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Zu - 4 new CDs and 7" out now and exploding live performances

2006-01-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

The exploding mixture of no wave, free jazz, punk, noise is by now a unique and recognizable trademark that the italian instrumental trio Zu, Massimo Pupillo (Bass), Jacopo Battaglia (Drums) and Luca Mai (Alto & Baritone Saxophone), make detonate in every track and in every live performance.

Their musical experimentation and research has already fascinated a lot of artists that started to collaborate with Zu: Sonic Youth Thurston Moore & Jim O' Rourke, The Melvins, Fantomas, The Ex, Dälek, Peter Brotzmann, Ken Vandermark, Mats Gustafsson, Hamid Drake, Eugene Chadbourne, DJ Olive, Damo Suzuki and others.
Zu are in the record stores with 4 (four!) new CDs and 7" out in last 6 months:

"The Way Of the Animal Powers" in quartet with the cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm on XENG

"How To raise An Ox" in quartet with Mats Gustafsson on baritone sax on Atavistic

"Ardecore", traditional roman folk "murder ballads" with Geoff Farina on il Manifesto

Zu/Dälek 2 songs split 7" on Wallace

I saw Zu in concert last January 4, 2006 @ Galleria Toledo in Napoli.
What a great powerful and devastating live performance!
Odd tempos' drums, pulsating basslines, raging winds. Tribal and hypnothic sound explosion.
A cathartic collective epilepsy seized the audience. Instinct and bowels.
I can't describe it. Go and hear them around Europe.

Here are some songs from their last album:

Zu - The Way of the Animal Powers - Tom Araya is our Elvis (mp3 download)

Zu - The Way of the Animal Powers - Things fall apart (mp3 download)

Zu - The Way of the Animal Powers - Farewell to the species (mp3 download)

And the video of the split 7" with Dälek:

Zu (feat. Okapi) vs. Dälek - Spiritual healing (video download)

Enjoy Zu!

Liars - New EP - It fit when I was a kid Learn the art and take it out when you need

2005-12-29T10:29:00.002-08:00

Did that scene really take place in front of the artist's eyes or just comes from his fantasy? It was about 3 years ago and with this question in my mind I was admiring one of the erotic statues (say them pornographic) from the ancient Pompei held in the National Archaeological Museum of Napoli but rarely exposed: not the usual statue of a warrior or an athlete but a Satyr that has sex with a goat! Fact or fiction? "Art" would be the right answer. And "art" is the answer for those who are querying about the cover and the sound of the new Liars EP "It fit when I was a kid" on Mute Records, prelude to the forthcoming new album "Drum's not dead", out in the 2006.

(click here to see the uncensored cover)

Somebody already consider it the worst cover of the history of the music and somebody just free porn, worse because it's gay porn!But is simply art. Art. What else could you expect from two playful ex-Los Angeles art school students like Aaron Hemphill e Angus Andrew?
The skills in arts come out. In the artwork of the EP cover and in the music too. The coat of the punk funk paint of the first album "They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top" that permanent left its stain on all the papers is slowly fading away. And also the concept album as a canvas where shapes and suonds were created and modelled, like in the second "They were wrong so we drowned" with its imaginery of witches and woods, now seemstoo obsolete and redundant. In this last 4 songs EP (3+1 remix of the titletrack) Liars seem to hone their arty approach to the music and dedicate to the aesthetical research of essential components of the music andlife and society: the beat. The rhythm that beats the life. From the pulse of the heart of a foetus in the womb of the mother, to the pulse of the bodies making sex, to the pulse of acollective body, a crowd, that sings a monotonous prayer that leads to hypnotical trance statesand approaches the divine. The obsessive pulse of the minimalistic tribal tom tom in the titletrack "It fit when I was a kid"are nothing else than a celebration of the life and of its rhythms and definitively of the human nature and of its need of a metronome giving a trace to follow if not a sense to the life. The Angus deep and mysterious voice goes with the music, reciting undecipherable and cryptic lyrics. In the middle the voice go up the scales of an organ and the song turns into a medieval ritual chant, almost envoking or evoking a superhuman presence. So thrilling!

The tracks 2 and 3 of Liars' new EP will be not in the forthcoming album "Drum's not dead". "The Frozen Glacier Of Mastodon Blood" is characterized by continuous distorted and vibrating chords of strings that create an atmosphere of tension and wait, almost forced in a rhythmic cage by an incisive drumming that plays odd patterns. The rhythm stops just for a while to let the voice of Angus give vent and then it starts again always precise and metronomic, but with a different drum pattern. At the end of the song the vibrating strings escape from the rhythmic lock of the drumming and they seem to scratch the air searching for flesh before they definitively go out into the silence.
In "Bingo! Count Draculuck" an obsessed Angus repeats "Are you all right?" again and again while agrowing noise open a glimmer in the silence and soon metallic percussions of strings and drums make it a big leak.
The 4th track of the EP "Don't techno for an answer" is a techno remix of the titletrack that exasperates that research of the beat, going crazy toward post-human and trans-human.
Great EP.
Buy it @ Mute Records.

Two cover art versions are available as the original artwork may be too hard for some. Created by Julian Gross, the uncensored version is only available for sale through Liars' website and features the sleeve on edible paper.

Here you can listen to the titletrack

"It fit when I was a kid"

RealAudio Hi
RealAudio Lo
WindowsMedia Hi
WindowsMedia Lo

The EP also includes 3 video tracks of the songs 1, 2 and 3 made respectively by Julian Gross, Aaron Hemphill and Angus Andrew.

Here you can see the low-budget video of "It fit when I was a kid"

RealVideo
WindowsMedia

Enjoy!

My Top Indie 2005

2005-12-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

... and should I find the peace and quiet needed to set up my Top Indie 2005 while news like this one or this other one are raining all around? Quiet diffiuclt!
Anyway, taking into account that also if the long expected new Tv on the Radio's album will be out before the end of the year I can't never listen at it because you are already out louding the Christmas songs, and considering that I will soon integrate and update my ranking just after I will take a look to your full of unheard, here comes my Top Indie 2005. Not the best of 2005, simply the top of my listenings during the year.

My TOP INDIE 2005

1 - The Decemberists - Picaresque (Kill Rock Stars)
2 - The Mountain Goats - The sunset tree (4AD)
3 - Xiu Xiu - La forêt (5 Rue Christine)
4 - Dälek - Absence (Ipecac)
5 - Offlaga Disco Pax - Socialismo tascabile (Santeria)
6 - Bloc Party - Silent alarm (V2)
7 - Marta sui tubi - C'è gente che deve dormire (Eclectic Circus)
8 - A Frames - Black forest (Sub Pop)
9 - The Trail Of Dead - Worlds apart (Interscope)
10 - Eels - Blinking lights and other revelations (Vagrant)
11 - Ex Models - Chrome panther (Psychotica)
12 - The USA is a monster - Wohaw (Load)
13 - Shipping news - Flies the fields (Touch and Go)
14 - The Planet The - You absorb my vision (5 Rue Christine)
15 - The Books - Lost and safe (Tomlab)

... but now I am listening at the new Depeche Mode's Playing the angel
Eh! Eh!
Enjoy!

