Sly & The Family Stone - Stand / You Can Make It If You Try / Sing A Simple Song

At approximately 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 17, 1969 at the Woodstock Musical Festival, Sly and The Family Stone took it to the stage. These days, I can’t imagine doing much of anything coherent at 3:30 a.m., but here, during the smallest of the small hours, the members of the seminal soul/funk/rock group got up and rocked a crowd of approximately 400,000 people.
Sounding fresh and sharp as they would ever sound on stage, Sly and The Family Stone gave one of the best performances of the three-day festival and one of their greatest live performances as a band. At one point, they famously got the absolutely massive crowd chanting “HIGHER!” while throwing up the peace sign. Even listening to the audio, the electricity is palpable. 
Countless historians and musicologists have written millions of words about the Woodstock concert and the associated sociological conditions that made it what it was, but I like to think those 50 minutes on stage by Sly and The Family Stone could be considered the high water mark of the high water mark of the late ’60s. During an event that’s become synonymous with music serving as the vessel of peace, love, and togetherness, Sly and the Family Stone radiated all three. 
Part of what brought the collective to that moment in time was Stand!, the group’s fourth album, released 50 years ago. The San Francisco-based assemblage of musical pioneers had been releasing albums since the mid-1960s. The gathering of musical minds became proprietors of psychedelic soul in 1966, led by former DJ and overall genius multi-instrumentalist Sylvester Stewart a.k.a. Sly Stone. One of the first notable bi-racial bands that also featured men and women, their ranks included uber-talented bassist Larry Graham, as well as Stone brother and lead guitarist Freddie, and Stone sister Rose, as a vocalist and keyboard player. The line-up also included drummer Greg Errico, trumpeter Cynthia Robinson, and saxophonist Jerry Martini. 
Prior to the release of Stand!, the group was best known for rollicking soul and rock jams like “Dance to the Music.” Though they had earned commercial and critical success, the band was coming off the release of their somewhat disappointing third album Life, which had hit shelves in July of 1968. Life was a solid, reasonably light album that was fun but didn’t really break any new ground or sell nearly as many copies as Dance to the Music.  
Stand! was Sly and The Family Stone’s best and most commercially successful album of their career. It went platinum in less than a year, eventually selling three million copies and spawning  the #1 chart-topping “Everyday People.” The album is one of the defining pieces of musical work of the late 1960s. Whereas the group had dabbled in themes of unity and peace on Life, these subjects became the super-text of Stand!
I was not alive when Stand! became a musical and cultural force. I learned about this album and Sly and The Family Stone from my father, who played it pretty frequently when I was growing up. Over the years, as I’ve come to learn about and listen to the music produced from that era, Stand! endures over all. Even within a year that featured as many great, important albums as 1969, Stand! remains at the top of the heap.
We live in deeply cynical times. We trade in sarcasm and skepticism as easily as we breathe oxygen. So it’s easy to perceive genuine sentiments expressed on Stand! with a jaundiced eye. But the album’s absolute sincerity is refreshing. Stand! is inspiring without ever being didactic, simplistic, or preachy.
Stand! crystallized the spirit of the late ’60s like few other albums have done. It’s a tribute to love, unity, optimism, and equality. Sly and The Family Stone express a deeply held belief that things could and would get better, that Black and white populations could love together in harmony. That you could stand up to the Goliaths in the government and make a difference. That people could make a difference in turning the world into a better place for everyone.
This worldview is typified in the album’s title track. The song leans hard into its message of empowerment, evoking imagery of little people standing tall and giants about to fall, all while encouraging people to remember that they’re free if they want to be. “Stand” is often remembered for its frenzied final third, where Stone decides to shift that tone of the song, recording a thrilling gospel-inspiration coda, with chanting vocals, blaring horns, and pulsing organs.
“You Can Make It If You Try” is another stirring call to action, designed to encourage the audience to work to fight against oppression in its many forms. The simple poetry of  “Time’s still creeping, especially when you're sleeping / Wake up and go for what you know” is really hard to top. The song is also one of the most musically interesting compositions, with its plucky guitar, rugged horns, and energetic organ breakdown about halfway through the song.  From: https://albumism.com/features/sly-and-the-family-stone-stand-album-anniversary

The Nields - Georgia O / Friday at the Circle K / Jennifer Falling Down

In the front, the Pit kids ruled. In the back, the grandparents huddled. And sandwiched between both were the rest of the diverse crowd-swingers and students, artists and bankers, all belting out the lyrics to The Nields' much acclaimed new album Play.
The Nields, made up of Katryna and Nerissa Nields, Nerissa's husband David Nields (he took her last name when they were married), drummer Dave Hower and guitarist Dave Chalant, are inspired by folk-rock and alternative music. They misleadingly call themselves a rock band their songs reveal a vibrancy and eccentricity missing from modern rock.
The quintet stormed the Paradise and led a show that ran on Jolt soda for fuel. Opening with "Friday at the Circle K," raven-haired lead singer Katryna dominated the show with her powerful vocals, and jigged and twisted through the show, not stopping until the last of the two-song encore. Guitarist Dave Chalfant and Dave Nields leapt and hopped to match. The band threw out chocolates between sets, described the inspiration behind their rich lyrics and urged the audience to use their own lingo ("dolphin friendly" for over the top politically correct). The band had an effervescence in personality to match the energy of their music.
The band draws in fans with its catchy beats and quirky vocals. Well-crafted lyrics make their fans feel warm and fuzzy, nostalgic and disturbed, while avoiding the sickly tone of most pop music. Despite class, age and style differences, all of the fans were mesmerized.
The punkster kids screamed, the swingers and students shuffled, and the geriatrics in the back tapped their feet. But everybody danced-awkwardly at first, heartily in the high-powered middle, frantically at the passionate encore. When the chaos was over, the sisters performed a silky version of the Hank William Sr.'s classic "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry." With the departure of the Nields from the stage, the tie holding the crowd together loosened, and the audience separated again into their different categories.
The audience loves the Nields because they reveal themselves to the audience in a candid way that everyone can understand. This is one group that loves its small but growing fan base-they have a mailing list of over 25,000 fans-and they crave success as much as any other "rock" band. And, in this age of formulaic talent and paper-thin lyrics, they are the ones who deserve it the most.  From: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1999/3/5/playing-the-nields-pin-the-front/ 

Wolfmother - Colossal

Pledging allegiance to thick, throttling fuzz guitars, primal psychedelia, and thundering rhythms, the 21st century rock revivalists Wolfmother split the difference between the classic sludge of Black Sabbath and the retro-garage rock of the White Stripes. Led by guitarist/vocalist Andrew Stockdale, the power trio came storming out of Sydney, Australia in 2006 with a self-titled debut that generated international hits in the form of "Woman" and "Joker & the Thief." Although they had some stumbles following up this initial success -- bandmembers came and went, leaving Stockdale the sole original member -- subsequent albums like 2009's Cosmic Egg and 2021's Rock Out played to a cult devoted to their heavy, riff-oriented rock.
Stockdale formed Wolfmother with drummer Myles Heskett, who then brought in bassist/keyboardist Chris Ross. A few years of woodshedding followed but things started to move quickly after their first concert in April 2004. Four months later, the trio inked a deal with Modular Records, knocking out a self-titled EP at Detroit's Ghetto Studios with producer Jim Diamond (not coincidentally, Diamond helmed early White Stripes records). The EP wound up charting on the Australian singles chart and the group kept touring before signing to Universal Records and heading to Los Angeles to cut a full-length debut with producer David Sardy. Wolfmother, the album, came out in Australia that October, where it turned into a big hit; it would eventually be certified quintuple platinum in their homeland. Other territories followed in early 2006 and the album performed well in each of them thanks to the singles "White Unicorn," "Woman," and "Joker & the Thief," along with a host of film, television, and video game placements, not to mention constant touring with a focus on festivals.
 Following this heavy promotion for Wolfmother, fractures started appearing in the band. In August 2008, Universal announced the departure of Heskett and Ross. Stockdale expanded Wolfmother to a quartet, adding guitarist Aidan Nemeth, bassist/keyboardist Ian Peres, and drummer Dave Atkins, debuting this lineup early in 2009 under the pseudonym White Feather. Around this time, this incarnation began recording a second Wolfmother album. Entitled Cosmic Egg, it appeared in the fall of 2009, debuting high in many countries but it failed to generate the same excitement as the debut. Wolfmother continued to tour the album into 2011, with Will Rockwell-Scott replacing drummer Atkins in 2010. Then, they turned their attention to recording a third album but things in the band continued to be unstable. Nemeth and Rockwell-Scott both departed in 2012, replaced by guitarist Vin Steele and drummer Hamish Rosser, and a new keyboardist called Elliott Hammond also joined as the group continued to record a third album. As it turned out, Stockdale decided to retire the name Wolfmother and release the record as a solo album called Keep Moving in the summer of 2013. Keep Moving didn't do much on the charts and by the end of the year, Stockdale announced that Wolfmother was once again an active concern (albeit without Hammond, who turned out to be a short-timer). Steele moved over to drums and Wolfmother were once again a trio; this is the version that released a surprise album called New Crown in the spring of 2014. A year later their debut was re-released as as deluxe, two-disc edition in celebration of Wolfmother's tenth anniversary.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/wolfmother-mn0000086250#biography

