News

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Sweden’s Emmon have released a new EBM-influenced track and video.

“For Real” has the tension of old-school DAF, if it had an Alan Wilder-style arrangement. Written by Emma Nylén and Jimmy Monell, the song bubbles with electronic energy under Nylén’s classy vocals.

The video by Niklas Kärreskog keeps to an industrial theme with grainy footage.

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Dear Readers and Friends,

This year is not turning out the way we expected. Some researchers and health professionals anticipated the events we are living through, but governments failed to heed their warnings and prepare for a public health emergency. We are now reaping the whirlwind sowed by “austerity” policies.

Many of us are living under conditions of curfew; called “lock-down” or “staying at home.” The best scientific information is that these measures are required to slow the spread of the virus, but it means the cancellation of shows for many months. For promoters, venues, artists and the staff who make their living working events, this has given rise to an immediate economic crisis.

At Cold War Night Life, we support the following immediate measures to assist culture workers affected by the pandemic and lock-down:

• full compensation for culture workers who have lost their livelihoods
• financial support for culture workers who were self-employed
• suspension of rent and mortgage payments during the period of lock-down
• state commissioning and sponsorship of art, in order to provide a livelihood for artists and the production of cultural material to support the people who are living under lock-down

Tours might be cancelled but not 2020. Through acts of social solidarity – such as buying music on bandcamp,com – fans can directly help artists to sustain themselves during this time. If you can, use that channel to help artists and get some great music. If you agree with them, we also suggest raising the bulleted items above with your respective governments. Let them know that bailing out airlines, car manufacturers and hotel chains isn’t your priority; the support of culture is.

Stay safe and positive!

COLD WAR NIGHT LIFE

PS: To get you started, here are some links to the Bandcamp pages of some of the artists we cover:

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Juno Jensen (Photo: Cecilia Riis Kjeldsen)

Pieces of Juno is the project of Norway’s Juno Jensen.

“Wake Me Up” is the first track to be revealed from her forthcoming album, Euthymia. Recorded in an empty swimming pool for extra reverb, Jensen describes the song as being about “following one’s own truth and to find a stillness in being, to let go.”

Euthymia is a word derived from the Greek for “well” and “soul.” In the mental health field, it is used to describe the state of balance between the highs and lows of those with bipolar disorder.

As we have seen throughout the album cycle that began with Kalopsia and comes to an end with the release of the new album on 27 March 2020, Jensen’s interests lie in the states of the mind. We read “Wake Me Up” as being about the relationship between self-control and vulnerability. The balance is where happiness is found:

I open my eyes
I open my mind
I open my soul to you
And hope you’ll love me
I open my body
To whatever may happen
I open my heart
To whomever may enter

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(Via Side-Line)

By Bernard Van Isacker

Excellent news again from the Nordics. The cult Swedish EBM act Pouppée Fabrikk is back with the very first brand-new studio album since the 90’s!

On “Armén” (out on March 27 via Alfa Matrix and available now in pre-order) they bring their solid early-Electronic Body Music sonic roots accross 10 tracks including Henrik Björkk’s commanding growling vocals, repetitive bass lines and solid hard beats. And for the very first time, it also features a song in their native Swedish language, “Kom Ta Min Smärta”. The whole was mastered by legendary Jouni Ollila, also a former member of the band.

The new album will be released on March 27 in multiple formats including a limited black vinyl edition and a fan CD edition with bonus goodies, and a normal CD version. All 3 formats can now be pre-ordered via the Alfa Matrix webstore. The download is available now via Bandcamp as well with 2 tracks for immediate download if you place your pre-order.

Pouppée Fabrikk have been active since 1987 and are the absolute leaders of what is called the EKM movement (Elektronisk Kroppsmusik). Their minimalist powerful electronic style has often been compared to electronic pioneers like DAF and Nitzer Ebb but the band has always managed to create a very own approach.

With the addition of Jouni Olilla and Jonas Aneheim on guitar the band moved towards a more Die Krupps-style electronic/metal mix. The “Your Pain – Our Gain” CD was meant to be released in 1996, but due to differences in opinion between the band and the record company (Energy Rekords) it was delayed until 1999. In 1996 the band decided to take a break and PF was put on hold and the band members worked on various solo projects.

In 2000 the band briefly re-united for a gig at the Tinitus Electronic Festival and released a 4-track mini CD entitled “Elite Electronics”. The band fully re-united in 2009, with Christian R filling the place of former member Jouni Ollila. Their previous album (“The Dirt”) released in 2013 wasn’t really a new album as it held material based on early abandoned demo’s next to a few new songs. It was however very well received by their fanbase who craved for old school material from the band.

 In 2019, the band announced the production of a new album, “Armén”, the first full length album since 1994.

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[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]S.P.O.C.K, the Swedish party band from outer space, have confirmed a live date in London.

The act formally known as Star Pilots on Channel K will perform at Slimelight, the capital’s longest-running alternative club night, on Saturday, 1 February 2020.

S.P.O.C.K will be well known to readers of Cold War Night Life for their catchy, melodic poptronica sound and deep lyrics infused with science fiction themes. As we have noted previously:

S.P.O.C.K might look, on the outside, like a Star Trek-themed novelty act, but in fact it’s a complex and sophisticated blend of poptronica and philosophy. Like the best science fiction, their music tells us more about our life on Earth than any imaginary venue in space, but the message is hidden within layers of vintage synths that lure you towards the dancefloor.

When they celebrated their 25 year mission, way back in 2013, we were there to report on the event. It was one of our first features, and we have followed them closely since – never failing to get soaked or good pictures!

