The Republic of Macedonia is a little country in the middle of the Balkans which has become independent during the break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 90s. And there is an underground music scene.

The Yugoslavian underground was very strong and rampant in the last decade of the South Slav confederacy with many great and strange artists like the Slovenian Laibach, Borghesia, the Serbian Disciplina Kicme, the Montenegrin Rambo Amadeus, the Croatian Satan Panonski, the Hungarian Bada Dada, and lots of others. But I heard about Macedonian underground artists nothing. Until recently when the various artists album „Magare i muzika” (Donkey and Music) has been released on BALKAN VELIKI RECORDS.

It’s a surprisingly good and colourful album about the Macedonian underground from indie pop new wave via psych-folk punk to electronic beats. And exception of Dj Zdena – who played at RNR666 Party in Budapest – and Bernays Propaganda – who makes tours in Europe often – there are totally unknown artists for me. But there are not just Macedonian artists like the Croatian Lutajuci Dj Zdena or the English Membranes because they were also released by BALKAN VELIKI. And at the moment  I have realized that hc-punk jazz fusion band Mnjenje is Serbian. So this album represents a wider region, what means the ex-Yugoslvaian underground is strong and rampant. But unfortunately there are two horrible hard rock songs in the middle of the album:

Anyway, I was curious about the Macedonian people, and it has turned out they are descendants of orthodox Slavs who did not run away and did not become Greeks, Bulgarians or Serbs during the last 150 years. After waves of different national proselytization some of them realized that anyway they are Macedonians. At first officially the separate Macedonian ethnicity was recognised by Communist International in 1934 because Soviet Russia wanted to use the network of Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization to revolutionize the Balkans. Funny, that year the organization was banned and dissolved in Bulgaria where it was state within the state. But after this they could manage to kill the Yugoslavian king and – if he already was there – the French Foreign Minister in Marseille same year within the framework of Croatian – Italian – Hungarian cooperation.

Albano-Macedonian prog folk rock band Blla Blla Blla…

Pic above: Mnjenje

“We know that’s the main aim of the sound: to get a sound that makes you feel sick in the stomach, because it sounds so good.”

NUN plays 70s & 80s horror movie influenced cold electric body noise punk music. Since their debut album, I am a NUN fan, and I have been waiting for the next one. And now, after three years they have released a song in four versions, and I am perfectly satisfied:

Studio and live ones were recorded years before the debut album, two remixes were made by ENDERIE, techno alias of Brisbane based experimental musician Andrew McLellan, who is so without limits that his project CURED PINK also played at Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Sydney International Noise Conference and Deadshits Fest in Brisbane. Anyway there is a new ENDERIE album on PARADISE DAILY RECORDS.

AMERICA FUCK is the product of living with toxic politics as the foreground; attempting to complete life’s menial tasks while filled with both rage and despair.

AMERICA FUCK is the duo of dark electronic artist Lana Del Rabies – who sings and plays synth bass – and Brian Miller from such great bands as

Foot Village – a drum-n-shout assembly,

Gang Wizard – psychedelic experimental krautrock, new album out now and it’s astonishingly fuckin’ good,

and True Neutral Crew – the Deathbomb Arc Records experimental hip-hop supergroup. He plays drums and electronics.

STATEMENT: Our first album Fertility Clown calls upon the brash immediacy of 80s political punk, the swirling disembodiment of free jazz, shoegaze’s resonate escapism, and the grim despair of goth to create a set of emotional tones that simultaneously are cooperative and combative.

And every song is a manifesto spiced with thoughts of French sociologist Marcel Mauss

„What is „society” for me?… Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in peoples’ lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people’s lives quite sporadically, and many people in history were never entirely clear whose government they were actually in.”  And so on

digital album on electro industrial dance noise hip hop experimental label

DEATHBOMB ARC

Paula H. Satan singer of French garage rock band JC Satan &
Théo Delaunay drummer of French garage rock band Lonely Walk,
but also seriously interested in techno as panoptique and Constance Chlore,
and a member of experimental/electronic label Simple Music Experience.

make music together as

SUCCHIAMO

to play cold erotic electroclash

12″ single on ANTINOTE RECORDS (France)

or download it from Bandcamp

new releases by CLAN DESTINE RECORDS Scotland, UK

DJ LOSER from Greece, he has two projects as minimal techno maximum noise Body Snatchers with Raw Ambassador, and industrial ambient Magdalena’s Apathy with Penelope’s Fiance. Cassette and digital album.

