Monday, January 5, 2015
Rarely Heard: Japancakes -Elephants
I came across Athens, GA-based Japancakes, when I heard that they had released an album covering the entirety of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, one of my all-time top 10 records! Of course I had to purchase it, and the result is fascinating as it doesn't simply cover the songs, but rather devoutly is a hommage to the great band, although some interpretations slide dangerously on the edge to Easy Listening. Japancakes "who in 1997 had the idea of organizing a group of ten musicians to take the stage without any previous rehearsals all for the sake of playing a single "D" chord for 45 minutes" (Allmusic.com) must be great fans, since that's exactly how My Bloody Valentine had started performing as well. However, on their albums Japancakes aren't heavy with drones and noise but rather produce subtle easy-going hypnotic instrumentals - again quite easy on the ear. Elephants is from their first album If I Could See Dallas.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Humanity finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, object buried beneath the Lunar surface and, with the intelligent computer H.A.L. 9000, sets off on a quest.
A visual (and acoustic!) journey rather than a story with a conventional plot this masterpiece is an audacious experiment that still holds its own as one of the great achievements in movie history.
Rewatched it just to take in the acoustic journey.
Halliwell****: "A lengthy montage of brilliant model work and obscure symbolism, this curiosity slowly gathered commercial momentum and came to be cherished by those who used it as a trip without LSD."
Maltin****: "A unique masterpiece, immensely influential...A visual feast, film also boasts distinction of having put Richard Strauss into the Top 40 with "Also Sprach Zarathustra.""
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Rarely Heard: Die Haut - Our Captain Speaking
I suppose it was 1981, maybe 1982, I convinced my pals to drive up to a small town near Munich called Ampermoching to see Red Crayola play in a small tavern there. I didn't realize it in beforehand, but a then quite unknown band called Die Haut were playing as support.
The tavern had no real stage, just a back room, and in one corner the Red Crayola's equipment was all set up. There was only a small audience and in came three (maybe four) guys dressed in black shirts and pants and placed themselves in front of us. I don't remember any instruments. Some bass-driven monotonic music came from somewhere, and I recall the guys started making wild erratic dance movements, no singing. To be honest the whole thing appeared to me quite ridiculous, and I was glad, when the whole performance ended after about half an hour.
Years later I heard that Die Haut had been an important cult band pioneering the Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) of music. Trouserpress.com says about the early Die Haut: "Rising out of Berlin's post-punk bleakness, die Haut ("the skin") is a largely instrumental quartet with Beefheartian and psychedelic overtones but possessing a disciplined ferocity that yields a strikingly Germanic sound." However, later on they would add vocals and play a more straightforward punk sound till their demise in 1997. Guest vocalists live and on recordings include: Nick Cave, Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane, Debbie Harry, Paul Outlaw, Mick Harvey, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Blixa Bargeld, Lydia Lunch, Alexander Hacke, Arto Lindsay, Kim Gordon, Cristina Martinez, Laurie Tomin, Alan Vega, Louisa Bradshaw, Danielle de Picciotto, Gordon W.
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