Muse - Feeling Good

#Muse #alternative rock #progressive rock #space rock #hard rock #art rock #electronic rock #alternative metal #The Roar of the Greasepaint-The Smell of the Crowd

Songwriter Leslie Bricusse died in October 2021 at the age of 90. Bricusse was responsible for some of the most memorable songs of the 20th Century. He wrote the lyrics to the James Bond themes Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice, composed Talk To The Animals from the musical Dr. Doolittle and with his frequent collaborator Anthony Newley, wrote the song Pure Imagination from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. With Newley, the songwriter was also responsible for one of Muse's most memorable tracks - Feeling Good. The band recorded a version of the song for their 2001 album Origin Of Symmetry and it’s gone on to be a rock classic. But it almost didn’t happen, as Matt Bellamy has revealed.
“We didn’t do any covers at all,” he said. “We’d all been in covers bands when we were younger, so we wanted to do our own music.” However, the version of Feeling Good by Nina Simone caught Bellamy’s ear. “My girlfriend at the time,” he recalls, “her favourite artist was Nina Simone, and she was listening to it all the time. I kept hearing that song Feeling Good and I just thought, with Chris’s distorted bass line, that could be really good.” The track was chosen as the penultimate track on Origin Of Symmetry, and was considered strong enough to form a double A-sided single with Hyper Music in November 2001.
But Nina Simone wasn’t the first artist to record Feeling Good. In fact, it’s a show-stopping number from a Broadway musical. Feeling Good was written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for their 1964 production The Roar Of The Greasepaint-The Smell Of The Crowd, which opened in Nottingham in the summer of 1964 and transferred to Broadway in 1965. Newley was an interesting character, having been a pop singer and actor and a huge influence on a young David Bowie. The Roar Of The Greasepaint-The Smell Of The Crowd is a strange piece: the main characters are “Sir” and “Cocky”. Sir is taking Cocky through the Game of Life, but the younger, less inexperienced man always comes a cropper.
The musical had a hit with Tony Bennett’s take on Who Can I Turn To and the barn-storming number The Joker later became known as the theme tune to the Aussie TV comedy Kath & Kim. One of the key moments come when the two are arguing over the rules of “The Game” and a new character, a black man, steps forward and wins the game behind their backs. He sings Feeling Good as an expression of triumph over the oppression of the other characters. The song was first performed by actor Cy Grant and then by Gilbert Price in the Broadway run. In the hands of jazz singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone, Feeling Good became a powerful anthem for the times. Simone recorded the track for her album I Put A Spell On You in June 1965, and the version became for many the definitive reading of the song, that is, until Muse came along.  From: https://www.radiox.co.uk/artists/muse/why-did-muse-cover-feeling-good/

Emiliana Torrini - White Rabbit

 #Emiliana Torrini #alternative rock #trip-hop #electronica #dream pop #singer-songwriter #Icelandic #Jefferson Airplane cover

An Icelandic singer/songwriter whose music embraces elements of folk, electronica, pop/rock, and trip-hop, Emilíana Torrini has earned favorable comparisons to such vocally gifted artists as Beth Hirsch, Kirsty Hawkshaw, and Bjork. Torrini was raised in Kópavogur, where she worked at her father's Italian restaurant and attended opera school as a teenager. After releasing three albums in her native Iceland (Spoon, Crouçie D'où Là, and Merman), she joined forces with Tears For Fears’ Roland Orzabal to produce her first widely released effort, 1999's Love in the Time of Science. The famed Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson heard her cool, otherworldly croon and approved Torrini to voice the finale music for 2002's The Two Towers, a job that Bjork had previously accepted before backing out due to pregnancy.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/08j69Ndyx1P7RLO3Janb5P

Tobacco - Streaker

 #Tobacco #Thomas Fec #electronica #alternative hip-hop #experimental rock #lo-fi #indietronica #ex-Black Moth Super Rainbow #music video

Thomas Fec, better known by his stage name Tobacco, is an American electronic musician. He is the frontman of the psychedelic rock band Black Moth Super Rainbow, in addition to working as a solo artist. As of late 2018, he has teamed up with rapper Aesop Rock to become the music duo Malibu Ken, releasing their self-titled debut album in January 2019. Little is known about Tobacco, as he, along with the rest of Black Moth Super Rainbow, is very private and rarely does interviews. It is known that Tobacco grew up in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Hampton High School in 1998 along with bandmate Seth Ciotti. In a 2009 interview with Skyscraper Magazine, Tobacco said that his name derived from "a character that freaked me out as a kid, the Tobacco Man," referring to the character from the film Redneck Zombies. In a 2016 interview with Song Exploder podcast, Tobacco discloses that he doesn't know "any instruments," but that he became enamored with a four-track recorder that his parents gave him while he was in high school. Tobacco released his first solo album, Fucked Up Friends, in 2008. It was recorded using entirely analog equipment. Rolling Stone said of the album, "one of the year's best stoner-rock records - only it's powered by synths, hip-hop beats and vocoders instead of guitars."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_(musician)

