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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.

(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

(Via Mute)

Goldfrapp have announced a UK tour for spring 2020. Felt Mountain: The 20th Year Tour will see Alison Goldfrapp perform tracks from the album for the first time since its original release in a brand new show featuring lush and intimate takes on classics from across their 20 year career.

Alison Goldfrapp explains:

Looking back, Felt Mountain represents a very special period in my life. It is the first album Will and I recorded as Goldfrapp, launching us in a new musical direction, and the moment for me, after 13 years or so in music, that I found a creative direction that I was truly excited about. Being nominated for a Mercury Prize was incredible and unexpected, and an affirmation that we were embarking on an important journey.

I listened to the entire album again recently – something I don’t really ever do – and it was a surprisingly emotional experience. The songs instantly take me back. The album is still relevant two decades on, and hopefully will be interesting for people to rediscover and maybe also hear for the first time.

In 2019, 1999 dystopian lyrics such as “I’m wired to the world, that’s how I know everything” from ‘Utopia’, and “no time to F***” from ‘Paper Bag’, have become more potent. I was intrigued then by the flawed concept of perfection which has become so much more intensified in our self-reflective social media era.”

A remastered deluxe edition of Felt Mountain will follow in autumn 2020 on Mute/BMG and will be released on double CD, coloured vinyl and as a deluxe box set. Originally released by Mute in September 2000, the album includes the singles ‘Lovely Head’, ‘Utopia’, ’Human’ and ‘Pilots’ and the reissue will feature remastered audio, unreleased material, b-sides, rarities, remixes as well as newly written sleeve notes and rare images.

Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory formed Goldfrapp in 1999 and released their Mercury Prize nominated debut album Felt Mountain in 2000.  They have since released a further five studio albums (most recently Silver Eye in 2017) and a string of hits including ‘Strict Machine’, ‘Ooh La La’, ‘Lovely Head’ and ‘A&E’. The multi-platinum selling band have been nominated for several Grammy and Brit Awards and won an Ivor Novello for ‘Strict Machine’. Goldfrapp have also scored the soundtracks to the films ‘My Summer of Love’ (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski, 2005) and ‘Nowhere Boy’ (dir. Sam Taylor-Wood, 2009) and wrote the music for the National Theatre’s production of ‘Medea’ directed by Carrie Cracknell in 2014.

Tickets for the tour go on sale on Friday 15 November at 10am GMT from http://web.archive.org/web/20250608211937/https://www.goldfrapp.com/live/

GOLDFRAPP – FELT MOUNTAIN: 20TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR 

25 March – Manchester, Albert Hall

26 March – Gateshead, Sage

27 March – Edinburgh, Usher Hall

29 March – London, Royal Festival Hall

31 March – Birmingham, Symphony Hall

1 April – Bexhill-on-Sea, De La Warr Pavilion

(Via Mute)

MUTE have announced details of a London event, launching the long awaited box set, STUMM433, out on 25 October 2019. The event, at Café OTO in the afternoon of Sunday 27 October, will see Daniel Miller and Simon Fisher Turner in conversation and a playback of selections from the 5-piece box set – full details below.

STUMM433 is the latest in the MUTE 4.0 (1978 > TOMORROW) series: a box set collating an unprecedented selection of Mute artists past, present and future, out on vinyl as a very limited box set edition of 433, signed by Daniel Miller as well as CD (both 5-piece collections, available from Mute Bank), and to download and stream.

STUMM433 features a huge array – over 50 – of Mute artists including Yann Tiersen, The Normal, Goldfrapp, Laibach, Depeche Mode, Liars, Silicon Teens, Erasure, K Á R Y Y N, Irmin Schmidt and many more, all presenting their own interpretation of one piece of music: John Cage’s game changing composition, 4’33”.

In recent weeks, Mute have shared visual contributions to the STUMM433 box set, watch these below:

Nitzer Ebb – https://youtu.be/mVbp_VIgL-g

ADULT. – https://youtu.be/LAiIe1t_I2E

The Afghan Whigs – https://youtu.be/iMXTkv7-tWg

Each artist has created a visual to accompany their performance and a selection of 28 designers associated with Mute have contributed artwork inspired by 4’33”, including Simone Grant, who worked with Miller on a lot of the early Mute artwork (The Normal, Fad Gadget and Depeche Mode); Steve Claydon, a member of Add N To (X) who designed for Goldfrapp; Slim Smith, who worked with Mute through the 1980s and 1990s; Malcolm Garrett, who designed the House of Illustrious box set for Vince Clarke and Martyn Ware; Tom HIngston, who has worked with Erasure and created the majority of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Grinderman artwork since the early 2000s and Anton Corbjin, who has worked closely with Mute on many campaigns since the early 1980s, including Depeche Mode, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and Fad Gadget.

