Monthly Archives

October 2015

Ten Awesome Depeche Mode Remixes

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Before Mute started using the format as part of its “brand extension” strategy, 12″ singles were primarily used to provide longer versions of singles for DJs. The usual way of stretching a song was to add some drum loops or an extended intro or extro, but the basics of the song sounded the same. One of Mute’s innovations was to offer new versions of songs, played around with in the studio by the same producers or specialist remixers, perhaps paired with additional tracks that were not available elsewhere. And then to do it again – and again – so that fans of a Depeche Mode song might end up with a number of different versions of the same single, pushing up sales figures and the single’s chart position.

This approach has been a boon for both remix artists and collectors, as the label drew in emerging names from the dance music scene to provide mixes and pushed out multiple official releases, promotional versions and overseas exotica in marbled vinyl. We’ve gathered some of our favourite remixes below, on the basis of rarity or the funkiness of the bassline. Which tracks would be on your list?

10. Shout (Rio Mix)

Depeche Mode’s first 12″ single came out in 1981. “New Life” came backed with an extended version of its B-side, “Shout,” which was louder, funkier and more experimental than the lead track. It’s not really pop, and it’s a pity that those who tried to write the band off as twee bubblegum lightweights didn’t flip the record to find it.

9. Master and Servant (US Black and Blue Mix)

By 1984, Depeche Mode had become a band living on 12 inches. “Master and Servant” provided them with an enormous club hit, so it was natural that Joseph Watt of Razormaid should be approached for a DJ-friendly remix.

8. A Question of Time (New Town Mix)

Basildon, the Essex community that gave rise to the Mode, is called a “new town,” because it was developed after the Second World War. Rico Conning, who was a member of Torch Song with William Orbit and worked with him in Guerilla Studios, provided the “New Town” mix for the alternative, limited-edition version of “A Question of Time,” the main mixes having been made by the PWL stalwart, Phil Harding.

7. Get the Balance Right (Combination Mix)

Made as a transitional single between the doom-pop of A Broken Frame and the digital-infused Construction Time Again, “Get the Balance Right” was Alan Wilder’s first recording with Depeche Mode. The band eventually dropped the song, but it’s one of their most modern, harder tracks.

6. Strangelove (Fresh Ground Mix)

Phil Harding made his name working for Stock Aitken Waterman’s hit factory, before being recruited by Mute to produce Nitzer Ebb’s first album and provide some mixes for Depeche Mode. His work on 1987’s “Strangelove” yielded this mix for a promotional single.

5. Behind the Wheel (Beatmasters Mix)

The Beatmasters were signed to the Mute sister label, Rhythm King – which was founded with profits from Depeche Mode’s 80s successes – when they made this remix for the limited edition version of “Behind the Wheel.”

4. Rush (Amylnitrate Mix)

Lifted from Songs of Faith and Devotion, “Rush” was remixed for the B-side of “Condemnation” and then released as a promotional single with this contribution by Guido Osorio.

3. Enjoy the Silence (The Quad: Final Mix)

The strategy of “brand extension” reached its peak with “Enjoy the Silence,” which ended its run with an extra-limited edition mix clocking in at more than 15 minutes. Stretched out with samples of clocks by the band and Flood, engineered by Paul Kendall and Peter Iversen, with mixing credits given to Gareth Jones, Adrian Sherwood, Holger Hiller and others, it’s a kitchen sink mix to end them all, on one side of vinyl.

2. But Not Tonight (Extended Remix)

Depeche turned their backs on “But Not Tonight” almost as soon as it came out, having felt rushed into it by their US label, but the song is one of the band’s best-loved and Dave Gahan’s vocal is a raw sensation.

1. Walking in My Shoes (Random Carpet Mix)

William Orbit’s sonic signatures are all over this 1993 remix, and the clues are there for what was coming for Madonna’s “Ray of Light.”

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Here Comes the Rein!

