Propaganda vocalist, Thunder Bae, hits us with an emotional song about the folly of a destructive relationship. Based on a true story, it is an indie track of some power that highlights the quality and texture of the Berliner’s voice.
Bonkers but beautiful. Kite on Ice was the most spectacular show the electronic scene has ever seen – and it was completely off-the-charts.
Gary Numan’s “farewell” shows set a precedent for staging, but he didn’t have a synchronised skating team circling him. Peter Gabriel is known for some theatrical productions, but he didn’t have Anna von Hausswolff and Henric de la Cour in cages.
When the Kite on Ice show was announced, it sold out immediately. The band’s Swedish fan base is massive, and it was no surprise that they could fill Stockholm’s Avicii Arena. In their home market, they have been accepted as superstars, and even the jocks are prepared to pass on the hockey for a night of “True Colours” and “Jonny Boy.”
At center ice, a platform stands ready for Nicklas Stenemo and Christian “Kitte” Berg. They take their positions, surrounded by a live band drafted for the event. The pulses of a synth escort them, along with some synchronised spotlights. Then things get brighter and louder. From the middle of their towering stage rise beams of red light, revealed by smoke. Stenemo launches into “My Girl and I,” as it becomes clearer what we are in for.
Kite on Ice is a visual feast that could not be contained in a club. Avicii arena has been stuffed full of lighting, which has been programmed to world-class standards. Video panels set up as large boxes play roles as Chinese lanterns, LED clocks, and glitches in the Matrix. Kubrick had only one obelisk in 2001, but this is the real future. Light bars even adorn the Zambonis that smooth the ice while performing a synchronised dance of their own.
For “Remember Me,” Berg secures a rope around the legs of Stenemo and drags him around the rink on his back. You wanted Kite on Ice? You’ve got it. We’d love to see other singers on the scene hold a tune while hogtied and frozen – Stenemo doesn’t miss a note.
Nina Persson appears, like a black swan, to sing her recent collaboration with Kite, “Heartless Places.” The Cardigans vocalist is taken out by a hip check near the blue line, by one of the Helsinki Rockettes, in a reminder of the building’s main purpose. No penalty is called, and she gracefully restores her balance. That’s show business.
Things get wild when de la Cour and von Hausswolff appear. Videos shot from inside their cages are projected on alternate sides of the boxes. Then they rise to the roof, exposing the power of von Hausswolff’s roar and de la Cour’s fin.
The event is a gathering of alternative music royalty, where everyone is queen for a day. On the evidence filling the Avicii, however, it will be a long time before anyone can claim Kite’s crown.
What are you afraid of? It ought to be missing the new Page single in the flow of Friday releases.
“För du är rädd” [EN: “Because You Are Scared”] is lifted from the Swedish duo’s current album, En ny våg [EN: A New Wave]. It has been remixed by Biomekkanik’s Christer Hermodsson with an 80s vibe.
Are those real guitars? Samples? Does it matter? To the purists (we are looking at you, Pär), synths and guitars should be kept apart. We like the New Wave angle, which keeps Page’s pop sensibilities intact while expanding their sonic framework.
There are only a few bands on this Earth that deserve to be driven to the ättestupa. One is Toto. Another is Foreigner. So, it is fittingly ironic (take note, Alanis Morrissette) that Laibach have turned out a cover of the latter’s hit, “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
The Slovenian art pranksters apply their subversive salve to the ballad. You will still want to push Foreigner off a cliff for the benefit of the community.
A throbbing, energetic slice of fried gold emerges from the Kite camp. “Heartless Places” features the inestimable voice of Nina Persson (The Cardigans). Next up, Kite on Ice, featuring synchronised figure skaters…
Cold War Night Life contributor, Marija Buljeta, has announced a London showcase of her concert photography.
Music in Frames, an exhibition of artists captured by Buljeta over a decade of work, features images of major popstars and alternative artists. It includes shots of dozens of artists, including:
Gary Numan
The Human League
GusGus
The Cure
Laibach
Dave Gahan
Howard Jones
Skinny Puppy
Simple Minds
The pictures are on display from 13 January – 7 February 2025 at Gallery 1885, The Camera Club, 16 Bowden Street, Kennington, London, SE11 4DS. An open view is scheduled for 16 January at 7 PM.
There were many good reads in 2024. These are the books that we chose to end the year with.