The Shee - Lady Margaret

Chris Belson: It is said that whenever a group of the beautiful and otherworldly Shee appear to us mortals, there is a strange sound like the humming of thousands of bees, or  a whirlwind or shee-gaoithe. I’m not suggesting that this band are in fact descendants of such magical beings but in their own way The Shee do personify this myth.  They appear to us with a new album, Decadence – a really beautifully crafted and brilliantly played folk record. Songs like Sugar and Pie have a hint of The Unthanks to it, only with slightly more biting and contemporary lyrics. Although mostly very traditional, In some songs there’s a very apparent influence by more mainstream pop-music which, if anything, makes this album accessible to people not familiar with traditional folk. The stand out songs for me are Meltdown – which has an almost Shooglenifty-like sense of energy, and Room to Breathe – which I had on repeat whilst writing this review.

Ian Parker: Listening to The Shee takes me back to the likes of Nickelcreek, as they too are trying to add a new twist to traditional sounds, using an array of fiddles, accordians and flutes to tackle a mix of old standards and covers of artists like Abigail Washburn and Liz Carroll. There is, as Nickelcreek before found, a novelty value to this sort of thing and you do wonder how long it will sustain, particularly when – as in the Shee’s case – they do not have their own material, but for now they are doing their thing well.

From: https://www.forfolkssake.com/new-bands-panel/7769/the-shee 

Elton John - Teacher I Need You / Blues for Baby and Me / Texan Love Song / High Flying Bird

If you’re a longtime Elton John fan, you certainly have a favorite album or two, or three. During the 1970s, Elton had an incredible run of amazing records. Standouts include Tumbleweed Connection, Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy, and Madman Across The Water. I’ve always appreciated Elton as an “album” artist, though he’s had huge success with his singles as well. One of the discs that sometimes gets slightly lost in the shuffle is the 1973 release Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, which came out between Honky Chateau and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It’s a fantastic effort that features a number of excellent songs. At the time of its original release, it spawned a couple of massive hit singles in “Daniel” and “Crocodile Rock.”
The record was made at Château d’Hérouville in France, where the band had recorded Honky Chateau. Don’t Shoot Me finds Elton and lyricist Bernie Taupin continuing their creative hot streak. Bernie’s vivid imagery and Elton’s tuneful music are the perfect match. Kicking off with the classic ballad “Daniel,” the album features an eclectic mix of tunes, including the rollicking, Stones-esque “Midnight Creeper” and the powerful “Have Mercy On The Criminal,” featuring strings arranged by Paul Buckmaster who had collaborated with Elton on some of his previous albums. There’s also a tribute to Elton’s friend Marc Bolan of T-Rex on “I’m Going To Be A Teenage Idol.” Of course, the supremely talented band consisting of Davey Johnstone on guitar, Dee Murray on bass, and Nigel Olsson on drums, backs Elton on the album, and they rocked, as they always did when backing Elton, whether it was live or in studio.
Other notable tracks include the rocking “Elderberry Wine” and the bouncy “Teacher I Need You.” Of course, it wouldn’t be an Elton record without some slower-paced, ballad-style numbers and the beautiful “Blues For My Baby and Me” and the tender “High Flying Bird” are also standouts. Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player is probably Elton’s most straightforward pop album up to that point in his career, and it’s a very well-crafted record, impeccably produced by Gus Dudgeon. In re-listening to it, I’ve realized it truly stands up alongside some of his best work.  From: https://www.culturesonar.com/elton-john-dont-shoot-me/ 

Heavy Vegetable - Cotton Swab

The off-kilter indie pop band Heavy Vegetable was the inaugural vehicle of Rob Crow, a prolific singer, guitarist, and songwriter who went on to form a dizzying array of alternate projects. Crow was a longtime devotee of rock eccentrics ranging back to Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart, as well as Can, the Residents, and Devo, among others. In practice, Heavy Vegetable's music sounded more punkish, with a fractured pop aesthetic that brought the likes of Guided by Voices or the Archers of Loaf to the minds of some critics; early on, their music also bore the unmistakable influence of prog-punk outfits like Slint and Drive Like Jehu. Crow's surrealist lyrics and fragmented melodic gifts earned Heavy Vegetable an enthusiastic cult following in the mid-‘90s. However, in the first indication of the creative restlessness that would mark his career, he soon chose to move on, fronting a succession of bands that more or less followed the Heavy Vegetable aesthetic.
Heavy Vegetable was formed in Encinitas, California (near San Diego) by guitarist/singer Crow, lead singer Eléa Tenuta, bassist Travis Nelson, and drummer Manolo Turner. After a few split singles and compilation appearances, the band debuted in 1993 with the four-song EP A Bunch of Stuff by Heavy Vegetable, released by The Way Out Sound. Their style truly blossomed on their first full-length album, 1994's The Amazing Undersea Adventures of Aqua Kitty and Friends (on Headhunter/Cargo), whose brief, catchy songs wedded progressive, even jazzy musicianship (odd time signatures, complex harmonies, etc.) to geeky lyrics reminiscent of They Might Be Giants. The follow-up, Frisbie, appeared in 1995 and consolidated the strengths of its predecessor while moving farther away from the band's punk roots. Frisbie in particular won the band considerable critical acclaim, but unfortunately, they split up during the supporting tour.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/heavy-vegetable-mn0000952646#biography  

Pom Poko - Live at Paste Studio Austin 2022

Winter in New York City can feel more brutal at times than in other parts of the world, which is pointed out by Pom Poko midway through their set at Baby’s All Right on Tuesday night as guitarist Martin Tonne and drummer Ola Djupvik sought out some warmer layers. This surprised me, considering the band hails from Oslo—a city 19 degrees of latitude north of NYC. Tonne must’ve sensed my confusion because he quickly followed up by telling us that they ‘are from Norway but [they’re] not very tough.” This didn’t stop the venue from filling up for Pom Poko’s first show in New York since they played New Colossus Festival in 2022 and their first New York date as part of their debut North American tour.
Much like their music, Pom Poko’s show felt like we were dynamically weaving through big musical breaks and complicated, intimate vocal-driven moments. To guide us through this weave, lead vocalist Ragnhild Fangel plays the role of a conductor as she sings—using intricate hand and arm gestures to shape the quieter moments. As the music got bigger, she threw herself into the noise, jumping and dancing alongside her bandmates.
The crowd was more than ready to jump, dance, and mosh alongside Pom Poko, especially after Nashville-based Big Bill kicked off the night with a blistering set. Their high-energy performance set the tone for the evening as they leaped into the crowd multiple times, crowd-surfed, and spent the final song balancing on the side railing of the venue. I worked up a sweat just trying to keep up.
After taking us through different songs from their discography—with the focus of the night being on their newly-released album Champion—Fangel ended the night with a crowd surf during “If U Want Me 2 Stay.” This was Pom Poko’s last show of the first part of their North American tour before returning to Europe, where they will continue touring across the EU and UK.  From: https://northerntransmissions.com/review-pom-poko-live-in-new-york-city/

 

Umbilicus - Gates Of Neptune

The debut album of Umbilicus was released in September. Can you introduce the band a little bit more?

