KidneyThieves - In Love With a Machine

 #KidneyThieves #industrial rock #trip-hop #industrial metal #alternative/indie rock

KidneyThieves started in 1997, the union of two talented musicians: Free Dominguez (vocalist and occasional guitar) and Bruce Somers (multi-instrumentalist, programmer and sound engineer). Somers with his background of programming/engineering and collaborating with several notable bands such as Nine Inch Nails, Orgy, The Misfits and Marilyn Manson; Dominiguez bringing a trip-hop/hip-hop affinity, along with a sensual, melodious voice – a marriage of Nine Inch Nails-inspired industrial rock and trip-hop along the lines of Massive Attack. In Somer's words, the band is a combination of heavy and light to form a sound that is not quite one genre altogether and yet it stands on its own. Confused? Most are when they first listen to any of their music; one moment you will be listening to a decent noisy guitar riff with industrial layers, the next you will be listening to a whispered trip-hop track concerning forlorn thoughts — the muscles of grinding rock formed around the soul of downtempo.
Their latest album, ‘The Mend', is the conclusive result of their Kickstarter campaign launched in December 2015; by April 2016 they had reached their goal (it reached nearly double the initial goal) and the album was released in September of the same year. This approach is typical of KidneyThieves' ethics of DIY and being progressively eco-friendly (the album was recorded in a “green studio” and independently released). ‘The Mend' is a concept album revolving around the contemporary issues that were most prominent during 2015 and 2016 – the division and disconnection, the corrosion, the escalation of hate and general distrust – topics most directly reflected in track titles such as “Fist Up”, “In Love With A Machine” and “Let Freedom Ring”. The album also focuses on the notion of catharsis through healing and becoming whole again after a major upheaval, the systems we find ourselves locked into and finding a grand mending through each other via compassion and realising the worth of our struggles.
KidneyThieves are unique in that they prove that whilst industrial rock tends to be synonymous with nihilistic tendencies and self-destruction, KidneyThieves show more depth with a philosophical edge by focusing on abstract thoughts and psychological subjects, borrowing from Jung. They also demonstrate a range of skill by not getting too comfortable playing to one genre. The whole of ‘The Mend‘ presents itself as the next step in the band’s continuing journey with a message of hope. The noticeable absence of certain elements (such as the heavier guitars and more polish given to tracks) might make long-time fans reluctant but this is an album that remains a worthwhile listen. In the end this is what music ultimately means for us all: a form of sublime, unconditional catharsis.  From: https://nevermore-horror.com/kidneythieves-the-mend-2016-review/

Queen - Live At The Rainbow 1974

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Part 2

#Queen #Freddie Mercury #Brian May #Roger Taylor #hard rock #glam rock #progressive rock #heavy metal #classic rock #1970s #live music video

Truly great stage presence is a rare gift for any band. Sure, some acts can get away with just standing around and playing their hits, but a really amazing concert experience requires that little extra something -- that indefinable spark of charisma and electric personality. That ability to reach out into the crowd and command an audience, fully connecting with every single fan no matter how large the venue is. Led by the unique musical charms of Freddie Mercury, Queen had that singular talent, turning every one of their performances into something special, and 'Live at the Rainbow '74' is no different. Featuring the band after the release of their first three albums, the show captures the group at the cusp of super stardom, revealing their early penchant for kinetic showmanship.
Filmed over two nights at the Rainbow Theater in North London in November 1974, the concert spotlights the band during their "Sheer Heart Attack Tour." The lineup consists of Brian May on lead guitar, John Deacon on bass, Roger Taylor on drums, and Freddie Mercury as the lead vocalist and pianist. Primarily made up of tracks from the group's first three albums, the songs carry a distinct mixture of styles, blending hard rock and progressive rock sensibilities with a more melodic and occasionally even operatic quality. With that said, these earlier records don't quite carry the same pop friendly stadium rock style that the band's later anthem hits ("We Will Rock You," "We Are the Champions") would become famous for.
After a brief intro following the band into the Rainbow Room, we quickly segue straight into the show. Opening with a rousing rendition of "Now I'm Here," we start in darkness only to have the lights kick on and off during key beats before finally bathing the stage in a warm glow as the band really kicks it into high gear. From there, we're treated to an energetic and varied view of the show, complete with close-ups, wide-shots, zooms, and frequent dissolves. Likewise, the lighting design keeps things interesting, washing the screen in moody oranges, greens, and blues, nicely complementing the tempos of each song. And what would a rock show be without smoke? Well, I'm not sure, but fret not! We get plenty of atmospheric fog.
Of course, Freddie Mercury is not one to be up-staged by mere lights and camera angles, and the legendary front-man commands the spotlight. First decked out in all white and then sporting a black ensemble complete with diamond claws (apparently a gift from the devil himself), the only thing louder than the singer's costume choices, is his voice. And wow, what a voice it is. With incredible range and seemingly effortless poise, Mercury carries us through the set-list without skipping a beat, infusing each note with deep emotion and charm. Likewise, the musician will playfully address the audience in between tracks to introduce new songs, maintaining a fun and intimate rapport with his fans. The rest of the band also get their moments to shine keeping things from becoming a one-man show, and we're treated to some fantastic drum and guitar solos as well.
Highlights include spirited performances of "Killer Queen" and "Keep Yourself Alive," and the band's climactic take on "In the Lap of the Gods… Revisited" is simply riveting. Really, there are no missteps throughout the entire production and each song is fully realized. Together, Mercury, May, Taylor, and Deacon create a truly engaging concert experience, using a little bit of rock star flash to enhance but not overpower their music. Instead, everything flows together perfectly, and each band member is firing on all cylinders, bringing the group's unique sound to life with a dynamic spark.  From: https://bluray.highdefdigest.com/12753/queenliveattherainbow74.html

 

Amanda Palmer - Want It Back

 #Amanda Palmer #ex-The Dresden Dolls #alternative rock #dark cabaret #dark folk #punk cabaret #singer-songwriter #music video

Last month it was announced that self-styled "punk cabaret" performer Amanda Palmer had managed to raise $1.2 million through crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter, with nearly 25,000 fans donating money to fund her forthcoming album Theatre Is Evil. To celebrate, she performed in a car park in Brooklyn wearing a dress made out of balloons, encouraging any of her fans with pins to come forward and slowly burst each balloon until she was left completely naked.
There's probably a metaphor in there somewhere relating to the open relationship Palmer has with her fans, but it also displays her willingness to bare all for her art. This feeling of being comfortable in her own skin can be seen in the stop-motion video for the excellent Want It Back, in which the lyrics to the song are scrawled on her body (bed sheets, walls and iPad). Talking about the making of the video, Palmer says: "I'm so comfortable being naked at this point that I almost forget. I’m also proud that that video has nudity, but it isn't sexual or erotic. it's using the body as a raw canvas, which I love."
Filmed by Australian director Jim Batt, it's a brilliantly intimate and anarchic representation of the song, the line "it doesn't matter if you want it back, you've given it away" made even more open and honest. Mind you, it could also refer to her no-refunds policy for fans who donated money.  From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2012/jul/09/amanda-palmer-want-it-back-video

