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RNR666 Rádió
New Dawn In Cuba
Our favourite mad artist, the supreme leader of Neoism
ISTVAN KANTOR aka MONTY CANTSIN landed in Cuba.
At first there he conducted the Che Guevara Orchestra
then gave a speech about chains and rights and asks the eternal question:
What time is it?
You know always the same…
I hope he won’t be jailed there because of his revolutionary art.
NIHILISM OF SHILPA RAY
SHILPA RAY new EP NIHILISM on 16 May
The song “Shoot This Dying Horse” is a rainy day waltz about how bad things can happen to anyone, at any time in the most random and meaningless ways. More specifically, it’s about getting dumped at a bar two days before Christmas. It was inspired by and written after binge-watching the Grateful Dead documentary series Long Strange Trip.
On the B-side, there is an Alice Cooper cover. The story behind this version is that she and her band listened to this one a lot on tour. When she paid closer attention to the lyrics, she realized if sung by a woman the song could be a feminist anthem.
„What have I got
That makes you want to love me
Now is it my body
Or someone I might be
Or somethin’ inside me”
Digital and limited cassette editon on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS (US)
Oh My GOSH!
GOSH! is a minimal psych-pop duo. OK, there are many. But when I got their new album ODYSSEY I wanted to show it to everybody. Hey, listen to this! So simple, bittersweet and beautiful.
GOSH! started when Padraig left his psychedelic post-americana band Nude Sunrise and started dating with Claire. One of the first moments they spent together there were guitars. Claire picked the bass and they learned „Badlands” from The Jesus and Mary Chain. Anyway she never played any instruments before and GOSH! is her first band. And it is among my brand new favourites.
New album ODYSSEY was written after they got back to Chicago from a chaotic tour. It remembers an underpaid journey as arduous as the real Ulysses’s, full of tragic twists and chemical quicksands. „All while watching the new season of Twin Peaks. It was a dark time, but we channeled that darkness and complete sense of defeat into creativity and in turn have produced something incredibly positive” – said Claire.
I know it coming soon on NICEY MUSIC
Unfortunately at the moment I cannot show the song Lake Shore Drive to you, but you can listen to it in KILLBONOCLUB this Saturday.
Sex Judas
Sex Judas brought David Holmes to my mind. There was a summertime open-air party in Budapest, and he was late because of police problems. Hours went after hours. When he finally arrived at dawn I was drunk and smoked so much that I was not able to speak normally. And after he started to play I was just shouting and wallowing on the grass. Same feeling.
Norwegian producer Tore Gjedrem of Ost & Kjex channels his love of comix, bohemia and fascination with human vice, the unspoken, the Red Light districts, the alleys of the mind into his alter ego Sex Judas. He is no bad character but certainly says what it’s author cannot.
“I wanted to create a world where any musical idea is possible, wound together by the world and word of Judas, the ultimate sinner, reborn as a child of Venus.”
The album GO DOWN JUDAS was made with contributions by his friends in the Oslo scene as hometown legend Dj Pål Strangefruit Nyhus, composer Ole-Henrik Moe, jazzpianist Bugge Wesseltoft, Sidiki Camara from Mali playing that beautiful Ngoni, and multi instrumentalist Ivar Snuten Winther. Music inspiration ranges from Africa to 80’s NYC, from Bohannon to Quasimoto, from Norwegian New Wave to Acid House. It touches anything from blues, funk, disco and post-punk to IDM, acid house and electronic explorer music. And it’s a fuckin funny album:
The album comes as a 2 x LP and Digital release on OPTIMO MUSIC on May 25th. Distributed by Kompakt.
Meanwhile in Epping Forest
I love if a band can make me some laugh with their music like
DOG CHOCOLATE from London.
By their own words, they perhaps play sloppy, messy, silly and jerky punk music:
Jono plays a couple of drums, Matthew plays a guitar and a load of pedals, Rob plays another guitar and sings some songs and Andrew sings most the songs and plays another guitar and sings some songs and Andrew sings most the songs and plays percussive keyboard when he’s not. They write songs without thinking too much about things that make them feel a lot, as it sez in the song „It’s About Giving A Shit” but at the same time not giving a shit!! It says more too, but dont worry about that now.
New album MOODY BALLOON BABY on UPSET THE RHYTHM RECORDS (UK)
An Unstable Genius
„Marvin would kick your ass for nothing. A true genius, Marvin was a pure original” said Iggy Pop about the extraordinary musician Marvin Pontiac. And if Iggy is so into him than I introduce that true genius to you.
