I think no need to write too much about SHIT AND SHINE on this page ’cause everybody know it is an electro-noise-madhouse made by a Texan man. Its every album is a surprise because you never know what you get but you are never disappointed. This time that madhouse is a disciplined one, you can enjoy it on the new double album MANNHEIM HBF. To me it seemed as if would be a German travel diary so I have asked Craig

– Was it born during a Shit & Shine tour in Germany?
– It was indeed but also I lived in that particular region of Germany as a teenager and I loved it there.
– There are some hauptbahnhofs on the album. Why the Mannheim one was chosen as the title track?
– Because I kept ending up there to transfer trains while touring so it seemed fitting.

So I think „Mannheim Hbf” is analogue with Kraftwerk 4th album „Autobahn” which was inspired by driving on motorways. In this case the matter is the German railway, you can listen to its beats on this album where the second station is Kircheim. It is a town in Baden-Württenberg approximately 35 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of Stuttgart. It is located on the small river Lauter in the foothills of the central Swabian Alb:

Double album MANNHEIM HBF will be released on Texan label 12XU RECORDS on 28th of March.

It was a time full of adrenaline and rapid changes.

The second half of the ’80s. This was a decade marked by the rise in tension between the American and Russian blocks in the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirty years have passed since the historical events which dramatically changed the cultural scene of the Soviet Union forever.

A team of filmmakers decided to carry out their own investigation into the change that was started by one man: Indulis Bilzens. He stood by the birth of rave culture in Germany and successfully has brought it on the other side of Iron Curtain in the second half of the ’80s.

Techno first appeared in the Baltics in 1986.

Bilzens was born in Riga in 1940, in the last year of the first independent Latvian Republic. In this year happened the first Soviet invasion, and his father was deported to Siberia. Between 1941 and 44 the country was occupied by the Germans. His mother fled the country with him into West Germany because of the second Soviet invasion in 1944.

Bilzens studied English in Cambridge – and was involved in the British peace movement -, medical informatics in Bonn and Stuttgart, and electronic composition at the University of Düsseldorf. Worked for a number of German newspapers and organized avant-garde music events and exhibitions. He began to visit his homeland in the late ’70s (then part of Communist Russian Empire i.e. the Soviet Union).

His friendship with the German DJ Maximilian Lenz (WestBam) led to an interest in the new electronic music coming out of the US. He was involved in the founding of Low Spirit label, Love Parade, and Mayday parties. Bilzens and Lenz made repeated visits to Riga in the late ’80s, introducing DJ culture.

ERA OF DANCE

a film about the first techno beats in the USSR.

More videos from the film.

A long article about the movie on Deep Baltic

„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

He is JAKUB from our favourite Czech disco punk band I LOVE 69 POPGEJU

at RNR666 PARTY in Budapest a few years ago. His solo album

ARE YOU HUMAN? CONFIRMED.

will be released in November on MIK MUSIK, BDTA and FLESH&BRAIN. If you are interested to buy a copy ask them.

Pic by Mark Martinko

Christophe Clebard, a Belgian electronic musician, at the moment in Vancouver. His new cassette „Suce moi” will be released on 30th September by Canadian label Agony Klub.

Hard to categorize, but it is telling that he published music as Tucano on Italian NO=FI Recordings, home of strange other music (Hiroshima Rocks Around, Cheveu, Trouble Vs Glue, OvO, Dan Melchior, Maria Violencza and more). Of course RNR666 gave news from Tucano. Then I wrote about his music: psychedelic no wave disco with gothic and oriental moments. Then he used Italian, Polish and Englisn langueges, now he uses French. Some phrases what came to my mind by his brand new tape: minimal, electro, acid, techno, industrial, in 80s retro style, when the Belgian undergroung electronic scene was dominant. And it called a French music collective Grand Triple Alliance Internationale De L’Est to my mind, there are some similar acts like The Dreams, Klaus Legal or Cheveu.

After Kraftwerk’s Autobahn here is the „Interstate” by The Pen Test

LP on Moniker Records (US)

*

Heavy trip-hop-like music by Canadian band, Dralms

debut 7″ on Fulltime Hobby (UK) and Fat Possum Records (US) and digital single

Not many people can front a rock band, sing Górecki’s Third Symphony, lead a marching band processional down the streets of the Sundance film festival and perform in a baroque opera of their own composing — all in a month’s time. But Shara Worden can. She came from a musical family of traveling evangelists, went on to study operatic voice and then classical composition not only in the States, but also in Moscow, where she made her first records. Since 2006 she has been making art pop records under the name of My Brightest Diamond. And there were many collaborations with such artists as Laurie Anderson, David Byrne & Fat Boy Slim, Sufjah Stevens, Prefuse 73, Recoil, Bon Iver, The Blind Boys of Alabama and more.