This Friday, Amanda Palmer — the boob-showing, armpit-hair-wearing, theatre-loving cabaret-rock misfit who might be reinventing the music industry one tweet at a time — is coming to play a show in San Francisco. It's sold-the-fuck-out, of course (you can catch her again Sept. 26 at the Fillmore) but that shouldn't at all diminish your enjoyment of her excellent (and, coincidentally, NSFW) new video for “Want it Back.”
Here again we get Amanda in the nude, but not to especially erotic ends. Rather, her skin becomes a canvas for the beautifully scrawled lyrics of the song, which race over her chest, around her body, then down her leg and off to the walls of the room, someone's iPad, and a bunch of other places before returning to from whence they came, as Amanda herself turns black with ink. The concept is simple but totally arresting, with the type of the writing (and even some words) changing throughout, and the he whole thing working in a kind of bewildering stop-motion courtesy of editor/producer/director Jim Batt. Musically, Palmer's band, the Grand Theft Orchestra, is in full-on piano-rock mode, with a meaty arrangement of agile, ear-friendly pop. Palmer's voice is always a bit more growly than we remember; she's distinctive and evocative and powerful, although not sweet. All in all this is top-notch stuff — definitely worth that million-dollar Kickstarter campaign.  From: https://www.sfweekly.com/music/amanda-palmers-nsfw-want-it-back-video-the-naked-truth-is-not-necessarily-sexy/article_e89b909a-6068-5e4a-bbd3-2945de572db7.html

Wand - Passage of the Dream

 #Wand #psychedelic rock #shoegaze #stoner rock #noise rock #garage rock #animated music video

On their third album, Los Angeles’ Wand gracefully sidestep the potential pitfalls of psychedelic songwriting—meandering guitars, rambling lyrics, directionless tracks. They ground the blurry, bizarre visions established on their previous efforts, Ganglion Reef and Golem, in colorful imagery, so that the faces of the monsters they’ve written about on past records come into full focus.
While the shadow of Wand’s mentor Ty Segall still hovers over Wand’s blown-out garage sound, the band’s own flickering light is beginning to shine through more often. They have added some progressive folk rock to the mix, fondly recalling unique and memorable records like Mellow Candle’s Swaddling Songs and Comus’ classic First Utterance without sounding like a carbon copy. Cory Hanson’s voice shimmers  against the acoustic palette of songs like the beautiful closer "Morning Rainbow", the song that also contains 1000 Days’ key lyrical thesis: "We will see this world together in its terror."
Paralysis, paranoia, disappearance, erasure, pure fear, and curdling dreams are all themes that reappear in Hanson’s lyrics for 1000 Days; even the titular song, a concise bit of folky garage pop with a sunny-sweet choral melody, seems like it might be a love song at first but quickly turns into the nightmare of relationship stasis, depression, and ennui ("I don’t need a thing ‘cause I’ve had every dream"). The mingling of beautiful, honeyed melodies with dark, bleak lyrical content is nothing new, but Wand do it especially well, and they have a precision in their songwriting that keeps their music from spinning off into glazed burnout territory.
Though one worries that with such a prolific release schedule that Wand will run out of ideas, 1000 Days is a heartening record, a record that sees a young band picking up steam, playing with their influences more deftly than on their prior LPs, and bringing a thoughtful approach to old and well-traveled sounds. There’s enough interesting moments on 1000 Days to hold onto these songs, go back to them, and explore within them. That’s more than many of their cohorts within the cluttered and long-trendy field of psychedelic garage—there are hundreds of disposable tape-label bands with little to say out there, and it’s wearying to search through all that crud for the occasional gem, which does exist—have to offer.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20995-1000-days/

Carolina Chocolate Drops - Hit 'Em Up Style

 #Carolina Chocolate Drops #folk #Americana #African-American folk #old-time string band #traditional #music video

From their beginnings in 2005, the Carolina Chocolate Drops revived the almost-forgotten Black string-band tradition and introduced this music to millions of fans across the world. The original band members — Rhiannon Giddens, Dom Flemons and Justin Robinson — learned their core repertoire straight from the source, an African American fiddler, Joe Thompson, then 85 years old, of Mebane, North Carolina. The Carolina Chocolate Drops’ success proved that the old-time, fiddle-and banjo-based music they had so scrupulously researched and passionately performed could be a living, breathing, ever-evolving sound. The Drops’ 2010 Nonesuch debut, “Genuine Negro Jig”, garnered a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy. Starting with material culled from the Piedmont region of the Carolinas, they sought to reinterpret this work, not merely recreate it, highlighting the central role African Americans played in shaping our nation’s popular music from its beginnings more than a century ago. The virtuosic trio’s approach was provocative and revelatory. Their concerts, The New York Times declared, were “an end-to-end display of excellence. They dip into styles of Southern Black music from the 1920s and ’30s — string-band music, jug-band music, fife and drum, early jazz — and beam their curiosity outward. They make short work of their instructive mission and spend their energy on things that require it: flatfoot dancing, jug playing, shouting.”
The Carolina Chocolate Drops roster fluctuated over time, and Rhiannon, Dom, and Justin have gone their separate ways. Each member has gone on to pursue impressive and meaningful careers maintaining the spirit of The Carolina Chocolate Drops. Rhiannon Giddens has released solo albums and has worked on collaborative projects such as “Our Native Daughters” and releases with Italian multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi. In 2017, she received a MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. Dom Flemons continues to perform and is known as “The American Songster” because of his breadth of knowledge of American music. In 2012 Music Maker released the album “Buffalo Junction” with Dom Flemons and artist Boo Hanks. Justin Robinson, in addition to recording and performing solo, is a food historian and botanist. In all of his work, Justin explores African American history in the South and aims to connect people to their culture.  From: https://musicmaker.org/artist/carolina-chocolate-drops/

Art of Bleeding - All Things Nice

 #Art of Bleeding #avant-garde #experimental #performance art #multimedia #culture jamming #animated music video

Art of Bleeding was a Los Angeles-based multi-media performance troupe providing darkly comic, faux-educational programs in first-aid and safety at clubs, galleries and art events. Staging shows from an actual ambulance, The Art of Bleeding creates what their press release refers to as a "paramedical funhouse" wherein puppets and costumed characters interact with a crew of nurses wearing medical-themed fetish gear. Events are hosted by costumed characters reminiscent of children's programming including the company's "beloved mascot," Abram the Safety Ape and RT, the Robot Teacher. In their performances and web videos, the group promotes an ill-defined and intentionally cryptic metaphysical doctrine that they call "True Safety Consciousness." The group's ambulance also functions as a mobile recording studio for their Gory Details Project, in which true-life tales of medical trauma are gathered from passersby to be shared in an online library of movies and mp3s. Some of these stories are also re-enacted within the framework of what would appear to be a tragically misguided children's show, the "Gory Details" web series.
In addition to live shows, videos, recordings, and paramedical-themed music, The Art of Bleeding has also choreographed public performances of bandaged and crutch-enabled dancers, created grisly anatomical walk-through installations, and staged a parking-lot display of smoldering, freshly wrecked cars peopled with bloodied actors sharing their cautionary tales. The troupe was founded by Al Ridenour, former leader of the Los Angeles branch of the Cacophony Society. When asked about the nature of his group, Ridenour has said, "Think of Art of Bleeding as a sort of public outreach multi-media brainwashing course in emergency medicine, and you'll have a good handle on it. At least better than me..."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Bleeding

