Twice a Man

Here to Go: Gasleben & Electric Friends

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]SIlicon Teens once asked, “Why walk on the moon / if you could fly to the Sun?”

Twice a Man’s polymath, Karl Gasleben, is half way there. A Vessel Out of Here, the second solo album from Gasleben &Electric Friends, is an ark constructed with a frame of taught, tense rhythms. Around them, a scaffolding of synthetic textures supports vocals from collaborators, Anna Öberg, Peter Davidson and Daniel Kaufeldt. The result is a trip to the stars, powered by electricity and guided with a critical eye.

Out now on Bandcamp.

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Karin My – Winter Tree

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

We have described Karin My as Sweden’s secret weapon before. The Scandi songstress has most often been spotred adding magic to the recordings of other artists, such as the legendary Twice a Man. More recently, she has been working on her own material, edging towards a debut solo album.

“Winter Tree” is a other step towards that end. Her vocals float like filaments on the gentlest breeze, lingering above the snap of the rhythm track. The accompanying video gives a flavour of the seasonal mood that infuses the song.

Made together with Daniel Kraufelt, “Winter Tree” is Nordic noir with an emotional edge. The album is expected in February.

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Twice a Man – Back on Venus

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Lost and found, this video for Twice a Man’s “Back on Venus” demonstrates why the Swedish art band have been so influential. With reverb and rhythms at the fore, they were the psychedelic edge of new wave.

The images of an office worker climbing a hill of sand matter less here than the magical, post-prog rock that Twice a Man excel at, but they make you look and they invite you to think.

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Encased in Sound: Twice a Man’s Cocoon

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Like Wire, Twice a Man never make the same album more than once. Their sound might have consistent elements, but each release is an exploration of new combinations and treatments for them.

Like a stone exposed to the weather, time has changed Twice a Man, but their impermanence has been with us for a long time. Cocoon, their current album, has at least twenty predecessors, including some mighty classics of electronic and experimental music.

To keep things simple, every track is numbered: “Cocoon 1,” “Cocoon 2,” and so on. Each has its own distinctive features. “Cocoon 7” is distinguished by an energising combination of rhythms and Dan Söderquist’s vocals. “Cocoon 8” has psychedelic strings layered over a chugging, modulated pattern.

The overall effect is a sonic combination of nature and creation. “Cocoon 1” seems to invoke both the humming of bees and the sound of their industry. Hives aren’t places for solitary contemplation, and the work of different teams drowns out any individual sounds. The environment has its own rhythms, and the ebb and flow of activity changes the sounds.

Cocoon is an unconventional album from one of Sweden’s most unconventional bands. It makes for inspiring listening.

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A Trip Back in Time: Cosmic Overdose

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

maxresdefaultIf you’re going to call your band Cosmic Overdose, you’re going to have to deal with some preconceptions. The first is that you are a bunch of hippies, sitting in fairy rings and tripping on mushrooms. The second is that your material consists of overblown guitar solos. If your music is actually varied and complex, inspired by dada, punk and experimental electronics, and you are meant to be warming up for New Order, then it might be time to rethink the name.

That’s not the whole story of Twice a Man, but it is how it usually opens. Before the Swedish godfathers of alternative music adopted their current guise – prompted by the promoters of the New Order show they were scheduled to join – they swam in many of the streams that were converging or competing in the second half of the 1970s. Punk was a rebellion against the high-art extremes of prog rock, but Cosmic Overdose found something to appreciate in both. Experimental and industrial music provided an antidote to pop, and the band absorbed the textures and freedom of the former while maintaining the accessibility of the latter.

PROCD070_Box.inddIf there is a surprise in the recently issued Cosmic Overdose box set from Progress Productions, it is just how much groove there is in their material. Over the course of two studio albums, the band belied their name with sets of jaunty, angular material that did as much to shake hips as expand minds. There are passages of smooth, prog-influenced pop, but they are respite between slabs of pure energy generated with a provocative spirit.