MARC ASH – aka Plovdiv – is a Berlin base Italian, drawing his inspirations from electro pioneers, early new wave and „dirty industrial” (esp. mining industrial). He is the founder of Blacksilk Records. Ostracism cassette and digital album.

„existing is useless. life is pointless. throw it away. be free” is the motto of the existentialist American DJ/producer COLLIN STRANGE, founder of the early American power electronics act Intrinsic Action which started in 1984. How I Creep cassette and digital album out now.

„We are still mythical;
we are still
permanently trapped
somewhere between the heroic and the pitiful”

Kate Tempest, writer, musician

„Metrical rigour and adroit rhyming are not yet among her accomplishments. She has a pretty, cherubic face, framed by unbrushed red blonde hair and she speaks in a Caribbean lite patois that translates ‘those things’ into ‘dem fings’. This linguistic pattern has many fans among the elite. It’s seen as an emblem of barbarous innocence, of instinctive passions bred in the ghetto, of an unschooled and therefore superior creativity. And it particularly excites Arts Council grandees who believe their mission is to reach down to the uncivilised and protean human type. Which Tempest perfectly represents.”

About Kate Tempest’s poetry by Lloyd Evans playwright and sketch writer in good old British conservative magazine The Spectaor. He also says „She is also pessimistic to the point of superstition. She sees malevolence everywhere.”

from the album Let Them Eat Chaos on Fiction Records (UK). Her former records were released by Big Dada/ Ninja Tunes.

„Illusion, my darling, everything is just illusion. Believe me! Causeless bustle, but many of us think it is the order itself. Childish illusion. But the method, it is deserving.”

Alexander the Lame

USA was having trouble
What a sad, sad story
Needed a new leader to restore
Its former glory
Where, oh, where was he?
Where could that man be?
We looked around and then we found
The man for you and me

And now it has begun. Dismantle Obamacare – build a wall (Chinese Great was ineffective, Berliner stood for 28 years, many people were killed when they tried to cross, it was demolished by the citizens in 1989) – use water torture –  climate change and environmental pollution do not matter. And the lies are just „alternative facts” by Counselor to the President, Kellyanne Conway, who thinks herself as a patriot.

„You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages – they haven’t ended yet” – wrote American writer Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Deadeye Dick.

*

LANA DEL RABIES is the solo dark experimental electronic project of American media artist Sam An. She creates rhythmic chaos from digital and analog sources. Combines beats, noise, synths and a passion for horror soundtracks into a futuristic brand of goth that still loves the technologically curious days of early death rock.

„Everything feels messy at the moment. Expresses all of our fears with this appropriate cover of David Bowie. Cthulhu release us all.”

– I was travelling in Java when the first McDonalds went up: it was like, ‘for fuck’s sake.’ The invasion by any homogenized culture is so depressing, the erection of another Disney World in, say, Umbria, Italy, more so. It strangles the indigenous culture and narrows expression of life – said Bowie about his 1997’s song „I’m Afraid of Americans.” It was co-written with Brian Eno. He has written recently

„I think Donald Trump is a complete disaster. And Brexit is a disaster too. That said, what I think is an even greater disaster is that we in the US and the UK – and increasingly the rest of the world – live inside political systems that can produce absurd results like these.

We now see political careers built upon lies and deceit and encouraged by openly biased media organisations, more concerned about revenue and ratings than giving the public real information. Democracy assumes an informed public: it doesn’t work if the media are corrupt.

Changing the faces at the top doesn’t alter anything if the whole machinery beneath them stays the same – the rich become the super-rich, the middle class stagnates and the poor get poorer.