On the surface, there’s nothing especially secretive about Tom Fec. He’s easy to find online, particularly in photos, playing both in his solo project Tobacco as well as the band Black Moth Super Rainbow. He lives in Pittsburgh, a working-class Rust Belt city once anchored by steel and brick. And yet a definite mythology has developed around Fec over the years. Critics write that he’s mysterious and reclusive, because his bands often play with masks on, and because he doesn’t generally talk about his personal life in interviews. That sense of mystique is due, at least in part, to the way his music sounds. His songs have an ominous air, his vocoded voice sounding like a badly mic’d cult leader, or a B-movie horror villain. On his upcoming album, Sweatbox Dynasty, he recorded every instrument onto a cassette before mixing it into the track, giving it a warble and fuzz. The result sounds like a record that’s been left out on a 100-degree day. Despite the fact that his music has garnered critical accolades, Fec shies away from the spotlight. He doesn’t want to headline your festival or talk about his influences. He doesn’t want to be part of any scene, or to be pigeonholed as a “psych rock” artist. He just wants to make his bizarre music in peace and play shows for the people who like it. These desires sometimes conflict with the realities of being a musician in the 21st century, who needs to be known to make a living.  From: https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/tobacco-interview?utm_source=footer 

The Broken Penis Orchestra - Easy Listening for Difficult People

 #The Broken Penis Orchestra #plunderphonics #noise #experimental #sound art #electronic #sound collage #psychedelic noise

a1 Timothy Leary in his death bed
a2 The pope's pot, penis and pussy
a3 A struggle for supremacy over the axe makes a good man humble
a4 Fornication under the control of the king
a5 Easy listening for difficult people
a6 The whore of Babylon
a7 Ball buster

Lots of collage-weirdness, not for stress-sensitive people. Dick Flick, conductor in chief, displays a wild and twisted array of sound collages that pull your ears through your brain and back again, (not unlike early Negativland or Nurse With Wound).

Euzen - Phobia

 #Euzen #Maria Franz #experimental rock #alternative rock #progressive rock #electronica #indie rock #Danish #music video

Euzen is a young, highly talented and ambitious band, situated in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their music is experimental, progressive and electronic, with the main focus of creating innovative music, which is both catchy and complex. Euzen present a variety of expressions in a grand musical universe filled with both acoustic and electronic instruments, completed by the captivating vocal range of the charismatic Norwegian singer Maria Franz. It's harmonic and intense, intricate and accessible, the total listening experience is completely and utterly unique and offers a fresh angle to electronic music.  From: https://www.womex.com/virtual/westpark_music/euzen

From the first accords of the Euzen’s ‘Metamorph’ you slide into a magical world of a great piece of work. This must be one of the best electronic releases of this year. Brave and bright, experimental and solid, melodic and light this album is exactly what you expect from a band from somewhere like Denmark. Probably it is not a good thing to mention the nationality in the context of music, but it would be ignorant as well to skip this aspect. There are international trends and terms like Eurohit. But this is exactly what we, the lovers of underground music, hate, right? Those who know the value of the music are looking for authentic and original pieces. And only those musicians who embrace their background are able to bring out something like this. Euzen is a brilliant example. Listening to them it is easy to identify they have some Nordic roots. On the one hand the music of Euzen is quite simple. There are not much of elements or tracks. The compositions of the songs are very ordinary and pop, just like many others. But quiet low bass lines give some feeling of calmness and relaxation. The vocals – something between Bjork and CocoRosie – tell some fairy tales. The charming vocalist immediately catches the attention of the listener. And the guitars give it a drive and colour texture. Exactly, it is possible to feel this music with all of your senses. This must be something like drugs – when you think you’re in control and can get off any moment. But try to turn this album off, if you dare. No, you won’t! This album is absolutely must have for an easy listening, when you want to relax for a while, since this is a fantastic soundtrack for daydreaming.  From: https://www.reflectionsofdarkness.com/artists-a-e-cdreviews-131/15689-cd-review-euzen-metamorph 

Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name

 #Beth Orton #folktronica #folk rock #trip-hop #contemporary folk rock #electronica #singer-songwriter

Beth Orton is the rare vocalist who exists between disparate worlds; she is a singer with a folkie soul who is as comfortable accompanied by an acoustic guitar as by electronic rhythms. Indeed, most people first heard her on William Orbit's Hinterland album and on the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust. Likewise, her slightly askance vocal style seems to betray naiveté, while lyrically there is a world-weary depth that the latest spate of tough-talking Lolitas cannot muster. Each song's closely observed details create small ripples that grow to substantial emotional waves by album's end; this very promising debut (Trailer Park) should be the harbinger of great things to come from Orton, with or without the help of a Lilith Fair or anything beyond the integrity of her songs and the wise lilt of her voice.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Trailer-Park-Beth-Orton/dp/B000003RSF

