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Saul Conrad in Europe Again!
The American musician, Saul Conrad plays „hard to categorize”, perhaps „experimental chamber pop” or „other” music on piano and guitar with surprising key changes, nonsensical rhythmic shifts, overlapping melodies, and folk elements.
His third album (read about!) – which is more popular than previous two (listen to!) – was influenced by Kirkegaard and William Blake, Townes van Zandt and Blaze Foley, Harry Nilsson and Syd Barret, and more. Sycamore, from his 1st album
10/19 London, UK – The Windmill, Elliot Smith tribute night
10/20 Ford, Argyll, UK – Ford House 10/22 Avellino, Italy – Godot Art Bistro
10/23 Budapest, Hungary – Hátsó Kapu 10/24 Budapest, Hungary – Müszi
10/25 Vienna, Austria – Mo.e 10/26 Lyon, France – Kraspek Myzik
10/29 Hamburg, DE – Hasenschauke 10/30 Berlin, DE – Madame Claude
10/31 Leipzig, DE – HanDstand und Moral
Bang Bang
Speedy Wunderground is a very special little label in London. It was formed in early 2013 by the producer Dan Carey. He worked together with Franz Ferdinand, Bat For Lashes, TOY, Django Django, Emiliana Torrini, The Kills, Kylie Minogue, Tame Impala among others.
The Speedy Wunderground works under strict rules: Dan will produce all releases. All records will be recorded at Dan’s studio. Recording of all records will be done in one day and finish before midnight. Mixing will be done the day following the recording, also in one day only. There will be no lunch break during these days. The core of each song will be a live take recorded in the dark with smoke and lazers and somewhere on each record the Swarmatron (a hand-built analogue synthesiser) will make an appearance. The recordings will appear in limited runs of 250 7”s.
Natalie Bang Bang is a Riot Grrrl. She said it. And made mention of Serge Gainsbourg, David Bowie, Madonna, A$AP Rocky and David Byrne as her top musicians. And picked Loser by Beck as her national anthem. But nevertheless she is just a teen spice girl in soft Madonna style. Maybe this post punk disco track is her first really good song
7″ will be released on 3rd Nov by Speedy Wunderground
Okay, but what the hell does Kythibong mean?!
KYTHIBONG, French independent record label, Nantes.
Records from electro-pop to arith-metal.
They have sent such well-known artists as
Pneu, Kommandant Cobra, Piano Chat, Sieur & Dame,
Vagina Town and Binidu in the direction of world fame.
Is it a one man label or are there a bunch of fanatics?
We’re three people, Mric, Anthony and Marion.
How does it started and when?
It started more than 10 years ago, in 2002, because Room 204, one of Mric’s band, needed a structure, for administration, stuff and, of course, a first disc. Room 204’s drummer had this band that should be released for the world to hear, so we had a second release. Then this other friend had a musical project and, it’s not all so complicated to release albums, isn’t it . In a few years, without really deciding it, we were a label. The real decision was to go on with it.
What was the first release?
Room 204 (minimal jazz rock) is the first album with the name Kythibong on it, but it’s a co-production. Argument (noise rock) was the first release we did alone, as grown-up assuming themselves.
What were the big (or little) surprises, disappointments and mistakes?
Mistake and disappointment cannot really happen the way Kythibong functions. When we release something there is always good-enough reasons for it, a mixture of human-music complicity and, if we’re happy when a lot of other people agree with us that an album is awesome, we’re also fine when it’s not the case. And we love pile up CD boxes to play stronghold and knights. As for surprises, let’s say we’re always a bit surprised that people still want to work with us.
Can you play on any instruments? Have you ever been in a band?
Mric is the only one of us who can play on a guitar with some efficient results. He has two bands, Papaye and Room 204 (math rock/arith-metal), both on Kythibong, because we have no other choices if we want to avoid any big family drama. But actually, they are super great bands, so it’s ok. We’re lucky.
What do you do beside the music business?
Kythibong. And beside Kythibong, Mric is a musician, Anthony has a record shop and Marion is a screen-printer.
What are your upcoming releases?
Up coming next: an EP from The Healthy Boy and the Badass Motherfuckers (always raining)
a new LP from Gratuit (electro-pop) and somewhen soon a super surf album by a newcomer on Kythibong Les Agamemnonz.
Kythibong? What or Who is it?
We forgot, it was too long ago.
Takako Minekawa & Dustin Wong & Cats
Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa – Savages Imagination. Album review.
Let’s see my notes! Well, at first, who is Takako Minekawa?