Paul Mazurkiewicz: Yeah, I was extremely excited that we were closing it with the release date on September 30th. The band consists of myself on drums, Vernon Blake on bass guitar, Taylor Nordberg on guitar and Brian Stephenson is our vocalist. The three of us, Taylor, Vernon and me live in Florida – we're all from the same Tampa area and Brian Stephenson is from Ottawa, Canada. It makes things a little more challenging at this point right now where we're able to possibly do some shows or debut, ironically enough we've never even jammed together as a full band because of the whole pandemic thing here. With technology of course you're luckily able to record things like that and you don't have to be in the same room these days. We started jamming together in 2020 probably around May or June after Cannibal Corpse was done recording the album "Violence Unimagined". I talked to my buddy Vernon and we actually had a project about 20 years ago. It was myself, Vernon on bass and Jack Owen, one of the original guitar players in Cannibal Corpse. It was around 2000 we started a rock project. It was a kind of break-up to death metal and all that kind of stuff and to play the style of music that I really love which is 70s rock which is Umbilicus pretty much. Jack Owen had the same kind of taste that I did so we decided to start this project. We ended up playing two shows in Tampa around that time in 2000 in a smaller bar. We wrote all originals and we had maybe about 15 songs written and we could just never procure a proper singer that we were looking for. The band unfortunately I guess fell apart and nothing ever became of the songs we wrote. We made some demos but nothing of any quality to one will be released. I always like to say fast forward twenty years and when this opportunity arose like I was saying with the pandemic in '20 and me actually having more time again, not knowing what was gonna happen with touring and all with Cannibal Corpse, I talked to Vernon and asked him if he wanted to get that project and the band back together. He was all for it and the thing was that Jack doesn't live in Florida any more. He is living in Illinois now and we really didn't think he wanted to be part of it anyway. So what happened was that Vernon and I started playing actually some of the old songs because we had to start somewhere and we really like the songs that we wrote back for the original project which was called "Path Of Man" by the way. We learned some of the old songs and just him and I played bass and drums and then we figured out that we needed a new guitar player. We needed to kinda start fresh in this project and that's when Taylor came into the fold. We had some mutual friends that suggested we try him out. So we did and the first practice we had was just magical. Taylor learned one of the old songs that we had from the other project and he jammed it with us and we just started somewhere. It was awesome and it was a lot of fun and we gelled right off the bat and he was totally interested in wanting to move this forward as well. What we ended up doing though is we were considering using some of those old songs but the fact that Jack really had a good hand in pretty much writing most all those we said to start fresh. Taylor is a great creative force, a great artist and somebody in so many different capacities and a great songwriter so he ended up writing the bulk of this material pretty much all of it. The last piece of the puzzle was getting a vocalist. We toyed with the idea that it would be nice to have somebody local just to be able to play and to be able to be together all the time. We didn't want to admit ourselves at the same time because maybe the right guys weren't gonna be here and Taylor suggested Brian. Taylor is in another band with him and we said why not, we'll give it a shot! We sent a couple of songs to Brian and when we heard back after he only had one or two songs for a couple of days and he just slapped something together it was just like "wow, this is unbelievable!". He was the missing piece. We know he is in Canada but he is such a great vocalist and we'll make it work. So Brian was brought in at the end there and all the music was already finished actually. We had all the songs completed and they were actually recorded. It was just a matter of what we gonna do here – Taylor was gonna try to sing there a little bit first but we figured if we get somebody that is gonna be mind-blowing, somebody that's a vocalist – Taylor would give it a shot, he has a great voice but he never sang in a band before like this. So it made sense to bring Brian in. I mean the songs are incredible, you've heard the three that we already had out, and he took the songs to the next level. That's where we stand right now. It's been a couple of years in the making and we're ready to release the whole record and we're very excited for everything that's happening with us right now.

From: https://metalbite.com/interviews/1622/umbilicus-with-paul-mazurkiewicz-drums

 

Traffic - Paper Sun / Smiling Phases

 Traffic - Paper Sun

 

 Traffic - Smiling Phases

 

Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi wrote Paper Sun in March 1967 when Winwood was in the Spencer Davis Group and Capaldi was a member of Deep Feeling. The bands were on tour together, and after a show in Newcastle, the two convened in a hotel room and put the song together. "I got the title from a newspaper in a boarding house in Newcastle," Capaldi explained. "I was half-asleep, lying there writing this lyric in my head at about 3:30 in the morning. I woke up Steve with this idea and then we went into the living room where there was a little upright piano and finished the song." When Winwood and Capaldi formed Traffic a short time later with Dave Mason and Chris Wood, they recorded "Paper Sun" and released it as their first single.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/traffic/paper-sun

 

Since Traffic's debut album, Mr. Fantasy, has been issued in different configurations over the years, a history of those differences is in order. In 1967, the British record industry considered albums and singles separate entities; thus, Mr. Fantasy did not contain the group's three previous Top Ten U.K. hits. Just as the album was being released in the U.K., Traffic split from Dave Mason. The album was changed drastically for U.S. release, both because American custom was that singles ought to appear on albums, and because the group sought to diminish Mason's presence; on the first pressing only, the title was changed to Heaven Is in Your Mind. In 2000, Island reissued Mr. Fantasy in its mono mix with the U.K. song list and five mono singles sides as bonus tracks; it also released Heaven Is in Your Mind, the American lineup in stereo with four bonus tracks. Naturally, the mono sound is punchier and more compressed, but it isn't ideal for the album, because Traffic was fashioned as an unusual rock band. Steve Winwood's primary instrument was organ, though he also played guitar; Chris Wood was a reed player, spending most of his time on flute; Mason played guitar, but he was also known to pick up the sitar, among other instruments. As such a mixture suggests, the band's musical approach was eclectic, combining their background in British pop with a taste for the comic and dance hall styles of Sgt. Pepper, Indian music, and blues-rock jamming. Songs in the last category have proven the most distinctive and long-lasting, but Mason's more pop-oriented contributions remain winning, as do more light-hearted efforts.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/mr-fantasy-mw0000193815#review 

 

 

Zola Jesus - The Fall

Having recently announced her new album Arkhon is now due to be released on the 24th of June via Sacred Bones Records, Zola Jesus has shared the third single and video from the album, entitled “The Fall“. Nika Roza Danilova comments on latest cut “The Fall” saying: “I wrote The Fall for myself. It was an exercise in using music as a tool for the sake of my own inner catharsis. I had a lot of turmoil and complicated emotions that I couldn’t process in any other way. I suppose some feelings require you to write a pop song in order to fully understand them. For that reason, this song is very precious to me.”
Speaking on the track’s accompanying video, she adds: “Working with Jenni Hensler as a director was such a soul-feeding experience. She’s someone I’ve been collaborating with for ten years, and a dear friend to me. I value her own artistic perspective so much that at some point I realized there was no one else I could trust with my vision. We connected on an emotional and spiritual level regarding the intent of the song, and then I handed it over and let her make her magic. I’ve never felt so freed by a collaboration. And working with choreographer Sigrid Lauren was such an empowering experience. She was able to interpret and support my idiosyncratic movements in a way that allowed me to feel free in the moment.”
Director Jenni Hensler comments: “When we fall, we have the inner strength to pick ourselves up again. We sometimes have to struggle to find that strength, but it is there within all of us. The journey Nika goes through within the video, including confronting her reflection, removing her mask and the symbolic choreographed dance that follows are my way of expressing that.
I’ve debated whether to write a heartfelt statement speaking of the long-standing collaboration and friendship I’ve had over the years with Nika, about how she has touched my life and how we have both grown. Or to only speak about the meaning of this current collaboration. The two are connected, intertwined. This video is about the feeling of being stuck in a position or way of thinking about yourself and of the world around you, including the pressures to conform to a certain way of expression. It’s about the mask we wear, and the ways artists are forced to comply in order to succeed. This oftentimes makes us forget that creating art is one of the most transcendent forms of expression and that fully feeling, being in the present and enjoying the process while creating is at the core of who we are and the art we create. It is about change and coming into the power of our creativity. We need to wholly feel and release the magic within. When we make ourselves vulnerable and find the strength to do that, the art has a deeper meaning. The unspoken feeling when we truly feel connected and in the present moment of ecstatic joy or pain as we create is palpable. When Nika and I spoke about the vision for the song, we discussed a yearning for something better, a breakthrough of creative potential, and learning along the way. And then a sort of enlightenment when you realize that you are in control and do not need to conform to external standards. There is power and magic in knowing that. There is power in the desire for something better, the feeling within that desire including the drive and excitement it brings. There is strength in the feeling of expressing the sensuality simultaneously brewing and fully releasing that inner fire. This is an expression of all of that and reflects the journey of our collaboration and metamorphosis over many years.”  From: https://musicandriots.com/zola-jesus-shares-new-single-video-the-fall/

