tropical swiss kraut disco

from the new album on trouble in mind records (us):

Klaus Johann Grobe

Tour in April in US, in May In Germany

Hi! we are ni-hao! we have delightful music!!! virtuosic short pieces filled with stop and start precision, dramatic changes and charming vocals

just like Melt-Banana with Cibo Matto with Boredoms with Takako Minekawa with OOIOO with Omoide Hatoba.

ni-hao! (means hello in Chinese) was founded by two Japanese girls Green Leo and Blue Yuhari in 2000, then Red Ariko joined, after two mini albums first album Gorgeous on John Zorn’s label Tzadik in 2005, Leo quit in 2007, second album Marvellous in 2011 on Tzadik, third one NO RESPECT last year on CD but only in Japan by Less Than TV Records, and now it is released as digital album by Aussie label Tenzenmen. It has been made together with two American Mexican twin girls. They play a chaotic mix of pop hip-hop punk hardcore grind noise

Full album < buy there

A compilation album from 2005

Keel Her / Claire Cottrill split cassette

Keel Her aka Rose Jayne Keeler-Schäffeler is a London based alien-obsessed hyperactive girl from Brighton. Makes high standard lo-fi sometimes noisy bedroom pop. And managed by Satan. In 2012 the godfather of lo-fi, and World Champion of DIY home recordings, R. Steevie Moore invited her to play together at his studio in Memphis. And she is in The Bin Bags where playing violin, keys and vocals. Just released their first EP on Permanent Slump Records. (The third song in this playlist is from them.) She said in an interview: Being a female musician: it’s really fun, but sometimes lonely. I’m an outsider, but I always have been, regardless.

Claire Cottrill is a very young girl from Boston (Massachusetts, US). With her guitar she makes music under the influence of sixties soul and r’n’b and Korn.

Split cassette on Third Floor Tapes (Ardmore – formerly Athensville -, Pennsylvania, US)

Scottish electronic musician Jonnie Common has gone to his kitchen and made an album using only noises what he has found there. Here is an album preview

He’s releasing the album on a set of four hand-made fridge magnets. Each one of these magnets is unique because they were all cut directly out of a stomach-churning 80s cookbook. He says: inside each set, I have even gone to the trouble (and believe me it was painstaking) of including the name of the dish from which each magnet was taken. I must stress that the combinations (or menus) were chosen for what looked good together rather than what would taste good together but I did spread it out so that every set includes 4 different types of dish. The categories are: soups, salads & starters, meat dishes, poultry dishes, fish dishes, vegetable dishes, supper dishes, savouries & snacks, puddings & desserts, cakes & baking.

Kitchen Synch is going to be released on Song, by Toad Records on May 9th.

SURF HARP plays – they say – fuzzy artcore. It is something weird eclectic funny pop music. It has started as a personal surfgaze project of Phil in Baltimore (Maryland, US), but

Chris: Aaron, Dennis, and I were recruited to perform the Galápagos EP songs live, and eventually Jeff was too, and we were just playing what was already there. Then, with playing new songs as a group, the material evolved differently, especially because we were playing live pretty often and tweaking the songs as we went along.

Their music is inspired by

Jeff: In terms of my bass playing and songwriting, I am inspired by a wide range of artists. Everything from Scott Walker to Pavement to Mingus to Aphex Twin. It is difficult to explain the direct effect that this inspiration has on my songwriting. I never say “I really like Neu!, how can I write a song like „Hallogallo”. But I guess the verses of  „Pomegranate” are a direct result of my love for Krautrock.

Phil: The biggest influences for me on the songwriting and tones of the album were probably Devo and Ween. Actually, there was one part during the mixing where I asked Mat to pitch shift the rototoms on “Pain Kills” to sound like the opening of Mayhem’s album Deathcrush.*

Moreover there are violin, cello and marimba on their first album which has been released on CD and cassette by Friends Records (US). When I was listening to it two bands came to my mind: Brattleboro (Vermont, US) art rockers Happy Jawbone Family and early Unknown Mortal Orchestra.

*From an interview on bmoreart. Listen to all from SURF HARP! I love them.