Mother's Finest - Truth'll Set You Free

 #Mother's Finest #funk rock #hard rock #R&B #funk metal #soul #1970s

Lemmy named his band Bastard before he decided on Motörhead. Lars Ulrich thought Thunderfuck was the way to go, before taking the name of his friend’s fanzine titled Metallica. And as Joyce ‘Baby Jean’ Kennedy recalls, the greatest of all funk rock bands once considered calling themselves The Motherfuckers. “We wanted to say that,” she says, laughing, “but we couldn’t have gotten away with it. So we just took the ‘MF’ and became Mother’s Finest.”
With a multi-racial line-up and a sound described as ‘Sly And The Family Stone-meets-Led Zeppelin’ – a combustible mix of soul power and hard-rock muscle – Mother’s Finest emerged in the early 70s as a band on a mission. As Kennedy puts it: “We wanted to make music that anybody could enjoy. We wanted to entertain and to be provocative, to give people food for thought. It was soulful, spiritual rock’n’roll, sexy and heavy with guitar. We were encompassing all of those things.”
There were multi-racial groups and black rock stars before them – Sly And The Family Stone and Jimi Hendrix being the most significant. But “our band was predominately black”, Kennedy says. In the definitive Mother’s Finest line-up, fronted by Kennedy and her husband Glenn ‘Doc’ Murdock, and featuring Jerry ‘Wyzard’ Seay on bass and Mike Keck on keyboards, the white members were drummer Barry ‘B.B. Queen’ Borden and guitarist Gary Moore, whose nickname ‘Moses Mo’, would distinguish him from the Irish guitar hero. It was with this line-up that the band made their reputation as a fearsome live act, and reached a creative peak between ’76 and ’77 with two albums produced by Tom Werman, who was then working with Ted Nugent and Cheap Trick.
But for Mother’s Finest the big breakthrough never came. Which, Kennedy says, was a mystery to Werman. “Tom always wondered why this was one band he produced where it never happened on a huge level.” She says that from the band’s perspective, with a mixture of pride and fatalism: “We had all the things that would make it work, but for some reason the spheres didn’t see it that way.” As she looks back on the glory days of a band she still leads, alongside Doc and Moses Mo – a band whose influence has carried over the decades in the music of Prince, Living Colour, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lenny Kravitz, Dan Reed Network and more – she accepts that what made Mother’s Finest unique was also what made them a hard sell in what was a less enlightened era. “The band was multi-racial, and that was rare,” she says. “Especially doing rock music with two people of colour out front. It was a beautiful thing. But back then nobody really knew how to make it work within the bureaucracy of the music industry. I just think that this band was a little bit before its time.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/mothers-finest-we-were-paving-the-way-for-things-to-happen-in-music-but-we-didnt-know-it

Mother's Finest is a funk rock band founded in Atlanta, Georgia by the singer couple Joyce Kennedy and Glenn Murdock in the early seventies. Mother's Finest was one of the "first real rock bands with both black and white members". Their music was a blend of funky rhythm, heavy guitars and expressive rock singing. Their debut album Mother's Finest from 1976 today is a rare collector's piece and contains the ironic song "Niggizz Can't Sang Rock & Roll" (they were criticized for it by an important reverend and had to suspend it from their live concerts). In 1978 they were guests on the German broadcast "Rockpalast" and with one concert (recently reedited in Europe as the DVD Mother's Finest - At Rockpalast) they gathered cult status in Europe which lasts until today. In the late seventies they produced more soul-oriented albums and at the beginning of the eighties some heavy rock on the album “Iron Age”. In the nineties they were back with "Black radio won't play this record", a funk metal album, and their last CD was "Meta-funk'n-physical" from 2004 which is more hip hop and electronic beats oriented.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Mother%27s+Finest/+wiki

The Zombies - I’ll Call You Mine

 #The Zombies #Rod Argent #Colin Blunstone #psychedelic rock #blues rock #pop rock #baroque pop #psychedelic pop #classic rock #British invasion #1960s

Q: Where did the name, The Zombies, come from?

Rod Argent: We got together in 1961, at the very beginning of the English band scene. That was even a year before the Beatles. We didn't know what to call ourselves. For the first month or so, we were called the Sundowners. But I think that may well have been a western film in the same way as the Searchers' name was from a John Wayne movie. We were also the Mustangs for a couple of weeks, but never went out on a gig with that name.  One day, our bass player at the time, who was the only one initially who left the band before we were professional, said, "What about The Zombies?" This was in the days before any of the crop of zombie films, like "Return Of The Living Dead." Now I just about knew what a zombie was. It had something to do with Haiti, and some sort of voodoo, unsavory sorts of things. Colin Blunstone didn't even know that. He hated the name! But I loved it. If we were lucky enough to get any recognition later, then very soon the name itself would be unimportant. It would just become whomever the members of the band were. A year after the Beatles were named, no one that I know thought about insects or even the play on words. They just thought about John, Paul, George and Ringo. That proved to be the case with us. When we were in the studio once, I was wandering around and heard the sound of Miles Davis coming from a record player in someone's dressing room. I knocked on the door. It opened, and there was Manfred Man. I asked if that was Miles playing, and he said, "Yeah, yeah." Then he looked at me and asked, "You're Rod Argent, aren't you?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "Man, I love your record, but you have to change that band name." But we never did [laughs].

Q: How did you meet Colin Blunstone?

Argent: The day we had our first rehearsal was the first day I met Colin. He was a friend of the bass player, who was a friend of mine. Originally, I was supposed to be lead singer, and not play piano at all. We had a little jam, and thought it was all going pretty well. Then we had a coffee break. I wandered over to an old, beaten-up piano, and started playing some Stingers records I'd heard. Colin came running over and said, "That sounds fantastic. You've got a great playing ability. Why don't you sing AND play piano?" I thought that would be too much, to sing lead vocals and play piano, so I said, "No." Twenty minutes later, we had another break. Colin sat down and started strumming a guitar, because he was going to play second guitar, rhythm. He started singing a Ricky Nelson song. It sounded absolutely lovely! I said, "My God, I had no idea you could sing like that. I'll tell you what. - you be lead singer, and I'll play piano." And that's how we started. It was Easter of 1961.

From: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimclash/2020/06/08/how-did-the-1960s-band-the-zombies-come-up-with-their-strange-name/?sh=4af7dfa63d4e

Rasputina - Cross Walk

 

 

#Rasputina #alternative/indie rock #cello rock #chamber rock #gothic rock #dark cabaret

Pioneers in the use of cello as the sole instrument within a rock band, Rasputina has been inspiring young string players to commit a number of musical sins since 1996. The group's concept was written as a manifesto, and manifested accordingly by directress Melora Creager as a wily subterfuge for a plot to open audiences to adventure. The funny, the sad, the heavy, the tender - it can all exist together. Employing elaborate costuming spanning a number of historical periods, Rasputina brings marginalized historical female figures and stories to light in the pop form, using archetypal characters such as Indian princesses, Hawaiian handmaidens and Medieval queens. Melora last performed in Europe with Nirvana, on their final tour in 1994. Over the years, Rasputina has performed/recorded with Marilyn Manson, Porno For Pyros, Cheap Trick, Goo Goo Dolls and many others. Hardened road-dogs, and with more than 7 albums under their belt, Rasputina continues to amaze and amuse.