As if being the poster girl for a convoluted sub-genre like folktronica weren’t bad enough, Beth Orton of Norfolk, England has also tried to live down (so far unsuccessfully) a phenomenal debut that was evidently a case of sheer timing — and quite possibly a baldfaced fluke. Her world-weary yet somehow still ingenuous voice — a seamless patchwork of the best Carole King and Rickie Lee Jones have to offer — has continued to be a pleasure.
Orton entered the scene through the agency of artist-producer William Orbit, a man able to make even Madonna sound cool. Calling themselves Spill, the duo put out a single in ’92 (a cover of cult guitarist John Martyn’s “Don’t Wanna Know ‘Bout Evil”), with plans for a full-length album that evolved into Beth’s SuperPinkyMandy. A limited release for the Japanese market, the album collects ten Orbit-influenced soundscapes, including the Spill single and the first version of Orton’s signature tune, “She Cries Your Name” (which would resurface in different form on Orbit’s Strange Cargo series). After Spill was spent, she continued working with Orbit, and added memorably to tracks by the Chemical Brothers and Red Snapper, undertakings that made her something of a traveling big beat/acid jazz diva.
In ’96 she slowed down her guest-spot rotations to put out the introductory She Cries Your Name EP (re-released the following year with different songs) and the remarkable Trailer Park. Despite the sun-drenched cover shot, this is music for cloudy days. A unifying tone — as strong as any concept album around — makes even pretty ear candy like “Don’t Need a Reason” and “Sugar Boy” sound as perfectly sad as the mandolin-trimmed “Whenever” and the simple retelling of the Ronettes’ “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine.” For those in line for the trip-hop Beth’s known for, you’ll have some time to kill: producer/DJ Andrew Weatherall (Primal Scream, the Orb) steps in for three tracks of lingering beats (“Galaxy of Emptiness” being the best), but it’s delicate pop like “Someone’s Daughter” that fills the gaps. A new take on “She Cries Your Name” is the album’s apex, a faultless blend of acoustic picking, lush strings and Red Snapper’s Ali Friend on double bass.
From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/beth-orton/

Skrillex - First Of The Year (Equinox)

 #Skrillex #Sonny John Moore #dubstep #EDM #electro house #post-hardcore #house #music video

Skrillex First Of The Year – Music video analysis
00:00 Close-up shot of a seated man, wearing a trench coat, holding a candy between his fingers. The music does not start yet. We can hear a kind of wind noise. The camera makes a slow bottom-to-top panorama shot, revealing the torso then the man’s face: around 35-40 years-old, ordinary shirt, a few day’s stubble, glasses, head going bald. He watches the camera in a vaguely hostile way.
Characterization: this description of a “man with a candy” works straight away as a metaphor by metonymy (that is, the candy stands for what this man could do with it – seducing a child?), the first hint of pedophilia as the main theme, which will get confirmed hereafter.
False track: we understand just after that the look from the man to the camera was actually not aimed at us (the audience), but at some children playing in front of him. At the same time, this ambiguity has a function: to let the audience, from the very beginning, try to guess and to figure out the soul of this pervert man (one says that the eyes are the mirror of the soul)
00:17 Shot in the counter-position, framing the man from the back and revealing in front of him the scene he is watching: children playing.
Progressive revelation of the world of the plot: the world of the pedophile in our contemporary world.
00:23 A strike of drums launches the music in sync with the pictures that frame a concrete ground while zooming out and travelling with a backwards movement. The shadow of a little girl enters the frame. She hops in rhythm with the music.
Characters: first appearance of this little girl who is going to become the Hero. The progressive revelation of the pedophile, then of his potential victim, allows this information to dynamize the action and to make the theme of the plot easy to understand: the fight between a hunter and its prey.
Media: the synchronization between the pictures and the soundtrack (frequent in music videos) also helps here to mark the steps of the plot and to catch our attention at the key moments.
00:36 Shot of this blonde little girl, around 6-8 years, skipping alone in a narrow street. The picture is slower than real time. We now can distinguish a human shape a few dozen meters away from her.
00:40 Shot of the man in the same street. We understand that he is following her and the next shot confirms it by framing both of them in the one picture. Around them are industrial buildings.
Structure: now the data is clear, this event is the catalyst of a plot in which a little girl will have to defend herself against a pedophile who wants to abuse her. Note the smartness of the montage, which proceeds in a dialectic way: thesis (the little girl), antithesis (the pedophile), synthesis (both of them united in the same picture).
00:50 The little girl takes some stairs down to a basement floor. The man follows her, while taking glances around as though to make sure there are no witnesses.
Structure: the development, Act II, begins as a chase.
01:07 The man walks in the darkness underground. His glasses shine in a threatening way. He pulls a little bottle containing some green liquid out of his pocket, which he seems to be pouring onto his hand over something. Zoom-on now on a pocket from which the plastic arm of a doll is protruding.
Themes: until now, it has been a juxtaposition of cliches and archetypes: the pervert man, alone, vaguely disgusting and gloomy, the little girl happy and innocent, the doll a symbol of this innocence. Those cliches automatically generate some expectations in terms of scenario-standards: the pervert man will probably attack her, the little girl will probably be unable to defend herself, etc. These expectations need to be set up so that they can be better contradicted later on.
01:20 The little girl holds a red telephone handset to her ear. The man comes closer to her. They are alone in a large underground room. Only a few meters separate them.
Structure: this mise en scene obviously builds a feeling of imminent danger and we thus expect that the man carries out the attack, which would make us enter the crisis of Act III.
01:27 In sync with the music, the little girl suddenly screams “Call 911 now!” The lips movement is in sync, but the voice does not match. It’s not a little girl’s voice but the voice of a man with a rather high pitch or the voice of an older woman.
False track: this sudden and spectacular situation twist comes to contradict everything that the beginning of the video made us believe: that the little girl was defenseless and on the point of being aggressed by a man stronger than her. The terrifying power of her voice takes us totally by surprise and also contradicts the information we had about her: her youth, her sweetness, her candor.
01:29 In reaction to the aforementioned screaming, the room is disrupted by an explosion of smoke. The little girl now looks like a witch and she agitates her fingers in front of her face while staring at the man in front of her. He gets violently projected into the air, flying and landing several meters away. The little girl seems to be generating and controlling this incredible indoor storm.
Structure: against all odds, we witness a crisis of Act III, but not at all the one we expected, which means that we followed a false track: the little girl has become the super-powerful aggressor of this pedophile treated as a simple toy!  From: https://www.storyanddrama.com/skrillex-first-of-the-year-music-video-analysis/