The S.P.O.C.K show follows Cold War Night Life’s presentation of Lau Nau and Vile Electrodes at Cecil Sharp House earlier in the evening of Saturday, 1 February 2020. Their announcement promises a full night of entertainment for those trying to forget the Brexit boundary date![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The Danish artist, Myrkur, has been hard to place in the record store racks. When we saw the project of Amalie Bruun in London, it was in a church packed with bearded men with runes on their jackets. The audience said “black metal,” but the music was a combination of Nordic folk songs and originals performed using traditional instruments.

That performance appears to have set the tone for Myrkur’s new approach. Having become a parent, Bruun has returned to the source material of her childhood for Folkesange, her new album.

The first track to be unveiled is “Ella,” which Bruun explains as:

the result of years of studying, playing and listening to traditional Nordic folk music. This is my version of a new folk-song, with roots planted in history and in the past. It is my ode to mankind and our connection with nature – a rite of passage as a woman and a rebirth-ritual in the sea.

Three years ago I decided to share a video where I performed an old Scandinavian folk-song on the nyckelharpa. After this I realized that I had a strong need to create an album within this universe and that other people also wished to hear this. So I started working on picking out what old songs to reinterpret as well as write my own version of this. “Ella” is this.

It was strange, in London, to see bearded men whooping to Swedish songs about virgins sitting under birch trees, but it is hard not to cheer Myrkur’s change of direction. Like Madonna’s Ray of Light, the material is rooted in feminine energy to bring balance to their universe.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text](Via Mute)

LEE RANALDO & RAÜL REFREE have announced details of their new album, Names of North End Women, out on Mute on 21 February 2020 on vinyl, CD and digitally. The new release will precede a series of dates that include a performance at the Milton Court Concert Hall on 7 April, as part of the Barbican’s music programme (full details below).

Watch the video for the title track here, a free edit of Austrian avant-garde filmmaker Peter Tscherkassky’s 1999 film Outer Space, itself an appropriation of The Entity (1982, Sidney J. Furie) – https://youtu.be/-tYRA2WAapg

Ranaldo and Refree worked together Ranaldo’s last solo album, Electric Trim (Mute, 2017), and soon after the pair returned to the studio to record the follow up they realised that Names of North End Women would become what Ranaldo describes as “the beginning of a new partnership, a new configuration’”.

For one of the greatest guitarists, ranked by both Rolling Stone and Spin, of his generation (Ranaldo co-founded Sonic Youth in 1981) and an artist reinventing traditional flamenco guitar (Refree’s album with Rosalía continues to grow internationally), this is an album that features tracks with little or no guitar. Instead the duo composed using marimba and vibraphone, using samplers, a vintage 2-inch Studer tape recorder and a modified cassette machine Ranaldo had previously used in performances 25 years earlier.

“We were mixing in all these strange analogue sounds from old cassette tapes, dealing with tape hiss; using very new technology and very old technology and mixing them together,” remembers Ranaldo. Elements from a mysterious old tape Ranaldo found spooled on the Studer when he’d bought it years earlier – drum sounds, slamming doors, people talking – formed the backbone of tracks. The music, it seemed, could come from literally anywhere.

“This record began as playing with samplers and cassette players,” says Refree, “as experimental music, musique concrete, poly-rhythms.” As the process wore on, however, their abstractions materialised into songs, their elemental rhythms, ambient hums and sampler damage revealing hidden melodies and patterns upon deep listening. Ranaldo and Refree traded melodic ideas and added vocals to the tracks, singing in addition to the spoken word pieces they’d always planned these pieces to feature. The words came in a process akin to the music, a collagist philosophy prevailing, as Ranaldo recomposed poems from his archives, wrote new pieces and incorporated lines sent in by Jonathan Lethem – who’d helped pen the songs of Electric Trim.

The result is an album alive with the electric crackle of experimentalism, yet satisfying as a collection of songs.

The album’s title, and the title of the lead track came from an experience Ranaldo had walking through a neighbourhood in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba. All the streets were named after women: Lydia, Kate, Dagmar, Harriett, Juno, etc – first names only, which implied something anonymous, or universal. Who these women are or were is not indicated, which lends their choice a certain mystery… Men are often named in our society with their full names, but these anonymous names were perhaps stand-ins for the many unrecognised or un-specified in our society. Ranaldo jotted the names down, in poem format, and explains, “somehow it became an impetus for the lyrics in terms of the people that drift in and out of one’s life, some significant, some fleeting.” He continues, “I had this idea of using given names as a device that could inform some of the lyrics. It doesn’t play through all the lyrics, but quite a few employ this idea.”

“This album loosens the bonds from the idea of what songs can be, and both Raül and I are excited to see where we can push it further,” says Ranaldo. For now, take time to absorb Names Of North End Women, its hidden treasures and unexpected turns, and ponder where Ranaldo and Refree’s collaboration might take them next.

NAMES OF NORTH END WOMEN TRACKLISTING

Alice, Etc.

Words out of the Haze

New Brain Trajectory

Humps

Names of North End Women

Light Years Out

The Art of Losing

At The Forks

LEE RANALDO & RAÜL REFREE LIVE

5 April – Bruges (BE), Chamber Music Room – Concertgebouw Brugge
6 April – Utrecht (NL), De Heiling
7 April – London (UK), Milton Court Concert Hall, Barbican
9 April – Paris (FR), LE CENTQUATRE
10 April – Clermont-Ferrand (FR), Cooperative De Mai
11 April – Nantes (FR), Stereolux
21 April – Ljubljana (SL), Cankarjev Dom
28 April – Berlin (DE), Roter Salon – Volksbühne
29 April – Prague (CZ), Palác Akropolis
30 April – Krems (AT), Donau Festival

Pre-order Names of North End Women – https://mute.ffm.to/nonew[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]