THE STRANGE STORY OF MARVIN PONTIAC
He was born in 1932, the son of an African father from Mali and a white Jewish mother from New Rochelle, New York. The father’s original last name was Toure but he changed it to Pontiac when the family moved to Detroit, believing it to be a conventional American name.
Marvin’s father left the family when Marvin was two years old. When his mother was mental institutionalized in 1936, the father returned and took the young boy to Bamako, Mali where Marvin was raised until he was fifteen. The music that he heard there would influence him forever.
At fifteen Marvin moved by himself to Chicago where he became versed in playing blues harmonica. At the age of seventeen, Marvin was accused by the great Little Walter of copying his harmonica style. This accusation led to a fistfight outside of a small club on Maxwell Street. Losing a fight to the much smaller Little Walter was so humiliating to the young Marvin that he left Chicago and moved to Lubbock, Texas where he became a plumber’s assistant.
Not much is known about him for the next three years. There are unsubstantiated rumors that Marvin may have been involved in a bank robbery in 1950. In 1952, he had a minor hit for Acorn Records with the then controversial song „I’m a Doggy.”
Oddly enough, unbeknownst to Marvin and his label, he simultaneously had an enormous bootleg success in Nigeria with the beautiful song Pancakes.
His disdain and mistrust of the music business is well documented and he soon fell out with Acorn’s owner, Norman Hector. Although approached by other labels, Marvin refused to record for anyone unless the owner of the label came to his home in Slidell, Louisiana and mowed his lawn.
Reportedly Marvin’s music was the only music that Jackson Pollack would ever listen to while he painted, this respect was not reciprocated. In 1970 Marvin believed that he was abducted by aliens. He felt his mother had had a similar unsettling experience, which had led to her breakdown. He stopped playing music and dedicated all of his time and energy to amicably contacting these creatures who had previously probed his body so brutally.
Furthermore Marvin held the tribal belief that having a photograph taken of yourself could steal your soul, thus these candid shots are the only ones known to exist.
When he was arrested for riding a bicycle naked down the side streets of Slidell, it provided a sad but clear view of Marvin’s coming years. In 1971 he moved back to Detroit where he drifted forever and permanently into insanity.
He was killed by a bus accidentally in 1977.
His only album „GREATEST HITS” was released posthumously in 1999. And this unstable genius recorded his African rhythm and blues songs with such great musicians as Marc Ribot, John Medeski, Billy Martin, Eszter Bálint and many others.
GREATEST HITS first time on vinyl on NORTHERN SPY RECORDS
By the way. You can find some inconsistencies in this story. For example Eszter Bálint was 11 years old when Marvin Pontiac died, so it seems impossible that she could work with him. Well, the truth is that the character of Marvin Pontiac was invented by John Lurie because „for a long time, I was threatening to do a vocal record. But the idea of me putting out a record where I sang seemed ostentatious or pretentious. Like the music of Telly Savalas . . . I don’t sing very well, I was shy about it. As a character, it made it easier.”
Not long ago Lurie found some materials of Marvin Pontiac which were recorded when he was in a mental hospital. Those were released as The Asylum Tapes in 2017.
A Mix Of Old But Perhaps Eternal American Tunes
Cadillac born New Orleans based American traditionalist LUKE WINSLOW-KING plays a mix of old, but maybe eternal American tunes with his band: ragtime, country, blues, gospel, dixie, bluegrass, jazz, rock and roll with minimal and occasionally brass band orchestration.
New album BLUE MESA out soon on BLOODSHOT RECORDS (US)
„BLUE MESA” on Bandcamp
Satan In Love
FOR EPICUREAN SOULS
V/A RARE FINNISH SYNTH – POP & DISCO 1979 – 92
Title song by EMILIA
She is internationally maybe the most sought-after Finnish disco 7”. Released in 1981, it was the debut single of the singer Anne Luoto under this moniker. Her experiments in cosmic Italo disco didn’t find any positive feedback from the Finnish rock critics, but luckily it didn’t stop her from making a highly collectible album also. Even though the eponymous album (1982) includes many quality tracks – and also her debut single Satan In Love – the standout track in her repertoire is this strange love song with devilish lyrics. The original track was released by Italian disco project La Bellini in 1978 and this Finnish version from three years later uses the same backing track. Anne Luoto had a very interesting day job – she was a calligrapher.
If you want to know more and you are curious about the Finnish lyrical version of this song by Fredi you need to buy this double LP. It comes with an essay about early Finnish electronic music by Mikko Mattlar: DJ, journalist and historian on Finnish music.