Do you remember the J-pop explosion in the 90s? Exactly I think the members of shibuya-key movement, e.g. Pizzicato 5, Cornelius, Kahimi Kane, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Towa Tei, Maki Nomiya and others. Among them Takako Minekawa made the wittiest music. Her particular experimental electro-pop was influenced by the 60s French Yé-Yé and Brazilian Tropicalia movements, Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk, house and the fashionable electronic dance music of the 90s, for instance the Ninja Tunes’ artists. And her music was nevertheless unmistakeable Japanese. It was very playful and silly parade of sounds and moods. Between two catchy pop songs always was something peculiar, but funny abstraction, but often also inside the catchy pop melodies. Her records were released between 1995 and 2000, and there was a hit in 1996, Fantastic Cat
After 13 years silence she came back last year with a common album with Dustin Wong. He is a Hawaiian born half Chinese/half American guitarist. He grew up in Japan and went to college to the US. There he founded an experimental guitar duo with Matthew Papich (nowadays: Co La): Ecstatic Sunshine (2004-07), and a Deerhoofesque art rock band: Ponytail (2005-11). After the break-up he has begun solo career, and makes experimental guitar albums. And now here is the next Minekawa & Wong album. And it’s (or at least, I like it) better than the previous one. The music is very playful and silly parade of sounds and moods. Inside the songs, between two peculiar, but funny abstract electro-pop melodies, always are catchy pop tunes. Unfortunately many people averse to the phrase „pop”, and same time they consider „rock”, „metal” and „punk” as positive things, when there are many load of shit under the label of „rock”, „metal” and „punk.” This is pop, because this is not rock. Rather alternative disco a la Mouse on Mars.
And here is another strange thing. The „Savage Imagination” comes the Beastie Boys in my mind, while this is almost entirely instrumental album. And this fact has been observed after I listened to it many times! Well, their rate of creativity is equivalent with the mentioned boys.
LP and CD out on 22 September by Thrill Jockey Records (US)
CD and digital on Plancha Records (Japan)
And finally let’s see the cats!
A rabbit tail long interview with Takako Minekawa Tovább / Read more »
From New Records
Little oriental and surf influenced Finnish psychedelic rock with some members from the death/thrash band Deathchain. Jess & The Ancient Ones have been personally selected by King Diamond himself to be the openers on his tour.
„Castaneda” 10″ EP on Svart Records (Finland)
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Collected works of the greatest French fuzzy neo yé-yé wave band, The Liminanas: „I’ve Got Trouble in Mind: 7″s + rare stuff from 2009-14. ” Some tracks are total Gainsbourg copies nearly word for word and beat for beat.
LP and maybe CD and digital by Trouble in Mind Records (US) on 30 Sept
Messy Ghost Pop from Secret Valley
Originally Secret Valley was an Australian children’s television adventure series. There was a holiday camp which had been transformed from a run down ghost town into a resort. The children often found themselves in battle against a gang of „bad” kids. These battles usually featured flour bombs and other food related missiles and everyone inevitably ended up in a big mess. The children have grown up and make this messy ghost pop music
Angry Loners Unite
from „The Glisten” 12″ EP by the Aussie lo-fi underground specialist Albert’s Basement
From New Records
Joanna Gruesome is among the best indie rock band. The Welsh group combines garage punk with indie pop in a very unique style. There will be released two split records soon. And in both case Joanna Gruesome is the much better. Maybe there are some tactics on one side. The first split is a 12″ EP with lo-fi indie pop band Trust Fund from Bristol
vinyl & digital on Reeks of Effort (UK) and vinyl on HHBTM Records (US)
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I very like Total Punk Records, not just for their releases, but also for their name. Because it’s absolutely enough to write that Golden Pelicans‘ debut album by Total Punk, and everything is clear
Simple Beauty
lo-fi, minimal, but real bed- & bathroom pop with 3 eggs
by Tomorrows Tulips
„Baby” & „Glued to You” from the album „When”
Strange Yonder (AUS, Sept 22) – Ayo Silver (EU, Sept 27) – Burger Recs (US, Oct 7)
They have written that their new album shows the band’s evolution through a blend of pop sensibilities with post punk and noise rock. OK, but every music after punk is post punk. And compared to this, every rock is noise.
Baroness von Sacher-Masoch
This month will be released the next album of the British singer and actress Marianne Faithfull, entitled Give My Love to London. From Paris, because she is living there.