MELORA CREAGER - voice, cello, banjo - Kansas born and raised, she moved to NYC in the 1980’s. Melora received classical music training as a child, but her performance career began with rock bands and East Village drag/performance artists. She founded the alternative/historical cello ensemble Rasputina in 1991 as a way to meet like-minded girls - girls that wanted to rock out on the cello and wear fine costumery. The sound and visual concepts that began in Creager's Rasputina manifestos presaged and influenced movements and trends such as Modern Victorians, Steampunk, freak-folk, corsetry, and crafting. In 19 recordings, and countless public performances, Creager has led a 20 year exploration in cello amplification, recording, and performance.

LUIS MOJICA - piano, beat-boxing - Luis uses the piano to cast wild narrative spells. His eyes are that of an androgynous monk with rainbow tentacles. Luis loops words, chants, and sounds through a loop pedal AKA beatboxing, ‘Beat-Boxing Baroque’. Luis brings his musical madness to Rasputina today.

CARPELLA PARVO - cello, voice - Cello-fingers in flight and with the voice of a bird, Carpella is from another country, but keeps it a secret which one. She played on Rasputina's debut album, Thanks for the Ether (1996), then succumbed to the very condition from which she takes her name - carpal tunnel syndrome. Having healed over 20 years, Carpella jubilantly returns to Rasputina in the 21st century. From: https://first-avenue.com/performer/rasputina/

The Dirty Soul Revival - Can't Hurt Me Anymore

 #The Dirty Soul Revival #blues rock #hard rock #Southern rock #heavy blues rock #funk rock

Abraham Anderson, a.k.a. “Abraham Drinkin’,” tried writing songs since he was 20 years old and first picked up an acoustic guitar, but he could never seem to force the words out the way he wanted. Almost three years ago, they came tumbling out on their own, the frontman for The Dirty Soul Revival told The Daily Times this week. “I think I was trying too hard to write in this vein or that vein, but I was driving home from work one day about 2 and a half years ago, and this song just popped in my head, and it just kind of wrote itself,” he said. “It was about my wife, and ever since then, I don’t really try. Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea for a phrase I like if I’m listening to Charlie Patton or really old blues, and because I played banjo up until a few years ago and listened to a lot of old bluegrass, sometimes some ideas come out of that. I love old country, too — Waylon Jennings, Johnny Cash — and the Allman Brothers, which is one of my favorite bands ever, so there’s a lot of variety. A lot of it is raunchy blues-rock, but there’s some funk, some country and some straight-up rock ‘n’ roll in there, too.”
Born and raised in Cushing, Oklahoma, Anderson started out playing banjo. He didn’t set out to pursue a career in music, but he wanted to play more bluegrass, and he wanted to get out of Oklahoma, which he describes as “ungodly hot in the summer,” and some friends suggested North Carolina. He headed east, destined for Raleigh, but when he stopped in Asheville, the temperature was a comfortable 70 degrees. “I just kind of fell in love with it; it’s beautiful, and I said, ‘I’m moving here,’” he said. “I’d never been east of Nashville, but I’ve always been fascinated by music from the South in general.”
That was in 2009; his wife, Jennifer “Trixie Laroux” Anderson, came with him, and with her on drums and him on guitar and growling and howling into the microphone, they began to shape what would become The Dirty Soul Revival into a musical force of nature. Imagine if one member of The Black Keys grew up out back of a rough-hewn juke joint back in the Mississippi pines and the other learned to play stomping barefoot on Smoky Mountain barn floors, and you’ll get an idea of what the band sounds like. It’s a successful romantic and musical partnership, Anderson said, that’s helped the two out-of-towners survive and thrive in the bustling Asheville scene.
“We first started dating about 15 years ago, and when I first met her, she was 14 and absolutely infatuated with the Beatles and Zeppelin and all this great rock from the ’60s and ’70s, and I wasn’t listening to anything like that,” he said. “She’s been into good music her whole life, and that really helps me a lot. It’s hard for me to say what kind of music I like, but I think the common denominator I find in everything I love is, for lack of a better term, soul. Not necessarily soul music, even though I love Otis Redding, but people singing something they believe in — something that’s more than just a song or a radio hit. It’s a part of them, and I just try to do the same thing. I sing and play what I feel, and hopefully some of that gets through. It’s just dirty and honest, and even though I may not technically be the best singer, if you get out there and belt it hard enough like you mean it, people will respond to it.”  From: https://www.thedailytimes.com/entertainment/up-and-coming-asheville-rockers-dirty-soul-revival-set-to-open-for-shooter-jennings/article_a91b755d-bab0-5e4d-b4bf-7282a8ba2213.html

Varttina - Laulutyttö

 #Varttina #Scandinavian folk #worldbeat #Finnish folk #world fusion #traditional #folk rock #contemporary folk #Finland

They are one of Finland's biggest musical exports but they could hardly be described as typically Finnish. They are, simply, Värttinä: musicians with a unique sound, with their feet firmly rooted in Finnish ground, in its language, culture and history, yet with the courage to develop over nearly two decades, something no-one else in the world has been able to copy.
Värttinä’s devoted and loyal fans all over the world may not all be Finnish speakers but they are intoxicated by the voices of Susan, Mari and Johanna, singers with the stage presence of a Wagnerian soprano, acting out roles from fishwives to lovers, while the guys lure the listeners with beguiling bouzouki, sax, accordion playing to die for, searing drums, guitar and bass.
Driving all this forward is the Finnish language itself, with its unique rhymes and rhythms, and spitting throaty sounds; words that launch themselves into the atmosphere and return several syllables later. Think of the pumping rhythms of Longfellow’s Hiawatha and you’re half way there.
For Värttinä it all began in the Finnish village of Rääkkylä in 1983 when a few mothers and grandmothers encouraged the children to sing and play some of the old songs from the Karelian region. Ancient stories once told with a simple accompaniment on the kantele (the Finnish zither-like instrument) suddenly woke up to find saxes, fiddles and guitars in their midst. This wasn’t important just for the birth of Värttinä but for the revival of Finnish folk music in general.
What emerged though wasn’t a folk band but, eventually, a ten-piece pop/rock style ensemble which established the formula of female voices at the front, boys at the back. Blessed by the no-nonsense and sometimes shocking lyrics of the ancient traditional sagas of blood, sweat and a lot of tears, the confrontational style of singing and song-writing won the music world over until the band was propelled into Finnish stardom in 1991.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/varttina/

DakhaBrakha - Live Music Hall Daile, Latvia 2015

Part 1

 

Part 2

#DakhaBrakha #folk #Ukrainian folk #world music #Eastern European folk #folk rock #cabaret #music video

