Niklas's thoughts

Today three live music albums are released.

Depeche Mode – 'Memento Mori: Mexico City'

Stream the album via this page.

I love the song on 'Walking in My Shoes'. However, I must say this: I'm a little worried about Dave's song on 'No Good'.

I saw DM live during the Memento Mori tour and they've been better and more inventive live in the past; just consider the official live version of 'In Your Room' that was recorded during the Songs of Faith and Devotion tour. Wow.

This album is released on the same day as Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds' Wild God (Live God). Listen to that album to hear what is possible, by the hands and voices of people who are around as old as DM, who apply older tools, but reach more high-soaring goals.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – 'Wild God (Live God)'

Stream the album via this page.

This is, at best, a soaring, gospel-sounding experience. Just listen to 'Frogs', the first track on the album. The artist as preacher comes out; Cave quips lines like a reverend. This is closer to gospel than nearly what James Brown, Sam Cooke, and Little Richard did live at times*.

Hear the guitar and the chorus of 'Tupelo'. Yeah, yeah, yeah!

Where Depeche Mode went electronic, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds go back to gospel music. To choral music. To human breadth in mass voices. To simple chords on the piano, to Cave chanting 'you're beautiful' again and again and again to a tambourine and the chorus singing 'touched by the Spirit/touched by the Flame'.

Where Cave has gone from noise and punk and art in The Birthday Party to gaming pop music during the 1990s to two of his sons dying and his making intimate and extremely soulful electronic music, to creating gospel, this is a fucking live album.

Listen to the song 'Conversion' as hands-up proof that this album should be heard.

*This is said in total awe and adoration of Little Richard live in Hollywood, James Brown live at the Apollo, and Sam Cooke live in Harlem. These are three of my favourite live albums.

Die Nerven – 'LIVE IM ELFENBEINTURM'

Stream the album via this page.

I've no idea how this came to be, but Die Nerven have become one of my favourite modern ice-cold punk-ish artists. I don't know German, but I love Einstürzende Neubauten enough to have learned a bit, and it's not like one can't translate lyrics online.

Die Nerven live is a one-trick pony. Their sound is based largely on the guitar sound: it's either very reverby and non-distorted or reverby and distorted; the singer's voice complements the guitar in exactly the same sound. Drums and bass sound circumstancial.

That's how they sound live, but on record it's a different story. They're tight as hell on record!

Having said that, there's something about Die Nerven's live sound that really captures me in small doses. Two or three songs at a time, brilliant! I can't listen to this album in one single go without pauses, and that's saying something having just listened to two entire live albums before this one: I should be able to make it, but I can't.

This band is fairly close to being a German version of Swedish band Kent some points, but that's doing Kent a disservice as they're a lot more varied in styles.

#music

Camera Obscura – Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken

In 1984, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions released their debut album. One of the songs on the album is named 'Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken?'

In 2006, Scottish indie-pop band Camera Obscura released 'Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken'.

There's a lot of good things to be said about a band whose album cover is twee, filled with reference, and features a person who looks both fearful and freaked out.

The song sounds like it's simultaneously performed by an indie-pop band and an orchestra, with a classic organ intro that leads into a reverby-ish Phil Spector thing with a jangly guitar melody. Produced by the guitarist from The Bear Quartet and one third of Peter Bjorn and John, this is a golden little nugget of indie-pop sweetness.

I love how the singer sounds bored. The violin works well in this track. It's very well-produced. Horns come and go. The guitar, drums, and horns go well together. Aah. Thank you, all involved.

#music

Xiu Xiu – Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1

Xiu Xiu are one of my favourite modern bands. God damn it. They're rock 'n' roll, experimental, fun, funny, and noise. And a lot more.

They've just unveiled their next album, a covers project that's today available for pre-order: Xiu Mutha Fuckin' Xiu: Vol. 1.

I love Daniel Johnston. They've covered one of his beautiful songs:

The second cover that they've unveiled today is The Runaways' ultra-fine 'Cherry Bomb':

Complete album track list:

Side A – Psycho Killer [Talking Heads]
– Warm Leatherette [The Normal/Grace Jones]
– I Put a Spell on You [Screamin' Jay Hawkins]
– Hamburger Lady [Throbbing Gristle]
– In Dreams [Roy Orbison]
– Sex Dwarf [Soft Cell]

Side B – Dancing on My Own [Robyn]
– SPQR [This Heat]
– Lick or Sum [GloRilla]
– Some Things Last a Long Time [Daniel Johnston]
– Triple Sun [Coil]
– Cherry Bomb [The Runaways]

Their merch is some of the funniest shit ever produced by a band. I mean, from switchblades to a mesh jersey that says XIU XIU 69:

Long live MF XX.