Electronic Body Music by Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze
EBM needs no explanation for consistent readers of Cold War Night Life. For newcomers, it can be thought of as the mutation of disco into jagged beats and bass lines, merged with the aggression of punk.
There were hints of it in the works of Giorgio Moroder and Cerrone; nudged by the nature of 8-step sequencers into harder rhythms suitable for the dancefloor. The next steps were taken by those nice young men from Dusseldorf, Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. True punks, they abandoned guitars for an MS20 and turned their sexual energy into a combination of grooves and growls that set the template for a new genre.
Yuma Hampejs and Marcel Schulze pick up the story at this point, describing the development of EBM and its influence around the world. Previously released in German, their book is now available to an international audience in English. Inspired by Bengt Rahm’s bible of Swedish poptronica, Den svenska synthen, it is a compendium of acts, large and small, who have made an impression on the scene.
With scores of photos by some of our favourite photographers, including Krichan Wihlborg and Jens Atterstrand, Electronic Body Music is a vital and thorough chronicle of a key subculture.
Fear of Music by David Stubbs
The core question posed by David Stubbs is why modern music provokes strong, negative reactions in people who admire modern visual arts. While a Rothko might draw sighs, a performance of Stockhausen might draw moans. Stubbs wants to understand why one is celebrated while another is derided, despite the conceptual similarities and even cross-overs between the different forms of expression.
Along the way, he traces the development of modern music, from Schoenberg to David Toop, and AMM to Aphex Twin. The influence of what used to be called New Music on pop music, including The Beatles and Pink Floyd, is evident; but why are experimental composers treated with disdain? The answer rather depends in who is making the criticism and the grounds for it.
Cornelius Cardew – himself a sometime member of the improv group, AMM – famously attacked Stockhausen from a Marxist position. In Stockhausen Serves Imperialism, a collection of writings setting avant-garde politics against avant-garde music, Cardew led the charge on the German composer. A former student of Stockhausen, Cardew took issue with his mystical methods and politically palliative intentions. Instead of fanning the flames of protest, Stockhausen appeared to him as a firefighter against the consciousness of the musical elite. The book was Cardew’s counterpunch.
To some extent, Cardew’s approach was influenced by the Maoist politics of the day. In 1974, a strident rejection of the past (even the near past) was consonant with the Cultural Revolution in China. The movement against the Vietnam War and the rise of national liberation movements provided part of the backdrop against which Stockhausen’s work could be evaluated. For composers inspired to “serve the people,” Stockhausen’s creations were both inadequate and inappropriate.
The other main tendency of criticism of Stockhausen is rooted in conservatism. The Tory newspapers were happy to print cartoons satirising his music, because it departed from the conventions of the past. Just as jazz and rock music were frowned upon by older generations, the use of electronics and unconventional notation provoked those unhappy with change. Their resort to (weak) humour could raise a smile only among the most philistine readers.
In reviewing the dialectic between modern art and modern music, Stubbs teases out the differences in the markets for, eg, framed Basquiats and Neubauten records. That they should be judged according to market criteria is a wonder; but possession, as they say, is nine tenths of the law. The former can be clearly owned, while the latter ends up as data in a huge pile at the end of the Spotify app.
This book raises as many questions as it answers – and it ends on one. The discussion hurtles from one end of your record collection to the other. Even if Stubbs doesn’t settle the matter definitively, the debate is made richer by the reading.
Strange Things Are Happening by Richard Norris
One of the hazards of having a musical career that crossed paths with Genesis P-Orridge is that it lives in the shadow of his ego. Another is that Genesis will have stolen your work, presented it to the world as his own, and then refused to let you have the royalties.
Richard Norris (The Grid, Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve) survived the first of these. The second – wouldn’t you know it – stung him, as it has so many others.
There really should be a support group for the victims of Genesis’ drive-by lootings of intellectual property. Among the stories will be how he was present at the delivery of acid house and tried to put his name on the birth certificate. Norris is in the best position to recount it, and he does so here with humour and grace.
Other stories include anecdotes involving Joe Strummer, Rick Rubin, Damian Albarn, and Sky Saxon. Most people would be hard-pressed to pick Norris out of a line-up, but he has crossed paths and worked with some of the biggest names in music. Crucially, despite the presence of many things in his bloodstream, he has met every situation head-on.
Electricity and Ghosts by John Foxx
John Foxx first came to public attention as the punk who fronted Ultravox! (while they still had the exclamation mark). He went on to release Metamatic – the album Gary Numan dreamed about when he slept. More music followed, but part of Foxx’s joy came from creating the cover art for his recordings.