DakhaBrakha has been on the frontlines of Ukraine’s cultural struggle against Russian domination for the past decade, reaching a global audience by infusing raucous traditional music from rural villages with a cosmopolitan mélange of instruments and influences. But the folk-punk quartet didn’t expect to find themselves literally under the gun last year, fleeing Kyiv as Russian troops tried to take the Ukrainian capital on Feb. 24. When shells started falling near the Kyiv airport, the musicians scattered as they sought safety, but by mid-March they’d reassembled in France for a series of solidarity concerts. Vocalist, percussionist and accordionist Iryna Kovalenko made her way to Hungary as the Russian army poured over the border, abandoning her car in a miles-long queue to cross the border. She eventually rejoined her husband and daughter in Seattle, where they had settled about six years ago.
“My wife and my two children are temporarily in France,” wrote Marko Halanevych in an email. Like his DakhaBrakha bandmates, he contributes on vocals and multiple instruments, including the goblet-drum darbuka, tabla, didgeridoo, accordion and trombone. Nina Garenetska, who plays cello and bass drum, is with her family in Lviv, “the western part of Ukraine, which is quite far from the front line,” Halanevych wrote. “But still, Russian missiles fly there from time to time.” Olena Tsybulska, who plays bass drums, percussion, and the button-accordion garmoshka, is with her family in Kyiv, “as well as the rest of the team,” Halanevych wrote. “However, we have relatives who live close to the frontline and even in the occupation.”
Now global ambassadors for a country fighting for its existence, DakhaBrakha hasn’t been able to perform at home since the invasion. Their audiences, particularly in Europe, increasingly include fellow Ukrainians displaced by the war who are eager for reminders of what they’ve left behind. “Often we met with them before or after the concerts, and we felt that these concerts were very important to them,” Halanevych wrote. “For some it is support, therapy. For some it is memories of home.” Supporting each other on the road the band has become a self-contained pod that manages to deliver walloping performances while keeping one eye on the news stream from home. They know they’re in an enviable position far from danger, but anxiety about loved ones serves as both fuel and a distraction.
“More than once I had to go on stage knowing that Russia fired about a hundred missiles,” Halanevych recalled. “Will all your relatives and friends survive these two hours? Being outside Ukraine, we are in constant contact with them, monitoring air alarms, battles at the front, and the needs of volunteers.” Marked by galloping rhythms, extended vocal harmonies, and striking instrumental textures, DakhaBrakha’s music has always evoked extreme emotions and situations. Responding to the conflict with Russia the group has added material directly inspired by the struggle, like the band’s 2018 requiem “Lament,” which is dedicated to all those who’ve died during the war. The women tend to perform with little visible expression, but the song “causes a wave of dramatic emotions,” he wrote. “It’s important for us that it is heard. There is also the composition ‘Boats,’ which is dedicated to all those who are currently defending our freedom, and to those who lend us their friendly shoulder.” American audiences have certainly been lending their eyes and ears as Ukrainian culture has become more visible in the U.S. than ever before. San Jose Jazz’s Winter Fest’s “Counterpoint With Ukraine” programing, which runs through March 3, features some of the Eastern European nation’s most acclaimed improvisers. And Dakh Daughters, an all-women music and theater project from Kyiv, present “Ukraine Fire” at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage April 24.
Garenetska, DakhaBrakha’s cellist and vocalist, was a founding member of Dakh Daughters, and both ensembles grew out of Kyiv’s influential avant-garde Dakh Theater. She’s been too busy with DakhaBrakha to tour with the Daughters recently, but Garenetska made the Hollywood Palladium performance presented by Sean Penn last June that raised $1 million for Ukraine. Buoyed by enthusiastic audiences and words of support, they cherish their role in the struggle, knowing “that we are doing extremely important things for the victory of good over evil,” Halanevych wrote. “We believe that our concerts can influence public opinion, and civilized countries will be more willing and faster to help us with modern weapons.”
From: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/28/after-fleeing-war-ukrainian-band-dakhabrakha-back-in-bay-area/

Cibo Matto - MFN

 #Cibo Matto #alternative rock #art rock #trip-hop #alternative pop rock #electronic #music video

From the start, it’s clear that Yuka Honda, one half of the New York City band Cibo Matto, doesn’t like to stay within the lines. When asked to name five albums that everyone should hear, she rattled off all of Stevie Wonder’s records, everything by Earth, Wind, and Fire, Sly Stone, all of the Beatles’ albums, John and Yoko, Talking Heads, all of Brian Eno’s stuff, and Antonio Carlos Jobin. When asked to offer up a simple description of Cibo Matto’s music, she shyly responded Oh. I don’t think I could do that.
Her unwillingness to accept boundaries is an excellent metaphor for Cibo Matto. When it comes to the group’s music, the keyword is fusion. From heavy metal to bossanova to hip-hop, Cibo Matto mixes everything to produce an eccentric recipe for sound.
Honda was born in Japan and came to the United States in 1987. She says her experience gives her a different perspective on making music. I am not only from Japan, but I lived in Europe for some time, Honda said during a phone interview. I have learned that although people have very different mind sets, they also have a lot in common. I don’t know why people like to categorize things between country and genre and like to put a border between things.
It was open-mindedness that eventually led her to form a musical union with another Japanese-born New Yorker, Miho Hatori. At first, Cibo Matto came together to play only one gig for fun. We were just really having fun, a lot of fun, and thinking we can just do whatever we want, Honda said. There was a lot more freedom to try out and be experimental for one gig.
A fan base started to form from Cibo Matto’s random performances and then led to a recording contract with Warner Brothers. Cibo Matto’s first album was released in early 1996. Entitled Viva! La Woman, the debut album conveyed what was on Honda’s and Hatori’s minds – food. Of the 11 songs on the album, 10 were about food. In fact, cibo matto is Italian for food madness. Viva! La Woman was highly innovative, built on the hip-hop loops produced by Honda’s extraordinary keyboard skills and Hatori’s vocal power.I started getting into hip-hop in 1986, Honda said. It was always very exciting, especially since I did computer music. I always try to build the song as much as I can. I look at it from different angles, but I don’t want to lose the live feel. I try to think about aspects of the music and realize as much as possible in every song.
Her openness to musical exploration paid off. Cibo Matto went on tour opening up for Beck, Luscious Jackson and other headliners. Viva! La Woman was named in Time magazine as one of the top 10 hip-hop albums of all time. As Cibo Matto grew more successful, new band mates joined to support the duo on the road. Sean Lennon was added on guitar and bass, and Timo Ellis and Duma Love on percussion. The group played at the Tibetan Freedom Concerts and opened the one in Chicago in June. Yuka thinks that the Tibetan Freedom concerts have brought together the most diverse of today’s artists. Cibo Matto is especially close with two groups that also call New York City home – the Beastie Boys and Luscious Jackson. We don’t help each other out in writing stuff, but we’re good friends, Honda said. We definitely have a sense of family in the music industry.
This past June marked the release of Cibo Matto’s second album, Stereotype A, which Honda produced. A more pop-oriented album, it shows that Cibo Matto is growing in leaps and bounds. Honda said a pop album should have something that sounds familiar, but also has to show you something new about it. Like most things, Honda had something to say about the title of the group’s latest release. People have a lot of stereotypes, she said. They are not used to women handling machines. If we have problems with the equipment, and we call a friend, they always want to talk to Sean first. Even if a producer walks in, they will always look to the man. People aren’t used to women pushing buttons and pulling strings.  From: https://www.gwhatchet.com/1999/11/18/cibo-matto-blends-variety-of-genres-to-produce-its-own-sound/

Borgo Pass - Burning Breath

 #Borgo Pass #heavy metal #sludge metal #hard rock #doom metal #retro-1970s #music video

An Interview with Borgo Pass

You five have been playing for a long time, since the 90’s right?

Tommy: You are correct. We’ve outlasted most marriages, and we’re catching up to the Rolling Stones.

Joe: Borgo Pass actually started as a Black Sabbath cover band in the 90’s. After several lineup changes and two CDs, this lineup of Borgo released our first CD in 2001. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Bet there have been a lot of ups and downs during the last couple decades. How have you managed to hang tight as a band?

Jimmy: We are all great friends, adults and respect the fact that we have created a Frankenstein that has stood the test of time. We still have fun and play a lot of relevant shows with the occasional national opening slot. It kinda never is a chore.