40 Years Nihilism and Rage – The Outsiders of The Australian Underground
This year the legendary unknown raw and wild synth-punk band PRIMITIVE CALCULATORS turns into 40. They (we) celebrate it with their third album ON DRUGS.
The band started in 1978, in the same place and same time than the Birthday Party. After a single they relocated to London, in same time than the Birthday Party, and promptly broke up in 1980. But there was a post-split-up single under the name of Zye Ye Ye in England in 1981. The first album was released in 1980. It’s a live recording of a gig supporting the Boys Next Door in 1979. The Boys Next Door was renamed to Birthday Party.
In 1986 they reunited for the sake of a film and relesed an EP but there were nothing new but a remix on it. In the early 2000s they were discovered, records were reissued together with unreleased live and other recordings. Then they have reformed in 2009 at the request of Nick Cave for the first All Tommorrow’s Pary in Australia.
First studio album THE WORLD IS FUCKED was released in 2013. And now the third album finally here. It is a little bit different than the others. Heartbreak and loss also appear beside nihilism and rage at the world. Even, there is a ballad, a dark, nasty, dire dirge.
An Empty Bliss Beyond Old Budapest
The enigmatically beautiful Katalin Kirby
has made an album from tunes of a lost world as
The Cartaker.
Nothing problem if you don’t know about that world too much because you can feel what they felt between two world wars in Hungary:
1. Summer Brought Me To Your Grey Plains pt I 0:00
2. Moments Of Gravity Undefined 4:02
3. Javor’s Delay 7:12
4. An Empty Bliss Beyond Old Budapest 10:44
5. A Great Beautiful Nothing Out Of Sight 14:29
6. I’m So Into You, Mr Javor 16:19
7. The Senorita Departs In A Flying Saucepan 21:16
8. The Universe Hurts So Bad 23:30
9. Wasted In A Little Bit Of Love 25:20
10. A Fashionable Hat Has Become Your Destiny 28:12
11. Summer Brought Me To Your Grey Plains pt II
Wap wap wap dabbada ding ding dack dabbada
This was a happy Wednesday morning because I have got the new album ROACH GOIN’ DOWN of American avant-punk girl trio PALBERTA. On this album Ani, Nina, and Lily continue to pave the way as innovators in the field of guitar-based music, delivering a barrage of twisted, catchy hymns that manage to be both challenging and feverishly compelling. They combine the band’s signature frenetic instrumentation with a thoroughly developed pop sensibility that fans merely glimpsed on previous releases. And this time it’s grounded by a lyrical nuance and newfound melancholy that gives the record an air of maturity compared to previous releases. But best describe their music what I’ve found on their FB page:
“You wanna wabbada? Wap wap wap dabbada?
You see that mabada? ding ding dack dabbada?”
Music Below The Line
ARNDALES is a sardonic post-punk quartet,
a hidden gem at an English countryside warehouse.
Their long-awaited debut album „SHOPS” coming soon.
Some thoughts about them in special LUTON HAIKU style.
There are rules and laws which people attribute to haiku writing
which aren’t the concern of Luton haiku writers.
Luton, the lively English town somewhere in the Polish-Pakistani borderland
to where I arrived 2 and half years before as a mentally emigrant from Hungary.
Of course it was raining that day.
And then totally suddenly The Fall played in Luton
at a fest where the other day Lee Scratch Perry was the big name
but that day I went to London to see Guitar Wolf.
And then my eyes got stuck in a name in the festival book: ARNDALES.
Got its name after Arndale Centre which is known as The Mall in Luton nowadays.
And one time it was the biggest covered shopping centre in Europe.
I googled them. And it turned up that In The Red Records release them.
And it releases just fine stuff, like Bassholes, Black Lips, Chain & The Gang,
Jay Reatard, Kid Congo, Oblivians, Ty Segall, Thee Oh Sees, Andre Williams
And I read their former bands are Country Teasers, Thrilled Skinny,
Badgewearer, Pregnant Neck, Collapsed Lung, Zuno Men,
and they played songs like this
rigth before The Fall at the same place.
And there I observed the guitar player’s hamburger patterned socks.
I thought those were witty symbol of the consumer idiotism.
On their new album they have taken inspiration from the world of retail jargon.
E.g. the opening track „Prestige Pricing” is named after the practice of inflating
the price of a product to indicate it’s prestigious status.
The album „SHOPS” is coming soon on IN THE RED RECORDINGS.
And there is nothing shiny. Just old fashioned music like the old Fall
with a Negativland song which is replaced to mid Bedfordshire.