Electricity and Ghosts: The Visual Art of John Foxx collects many of Foxx’s graphic works for the first time. Designed with Jonathan Barnbrook, who has worked on packaging for John Foxx & The Maths, it is a reminder of the multiple dimensions that Foxx has inhabited since art school. As a maker of plastic art, collages, and film, Foxx was never going to be content to focus on only one medium.
Foxx’s work as a book designer for major imprints is lesser-known, but it has been staring out from shelves since the mid-90s. His use of Shreddies cereal on the cover art for “Endlessly” emerges as a previously obscure detail. His notebook sketches are shown for the first time. We might never see Foxx singing in concert again; but, with this book, his position as a total artist is reinforced.
In Christian mythology, God’s work is perfect, so it cannot be bettered. Tell that to Laibach, who have had another go at their classic album, Opus Dei.
The first part of Opus Dei Revisited finds the Slovenian art pranksters in their Llubljana studio, recording most of the album anew. The second part features their producer, Rico Conning, playing with the original master tapes. The results breathe new life into the material, expanding it and finding new textures. They humble the doctrines of a dozen religions.
The new recordings subvert the iconography of the 1987 Mute album. “Leben heisst Leben” is still a magnificent anthem, but they let it crumble in places like the remnants of the Berlin Wall. There are fragments of the original arrangements, which stand out as prominently as brutalist buildings in the Yugoslav countryside, but there are also echoes of pain from nearly forty years of neoliberalism.
Since the original recording of “Geburt einer Nation,” Laibach have been to North Korea to perform The Sound of Music, soared across the universe, and soundtracked the Nazi base on the dark side of the Moon. Their new take is impressed with all of the tension and drama, refreshed with a travelogue from their trips to the absurd and back again.
“The Great Seal” gets a positively Christmassy makeover, with a thermin and chimes. No one does Laibach quite like Laibach.
Apart from Rico Conning, that is. The producer and engineer made his name with William Orbit and Laurie Mayer in Guerrilla Studios, but he also developed a name for himself working with Depeche Mode, Wire, and Test Dept. Back in the day, he was dispatched by Daniel Miller to work with Laibach in Yugoslavia, taking only a bag of cash and an Akai S900. Looking back, he reflected:
The sessions went well. One day we took a break in the mountains, to enjoy the spectacular scenery. We came upon a four-seater sleigh and without thinking twice jumped into it and plummeted down the mountainside.
That was the beginning of a long relationship with the Slovenian collective. For Opus Dei Revisited, Conning has pulled apart the original spools and put them back together in a way that respects the material while subverting the subversives.
His version of “Leben heisst Leben” turns the Opus track on its head and then on its feet again; using accordian sounds to put the lager back in schlager. The guitar solo turns back time to an age of mullets, squirrel tails, and bandanas tied around acid-washed jeans. Germany has a lot to answer for in history. The judgement of fashion is embedded in the discordant vocals and sounds of crackling fire that consume the track. You won’t know whether to laugh or dance.
There is less doubt with Conning’s reimagined take on “Geburt einer Nation.” He stretches out the vocals and creates for a groove that converts the brass stabs of the original into subtle hooks. It is designer production for the glistening future we inherited from the dreams of the utopians of both East and West.
There is more fun to be had with “How the West Was Won.” In the band’s recording, it maintains a level of subtlety that Conning undoes by turning all of the dials to 11. Laibach has its own origin myth, but here they commit to the flames the Morricone version of the strong, independent white man conquering an empty land. Conning incorporates tropes of Americana from cinema, exposing them to a modern gaze. Decolonise your record collection with Laibach.
The set concludes with a soaring, beautifully-rendered version of “The Great Seal.” It ends with an ambient, gentle lead-out that has the familiar touch of a calming hand on the shoulder of a friend. In a world at war, there is a moment of peace.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a remix of Emmon’s “Machines.”
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two CDJs and a remix of Emmon’s “Machines.”
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, three nights of clubbing, two CDJs, and a remix of Emmon’s “Machines”…
The result of a chance meeting between Emma Nylén and Terence Fixmer, the Emmon track has been given a radical makeover for the clubs. It was encouraged by DJ Hell, who rang Nylén personally to discuss releasing it on his Deejay Gigolo Records label.
The Swedish duo, Ankomst, debuted this track at their recent London show. It throbs with melancholic tension.