Åsa Söderqvist aka ShitKid from from the land of 6 hours workday aka Sweden

Oh Please Be A Cocky Cool Kid + 666

from debut EP by PNKSLM RECS (UK/SWE) on 1 April

old but cool experiments

Albrecht Schrader den wundervollen Pop-Pianisten aus der Hansestadt Hamburg, der aber schon seit einigen Jahren in der Domstadt Köln wohnt. Leben in der Großstadt, so der Titel seiner kommenden EP spannt mühelos den Bogen von Steely Dan über Prefab Sprout bis Erobique

taken from „Leben in der Großstadt” EP out on Staatsakt March 18 2016

Influences: Serge Gainsbourg. Claudine Longet. Burt Bacharach. Henry Mancini. Blumfeld. Jane Birkin. Scott Walker. Tom Waits. Rocko Schamoni. John Lennon. The Divine Comedy. Cole Porter. Morrissey. Bob Dylan. Francoise Hardy. Harry Nilsson. Ennio Morricone. Elliott Smith. Vince Guaraldi. Claude Debussy. Prefab Sprout.

Albrecht Schrader Live
12.04. Köln, Studio 672
13.04. Hamburg, Kleiner Donner
14.04. Berlin, Monarch

NP221 Daisy Chains „Above Board” C26 (full album stream here)

Daisy Chains is a very responsive Minneapolis trio. Minimalist fuck you pay me post punk leanings intersect slow country drawl and rock and roll swagger in interesting ways to create something unique that also nods to greats such as Dead Moon, Beat Happening, and Opal.

NP223 Stefan Christensen „Isreal (Its More of the Same)” C32 (full  album here)

Stefan Christensen was the lead man in long running New Haven Connecticut arty DIY punk outfit the Estrogen Highs (e.g. Trouble in Mind, Telephone Explosion, Dead Beat or Southpaw Records), and hc-punk band Iron Hand.

He has walked away to a more abstracted discordant and subtle area of the post punk. Kiwi influences such as This Kind of Punishment, the Dead C, Alastair Galbraith and the Xpressway label sound stick out along with the Mike Rep Ohio scene of weirdo rock and the general goodness of early UK DIY as prime vantage points.

He is running C/Site Recordings. Now they have launched a store with releases available from Estrogen Highs, Stefan Christensen, Pieces of Fruit, Worn Leather, Mountain Movers, Medication, Phemale, and Jon Eriksen. First batch of cassette releases coming in the spring, which will include releases from Stefan Christensen, Medication, and more.

The Liminanas is a French 60’s style guitar pop duo. Their every song is excellent, like this new one with Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order) on bass and vocal

but if you listen to one of their albums the second song: so good, third one: so-so, forth: boring. I could not listen to a Liminanas album to end yet. And I like this style. I hope I will do it in the case of the new album. Malamore will be released on Because Music in April.

Französisch Neue Deutsche Welle. With mediewal, afro and oriental rhythms. So sehr putzig! Well, it’s funny enough.

Heimat consists of Olivier from Cheveu and Armellie from The Dreams. Debut LP by Teenage Menopause Records (Europe) and Kill Shaman (US).

Cover art by Alexander „the Great” Lobanov, a deaf and mute and lunatic artist. He was a prototype of the Soviet human.

For example there was the Trinidad calypso musician Lord Executor (1884-1952), he could not imagine it. This song is a late answer to him by Swiss mish-mash folk pop band Pussywarmers

from their latest album I Saw Them Leaving (Wild Honey Records). You can find chansons, folk ballads, psychedelic beats, rocks and seagulls on it. Listen to it in full! Buy here

Some days back I have found a Devoish synth punk band, it was called Distractor. Since then I have been listening to their one and only album continuously.

When I went to the work, when I came from, there was no other option, there was no question, click the continuous playing on my phone and „got some dirt, got a shovel”. Today I was strong. I forced myself to stop it. Of course I am listening it now again. There are just hits and funny anthems on ukulele, trombone, guitar, bass and synth. Here are three songs: Went to the Store, Dig Dug, and Devotion

„We were in Glen’s Buick one day listening to Gary Numan M.E. and he was singing along to it and I remember thinking, woah… Glen can sing. That was my first memory of it all. Maybe like a year later we were bored sitting in his garage. At that point in both of our lifes, we really had nothing going on at all. Days came and deflated into the next. I had an old Casio that had bounced around my friends, he had a trumpet he got when he was eight or something… and with that, we sat down and wrote our first song called All the Fucking Things Do

The album was released as digital in March 2015. Buy it here. It has been released on cassette this year by Burger Records. But you can download it free. And there are freakish videos for every songs. And here is some live footage. And nothing more. Never. Glen died of serious illness last year autumn. He was 25. And maybe he already rest in space.