The Swedish songstress, Anna Öberg, returns with a pop number for the delayed summer. “Njut en minut” [EN: “Enjoy a Minute”] bounces with energy and verve just as the Sun starts to reappear.
Sweden’s Twice a Man were one of the most prominent groups of the Swedish New Wave. They emerged from the angular post-punk of Cosmic Overdose; creating a template of funky and experimental music mixed with ecological and social politics.
As this clip from a 1984 show demonstrates, their funkiness was never secondary. They continue to make excellent music to this day, but it is a joy to see them in regulation 80s clothes and with old school keyboards to hand.
Brian Griffin, the world-famous photographer, has announced a crowdfunding campaign for his new book, MODE. Gathering his pictures from the band’s first five albums and promotional materials — including some versions that have never been published before — MODE promises to be the definitive collection of the band’s early images.
Appearing together with his collaborator, Vaughn George, Griffin recently announced the book and Kickstarter on Youtube. Fans, who have been waiting for decades for Griffin to focus on the boys from Basildon, were invited to commit to buy a signed copy of the book, which will include a list of supporters. Other options include premium prints of Griffin’s images and a boxed edition with a gelatin print.
Griffin’s cover shot for A Broken Frame appeared on the front cover of Life magazine’s special issue, The World’s Best Photographs, 1980-1990. One of the most iconic images associated with Depeche Mode, it was shot in a grain field in rural England during a break from a storm. It could be put down to luck, had Griffin not gone on to shoot the magic, mountainous cover of Construction Time Again with just as much artistry.
Griffin’s last album cover for Depeche Mode was Black Celebration. He went on to have a career in video, and the promotional video for “Only When I Lost Myself” was one of the most unique for the band.
The cut-off for the Kickstarter is 16 June 2023.
We asked Griffin a few questions, on the back of the announcement:
What is your favourite Depeche Mode song?
Only When I Lose Myself.
What inspires you about Depeche Mode?
Freedom.
What is your favourite moment in the book?
The story about the making of “Only When I Lose Myself.”
Machinista are back with a new track. “Stranger” finds the Swedish trio in fine form; making use of Italo-influenced electronics, fiery guitars, and a growling vocal line. It is the kind of material that Machinista excel in producing, and their hiatus can be forgiven.
Machinista play the WGT festival on Monday, 29 May 2023, on the Moritzbastei stage.
Malcolm X was born in Nebraska on 19 May 1925. He was murdered in 1965. In 1983, Keith LeBlanc (Sugarhill Gang, Tackhead, Fats Comet) and Reggie Griffin recorded this song with Marshall Chess producing. In the studio, they cut up parts of X’s speeches with hip hop beats programmed on drum machines from Emu and Oberheim, while layering synth parts played on a Voyetra and a Mini Moog.
The result was a funky, rhythm-driven tribute to the great revolutionary figure. Using the avant-garde cut-up techniques of industrial artists like Cabaret Voltaire, but assuming the stylings of street-savvy hip hop, they restored X’s voice and changed the way that political music was being made.
What followed included a lawsuit, with Tommy Boy and Sugarhill Records arguing over the rights to the track. They settled it by having a dual release. That’s all in the past now; and, on X’s 98th birthday, LeBlanc has reissued “No Sell Out” as part of a compilation, together with the Stop the Confusion album released in 1993 by his own label. LeBlanc was working then with DJ and producer, Tim Simenon, who would tap the legendary drummer on the shoulder to help make Depeche Mode’s Ultra album just a few years later.
It still stands the test of time, and will get you moving…by any means necessary.
Dave Baker’s Lonelyklown project takes its name from a line in The Carpenters’ song, “Rainy Days and Mondays.” Fitting, then, that the latest release is a version of “Like Karen Carpenter.”
As one-half of I Start Counting, Fortran 5 and Komputer, Baker has shared responsibility for some of the best songs to emerge from the Mute label. With Lonelyklown, he takes a solo journey through the 1970s, exploring soft rock with the benefit of hindsight and a set of modern synthesizers. It’s futuristic nostalgia, but don’t colour it beige: as this track shows, Lonelyklown’s take is as colourful as a Bob Ross landscape.