Fifty Foot Hose - Cauldron

 #Fifty Foot Hose #underground rock #experimental rock #avant garde #noise rock #electronic #psychedelic rock #1960s

Fifty Foot Hose is an American underground rock band that formed in San Francisco in the late 1960s and reformed in the 1990s. They were one of the first bands to fuse rock and experimental music. Like a few other acts of the time, they consciously tried to combine the contemporary sounds of rock with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas. The original group comprised three core members: founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and vocalist Nancy Blossom, augmented by Kim Kimsey (drums) and Larry Evans (guitar).
Cork Marcheschi (born 1945) grew up in Burlingame, California. In his teens, he performed with the Ethix, who played R&B music in clubs around San Francisco and in Las Vegas, and released one experimental and wildly atonal single, "Bad Trip", in 1967, with the intention that the record could be played at any speed. Interested in the ideas of experimental composers like Edgard Varèse, John Cage, Terry Riley, and George Antheil, he constructed his own custom-made electronic instrument from a combination of elements like theremins, fuzzboxes, a cardboard tube, and a speaker from a World War II bomber.
David and Nancy Blossom brought both psychedelic and jazz influences to the band. Together, the trio recorded a demo which led to a deal with Limelight Records, a subsidiary of Mercury Records. They released one album, Cauldron, in December 1967. It contained eleven songs, including "Fantasy", "Red the Sign Post" and "God Bless the Child", a cover of a Billie Holiday number. It was an intriguing mix of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with fierce and advanced electronic sound effects. "I don't know if they are immature or premature", said critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The record sold few copies at the time, although the group had a small but intense following in San Francisco and also toured with other acts including Blue Cheer, Chuck Berry and Fairport Convention, when the band was augmented by Robert Goldbeck (bass). They broke up in late 1969, when most of its members joined the musical Hair, Nancy Blossom becoming the lead in the San Francisco production and later singing in Godspell.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Foot_Hose

tUnE-yArDs - Water Fountain

 #tUnE-yArDs #Merill Garbus #art pop #alternative rock #pop rock #worldbeat #indie pop #lo-fi #electronic #animated music video #puppetry