#music #XiuXiu

Hooked (Hyams Gym, Leytonstone)

The Bug is Kevin Martin: dub entrepreneur, musician, and collaborative person. He made Curse of the Golden Vampire together with Alec Empire, the main person behind one of my old favourite electronic hardcore bands, Atari Teenage Riot; the album is a sort of mix between dubstep and electronic hardcore; it didn't really work most of the time but it is important to me.

This album reminds me of the album My Demons by Distance, a dubstep composer and musician:

Of course, Distance's music is much more loop-based and clinical than what music is currently made by The Bug. I prefer the organic, not the clinical.

The music by The Bug and Distance remind me of Blade Runner; somewhere in the clouds above Japanese skyscrapers that resemble Vangelis's fantastic and magnificent soundscape:

The Bug's music is more gritty and down-to-earth than what Vangelis cooked up, but then, Vangelis probably influenced most musicians in different ways.

I wish GZA would issue what he made with Vangelis.

#music

Fontaines D.C. – 'Starburster'

I like the song and I really like the video.

Videos like these are sublime.

The Fontaines video reminds me of Xiu Xiu's NSFW video for 'Common Loon'.

#music #XiuXiu

Fluisteraars – 'Kronieken Van Het Verdwenen Kasteel – III – Grunsfoort'

Stream the single here.

This is intensive and very good music with either a lot of thought behind it or a lot of luck. Fluisteraars is a black-metal band based in the Netherlands. Apparently there's something in the water over there, because the region seems to spawn some really interesting bands, for example Turia and Lubbert Das. I must confess that I'm week for bands on the Haeresis Noviomagi label. Back to the topic:

This song is eight minutes and twenty seconds long. First, an airy intro with synths that made me think of Steve Roach and suddenly: onslaught.

The cymbals and the snare drum ring out while the bass, thrumming in the background, makes for a great spine to carry the colossus that is the main guitar melody track. This is some hypnotic shit! Usually, black metal isn't this enticing. The closest I can come to thinking of another interesting band is probably Cistvaen, although the genre is filled with a lot of weird and very good bands.

I love how Fluisteraars go from super-heavy to dropping the tempo by half and then laying down some three-note acoustic nylon-stringed guitar. Then back to the onslaught.

The song is screams, howls, and I can only hope the lyrics are good because Dutch is a language I do not speak. I like both how the singer phrases and paces himself between slower, more silent moments and then going for full-tilt screams.

Nearly six minutes into the track, everything goes fairly quiet. Distant sounds are heard – some drums, some sweeping metallic swoops, water-and-glass. Then: a scream. And a trebled-up grinding guitar melody. And the drums. The freaking drums! They're great!

This is some band. Fluisteraars pull off what a lot of black-metal bands try out but fail to do: production meets arrangement bliss. Even the synths are fairly well-tempered here, which rarely is the case with black metal. Either you get zero synths, some drab organ sounds, or really fake-sounding stuff as with Lamp of Murmuur*, but that's not the case with Fluisteraars.

Damn it. I'm going to listen to Fluisteraars's latest album, Manifestaties van de ontworteling, right now.

***

• All hail Lamp of Murmuur though, that blastbeat master rules. Don't sleep on his new album that was released just a couple of weeks ago! And yes, I dig his synths too. If you can pull that shit off, by Natas, go do it as well as Lamp.

Hania Rani – 'Non Fiction – Piano Concerto in Four Movements'

Stream the album from here.

This is a collection of beautifully recorded and masterfully engineered orchestral works where the clarinet and violins are just as important as the piano and arrangement.

The songs soar, kind of reminding me of how Harold Budd handled arrangements on his masterpiece album Avalon Sutra and also of how Sigur Rós made some tracks on their latest album, Átta.

At times, songs are cinematic, like 'Non Fiction: I.II Animato', where clarinet flourishes and string plucks sound a bit Disney. As does the harp on 'Non Fiction: II.II Presto'.

Some tracks make me think of the wonderful soundtrack to the TV show Devs. The oboe and the glissando strings in 'Non Fiction: III. Misterioso' are examples of this.

I'm also reminded of Vangelis's brilliant faux-soundtrack The City, an album that makes me feel like it starts as a morning walk through a city, both living through city people and by heightening my perception of, well, everything, simply by how beautiful, experimental, and how wonderfully Vangelis crafted the album concept and music.

This is not only orchestral but ambient music. The aforementioned 'Misterioso' serves as an excellent example of what Rani does. She manages to mix the cerebral with the visceral in a grand way. I'll buy this album.