The vinyl box set will include a set of candles, designed by award-winning perfumer Joseph Quartana of Six Scents Parfums, as an interpretation of 4’33”. Quartana imagined a flash of lightning in an old wooden theatre as metaphor for the lingering afterglow of a concert performance in order to answer the question: what is the scent of silence?

4’33” is among the most important of all contemporary music compositions. Composed and premiered in 1952, 4’33” is a piece for any instrument or combination of instruments. The score instructs the performer or performers not to play their instrument for the duration of the piece (generally four minutes and 33 seconds). As challenging and thought-provoking now as it was when it was premiered, 4’33” completely changed popular thinking on silence, sound, composition and listening.

Daniel Miller explains, “John Cage’s 4’33” has been present in my musical life for as long as I can remember as an important and inspiring composition. When the idea of every Mute artist doing their own interpretation of the piece came up during a conversation with Simon Fisher Turner, I immediately thought this was the perfect way to mark the label’s MUTE 4.0 (1978 > TOMORROW) series.”

Net profits from the release of the STUMM433 box set will be split between the British Tinnitus Association and Music Minds Matter, charities chosen to honour Inspiral Carpets’ founding member Craig Gill who suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of his tinnitus in the years up to his untimely death.

Artists featured:

A Certain Ratio, A.C. Marias, ADULT., The Afghan Whigs, Alexander Balanescu, Barry Adamson, Ben Frost, Bruce Gilbert, Cabaret Voltaire, Carter Tutti Void, Chris Carter, Chris Liebing, Cold Specks, Daniel Blumberg, Danny Briottet, Depeche Mode, Duet Emmo, Echoboy, Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, He Said, Irmin Schmidt, Josh T. Pearson, K Á R Y Y N, Komputer, Laibach, Land Observations, Lee Ranaldo, Liars, Looper, Lost Under Heaven, Maps, Mark Stewart / Sonskrif / The New Banalist Orchestra, Michael Gira, Mick Harvey, Miranda Sex Garden, Moby, Modey Lemon, Mountaineers, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, NON / Boyd Rice, Nonpareils, The Normal, onDeadWaves, Phew, Pink Grease, Pole, Polly Scattergood, Richard Hawley, ShadowParty, Silicon Teens, Simon Fisher Turner and Edmund de Waal, The Warlocks, Wire, Yann Tiersen and Gareth Jones.

STUMM433 is part of a series of special events and releases that started in 2018 and will continue through 2019 beyond, the STUMM433 vinyl box set is manufactured in partnership with The Vinyl Factory Manufacturing.

Future Sound Systems (whose previous modules include The Gristleizer, created in collaboration with Chris Carter from Throbbing Gristle and the original designer, Roy Gwinn) have worked together with Daniel Miller to create the STUMM and MAKROW modules, available now to buy. MAKROW, described as “your system’s steering wheel” and STUMM, a six-channel bank of high-fidelity audio mutes, are both designed for live performance. Daniel Miller explains, “when I was developing my own systems at home, there were things that I felt would help my system but I couldn’t find them.” To hear more about the collaboration, go to https://youtu.be/fjqPY_sEYzM

MUTE 4.0 (1978 > TOMORROW) acknowledges the launch of a label that started out of necessilty rather than design (to release the 7” single by The Normal, ‘T.V.O.D.’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’, recorded by Daniel Miller on a KORG 700S keyboard with a TEAC four-track recorder), and marks the past four decades, but crucially, looks forward to the label’s many years to come as it travels unapologetically into tomorrow.

The vinyl box set will feature: 5 x 180gm clear vinyl; 36-page 12″ sized soft touch lamination booklet; black tin candles with the scent of silence and a Certificate of authenticity, numbered and signed by Daniel Miller, all packaged in a unique frosted opal PVC case with 3mm walls.

The CD box set will feature 5 x CD with a 40+-page booklet, packaged in a two-piece card box.

LONDON LAUNCH EVENT

27 October – Café OTO – from 1pm-3.30pm

Daniel Miller and Simon Fisher Turner in conversation with playback of selections from the 5-piece box set – https://www.cafeoto.co.uk/events/stumm433/

Listen to Simon Fisher Turner talking to Stuart Maconie about the project over on the Freak Zone – https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009dfh

KMFDM are back with a new album. The twenty-first in their catalogue, Paradise, is a fierce, politically-charged reaction to the growing threat of authoritarianism.

