Reviews

Lust for Youth: Live in London

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

LUST FOR YOUTH
FIRST HATE
Moth Club, London
22 April 2016

The front of the stage at Hackney’s Moth Club is the flame drawing in London’s bright young things. There are Hungarian, Polish and Italian fans pressed together, absorbing the dark wave throbs of a Danish band led by a Swede — if the UK is going to leave the European Union, then surely shows like this will be a casualty of the new politics. Then who would be left in the capital to mutter into the darkness over pulsing electronics? Answer us that, Boris Johnson.

The act holding Europe together on this evening is Lust for Youth. A project started by Hannes Norrvide in Gothenburg, way back in in 2009, the L4Y template took form with doom-laden electronic sounds and growled vocals (“Another Night”). Within a short time, Norrvide had relocated to Denmark and absorbed pop sensibilities, even if his Psyche-influenced roots are still evident. The current L4Y release, Compassion, shows a wider range of influences that most of the audience would regard as distant history: “Sudden Ambition” sits somewhere between Depeche Mode’s “But Not Tonight” and “Hold Me Now” by Thompson Twins, while “Better Looking Brother” arguably owes something to New Order’s “Thieves Like Us.” These are just reference points, however, as Norrvide’s style is imbued with greater tension and angst than these precedents.

On stage, L4Y includes a hooded producer, Malte Fisher, on guitar and Loke Rahbek on keyboards. Through a cloud of Euro-sweat, rising from a sell-out crowd of jumping 20-somethings, they deliver a set that includes the sinister electro of “Chasing the Light,” “Illume” from the formidable International release, and most of the Compassion album. The new material really comes to life in performance, and the magnificent “Stardom” has a large section of the crowd singing back to Norrvide in their own accents.

A great surprise was the appearance of First Hate, another Danish-based electronic outfit, in the support slot. Influences from the godfathers of dark wave, Psyche, can be found in their songs, too, but their energetic performance was far from being derivative. “Trojan Horse,” the stand-out track from their first EP, “The Mind of a Gemini,” was a great lead-in for the headliners:

The UK might want to leave the EU, but access to music of this quality needs to be a key point in negotiations.

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Nash the Slash on Reissue

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

220px-Nash_the_SlashWhen Gary Numan first toured Canada in 1980, he stumbled across an eccentric and remarkable performer called Nash the Slash. Numan promptly ditched the support act booked for his tour and took Nash in their place. In short order, Nash was in England, signed to the Dindisc label alongside Martha and the Muffins. His output was produced by Steve Hillage and Bill Nelson, and he appeared on a Smash Hits flexi with label-mates OMD. Nash performed live with Numan at his “farewell” concert and played violin on his single, “She’s Got Claws.”

Artoffact, the Canadian industrial and electronic label, have now re-issued several Nash the Slash releases. The series starts with the first solo Nash the Slash release, Bedside Companion. A four track EP, Bedside Companion reveals Nash’s prog rock roots. The outstanding track on this release, “Blind Windows,” marks the birth of the ambient trance style that is the missing link between Steve Hillage’s solo material and the sound that he later developed for The Orb and System 7. The four songs are presented at the intended speed and 1/3 slower, reflecting the happy accident that occurred when Toronto DJ, Dave Marsden, mistook the 45 rpm 12″ for a 33 1/3 album: Nash realised that the instrumentals could be played at different speeds with equally interesting results.

Marsden’s oversight helped to inspire the release in 1981 of Decomposing, the first album designed to be played at any speed on a conventional record player. Essential for any Nash fan’s collection, and including the magnificent “Womble,” Decomposing is not part of the current Artoffact series. Instead, we have Dreams and Nightmares, the second Nash the Slash release, which collected recordings as diverse as a soundtrack to Un chien andolou and music for late night television. Essentially a compilation of tracks recorded to four-track, this is the kind of material that eccentric electronic artists recorded in their bedrooms in the 1970s and circulated on cassette tape through the Contact List for Electronic Music, but Nash was already a step ahead in releasing vinyl through his own label, Cut-Throat Records.

coverA surprise is the inclusion in this series of Hammersmith Holocaust, a reproduction of one of Nash’s rarer recordings. Lifted from the sound board at a support show for Numan in 1980, it begins with “Wolf,” in which Nash uses a motif from Prokofiev, stretched and distorted over simple bass patterns. A cover of “Smoke on the Water,” rewritten as “Dopes on the Water,” plays with Deep Purple’s classic tale of jazz venue immolation. “Children of the Night,” the title track for the Hillage-produced album that would follow the show, starts with an ambient intro that signposts the template that The Orb later lift for “Blue Room.” Nash is in full stride during a cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” that also strays into ambient trance territory, before a nitro-fuelled version of “Danger Zone” wraps proceedings.