If English comparators were sought, then Blurt, Brian Eno and Cabaret Voltaire would figure, but the points of intersection would be limited. Cosmic Overdose defied definition as craftily as those artists, even if they sometimes drew inspiration and confidence from similar sources. The three albums packaged in Koko Total don’t fit a template, nor do they bear direct comparison to others. Cosmic Overdose were true originals.

r-63591-1199198361-jpegThe first album they shared with the world was Dada Koko. From the opening number, “Investera i Framtida,” with its synthetic waves, it was clear that something new was being born. “Modern Dadaister” isn’t a million miles from XTC’s jerkier sound, when it starts, before growing into something trippier. There is a moment of calm in the arc of the album before “Tanten” explodes with a burst of dark energy. The Arp synth returns on the album closer, “Råttan,” a track tailored for the alternative dancefloor.

r-294022-1199199027-jpegThe second album, 4668, showed that the Swedes had absorbed something from Joy Division. As the Manchester doom-meisters had done, Cosmic Overdose were starting to push through the punk chrysalis to emerge as something more electronic. Their transformation into Twice a Man would put them at the forefront of the Swedish synth scene and keep them in its top tier for a generation. In the meantime, fans had the brooding “Android,” the well-crafted “Nina Fontanell” and the charming “Liten Storsint” to contemplate.

cosmov3The third CD in this package collects live recordings, singles and strays from the archives. “Observation Galen” from 1979 is here with its B-side, “Isolatorer.” Then there are live versions of “Suicide Case,” “Ruta Nr 1” and “Läckan” from a show the same year in Kalmar. They reveal a band confident in its presentation with spellbinding material. Further live sessions follow from shows in Oslo, Lund and Stockholm (with an appearance by Lars Falk on “Väx och Njut”) before the album closes with the single, “To Night.”

The quality of the recordings is excellent, and they open a window into the short time when art and punk overlapped with the electronics of the Futurists and the psychedelia of the proggists. Wire unpacked that confluence methodically over four decades, but Cosmic Overdose concentrated it into two albums and two singles and changed their name. What came next is a story for another day.

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Here Comes a Remix: Twice a Man

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Twice a Man have revealed their new single: “Here Comes the Rain,” lifted from the Presence album, appears in both an edited form and as a remix from Denmark’s esteemed Leaether Strip.

A brooding, moody and dramatic minor-key masterpiece, “Here Comes the Rain” is one of the stand-out tracks that appeared on our chosen Album of the Year for 2015. Leaether Strip’s version digs into the bassline and plays with the groove, yielding a more austere yet decidedly funky interpretation.

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The Top 15 of 2015

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

If 2013 was the year of new music and 2014 the year of the live show, what was the defining feature of 2015? We’d say that it was the development of collectives organising to support artists outside of the record industry mainstream. The trend picked up steam with I Am Snow Angel joining forces with Dani Mari and Claire London. They called themselves Female Frequency and started crowdfunding to produce an album made entirely by women artists. Over in Norway, the KOSO collective launched with a similar spirit. This was less of a feminist statement than a reflection of feminine confidence. The record industry might be run by men in suits and their hipster-bearded minions, and EDM might have been born in some boys’ bedrooms, but this year the female of the species got tired of waiting for her turn. She sounds great.

 

15. Train to Spain – What It’s All About

We called What It’s All About the soundtrack to summer, and with its effervescent synths and sparkling vocals it was glittery bliss for the trip to the beach on bright weekends. Those days are long forgotten in Europe, suffering in the cold and damp of a stormy December, but we have Polaroids to remind us that Train to Spain’s first album was an accomplished debut.

 

14. Hannah Peel – Rebox 2

Hannah Peel’s first EP of cover songs, Rebox, tackled classic 80s pop gems, like “Tainted Love” and “Blue Monday.” Her second, Rebox 2, picked tracks from more current artists, such as East India Youth (with whom she toured) and Perfume Genius. We love Peel’s original material, but there is no faulting her song choices or interpretations here. As ever, Peel’s voice is the draw – it travels on wavelengths of exceptional clarity and has the impact of a Holi carnival of colours.