Paul: Ups and downs definitely sums up the past 20 plus years of Borgo Pass! I prefer to remember the ups, but it’s hard not to remember the downs. The disappointments and mistakes have been learning lessons and we have become a stronger band because of it. I believe that we have survived all of these years because of our love and respect for each other and our universal love of writing, playing and performing music. We literally have music in our veins and bleed Borgo Pass!

Tommy: Hell yea that’s just life in itself, but the ups most definitely outweigh the downs.

You state that Black Sabbath is one of your main influences. What do you think of the relatively recent revival of doom metal and stoner rock on a global scale?

Joe: Black Sabbath was the common denominator that brought the five of us together. We all have different influences, but Sabbath was the one band that we all agree had the strongest effect on us musically.
It’s refreshing to see the stoner-doom scene finally finding it’s place in the U.S. music scene. This scene was already catching on in Europe, but it’s past due to give these bands some recognition over here. In a small way, I kinda miss being able to check out, for example, Weedeater in a small club like CBGB and just chilling with 30 people enjoying the tunes. Now bands like Sleep are selling out every room they play!
With past festivals like the Stoner Hands Of Doom Fest, Emissions Fest, and now Eye Of The Stoned Goat and Psycho California, it’s great to finally see people coming in droves to hear some great bands! Just like Roadburn and DesertFest in Europe, people are supporting the U.S. scene like never before.

Jimmy: Black Sabbath for me is the battery of it all. it just doesn’t get more personal, original, or heavy. It’s almost like it’s magical, listening to Sabbath since I was a child. I think it’s a fresh revival of bands some really good and some trying too hard to play slow with a lack there of vocals and stage presence especially with the singers. That’s just me from what I have seen of the new breed of cadre. I mean, Ozzy was insane and the band looked as angry as a pitbull raging when they played. I like a newer band called Pallbearer from Arkansas, who have a great vibe and sound. I also still love DOWN and Corrosion of Conformity and Crowbar, as well, who have been carrying the baton for many years. I miss Type O Negative a lot.

Tommy: Black Sabbath is THE main reason we ever started this band, there are other reasons but Black Sabbath is number one! I’m happy to see a revival of doom and stoner rock, given all of the forced-fed crap that’s out there. It’s about time the people started thinking for themselves and actually enjoy real music with real emotion and raw feeling. I still like to listen to the heavy local acts.

What has been the biggest challenge in promoting Borgo Pass to new listeners in this brave new world of DIY marketing?

Jimmy: We have a unique, heavy sound with many elements. It’s been tough to sell it to the corporate establishment, as they want something cookie cutter. I call us very original and extremely marketable heavy music that could reach many different sub-genres of fans.

Tommy: God awful pop music is still our biggest enemy. That is our biggest challenge.

Speaking of the new listener, what song and album would you recommend a person start with if they want to get to know the band?

Jimmy: Our Deadwater album, starting with the first track: “Rotted Chain.”

Paul: If someone were to ask me what song or record of ours to listen to first, I would recommend listening to ‘Slightly Damaged’ (2002), our first recording with Jimmy on vocals and them listen to our following recordings, 'Nervosa’ (2005) and then 'Deadwater’ (2011) so that the listener can hear how we’ve grown and matured as song writers over the years.

From: https://doomedandstoned.com/post/119706967253/borgopass

Maximum the Hormone - A-L-I-E-N

 #Maximum the Hormone #metalcore #alternative metal #hardcore punk #alternative metal #nu metal #experimental #Japanese #music video

Maximum the Hormone is a Japanese band which derives influence from Punk Rock, Funk, Rock, Pop, Metal, Anime, Manga and Japanese popular culture with lashings of sex. They are not a "comedy" band, but many of their songs, like "Bikini Sports Ponchin", "Chuu Chuu Lovely Muni Muni Mura Mura Purin Purin Boron Nururu Rero Rero" and "(Cutter Knife Dosu Kiri) Honjou Hasami" have pretty damn funny lyrics when contrasted with the upbeat tunes of the songs.
The band are probably best known for their songs "What's Up, People?!" and "Zetsubou Billy", which are the second opening and closing themes of the Death Note anime, and are generally harder-edged and less hilariously perverted than most of their material. It's worth noting that they're also pretty successful in their home country, their latest album being in the top 20 best selling albums of 2013 in Japan.
Their music contains examples of:
Avant-Garde Metal: Genres will get mashed up with impunity.
Death by Music Video: There are two songs that became part of Death Note Anime OST, which were the second opening and ending for the anime version: What's up, people? and Zetsubou Billy. In the videoclip of the latter is shown a lot of kind of Japanese bands and soloists, since Visual Kei to an Idol Singer, all of them dying one by one because of the Death Note written by a mysterious person behind the TV (assumed to be Kira) only to left the real MTH playing the instruments left by the Visual Kei band that recently died.
Digital Piracy Is Evil: Somewhat inverted: the lyric "Stop, stop Winny upload" refers to the old p2p service Winny (comparable to Napster), but when asked in an interview about using such an old reference, the lead singer mentioned that he wanted to have a catchy “Stop” phrase where other stuff like “Stop Nukes” could be replaced. Knowing their self-referential humor and love of playing with expectations.
Dissonant Serenity
Funk Metal: Driving slap bass taken up to eleven just sounds like Funk, especially in the hands of their bassist.
Genre Mashup: They combine and cross genres more-or-less when they feel like it. Few other J-rock bands have achieved the same level of Genre-Busting, the notable examples being Dir en grey and Melt-Banana.
Gratuitous English: "Koi no Mega Lover" - just from the title you can hear this making its insidious presence felt. Their name itself doesn't make grammatical sense either, does it?
Hardcore Punk: Had their roots in this.
Iconic Outfit/Iconic Item: Ryo's toilet sandals of VIC, which he wears almost all the time. It influenced the track "Benjo Sandal Dance", which is about his habit of wearing those sandals.
Indecipherable Lyrics: The screaming and the Motor Mouth lyrics make it very hard to understand a word.
Japanese Delinquents: Mentioned in "Chuu 2: The Beam" ("8th Grade: The Beam" in English). Mentions how grade school punks are known to hang around the mini amusement park areas on the rooftops of stores that are somewhat common in Japan.
Long Title: They have garnered quite a few over the years, "Rei Rei Rei Rei Rei Rei Rei Rei Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma Ma" and "Chuu Chuu Lovely Muni Muni Mura Mura Purin Purin Boron Nururu Rero Rero" in particular being major offenders.
Lyrical Dissonance: "Chuu Chuu Lovely Muni Muni Mura Mura Purin Purin Boron Nururu Rero Rero" sounds catchy and upbeat, but the lyrics themselves are all about sex and violence. "Koi no Sperm" is set to the catchiest, cheeriest tune one could imagine. You're guaranteed to have "Sperma... Oh, Sperma... Oh Sperma!" stuck in your head at some point. "My Girl" from the Greatest the Hits EP is a (mostly) upbeat Nu-metal track (with shades of 80s glam rock/metal). If you didn't know Japanese, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a lighthearted song about a relationship. It's actually incredibly dirty and about how much they love pussy.
Metal Scream: Daisuke provides some very impressively ranged harsh vocals. Luckily for him, Ryo takes charge of the clean vocals, so his larynx probably isn't completely stripped out.
Motor Mouth: The lyricism is delivered so fast, it's hard to understand anything. Sometimes you might even mistake the language!
Nu Metal: Cited Korn as an influence and mixed clean, harsh and rapping vocals. Not your typical Nu Metal band, though, it's safe to say.
Self-Titled Album: Or to be accurate, Self-Titled Song. The eponymous song "Maximum the Hormone" was first released in their "Greatest the Hits" EP in 2011, before being in the "Yoshu Fukushu" album in 2013. The band would eventually release a direct sequel to the song in 2018, albeit with a subtitle.
The Smurfette Principle: Nao is the only female member of the band. She is also the oldest member, pushing 45 at the time of this writing.
Soprano and Gravel: Nao, who sings clean female vocals, represents soprano. Daisuke is responsible for screams, therefore representing gravel. Finally, Ryo is middle ground between those two - he provides singing, but also some screams himself.
Surprisingly Gentle Song/Fake-Out Opening: Parodied with "Chiisana Kimi no Te" (Your Little Hands), a pop rock song that plays at the beginning of the music video for their self-titled song, "Maximum the Hormone". The song seems to end abruptly, after which Ryo is seen vomiting on the TV screen that showed the video for the previous song, leading into the actual song.
Visual Kei: Invoked in the video for "Zetsubou Billy", which depicts a Stylistic Suck Visual band, among other Stylistic Suck takes on other music subcultures.
Vocal Tag Team: A big part of their sound is the constant alternating between Daisuke's rap/screamed vocals, Ryo-kun's middle ground cleans (although he does scream quite a bit as well) and Nao's fully clean, pop-esque style.
While he very rarely sings lead, Ue-chan usually contributes backing vocals. In live performances especially, he frequently fills in for harmony parts, whenever Ryo-kun or Nao would have overdubbed their own backing vocals on the album.
Vulgar Humor: Pretty much their schtick most of the time.
From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/MaximumTheHormone