Unwoman - Long Long Shadows

Unwoman is a San Fransisco-based cellist and multi-talent that have been active since 2001, releasing a wide array of about seven albums and one EP. Her real name is Erica Mulkey and she also frequently plays and visits goth, steampunk and science fiction-events. With praise from Amanda Palmer (Dresden Dolls) and collaborations with various acts such as Voltaire, Abney Park, Rasputina, Jill Tracy and many more – she’s gotten a wide range of perspective, influence and musicianship. Nowadays she also performs solo with the drummer Felix Mcnee as Heavy Sugar Duo. Besides that, she also does guest appearances in other bands. I got the opportunity to ask Erica about her collaborations, how she depicts the “dark cabaret”-genre and what’s in store for the future of Unwoman – and much, much more.

You’ve worked with many known acts within the dark cabaret-scene, if you’d get to choose one ultimate collaboration that you haven’t done yet, what and who would it be with?

– It would be pretty sweet to play with Amanda Palmer. I have seen her live many times but never met her, though we’ve communicated online.

I think it’s pretty cool that you’ve self-produced four full-length albums, could you tell me what goes into that process?

– Writing songs, recording material, polishing mixes (I could talk for days about how I actually produce songs but I suspect this isn’t the right place for that), package design, having material mastered, and communicating with pressing plants. I’ve actually self-produced six full-length albums if you count my remix album Unremembered and my covers album Uncovered – seven if you count Infinitesimal, my very first album which was unreleased until Feb 20, 2012.

Does it give you more artistic freedom if you self-release it?

– I have complete freedom and from what I gather I would not if I were beholden to a label, so yes, of course.

What do you think about the genre dark cabaret in general?

– It’s interesting in its communication style –- it brings back the tradition of songwriters speaking directly to the audience rather than being overwhelmed by intricate musical trickery, yet it’s open to visual glamour and seduction that coffeehouse singer-songwriters don’t generally employ. (For the record I don’t consider myself dark cabaret; my recorded music is too electronic.)

How many projects do you have going at the same time right now, as we speak?

– It depends how you count things. I have my documentary project, which I hope to have to press in March, I have this first album rerelease (Feb 20) for which I scanned a lot of old original lyrics notes, I have my next album (to come out Summer 2012) for which I have 13 songs written… I always have little collaborations happening here and there, too.

What do you think about Siouxsie and the Banshees, more than them influencing you musically?

– Oh yes, they were very influential. I think it was extremely important that post-punk/goth music had a strong female voice and Siouxsie was wonderful for that. I love all of their albums but my favorite may be Juju.

I’ve lately heard something that reminded me a lot about Siouxsie, her name is Zola Jesus, have you heard her music?

– Yes! In fact, her song “Night” is an important one between myself and my boyfriend, as we have to spend a lot of time apart because of my touring schedule. One time at Death Guild (San Francisco goth club, where he does lights and live visuals) we danced to “Night” – not touching, – but our eyes locked through the entire song.

It seems like you have quite dedicated fans, how do you feel about them?

– I seriously love them. They are smart, loyal, forgiving, and supportive, and I do my best to give back what they give me.

Amanda Palmer seems to help you a lot, have you collaborated with her in any shape or form, or do you want to?

– She has helped me a lot – but it was all in one day, when she found my ustream and tweeted about me, and got me at least a hundred new dedicated fans. I know I could double sales of any of my albums if she tweeted about those, but I don’t want to bother her. (Heh, I answered the 2nd question already) I have never actually met her – the last three times she’s performed in San Francisco I’ve had a gig out of town.

Where would you say that you’ve found inspiration for your aesthetics?

– Visual aesthetics: silent films, art nouveau paintings, steampunks, street goths on Telegraph Ave in Berkeley, Victorian dolls, post-apocalyptic fashion tumblrs, witches, burlesque performers, tribal fusion bellydancers…

Have you also drawn influences from Lene Lovich and Toyah?

– Not consciously.

You seem to have quite a lot going at the same time, does it ever become tiresome for you?

– I wouldn’t say tiresome, because my life is thrilling and beautiful, but it can be overwhelming. I had recently been saying yes to everything that came my way, and getting lots of people inquiring about shows, and saying yes to all of those, but I think I need to slow that down for a bit so I can make sure my head is above water and I’m not letting too many things fall through the cracks. The main difficulty is rapidly shifting gears between traveling for shows vs being at home editing music or video. I absolutely love both of those things but I need balancing skills that I haven’t fully developed yet – I’ve only been a full-time musician for two years now.

What do you believe that the future holds for you, and will you be releasing something new this year?

– Lots of convention appearances (steampunk, scifi, goth, etc) in the US. I will be releasing my next original album this Summer. Based on what’s been happening over the last two years, my fanbase will continue to grow slowly and steadily; I’ll never be a household name but I’m able to support myself and live by my own rules, so that’s just fine with me.

Will you be touring in Sweden someday or have you done that already?

– I hope someday to have a big enough fanbase globally to justify it, but right now I don’t think I could make it work. I played in the UK a year ago and the shows themselves were really fun, but being in a foreign country, even one where I spoke the language, where I didn’t have any close friends, was really difficult for me – I’ve only just recently gotten comfortable touring in the US and it makes the most sense to focus on playing here.

What would be your last words of wisdom to your Swedish fans?

– I recently expressed this to a young fellow musician but it really applies to every creative person: You will never get permission to rock to your fullest awesomeness. Do it anyway.

From: https://invisibleguy.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/interview-with-unwoman/

The Orange Kyte - Distractions

Steeped in psychedelic garage rock sensibilities, The Orange Kyte’s Stevie Moonboots has become a beloved voice in Vancouver’s diverse music scene since leaving his hometown of Dublin behind in 2012. For the Orange Kyte’s new album, Masquerade, Moonboots has drawn inspiration through reflective observation of Vancouver, unearthing his curious take on the duality of the human experience.
“I’m very interested in psychology and sociology,” says Moonboots. “I’m just interested in what lurks beneath the façade of everyday life. You know when you’re having a bad day and you see somebody who looks like they haven’t got a care in the world, but you know they’re looking at you thinking the same. The masks we wear and how we present ourselves from a societal point of view has always fascinated me.” 
The Orange Kyte’s songwriting process conjures cascading kaleidoscopic visions of orange hues, and dreamy rock psychedelia that hits the aesthetic core of what Moonboots refers to as a growing —most certainly an orange coloured and hallucinogenic patterned — “umbrella” of genres.
“I try to keep a theme in my head then join the dots and make it cohesive. I’m very standoffish when it comes to dictating parts to everyone in the band. One of us starts playing and then we all join in. The focus is on creating the best possible songs I can write. We never limit ourselves and our sound is an ever-expanding umbrella of musical influences.” The lenses in which the band got its name is multifaceted, being an interesting homage to the past, with a surprisingly potent metaphor of rocks subversive power. 
“I didn’t have a name for the band before I released the first single so I asked my girlfriend at the time what her favourite colour was, and it just happened to be Orange,” Moonboots says with a laugh. “Kyte is prison slang for contraband communication. People think I’m doing a playful version of kite but that’s actually not the case. Contraband communication you can relate that to music, and sometimes rock and roll can be that.” Avoiding any form of contrivance has been one of The Orange Kyte’s most cherished values. Comfortability as an artist can lead to a weakening of the messages found in the songs, losing its “humanity.”   
According to Moonboots this is something many artists of the past have strived to avoid as it can dampen originality. Aware of this trap, this new offering feels truly vital and informed coming from a place of exciting inventiveness. Impressive for a genre of music that has existed for many decades. 
“You want to create a body of work, like Guided by Voices for example, that leaves a legacy. Contentment is the death of your art. David Bowie said to never let your feet touch the bottom of the pool,” Moonboots says.  From: https://beatroutemedia.com/the-orange-kyte-masquerade-album/  