Things really get interesting with the reissue of Children of the Night, Nash’s sole album for Dindisc. Recorded at Britannia Row, the London studio owned by Pink Floyd where New Order created “Blue Monday,” the album has cover artwork by Martyn Atkins, who also worked with Joy Division and Depeche Mode. In the studio, Hillage, who was getting ready to produce Simple Minds’ legendary Sons and Fascination, was supported by engineer Michael Johnson, who also worked on some of Joy Division and New Order’s best-known recordings. The result was an alternative classic, packed with essential tracks like “In a Glass Eye” and “Reactor No. 2;” but, even with the inclusion of a jukebox-friendly remake of Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve,” the commercial success of those other artists eluded Nash, who returned to Canada and revived his Cut-Throat imprint. Always ahead of his time, his next album would feature input from the Martha and the Muffins producer, Daniel Lanois.

When Nash died in 2014 from a heart attack, the tributes were led by Gary Numan. Numan has contributed liner notes to Hammersmith Holocaust that re-tell the story of how he met Nash, as well as his feelings about working with Jeff Plewman, the man beneath the bandages. Even if Nash’s absence leaves a hole in the heart of alternative music, the material assembled in these recordings lives on.

 

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Here to Go: The Magnetic North

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Urban planning is a tricky business. The development of places for people to live is much more complicated than arranging roads to channel traffic and locating schools near residential areas. There are no options in Sim City for dealing with the interactions between hippies and the working poor, for example. On a computer, you can raze a neighbourhood and start again, but in meatspace the reality is that decay starts before the paint is dry and never really ends.

The unplugged version is also full of memories – some happy, some banal, some tragic – that present a psychological challenge to the cartographer’s reductionist sense of space. Maps don’t mark out where young kids gathered to race bicycles or discuss David Bowie; where first glances were exchanged or bullies waited for their prey. These experiences are sometimes highly personal, but the memories of them are closely connected to the spaces arranged by planners. The collective memory of them has a lot to do with identity.

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Britain’s new towns – the cities built in the period of renewal that followed the Second World War – were designed with a certain optimism. Basildon, East Kilbride and Milton Keynes were conceived as open, rational spaces, in which the inhabitants could develop in greater harmony with their surroundings. That promise brought to one of these towns, Skelmersdale, an influx of followers of the Transcendental Meditation movement.

The arrival of a large group of TM practitioners in a town with no history was an event outside the urban planners’ contemplation. It shaped, not only its identity, but also the psychogeography of its inhabitants.

The Magnetic North’s first album was inspired by Orkney, where Erland Cooper had been raised. Legend has it that Cooper was visited by the spirit of Betty Corrigal, an 18th century Orcadian, and awoke from a dream with a list of track titles derived from places on the island. Band-mates Hannah Peel and Simon Tong joined in, creating music that grew from Orkney’s rocks and the small community that clings to them.

The second album from The Magnetic North shifts location to Skelmersdale, or Skem, where Tong grew up. Tong’s parents had been TM practitioners, and parts of The Prospect of Skelmersdale directly reference the influence of rhe Maharishi. “Jai Guru Dev,” named for a uniquely Skem greeting, features found sound from the dedication of the Golden Dome meeting place created by the town’s TM community in the 1980s. Other songs touch upon TM themes less self-consciously, interweaving them with expressions of optimism  and departure.

The desire to leave a place is one of the strongest feelings one can have about it. The planners of Skelmersdale didn’t provide an easy exit, which helped to shape Tong’s relationship with the town. It’s been a while since he moved, but on this evidence he hasn’t entirely left it behind.

If a third album, describing Peel’s version of Barnsley, is on its way, we’re keen to hear it.

