Gangleri – music reviews

First released as a 12″, then as a picture 12″ and upcoming on cd and cd+dvd comes the new album of ORE. This album immediately sounds a bit different from earlier achievements. The sound is softer, more melancholic, the guitar loops are almost gone (or with effects). After a few listenings, the album still does not really work for me. It is a bit too soft and the crazy, bombastic, industrial, martial, etc. elements all seem to be lost and we are left with atmospheric music with male and female vocals. Perhaps musically “Onani” is a step forward. There are no longer the obvious looped samples and repetitions, but it seems that this had to give away to the atmosphere somewhat. Maybe I have to listen to this album some more before things start to fall in their place.
Links: Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio, Cold Meat Industry

However I have the debut 10″ of Novo Homo, I have seen the man live a couple of times and I like what he does with Der Blutharsch, I have almost completely neglected Bain Wolfkind. Stupid me! “The Swamp Angel” is an amazing dirty (blues) rock album which reminds me of Bluebob here and there. Wolfkind has more releases available, I might need to see if they are as enjoyable as this one.
Links: Bain Wolfkind, Hau Ruck!

Well well, the Strp festival has anounced interesting names for their opening weekend. A whole range of experimental “IDM” projects will play on 3 and 4 April. I accidentally only bought tickets for Saturday (already € 34,- per ticket!), the night that Aphex Twin plays. Squarepusher has not been put in the schedule yet, but I can hardly imagine that they would put him on Saturday too. That would be great though!
Anyway, more info: Strp.nl.

Last weekend I ran into a couple of breakcore projects on Last.fm that could very well have been released on Cock Rock Disco. Both did in some way (compilation and album), but there seems to be much more neurotic breakcore out there than the crazy stuff of CRD. Both Mochipet and Otto von Schirach have great tracks in the Last.fm Kid606 ‘radio’. Mochipet sometimes seems to do breakcore/hiphop, a bit like Antipop Consortium, but both Mochipet and Otto von Schirach make completely over-the-top and impossible-to-listen-to breakcore on most other tracks that I heard.
There is so much crazy music out there and since there seem to be so many projects and labels in this style, I suppose there is also a large audience that listens to this stuff.

I have known Last.fm for a while, but I hadn’t really ‘worked with it’ until recently. I finally got a laptop (cheap second hand) which I connected to my amplifier so now I can play all the music that I have digitally too more easily. When I was looking for a proper internet radio and I couldn’t find any, I stumbled upon Last.fm again. I only knew this website for having popular music and it has suggestions for similar artists. This could be a nice way to discover new music. Then I noticed that almost anything has a “radio”: artists, ‘tags’, etc. “Radio” is a compilation (often virtually infinate) of tracks that users connect to a certain tag (musical style) or artist. This function is truely amazing. I play music that I would never buy. In the weekend I find myself playing old punk (The Clash, Sex Pistols), not too fast, but not too slow, nice music for a drousy Sunday morning. Last.fm has an enormous amount of music, most bands are on it and it can be nice to see what other users connect to a certain band. Just a test case (but a serious one): Devil Doll, what would be “similar artists”? The line names Fields of the Nephilim and Elend, yea right. The “radio” has much more interesting things to offer though, since it is filled with all kinds of old, strange and sometimes surprisingly nice progrock. Another such test: Diamanda Gallas. Similar artists are Einstürzende Neubauten and Nurse With Wound, uhuh. The “radio” also presents avantgardistic electronic music, but also experimental opera and vocal music, like Laurie Anderson and a magnificent song of Amy X Neuburg. What about Nicholas Lens? For a great many years I have been looking for something that comes just a little near this magnificent music, but without succes. “Nicholas Lens radio” has experimental modern classical (of course), but a bit too many ‘classical classical’, but a surprise (inspite of the name) are for example the OperaBabes, who combine opera with modern electronics.
This morning I started with rockabilly, because I was curious what it sounds like. Ehm, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, isn’t that just rock’n'roll. No problems with r’n'r, but I expected something modern, so I continued with psychobilly. That’s already more like it, this is more punk and the bands go from pretty old to pretty new, not bad! Apparently it is a small step from rockabilly to horror punk, ah, punk again with a nice gloomy horror sauce and …. gothic? Damn, these vocals sound quite gothic now and then and then I even noticed a tag “gothabilly“! Never heard of it, but I love it! Somewhere between rockabilly and death rock/batcave and I even noticed a great band that I thought had long passed: The Coffinshakers! I have their 95 and 96 demos, they claimed to play “vampiric country music” and I loved it, but after some vinyls I lost them. What they call country actually sounds a bit like rock’n'roll, but I think the same of Johnney Cash now and then. Anyway, nowadays they are put under the banners of rockabilly, psychobilly and of course gothabilly, there are even three gothabilly compilations (98 to 00 or so) one of which has The Coffinshakers. Cool!
Last.fm is truely amazing and just fooling around has made me known a shitload amount of musical currents and bands that I never heard of, from “chamber rock” to the weirdest avantgarde experiments from the 60′ies to the present day, modern classical, all kinds of weird old music. I have a difficult musical taste, but there is so much music that there is even a lot that I like.
Two minor points about Last.fm are that you can pick a certain song of a certain band to play (band’s pages usually have 30 second snippets) and there’s no fast forward.
Last.fm seems quite an ultimate website for music lover. Do not look for the newest or the new and they might not have everything (neither does Discogs.com), but they have pretty damn much!