tUnE-yArDs, the duo of Merill Garbus and Nate Brenner, combine soulful vocals, unusual percussion, and trenchant social commentary into uniquely vibrant music. Starting with the raw collages of 2009's self-released BiRd-BrAiNs, the project immediately attracted attention for its impassioned sound and viewpoint. Though Garbus and Brenner polished their music slightly on albums such as 2014's Nikki Nack, the combination of their explorations of complex issues like race, gender, and privilege with bold song forms indebted to playground chants, work songs, and non-Western musical traditions remained as distinctive and acclaimed as ever. The duo took a more reflective, electronic-based approach on 2017's I Can Feel You Creep Into My Private Life. 2021's Sketchy, saw Brenner and Garbus combining more personal songwriting with the anthemic, kinetic style of tUnE-yArDs' earlier work.
Born in New York City and raised there and in Connecticut, Garbus had an eclectic creative background. She spent some time as a puppeteer at Vermont's Sandglass Theater and also played ukulele in the Montreal-based band Sister Suvi. She began writing and performing under the tUnE-yArDs moniker in 2006, using a digital voice recorder and shareware mixing software to assemble her first songs. It took Garbus two years to craft her debut album, BiRd-BrAiNs, which she offered on cassette and as a pay-what-you-want download on the tUnE-yArDs website. Thanks to frequent touring with artists like Thao and positive buzz from music blogs, the album became a cult favorite. In June 2009, Marriage Records released the album on cassette; that August, 4AD Records reissued it in a special screen-printed version before distributing a CD version of BiRd-BrAiNs in November that coincided with a tour opening for the Dirty Projectors.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/tune-yards-mn0002144063/biography

Tori Amos - A Sorta Fairytale

  #Tori Amos #alternative rock #piano rock #art rock #pop rock #chamber pop #baroque pop #electronic #singer-songwriter #music video

A Sorta Fairytale is the first single from Tori Amos' 2002 album Scarlet's Walk, a concept album in which Scarlet, a character loosely based on Amos, travels across post-9/11 America. In A Sorta Fairytale, Amos refers to how relationships with other people, whether long or short, are part of who you are, which means that you are never completely alone. The music video features Amos as a head attached to a disembodied leg and Adrian Brody as a head attached to a disembodied arm. The pair meet and fall in love, but Brody laughs at Amos' crooked fifth toe; she runs away to a beach, where Brody find her and they share a kiss. In response, their bodies emerge from their disembodied parts, making them into whole people through their love.
Notes for Parents: The lyrics of this song are suitable for all ages, but they are poetic and metaphorical and may require some explaining for younger girls. The tone of the lyrics seems very bittersweet, focusing on the loss of relationships, but the video shows a more optimistic view, with the lovers made whole by each other. The video images are strange, and some younger children may find them disturbing; there is also a scene revealing the emerging bodies of the pair. Nevertheless, the video is fascinating and provides an excellent illustration of the idea that the right person will love you despite what others consider flaws.  From: https://www.amightygirl.com/a-sorta-fairytale

Tori Amos is an American pianist and singer-songwriter. Her music walks the fine line between baroque pop and straightforward alternative rock. She has ventured off into other territories, like electronic (From the Choirgirl Hotel, To Venus and Back, Abnormally Attracted to Sin), funk/soul/gospel (The Beekeeper), big band ("Pink and Glitter"), adult contemporary (Scarlet's Walk, certain songs on The Beekeeper), country ("Not Dying Today", "Drive All Night") and even folk ("Wedding Day"). She has written about many topics, including rape, masturbation, war, religion, feminine sexuality, homosexuality (and related topics), betrayal, and... other things. Richard Croft said it best about the public's perception of her: "The image of Tori Amos most widely known in pop culture is sort of like an American Björk, a modern Kate Bush, a feminist icon, a screeching, red-haired banshee who flails wildly at the piano and sings all sorts of man-hating anthems for her throngs of similarly screeching, red-haired fans." Note that this description was tongue-in-cheek; she is not misandric, and her fans have a variety of hair colors.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/ToriAmos

Sophie - Faceshopping

 #Sophie #Sophie Xeon #avant-garde #experimental pop #hyperpop #electronic #avant-pop #dance-pop #bubblegum bass #avant-pop #music video

Sophie Xeon, stylized as Sophie, was an avante garde singer and producer behind some of the biggest names in pop music.  Before the artist’s unexpected death at 34 on Jan. 31, 2021, Sophie had pioneered the hyperpop subgenre - a radical blend of trance, electronic and hip hop music - and collaborated frequently with pop stars like Charli XCX. As a transgender artist, Sophie also inspired many LGBTQ+ listeners and queer musicians.
Sophie’s music is liberating in its absurdity and unconventionality. The sounds challenge the conventions of mainstream music, experimenting with auto-tune, vocal distortions and a complete abandonment of acoustic instruments. One of the most intriguing parts of Sophie’s music is how it simultaneously critiques and contributes to the pop industry. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Sophie noted that hyperpop strove not to make fun of pop music, but to push its boundaries and urge experimentation.
In the song “Faceshopping,” Sophie sings, “I’m real when I shop my face,” in a reference to Adobe Photoshop and the ability it provides to alter the way one is percieved. The dissonance that Sophie feels between the self that is physically presented and the self in Sophie’s mind can only be remedied by editing or surgery. Sophie validates body modification as a way of self-determination — an experience unique to the trans community and to those who experience gender dysphoria.
Sophie’s music is a peek into the future of pop. It’s deeply personal, openly critical and unabashedly fun. It uses machine-like sounds to reveal a true, human self. In a world where the digital and authentic are seen as antithetical, Sophie has shown us that real and synthetic can exist simultaneously, and we have the power to create our truest selves.  From: https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2021/02/li-sophie