Ike & Tina Turner - Whole Lotta Love

 #Ike & Tina Turner #soul #R&B #funk #blues #funk rock #rock & roll #1960s #1970s #Led Zeppelin cover

As husband and wife, Ike & Tina Turner headed up one of the most potent live acts on the R&B circuit during the '60s and early '70s. Guitarist and bandleader Ike kept his ensemble tight and well-drilled while throwing in his own distinctively twangy plucking; lead vocalist Tina was a ferocious whirlwind of power and energy, a raw sexual dynamo who was impossible to contain when she hit the stage, leading some critics to call her the first female singer to embody the true spirit of rock & roll. In their prime, the Ike & Tina Turner Revue specialized in a hard-driving, funked-up hybrid of soul and rock that, in its best moments, rose to a visceral frenzy that few R&B acts of any era could hope to match. Effusively praised by white rock luminaries like the Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin, Tina was unquestionably the star of the show, with a hugely powerful, raspy voice that ranks among the all-time soul greats. For all their concert presence, the Turners sometimes had problems translating their strong points to record; they cut singles for an endless succession of large and small independent labels throughout their career, and suffered from a shortage of the strong original material that artists with more stable homes (Motown, Atlantic, Stax, etc.) often enjoyed. The couple's well-documented marital difficulties (a mild way of describing Ike's violent, drug-fueled cruelty) eventually dissolved their partnership in the mid-'70s. Tina, of course, went on to become an icon and a symbol of survival after the resurgence of her solo career in the '80s, but it was the years she spent with Ike that made the purely musical part of her legend.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ike-tina-turner-mn0000094224/biography

Mouth - Parade

 #Mouth #progressive rock #psychedelic rock #krautrock #hard rock #retro-1970s #German

Mouth were formed in Cologne in 2000 as a trio, comprised of Christian Koller (vocals, guitars, keyboards), Jan Wendeler (bass, bass synth) and Nick Mavridis (drums, backing vocals, keyboards). The band's style is a blend of 'golden era' progressive rock - with influential names such as Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant, Soft Machine, Hatfield & The North - as well as classic rock/hard rock and prog related names old and new: Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, T. Rex and Fish. Indeed, this is often cited as a mixture of retro prog, krautrock, hard rock, psych and glam rock - all together it fuses into a unique spleen, often underlined with dystopian themes.
In 2007 they were offered to record an album, and their debut 'Rhizome', released for Bluenoise label, saw the light of the day two years later. Nearly at the same time Nick Mavridis left the band and was substituted by Thomas Ahlers until Mavridis re-entered the crew in 2010. Jan Wendler left in 2012 and Gerald Kirsch joined as the new bass player in 2013. During the next years the band recorded a lot of songs, with the result being the albums 'Vortex' (2016) and 'Floating' (2018), both highly acclaimed productions showing way more kraut and psychedelic rock attitude. After the death of Gerald Kirsch in 2018 the band went on a short hiatus, then announced Thomas Johnen as a new member in March 2019. Their live comeback was at the Krach Am Bach Festival. Containing new and previously unreleased material, a further EP is planned for late Summer 2019.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=5194

Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out

 #Sleater-Kinney #Carrie Brownstein #indie rock #punk rock #riot grrrl #alternative rock #1990s

Listening to Dig Me Out on its 25th anniversary feels a little like finding an old Polaroid of our younger selves that used to hang on our bedroom wall. There we were, all wide-eyed in that ready-made frame, but we longed for someone to peel back the film to expose the layers underneath. Sleater-Kinney peeled back the layers for us, and then they stayed to tear the whole damn wall down.
Sleater-Kinney, which started as a side-project of Olympian singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, became the only project. In 1997, with then-new drummer Janet Weiss, they were carving themselves out of the Pacific Northwest’s Riot Grrrl movement. They had already released two LPs: 1995’s self-titled debut and 1996’s Call the Doctor. Both albums had gotten attention, but Dig Me Out (Kill Rock Stars, 1997) was about to change the trajectory of Sleater-Kinney forever. A month after Dig Me Out arrived, Sleater-Kinney went from performing in coffee houses and record shops to packed houses across the country, including CBGB in NYC.
In the YouTube video of Sleater-Kinney at CBGB in 1997, Brownstein approaches the mic with her signature red Epiphone strapped over her shoulder, having not upgraded to a Gibson yet. Across from her, Tucker plucks her guitar to help Brownstein finish tuning. Finally, they tune down to C#, which Brownstein admits gives them an intentional “sourness”. Weiss on her throne at the center, behind them, with her hair in quintessential late ’90s pigtails. The stage lights dim, and their set begins with the album’s title track in near darkness. Brownstein is explosive. Tucker wails. Weiss is a force. By the time the lights come up, halfway through the first verse, the audience is awe-struck. Best of all, no one in the crowd has a cell phone yet.
Coming from the DIY punk/Riot Grrrl movement, Sleater-Kinney had more creative control than more mainstream bands. I imagine they chose “Dig Me Out” as the first track because it’s the title track and because the sound exemplifies exactly who they are as a band. It’s real, it’s raw, and it’s ready for anything. In an interview with Sound Opinions, Brownstein described Tucker’s voice as “unapologetic” and able to “say more in a note or series of notes than most people need a whole song to say”. Tucker’s voice literally digs down in each verse, creating a word painting to reflect the text she’s singing. “Dig Me Out”, and almost all of the tracks on the album, are even better when listened to with headphones. Tucker’s guitar is in one ear, Brownstein’s guitar is in the other, and Tucker’s voice and Weiss’ percussion are everywhere all at once. Weiss has a series of snappy drum rolls throughout, and there is almost no better collision of sound than when she hits the crash as Tucker roars in the chorus.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/sleater-kinney-dig-me-out-atr25 