Xiu Xiu + Larsen = XXL Ciautistico! Much more than a sum

2005-12-08T13:24:00.000-08:00

Ciautistico! is the result of the collaboration between Xiu Xiu and the Italian band Larsen, out on Important Records.
The meeting was in a club of Seattle, a couple of years ago: just few seconds to understand that even if they were talking far languages, running on parallel lines, 10, 100, 1000 hidden mood-wires were building bridges between their paths. A lot of e-mails and a couple of live shows and finally just 11 days to create and register “Ciautistico!”, just a single intense crazy session, just the duration of an inaccurate number of wine bottles to drink.

“Ciautistico!” seems a really philologically correct title for the XXL album, because ciautistico is just a fantasy coined word from the Italian words “ciao” (hello) and “autistico” (autistic). In effect the album sounds like a greeting with smiles and hugs between two autistic persons that could often appear a little uncomunicable.
This collaboration has the merit of driving the Jamie Stewart’s urge of communication to a more blind landing place and at least for a while quieting both bands unquiet moods in a ritual drinking that mixes in a single bottle of wine the grapes of the mutated-synth-orchestrated pop from the Xiu Xiu vineyard, with the grapes of minimalistic droning instrumentals and almost-techno beat by Larsen vineyard.

XXL - Live @ Teatro Juvarra - Torino (Italy) - May 12, 2005

The incipit of the album, “Paw paw paw paw paw paw paw”, is a great orchestrated pop song with a strained and oniric synth melody that reminds to other great Xiu Xiu past episodes. Much Larsen marked is the next song, “Minnie mouseistic”, a thrilling and vibrating rolling out of discordant tones, trills and creaks that introduces us on tiptoe into their droning world, where Caralee McElroy is waiting us to recite her strange and confused monologue in a tremulous Italian. “Ciao ciautistico” seems just an intro, a rubbing and warming hands before to mould the next “(Pokey in your) Gnocchi”, the real touching point between the bands, the instant when their mouths drinking from the same cup reach to a kiss. A monotone and irreverent simple riff of guitar entwines cinematic droning sounds and orchestral chimes and bells, to weave a precious carpet that brings the Jamie’s voice to flight. “Distorted duck” is an instrumental song starting with hot and full-bodied guitar tones that evolve in a delayed melody that screw up on itself like a record that get stuck and reminds me to some atmospheres made by Italian band Massimo Volume in the early 90s before the duck of the title – a distorted sample of “quack” – invades the musical field and infects the serious mood with its jumping and rhythmic irony. “Lipstick fair” is just a glitchily fragment that introduces to a great suffering cover of the Adam Ant hit “Prince charming”; the singing blows in an emotional growing, with Jamie’s voice surfing on the higher waves of the deeper sea and shipwracking in a jubilation of atonal percussions and chimes and trills. “Birthday song” is another pretty instrumental gift, a bubbletronic pie with candles, an homage from Larsen to Xiu Xiu, The album ends with “Sunday”, an instrumental pop song again, to seal a great record, where the addition of Xiu Xiu vocals to the Larsen instrumental err counts much more than a simple sum.

Buy “Ciautistico!” @ Important Records.

Here come 3 songs from Ciautistico!

Xiu Xiu Larsen - Ciautistico ! - 01 - Paw paw paw paw paw paw paw (download mp3)

Xiu Xiu Larsen - Ciautistico ! - 03 - Ciao ciautistico (download mp3)

Xiu Xiu Larsen - Ciautistico ! - 04 - (Pokey in your) Gnocchi (download mp3)

The USA is a monster – Wohaw. You can’t imprison a nation in a reserve. You can’t imprison the music in a label

2005-11-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

It’s almost a month that I am listening it and It’s almost a month that I think to write about it.
I liked it since the first time, but I couldn’t catch it, couldn’t find the starting point. I was looking for a handhold, a keystone of this melting pot record: "Wohaw", the second album of The USA is a monster, on Load Records.

Perhaps I was making the same criminal error done by those people that tried to humble and attach oxbows to a whole people and nation, the native Indians, because I also was trying to brilant work in a reserve, a ghetto, with a musical label: Math-Metal? Or Prog-Core?. Or Noise-Folk? No. Nothing of all that. No strange coloured and exotic animal to exhibit and to watch ironically or scared behind the bars of a zoo, but the pride of a people translated in music by a duo, Tom on drums and keyboards, and Colin on guitars and vocals, that give us a parade of musical genres and styles, a wide variety of sounds and rhythms, an unbounded history that suddenly appears, like an endless line of horseback Indians above a bare hill. Not a menace, but a memory and a declaration of a greatness that demands respect. Rather an holyday of peoples and tribes, where the themes of Indian spirituality, ancestry and drums, live once again, running deep in the music and artwork, going with vitriolic political lyrics that seem arrows thrown against the silence. An holyday where, with Tom and Colin, this time, the conquerors are lending the sounds instead of bringing pain and screams. So Hella, Lighting Bolt, Oneida and hundreds of other musicians join together Apaches, Blackfoots, Cherokees, Comanches, Delawares, Mohawks, Iroquois, Sioux and hundreds of other tribes. Power metallic riffs join with tribal drummings, squeaks and squeals join with Indian chants. You can’t imprison a nation in a reserve. You can’t imprison the music in a label.
Here comes a song from "Wohaw":

The USA is a monster – Riff scientist (downalod mp3)

Listen to the Italian indie music on my radio.blog player

2005-08-18T00:28:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I start my radio.blog player on these pages.
You can see it on the right side of the blog.
Here you can listen to the best Italian indie music.
Only Italian indie music.
This streaming service wants to contribute to the Italian indie music could arrive to as much as possible ears.
Just an handful of nice songs, but I will try to often add new songs and bands, also if I know that it will always remain just a tunnel and limited vision of what Italians indie bands do.
All songs are free mp3 taken from bands or labels webpages to respect their passionate passionate work.
Enjoy.

4 new songs by Sonic Youth Live@Flywheel Easthampton, MA, USA July, 23, 2005

2005-08-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

As reported on the Sonic Youth official web pages some days ago the band performed 4 new songs: Helen Lundeberg, Do You Believe in Rapture, Or and Pink Steam.
Thurston Moore + Heavy Creeps (Sonic Youth minus Lee Renaldo) performed new stuff live at Flywheel Easthampton, MA, USA on July, 18, 2005.
You can find a video from that venue catching Pink steam on the Sonic Youth official web pages.

