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Radio 'n' Magazine 'n' Gigs 'n' Records 'n' T-shirts
RNR666 Rádió
So Indifferent in Brighton
A nice video from French garage rock band SAPIN about Mama
from the album „Wrong Way” on Azbin and Beast Records
From New Records
„I wasn’t always a model citizen, but I always played music.” – Dan McGee
Spider Bags is a rock’n’roll band. It’s got a bit of a country and two bit of blues influence. The main figure, the songwriter Dan McGee started playing guitar when he was really little because of Blind Lemon Jefferson (blues musician, 1893-1929). His favourite songwriters are three delta blues musician: Skip James (1902-69), Robert Johnson (1911-38), Tommy Johnson (1896-1956) and Lou Red. He don’t have any kind of training, and didn’t really even start playing shows for a long time, until he was in his late twenties, then his band has become a favorite of the garage rock scene. The forth album will be released soon, and I’m very curious because he „wanted to make a record that sounded like a classic rock record, that was mixed like the old AC/DC records, or like Dark Side Of The Moon.”
Frozen Letter LP/CD/digital on Merge Records (US)
Among the many favorite songs of RNR666 there is a Spider Bags’ forever green, Hey Delinquents!
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Australian suburban country that’s made while sitting around the kitchen table by/in Lower Plenty. The band (with UV Race and Total Control members) named after a Melbourne suburb. The life is there so
Life/Thrills LP on Bedroom Suck Records (Aus)
Black Metal in Soft Pink Mood
Extremity on the cube. A gay professor of literature
has made one of the most interesting cover albums ever, titled
Why Do the Heathen Rage?
(Electronic Profanations of Black Metal Classics)
The cover art looks as if it was designed by a Satanist Tom of Finland.
Because of it one of the label main distributors
has refused to carry the record.
Out now on Thrill Jockey Records (US)
The Soft Pink Truth is the solo alter ego of Drew Daniel, one half of Baltimore-based electronic duo Matmos. Mr. Daniel has taught the history of electronic music at the San Francisco Art Institute and a sound art seminar at Harvard. He now teaches in the English Department at Johns Hopkins University. He has written a book about industrial-experimental-electronic band Throbbing Gristle; released a similar album in 2004: Do You Want New Wave (Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?) which consists of house covers of classic hardcore and punk songs; produced remixes for Björk, Herbert, Grizzly Bear, Dat Politics and more. And he is a black metal fan.
Black metal is a very special subgenre of heavy metal. It was born on 1 November 1982 by British band Venom. That day the band’s second album titled Black Metal was released. Strange fact, but Venom’s music was fast, harsh and primitive rock and roll rather than heavy metal at that time. It stood nearer Motörhead or Ramones, than Judas Priest or Iron Maiden. As special features their lyrics had dark, occult and devilish themes. But Venom’s music and texts were refined and gentle compared with the subsequent, more and more extreme bands. Today’s black metal bands’ music is just like a mix of noise of coffee grinders and sounds of a pig-killing. Unfortunately some bands and many fans take the Satanist rubbish seriously. But the blackest black metal bands are adherents of white supremacist and Nazi ideologies. The words beget acts. In this case their fruits: violence, church arson, suicide, murder. All these in welfare states of North-Europe mainly. And they say always: I did it only in self-defence.
And then this man resolved to make a peculiar electronic black metal tribute album. And who was the first man whom he invited to cooperate in this? Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons). By the way, the others: Jenn Wasner from indie-folk rock duo Wye Oak, Terrance Hannum from drone-metal band Locrian, his Matmos partner M.C. Schmidt, Irish composer and vocalist Jennifer Walshe and more.
And the music? Well, it’s not an easy pop album. A Mix of electro-industrial, drum’n’bass, trip hop, house and EBM. It came Kraftwerk, Björk, Madonna and Leather Strip to my mind. Some covers are spiced with samples of house hits. The album requires a good piece of sense of humour. At first it was very strange, but as I listen to it repeatedly, so like it increasingly. But „Who in the world wants to hear this?” Nobody, basically. Black metal people aren’t going to like it because it’s faggoty disco, but actual dance music people aren’t going to like it because it’s weird people screaming about Satan.” (Drew said this in a Pitchfork interview.)
Venom + Sarcofago covers
The album not requires know of the original songs, but you can listen to those here. There you can read about some words about the bands: Venom, Beherit, Sarcofago, Sargeist, Darkthrone, AN, Mayhem, Hellhammer and Impaled Northern Moonforest.