OvO - You Living Lie

 #OvO #noise rock #sludge metal #industrial #extreme metal #experimental #avant garde #dark electronica #Italian

OvO is an Italian noise rock duo formed by Stefania Pedretti and Bruno Dorella in 2000 in Ravenna, Italy. The two initially planned for the band to be totally improvisation-based with an open lineup. After encouragement from members of their local music scene to become a band and tour, they decided to do so in order to play with Cock ESP, an extreme noise band from Minneapolis. Since, the pair have released eight full-length albums on a variety of international record labels. The origin of the band's name, OvO, stems from using a piece of the Italian word "nuovo", or new, which creates a palindrome. Decibel Magazine summarizes OvO's 2016 album, Creatura, as "making rhythmic, layered, sludgy noise" and a "David Lynch dance party.” Counting Swans and Diamanda Galás as their biggest influences, Pedretti and Dorella are known for primitive industrial sounds and Pedretti's theatrically dark vocals. The band is set up in minimalist fashion, with only two members, one of whom plays a half drum kit. Stereogum's Doug Moore described the band's sound as, "music – rhythmic noise, really – that simmers with a flat-affect malice, owing equal debts to extreme metal, noise rock, industrial music, and dark electronica," while Christian Eede of The Quietus recalled their music as being "punctuated by slamming, swampy drums, squalls of feedback and punchy guitar riffs, as well as Stefania Pedretti's no-holds-barred vocal."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OvO_(band)#cite_note-Decibel_Magazine-5

Chelsea Wolfe - Carrion Flowers

 #Chelsea Wolfe #dark folk #gothic rock #experimental rock #noise rock #ethereal wave #industrial #doom metal #black metal #electronic #singer-songwriter #music video

“What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin—to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it.”
– Henry Miller
Digging beneath the mess of the world to find the beauty underneath is perhaps the most consistent theme in Chelsea Wolfe’s expansive discography—a theme that ties together her ceaseless explorations in unorthodox textures, haunting melodies, and mining the grandeur embedded within ugliness and pain. With her sixth official album Hiss Spun, Wolfe adopts Miller’s quest to become empowered by embracing the mess of the self, to control the tumult of the soul in hopes of reigning in the chaos of the world around us. “I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free,” Wolfe says of the album before extrapolating on the broader scope of her new collection of songs. “You’re just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasons or for no reason at all, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it’s been fucked for a long time, it’s been fucked since the beginning. It’s overwhelming and I have to write about it.”
Hiss Spun was recorded by Kurt Ballou in Salem, Massachusetts at the tail end of winter 2017 against a backdrop of deathly quiet snow-blanketed streets and the hissing radiators of warm interiors. While past albums operated on the intimacy of stripped-down folk music (The Grime and the Glow, Unknown Rooms), or the throbbing pulse of supplemental electronics (Pain Is Beauty, Abyss), Wolfe’s latest offering wrings its exquisiteness out of a palette of groaning bass, pounding drums, and crunching distortion. It’s an album that inadvertently drew part of its aura from the cold white of the New England winter, though the flesh-and-bone of the material was culled from upheavals in Wolfe’s personal life, and coming to terms with years of vulnerability, anger, self-destruction, and dark family history. Aside from adding low-end heft with gratuitous slabs of fuzz bass, longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm contributed harrowing swaths of sound collages from sources surrounding the artist and her band in recent years - the rumble of street construction at a tour stop in Prague, the howl of a coyote outside Wolfe’s rural house in California, the scrape of machinery on the floor of a warehouse at a down-and-out friend’s workplace. Music is rendered out of dissonance - bomb blasts from the Enola Gay, the shriek of primates, the fluttering pages of a Walt Whitman book are manipulated and seamlessly integrated into the feral and forlorn songs of Hiss Spun.  From: https://chelseawolfe.net/bio/

Nine Inch Nails - Broken

#Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #industrial #alternative rock #electronic rock #industrial rock #industrial metal #ambient #transgressive #banned music video

Nine Inch Nails’ Broken (also known as The Broken Movie) is a 1993 short film featuring four music videos from the Broken EP with wrap-around segments shot in the style of an amateur snuff film. The extremely graphic film was directed by Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and Hipgnosis design group fame. The NSFW video has never seen an official release (perhaps because no label would want to put their name on it?) and has to this day been a difficult piece to track down. The terrifying, violent, and unforgettable film was originally “leaked” by Trent Reznor himself via hand-dubbed VHS tapes in the ‘90s. The original tapes were given by Reznor to various friends with video dropouts at certain points so he could know who redistributed any copies that might surface. Reznor later implied in a comment on the Nine Inch Nails website that Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers was responsible for the most prominent leak of the original tape. In 2006 and 2013 the film was briefly “leaked” to the Internet, many believe by Reznor himself. In both cases, the film disappeared quickly. In the case of the 2013 “leak,” the entire video was made available for streaming on Vimeo via the Nine Inch Nails Tumblr account, but was removed by Vimeo almost immediately.  From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/broken_nine_inch_nails_infamous_unreleased_snuff_film_now_online_nsfw_watch