 

The Sugarcubes - Birthday / Motorcrash

 The Sugarcubes - Birthday

 

 The Sugarcubes - Motorcrash

 

“We loved each other with a premature love, marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives.” This is a statement likely to rouse popular affinity because its sentiment is widely relatable. Many of us, have at one point or another, been victim to love’s vampiric seduction and bear concealed scars that we relish fondly in the dim light of our private moments. The human tendency to seek and find love is essential to how we fashion our identities. It acts as the shaky foundation on which we build the fragile idea of self.  The instinct to connect runs deep in our species, and the way that we successfully build relationships with others informs a lot of who we are and why. 
But suppose I told you that the quote above belongs to Humbert Humbert, the predacious and reprehensible protagonist in Nabokov’s eyebrow-raising classic Lolita. In that case, your reaction might be, not surprisingly, less commiserative.  This scandalous exemplar of late modernist literature is, after all, one in a short list of modern classics whose lurid content and racy premise belong in the collective cultural unconscious. You don’t need to have read the novel to know that its plotline details the improper love affair between a middle-aged English professor and his prepubescent ward. Nor do you need to be a heavy-handed moralist to understand the unsavory implications of that relationship. Even when it comes to love and the heart, some things are just plain wrong. 
But even as the notion of inappropriate and illicit intergenerational romance makes us grimace in disapproval, especially when it involves a minor, Nabokov’s use of it as the vehicle with which to probe our fundamental desires is still remarkable. You don’t have to approve or sanction Humbert’s nefarious behavior to recognize that there’s something much more complex at work. As a skilled observer of the human condition, Nabokov is aware of our latent impulse to keep looking when everything around us tells us not to. It’s this curiosity, capable of pulling us out of our emotional comfort zone, that feeds our appetite for material that’s incompatible with any personal or collective moral standards. There’s a reason why sex, violence, shock, and horror sell as well as they do. 
In this context, we can better grasp the book’s appeal and its beneath-the-surface subject matter. It’s also under this light that we can appreciate similarly provocative artistic statements.  Enter “Birthday,” Icelandic band The Sugarcubes’ ground-breaking 1987 hit-single from their debut album Life’s Too Good. A four-minute-long, upbeat ballad that features an eclectic range of parts including Einar Benediktsson’s equable trumpet; Sigtryggur Baldursson’s syncopated percussion; Bragi Olafsson’s warm and stolid bass work; Þór Eldon’s new-wave-influenced shrill tone; and Bjork’s clunky and rattling keyboards, this old-MTV favorite served as the Reykjavic-native’s introduction into the American consciousness. Characterized by a fresh ‘80s-forward sound, the song quickly became famous for its odd and cryptic lyrical content about a five-year-old girl with some unusual habits:

She lives in this house over there
Has her world outside it
Scrabbles in the earth with her fingers and her mouth…
Threads worms on a string
Keeps spiders in her pocket
Collects fly wings in a jar
Scrubs horse flies
And pinches them on a line

That is a curious way to introduce a character that is, without a doubt, enigmatic. There isn’t much that we know about this girl other than “she’s five years old” and that whatever interests define her, they do not exist at home. Her life is spent outside, engaged in several strange and seemingly nonsensical hobbies.  What’s interesting is Bjork’s decision to tell the story from a third-person perspective, making it feel as if she is looking out her window, able to see this child go on about her baffling business. It’s hard not to feel like she’s extending an invitation for us to come and observe with her, to watch this perplexing set of events as they unfold. And here, we come across that same “curiosity” principle. Curiosity, as we find out, doesn’t just keep us looking and listening. It also moves the plot along:

She has one friend, he lives next door
They’re listening to the weather 
He knows how many freckles she’s got
She scratches his beard
She’s painting huge books
And glues them together
They saw a big raven
It glided down the sky
She touched it

By the third stanza, Bjork lets us know that the girl has a friend who lives in the house next door, which is not an uncommon thing for a child that age, particularly for one who spends most of her time playing outside. What’s strange, though, is that this “friend” is an adult man. What’s disturbing is the degree of familiarity he has with the child, particularly with her body. The fact that he’s aware of specific details about her physical appearance, like the number of freckles on her face, suggests a closeness that’s hard to bear. This sudden revulsion is reinforced by how at ease the child feels with this man. She doesn’t perceive his interest in her as perverse. On the contrary, she sees him as someone whose presence and affection feed her interests and curiosity and allow her to discover the world around her. Her interest in all of these odd and eccentric activities, in a sense, mirrors a profound and fundamental interest in him. 
It’s important to point out that at no point in the song do we get a clear explanation of what happens. Instead, Bjork concludes each stanza with a guttural cry that heightens the song’s emotional tension as it intensifies our desire for a resolution. The song concludes with Bjork telling us that it’s the girl’s birthday, an occasion she celebrates with her adult playmate:

They’re smoking cigars
He’s got a chain of flowers
And sews a bird in her knickers
As if this tale couldn’t get any more objectionable, she concludes with:
They’re smoking cigars
They lie in the bathtub
A chain of flowers

Criticized and questioned when it first came out, the song’s intent isn’t different from Lolita’s, and it’s hard to argue the latter’s influence on the former. In a quote from Martin Aston’s biography on the singer, Bjorkgraphy, she explains that she set out to explore the way that not only “huge men, about 50 years old”, but also “material, a tree, anything,” can have a profoundly erotic effect on someone even when “nothing happens.” 
In other words, nothing physical or concrete needs to happen for someone to be emotionally affected by a person or thing. Our mere interest in them, which Bjork and Nabokov contend are based on the innate desire in all of us to be both the object and subject of discovery, is enough to shape the way that we perceive our world. In coming to terms with the limits of what we’re allowed to experience, Bjork says, we can ultimately find the spiritual and emotional fulfillment we so anxiously crave.

From: https://twostorymelody.com/retrospective-review-the-sugarcubes-birthday/

According to Björk, the song is about a little girl who is out biking and sees "a motor crash, and no police has arrived yet, and there is a car with parents in the front and children in the back and they're all wounded. And she wants to help them - so it's a really nice song." The girl in the song then sneaks the mother in the motorcrash into her house and nurses the woman's wounds there. When the mother is healed, she and the girl disguise themselves and take a taxi to the woman's home. When the woman's husband opens the door, she and the girl pull off their disguises.
"But the husband gets very angry," Björk explained, "and says, 'Where have you been all this time?' And then the song is over." Lyrics about motorcrashes (or as Americans call them, car accidents), are not typically paired with jaunty music as heard here, but The Sugarcubes were not a typical band. The subject matter turned off some major record labels, including Polydor, which pulled plans to sign Sugarcubes because of the perceived offensiveness of "Motorcrash." Björk explained that labels' reactions were absurd because the song wasn't about anything mildly offensive. The Icelandic director Óskar Jónasson was behind the lens for the video, which starred the band members as the characters described in the song. Their keyboard player, Magga Örnólfsdóttir, is the girl on the bike.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-sugarcubes/motorcrash

 

