Villalobos Is Alright With Bananaspam!

Mondays are always fantastic when accompanied by the meticulous ethno-futurist techno of Ricardo Villalobos.

This Weekend That You Walk Upon

We all remember Simple Minds’ musical contribution to the John Hughes movie The Breakfast Club. “Don’t You Forget About Me” was its title, the year was 1985, the movie was everywhere and so was this song, the first track on the soundtrack. However, many years before Simple Minds became the darlings of American stadiums they were the British (or more accurately the Glasgow) band that could…and did. Their early albums from ’79 and ’80 were intricate and forward looking, channeling diverse influences like Kraftwerk, Magazine, The Velvet Undergound, Giorgio Moroder, La Dusseldorf, Neu! and disco. These records were musically startling, containing strong, rhythmic rock grooves tinged with electronic and funk elements, and they paved the way for the band’s tour de force, the Sons and Fascination and Sister Feelings Call albums which dropped in the fall of 1981. Sister Feelings Call came free as a bonus disk with the first 10,000 copies of the Sons and Fascination LP. At this point Simple Minds was comprised of Jim Kerr, Charlie Burchill, Brian McGee, Mick MacNeil and Derek Forbes, the eighth embodiment of the band since its formation in 1977.

Sons and Fascination/Sister Feelings Call also came on one cassette, and in 1984 and 1985 my red Walkman beat the ears off me with it and The B-52s' Mesopotamia. And though we now obsess on tracks like “This Earth That You Walk Upon” as part of Daniele Baldelli’s mythic dj sets (“League Of Nations” is the slo mo jam though and I’m sure Baldelli rocked this too), back then Simple Minds were on the same pedestal as Echo And The Bunnymen and U2. These outfits were all venerated as the zenith of new wave and the bands from the isles, which all could — and all did to some extent —take over the world. Over and above the blogger worship of “the unremembered eighties,” (my fave James Murphy lyric) Sons and Fascination/Sisters Feelings Call was a masterpiece of modern rock, effortlessly fusing grand anthems with lush, complex sounding electronics and driving funk and disco grooves.

Check “Love Song,” “The American,” and the old school Ibiza classic “Themes For Great Cities,” for proof of this. And wallow in the dislocated, alienated ambience of tracks like “League Of Nations,” “Seeing Out The Angel,” and “This Earth That You Walk Upon,” (in its awesome vocal version) to find an unnerved repose from wide screen epics such as “Sound In 70 Cities,” and “Boys From Brazil.” Perhaps “Don’t You Forget About Me,” has led us to completely forget about this stellar, if not jaw droppingly excellent, album, but a root through your local music emporium’s cd and vinyl sections will refresh your memory and allow you to withdraw from stadium sized worship and to plant your musical feet firmly on this earth that you walk upon.

Orr

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Summer Jams While The Hills Burn and Burn..

Here's one for the ladies and baby makers. Something for the summer while the whole of the state of California is a burning and burning. The hills are brown and even the air is chipotle smoky. Somebody save Big Sur, please! (Props to J.Stinz for the mix)

SKATE ROCK Time Capsule

In 1983, Thrasher Magazine started releasing a series of tapes and vinyl that captured the outlaw skate-punk spirit of the day with bands like The Faction, JFA and Tsol. The Skate Rock compilation tapes will bring you back to the days when skate culture and punk rock first collided like meteors--something that went hand in hand ever since. If you didn't experience skate culture first hand during the early to mid 80s, these compilations will definitely bring you straight back to the Del Mar Skate Ranch and the Pipeline in Upland, California.

Remember a time before skaters were steeped in faux-hip/hop regalia, Hot Topic’esque mall attire and the glut of X-Games extreme sports consumption. Let’s take a trip back to this golden era where skating was fun, rebellious, rough and raw. Skateboarding Is Not A Crime.
-BS/J.Stinz