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

artworks-000130785275-83l73y-t500x500Fierce! There’s no other word to describe the music of Rein, who jumped from our speakers with her first release, “There Is No Authority But Yourself.” With its independent attitude and blistering beats, we were immediately converted and it became our Track of the Day. In the weeks that have followed, Rein has revealed additional material and appeared in a video for The Operating Tracks. We tracked her down ahead of Sweden’s Bodyfest event to find out a little more about this uncompromising new artist.

You’ll be performing soon at Bodyfest in Stockholm with The Operating Tracks. How did your collaboration with them come about?

A friend of mine knew The Operating Tracks’ manager. My friend mailed him a short presentation about me and my songs. This was just some days after I uploaded my demos on Soundcloud. Then we had a chat, and he had an idea for me to guest in one of their songs. They sent me “Testify” and I was recording my part at home in Reason. I actually first met Carl and Carolina when we recorded the music video. I really liked them immediately.

Your solo material is very old-school EBM. What bands inspire your sound?

Thanks! I do, of course, get very inspired by Nitzer Ebb, but not only them. I get inspired by crust punk, too, for example. I like short songs with short lyrics. But I am also very inspired by other music genres, like electro, where there is a lot of dynamic in the synths with effects and stuff. I like to take cool parts from genres that I like and make something cool with it all together.

You previously played drums in a band [The Blister Exists], but your voice is great and belongs in the lead position. Do you have a singing background?

I have been singing since I was four years old. I was raised in a family where everything was about music, because my whole family work with music, lyrics and performance. So, it has always been natural to me to sing, perform and create music. But I was self taught – I never made it to a music school. I was always singing to the radio in the car with my father and did some school shows. I really love to sing and always have.

We saw a picture of you using Reason. Do you do all of your own recording and production?

Yes, I do! I have created songs in Reason since I was thirteen years old, and there’s nothing strange about that! I get this question a lot because I am a woman, I guess. I guess a lot of men aren’t getting this question as much.

What is in your heart that still needs to come out through your music?

I want to make music for people who don’t have a voice and sing about injustices in society with some kick-ass beats.

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In the Garden of Dark Flowers

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

cd166f05e8736fca295049f8ae5b6f09_400x400What fills the spaces between dreams? Listening to the music of Dan Söderqvist, the Swedish progfather, it’s hard to find any gaps in the tapestry of the subconscious. Dark Flowers Awake, his latest album, weaves together collaborations chosen from the years 2002-2010, interlacing the surreal and the subliminal in a matrix of exotica.

The trip begins with two songs made with Anne Sulikowski, the Canadian composer and psychiatric nurse also known as Building Castles out of Matchsticks. Sulikowski provided the rhythm tracks for “A Seagull’s Dream” and “La La Land,” but Söderqvist’s palatial constructions are assembled from more appropriate materials: deep grooves that grind in a way reminiscent of Silver Ghost Shimmer; ethereal vocals that unfold like fractals; synths that maneuver between the stems of flowering poppies.

“Pretty Blue Forever,” incorporating lyrics by Gregory James Wyrick, moves in the direction of high-quality dream-pop. Detroit-based Wyrick’s art is a kind of surrealistic grotesque, and Söderqvist underpins his words with rhythmic patterns and synth sweeps that draw in spacey guitar lines with the sonic reach of a Vostok capsule. The final decay stretches on, until its trajectory passes the horizon.

The other highlight is “Blue Evening (Version),” a revision of a track that previously appeared on Twice a Man’s 2002 album, Agricultural Beauty. Its words are drawn from the contemporary Indian poet, Anjum Hasan. With a mesmerising rhythm built around a simple tabla beat, the song grows organically, forming a web of drones, bells and pads infused with the scents of sandlewood and jasmine flowers. It is sensuous, exotic and perfectly balanced between naturalistic and synthetic modes of expression: sounds from gardens where you feel secure.

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Back to Blue Velvet with Tuxedomoon/CWNN

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

David Lynch’s Blue Velvet is remembered as much for Dennis Hopper’s turn as a substance-inhaling gangster with a limited vocabulary as for its soundtrack. A combination of iconic pop songs and Angelo Badalamenti-scored classical music influenced by Shostakovich, the musical setting for Hopper’s ranting threats was as vivid as the stylised vision on the screen.