We are in the year of the fortieth anniversary of Play It Again Sam Records. It is also the year that Bruce Geduldig, Tuxedomoon’s visuals artist, would have turned 70. Fitting, then, to find a six-track EP of songs by The Weathermen on release from PIAS.
A collaboration between Geduldig and Jean-Marc Lederman from Fad Gadget’s first touring band, The Weathermen leaped onto the stage with “Deep Down South” in 1985. From their base in Brussels, they combined the electro-intensity of Front 242 and Kraftwerk with a sense of humour that mercilessly mocked rock tropes and the lovers of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Named after a group of middle-class American radicals, who used to recruit youth by attacking them in the street and were known for blowing themselves up, The Weathermen took nothing seriously except the mixing of their samples and heavy-duty beats.
For their third communique, John F. Kennedy had been roped in for lead vocals on “Let Them Come to Berlin.” Using the cut-up tape style of Cabaret Voltaire, The Weathermen managed to turn the dead president’s anti-communist speech into a dancefloor classic. It set a template for subversion, both on and off the dancefloor, and anticipated Berghain decades before the queues started to form.
The 40 EP collects these songs with four others from the band’s very respectable back catalogue. The stand-out track, and the one that had the greatest reach for the duo, is “Poison,” in which Geduldig plays the role of stalking groupie, Suzanna Stammer. Over Lederman’s classic electro track, which featured sampled metal and a menacing bass line, Stammer leaves a series of threatening voice messages. The scary part is that there are real Suzanna Stammers, from Plan K to Pustervik. Thanks to The Weathermen, you can dance to genius tracks like “Bang!” in the club while she scratches up your Bruce Springsteen records back at home. Best have a word with your drummer about who he lets in.
It’s 2023. Bruce is gone, but the beats remain.
Sweden’s Agent Side Grinder have supported Suicide, and it is the American duo’s influence that first strikes the listener of “Waiting Room,” the lead track from their new album, Jack Vegas. The chick-a-boom rhythm and dirty organ lead owe more than a little to Martin Rev’s instrumental style, even as the voice of Bill Burroughs pierces the track like a shotgun blast to the face.
This is ASG’s Americana phase, and they draw upon the beat poets and proto-electro pioneers as an escape from the walls of their own continent. Jan Myrdal once achieved fame as a Disloyal European, and ASG follow him; diving head-first into the post-war American dream. The irony is that it was only made tolerable for those who experienced it through the injection of large doses of narcotics. Seedy hotels and basement clubs were where the marks lived, and the sounds and words that crawled from them stained a trail that the decades have not erased.
The sixth studio album from ASG, Jack Vegas is named after an online casino and a line of gambling machines found in Sweden. The title track is the longest in the set, and its groove provides a structure for the whole. It’s not for the hard of thinking. As Burroughs once growled, “Open your mind and let the pictures out”
(Photos: Krichan Wihlborg)
From Spain, but living in Brexit Britain, comes Fox Gunn. We caught her performing with Sweden’s Agnes Hustler in London recently, and she impressed with her self-assured vocals and melodies. This song is about a break-up she went through, but it is not a sad thing; it is about the level of insight she has into her former partner’s experience. It is a great introduction to the former Lulalong singer, who will be going places with bangers like this.
Filmed within walking distance of Cold War Night Life Towers, in Highgate Cemetary, this video from Melaina Chole features a soundtrack based on waves of endless feedback. It marks a change for the Aux Animaux songstress, Godze Duzer; leaning into territory otherwise occupied by acts like Sun O))) and Anna von Hauswolff – both inspirations for the debut EP from the project.
The witch pin of the title is the thorn of the Blackthorn tree, which was believed to have been used by the Devil to take pricks of blood from His followers. There is an air of pain, longing, and despair in the track’s dark ambience. The delerium of angst finds a way through the Nordic melancholy. The Groke is among us.