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?

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.

New Yorker PARQUET COURTS is a punk band. Hard to say anything else. OK, compared to Total Punk Records style punk bands they rather play pop music. Their influnces come from Velvet Underground, Ramones and Talking Heads, but I also hear The Fall and even Country Teasers in their music. I remember their first album was a big revelation for me. There the sound was more punk than on the next ones. Fortunately, unlike many others they don’t write the same record year by year. And now with the new album WIDE AWAKE we arrived to New Orelans:

SHILPA RAY  new EP  NIHILISM  on 16 May

The song “Shoot This Dying Horse” is a rainy day waltz about how bad things can happen to anyone, at any time in the most random and meaningless ways. More specifically, it’s about getting dumped at a bar two days before Christmas. It was inspired by and written after binge-watching the Grateful Dead documentary series Long Strange Trip.

On the B-side, there is an Alice Cooper cover. The story behind this version is that she and her band listened to this one a lot on tour. When she paid closer attention to the lyrics, she realized if sung by a woman the song could be a feminist anthem.

„What have I got
That makes you want to love me
Now is it my body
Or someone I might be
Or somethin’ inside me”

The original one.

Digital and limited cassette editon on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)

This was a happy Wednesday morning because I have got the new album ROACH GOIN’ DOWN of American avant-punk girl trio PALBERTA. On this album Ani, Nina, and Lily continue to pave the way as innovators in the field of guitar-based music, delivering a barrage of twisted, catchy hymns that manage to be both challenging and feverishly compelling. They combine the band’s signature frenetic instrumentation with a thoroughly developed pop sensibility that fans merely glimpsed on previous releases. And this time it’s grounded by a lyrical nuance and newfound melancholy that gives the record an air of maturity compared to previous releases. But best describe their music what I’ve found on their FB page:

“You wanna wabbada? Wap wap wap dabbada?
You see that mabada? ding ding dack dabbada?”

Album on Bandcamp

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.

“I got a right to say FUCK YOU!!!” is how the new album from guitarist Marc Ribot’s trio Ceramic Dog starts off, with Ribot howling in anger at corruption, tyranny, life in general, and nothing in particular. YRU Still Here? just in time to remind us that now is a moment when anger is necessary and unavoidable. Musically it continues the lineage of his earlier experimental no-wave/punk/noise groups Rootless Cosmopolitans and Shrek:

Beside Ribot you can find Shahzad Ismaily (Secret Chiefs 3, Will Oldham, Ben Frost) on bass and drummer Ches Smith (Xiu Xiu, Secret Chiefs 3, Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant).

And Ribot? For me he is known about his works with John Zorn, The Lounge Lizard and Tom Waits, but he played together such musicians as Solomon Burke, Beth Orton, Marianne Faithful, Caetano Veloso, Laurie Anderson, Cibo Matto, Vinicio Capposella, Auktyon (Russia), Alain Bashung, Madeleine Peyroux, Sam Phillips, Norah Jones, The Black Keys, Robert Plant, Elvis Costello and many others. And of course he has released lots of album under his own name. He has also worked for decades as a tenant union and artist rights activist, where he mastered the agit-prop skills used to such dazzling effect on hits such as “Fuck La Migra” and “Muslim/Jewish Resistance”.

The album „YRU Still Here?” will release soon on Northern-Spy (US), Yellowbird (Europe) and P-Vine Records (Japan). It’s my favorite album since I’ve got it.

‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’

By Jonathan, SHILPA RAY could be Patti Smith and Iggy Pop love child with Allen Ginsberg as the midwife. Maybe, I do not know, but her new album DOOR GIRL released now, and it is among the best ones this year. She is coming from New York, living in a love and hate relationship with the city where she works as a door girl at Pianos bar. And this door girl tells stories about the city and its people who are living in a big sweet rotting apple like worms.

She has started to write this album after she was rejected by record labels and booking agents because ‘she doesn’t write strong enough hooks.’ ‘Fuck it! You want a strong hook? I’ll give you a fucking strong hook!’ And then she wrote the first song for the album in about an hour or so, really angry.

Musically this record is all digging into what she felt was indigenous from New York City, so a lot of the influences came from doo-wop, punk, noise, hip-hop and no-wave.

This song ‘EMT Police and the Fire Department’ is about a hot summer night at the Pianos when somebody called the ambulance, the cops, and the fire-brigade, and they arrived at the same time

‘It was like one of those nights in the summer when you know there’s a lot of trouble about to happen, because it gets swampy and hot and everybody goes crazy… I’ve definitely seen people fighting in the front. It breaks out in this massive wave: it gradually happens and then somebody calls out some kind of a sexist or racial slur, because they always just go to that… Then the whole place just goes crazy. I’ve definitely seen somebody break a bottle over a guy’s head before over something really stupid.’

DOOR GIRL ON TOUR in October in UK, France, Italy, Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic, in November in the US. So if you want a strong hook, she will give you a fucking strong hook.

UK DATES: 3 > Brighton – Green Door Store, 4 > London – The Social, 5 > Glasgow – 13th Note Cafe, 7 > Gateshead – The Central Bar, 8 > Hull – Adelphi Club

If you want to know more about her songs, she talks about here

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

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

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.