 

Ministry - Filth Pig

 #Ministry #Al Jourgensen #industrial rock #industrial metal #alternative metal #thrash metal #electronic #industrial dance #EBM #speed metal #electro-industrial

Until Nine Inch Nails crossed over to the mainstream, Ministry did more than any other band to popularize industrial dance music, injecting large doses of punky, over-the-top aggression and roaring heavy metal guitar riffs that helped their music find favor with metal and alternative audiences outside of industrial's cult fan base. That's not to say Ministry had a commercial or generally accessible sound: they were unremittingly intense, abrasive, pounding, and repetitive, and not always guitar-oriented (samples, synthesizers, and tape effects were a primary focus just as often as guitars and distorted vocals). However, both live and in the studio, they achieved a huge, crushing sound that put most of their contemporaries in aggressive musical genres to shame; plus, founder and frontman Al Jourgensen gave the group a greater aura of style and theater than other industrial bands, who seemed rather faceless when compared with Jourgensen's leather-clad cowboy/biker look and the edgy shock tactics of such videos as "N.W.O." and "Just One Fix."  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ministry-mn0000420133/biography

Eurythmics - No Fear, No Hate, No Pain

 

 #Eurythmics #Annie Lennox #Dave Stewart #synthpop #new wave #electro-pop #alternative rock #blue-eyed soul #British R&B #1980s

Eurythmics, the London duo consisting of vocalist Annie Lennox and guitarist Dave Stewart, released two albums in 1983. These seminal albums would cement their place as one of the New Wave’s most fondly remembered acts. After establishing their synth-pop credentials with “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” they released “Touch,” a daring album that builds off their previous success and breaks new ground. Not content to build the album off of the pop sensibilities of the opening track, “Here Comes the Rain Again,” Lennox and Stewart use the rest of their time to build a world of their own, which results in an incredibly challenging, albeit rewarding, listen. While not every song hits home emotionally (“Right By Your Side,” for example, is too upbeat for its own good), all are interesting and complex enough to warrant constant relistening. “Touch” has one standout track, “Who’s That Girl,” a haunting, majestic anthem of jealousy and suspicion. “No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts)” and “Paint a Rumour,” the two songs which close out the album, also showcase the band’s strengths, especially Lennox’s ability to be soulful and earnest one moment and icy and detached the next. Throughout “Touch,” she proves herself time and again as one of the genre’s most confident and unconventional performers. Eurythmics have always been well in control of their image, and on “Touch,” they accomplish exactly what they set out to do. Powerful vocals and intriguing arrangements combine to make “Touch” a work of art.  From: https://wakemag.org/reviews/2019/12/9/retro-review-touch-eurythmics 

Eurythmics were one of the most successful duos to emerge in the early '80s. Where most of their British synthpop contemporaries disappeared from the charts as soon as new wave faded in 1984, Eurythmics continued to have hits until the end of the decade, making their technically consummate, soul-styled vocalist Annie Lennox a star in her own right as well as establishing instrumentalist Dave Stewart as a successful, savvy producer and songwriter. Originally, the duo channeled the eerily detached sound of electronic synthesizer music into pop songs driven by robotic beats. By the mid-'80s, singles like "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and "Here Comes the Rain Again" had made the group into international stars, and Eurythmics had begun to experiment with their sound, delving into soul and R&B. By the late '80s, they were having trouble cracking the Top 40 in America, although they stayed successful in the U.K. By the early '90s, Eurythmics had taken an extended hiatus - both Lennox and Stewart pursued solo careers - but reunited occasionally for recording or tours.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/eurythmics-mn0000206241/biography

Pigface - Kiss King

 #Pigface #Martin Atkins #Meg Lee Chin #industrial rock #alternative rock #indie rock #experimental rock #avant-garde #noise rock #industrial dance #electronic #1990s

Pigface defies categorization. Less an actual band than a recording and performing ensemble of well-known musicians in the alternative/industrial genre, it is also, in a way, a political statement. Founding member Martin Atkins had tired of the rock star attitudes he witnessed as a member of successful bands like Public Image Ltd. and Killing Joke; in addition, despite the fact that both acts presented groundbreaking, anti-establishment-themed sonic artistry, both remained under the thumb of record label executives. Sandy Masuo, writing about Pigface in Option magazine, equated it with “a savvy, calculating brand of post-punk punk attitude - one that’s all about recapturing the means of production that was supposedly seized in the 70s” with the birth of the punk movement.  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/pigface