My hope – the only hope really – is that Trump in office will reveal himself for what he really is, and that the public will roundly and unequivocally reject him and everything he stands for – his terrible policies, his jingoism, his arrogance, his childishness, his lies, his prejudices and his small-mindedness. In rejecting Trump we’ll also start to take down the whole malignant media-political structure that so lovingly nurtured him.

As I’ve written before, I believe that Trump can turn out to be not the beginning of a long decline, but the end of one – the turning point. For 40 years we’ve been sliding into a deepening pit of inequality, fear-driven nationalism and conservatism, and mostly not noticing.

Trump’s presidency could inadvertently change that – not because he’s going to do anything right but because his election is energising people to come to grips with the fact that their political system is fundamentally broken and it’s time to do something about it.”

*

The initial lyrics of this post is taken from musical The Producers.
Just I have replaced Germany with USA.

Just in time for the Trump presidency,

one of our favourite electro-hardcore-punks
TIT WRENCH releases their first album in years
titled Why Question Authority?

with all your favorite TIT WRENCH members:
Bob Barley, Pea Hix, Matt Anderson (Heroin/Gravity Records), Gunnar, Harpo;
are joined by J Lesser (Lesser) and Rob Crow
for a punk noise electro pop masterpiece.
Many guests stop by including Justin Pearson (Locust/Retox),
The Harpettes and too many others to list.

Buy it here

Poor’s Man Ministry – RNR666 podcast full with classic Tit Wrench hits.

Interview with Bob about TIT WRENCH on RNR666.

30 Years Anniversary Tribute Album for the Monsters

A tavaly 30 éves Monsters zenekar születésnapja alkalmából egy három lemezes sorozattal kedveskedett nekünk. A harmadik egy Monsters dalokat tartalmazó feldolgozás album. Tizenöt dal – azaz a bakeliten csak tizennégy, mert a Roy & The Devil’s Motorcycle tizenkét perces Pony Tail & Black Cadillac átirata csak a CD-re fért fel – de nem kell megijedni, mert a Voodoo Rhythm Records-nál évek óta a vinyl lemezhez automatikusan jár a CD is. Vannak a lemezen az istállóhoz tartozó bandák, és vannak baráti csapatok innen-onnan, kábé fele-fele arányban.

Jó az egész lemez, meg érdekes is, hogy ki, hogyan alakítja át saját képére a dalokat. Nekem egyértelműen a lemez második felén található hármas tetszik a legjobban, a 9-10-11. szám, amit akár ipari blokknak is nevezhetnénk, de legalábbis no wave-nek. Mindegy.

Sudden Infant kezd, ami Joke Lanz alteregója, aki a 90-es évek eleje óta készít noise / experimental felvételeket – de tonna számra! – és mint extrém body art művész is ismert. Az ő száma itt a More You Talk. Ezután Helios & Hess jön, akik a svájci ipari csapat, a Herpes Ö Deluxe tagjai. Velük készítette Beat-Man tíz éve a csodálatos Reverend Beat-Man & The Church of Herpes nagylemezt. Itt szerintem Monsters lemezekről vett hangmintákból vágtak össze egy dalt némi gitár gerjesztés és fémcsörömpölés kíséretében. A blokkot a Bigeneric, azaz Marco Repetto zárja, aki a legutolsó ‘M’ című albumról dolgozta fel a Let Me Spend A Night With Your Wife című dalt, és kreált az amúgy egyszálgitáros kesergőből egy minimál pszichedelik valamit. Ha a 90-es években egy DJ ezt rákeveri valami big beat lemezre, biztos hogy beőrültem volna! Nem mellékesen Marco Repetto 1977 és 80 között Bern – innen való a Voodoo Rhythm Records, és itt található a Voodoo Rhythm lemezbolt – első punk zenekarában a Gluemas-ban zenélt, ami később Grauzone lett, és volt is egy német nyelvterületen slágerlistás daluk, az Eisbar, amit éppen ő írt.

Nagyon fasza album, végül is az egész lemez nagyon jó, vannak beindult trash’n’roll-ok (The Sex Organs, The Devils), punk cuccok (The Failed Theachers, The Seniles), érzelmesebb dolgok (Dylan Walshe) vagy exotica (Ronaldo Bruno és Nicole Garcia, akit meg is tudsz hallgatni!). Borító űber, mint általában, nem Facebook barát, belül rengeteg sosem látott fotó a zenekarról.