Rockfour - Oranges

It is not easy to make a record in 2000 with a heavy mid-to late-1960s feel that doesn't strike jaded ears as pointless revivalism. Rockfour manage to largely succeed in doing so, to their considerable credit. The harmonies are very much in the late-1960s vein of the Beatles and Pink Floyd, while the melodies and slight sense of whimsy are likewise much in the late-1960s British psych pop mold, and the guitars often carry a Byrdsian ring ("Oranges" being the outstanding example). "Superman" gets into a bit of a (very early) David Bowie mold, not least due to its title. Certainly the creative use of Mellotron in particular is vital to the convincing dreamy psychedelic feel, as are ventures with the stylophone and wind organ. Of course, many bands draw inspiration from these musical giants of decade past, but Rockfour stands out from that pack in their superior sense of melodics, an unforced ease with the approach, and a diverse lyrical palette that encompasses frustration with government and the media, poetic spaciness, and (on "Oranges") paisley alternate-world dreaminess. Any attention this draws in the U.S. and U.K. may be partially due to the novelty of an Israeli alternative rock band, but, in fact, this would be worthy of notice regardless of its regional origin.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/supermarket-mw0000323786#review 

PerKelt - Morana

Have any of you played in other bands?

Stepan: I have played just very briefly with a punk band called Poetické Odpoledne (Poetic Afternoon) and Bohemian Guitar Orchestra (if that is considered a band) back in the Czech Republic

Pavlina: I've played oboe in several orchestras and early music ensembles...

David: I've played in a melodic death metal band called "Shades of Syn" for 5 years in France.

Will:Yes! Many. At least 25 other full time bands and many smaller projects, as well as collaborating on various performances and recordings. Mostly I played with one3four, a math punk band, BAAMPHF!!!, an instrumental math metal band, Vultures Quartet, improvised music and modern composition ensemble, and a few other goth bands and Asian traditional projects, primarily. 

How is it that you started playing music?

Stepan: Music education is a big tradition in the Czech Republic. Primary schools of music are in every town, attended by many children, and, if you are lucky, have a good teacher, and show a hint of talent and interest, there is no way to escape playing music.

David: Since I was a boy I have always been attracted towards percussion and drums. At the age of 16 I decided to start playing drums and became self-taught; finally this year at 28, I've enrolled in Music School.

Will:I started beating on things when I was about 15. I wanted to join my high school band, but I was told I was too old. Then I went to university where there was a small music program and I took a few percussion performance classes and lots of classical music history classes, but mostly I started playing with other musicians outside of university then. That would have been about 1983 or before. Quickly, I ended up in a few bands, and in some cases made my own percussion. The start of a trend that continues through to today! Now I have completed a few music degrees and play music full time.

What are your names? / Who plays what? / How old are you?

Stepan Honc (30) on guitar

Pavlina Bastlova (29) on recorders, harp and vocals

David Maurette (28) on percussion

and Will Connor (51) on percussion.

Have you had other previous members? Stepan: many... Michal Benda on viola, Filip Tomanek on percussion, Karel Novotny on viola, Matej Stepanek on Cello, and after we moved to UK we have briefly played with George Seaton on drums and Maya McCourt on cello as well. PerKelt takes a lot of dedication and only the fittest survive :)

Did you make music even when you were young?

Stepan: Yep, if I don't count a regrettable experience with a super noisy metal drum when I was 4 years old (my mum loved it!), I started playing guitar when I was 7, wrote my first song when I was around 15.

Pavlina: What is it? I'm 29, I'm still young!

David: Since I can remember, I've always made up wood sticks to play on anything

Will: Constantly. I was always tapping on something or making noise generating devices (and often getting told off for it by my parents, who hated that I was leaning towards being a musician even when I was a child). And I’m still young, too...

Where are you from?

Stepan: Originally from the Czech Republic, PerKelt first formed around students of Conservatory in Pardubice. Now we live in London, UK

David: I'm originally French but I grew up in New Caledonia.

Will: Technically, I'm a resident of Honolulu, Hawaii. I grew up in the Appalachian Mountains of South and North Carolina, and I've lived in Juneau Alaska, Chengdu, Sichuan and Lhasa, Tibet, China, and I am currently in the Czech Republic until I return to the band in the UK, where we all live in London.

What year did the band form? 

Stepan: 2007

What's your style of genre? 

Stepan: we call it Celtic Medieval Speed Folk, or occasionally Progressive Celtic Music as we are writing more and more of original material these days. We like to describe it as a music that sounds like folk songs from their own country (we have exactly this feedback from people from Ireland, England, Spain, Brazil, Peru, Eastern Europe...) with some ancient tweaks, and generally played way too fast...

What inspires you?

Stepan: Everything around what sounds good. We have a massive background of classical music, the first idea to form a band came to us once we heard the River Dance and a Czech medieval band called Gothart. Since then it is whatever from Jethro Tull, Loreena McKennit, random rock and folk bands, Irish folk music, alternative scene, jazz, math punk, jamming with friends...

Pavlina: I think that my greatest source of inspiration lays mainly in traditional Irish music. Particularly Irish dance music. I simply love its vibe... And I am also very fond of classical and film music because it can express a huge range of moods and feelings and it's got a lot of dynamics and tension... Those are the elements which we try to put in our music when we compose.

Will: H. P. Lovecraft has always been and probably always will be my main influence for everything. Godzilla mythos is also high on the list, as well as kung fu / samurai movies, noise music, Medieval music, ethnomusicology, and all things Gothic and Halloween related. It all feeds in to my music somehow. Energy is the other big thing. Perhaps that’s vague or cliché, but if music doesn’t have the energy (not necessarily speed or volume, although, that’s fine, of course), it’s just not inspiring to me, so a intangble influence for me is aiming for a high level of (good) energy.

How often and where do you reherse? 

Stepan: Approximately twice per week at my house in Balham, London

How have you developed since you started with the music?

Stepan: We are still evolving but since I was 7 I definitely learnt how to play guitar better and since we started with the band I've learnt better how to arrange music, how to work with timing and orchestration, how to change time signature within one song seventeen times...

Pavlina: It's been a constant evolution since I was 4 and started playing recorders. A couple of awards from competitions settled my confidence; the Summer School of Early Music, which I regularly attended, introduced me to some music we later arranged with PerKelt; and performing technically demanding baroque pieces gave me the technique and sparkled the love for playing insanely fast. And, of course, 9 years of studies of oboe and playing in orchestra at conservatory and academy of music count too, with the background of music theory and harmony it's much easier to compose something interesting...

Will: I think this a question for the others, really, when referring to PerKelt’s development, but I would add that since I have joined the band, we have grown to be more “speed folk” oriented and taken a turn towards more rhythmically varied composition, and moved slightly away from straight forward Medieval sounds and even away from more traditional Celtic melodies, whilst still retaining a feel for it all. It's been a very fun development and I love the direction we are headed currently!

Do you have other interests of work outside the band?

Stepan: strictly speaking of work PerKelt is our full-time project, but of course we have another interests. For me it's nature, Pagan culture and Wiccan magic, poetry, Buddhism, philosophy, psychic explorations etc...

Pavlina: I am actually working on my first solo EP as well, and do abstract painting quite intensively.

David: I was working as barista/bartender but I just quit my job as school and PerKelt became the priority and took over most of my time, so good!...

Will: As Stepan says, PerKelt is our 9-5 job, but for me, in terms of non-PerKelt stuff, it's mostly Gothic and Asian cultural things, with many things relating back to percussion. (As I mentioned above) Lovecraft, old horror movies, Godzilla, kung fu and samurai movies and tv shows, XBox games, comics, Ethnomusicology studies, building instruments, Halloween, and I like to grow cacti. In addition, I still play a lot of other music, but PerKelt is my main focus. I play solo percussion dark ambient Lovecraft-influenced compositions and work on sound design for the Gothic immersive theatre company Dread Falls Theatre as my other main music outlets.

Are you looking for a booking agency, and what are your thoughts around that?