The Magnetic North play in London on 14 April 2016 and in Salford on 1 May 2016.

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True Bromance: Spiritual Friendship Release Debut

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Spiritual Friendship is the self-titled debut from the duo of Gareth Jones and Nick Hook. Jones needs no introduction to readers of Cold War Night Life, having played key studio roles for John Foxx, Wire, Fad Gadget Tuxedomoon and Depeche Mode – just a few names in a long list of artists. Hook is Jones’ mate. Well, he has been involved in music for some time in a variety of roles, but the point of the collaboration is that Jones and Hook get along rather well and this is their joint creation.

It’s not a conventional album, though at times it threatens to become one. There are danceable moments (in “Dance” and “Chicago K Hole”), but this isn’t a dance record. It is a collection of field recordings that bears some comparison to Gaia la terre, the 1980s cassette release by Pierre Perret. The artists themselves refer to it as a soundtrack to an urban stroll, so it might be thought of as a counterpoint to Perret’s more pastoral work.

Is it any good? That rather depends on what you are expecting. There’s no point looking for fragments of old Depeche Mode recordings, like early Recoil, and there aren’t many tracks that will fit into a playlist. Taken as a conceptual whole, however, the album is full of playful surprises and delightful twists. Like some of Brian Eno’s work, or the studio adventures of Dome, there are ideas described enough to get the point across, which intersect with other suggestions and fade into the background. If you want three singles, then you’re on the wrong channel – but it’s free to play on Tidal or Soundcloud, so just hit >> or << and find something more contained, commercial and comfortable. If you have 40 odd minutes and an open mind, then, yes, this really is good.

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New Injections by Black Needle Noise

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Black Needle Noise, the latest project from John Fryer, has put out a selection of tracks for downloading on Bandcamp. Featuring guest vocalists Jarboe, Antic Clay, Andreas Elvenes, Ledfoot, Attasalina and Zia, BNN follows Fryer’s pattern of generating foundations for singers to build upon. It’s an experimental approach that carries some risk, but all of the BNN pairings deliver material that is stylish, dark and on the right side of the edge.

The thread that ties all of the songs together is Fryer’s grindtronica sound, which lets guitars fizz and fuzz alongside atmospheric synths and reverb-heavy percussion. There are monumental tones, scored for Gothic cathedrals, and razor-sharp chord changes. Whereas This Mortal Coil, one of Fryer’s earliest projects, stretched notes into eternity, with BNN he is as likely to compress and distort them into moments that peak and fade like the light from collapsing stars.

Two of the songs are collaborations with Jarboe, the former Swans and Skin vocalist. Her time as a solo artist has only honed Jarboe’s ability to channel dark, bittersweet sounds, and on “Vexation” they are steered into magnificent choruses that flood over Fryer’s beats. The second Jarboe track, “Human,” pierces a different vein, injecting a feeling of melancholy that moves with each pulse further into your system.

The appearance of Antic Clay on “Queen of Dust” takes BNN into Tarantino territory,  with a bass that is mining for gold and dirty, fuzzy guitars. Dark Americana is at its roots, and the feel is not a million Nordic miles from the path previously scorched by the Bad Seeds. You don’t have to sell your soul at a crossroad to enjoy the song, but you get the feeling that a few were pawned in the course of making it.

Andreas Elvenes of Norwegian outfit BC (aka Bitch Cassidy) crosses the Styx  in “Mourning Morning” to the accompaniment of drones, mechanical clanking and filter sweeps that recall This Mortal Coil’s more atmospheric work.

The appearance of Ledfoot brings a Gothic Blues influence to “3 Steps Backwards.” Growls, mutterings, whispers and chirps sit beneath his haunting vocal line. The effect is chilling and disquieting, but the richness of Ledfoot’s voice keeps the song in balance.

From Oslo, Zia Land provides the vocals for “Wildstone.” If Portishead did burlesque soundtracks, they might approximate the sound on this track, which comes at you like a Clash sample slowed down and looped with delays, brass stabs and John Barry’s sense of drama. “I’ll take you all the way,” promises Zia, but the song ends without a final release – the plateau phase carrying on into oblivion. Such a tease, that BNN.