5 days later Thurston performed the 4 new songs in a solo set live again at Flywheel Easthampton for a benefit show.

First Matt (You Ain’t No Picasso) posted 3 of the 4 songs on his basic and essential blog.

Here are the complete live set, with Thurston playing acoustic versions of the 4 new songs:

1 – tuning/intro (download mp3)

2 – Helen Lundeberg (download mp3)

3 – Do you believe in rapture (download mp3)

4 – Or (download mp3)

5 – (Eye liner) (download mp3)

6 – Pink steam (download mp3)

7 – The sun machine is coming down and we're gonna have a party (download mp3)

Enjoy

Ex Models' new album "Chrome panther" - Swallowing and vomiting back No wave. Post modern-primitivism and noise-trance

2005-07-02T07:55:00.000-07:00

The italian indie label Psychotica records is going to become more and more an essential reference for those who search for new corrosive musical mixtures and extreme contaminations among noise, jazzcore, no wave, hip hop, punk and industrial.
Their new release, co-producted with the german X-Mist, is the 3rd work of the newyorkers Ex Models, "Chrome panther", out in Europe only on vinyl, everywhere on CD in late autumn.

I'm listening to the post-modern tribality oozing from the vinyl and I found myself thinking about the celebration of a tribal welcoming rite where the circle sitting guests are invited to join and share and drink from a cup, passed hand by hand, and where everyone vomit what he just get.
Ex Models do alike.
After a re-arrangement of the band that added to Shahin Motia-guitars+vocals and Zach Lehrhoff, bass+vocals, the drummer Kid Millions from Oneida, just like the fellow countrymen Liars, with this new work Ex Models swallow a more conscious and basic drink of the No Wave, chewing it with Punk-Funk and Kraut-Rock, spitting it with 25 years of New Wave, mixing togheter into the cup ed vomiting back with abrasive and tearing sounds.

The start is with the splinter “Chrome panthers”, shortest but devastating song, with the guitar strings rough rubbing till blood and vomit.
Then the cup moves to other hands. “That’s funny I don’t feel like a shithead” and “Mutiny” and here the odd and pulsating and creative Millions' drumming goes in resonance with the bass and guitar noisy loops. And the hisses and the whistlings and the larsens come in and out from the songs. Pure tribal and hypnotic trance.
You can hear the presence and the strength of the Oneida's drummer expecially in the ability to dilate the percussive action and to keep the trance on for a longest time. So the times become longer than the 1-2 minutes songs of the past.
The guitars (?) hisses and oinks yap again in "Buy american, a song that wraps itself in a spiralling loop like a dark blind tunnel with no exit, stage of a crazy and pervert race where the crying of the chased confuses with the rescue sirens, while the drumming beats its tempo with stop and go.
Odd tempos and staccato stratching guitars hang on also the next "Headlines" that resumes the hypnotic and ossessive trance rhythm, but here guitars and drums seems to almost change their roles each others. The sound wrap on itself like an ecstatic dancer that vacillates and loses any else reference except the obsessive frequency of the loop.
Ending "Crome hearts" is signed by a rhythm that moves from tribal to martial and the song is characterizes by screaming lyrics as liberation screams, repeating again and again, at the end drowning in a sonic and noisy wave of distorting guitars and hammering drums that sweeps and blazes all, closing the rite.
Buy the record @ Psychotica records.
Here 2 preview (samples ~ 30/40 sec) from the Ex Models web pages:

Ex Models – That’s funny I don’t feel like a shithead (download mp3 – partial)

Ex Models – Headlines (download mp3 – partial)

Coldplay pay tribute to Kylie Minogue @ Glastonbury (UK) festival, june 25, 2005

2005-06-30T03:21:00.000-07:00

OK, I acknowledge that I like a bit of Coldplay.
Instead, what I dislike is the sprint race that mass media engaged, after they get Bono-God off the paradise’s throne, to achieve the beatification-sainthood for Chris Martin & Co., before of that one of Pope John Paul II, put on the fastest-track by Ratzinger (ooops…. Pope Benedict-Idon’trememberwhatnumber) to benefit for his own personal image.
So, also if I am sure that the tribute paid, last saturday june 25, 2005 @ Glastonbury (UK) festival, by Coldplay to the unlucky and convalescent popstar Kylie Minogue, was really true, sincere and honest, I can’t get read the spot light and emphasis given to this episode by mass-media as much as my reaction, within the framework of building “the prophecy of a new messiah’s advent”.
But alas, I can already hear the angels’ trumpets blare…..

OK, I acknowledge that I like a bit of Coldplay…. and I also like a bit of Kylie Minogue, that really looks like my ex-girlfriend.
Instead, what I dislike it’s just me, lately too intolerant and anger.
I apologise if I have offended any person, feeling or religious belief. Please, forgive me.
Thank you Chris. Come back soon Kylie.
From the BBC special of Glastonbury 2005, here comes the Coldplay’s tribute to Kylie Minogue:
Coldplay – Can’t get you out of my head (download real audio)

Bachi da pietra – Italian alt-folk blues. Of bowels, of sweat, of fields and ground

2005-06-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

I relax under the shadow in this afternoon summer heat. Right after the lunch. Outside all is quiet and the silence is all around this seaside suburb that hard upon the morning coming and going on the beach, at last exhausted falls asleep, turning away from the sea and hugging the campaign and the cropped fields, just on the inside.
Silence is really everywhere, except for the branches and the leaves caressed by a pleasant and heaven-sent breeze. Only from time to time the silence is broken by the rumble of a far bike that let you best enjoy this summer quiet with its making noise.
I relax and just now I start to enjoy my vacations.
From the low ground window with that light wind come inside the smells and the fragrances of the sunburned field, of the ripening fruits on the trees, of the flowers courted by propeller-whirring hornets, of the vegetables hanging at sun on a white wall, of the red wine left into the glass still held by the hand of the man fallen asleeping on a deck chair.
I relax and I let the music starts:

“Tornare nella terra” by Bachi da pietra, an Italian alt-folk-blues. Made of bowels, of sweat, of fields and ground. The sound is knead with the ground. The same ground who sands smelling messages to me. The sound is one with the ground. The voice is laying down on the music, just like bowing farmers in the fields to draw the lines. Sometimes it seems to only mime the words with the lips. Implied, just like the sweat, implied into the gesture that goes with. Another time it gives lyrics as charming as flavouring and charming as grapes from the grapevine. And it’s a chorus of percussions and strings, now beated and bited, now caressed and kissed by hard wine cellar and field’s working callused hands, by mouths closed up by the muggy weather and the nearby sea’s salt that burrows wrinkles into the burned faces.
I relax and this music is cradling me. It leads me in a trip into my teen memory, among the barrels of wine that inebriate if I was passing too close and the nettles that stinging my ankles while I’m working the ploughs to let the water flows into the ground.