Stepan: We are just about to sign a big contract with one, so we are really keen to these things. Many agencies in London are quite incompetent but some really do their job great and it's a win-win situation, then. When you are an artist it's a great benefit for you to be able to focus on what you are good at and not be bothered by what you are not.

Are you looking for a label, and what are your thoughts around that?

Stepan: We absolutely want to keep total artistic freedom so major label would probably be avoided (not that we have any offer on the table :)). But to be honest this was never our main interest so I just hear rumors about labels pushing artists towards main-stream music, dictating what they can and cannot say on stage etc... Not really something we would like to do to our PerKelt baby.

Pavlina: Totally agree on this.

What made you decide to make this music?

Stepan: Coincidence... I happened to meet Paja and have exactly the same taste of folk music, preferably fast with strong melodies. Then we joined up with few schoolmates at conservatory and very quickly were offered a job as a band at one massive Medieval tavern to play regularly, which led us quite strongly to discover some great ancient melodies from 13th-16th century, but later we found that we need more artistic freedom. We moved to London and now we are rather curious what will inspire us next and where the band style will evolve.

Pavlina: I just always really wanted to create something new and interesting...

What are your songs about?

Stepan: Lyrics are mostly stolen from people who wrote them several centuries ago, so they are about random folklore things (trolls, drinking, animals, love, warfare...) or Christian topics. But we never really cared, most of them are in foreign languages so we use the vocals as another instrument rather than to bring some message to our audience... However, after few years in UK we are daring enough to write some lyrics, too. The last song Dancer in the Wind is about freedom, another one Going Home is about going home... so pretty much random things again :) We shall see in the future.

Who does the composing and writes the lyrics?

Stepan: I was always writing a poetry in Czech, so now when I actually speak English, I'm logically the source of things that rhyme again. With composing it's more interesting, because we all are involved in the process. Paja usually brings some short melody on harp or flutes, I get an idea to write something contrasting, then we all work on the harmony, accompaniment and argue about structure, and eventually our percussionists finish the full sound or bring some more ideas... It's pretty vivid, exciting and long process.

Do you start with the music or the lyrics? 

Stepan: Almost always with the music. Even if the lyrics are already written, we are quite good at bending them to fit the melody we like. Usually it sounds better than before.

Do you compose in a certain environment?

Stepan: Not really, sometime in the park, in the pub, or romantically at home with my laptop.

Pavlina: My ideas come so spontaneously, that I have a pen and paper with me on the bus, on the lift, in the coffee shop...

Will: The bus and the tube work well for me, too, and I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night, having dreamt of a new song bit and I have to go write it down immediately (or even call/email Stepan at some ridiculous hour), a la the late great Sun Ra writing for his Archestra.

Have you done any covers live? 

Stepan: If you consider 13th century songs from which we've grabbed lyrics and 8 bars of melody, and covered it with a 5 minutes song of completely different nature, then we are mostly a cover band :) But otherwise, apart from few jam sessions where we've played live Fee Ra Huri by Omnia, we don't do covers...

What language do you sing in? 

Stepan: I was looking forward to this question :) Old Galician, Old  Occitan, French, Swedish, Scottish Gaelic, Czech, English and few more are coming.

From: https://ghgumman.blogg.se/2015/october/interview-with-perkelt.html 

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Breaking The Girl

For Red Hot Chili Peppers’ 1991 album BloodSugarSexMagik (BSSM) the band seemingly had it all. A breakthrough album with 1989's Mother's Milk, a new line-up with the mercurial John Frusciante on guitar and major tours booked. Yet there was much messiness behind the scenes.
The band were still grieving for guitarist Hillel Slovak, who overdosed on heroin in 1988, a tragedy that prompted frontman Anthony Kiedis to beat his own heroin addiction. A few other guitarists were tried out before Frusciante arrived in 1989. Ironically, Frusciante would soon spiral into heroin abuse himself and leave (in 1992) for six years. On the bright side, the Chili Peppers had great new songs and a new producer, Rick Rubin.
Rubin was a maverick and bought ‘The Mansion’, a 10-bedroom pile in Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles. The house had been used by actor Errol Flynn in the '30s and was once home to famed escapologist Harry Houdini. It wasn’t a typical studio, but Rubin and the Chili Peppers agreed they would record there for “the vibe”. Audioslave, The Mars Volta and Slipknot have all since recorded albums at The Mansion.
The basic chords for Breaking The Girl were written by Frusciante, partly inspired by Led Zeppelin’s acoustic forays Friends (III) and The Battle Of Evermore (IV). Kiedis immediately wanted to match Frusciante’s folksy neopsychedelic music to a lyric addressing his recent break-up with model Carmen Hawk.
Kiedis’ words also mused on fears that he was repeating the mistakes of his womanising actor father, John, who had bizarrely organised for Anthony to lose his virginity at just 12 with Kiedis Snr’s own 18-year-old girlfriend. Witness the lyric: “Raised by my dad / Girl of the day / He was my man / That was the way.”
The singer also later mused: “I began to wonder if I was following the standards of my father, jumping from branch to branch… As exciting and temporarily fulfilling as this constant influx of interesting and beautiful girls can be, at the end of the day that shit is lonely and you’re left with nothing.”
Clearly Breaking The Girl is no ordinary ballad. Unusually in the Chilis’ canon, it’s also in 6/8 time and a true collaboration. As Frusciante said of the Chilis’ modus operandi: “Everybody’s their own boss. I write the guitar parts, Chad does drums, Flea writes the bass and Anthony writes the vocals. Everybody makes suggestions about everyone else’s part. If you really want to do that part, you can do it, but everybody takes suggestions from everybody else.”
Bassist Flea has since revealed he wanted to adapt a “less is more” approach for BSSM: “I had been playing too much prior to that… If I do play something busy, it stands out, instead of the bass being a constant onslaught of notes. Space is good.”
Frusciante concurred, adding: “Space is a huge part of it. Like those parts of life when you’re able to kick back and do nothing – those are amazing parts of life. It’s the same with music… Mother’s Milk doesn’t represent the type of guitar player I am. I’m a bit embarrassed by the album, really.”
Meanwhile, Chad Smith’s Breaking The Girl drum parts were inspired by the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Mitch Mitchell. “I was trying to think like Manic Depression, the Hendrix song, that tom thing… and that’s almost what Breaking The Girl is. I’ve always been into taking suggestions from other [band members]… Flea’s a very interesting pedestrian drummer and he’ll play a straight roll on a tom and I’ll move it around, but I wouldn’t have thought like that. I kind of digested [Flea’s] version and made it more drum-oriented.”
The percussive bridge is another story altogether. Smith recalls the whole band wanted a “metallic” breakdown. “We sent out the runner guy from the house to go to the dump yard and bring back big metallic pipes and stuff. We sat on the ground in the foyer and Flea had this big pipe and was beating it, and I’m playing [car wheel] brake drums and Anthony was playing a garbage can or something. Then we all kind of switched and double-tracked it and Brendan [O’Brien, engineer] put a mic out there and would say, ‘OK, now you sit closer, you sit farther’… and it was done in half an hour.”
Indeed, working at The Mansion encouraged such improvised recording. While Breaking The Girl’s metalwork was hit in the foyer, Kiedis recorded many vocals in his bedroom and all of Frusciante’s acoustic guitars for BSSM were recorded in his sleeping quarters. For Breaking The Girl, Frusciante played a Maton Messiah 12-string, down-tuned a semitone to Eb. A Mellotron was used for the ‘flute’ parts.
By the time the video for Breaking The Girl was filmed, Frusciante had tumbled into drugs and quit. The Breaking The Girl video is one of only two Chilis videos to feature Arik Marshall (who briefly acted as a replacement before Dave Navarro), the other being If You Have To Ask. But it’s Frusciante who plays both tracks.  From: https://www.musicradar.com/news/red-hot-chili-peppers-breaking-the-girl

Tanya Donelly - Pretty Deep

Question: I have the impression that your surname is Irish. Do you know much about your family roots? Do you feel much of a connection to Ireland or wherever else your family roots might be from?