The final track in the set comes from American singer and sometime Daniel Ash-collaborator, Attasalina. “Messages by Dream” is soulful dreampop; a tangle of barbed wire and muslingauze that unwinds only by tearing into fibres.

 

 

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Stockholm’s Electronic Easter Egg

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

ME THE TIGER
VILE ELECTRODES
Stockholm, 26 March 2016

IMG_8062-1The end of winter doesn’t bring every Swede out of hibernation, but those who gathered at Stockholm’s Nalen club on Saturday night got an early electronic Easter egg: Vile Electrodes, Britain’s best synth act, were in town with enough equipment to tip over the national grid. Lights must have been flickering across the Öresund Bridge as Swan and Neon wired it up, leaving Danes to wonder which band had carried a studio-load of analogue gear to their Northern neighbour for a live show.

This is the way with Vile Electrodes. Unlike most synth duos, which tour with Macbooks and USB keyboards, the Viles still like plugging bits of kit together and letting electricity flow through circuits. Poor Keith Emerson never had a chance to see them, before the Curse of 2016 overloaded his final fuse, but their stage set-up is the spiritual descendant of the keyboard fortress that surrounded him on stage.

The air outside the venue was chilly, but the atmosphere inside was fired up with classic Vile Electrodes material. “Captive in Symmetry,” “Empire of Wolves” and “Proximity” were all present and correct. At the end, a call came for “Tore Myself to Pieces,” which got its own industrial dance from the Techno Viking’s younger brother. If every person who was at the show starts their own poptronica band, then Sweden will need to import a lot more equipment and start up more power stations.

IMG_8193-1The Viles were followed by Falun’s finest export, Me the Tiger. The trio are consistently impressive on stage, exploding with energy while kicking out classy pop like “As We Really Are” and “What Promises Are Worth” from their Vitriolic album. It was infectious: Tobias Andersson ended up in the crowd with his guitar and Jonas Martinsson had to set up a hi-hat for audience participation, while the enthusiastic crowd sang along with vocalist Gabriella Åström. It was a basement club on Easter weekend, but they unleashed enough force to fill a stadium at the height of the summer festival season.

There were many in Sweden who used the weekend to sweep the cobwebs from their summer residences. Those who came to see this show had the cobwebs blown out from their brains.

 

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Everybody Is (Dancing to Jeddie 3)

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

In the 70s, everyone was a winner (babe, yeah it’s true). In the 80s, everybody wanted to rule the world. Fast forward to the 20-teens and everybody is a DJ. At the end of history (as Fukuyama would have it), even Z-list celebrities with smartphones are being billed as DJs, tapping the pots on mixing decks in a kind of mime show. Pre-recorded shows are becoming standard, allowing anyone with a backwards baseball hat to call themselves a DJ if they stand in the appropriate place.

So, when Jeddie 3 say, “Everybody Is (a DJ),” they aren’t kidding. Or maybe they are: the talent behind the tag is Eddie Bengtsson, Sweden’s answer to Vince Clarke, and he has a sense of humour a Nordic mile wide. Bengtsson will have noticed the move by Vince Clarke and Martin Gore into the world of Beatport, and Jeddie 3’s release might be seen as an exercise in one-upmanship. Beating VCMG (or just MG) in the quality stakes would be like shooting fish in a barrel for a composer of Bengtsson’s experience, however, so there is likely more going on.

Taken at face value, “Everybody Is (a DJ)” is a thumping piece of dance music, designed for the dancefloor. It will find its way into a Boiler Room mix soon, prompting Millennials to twitch around the DJ table, dreaming of the moment when they can play with their own Traktor 2 set-ups. If they were smart, they would learn some chords and how to extract the coolest filter sweeps from a Moog, so that they could be just like Eddie.

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A Ton of Hox: Lewis and Karperyd Release New Album

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Here comes Duke of York, the new album from Hox. Comprised of Europe’s Northern-most art refugee, Edvard Graham Lewis (Wire/Dome/Duet Emmo/He Said/He Said Omala/Ocsid), and his sometime collaborator, the graphic designer Andreas Karperyd (Omala/He Said Omala/Woodwork), Hox’s second effort is leftfield eccentronica with the rough edges left unsanded.