Bachi da pietra - Solare (download mp3)

Buy "Tornare nella terra" by Bachi da pietra @ Wallace records.

Kill Rock Stars/5rc new releases: Need New Body and The Planet The. Pure fun and amusement

2005-06-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

I'm listening at the new releases of Kill Rock Stars/5 Rue Christine recordings: Need New Body and The Planet The.

Need New Body - Where's Black Ben?

The Planet The - You Absorb My Vision

Both move with alternation between frenetic and broken rhythms, grinding halt and start again. Both got an approach that seems to be canonic and iconoclastic at the same time.
I love both. But they escape from any attempt of classification. I can't take them. Progressive? Punk? Funk? Or just Cabaret? Divertissement?
So different but so similar.
Suddenly the light.
Surfing the net, randomly I pick up this new: Berlusconi's fat sold for € 15.000.

And then all become clear and bright and I understand the real essence of both musical proposal: pure fun and amusement. The fun and the amusement that I wish to bring with myself, while I'm going to etch our beloved premier, Mr Berlusconi. I'm almost sure that Need New Body and The Planet The will be happy to play the soundtrack!

Need New Body - Eskimo (download mp3)

The Planet The - You absorb my vision (download mp3)

Buy Kill Rock Stars CDs here.

Calla - "It dawned on me" from forthcoming album "Collisions"

2005-06-12T03:03:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wish I could fall in love in front of a mobile phones or a dress shop window just like the majority of the people that live their lives with much lightness than me.
I understand that often to be always serious and to look for learned and cultured music also in the alternative/pop/punk/hardcore/noise stuff could be very very boring.
So, despite my original intension to review the dangerous cross between newyorker hip hop and italian jazzcore in the 2 songs split CD - Dälek vs. Zu - and also if purists will disagree, let me rejoice with the new Calla's song "It dawned on me".
The song comes out from the only 300 copies limited "Collisionsworks" EP and anticipates the forthcoming next album "Collisions", out in late summer.

Without any of the well-read approach of the previous work "Televise".
Without any of that intellectual mixing between experimental and traditional.
Denuded of the slo-core dressing and psychedelic atmospheres, only a simple and basic pop song remains. With its catchy epic new wave 80's style incipit of the distorted guitar.
And that's all I need today!
It repeats and repeats again in my CD player.

Calla - It dawned on me (download mp3)

Visione Sinfonica - Your latest paintbrush

2005-05-30T13:09:00.000-07:00

Once I asked an abstractist painter how he understood his painting was end and the last paintbrush was given. A smile was his only reply.
I'm listening to an italian band named Visione Sinfonica and their "Pittore del silenzio" and other songs.

I feel it's going to comunicate something to me, but it's a nonverbal communication. It trascends the audio and the word. I feel those sounds that fast flow along my body, just like the sharp walls of the precipice I'm falling into. I'm sinking. The sound scratches and tears off and bites my skin and my flesh. This nailed music assails and hooks me. Or it's me who's looking for an handhold?
Am I trying to take something out from these sounds or are they the ones who tryng to take something out from me? Something that can't go out and hides below the skin and the thoughts and the gaze.
I'm looking for words.
I'm looking for words.
Confused. All seems relative these days. I lost my habitual reference points. On instinct, nervously I overreact. To every single disturb or upset.
At the table I was careful to avoid dirtying myself. The stain that your accidentally flying salad fork left on my shirt can't be the last paintbrush.
Let's talk about togheter.

Visione Sinfonica - Senza titolo (download mp3)

Visione Sinfonica - Pittore del silenzio (download mp3)

Visione Sinfonica - Cuore/amore (download mp3)

Visione Sinfonica - Sul collo (download mp3)

Visione Sinfonica - Il sesto pezzo (download mp3)

Xiu Xiu - 5 new songs from forthcoming album La foret live @ LA March 4, 2005

2005-05-07T11:51:00.000-07:00

I have listen to the new Xiu Xiu's album "La Foret" that will be released July 12 on 5 Rue Christine and Acuarela, but here instead of sharing new songs from the CD, I prefer to give live versions of 5 new songs to you, taken from the concert @ Echo, Los Angeles, California, last March 4, 2005.
My choice wants to respect the passionate bands and indie labels that keep on working to let alternative music emerge from the sea of corporations, away from their politics and earnings.

(by Roberta "saintbarbie" 2005)

Almost all along "La Foret" Jamie sings with a whispering and trembling voice. Going with a sad piano ("Mousey Toy") and more often with a deep and hot chord vibrating acoustic guitar ("Clover", "Baby Captain") it slowly slides, evoking oniric scenarios with synth and industrial sounds of sonic delirium and saturation, with wind instruments that cut the silence, with carillons, wheels, crazy tic tacs. Sometimes the total absence of tempo ("Ale") creates the panic of confusion, from which Jamie comes hanging on a prayer that however crushes on a thud noisy wall or under a martial rhythm. Only few flashlights: "Muppet Face" with a little upbeat guitar and the counter-singing by the sampled voice of a doll; "Pox", pure new wave song, with two lonely notes pulsating bass line and guitar chords, and techno bubble soap exploding all around, a real Xiu Xiu style anthem. Also when the band retrieves the melody and a more standard song playing to built a pop gem - "Bog People" - Jamie's hopeless singing sounds just like that one of a daying swan.

Live recording is not complete and I don't have the set list (May someone post it?).
Live @ Echo - Los Angeles, California, USA, March 4, 2005.

Xiu Xiu - 01 - Fabulous muscles

Xiu Xiu - 02 - Pox (Download)

Xiu Xiu - 03 - Bog People (Download)

Xiu Xiu - 04 - Ale (Download)

Xiu Xiu - 05 - Don Diasco

Xiu Xiu - 06 - Muppet Face (Download)

Xiu Xiu - 07 - Mousey Toy (Download) (partial)

Have a nice listening.

CocoRosie – Noah’s Ark out in September. Here some new live songs

2005-05-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

I have been turned on to the naïve world of CocoRosie by Nin-Com-Pop, excited coming from their concert in Faenza, Italy, last May 2004. Her beautiful review and pictures were like the advertisement sign of an ice cream parlour in the middle of the desert. The day after I bought “La maison de mon rêve” that loving coupled with my CD player for months.

Touch and Go Records now announces that the 2nd CocoRosie’s album “Noah’s ark” will be released in September 2005, disclosing new cover and track list.