Pigface is an American industrial rock supergroup formed in 1990 by Martin Atkins and William Rieflin. Pigface was formed from Ministry's The Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Taste tour. For the tour, Al Jourgensen brought along Atkins, Nivek Ogre and Chris Connelly. Also on the tour was Rieflin, regular Ministry drummer at the time. While Atkins enjoyed the dynamic of playing with a second drummer, he felt that the lineup was capable of doing much more than being, what he has frequently called, "a Ministry cover band." Once the tour was over, Atkins and Rieflin decided to continue working together and recruited several of their tourmates. Pigface was born with the intention of keeping a revolving-door style collaboration with many experimentally-minded musicians, many of whom, especially early on, had recorded for the influential industrial music record label Wax Trax!. Trent Reznor was also an early partner, before Nine Inch Nails became a household name. "Suck," co-written and sung by Reznor, was something of an underground hit, and Reznor later re-recorded the song for the Broken EP. Rieflin left Pigface after the first tour, leaving Atkins as the sole founder of the group. Hundreds of musical collaborators have since recorded and performed with Pigface, ensuring that each album, tour, and song is unique.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigface

 

Meg Lee Chin

Sopor Aeternus - Sleep

 #Sopor Aeternus #Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows #Anna-Varney Cantodea #neoclassical #darkwave #dark folk #neo-medieval #neo-baroque #gothic rock #electronic #industrial #occult #performance art #music video

Officially founded in 1989, the German based Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows is one of the last of the very few dark groups/projects in Europe (in fact, on this planet), who have based the sacred trinity of their music, poetry and visual appearance on the explicit emphasis of the highly individual expression of pain, isolation, depression, token suicides and the desperate search for the “sacred reunion”; all conceived and acted out by Sopor’s sole protagonist - the transgendered and utterly beautiful Goddess (and likewise tragically Butoh-esque creature) Anna-Varney Cantodea. Perhaps best described as “introverted exhibitionism”, the holistic concept of Anna-Varney ‘s ritualistic/Jungian art is not necessarily rooted in the grounds of a commonly accepted sense of aesthetics - which is one of the many aspects that gives his/her work its serious and most unique character. Though the music playfully fuses elements of classical, baroque, medieval, and even electronic music, the essence of Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows always remains entirely “gothic”. Despite the fact that to this very day Anna-Varney still refuses to perform her magic(k)al work live in front of a human audience, Sopor Aeternus & The Ensemble Of Shadows have long gathered cult status in underground circles worldwide. Strongly recommended to be approached only with an open heart and mind, the profound darkness (and occasionally subversive humour) of Anna-Varney ‘s multi-layered (yet fragile) art is mainly intended as a spiritual healing-process for the wounded soul.  From: https://www.season-of-mist.com/bands/sopor-aeternus/

Nine Inch Nails - Closer

 #Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #industrial #avant-garde #alternative rock #electronic rock #dark industrial #ambient #industrial metal #1990s #music video

“Closer" is a song by American industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails, released as the second single on their second studio album, The Downward Spiral (1994). It is considered Nine Inch Nails' signature song and remains one of their most popular hits. The music video was directed by Mark Romanek and first aired on May 12, 1994, having been filmed in April of that year. Set in what appears to be a 19th-century mad scientist's laboratory, the video's imagery involves religion, sexuality, animal cruelty, politics, and terror, including: a heart connected to some sort of device, the beat of the heart corresponding to the beat of the song; a nude, bald woman with a crucifix mask; a monkey, scared, panicked, tied to a cross; a severed pig's head spinning on some type of machine; a diagram of the vulva/vagina; and Reznor wearing various fetish gear, such as an S&M mask, ball gag, and long leather gloves while swinging in shackles. Several times, Reznor, wearing leather pants, floats and rotates through the air, suspended by invisible wires. There are also scenes of Reznor being blown back by a wind machine while wearing aviator goggles.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closer_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)

 

 

Whale - Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe

 #Whale #alternative rock #experimental rock #indie rock #grunge #noise rock #electronic #trip-hop #1990s #Swedish #music video 

Whale was a Swedish alternative rock group active from 1992 to 1999. Musician, record producer, and sound engineer Gordon Cyrus and comedian, actor, musician and radio and television personality Henrik Schyffert met while working on a commercial and decided to collaborate on a music track. Schyffert recruited his then-girlfriend, Cia Berg, to perform vocals. The band enjoyed some success, particularly in the European market. Their first single, 1993's "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe", was positively received by critics and received heavy spins in the Euro dance club scene and saturation airplay on MTV. The music video for "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe", directed by Mark Pellington, won the first MTV Europe Music Award for Best Video in 1994.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_(band)