Az ünnepi sorozat első lemezéről ITT a másodikról ITT írtunk.

Happy birthday Monsters, jó egészséget, meg minden!

Kornél (Új Látásmód Fúzió – cold wave synth pop) és
Csabi (Csermanek Lakótelep – no wave synth punk) duója

a STÍLUS EGYÜTTES ad ma este 11 órai kezdettel nagy sikerű koncertet RNR666/DAVORIA közös buliban Budapesten az Aurórában.

Utána DAVORIA LIVE ACT a techno zene kedvelőinek.

Belépő 800, mellé magazin mert

az alkalomra jelenik meg a C11H18N2O3 2. száma, melyből kiderül

Teljesülnek a régi álmok? Együtt változik-e ízlés és személyiség egy tudatos LSD túladagolást követően? Mit szeret magában Csermanek Csaba? Hova megyen Prince? Kié Bill bal cipője? Shitkid vagy Bianka? Láthatta-e Melies klasszikusát Kohn Náthán? Na és van-e lejjebb?

„Szilveszteri inspirációk 4.

Ha már keverjük a stílusokat, legyünk eredetiek. Ne menjünk a tömeg után, ne válasszuk a kiüresedett kliséket!”

„just in time for the holidays”

from MARSHALL APPLEWHITE next mixtape Suburban Boredom, out now on little Scottish label CLANDESTINE RECORDS on cassette and digital.

He says „If EDM is drug music, I am the anti drug.” But there was another Marshall Applewhite who also said very particular things.

After divorce, without job, in the state of depression a gay music teacher from Texas, Marshall Applewhite, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ met a woman who used to got instructions from a monk Brother Francis from the 19th century. They identified themselves as the two witness of God which are described by John the Revelator in his nightmare after an overabundant late supper. Those two have authority of prophesy, have power over sky and waters, and able to strike the earth with plague. They also concluded that they had been chosen to full fill biblical prophecies, so they went to proselytization tour, but without any success. Maybe because

„It would be impossible to explain to you who we are, where we come from, and who we represent. If we tried, you would not believe us. We exist in another dimension, which does not allow for the use of currency.”

This quote is taken from one of their sacred messages. This one was found in their room in a Holiday Inn.

The essence of their catechism

We have superior souls which are from other space and planted into our human bodies. We are here to teach people how to reach the next level of existence. To reach this state need to strip all the human habits and emotions, for example must to jettison from the luxury of thinking too. And when the time will come a spaceship will come for the true believers and take their souls to the Heaven and everybody else will die in a final fire shower.

The time came in 1997 with Comet Hale-Bopp, when an amateur astronomer took a photograph which showed a large metallic object behind the comet. So the 39 members of Heaven’s Gate group prepared themselves for the journey as guidance by the spiritual leader.

At first everybody went and bought the same type of black Nike shoes – because of the Nike logo is similar to a comet, but a „Heaven’s Gate Away Team” armband, passport, driving licence, a 5 dollar bill and some change also were needed. The latter because so they will be able to call home.

Finally they released their souls from the human body with a mix of medication of epilepsy, vodka and apple sauce, and before the final exit they set plastic bags on their heads. But they all slipped on a banana peel. The photo of the comet with that UFO was fake. So they in vain took out insurance on alien abduction.

*

Today news: Psychiatrists have urged parents to stop telling kids about Father Christmas because it could undermine trust in their parents and lead to „abject disappointment”. „If parents can lie so convincingly and over such a long time, what else can they lie about?”

„everyone believes in something that doesn’t exist, we’re telling people we don’t exist, that we’re a fictional band and

we want to write the biggest pop hits that the radio won’t touch.”

MOONLANDINGZ

In this fiction the persons are from the Fat White Family & The Eccentronic Research Council, and this phantom song is „our ode to the odious little England hegemony we have suddenly found ourselves sinking into”

from Blak Hanz EP on Transgression Records (UK) on 16 Dec

But maybe all of these are just games of the imagination.