Goblin: Magical Sound Worlds Of Argento

Some have wondered who was behind all of the magical sounds accompanying Dario Argento films? Goblin, formerly known as Cherry Five, an Italian progressive rock band, single handedly brought Argento films to life. Films like Suspiria, Tenebrae, and Profondo Rosso stood out and set itself apart from its American counterparts thanks to Goblin's work. Their revolutionary use of synthesizers and odd instrumentation provided the eerie backdrop that brought out the films' demons. Towards the end of their career in the late 70's, Goblin went on to do the soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead (originally known as Zombi) and has continued to influence the manner in which horror films are soundtracked. On the current tip, their title score for the movie Tenebrae was sampled by electro heavy weights, Justice, in their songs Phantom Pt. 1 and 2.
J.STINZ

Saluting Loosely

If you missed this one first time around when it was released on Chicago indie label Graveface (home to Black Moth Super Rainbow, amongst others) then rejoice in the fact that it is not an excellent indie album that will be discovered in fifteen years time, because British indie stalwart Heavenly picked it up and released it on June 2nd. I covered it for my nitewise column exactly a year ago and gushed enthusiastically about it at the time.

Tuned to Love by English outfit The Loose Salute is an eleven-track opus of delicately countrified, and Americana inflected, indie pop that is full of unpretentious joy and melancholy, beautiful arrangements and thought provoking lyrics. It also has the wonderfully tragic, “Photographs and Tickets,” with its Don Henley referencing guitar riff (believe me it works).

Founding members Alan Forrester and Ian McCutcheon served time in Mojave 3. McCutcheon was also a member of British shoe gaze legends Slowdive, which spawned Mojave 3. Thus a taste for Americana had already been established. Velvety voiced vocalist Lisa Billson is no beginner either, and sang with English techno innovators Orbital on a number of their releases earlier in this decade.

I’m not going to gush too much again and will just say that this album is a great summer listen and a worthy accompaniment to those Neil Young, Gram Parsons, Byrds and Doors records that will be helping you through another endless California summer (even if you live in Croydon). By the way “The Mutineer” is meltingly gorgeous (the way a Cadbury’s Flake is over ice cream in the back of a hot car), and pedal steel guitar (my favorite instrument on the planet) pops up here and there, most effectively on “Why Do We Fight?”

I love this record, I surely do!!!!

Orr

Passions.

I’m sure this one has been well documented, but I thought I’d put my own little twist on it. This was a British top 40 hit and I remember it as such. I remember it on the radio in early ‘80s when I was knee high to a small grasshopper, tuning in to BBC Radio One at six thirty on a Tuesday morning, getting ready for secondary school (high school). I grew up in the far north of the Republic of Ireland right on the border with Northern Ireland near the old city of Derry. This was a region where residual hate from the schism caused by the Reformation, and all of its political and economic machinations, still played out with brutality. Where death, destruction and despair rained from above, distorting reality, ruining lives and casting a shadow over youth.

Thankfully there was the music, coming in over the border from BBC transmitters, transmitters that we weren’t supposed to be able to access because we were on the Republic of Ireland side of the divide and weren’t paying license fees to the British government. But the air waves don’t adhere to borders, nor did the music that was playing on those morning shows in the early ‘80s. The Jam would rub shoulders with the Whispers and you’d hear Kissing The Pink’s “The Last Film” next to ABC. And Diana Ross, Soft Cell, The Undertones and Joy Division would all be swirling around in these illegal transmissions.

One of the songs you’d hear in 1981 was “I’m In Love With A German Film Star,” by The Passions. It was haunting and beautiful, with its sombre but pretty vocals and that guitar with the echoing effect. It was imprinted on my psyche forever, liable to burst out of my unconscious at any moment, issued from memories of a more innocent time. It may now be — to quote James Murphy’s lyrics in LCD Soundsystem’s “Losing My Edge” — a facet of the “unremembered ‘80s,” but I remember it well. I remember it like P.I.L. button badges and new copies of Metal Box, in the Metal Box, Killing Joke and their channeling of War’s “Me And Baby Brother,” on the song “Change,” (which LCD Soundsystem later channeled on their song mentioned above). I remember it like Diana Ross’s “My Old Piano,” Odyssey’s “Inside Out.” and the Stranglers’ “Thrown Away.”

I remember it all so well, and I’m still in love with it all; the eclectic sets of music that paved the way for innovation by mixing up music forms that were always kept in their little, generic boxes. Black music and white music, soul and punk, reggae and new wave. If we can keep mixing we can keep moving on, and borders — whether real or generic — can never stop the music.

Orr

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