When your voices are running down!

So what is the relevance of The Police’s “Voices Inside My Head”/”When The World Is Running Down You Make The Best of What’s Still Around?” Though many of you probably hate Sting —and remember that his “If You Love Somebody, Set Them Free” is a Larry Levan classic — these two tracks from the Police’s 1980 LP,  Zenyatta Mondatta, pressed on a gourgeliciious twelve inchy single, are certified Paradise Garage nuggets and still get a fair bit of play to this day. Voices works ‘cos it’s so damned funky, chanty, wicked and otherworldly. When The World is Running Down etc. rocks ‘cos its world weary lyrics and unstoppable groove speak as much about the crap that’s going on today as they did in 1980. Hopefully Justice will do a tearingly banging remix which will utilize cold, austere synth tones that you’ve only heard five trillion times, and there’ll be a Digitalism mix on the flip, both will sound incredible after 247 lines of low grade charlie. Then the downer message of the song will be buried in a euphoric, but knowingly ironic, blizzard of software abandon.

But I’m missing the point here, all this crunchy electro is really modern punk rock and is descended from the ground breaking Daft Punk. Of course, that’s why Thomas Bangalter lives in Beverly Hills, he’s being ironically punk rock. The thing about punk rock is that it started off wickedly and ended up being preachy shite, just like the way electro started off wickedly and is now glitchy shite. An era is coming to an end (thank Christ), an era of conservative politics, war, poverty, fixation on cookie cutter celebrities, endless ironic nostalgia and nerdy white guys claiming that gangster rap is truly authentic because it isn’t as earnest as more conscious hip-hop. Please move to the places where this rap is being produced so you can be shot at because the only thing that view does is bolster your ignorance of black music in general. As Public Enemy once said, “Who stole the soul?” It’s not in dance music anymore and it sure ain’t in Usher’s daft (unpunky) dances.

Are the voices inside your head telling you that when the world is running down you should make the best of what’s still around too? The ones in my head are. Give these two tracks a spin today and pray for more top notch new music, that grooves most of the night instead of banging all night. Hey a few bangers are necessary to wake people up, we don’t want to fall into that dreaded jazzy house trap that killed the ‘90s, — in cahoots with wanky intellectualizing about Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, by nerdy white guys no less — the dreaded jazzy house that electro dj/promoters will always remind us about. Sorry guys, this era’s nearly over too, cue flutes and saxophone samples. The beast goes on, and you make the best of what’s still around. Zzzzzzzzz.

Orr

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My Bloody Valentine Interviewed Backstage At Benicassim

A slashing night out!

I’m always on the hunt for a decent night out in San Francisco and as the years have gone by I get pickier about what I want to attend. At this point any event that features the same type of music all night — especially house, techno or hip-hop — is a definite no no, unless a serious guest is playing and I know that his/her selection will be stellar. I take my cues from hearing the likes of Tony Humphries, Derrick May, Gemini, Simon DK (the best deep house sets I have ever heard period) and Afrika Bambaataa rolling out upfront selections that are peppered with the classics that really matter. And also I have a deep admiration for the kind of eclectic approach that was developed in Chicago, at the birth of the house music scene there, by the WBMX Hotmix Five djs and Ron Hardy. Variety is the spice of life and with music that is a concrete rule of thumb.

One San Fran party that has charmed me on the two occasions that I have attended is Suspiria. Yes it is the title of a Dario Argento movie with a Goblin soundtrack, and the music, venue, visuals and attire of the patrons add to this, creating a rather seductive setting. The night is a collaborative effort between prolific rock/electro/indie club promoter and mainstay DJ Omar, djs such as Mario Muse, MizMargo and Justin (of Shutter fame) and prolific visuals creator Chris Golden, a man who provides colorful backgrounds for many of the city’s successful shindigs. The music is an imaginative array of modern electro cuts — many with slnky female vocals — industrial classics, Goth rock gems and a smattering of moodier Italo pieces courtesy of Claudio Simonetti and other Italian outfits.

When you get The Chameleons up against Bauhaus, Goblin, Japan, a brace of upfront electro tunes, dark Italo disco nuggets and esoteric Euro, proto-industrial tracks by artists such as Malaria (of which Gudrun Gut was a member), Einstürzende Neubauten (Gut was also a member of this outfit) and Fad Gadget, you know you’re in for a night of deliciously dark sonic diversity. The crowd gets dolled up, the venue, Harlot, is beautiful in a very moody fashion; and the visuals culled from various European Giallo movies – with their penchant for horror, crime, mystery and eroticism — place an artistic crown on the event. Folks drink and dance, the soundsystem is great and Harlot itself is centrally located in SF’s SOMA district. Suspiria happens on the third Wednesday of the month and is worthy of your attention.

Orr

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Trans Weekend Expression.