 

13. Machinista – Garmonbozia

Machinista’s second album showed off the continued strength of their songwriting, as well as John Lindqwister’s penetrating vocals. Last year’s debut, Xenoglossy, set the template, and there was clearly more Lynchian, dancefloor-friendly poptronica waiting to come out.

 

12. Muricidae – Tales from a Silent Ocean

John Fryer, the legendary producer and songwriter, pushed out two major projects in 2015: Silver Ghost Shimmer, a grinding, sexy project with singer Pinky Turzo; and Muricidae, a Mortal Coil-esque enterprise featuring Louise Fraser. We found it hard to choose between them, but in the end kept coming back to this jewel from Muricidae’s debut album, Tales from a Silent Ocean. Set to repeat, it’s perpetually Sunday after sundown, and that’s our favourite time.

 

11. Marsheaux – A Broken Frame

Reinterpreting a Depeche Mode album with synthesizers might seem a neat conceit from a distance, but when it is A Broken Frame, the Basildon boys’ second, purely electronic album, you might also ask, “Why?” The answer is that Depeche Mode have long turned their back on that masterful set of experimental pop. If Gore and Gahan aren’t going to develop the ideas that were first captured in Blackwing Studios, back in 1982, then why not some fans from Athens who have a line in angelic electropop? By giving the songs a modern makeover, Marsheaux breathed new life into them – if only DM would do the same!

 

10. Vile Electrodes – Captive in Symmetry

There still isn’t a band in Britain that is making music at the level of Vile Electrodes. Their three-track EP, Captive in Symmetry, reminded everyone of that, but so did a show warming up for Mesh and a headline performance at “A Secret Wish.” This was also the year that the BBC discovered the Viles, as did lecturers in media studies at an academic event in Dusseldorf. After years of breaking the fourth wall, surely it’s time they punched through the glass ceiling, as well!

 

9. Pieces of Juno – “Same to Me” VIDEO OF THE YEAR!

In the year of A-Ha’s return, we discovered a Norwegian artist we like better: Pieces of Juno, an Oslo-based songstress, caught our attention with leftfield poptronica and creative video work. We first heard her providing backing vocals for Karin Park at Electronic Summer, which was a mighty performance all-round, and a little digging unearthed a vein of gold and silver.

Nothing against Morten & Co., but things have moved on a little. These days, Juno and friends in the KOSO collective are making their own way without the support of major record labels. As this effort shows, Norwegians are still doing great video work to accompany the sounds from the North.


 

8. Me the Tiger – Vitriolic

One of the stand-out performances of 2015 came from Sweden’s Me the Tiger at Gothenburg’s legendary Electronic summer event. The trio from Falun shook the walls with outstanding songs and fabulous vocals from Gabriella Åström. It turned out that they’d put it all down in the studio, too, and Vitriolic was bottled lightning. With DAF’s management behind them, they’re going to go far.

 

7. Jennie Vee – Spying

The word “muse” comes up a lot in writing about New York’s Jennie Vee. Not in the sense of a glam- and prog-influenced rock band that puts marching teddy bears in their anti-NWO videos, but as an artist who stimulates others. Courtney Love has used the term to describe Vee, as has her photographer, Katrin Albert. We just call her great, because Vee has given shoegaze a shiny, patent-leather kick from behind. Her first solo album, Spying, demonstrated that the preceding EPs weren’t kidding with their emphatic, bass-driven dreampop. We’ll be spinning this for a long time yet.


 

6. Karin Park – Apocalypse Pop

The arrival of Karin Park’s fifth studio album was keenly anticipated. There had been a three year interlude since Highwire Poetry, and it turned out that the extended gestation period did nothing to detract from Park’s sense of melody. With a diverse group of songwriters collaborating on compositions, the album’s flavours change like an American gobstopper candy: layers peel away to reveal a raw, inner core of emotional authenticity that you get from few other artists. “Hard Liquor Man” and “Look What You’ve Done” will become classics of Park’s live show, but we also loved “Stick to the Lie,” which had a single release with this remix.