Tanya Donelly: Donelly is Irish, but my family came over so long ago that I feel no direct connection to Ireland, other than a romantic one. I just recently developed an interest in genealogy and would like to learn more about my blood. I’m also Hungarian on my mother’s side—easier to trace because my great grandparents came over in the beginning of this century.

Q: Is it scary having your name on the CD cover rather than having Throwing Muses or Belly on there?

T: Yes.

Q: Do you feel comfortable being a solo artist?

T: More so now.

Q: Or does it just seem natural?

T: It doesn’t feel completely natural to me yet. I’ve got a band again in a way–the people I toured with are playing on this new record and will most likely do the next tour with me, too.

Q: How do you perceive your place in the marketplace? Are record sales important to you? Or do you leave that kind of stuff to your manager and others? Are you happy with a small cult kind of following? Or does having huge record sales appeal to you?

T: I’m more happy with a small cult following and the artistic freedom that comes with that. It’s also important to sell enough records in order to continue to make them.

Q: How different was the transition from the Muses to Belly, compared to going from Belly to solo?

T: Leaving the Muses was an amicable, sad experience. The Belly breakup was a less than amicable, sad experience. I think the Muses split was harder, because I was younger and much more easily freaked out.

Q: Do you feel like you’re writing music more for yourself now, rather than for a band?

T: Yes, although I still keep the people I play with in mind when I have certain noises in my head and when I’m thinking about parts. Dean, Rich, Elizabeth and Dave are very much part of the process on this record.

From: https://fairangels.wordpress.com/2018/05/12/brief-interview-with-tanya-donelly-1998-2/

Best known as frontwoman for Belly and sometime member of Throwing Muses, this first solo outing by Tanya Donelly is everything you’d expect. Issued on 4AD records in 1997, ‘Lovesongs For Underdogs’ does not always sound like great departure from previous work with Belly; but while not greatly different, it manages to pull together the soft sounds of that band’s ‘Star’ and rockier parts of ‘King’ on one release.  In that respect, it could be viewed as Donelly’s most “complete” record.
Released as a single, the opening number ‘Pretty Deep’ sets the tone for a lot of the record’s best moments.  It’s a brilliant piece of chorus driven alt-rock (with poppy edges), its ringing guitars evoking lots of great 90s vibes, while the quieter moments highlight Donelly’s fantastically breathy vocal style.  The chopping between loud and quiet is typical of the musical fashion of the time, and the multi-tracked guitars toward the end of the number have a great mix between dirty and clean, which in turn bring things to a solid climax.  From: https://www.realgonerocks.com/2013/03/tanya-donelly-lovesongs-for-underdogs/ 

Stevie Wonder - Live Cannes, France 1974

Ah, Steve! Oh, Wonder! You don’t miss much, do you? “Who’s eating that bread?” Stevie reaches over and gropes around for my hand and his fingers discover the piece of garlic bread I’ve just picked out of the basket on the bar. “Thought it was you,” he laughs. “You hungry? You want to eat now?”
No, no, I’m fine, Steve. Don’t let me interrupt. On his other side is Mike Sembello, Stevie’s guitarist, with an acoustic, and right here in the bar of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, amidst the cocktail-hour clamor, they are working out a tune which has been gestating in Steve’s head. “Um, Mike, let’s try it this way. Doo doo da doo... no, doo doo doo da doo... yeah, then a C-major seven, pom pom pompom, C-minor seven, then a D with a C in the bass.” He clears his throat and croons liquidly: “When I said love... each word... I meant... forever... But when I told you that... C-major seven... But when I told you that...”
Charlie Collins, Stevie's business manager, steals up holding a big Sony portable cassette recorder. You can never tell when Stevie Wonder is going to feel like working so they always try to have one of these cassette rigs handy in case that stray hit might pop out. Bar service comes to a screeching halt as the bartenders and the waiters crowd in to hear Stevie sing: “... each word I meant forever, uh, there it goes for four counts then on to F... I meant, duh, duh, duh, duh, forever. Okay?” Sembello plays it back as requested and an enormous grin spills over Stevie Wonder’s face. “Oh, that’s beautiful, that’s so beautiful.” He clutches my hand again. “I still got to work out the words.”
Tonight is an occasion. We are gathered here at the Fifth Avenue to celebrate Stevie Wonder’s return. Six weeks before he was nearly killed in an accident in North Carolina when the car in which he was riding ran into the rear of a lumber truck. A log from the truck’s payload had come smashing through the front windshield and had caught Steve squarely in the forehead. You can still see the great, raging pink splotch of a scar above his dark glasses. He was pulled from the wreck bloody and unconscious and remained in a coma for over a week. When he came to, his sense of smell was completely gone and it was thought at first that the damage might be permanent.
Steve responded well to treatment, however, and the smell returned. He wouldn’t be allowed to resume touring for a couple of months yet, or even to return to his normal rather frenetic work pace, but he’d improved sufficiently that a press conference had been held the previous week to announce to the rock cosmos that Stevie Wonder was back on the case.
I’ve just met Steve a little while ago here in the bar, but it is already clear that we are not to relate solely as writer and subject. Whatever objectivity I’ve brought into this is crumbling fast. My God, I’m thinking, I don’t want to write a press release on the guy, but I love him already. His time is my time, he says. All he has on tap for the week are a couple of rehearsals and some doctor’s appointments; for the rest we can do what we like, do the interviews, see some movies maybe, kick around Manhattan, or just lay back and screw off... whatever. Furthermore, he says, he doesn’t want to know anything about what I’m going to write. If somebody’s out to do him a job, they’re gonna do it, no matter what, he says.
And right now, anyway, it’s time to get down. Most of the members of Wonderlove, Stevie’s band, are gathered under one roof for the first time since the accident, and tomorrow rehearsals start for a new album. But tonight it’s party time—the juice is flowing, the music and the chatter are loud... folks are feeling good. These last six weeks have been tough on everybody but now Stevie’s out of the woods sure enough. And right now that boy is really cooking. He’s left off working on the new song, and with some of the Wonderlovers gathered round to chip in with the echoes and doo-wahs, he’s launched into a rollicking retrospective medley of wonderful Wonder goldies. Stevie’s head wobbles drunkenly around on his neck like a spent gyro and the whole place throbs as he slams into the prophetic finish of Higher Ground, his hit single currently dominating the AM airwaves: “I’m so glad he let me try it again/ ’Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin/ I’m so glad I know more than I knew then/ Gonna keep on tryin’/ Till I reach the highest ground... Whew!”
I’m telling you! Stevie, you are a piece of work. “Oh, this is fun!” he exults. “I’m having so much fun. Really. Everything cool with you, Burr? You having a good time?”
I can’t tell you, Steve, but I can’t help wondering what it is you’re cruising on. I mean nobody feels that good without a little help. “I don’t even drink, man,” Stevie laughs. “Not since the accident anyway. And never too much before that. I used to drink a little beer now and then, and sometimes a little Mateus. But I even cut the wine out when I heard what the Portuguese were doing in Angola. Drugs? I never did acid or anything like that, but I did try grass a couple of times. The first time was pretty nice, I got out there, but the next time was nothing but a lot of paranoia so I never went near it again. I love to hear people talking about all the junk I must be doing, though. You know, ‘There goes Stevie Wonder jivin’ around. Must be stoned again.’ Sometimes I’ll be sitting somewhere listening to tapes, like on a plane or something, and my head’ll get to going around like it does when I hear music, and I’ll hear somebody whisper, ‘Look at Stevie Wonder over there actin’ crazy. You reckon he on dope?’ That’s so funny. First of all, they figure that ’cause you’re blind you can’t hear them. And my moving my head around like that, that’s just what is called a ‘blindism.’ When you’re blind you build up a lot of excess energy that other people get rid of through their eyes. You got to work it off some way, you know, and it’s just an unconscious thing. Like a lot of blind people are always rubbing their eyes. Each person develops his own blindism.”  From: https://classic.esquire.com/article/share/5fd27dfa-6495-4dda-8e1f-8d071414f6b7