Their press release doesn’t hold back:

Helmed by founder and frontman Sascha “Käpt’n K” Konietzko and Lucia Cifarelli, delivering their searing and brutal vocal performances like liquid daggers, and backed by the percussive fury of Andy Selway, KMFDM is joined by Black Sugar Transmission’s Andee Blacksugar lending his angular guitars to give the seething bite of PARADISE just that extra shot of venom. Of course, what would a KMFDM album be without a few guest performances? For PARADISE hosts some of the most impressive in the band’s history. Doug Wimbish (TACKHEAD, Living Colour) returns for another round to lend his electrified funk bass skills to “Piggy.” Longtime alumni Cheryl Wilson brings her soul mama vocals to the disco-infused “WDYWB,” while rapper Andrew “Ocelot” Lindslay delivering an all-out verbal assault on “K-M-F.” But if that weren’t enough, fans will undoubtedly be overjoyed as “Binge Boil & Blow” finds the Lord of Lard himself, Raymond “PIG” Watts returning to the KMFDM fold for the first time in 16 years!

Fascism is in fashion again, and the planet is a paradise for assholes… and KMFDM will have none of it! KMFDM’s message is as relevant as ever, and PARADISE may be the band’s most powerful outing yet, demanding that you live with no regret, don’t look back, find your destiny, destroy what destroys you, and rip the system!

Sarah Badr’s FRKTL project lands in London this weekend for a special DJ performance.

The international digerati struggle to keep up with Badr, who has called London, Cairo and Berlin home. Surfing the digital stream, she has most recently been spotted connecting from Latvian forests.

She has left the pines and birch to play at a mini-festival of experimental music. While we wait for a live FRKTL performance next year, she has two tracks from her forthcoming album available now. “Eigenspace” and “Fire Upon the Deep,” are available on Soundcloud.

FRKTL ◡ Aircode ◡ Dilian ◡ Jaeho Hwang ◡ TZT + takes place on Sunday, 22 September 2019 at The Glove That Fits, 179 Morning Lane, London.

One of the best alternative electronic acts ever to emerge from the UK, Linea Aspera, has reunited for concert dates in Europe and the UK.

Hot on the heels of their recent album, Preservation Bias, the duo of Zoè Zanias (Alison Lewis) and Ryan Ambridge have announced a tour with the following dates:

30th of November – Tour à Plomb – Brussels
6th of December – Protocol – Paris
10th of January – Ivory Blacks – Glasgow
11th of January – Electrowerkz – London
17th of January – Fuchs2 – Prague
18th of January – Conne Island – Leipzig

Between 2011 and 2013, Linea Aspera produced dark wave gems faster than Bitcoins can be mined. They flamed out, to the disappointment of fans, and Lewis moved to Berlin to found Keluar with Sid Lamar and advance her solo activity as Zoè Zanias.

Their return is excellent news for those who were there but especially for fans who discovered their music after the event.

Four top bands have been named for The Quad, a music event in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Taking place on the 25th of October, 2019, The Quad features Page (SE), Cryo (SE), Kårp (SE) and Iris (US). This four-by-four arrangement (four bands, four letters in each band name) sets up a show that will be sure to warm Sweden’s second city as the nights get longer. Each of the featured artists has a strong profile in the electronic music scene, and the event promises to be one of the highlights of the autumn music season.

Tickets are on sale now. A special ticket allows for donation of SEK 44 to the Swedish children’s rights organisation, BRIS.

The show is sponsored by Depeche Mode Party Gothenburg with Cold War Night Life.

Page

The Quad sees the pioneers of poptronica return to Gothenburg with a new album in their pockets.

Fakta för alla [EN: Facts for Everyone] is the most mature and sophisticated of Page recordings to date. With sonic references to Gary Numan and Ultravox, it has the feeling of early Moog-driven classics with a completely up-to-date set of songs by Eddie Bengtsson. It is the point of singularity where 1979 electronics and 2019 melodies merge.

With the art-house glamour of Marina Schiptjenko and the high energy cannonball of Bengtsson on stage, Page will be sure to create a party atmosphere fit for time travelers.

Cryo

Cryo have their own recent album, The Fall of Man, to show off. A slab of EBM hewn from pure Swedish granite, The Fall of Man is a hard, energetic and intelligent release from the duo of Torny Gottberg and Martin Rudefelt.

Cryo have been at the forefront of Sweden’s EBM scene for years. Their show features Rudefelt as an expressionistic mad scientist, belting out stylish songs while Gottberg hammers out rhythms with the intensity of small arms fire.

Kårp

Local band, Kårp, are known for their first single, “Therapist.” Their sound has been compared to The Knife and Lykke Li.

Iris

The appearance of Iris will be special for Gothenburgers who have appreciated the band’s pop style since their 2000 debut, Disconnect. Now on their sixth album – called Six – the duo of Reagan Jones and Andrew Sega have an impressive catalogue of synthpop material that has won awards in the US.