Keith Moonshine Show
Black Originals of Soft Pink Covers
The Soft Pink Truth has made a peculiar electronic cover album of black metal classics. Here are the originals with two covers.
Tracklist and some words about the bands >
Total Punk News
„Give up your dreams. Commit suicide.”
LIFE STINKS – Portraits 7″ on Total Punk Records (US)
San Francisco’s kings of misanthropy are back with two drummers.
When the band formed all members selected instruments they had never played before.
In the manner of Flipper, Stooges, Germs and Velvet Undergound.
But what were the first steps on this way?
– Chad (singer, also in Outdoorsmen): I heard “Beat On The Brat” on the radio
when was fourteen or so and went, “Whoa!”
– Vinnie (drums): I was hanging in my friend’s garage one evening smoking pot
and drinking 40s, and my friend at the time, Jon Scott, brought in this tape
he had dubbed off his brother and we listened to it about thirty times in a row.
It was Minor Threat’s discography.
Later that night when we were done hanging out
I broke into the garage and stole the tape.
LUMPY & THE DUMPERS – Bat 7″ also on Total Punk
St.Louis Blues Trash in D-Beat, 1-2-fuck-u
Not A Simple Case
Jonathan Kingsley Seilman is a French musician, arranger and producer from Nantes. For me he is unknown for his previous projects, This Melodramatic Sauna, and its collaborations with The Patriotic Sunday, but is known through Birds Are Alive and Sieur & Dame. He now back to himself with a new project, LE FEU, in collaboration with My Name Is Nobody, Binidu and Fordamage members. The most simple phrase is: indie pop, but it came Mick Harvey to my mind. Well, it’s not a simple case.
WE ALL RUN
from debut album „Playgrounds & Battlefields” on My Little Cab and Havalina Records (both labels are French)
From New Records
Never mind the bollocks, here is the Landlady. A very amusing alternative rock band from Brooklyn. Or alternative jazz, possibly indie gospel. All the same. Dog bless them.
„Upright Behavior” album on LP/CD/digital on Hometapes (US)
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Members of Greys grew up on 90s noise rock like Helmet and similar bands, nevertheless their music is melodic like Therapy. At the same time this is hardcore punk.
„If Anything” album on LP/CD/digital on Buzz (Canada) and Carpark Records (US)
A Dum Dum Girl, A Crocodile, And Some Drag Queens
HAUNTED HEARTS are a psych indie pop band of DeeDee Penny (Dum Dum Girls) & her husband Brandon Welchez (Crocodiles). In this clip they’re with members of a New Yorker drag collective Chez Deep
UP IS UP BUT SO IS DOWN
from their debut album Initiation on Zoo Music (US)
Astral Gunk Soupcans With Double Crosss
CROSSS is a Canadian proto-metal/psych garage hard rock band. And they are really great! Their two split vinyls, a 7″ with garage punk band Astral Gunk
and an 8″ with garage punk band Soupcans, (but in this case their song is like an early Hellhammer track)
were released recently. The first on Pleasence, the second one on Bruised Tongue Records.
A Little Big Man Died
Jazz singer Little Jimmy Scott died at his age of 88. His most famous performance was in the last episode of Twin Peaks, where he has sung Sycamore Trees. Lyrics: David Lynch, Music: Angelo Badalamenti
He suffered from Kallmann’s syndrome, a rare hereditary condition, that preventing him from reaching puberty, he stopped growing, and his voice never changed from a boy soprano’s. He got his start singing in the church choir. He first rose to fame when he sang lead in the Lionel Hampton Band for 1950’s hit „Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” He went in solo in 1951. Along the way, he gained the praise of such peers as Ray Charles, Billie Holiday and Nancy Wilson. His career faded by the late 1960s and he returned to his native Cleveland to work as a hospital orderly, shipping clerk and as an elevator operator in a hotel. He came back in the limelight in the 1990s through Lou Reed, who recruited him to sing back-up vocals on his song „Power and Glory” on his album Magic and Loss. Throughout his six-decade-plus career, Scott also performed with the likes of Michael Stipe, Antony & the Johnsons, Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughan, Charles Mingus and Quincy Jones, among many others.
From New Records
Hand of Dust is a trio from Copenhagen, and plays folk rooted dark rock. Their music is like a mix of Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave and 16 Horsepower.
7″ on Avant! Records (Italy)
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“We are a well educated band.” Yet UV Race is the silliest garage punk band in Australia.
7″ EP on XVIII Records (France) for the fans of UV Race only.
They will come to Europe between mid July and early August. For dates check their FB page