You can catch your clothes on tracks like “Anthracite” and prick your fingers on a song like “Track and Field,” but we dare you not to marvel at the grain of “Javelin.” Lewis is one of art-rock’s most distinctive vocalists, and he’s never better than when his words are carried on waves of pulsing bass and distorted guitars.

There are echoes of Lewis’ previous work with Bruce Gilbert to be heard on tracks like “Correct Co-ordinates,” which is more Dome than Wire, despite the echo of “Map Ref 41°N 93°W” in the title. There is also clearly DNA in the outstanding track, “Goodbye,” which can be traced back to Lewis’ incarnation as He Said. Bare and exposed though the sound may be, its warmth and natural texture owes something to Scandinavian design.

As great as Wire’s last album was, this is the material we next want to see live.

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Twice a Man Assert Their Presence

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

You can dance to the echoes of Nero’s fiddle, but you can’t pretend that the empire isn’t burning. From jihadi mercenaries to rain forest arsonists, blithe drone operators to sinister traffickers, the crackle of kindling can be heard from its distant corners. The stillness of decaying factories makes it easy to hear the drone of server farms, collecting and processing the information used to track, monitor and control its subjects. The empire’s heart beats to the rhythm of small arms fire.

Twice a Man are legends of the Swedish music scene. The Gothenburg-based group of Karl Gasleben and Dan Söderqvist arose at the end of the 1970s from progressive rock roots, and today the band remains at the tip of the European warm wave spear. Now rejoined by sometime member, Jocke Söderqvist, their latest album, Presence, fits with Twice a Man’s reputation for making intelligent pop. This is music to explode lies, but without the direct didacticism of Pet Shop Boys’ latter works. It feels less like an emission from Professor Chomsky than the boy of lore who could see through the emperor’s threads.

The first single taken from the album, “Black,” comes with a radio-friendly edit and a dancefloor-oriented “Alien Waveform Extrapolation” mix. The material is emphatic and moody. With vocoders and glitchy synth sounds, it owes something to the more primitive electronics of the 1970s, but stylistically it is body music from five minutes into the future. It’s a good taste for how the album is going to proceed.

Presence begins with “A Time of Terror,” and you know it is the one we are living in. There are Arabesque touches to the song, but the rhythm track starts with an industrial/martial feel before dissolving into a solo cry. Portion Control once sang, “Terror leads to better days,” but it really doesn’t, and that is one of Twice a Man’s themes.

“Here Comes the Rain” describes “insane cries without end” that “reverberate between religious walls.” Twice a Man don’t shy away from difficult material, and with soaring guitars and grinding bass lines, they tackle the day’s headlines straight on. It is not only, of course, in areas of Syria over-run by Wahhabist maniacs that this description rings true. As a live track, you don’t need a prophet to tell you that this will be an absolute stormer.

The rain blends into the following song, “A World Is Gone.” With dramatic – even cinematic – musical backing, longing is expressed for the spirit of resistance that has long since passed into passivity. These days, the radicals of ’68 sip tea from Che Guevara mugs while watching Idol on television, while poisonous gases are released onto battlefields and the planet is allowed to die outside of their dream homes. “Will there ever be harmony again,” asks the song – and the answer is, “Of course”, but how the balance is restored depends on the courage that can be summoned in the world’s living rooms.

After the album version of “Black,” “Lines” picks up the pace with a Moroder-meets-John Barry track that exhorts us not to let the future fall. There is every risk that we will, of course. The new generation will do well to learn how to make such energetic electronic music before it is too late.

The title track, “Presence,” swirls and bubbles over a funky bass line. It’s the kind of track that shows why Twice a Man are still the masters of theatrical dark wave. It’s not hard to imagine Covenant feeling affinity for this material, even if they don’t participant in the polemic. “We need power to fill our needs” sums it up.

These themes continue, wrapping up with “High in the Clouds,” which takes up warnings of ecological disaster. Songs about holes in the ozone layer might sound didactic on paper, but there are additional layers to the material; further levels of consciousness to be explored. Twice a Man’s message is ultimately one of hope, but not for the arrival of a superman – no one is going to save the planet for you. You can dance, but when the lights come up, that’s still your job.

Details on Presence are here.

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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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