1 - K-hole
2 - Beautiful boyz
3 - South 2nd
4 - Bear hides and buffalo
5 - Tekno love song
6 - The sea is calm
7 - Noah's ark
8 - Milk
9 - Armageddon
10 - Brazilian sun
11 - Bisounours
12 - Honey or tar

Waiting for September I have been around on the www to search for their recent live performances and tests of new material. I have found a handful of now songs: someone had a title, someone else not yet, perhaps only a demo.
Could you help me to identify what songs among the following will get on the “Noah’s Ark”?
Here they come:

Live @ La Guinguette Pirate, Paris, May 20, 2004

CocoRosie – Beautiful boyz

CocoRosie – Tekno love song

CocoRosie – untitled song #1

CocoRosie – untitled song #2

CocoRosie – untitled song #3

Live @ Radio Aligre FM, Paris, December 17, 2004

CocoRosie – K-hole

CocoRosie – Brazilian rain song

CocoRosie – Left hand shoe

Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!

Bella ciao - a rebel song, a liberation song

2005-04-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

Not as famous as many traditional songs from my town Napoli, nor as "Volare (Nel blu dipinto di blu)", nor as "Quando, quando, quando", but if I have found more than 100 versions of "Bella ciao" on the net, by different artists, in many different genres and languages, that will mean something to many people. Right?

Surely that was the most played song today in Italy. Today was April 25, the Liberation Day in Italy. Liberation from nazi-fascist regime, reached by Partisans 60 years ago with a popular insurgence, before Allied Forces came to last hit to Nazi.

There are many many versions of "Bella ciao" as I said. Here comes someone.

A splendid ethereal and striking version by Anita Lane, Nick Cave's author and inspiring muse, member of the unseparable Bad Seeds, taken from his album “Sex o’clock” (Mute records 2001).
Anita Lane - Bella ciao

Another beautiful easy listening version of the song by Mirah, Phil Elverum's Microphones female vocalist, from his album “To all we stretch the open arm” with The Black Cat Orchestra (YoYo records 2004).
Mirah - Bella ciao

Another one by Spaceheads from the self-titled album (1996): a really strange version with experimental/avant/jazz/dub/trip/acoustic/techno/space contaminations, committed to the voice of Marion Coutts, singer out of the Dog Faced Hermans, anarcho-punk band from Netherlands.
Spaceheads - Bella ciao

To stay in anarcho-punk community, here comes another version of "Bella ciao" by Chumbawamba, unreleased and dedicated to Carlo Giuliani, the 20 years old italian boy killed by italian police in Genova, in the summer of 2001 during the protests against the G8 economy, liberism and their wild globalization.
Chumbawamba - Bella ciao

For the hard to please ones there is the version by Swingle Singers, famous ensamble made by Ward Swingle in the early ’60s in Paris.
Swingle Singers - Bella ciao

But the non-standard version are so many.
Could someone help me to give a name to this (hungarian?) heavy metal band? Vàltozat?
Vàltozat (?) - Bella ciao

Do you like this speed-folk-metal version by russian 44 Leningrad?
44 Leningrad - Bella ciao

Here you can find the punk version by swiss band PunkSeck
PunkSeck - Bella ciao

So many the ska versions too: german by Heiter Bis Wolkig, spanish by Los Canallas and italians by Banda Bassotti.
Heiter Bis Wolkig - Bella ciao
Los Canallas - Bella ciao
Banda Bassotti - Bella ciao

I finish with the folk version by italian Modena City Ramblers, that also comes at the end of their usual concert in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome, May 1st, International Workers' Day.
Modena City Ramblers - Bella ciao

Resistance. Now and ever.

A Frames - Black Forest: an abrasive shower to wash all that buttery pop away!

2005-04-16T07:26:00.000-07:00

I acknowledge that I didn't know A Frames before I listen their new 3rd album "Black Forest".

The intro of the record, the opening titletrack "Black Forest I", retrieved me to the recent works made by Liars: raining noise and a distort and pulsing bass that seems the heart of a metallic crawling with life forest.
Then the attack of the next song "Experiment", with that martial drumming, the hopping bass and the guitar as scratching as nails on a smooth wall without any grip, and the voice, the voice that gives a shiver along my shoulder, while a schizoid and epileptic silhouette it draws before my eyes: Ian Curtis. That image does not hint to go out of focus also in the next song "Galena", in fact it wiggles always faster and without any coordination, just like after a tarantula bite.
The injected venom flows under the skin, whacking the body off, just like an electric shock and the body changes as it passes through, mixing the screams with thousands of voices and thousands of echoes, while the past runs fast. The frames are short: the Johnny "Rotten" Lydon's punk in "Death Train", while the virus grafts on a bluegrass substrate in "Files". In "Eva Braun" it re-emerges, dressing like Ian Curtis's Joy Division, even in the choice of the hated nazi imaginary, able to keep opaque lights flaring in the middle of the rotten.
Dark and pealing funk-punk à la Liars in "Black Forest II", with odd tempos, broken by continuous hiccups.
With "Memoranda" an "U-boot", A Frames brings the dark wave back home, in the USA, and here the obsessive rythmes meet the typical american indie-rock guitar wrenching embroideries: two sparkle asters in a black sky.
"My teacher" is a slowly overlapping of dialoguing voices for a tempory apparent calm, which noise and rythm restart from, swithcing till the end funk-punk and dark wave attitudes in “Age of Progress”, “Negative” and the final “Black Forest III", that abrasively closes the record , drowning it under a noisy shower.
Buy "Black Forest" @ Sub Pop records.
Here 2 songs (mp3) from the album:
A Frames - Black Forest - 02 - Experiment
A Frames - Black Forest - 03 - Galena

Coldplay - 5 songs live + "Talk" from the forthcoming "X&Y"

2005-04-09T03:22:00.000-07:00

New Coldplay's album "X&Y" will be out on June 6 as announced on their web site where
you can find the artwork and the track list (12 new songs).
The album will be preceded by single ‘Speed Of Sound’ on May 23.
Moving from USA, last week the band was in Europe to keep on live testing new songs from the forthcoming album.
Some anticipations were already been given to fans during public radio station KCRW-FM's
annual benefit A Sounds Eclectic Evening concert Saturday, March 12, 2005 at The Universal Amphitheatre - Los Angeles.