I got this email today. Not really my kind of music, but perhaps you are interested.

I’m wondering if you’d be interested to hear my recent album… I’m not so sure how to classify it… original/folk-ish/acoustic music… a sparkling/melancholic/eclectic mix based around acoustic guitar, double-bass and vocals, with a variety of other instruments woven through.

I could mail you some mp3s… or you can download some songs online at my Sonic Bids page:
http://www.sonicbids.com/TomBolton

Or, if you let me know your address I’ll mail a CD to you.

Regards,

Tom Bolton
(Melbourne Australia)

www.sensibletom.com

Apparently “Kreuzung” is a “Reutoff and friends” series. Now I am not a big fan of Reutoff, but I do like Der Blutharsch, so I decided to get one of the 700 special cardboard cover cds. The album is only half an hour one one of the two Der Blutharsch tracks is also on the recently released “Everything Is Alright“. Reutoff contributed some Der Blutharsch remixes which results in something like dark ambient, but also a very nice neofolk song. The result is not smashing, but not too bad either.
Links: Reutoff, Der Blutharsch

I do not visit the Cock Rock Disco website enough I guess. When I did last week I noticed that there are 7 new free releases since the last time I looked. They are mostly mix cds and not all as extremely breakcore as often happens on this label. As a matter of fact, there seem to be more DJ Donna Summer ideas here, with mixing the weirdest and silliest tracks from soul to AC/DC, happy hardcore and speedcore. Unfortunately the DJs are not as gifted as DJ Donna Summer, the label owner. Kid Kameleon has a rather standard mix if you have followed the label. All kinds of popmusic mixed with a regular beat. The Beast Within is a mix of CRD project and does contain the more extreme forms of electronic music. There seems to be a (new?) liking for electronically made metal, but mostly you will hear the extreme breakcore that you might know from this label. Projects such as The Teknoist, Duran Duran Duran, Bong-Ra, along with new and crazy names such as Toecutter and DJ Floorclearer. There are some way too unstructured f**ked up tracks, but there are also surprisingly calm tracks this time. Another nice free compilation of extreme music. Nero’s Day In Disnleyland is a quite typical CRD mix with music varrying from The Cure and Skinny Puppy to Hole and Morrisey to a whole range of bands that I don’t know, hiphop, rap, soul, jazz, rock, metal; all very weird of course, but not mixed together too well; it just sounds like a weird bunch of musical styles. DJ Rainbow Ejaculation has got to be a country mate, since (s)he mixes the most faulty happy hardcore of 12 years ago that I can not image ever left our country. People of my age (well 30+) will recognise many things that have been repressed from our memories and all that layered with “gabber” beats, truely awfull . CDR then “is a Japanese dude who has been fucking Amen breaks for years…” and so he does with his extreme breakcore “CDR on CRD”. Way too chaotic for my liking, but as often with these kind of releases, it contains weird findings and crazy humour, but musically all build around the same breakbeat. And yes, there is some more crazy free stuff there, so just have a peek if you are interested in (a new kind) of digital extremism.
Cock Rock Disco believes in free music!