Thanks to a CD compilation provided by their record company (“Sounds From The Matrix 004″), I just recently got to know the music of New York based electronic / industrial act Neikka RPM. Taking a deeper dive listening to their “Rise Of The 13th Serpent” album, I had to find out that this project does provide a kind of dense acoustic experience crossing the boundaries of genres and electronic substyles along with quite some things making one think about the music and the project a little more. Thanks to “the internet”, getting in touch with Neikka RPM has proven to be quite easy, and Dominique was so kind to answer my annoyingly extensive set of questions… Read on. :)
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Some days earlier, I just stumbled across ‘words once said’, the debut album by French electronic / synth-pop group Celluloide. And I wonder what’s all the big thing about so-called “future pop”, again: Celluloide perfectly know how to create rather old-school electronic music, mostly using analog synthesizers and sound patterns that might make you remember the 1980s wave / synth-pop / “new romantics” movement, that might make you remember records like the “Speak And Spell” debut by Depeche Mode, or also the doings by British act Visage (mainly known for that very one song, though). Possibly mainstream these days, this music somehow still works out twenty years later, and this way, the music by Celluloide both is a pleasure listening to and brings back quite a set of memories, in some way. Enjoyed it, that’s for sure. The bands website offers a “full-length e.p.” featuring some cover versions for free mp3 download, and a video for one of their later tracks is out on youtube as well. Have a look. :)
“…
And I still believe in angels
And footsteps in the snow
And I still believe in the goodness of Man
Despite the evil in my world
And I still believe in love
Though I’m happy to be free of the pain
But please just give me one last breath
Before I pass from this place
One last breath for the wicked
One last breath for the sin
One last breath for the lost, the nameless
And those that I’ve forgotten…”
The soundtrack of this morning I listened to while on my way to work, taken from Sophia’s “Technology Won’t Save Us”, one of the very few indie-rock albums that have made it to my collection. In some ways, both the record title and the lyrics somehow seem to fit. Melancholy at its best, and I adore this album maybe just for its title. Indeed, technology won’t save us…
Oh well. Usually I visit the web site of Flesh Field once in a while, still hoping to see them live on stage around here somewhere someday. But obviously I never really took a closer look… If you visit the site, go to “Discog” and select “Internet Releases” (or, as an alternative, go here) to find around 80 minutes of their best tracks, remixed by artists like Icon Of Coil, Feindflug, Haujobb and a bunch of others, same as three unreleased songs. If you enjoyed their two albums so far, listening to those songs definitely won’t hurt, and if you don’t yet know about FF, perhaps this is a good starting point. My personal favorite out of this collection, so far, is “Inferior”, perhaps one of the best Flesh Field songs after all, remade by Forma Tadre - dark electronics at its best.
Sometimes there’s still hope: Even while nowadays people seem to have agreed upon the idea that web-shops “selling music online” have to lock down content they sell using some sort of DRM to prevent users from “illegally using” music they bought there (which ends up with shops like Apple’s iTunes music store where to buy music that requires you to own an Apple iPod in order to listen to it, or a bunch of other German stores which will not work if you don’t run any MS Windows operating system and a “supported player” [i.e. Windows Media Player…]), once in a while you stumble across a site like Jamendo… which provide you with vast amounts of “free” (not just free-of-charge) music, mainly available under some CreativeCommons license, to be downloaded to your hard drive using eMule or Bittorrent, to be copied to your favorite music player and listened to wherever, whenever you want, without having to worry about any artificially induced restrictions or limitations originally not there in the technology used for this. I could keep on writing for hours about that but I’ll better spend some time exploring all the music around here, some of it (for what I listened to by now) done in a way that is technically really up to highly-commercial records (but maybe a little more inspired). Go there, look around, feel home. :)
Following several deviations through the world of music from various parts of the world, I ended up astoundingly listening to “Passenger” by Jordan Reyne. And still I am amazed by this trip through worlds, through noises and melodies and fragments of both electronic and organic origin, by an incredibly dense release by a very talented and inspired musician. If you can imagine music somewhere in between Björk, Android Lust and The Gathering, somewhere in between dreams and visions, capturing different moods and atmospheres almost like a collection of photographs randomly put together, you are likely to love the music of this singer. And if all that doesn’t too much impress you, perhaps her very voice will… :) Great. By the way the songs themselves for “Passengers” and two other releases are all available for download online. Check it out.
Music for all those who dare to go beyond what is being sold in (online) music stores: “The Garden Of Unearthed Machines” by White Nois Stasis is another great piece of net audio released under a CreativeCommons license and available on archive.org, another manifestation of original electronic music, yet somewhat different to what you’re probably used to while listening to releases found at netlabels such as Thinner: Even though WNS also are into electronics, they exceed the boundaries of Eletronic/IDM/Ambient by providing an interesting, dense release heavily filled with industrial and noisy influences, harsh and yet atmospheric. “Te Garden…” contains quite a bunch of good ideas, for example the inclusion of non-electronic instruments (like the piano in “12 bit spectre” or the sitar at the end of “alihamet wormhole”) as well as heavily distorted vocal parts (samples?) and even guitars, making “I will (tr)eat you well” an exceptionally heavy track for this kind of music. Very inspiring music, I’ll try to search for some images to play with… ;) Check it out.
Wer hätte gedacht, daß diese Site wirklich irgendeinen Nutzen haben könnte: Wie ich jüngst entdecken durfte, ist die Clip- / was-auch-immer - Plattform YouTube nicht nur eine Sammlung aller möglichen und unmöglichen Artefakte der um sich greifenden Fähigkeiten von Mobiltelefonen, neben Telefonie auch Videos zu erzeugen, sondern daneben auch eine Quelle für Musik-Videos aller Art, die längst schon die Mainstream-Welt verlassen haben, respektive auch kaum noch auf anderem Wege zu sehen sind. Dort finden sich dann Leckerbissen von Bands wie Paradise Lost, Tiamat, Front Line Assembly, Pink Floyd, Depeche Mode, Sisters, Apocalyptica und mit Sicherheit noch etlichen anderen, nach denen ich bislang noch gar nicht zu suchen wagte und auf die man im “regulären” Programm derzeitiger Sender wohl eher nicht mehr zu hoffen braucht. Erkenntnis 1: In Zeiten ständig schrumpfender Aufmerksamkeitsspannen und sich überschlagender Veröffentlichungen auf einem immer kurzlebigeren Musikmarkt ist ein derartiges Archiv eine schöne Sache, nicht nur für den hoffnungslosen Nostalgiker. Erkenntnis 2: Wer braucht eigentlich den Blubb, den Viva und Co. derzeit über den Äther respektive die Satellitenschüssel prügeln, wenn man Andy Eldritch mit fieser 80er-Jahre - Sonnenbrille durch obskure Fabrik-Anlagen rennen sehen kann? Keiner? Eben. “Lucretia, my reflection, dance the ghost with me…”