How, then, to score a film that documents the making of Lynch’s most accessible movie, using material gathered on set thirty years ago? For Blue Velvet Revisited, German film-maker Peter Braatz put that challenge to Erik Stein of Cult with No Name and Tuxedomoon. Their answer, with additional input from John Foxx, sits across the tracks of the latest album in Crammed Discs’ Made to Measure series.

Blaine Reininger dislikes Tuxedomoon being described as doom jazz or by similar labels, but the emotionally-charged atmosphere created by the band rarely crystallises into contentment or comfort. There isn’t a category for Tuxedomoon, so much as particles that shift into infinite forms, endlessly dissolving and reassembling. The material that they have crafted here is distinctly theirs, owing little to Bobby Vinton or Shostakovich by way of Baladamenti. It stands on its own, and can be enjoyed without reference to either Lynch’s or Braatz’s visions.

Cult with No Name’s handiwork is also woven into the recording, and it’s difficult to unpick the tapestry to attribute individual touches. An exception is the voice of Kelli Ali, another CWNN collaborator, which emerges in two songs. John Foxx’s contribution, a song called “Lincoln Street,” sits like a fulcrum in the middle of the set without breaking its flow.

Listened to in traffic on a grey London day; absorbed through Sennheisers with a glass of absinthe at night; allowed to float in the background while daydreaming about a girl who looks a little like Isabella Rossellini – there are a million ways to experience Blue Velvet Revisited, and each one reveals new resonances.

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Announcing Heresy: A Tribute to Rational Youth

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Cold War Night Life (www.coldwarnightlife.com), the online magazine of electronic music and culture, has announced the planned release of a tribute to Rational Youth. Called Heresy, the vinyl and CD package features many of the Canadian synth pioneers’ best-known songs, interpreted by contemporary artists from the UK, Sweden, Australia, Norway, Germany and Canada.

Included in the release will be the premiere of a new track from Rational Youth. “This Side of the Border” is in the classic Rational Youth style and is certain to please existing fans and win new admirers.

Spanning two vinyl LPs and a 12” EP, with two accompanying CDs mirroring the vinyl, all contained in a triple-gatefold sleeve, Heresy will be issued only in physical form – no Spotify, no iTunes, no Google Play. This reflects Cold War Night Life’s philosophy that albums are to be touched, read and heard.

The album is expected to be released close to the New Year.

The featured artists and tracks are:

    • Rational Youth – “This Side of the Border”
    • Candide – “City of Night (CET Mix)”
    • Rossetti’s Compass – “Coboloid Race”
    • Johan Baeckström – “Saturdays in Silesia”
    • Psyche – “Ring the Bells”
    • Kord feat. Annie Gylling – “Dancing on the Berlin Wall”
    • Independent State – “Beware the Fly”
    • Den Där Killen – “In Your Eyes”
    • Procedure – “Close to Nature (No TDM Mix)”
    • Parralox – “I Want to See the Light”
    • John Costello – “Holiday in Bangkok (Direkt Mix)”
    • Diskodiktator – “Talk to Me (I’m Only Human)”
    • Mars TV feat. Robert Enforsen & Karin My – “Just a Sound in the Night”
    • Project Grudge – “Beware the Fly”
    • Technomancer feat. Angst Pop – “I’ve Got a Sister in the Navy”
    • Machinista – “City of Night”
    • Rekk feat. Robert Enforsen & Karin My – “The Man in Grey”
    • Datafreq vs The Beautiful Spies – “Everything Is Vapour (Future Spy Remix)”
    • Touching the Void – “Ring the Bells”

Ordering information will be available soon.

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In the Eye of the Storm: Jennie Vee

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

JENNIE VEE
The Lock Tavern, London
6 October 2015

IMG_6828Hurricane Joaquin is dropping the Atlantic Ocean on London, driving the creatures of Camden’s night off the streets and into doorways. The smart ones press upstairs into The Lock Tavern’s cozy live space, where Jennie Vee is kicking off a short UK tour.