This is the set list of the concert:

Coldplay - Live @ TheUniversal Amphitheatre - Los Angeles
Saturday, March 12, 2005

01 - Square one (download mp3)
02 - In my place
03 - White shadows (download mp3)
04 - The scientist
05 - Daylight
06 - Sparks
07 - A message (download mp3)
08 - Clocks
09 - What if (download mp3)
10 - Politik
11 - Speed of sound (download mp3)
12 - Yellow

And here again a new track from "X&Y":

Coldplay - X&Y - 05 - Talk (download mp3)

The Decemberists - And we'll all come praise the storytellers

2005-03-06T10:13:00.000-08:00

Late, when you are trying to fall asleep and wipe away the two thoughts that hold tight to weariness - the expiry date of your job and your too much big and empty bed - the joy to hear fairytales from a storyteller peeps out.
When I was a child I remember there were those records with a voice that told about gnomes, sprites, princes, knights, dragons, and a lot of sounds, noises, voices of animals, from the wood, from the sea, thunders...... They gave me quiet, happines, fear sometimes.
This evening - relaxed on my bed - I have listen The Decemberists' new album "Picaresque", scheduled for march 22, and it has given the same joy to me.

Just starting the CD the dark room has become populated by the word-made characters and full of the figures painted in the literary lyrics by Colin Meloy.
As many fairytales, an animal (a kind of bird?) sound opens the first song of the album, with "The Infanta" carried on the back of a pachyderm, going with drums in a spanish march tempo.
In an unusually sunny and happy day R.E.M. meet The Smiths in "We both go down togheter", "The sporting life", "The bagman's gambit", "Sixteen military wives".
"Eli, the barrowboy" reminds me to Traffic's "John Barleycorn must die". So "(From my own true love) Lost at sea". This one makes me shiver.
Literary indie rock. Are The Decemberists moving toward progressive music?

A really folkloristic country band seem to accompaign the accordion in "The mariner's revenge song".
Anyway "The engine driver" shows that The Decemberists, by now, write popsongs with a personal and recognizable style.
Buy "Picaresque" here.
Here instead you can listen 2 song from the album:
The Decemberists - The engine driver
The Decemberists - (From my own true love) Lost at sea (removed link)

The Books

2005-03-01T23:54:00.000-08:00

"...leggo gli usati perché le pagine molto sfogliate e unte dalle dita pesano di più negli occhi, perché ogni copia di libro può appartenere a molte vite e i libri dovrebbero stare incustoditi nei posti pubblici e spostarsi insieme ai passanti che se li portano dietro per un poco e dovrebbero morire come loro, consumati dai malanni, infetti, affogati giù da un ponte insieme ai suicidi, ficcati in una stufa d'inverno, strappati dai bambini per farne barchette, insomma ovunque dovrebbero morire tranne che di noia e di proprietà privata, condannati a vita in uno scaffale..."

"...I read used (books) because much flipped and greased by fingers pages weigh more in the eyes, because each copy of a book can belong to many lives and the books should be left without any care in public places and move with the passers-by which carry them around for a little while and they should die like them, consumed by the ailments, infected, drowned from a bridge with the suicide people, burned in a stove during winter, torn by the childs to make paper boats, so anyway they should die except for boredom and private possession, condemned upon a shelf for its lifetime..."

Quotation by Erri De Luca's tale "Tre cavalli" (Three horses)
I apologize for awful translation with the author and the readers. Another one better than mine is welcome.
The words of the italian writer come to my mind when I have heard for the first time this strange musical duo, discovered just know (Many thanks to Aurgasm. Why don't you tell me about it before?): The Books.

Since by picking the duo's name, Nick Zammuto Willscher (a guitarist) and Paul De Jong (a cellist) seem to show the same mental attitude and feelings than the italian writer for that concerning the literature, the music, and the art at all.
The books and the library which they refer to are the myriad of samples and sounds, directly taken from the real life. Mixed in an especially sublime manner, like only a great cook can do with spices and aromas, those samples dress and enrich the sound of the band.
Food music is otherwise a definition that they like a lot.
Guitar and strings get married with daily ambient sounds, just like bread and butter, in a musical stratification that tries with success to take simple and ordinary truths out from the complex mix. Almost searching for an ideal purity.
Their new album "Lost And Safe" is scheduled for release in April 5 on TomLab.
Taste this slice:
The Books - An Animated Description Of Mr. Maps

Meanwhile in Italy .... (Part #2)

2005-02-27T03:09:00.000-08:00

Part #2
Strictly talking about music ..... at least trying...!

Sometimes a child makes us wonder for unexpected genius.
Sometimes a crazy man makes the same for wise words.
Sometimes God speaks through the voice of a child or a crazy man.
Sometimes, stealing childish and crazy attitudes, someone prefers to play music.
Jennifer Gentle do that.

"Valende" - their 3rd album and the 1st after they signed with Sub Pop - is a trip into late '60s-'70s psychedelic suggestions, hanging in the balance between pop songs and experimental, drifting away from realty. Garage, odd folk, keyboards à la Manzarek and a lonely dive into Barrett moods. Circle spiralling on themselves.
Here are 2 songs from "Valende":
Jennifer Gentle - I do dream you
Jennifer Gentle - Universal daughter

In these days there is another record that reminds me of images and thoughts of dilatation and saturation. If Jennifer search for them at the inside, Franklin Delano stretch them outside.

Their "Like a smoking gun in front of me" is a kite with a cold steel wire linked to your soul that takes you miles away in a desert.
Those visions and this electric new folk as soundtrack.
Everywhere this new folk saturates the space.
It freezes me. And thrills me.
It's elsewhere. Nowhere from Italy.
Is it an escape? A getaway?
Is it an abandon? A renounce?
Are we running away from something?
.... I said I try not talking more about politics.
Listen:
Franklin Delano - Sounds like rain
Franklin Delano - Please remember me

And listen these recent records:
...A toys orchestra - Peter Pan syndrome
...A toys orchestra - Modern lucky man
Uncode duello - Soundtrack for UD
Blessed child opera - Flashing lights

... waiting for the forthcoming albums of
Marlene Kuntz
Yuppie Flu

... and moving on tour with:
Zu

Meanwhile in Italy .... (Part #1)

2005-02-22T13:08:00.000-08:00

Some days ago somebody asked me for news from Italy. Here they come!

Part #1
(Please skip if you are not interested to know my personal political ideas)

Strange coincidences.
It happens that His Majesty The King of Jokes/The Joker Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, our (not mine!) president - while he keeps being a pusher of illusions, staying at government and on TVs (all of his own property or control), and giving hand to Mr. George W. Bush into Iraqi illegal war, while with the other hand he breaks down the welfere state and the workers' conquests and the democracy and the freedom - is going to write lyrics that some menestrel of his regime will sing, just when a victim of his executions, Daniele Luttazzi - the satire comedian censored and purged from TVs togheter with many other comedians and opinionists in few years - has recorded his first (and only) album of songs composed during last 25 years.
Daniele vs Silvio. Who do you root for?
Daniele Luttazzi - Money for dope (removed link)
Silvio Berlusconi - Io berlusca che non sono altro (This is a joke! An exe file. Don't worry! It's virus free!)
Buy Luttazzi's album here and support his shows.