Kraftwerk was a disco outfit!!! No way! But yes way, to quote Bill and Ted, for some people they were. Nicky Siano, who was the dj at the seminal disco club The Gallery, was clearing the dance floor at Studio 54 with “Trans Europe Express” in 1977. However, in 1978, when this record was promoted (it was never released) Kraftwerk were beginning to become part of the dance music vernacular. Disco djs were dropping their tracks, r&b radio stations were featuring some of their tunes and within a few, short years the likes of Afrika Bambaataa and Juan Atkins would be incorporating key Kraftwerk tunes into the embryonic stages of hip-hop and techno respectively. It’s also highly likely that Larry Levan at the Paradise Garage in NY and Ron Hardy at the Music Box in Chicago were slipping Krafwerk numbers into their heady and bacchanalian selections.

Part of the band’s appeal was that it was inadvertently funky; it was groovy by mistake. This is the accepted lore on their revolutionary sound. However, we are talking about a group of guys in 1970s Germany, we are not dealing with a quartet from Papa New Guinea in 1904. In other words Kraftwerk’s music didn’t happen in some cultural vacuum. You can put money on the fact that these supposedly stoic Teutons were versed in the contemporary music of their time. They weren’t the only ones dealing in a forward-looking minimalism that would have ground breaking ramifications in the next decade. James Brown had deconstructed soul and r&b into the sparse, sleek and primal pulse of funk and I’m sure the Germans were cognitive of that fact. Would they have listened to the Beach Boys and their textural adventures, and were they bowled over by Suicide when Rev and Vega’s jaw-droppingly different first LP dropped in ’77? Yes and yes, I would guess.

And just as funk’s functionality materialized in the transmission of an instinctive need to dance, Kraftwerk’s music projected the zeitgeist of inevitable progress, of an electronics driven world where manufacturing and romance would be equally influenced by circuits and micro chips. Three years later in 1981 their stellar Computer World album would deal with these subjects in a semi-serious fashion. Because even though their music can be (mis)construed as earnest and academic, there is an obvious irony, a tongue in cheek aspect to many of their songs. Amazing, isn’t it? Especially when you’ve been under the impression that irony was invented 2002 in Williamsburg by a fixed gear bike rider from Boise, Idaho. Twasn’t, it has been a literary and comic device for yonks and yonks.

So the point is that these four tracks by the futuristic German group are a succinct window into their worldview, their vision of the future. Perhaps these songs were alien in 1977 NY discos but seven to ten years later other electronic music pioneers like Newcleus, Egyptian Lover, Rhythim is Rhythim and Model 500 would give the European sparseness a distinctly urban American twist and set in motion otherworldly dance crazes, and a capacity for abstract musical texture that remains with us to this day. So when you’re contorting to that new Justice remix, or Kompakt track or Chris Brown radio jam this weekend, remember that without the stoic Germans known as Kraftwerk, these tunes would probably sound a lot different, a lot safer perhaps. And the spirit of James Brown looms large too wherever the heavy funk is being played out through strings, skins, keys, pads, patches or filters. The beat rolls on like a locomotive, it’s always trans-European, trans global and eternally doing it to death.

Orr

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Datapanik and Musical Heroes.

Though everything post-punk, new wave, synthpunk etc. etc. etc. has been successfully related to us by the rich kid hipster chorus of America via the miracle of the intraweb, I am oft amazed that some bands tend to escape the omniscient glare of these observant and independently wealthy purveyors of accepted wisdom and musical knowledge.That's not to say that these overlooked bands haven't been given some attention, it's that they haven't undergone the same level of scrutiny as say, The Au Pairs — a truly awesome band — or Josef K (another banging outfit, which was also Scottish, meaning it was absolutely fantastic). One band that I believe (and I could be wrong) falls into this category is Pere Ubu, especially their early recordings in the the mid to late '70s.

I know, I know, they have been talked about a bit, Simon Reynolds gives them a fair shake of the stick in his Rip It Up and Start Again tome, but I just don't think the Ohio band's ground breaking aspect has been given its rightful due. The five track EP pictured above is a real portal into their forward looking — and fun — approach to music. It's a heady stew or straight up garage rock, electronics and musique concrète, which perfectly fuses experimentalism and an odd sense of fun. I dare you to listen to "Heart of Darkness," which was recorded in the fall of 1975, and not think of Joy Division. "30 Seconds over Tokyo" — a reference to the amount of time US bombers would spend over the Japanese city on a mission, and the 1944 movie of the same name — is fractured, ethereal, sombre and very new wave for a track recorded in 1975.

Flip the record over and you have "Cloud 149," a dreamy and thuddy little rocker with plinky organ sounds, wiry guitar sounds and an overall approach that sounds like Jimi Hendrix crashing into Bill Haley, with a few synth bits thrown in to confuse everyone. It's terrific!!! "Unititled" has a sixites rock feel to it and is in fact an early version of "The Modern Dance," the title track of Pere Ubu's classic debut album. "Heaven," is just that, it's divine and akin to the weird, spacey, meltdown part in The Doors' "Hello, I Love You," injected into a sunny, folk song with some whispered vocals and synthy noises thrown in there for good measure.