In front of a bank of strobes, the NY-based artist and her band are making a dreampop storm of their own. Confident and poised, styled to the nines, they fill the room with kinetic energy. There’s little room to dance in front of the stage, but the band are in constant motion.

A sweaty, energetic set kicks off with Vee’s current single, “Spying.” The lyrics are either paranoid or perceptive, but questions dissolve in the soaring chorus. This is Vee’s sweet spot, occupying a position somewhere between 4AD’s most earnest shoegaze and the more melodic moments of The Jesus and Mary Chain.

With Snow Patrol’s Paul Wilson providing studio help, there is a buzz around Jennie Vee’s album, coming out on October 15th, and on first listening the new material is at least as good as the singles and EPs that have already won her an international following. As a live track, “Spying” is scalding.

IMG_6604When not fronting her own show, Vee tours with Courtney Love, who has described Vee as her muse and used her as a model for her clothing line. Her musical style and image have matured considerably from her days with the grrrl-punk band Tuuli or the synthpop of Vicious Guns, but Vee remains a striking presence. Flanked by Lauren Strange, a blonde belle from Memphis who plays guitar and provides backing vocals, and Richey Rose, another Southerner whose guitar shapes a lot of her sound, Vee carves her own mark on the stage with each track.

The set covers a lot of ground, propelled by Naomi Langworthy’s driving rhythms. Tracks from the Die Alone EP are accompanied by songs from the forthcoming album, one of which was written only weeks ago. As hair flicks, sweat beads and boots stomp, it is clear that Vee is a Creation rebel, but one Alan McGee still needs to sign up.

Set list:

Spying
Gone Away
So Hard
Real Eyes
Toys
Dreamtime
Delicious
Say Goodbye
Wicked

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Lau Nau Shines Winter Light

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

LAU NAU
O YAMA O
Cafe Oto, London
2 October 2015

In Finland, winter is coming. The days are already fading and leaves falling. Soon, the snow will arrive and the lakes will freeze over. When the Sun peers over the horizon, it will keep low, casting long shadows among the forests of birch and pine. New tones will be added to the sonic palette: the drone of wind brushing through frozen branches; the echoes of ice crystals falling to the ground. What would be the sound of your feelings during those months?

Lau Nau offers an answer to that question. Helsinki-born Laura Naukkarinen’s music is a deeply connected response to the land she inhabits and the people she shares it with; both appreciative and nurturing. Lau Nau’s transcendent settings of traditional Finnish songs and shamanic original material have led some to style it as acid folk, but in places the songs could be described as magical humanism – a musical counterpart to Italo Calvino’s less mathematical musings, perhaps – or soul music for the Boreal forest.

Lau Nau performs two sets at Cafe Oto, starting with a solo show. Her guitar and a Korg keyboard provide accompaniment, but this event is all about her voice. Loops are generated on the fly, generating ethereal harmonies which swirl around Naukkarinen’s lead. The material stretches from her first album, Kuutarha, to her current release, the soundtrack to Hem. Någonstans [EN: Home. Somewhere]. Horses run home and the touchiness of lovers is lamented, but attempts to keep up with the lyrics and identify the songs are overtaken by enchantment with her vocals. The cinematic sweep of this dreamscape covers a lot of ground, but it is anchored by a powerfully feminine touch.

A second set brings Lau Nau together with the evening’s first act, O Yama O, an experimental music project. The programme’s dialectic is resolved with a skilled improvisation that sees Naukkarinen echo Keiko Yamamoto’s calls, while Rie Nakajima tinkers with an adapted dinner service and guest artist Billy Steiger plucks sounds from his violin. The introduction of Lau Nau to the group opens up the spaces surrounding each sound, allowing them to expand, and at the end the silence stretches into the night.

Lau Nau’s official Web site: [ot-link url=”http://www.launau.com”]www.launau.com[/ot-link]

 

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