Here you can find some of the Luttazzi's pungent satirical gags, that caused his purge (+ Benigni and other comedians' gags against Berlusconi).

Factory's new beginning: Raw-T

2005-02-15T04:57:00.000-08:00

Manchester's legendary Factory label - midwife of british new wave during 70's-80's, featuring Joy Division, New Order, Durutti Column, OMD and others - is back on the track again! For the fourth time!
F4 is the new label's logo that replaces the older which fans were fond of.

Click here to access to "old Factory" web pages.

Click here to access "new Factory" web pages.
To persuade Tony Wilson, the boss, to one more attempt the adventure, that revealed Ian Curtis's shortest spring to the world, this time was a young collective from Manchester: Raw-T.

Aged about 17 (on average), they melt hip hop and garage, giving new british soil to american street colture's roots.
"Switch/Ego" was the debut 12", released in december 2004.
"Realise and witness" will be their first full length album, out in march 2005.
"Where we live", scheduled for february 21, is the antipasto.
EnJoy!
Raw-T - Where we live (removed link)

The "day after" syndrome: in memory of Bob Marley

2005-02-07T13:32:00.000-08:00

It happened with iraqi war.
It happened with asian tzunami.
It happens everyday at every corner.
Immediately after a tragic event - natural catastrophe or terrorist act - worldwide people join the indignation and the sorrow and the solidarity with the victims.
The day after those feelings are already gone.
While elsewhere some people still suffer from yesterday's event and hope somebody helps, putting feelings aside, we - the luckiest ones - we let ourselves be distracted by daily well-being life little preoccupations.
Such hypocrisy!
Yesterday there was Bob Marley (02/06/1945 – 05/11/1981) 60th birthday celebration.

I forgot it.
I forgot it while newspapers and TVs - probably less sensible than me for some themes - talked largely about it, bringing Africa, or better some african folklore, to light.
But perhaps I would have to admit that my greater forgetfulness was not that.
Searching for names and titles of my records collection black and afroamericans musicians are few, too few, although they started music.
Am I unconsciously racist?
Perhaps yes. My displeasure and excuses for that.
I know that's not enough to solve people's troubles and I know asking for excuses is not enough to modify our western wasteful lifestyle, without to renounce to something for the weakest and poorest ones.
That's not enough, but I want to start remember it to me just today, the day after.
For Bob, For Africa and for every south of the world and towns.
Bob Marley – Could you be loved (removed link)
Bob Marley - Get up stand up (removed link)
When I listen these songs, I can't stop my feet and heart and mind.

Hella: 2 disc double solo record

2005-02-06T08:32:00.000-08:00

"Church Gone Wild/ Chirpin Hard" is going to be out in few weeks: beginning of march as Hella's webpages say.

Suicide Squeeze label will release this new Sacramento's duo work.
Some teachers of musical critic wrote on the blackboard the equation: Hella = math rock.
But that one is an equation with no solutions.
Much more than staccato guitar and drums parts, back and forth, stop and start.
Much more than virtuosism.
Much more than shit on the sheet music.
Zach Hill and Spencer Seim do not believe in that cruel and cold god in the name of which prog and metal musicians have often been sacrificed on the altar of the music.
Not a crazy race toward the trap to reach the false heaven of the perfection but the consciousness and the acceptance of the death of the god and the ability to resist the consequences. Searching for new musical experiences and emotions in many different directions. So, fast talking each other, Zach - the drummer - expands to outise the borders of the rhythm, in“Church Gone Wild”, while Spencer - the guitarist - contaminates them from the inside, in “Chirpin Hard” .
Here come 2 tracks:
Hella - Church Gone Wild - We was just boys, living in a dead ass german shepard
Hella - Chirpin Hard - Song from uncle

Soundtrack for feet and heart warm bath: The Dears

2005-01-30T11:47:00.000-08:00

On foot in the snow. I came home on foot, printing off my shoes in the snow!
It’s so banal – you will say – that’s wintertime. Well, It’s true, but at my seaside town last times were 1985 (I remember some flocks of snow) and, back, 1956 (I was still not planned)!!!
3 kilometers from home the bus said “Farewell”, the wheels spinning without moving in any direction on the white-covered road. In few minutes the same way for all the cars, not equipped for snow travel, and a big queue started to form.
I got off the bus and I walked along the road that leads to my town, dropping the hill.
While I walked on, a fascinating and unusual show, the one that only nature can give: the snow upon the sea.
I walked in the middle of the road, where the snow was thinner. A smaller danger to slip on the ice, a big risk to be hit by car. From the cars someone invited me inside. I keep go ahead. I spent almost 1 hour to reach home.
I was a kind of ice cube when I arrived. Upon my face the cold drawn a smile or a paresis beginning. My frozen feet hurt me; back to life in a smoking warm bath.
Murray Lightburn’s hot velvet voice and The Dears soft music blanket melted the rest away, covering me just like a lovely caress. The smile remained.

"No cities left" on sale in Italy only since autumn 2004, despite the rest of the world.
Buy it here.
Here come 2 tracks from the album:
The Dears - No cities left - 01 - We can have it (removed link)
The Dears - No cities left - 03 - Lost in the plot (removed link)

Liars - live on tour in Italy and up to finish new work in Berlin

2005-01-17T13:17:00.000-08:00

Announced directly by guitarist Aaron Hemphill on the band's web pages, they will be back on tour in Italy next February. Dates are:
2/15 - Torino
2/16 - Roma
2/17 - Sarzana
2/18 - Bologna
2/19 - Verona
After these shows they will be in Berlin (Germany) to finish up thier new record.

They are Liars: name was never so appropriate for a band that surprises for its continuous change of musical direction, only following the limits of their own imagination. Early associated with new post punk/funk scene with its first work "They threw us all in a trench and stuck a monument on top", the tall Angus Andrew's band quickly moved away from that etiquette towards a more personal melt of genres, sounds, attitudes. Just like in a radioactive reaction, when an istable nucleus of an element decays into a different isotope of the same element or into a different element, with energy or partcles emissions, so Liars's sound achieves an updating of the fears and the anxieties and the alienations that were proper of past decades sounds. Almost a reincarnation. And their alternations of 4/4 and odd tempos, their accelerations or obsessive loops, describe the schizophrenic best fit curve of post-industrial society in current lifetimes.
Definitively you can't catch their music in a definition or with a comparison (Pop Group, Sonic Youth and others) , because it slips away, but surely you could better call it "pre" instead of "post"!
Waiting for new release, later in spring, here are 2 songs from their second work "They were wrong so we drowned":
Liars - They were wrong so we drowned - 01 - Broken witch (removed link)
Liars - They were wrong so we drowned - 08 - Hold and it will happen anyway (removed link)
You can buy their records here or download audio clips here.
What will be their next lie?
Anyway don't believe them! They are Liars!