I got acquainted with the band in 1980, within the pages of Smash Hits magazine. This was a British mag that kept one up to date on all the pop music factoids needed to maintain a knowing conversational style with judgmental peers. But not only did it contain pop music news it also had excellent indie rock and disco sections. Pere Ubu were constantly referenced, as were the likes of Delta 5, the Au Pairs, Red Krayola, Josef K, Swell Maps, Crispy Ambulance, the Fall, Joy Division, Dead Kennedys and Killing Joke. Reading about these bands was one thing, finding the records was another, especially when rare imports or limited indie pressings were hard to come by. Some would show up in weeks, some would take years to acquire in the pre download, blog wilderness of the eighties, when knowledge and info was difficult to access, it wasn't at your fingertips all the time. Maybe it was better that way, not because it left the resources in the hands of the few, but because you really appreciated something when it took forever to find.

Jump forward to 1986 and Northern Irish band That Petrol Emotion, a post-punk/dance-rock outfit that grew out of the ashes of The Undertones, had a live cover of Pere Ubu's "Non-Alignment Pact" on their "Natural Kind Of Joy" EP. I bought that and Ubu's Terminal Tower compilation, which came out on Rough Trade in '85, on the same day. The Petrols did a good job on the cover and there's also a kick ass version of the song on the Pere Ubu live album 390 Degrees Of Simulated Stereo : Ubu Live Volume One, on which singer David Thomas utters the title in an unusual fashion before launching into the song. However, the EP featured in this piece didn't fall into my hands until about 2003 in Rasputin Music in Berkeley, twenty three years after the band's mythology was introduced into my life. So, if you're vague on this excellent American outfit, or you're curious but haven't given the music a listen, then please do so, you will be amply rewarded by the sounds of a band who stood somewhere between the tail end of the '60s and the doorway to the modern rock that we now take so much granted. I hate using the word visionary, but it is applicable here.

Orr

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Steppa's Delight (Soul Jazz Records)

At the beginning of the millennium, London pirate radio and it’s club offspring were mutating garage and jungle sounds once again. Two-step was now oscillating it’s cultural pull away from silken Champagne affairs and moving into the darker and deeper turf of Dubstep.

This was street music, formed in the lab with extra helpings of cavernous bass and anxiety. The frenetic pulses, disembodied divas and echoes of Jamaica past are well represented by Burial’s 2 long players and continues to be championed by Rinse FM, who gave Wiley and Dizzee Rascal their first taste of notoriety.

The venerable, ever-rewarding Soul Jazz Records, who’s always first to connect with new and emerging sounds and reconnect with those musical traditions that should never have been lost in the first place has just released two excellent dubstep volumes titled, “Steppa’s Delight.”

Track highlights like Kode 9’s “Samurai” starts off as if you are attending a Jamaican Death march, then as soon as the tension builds, the uptempo slaughter ensues, replete with jaw dropping sub-bass that will face any dancehall. Closing out Volume 1, the remixed version of spacerock’s North Star, Seventeen Evergreen’s “Ensoniq”, which combines psychedelic electronics and vocal treatments with Dub Step’s trademark hypnotic, pulsing bass.

Steppa’s Delight is a portal that leaves you fiending for a Soul Train equivalent of a Dubstep dance show. Imagine Don Cornelius introducing Shackleton’s “Blood On My Hands” while clouds of smoke billow from the dancefloor.

Buy here!

J.Stinz/Bananaspam

Minimal Mondays or frugal Fridays? You decide

The Germans have taken the reins with techno over the last ten or so years and there is not stopping them. And why should they stop when such great work has been done. If you've been lying under a crab, which was buried under a stone in the Aleutian Islands then you may not have come into contact with Basic Channel, Monolake, Gas or Supermayer. These producers really pushed the German penchant for slick, sparse production, then reached out across the globe to find like-minded musicians and added them to their label, playlists or mindset. One of the most prolific labels in the world of minimal techno is Kompakt. However, its appeal lies in being eclectic in its output and in its influences. And whereas other labels display a starkness of sound, Kompakt often revels in a lushness that brings a welcome respite from the cold, ersatz dance music on offer from other imprints.

Just check out these two releases; Kompakt 177 and 178 respectively. The DJ Koze remix of Closer Muzik member Matias Aguayo's "Minimal," is about as deep as house (this ain't techno, sorry) can get, with a cocky, ironic vocal about music that "got no groove, got no balls," while a girly chorus seductive coos "si," and other utterances en Español. The original is a winner too, displaying a rhythm akin to that of reggaeton, while Marcus Rossknecht's remix doesn't stray far from the original, it just beefs things up a tad. The remixes of KOM 178, namely Justus Köhncke's "Yacht," and "26," are similarly sterling and staggeringly stalwart, methinks. Both Robert Babicz's and Aaron Carl's mixes display a chunky penchant for Detroit nuances (well, Carl is from the motor city) that is immersed in rich textures and buoyed on a paltform of tough, funky beats. Both are late night cruisers for dimly lit floors and well lit crowds, and are diamonds in the rough, so ignore at your peril. And as usual Kompakt has more in store, but we'll get to that later, so enjoy these for now.

Orr

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