Swans - You Know Nothing

 #Swans #Michael Gira #Jarboe #experimental rock #post-rock #noise rock #industrial #no-wave #neofolk #industrial rock #gothic rock #dark folk #apocalyptic folk

In a half-decade span beginning in the mid '80s, Swans swiftly transformed from bone-crushing no wave brutalists to God-fearing gothic rockers, and then to featherweight neo-folkies. White Light from the Mouth of Infinity and Love of Life, originally released in 1991 and 1992, respectively, marked the end of that metamorphosis, as the band settled into a sound at once songful and vast, luminous as a glass menagerie and forceful as a falling anvil. The two albums have long been treated as minor works in Swans' discography: out of print for years, they were cherry-picked (alongside selections from 1989's major-label fiasco The Burning World and the Gira/Jarboe side project the World of Skin) for 1999's inauspiciously titled Various Failures 1988-1992. "I'm ambivalent about much of it, but then what do I know?" Gira has written of the music on that anthology. "Some of it is genuinely good I think. Anyway, I was learning how to write a song as I went."
It's true that the period marked a shift from pummeling mantras to something more "musical," with singing instead of shouting and cascading chords instead of just drop-tuned gut-punches. That said, even here, Gira's concept of "songwriting" remains idiosyncratic: there's little in the way of verse/chorus structures, mainly just mantra-like incantations and chords wreathed around gleaming pedal tones surrounded by wide-open expanse. Drummers Anton Fier (White Light) and Vincent Signorelli and Ted Parson (Love of Life) lay into their snares with military gusto, driving the music forward in surging tattoos, and their nonstop rattle contributes to a sensation of overwhelming excess. Close your eyes, and you can practically see the sounds exploding like fireworks against the darkness of your lids.
The textures and tone colors are well suited to Gira's favorite themes, like love, death, and the sublime. Where early Swans lyrics were notable largely for their grueling power dynamics and limitless abjection—see "Raping a Slave", "Filth", "Cop", etc.—here Gira explores a more nuanced perspective. It's hardly all kittens and rainbows; both albums are littered with ugliness, from the dirge-like "Better Than You" ("So glad I'm better than you," he sings, in the world's most dead-eyed Dear John letter) to the claustrophobic "Amnesia", where he tells us "sex is a void filled with plastic" and "everything human's necessarily wrong." Gira has rarely wallowed as beautifully as he does on "Failure", one of the great nadirs—in the best way possible—of the band's catalog. Over bluesy acoustic guitar and frigid digital synthesizers, his preacher's drawl drips like blood from a stone; it would be hard to imagine a voice with more gravitas. But Gira has never met a dichotomy he could resist—he eats love and hate, sprinkled with a bit of good and evil, for breakfast—and here we can see the pendulum beginning to tip from darkness back to daylight.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21259-white-light-from-the-mouth-of-infinity-love-of-life/

Comus - Song to Comus

 #Comus #acid folk #freak folk #folk rock #progressive folk #British folk rock #psychedelic folk #1970s

A guitar is hit hard and strummed with abandon, another is plucked and joined by a flute, the demented voice of Roger Wootton breaks in to sing: “Bright the sunlight summer day, Comus wakes he starts to play. Virgin fair smiles so sweet, Comus’ heart begins to beat’. Each of the ending words are echoed out in repeat, “play, play, play, play.” The song continues on to tell a form of the Comus story, based on John Milton’s masque of the same name, in which he ensnares a lady in a forest. “Comus glare, Comus bare, Comus rape”.
In 1630 a heinous charge of sodomy and rape was brought upon the head of the Earl of Castlehaven, who was tried and convicted of sodomy with his page, and accused of provoking and assisting another to rape his wife – part of a twisted plan to produce an alternate heir. Described by the judge as an ‘unnatural crime’, he was found guilty and beheaded three weeks later on Tower Hill. Four years after this event, his brother-in-law John Egerton, the 1st Earl of Bridewater, arrived at Ludlow castle to take up his new appointment as Lord President of Wales. To celebrate the occasion, the poet John Milton wrote a masque, named ‘Comus’. It is said that the masque was performed to cleanse the family’s past and to help forget the crimes of the Earl of Castlehaven.
John Milton (born in 1608), worked as a civil servant under Oliver Cromwell, and was a renowned poet and scholar, best known for his epic poem ‘Paradise Lost’, that ruminates on the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan. His masque ‘Comus’ tells the story of two brothers and a sister who find themselves lost in a forest. When the sister, known as the Lady, stops to rest, her brothers search on for food. Comus then appears to her, a kind of god of chaos based on the Greek god of the same name, disguised as a villager. He tricks and captures her, and takes her to his pleasure palace, putting her on a bewitched chair where he uses a necromancers wand and entices her to drink from his magical cup. She refuses in the name of chastity and temperance. Eventually she is rescued by her brothers with help from The Attendant Spirit, a kind of angel. Who manage to chase Comus away, but they can’t free their sister from the chairs spell. The Spirit gives them aid by calling the water nymph Sabrina with a song, who subsequently frees the Lady. The three siblings return home to be reunited with their parents in jubilation. ‘Song to Comus’ uses the middle part of the poem, where the demon finds the Lady in the forest, as its basis. Roger Wootton sings wildly with glee as he enacts Comus, ‘hands of steel, crack you open and your red flesh peel.’ The band ramp up the darkness with theatre, as they do with on most of the songs on their unique debut ‘First Utterance’.
Comus formed tentatively in 1967 with the meeting of guitarists Roger Wootton and Glenn Goring at Ravensbourne college. During that period they started to play folk clubs together and later met David Bowie at the Arts Lab in Beckenham, who then asked them to perform regularly at his curated evenings. They met their manager Chris Youle at the college, as well as a violinist, Colin Pearson, who was studying Milton at the time and suggested the band name. The bass player Andy Hellaby was found at the Arts Lab, and singer Bobbie Watson was invited to join after the rest of the band heard her harmonizing at a local house. Flautist Rob Young was found through an advert.
In 1970 they toured and played across the country like any other working band. During that year, Canadian director Lindsay Shonteff asked them to contribute to her film ‘Permissive’, a story of groupies in London. Shonteff had been impressed by a gig at which Roger cut his hand and continued to play on, bleeding on to his guitar during the song ‘Drip Drip’. Various members of Comus went on to score another three films for Shonteff, who’s ‘Permissive’ is part of the BFI flipside collection. In June of the same year, the band performed at the Purcell Rooms in London’s Royal Festival Hall supporting David Bowie. Their mesmerizing and frenetic act brought them much attention and led them to ink a contract with label Pye/Dawn. The following year they released ‘First Utterance’, with its cover depicting Comus in all his evil glory, drawn by Roger himself. Unfortunately the album had no commercial success and they disbanded in ’72. On ‘Song to Comus’ the intensity of the rest of the album is continued. ‘First Utterance’ really is a one of a kind – bizarre compelling vocals by Roger, lush foil-vocals from Bobbie, urgent guitars, apocalyptic violin playing, head nodding percussion and a burrowing flute.  From: https://www.spookyisles.com/john-miltons-tale-of-rape-and-necromancy/