„This Is My Hand” album on LP,CD, digital on Asthmatic Kitty (US)

She also in a very famous artist Matthew Barney’s brand new cine-opera, the „River of Fundament„, together with Salman Rushdie, Mike Tyson, Debbie Harry and Zeena Parkins, but it’s „such a mess that I sincerely hope I will never have to endure a second viewing” – wrote a critic.

The beauty of it is that she was born in El Dorado

Euro tour in Oct

*

Classic industrial techno disco tracks taken from the split LP of STATIQBLOOM and ZEX MODEL

STATIQBLOOM is the German born Fade Kainer from New York. He has industrial metal background (Batillus, Inswarm, Theologian), member in tour band of Jarboe (Swans). ZEX MODEL is a project of Paul von Aphid from Russia, Kaliningrad (aka Königsberg, East-Prussia). It’s dedicated to mutant sounds of 80’s WaxTrax and Nettwerk Records. The split will be released later this month on Desire Records (France)

Electronic band Borghesia was formed by members of an alternative theater group in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (today Slovenia) in 1982. In the early times their music was influenced by new wave, electro-pop, disco and EBM. Then they took a more EBM direction. Their records were released by influential, then industrial and EBM specialist Play It Again Sam Records. Borghesia stop its activities around 1995 and came back in 2009. As a theatrical multi-media project, and also musically they show some similarities with Laibach. And vice versa.

marketing, media, hr, politology, any ism
We Don’t Believe You

from the album „And Man Created God „on Metropolis Records

Barbara Lehnhoff didn’t want to become a musician – like so many other individuals, but her debut album under moniker of Camilla Sparksss is better than the new Laibach. You can find danceable technoid rhythms and electro-industrial punk tunes on it.

Barbara grew up in Canada amongst Indian reserves with a little brown bear. She is master of tracking and trapping, and knows the smoke signals.  Then she went among alpine natives of Swiss-Italian borderland to learn economic, graphic design and film making.

„I started playing bass in 2004 when I was studying video in Lugano, Switzerland. I needed a soundtrack for a short film I was working on and so I met up with Aris and we started recording.” And art punk band Peter Kernel was born from this co-operation. They were invited by Spencer Krug from the Canadian band Wolf Parade to open for their European tour in 2010.

How does Camilla Sparksss started?

Camilla Sparksss started while I was unloading my 8×10 Ampeg bass cabinet for the 15th time while we were touring Peter Kernel. I looked at Aris and said “we need to start a lighter project”. (…and of course we’ve always wanted to start something electronic).

(An 8×10 Ampeg bass cabinet’s dimensions: 120 x 66 x 40, around 65-75 kg. – editor’s note)

CS is absolutely another musical world than P. Kernel. What are the main musical influences of CS?

I think CS is a different style from PK, but if you listen carefully both projects are very similar. They’re both minimal, instinctive and raw. The main difference lies in the production and instruments used. At the begging we wanted to transform PK into electro, but as we started writing the songs we became nostalgic of the “acoustic” punch of a live band. So we decided to give Peter Kernel a little sister called Camilla Sparksss. But both projects are influenced by what we’re experiencing in our everyday lives and how we feel in the moment. Musically we listen to very different kinds of music, at the moment my favourite band is Moonface. It’s the solo project of  Spencer Krug.

Are there any non-musical projects?

I love making clothing, especially hand made T-shirts. You can check them on my Bandcamp page. And of course videos. Oh, and I love cooking, but I’m not very good at it.

*

On her shows there are two dancers. Anahì Traversi, a Swiss-Argentinian theater actress, and Miriam Vile, a Swiss-Italian „Gangsta” jewellery designer.  Next shows: 07 Jun > Luzern, Südpol (Switzerland), 19 Jun > Lyon, Sonic, (France), 21 Jun > Vesoul (France), 07 Jul > Lugano, Elettrolake Fest, Piazza Manzoni (Switzerland).

Three to get ready, Now go, cat go

TRANSFORMER RECORD STORE MATINEE
with international independent labels 

Totally Wired + Baba Vanga + HappyHappyNoiseNoise + RNR666 + Farbwechsel & co. + Last Foundation + 8ounce + Dzsukhell + Go Away + Itai Itai + The Dole Shirt + Freakyhouse + Legenda Records

& performers

21h GRAN live (AT, Totally Wired)
22h Küss Mich feat. Mike, Sirius & Darktunes, Dee Rüsche, Splatter & Gördön

APRIL 12  16:00  BUDAPEST  BEAT ON THE BRAT      facebook