Her life was pretty vicissitudes. She has begun her singing career as a folk music performer in coffeehouses in 1964. Her first hit was „As Tears Go By” was written by Jagger, Richards and then Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham. It was one of the first original compositions by Jagger and Richards, as until that point The Rolling Stones had chiefly been performing blues standards. Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in order to force them to write a song together: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.” The song was given to her. Later the Stones also recorded it.
As Jagger’s girlfriend in these years she made big impression on the Stones. For example she is co-author of Sister Morphine. First it was recorded by herself with Jagger, Ry Cooder, Jack Nitschze and Charlie Watts, and was released as B-side of her single in 1969.
From New Records
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
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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)
From New Records
Susan from LA. Indie guitar pop with garage rock taste. Quite like a band from the better ones on Slumberland Records. Sometimes so good like the Breeders. Drummer from Texan garage rock band Cowabunga Babes, and its garage punk side project The Vomettes.
Debut 7″ on Volar Records (US)
+ cassette with 2 more songs on Burger Records (US)
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The Canadian quartet New Swears play Black Lips-like garage rock’n’roll while they name the infamous, hyper dirty ultra sexual rap gang, 2 Live Crew as influence. I think no need to say more:
„Junkfood Forever, Bedtime Whatever” LP on Bachelor Records (Austria)
They’re on Euro Tour Now!
From New Records
Abridged version of John Schooley’s legend
„Details of the early life of John Schooley are sketchy. Various sources place his birth either in Columbus, Ohio or Vancouver, British Columbia. We do know that his family moved to the rural enclave of Niangua, Missouri when he was still quite young. His parents were sharecroppers, barely scratching out a living from the rocky soil of the Ozark Mountains. The youngest of eight or possibly nine siblings, John Schooley did not take to farming, or, apparently, work of any kind. He could be found, often as not, shirking his chores to hunch over his guitar. He would stomp his foot on a board or on the front porch, frequently scaring the cows. The family Victrola was stocked with any 78″s that could be found, mostly by Jimmie Rodgers, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Doctor Ross, and Don Van Vliet. Most evenings the family tuned to radio station KWTO out of Springfield, to hear the “Carter Sisters and Mother Maybelle with Chet Atkins and his Famous Guitar” perform as part of the syndicated “RadiOzark” network.
School was never to his liking and Schooley quit after graduating the fifth grade. Chafing at the dreary small town life of Niangua, Schooley left never to return. He rambled north to Columbia, Missouri. First trying to put together a hot-jazz combo along the lines of the then-popular Django Reinhart, but he was unable to find suitable musicians. Then, billing himself as “John Schooley and His One Man Band”, he rigged up a kick drum and hi-hat and began performing at “house frolics” and on the sidewalk in front of local record store Whizz Records. He met with minimal success. He was frequently chased away by the proprietor with a broom shortly after setting up. Being unwilling (or perhaps unable) to learn pop hits of the day, Schooley tried to force his listeners to dance to his own frequently atonal blend of blues and country, again with minimal success.
The musical scene in Columbia was so stagnant that when it was announced that bluegrass stars The Oblivians were coming to town, Schooley was able to secure the opening slot even though he had no band together at the time.” He founded the guitar, drum, and vocal trio The Revelators. Surprising success. „When the record, titled “We Told You Not To Cross Us” was released it caused a sensation in at least three Missouri counties and parts of Arkansas and Illinois. The Revelators were immediately rushed off to a whirlwind tour of Europe, which included performances for the as-yet not-dead Princess Diana and Archduke Ferdinand.”
After the break-up he went to Texas „and took whatever work he could find, from oil roughneck to hotel elevator operator. He eventually started another musical combo, the Hard Feelings” while he continued performing as one man band. He added harmonica, snare drum, and washboard to his kick and hi-hat apparatus and recorded some songs. „Voodoo Rhythm recently uncovered the tapes of these songs, long presumed lost, in an oil drum outside of Lockhart, Texas.” Album preview
„The Man Who Rode The Mule Around The World” LP, CD
on Voodoo Rhythm Records (CH)
Euro tour with Urban Junior in Sept-Oct.
A missing moment of his legend: toured as an additional guitar player for the blues legend R.L. Burnside.
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The Family Fodder is among the funniest British bands ever. Since the mid-70s they have been playing really indie pop music, but literally! It’s independent from everything. So the best. Now here is a vinyl-only collection of 11 love songs, that have never before been released on vinyl. Alig Fodder says about it: „We collected all the love songs together without all the annoying instrumentals, dubs and solos.”
„Just Love Songs” LP on Staubgold Records (France)
You can find some music videos in reference to this album on their site.