 

5. Dan Söderqvist – Dark Flowers Awake

Dan Söderqvist’s sidelines from Twice a Man have included a number of collaborations with European and American artists. This year, he picked through the archives for some of the best, which were collected as Dark Flowers Awake. With contributions by the artists behind Building Castles Made of Matchsticks, Narcoleptica and Mono-Drone, among others, the album showcased Söderqvist’s experimental forays but also how far his influence reaches beyond Sweden’s borders.

 

4. Rein – “Concrete Jungle” NEW ARTIST OF THE YEAR!

We’ve been waiting for Rein to come along – a fierce, independent woman who combines talent with a capacity for attitude and aggression that can tame the hardest death metal grunt. Armed with a copy of Reason, Rein stormed onto Soundcloud with the old-school EBM of “There Is No Authority But Yourself,” followed quickly by “Concrete Jungle.” The latter proved that she has a fantastic voice, while this mix pushed us out onto the floor all over again. Dance, pilgrim!

 

3. Lau Nau – Hem. Någonstans

Finnish avant-folk composer, Lau Nau, breezed into our consciousness with the soundtrack to Hem. Nagonstans, a film by Lotta Petronella. Readers of The Wire and visitors to obscure festivals will have got there ahead of us, but the musical world of Laura Naukkarinen is one that we are happy to inhabit. A rare London appearance confirmed the organic beauty of Lau Nau’s voice and vision. We’ve been walking barefoot among the birch trees ever since.

 

2. Sista mannen på jorden – …translate EP OF THE YEAR!

R-6954020-1430309974-3662.jpegReleased to mark SMPJ’s first London show, at Cold War Night Life’s “A Secret Wish,” …translate was an ultra-limited edition EP, featuring English versions of some of the band’s best-known songs. With a darker version of “Stadens alla ljus” rendered as “All the City Lights” and the classic “Luft” reprised as “Air,” this was the perfect introduction to Sweden’s best-loved poptronica outfit.

The EP isn’t available as a download – you had to be there. Sorry if you couldn’t make the show, but singer/songwriter Eddie B did share this taster on his Soundcloud account.

 

1. Twice a Man – Presence ALBUM OF THE YEAR!

Twice a Man have been making music together for four decades, but they’ve never lost their bleeding-edge coolness. In 2015, they released a new album, Presence, with the political verve and musical mastery to show the new generation how it is done. This is a remix that appeared on the single for “Black,” proving that there is plenty of juice in the engine yet.

 

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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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Twice a Man to Curate “Warm Wave” Event

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Sweden’s Twice a Man have a new album on the way and plans for a unique “Warm Wave” event in May.

One of Europe’s most respected electronic bands, the duo of Dan Söderqvist and Karl Gasleben recently expanded to include former member Jocke Söderqvist for the thirtieth anniversary of their pioneering album, From a Northern Shore. They will be in Gothenburg to host “A Warm Wave Concert” on 29 May 2015. A Stockholm show will take place on the following day.

Featured artists for the event include Argentina’s Vólkova, Sweden’s Red Mecca and Alvar, and Keluar from Berlin, as well as the hosts. They explain the unifying theme for the evening:

The concept of Warm Wave was originally coined by César Canali (Vólkova) and Chris Inlaw in front of the release Not so Cold, “A Warm Wave Compilation”.

In the early 80´s when Twice a Man initiated their music style in Scandinavia, many critics and others, blamed the band for playing dark, depressive music and gave the name “Cold Wave” to their genre, picking on that synthesizers were not real instruments. “You just push buttons”. Obviously we have kept pushing those buttons, because we are passionate in what we do and have love for our music, so after all we are “Not so Cold”.

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/442650519216867/

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