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm

2005-01-12T08:17:00.000-08:00

14 february 2005. The countdown is started. The bomb is primed to explode it would be said if that weren’t so much in contrast with the fact that the Bloc Party’s webpage opens with a statement by Bertrand Russell: "Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd".
This statement makes me happy. It lets me talk about Bloc Party without any fear to be laughed at, for moving against the mainstream.
Awaited since so long, at early listening “Silent alarm” doesn’t disappoint the expectations.
In evidence above all the rythmic section: brit-pop drumming is throbbing and takes the breath away since the first attack, “Like eating glass”, a potential new hit-single. All songs are jagged by powerful guitars and bass lines and the handrix-shaped singer dares rappers on their own field with never banal lyrics (see “Helicopter” with rhymes against G.W.Bush and American Government foreign politics).
You can pre-listen 4 tracks from “Silent alarm” @ Wichita/V2 webpage and you can pre-order it here.
Already known, says the herd. Probably yes, but …
today I felt “light” after the “heaviness” of Christmas time.
today I’ve gone around searching for a new home and a new bed to share with an older friend.
today I felt like I was a bit younger.
today Bloc Party has been the soundtrack of my day.
P.S. For those who prefer offline listening, just for few days:
Bloc Party - Silent alarm - 01 - Like eating glass (removed link)
Bloc Party - Silent alarm - 02 - Helicopter (removed link)
Bloc Party - Silent alarm - 03 - Positive tension (removed link)
Bloc Party - Silent alarm - 04 - Banquet (removed link)

Le recensioni impossibili #1: Xiu Xiu - Fleshettes (3:12)/Helsabot of Caraleebot (5:57) (CD single)

2005-01-07T13:58:00.000-08:00

Con questo post iniziano le recensioni impossibili da realizzare.
La prima è dedicata al nuovo cd single degli Xiu Xiu, "Fleshettes", edito nel novembre scorso dalla spagnola Acuarela.
(Almeno a me qui a Napoli) Il disco risulta ancora introvabile.
D'altra parte pare proprio che i percorsi del sottoscritto con gli Xiu Xiu non debbano intersecarsi, visto che nella primavera scorsa sono stato impossibilitato ad assistere ad una loro performance proprio nella mia Napoli. E quando mi ricapiterà più!?!?!
Per chi non li conosca gli Xiu Xiu, in giro dal 2000, sono una band californiana imperniata sullo sfrenato esibizionismo e sull'incontinenza verbale che il cantante Jamie Stewart riversa nelle sue interpretazioni/polluzioni che si sviluppano in una cornice chiaramente post-rock, con innesti synth-techno.

Storie vere - tengono a precisare - di degrado morale, fisico, sociale, il cui tono oscilla tra il melodrammatico, l'apocalittico, il sornione e il malinconico, spingendosi lungo il sentiero ostico tracciato da band quali i Joy Division, i Suicide, ma anche gli Smiths.
La loro musica ansiogena e nevrotica suscita reazioni contrastanti: dall'isterismo adolescenziale alla violenza delle aggressioni subite on stage.
Dei precedenti "Knife play", "A promise", "Chapel of chimes", "Fag patrol", "Fabulous Muscles" si è scritto tanto. Non potendo recensire il loro ultimogenito, godetevi almeno questi due concerti:
Xiu Xiu - Live @ Tonic - New York (USA) - 20 marzo 2004
Xiu Xiu - Live @ K4 ZentralCafè - Nuremberg (Ger) - 13 maggio 2004

Pathos (Mike). Parto da qui.

2005-01-06T23:08:00.000-08:00

.
L'ho scoperto la sera di Natale. Ho ascoltato Mike Pathos urlarmi dentro il suo lamento e il suo violino straniato. Inquieto mi è scivolato in corpo, con le sue note stridenti che sono unghie sulla lavagna di una classe vuota in cui mi hanno insegnato che non c'è futuro. "Liar", la sua cover della lennoniana "Imagine" cala la notte più buia su ogni Natale. La stella cometa s'è spenta di colpo e il suo nucleo gelido mi ha gelato il respiro. C'è dell'autolesionismo nel cercarlo e ritrovarlo da allora tutte le sere. E a fare da cassa armonica al suo rumore minimale.
Canadese, polistrumentista (suona pianoforte e chitarra oltre al vuolino), dopo aver trascorso diversi mesi in una clinica psichiatrica, ha trovato la forza di concludere le registrazioni dell'album "People" (recensioni qui, qui e qui), iniziate nel 1995, sotto la guida di Alan Fisher (Cabaret Voltaire, Bjork), ospite della prolifica Tzadik di John Zorn.
Ecco due canzoni da "People"
Mike Pathos - People - Envoy (removed link)
Mike Pathos - People - Liar (removed link)

A bordo!

2005-01-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

Non ho mai amato spostarmi in auto da un luogo all'altro della città. Ho sempre preferito autobus e metrò. Non così per gli spostamenti fuori città.
Se penso ad un viaggio in autostrada, mi vedo con il naso schiacciato sul finestrino, seduto accanto al guidatore. Fuori, come un documentario, veloci scorrono le immagini di campi coltivati e fattorie e linee dell'elettricità. Mute, mentre dentro l'abitacolo l'autoradio aggiunge la colonna sonora.
In famiglia non abbiamo mai pagato il vecchio canone dell'autoradio. Non lo trovavamo giusto.
Io, poi, più che altro in auto ci ascoltavo le cassette dei programmi radio, registrate di notte e conservate non più di qualche settimana, il tempo di ascoltarle, duplicarne qualche canzone e poi, via, di nuovo a ri-registrarle, fino a smagnetizzarle.
La radio la ascoltavo di sera, fino a notte fonda. Con ancora i vestiti addosso, mi sdraiavo sul letto
ed il volume basso dello stereo riempiva la stanza buia. Ascoltavo Stereodrome e Stereonotte. Sono stato nutrito dalle loro seminali cene musicali. L'indomani mattina correvo magari a comprare qualche disco.
Radio che trasmettano buona musica, non ce n'è più qui la sera. Pare di ascoltare un'unica canzone, la stessa, 24 ore su 24. Prendere o lasciare.
È tempo allora di attraversare l'etere, scegliersi canzoni ed amici con cui ascoltarle.
Parto. Mi metto in viaggio. Raccolgo autostoppisti che vogliano condividere viaggi musicali.
Il viaggio dura una sola sera, poi si scende.
Chi viene a bordo?