk feeling by ZIG ZAGS from LA on 7″ vinyl on FAMOUS CLASS RECORDS (US)
EURO TOUR March-Apr Ger, Bel, NL, UK, Ire, Fr, Sp, It, Au, Swi, DK, Nor
Adventures of the Annoying Lil French Girl in New York
Not enough people know Anni Rossi, the singer/ songwriter/ violonist. She plays with her instrument like you’d play the guitar, indeed, she isn’t scared to strum the string, making it a perfect tool for RNR.
Meet with Anni
a place (I won’t name for some personal reason) in Williamsburg
On Friday night, following an evening of drinking cheap beer with colleagues, I joined my new roommate, Andy, a New-Yorker and member of an anarchist organization called The Base. I knew that he knew the place where I needed to be. It was his friend’s birthday, and their musician friends were playing for her. Those kinds of friends are very precious, between tours, they will certainly animate your greatest parties.
That said, the gigs were very pleasant. First line, a guitarist and a drummer nostalgic of Kurt , second, a band from the past future, I mean like the people during the eighties pretending to be from the future. ( I’m not sure if you know what I mean, I’m stoned.) Anyway, those guys freaked me out, they were really good, but I just couldn’t take it, it took me back to … a night in Budapest, it was November, We were waiting for the bus in Nyugati station, I was wearing somebody else’s hat and he loved it… I was mentally preparing for the long tricky way back home (since I live in the extremities of Bushwick, just on the border with Bedstuy…) when I heard the name of Anni Rossi, which surprised me for the reason I mentioned before. So I asked around: what about Annie? She’s here? Really??? Where? (Turned out she was there all the time.) Is she going to perform? She’s great, isn’t she? I was, let’s say, suddenly a little overwhelmed and turned straight back to shake her hand: Are you Anni Rossi? Yes, and what’s your name? Line. Line who? Line ** ******. Curious and nice, she seemed unfamiliar with this kind of devotion, yes because I confessed my passion for one of her song, it was playing in my headphones in Thailand, Scotland, and on various trips here and there.
I asked her insistingly to play it, she said she’d try as she didn’t bring her violon (maybe she was upset with it), that night she preferred an electric banjo, accompaigned by the classic bass and drum combo. The concert was like a Rob, Ryan and Anni family reunion. Her belly button proudly displayed, she performed with a nonchalant attitude and voice like a cool Cold War Kid. Sipping her whiskey in between songs, she took it slow, inspiring air, expiring it, creating beautifully contained bluesy waves.
And finally the way back home wasn’t that bad at all, walking with magical bubbles in my head. Anni Rossi is just Loveli, check it out!
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Bushwick
is located in the center of Brooklyn, where I live. It is full of brownish little 2 storey houses with flat rooftops and old factories transformed into lofts. It wasn’t such a nice neighbourhood (criiiiime) a couple of years ago, but as the rental price is cheaper than in other shiny and trendy places such as Williamsburg (headquarter of the hipster community), a lot of young and poor artists/ professionals like me are living in there. In my street seems to live many repented, retired gangsters, so it’s kind of quiet, apart from loud conversations and tooting at 2 am.
The mentioned neighbouring Bed-Stuy (Bedford-Stuyvesant) is the land of heavyweight rappers and boxers. For example Mike Tyson, Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but the chess world champion, Bobby Fischer also lived here.
Self Fellatio, You’ll See, It’s All So Goooood
Aretha Franklin in Punk, Sometimes with Nick Cave
Shilpa Ray is an Indian American singer-songwriter. She got Indian classical music education, and learnt to play harmonium and piano. In her childhood it had been forbidden her to listen to pop music. Her first pop experience was Oliver Stone’s film The Doors. Then she has taken to music of Velvet Underground, Cramps, Stooges and Joy Division. After her bands „Beat The Devil” and „Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers” were split, she toured with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds as a backup singer and supporting act. Then she recorded a version of Pirate Jenny featuring Nick Cave and Warren Ellis for compilation album „Son of Rogue Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs & Chanteys.” (It was co-produced by Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes’ bandmate in the band „P”, Johnny Depp.) Her latest EP It’s All Self Fellatio was released by Nick Cave’s own label in 2013.
Shilpa Ray in Palisades, Brooklyn
It’s back home that Shilpa Ray closed her 6 weeks US tour. And the gig was as stunning as the character herself. She plays harmonium (a kind of beautiful piano/accordeon instrument) that fits perfectly with her style. Wavy hair and open mouth, her cat voice hiss and miaows through the sound system sitting in front of me and I let my body speak with the alive machine.
Shilpa, I’d like to say that you’re a sort of hero. You possessed your public by spreading your healthy, angry, frustrated feeling of shame. Your natural talent is an inspiration to all the unloved ones. So what else do we need? You transform your own emotions into a real touchable and touching music. The tribality of it all, sustained by heavy beats proves that you can deal with being rough and powerful. The female fans say it surely, you inspire and transpire feminity.
John, the professional pedal steel guitar/keyboard player melts with her. He says, when playing he tries to inverse the melody making his music complementary to other’s, and that’s the magic trick of being a professional artist. This 6 weeks tour has been tough for the band, but finishing it at home just makes it seem all so smooth. Indeed, John lost himself on stage and that’s how he knows it’s been a good night!
Oooo crap, Shilpa has to fly away and there are so many things I will never know about the artist, though, after having heard what I heard I ‘ll always remember her melodic inside.
People! Do yourself a pleasurable favor and listen to It’s all self fellatio, you’ll see, it’s all so goooood.
Shilpa Ray and Her Happy Hookers
From New Records
Hey!Amphetamine Reptile mode Deutsch noise punk by UV Glaze
7″ single on Bachelor Records (Austria). You can find some free tracks here
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Smell swamp psych garage blues rock by The Ukiah Drag
„In The Reapers Quarters” LP and digital on Wharf Cat Records (US)