18 January 2022
Movie: VELVET GOLDMINE (1998)
Directed by Todd Haynes
Story: A fictional drama It is set in Britain during the glamour and
glitter rock days of the early 1970s, it tells the story of a fictional
homosexual pop star, Brian Slade.
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Christian Bale
Trailer
Placebo performing T.Rex‘s glam slam 20th Century Boy in the film.
18 January 2022
Band: BLOOD RED SHOES
Who: Alt-rock duo – Laura-Mary Carter and
drummer Steven Ansell – from Brighton UK.
Active since 2004 / 6 studio albums
Ansell: “We’ve always been outsiders right from the very beginning. This album is really about us asserting ourselves as our own little island. We have made an entire career out of being told what we are ‘not’, of being rejected, of not fitting in, and this album is us deliberately pushing into all of our strangeness, emphasising all of the things that make us different. Ultimately this album is an invitation. It’s us saying, this is our world, these are our darkest thoughts and feelings – our ghosts – caught on tape. You are welcome to join us. Come and embrace the strange.”
Turn Up The Volume: The wayward Brighton tandem turn up the heat and decibels
on their new full lenght. From industrial slam dunks to (Morbid Fascination / Murder Me /
Give Up / I Am Not You) high-powered sucker-punch grooves (Comply / Sucker / Loose Whatever I Own) and sensual begging. Like The Horrors rockin’ out, fronted by Garbage‘s Shirley Manson. Blood Red Shoes do what only they like to do on this steamrolling record,
all of you, frenetic rock addicts out there, will like too.
Key singles: Morbid Fascination / Murder Me
– MORBID FASCINATION –
– MURDER ME –
Stream/buy the full album here…
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BLOOD RED SHOES: Facebook – All Albums
Totally agree…
(Image: cover of Laurie’s album ‘Big Science’)
Daily electricity to load your batteries
18 January 2022
Artist: PLEASURE CRAFT
Who: The new project of
Toronto musician Sam Lewis
New single: DEAD WEIGHT
From upcoming debut LP Mirrors, and Windows.
A concept album that follows the character arc of
the protagonist introduced in our previous single
Bag Down.
New single: DEAD WEIGHT
“The protagonist grapples with self loathing and fear brought
on by a newfound self-awareness and introspection.”
Turn Up The Volume: After a ghostly intro, the drone machine starts
up hitting like a massive sledgehammer with an industrial exuberance.
Merciless and puissant. No rest for the wicked. Think The Horrors and NIN.
A master blaster! Absobloodylutely!
He’s a bone holding flesh he’s a blood test
He’s a messenger
He’s the cold on an old snow covered road
He’s trapped inside a mirror
Bite the edge, get your teeth in, cock the gun, feel it breathing
Taste the noise, begging to leave control, eating from a bleeding hand
Pulling on a dead weight
Pulling on a dead weight
Buy/stream here…
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PLEASURE CRAFT: Facebook
Great concert posters from the past
Band: THE SENSATIONAL ALEX HARVEY BAND
Who: Theatrical rockers from Glasgow,
led by founder Alex Harvey
Active: 1972-1978 / 7 studio albums
Alex Harvey also made 5 solo LPs
Where/when: Sheffield UK, 1974
For those who never heard of them…
18 January 2022
Band: TINDERSTICKS
Who: Gloomy nightdreamers from
Nottingham (UK), led by crooner Stuart A. Staples (56)
Active: 1992-present / 13 studio albums with last year’s
Distractions as the most recent one / they also scored
several soundtracks for movies.
New album: ‘PAST IMPERFECT: The Best TINDERSTICKS ’92 – ’21
Out: 25 March 2022 through City Slang
Content: A limited-edition boxset containing…
Past Imperfect, the best of Tindersticks ‘92 – ’21 (coloured 2LP)
Live At Glasgow City Halls 5th October 2008 (coloured 2LP)
Exclusive 7”: A: “Both Sides Of The Blade” B: “For Those …”
Staples in a press statement: “30 years! This collection has been difficult to compile, but here it is. I have always felt we move forward in small steps (the occasional leap), at times we have been happy to slow right down and examine what is in front of us so thoroughly that we could appear static from the outside. But on the inside of this world, like looking down a microscope, it is brimming with life. We now get a chance, or are forced, to look over our shoulder to see how far we have traveled.”
Here’s a taster titled Both Sides Of The Blade featured
on last year’s French Claire Denis movie called Feu…
TINDERSTICKS: Facebook – All Albums
New striking strokes
17 January 2022
Artist: ANIKA
Who:: Fascinating Berlin-based artist Annika Henderson who released
her wayward, self-titled solo debut LP in 2010. She also made two
notable LPs with Exploded View. You can stream Obey (2018) and
Exploded View (2016) here.
Anika released her newest solo album CHANGE last
July. One of the most intriguing longplayers of 2021.
Anika: “It’s a moment caught in time. This album had been planned for a little
while and the circumstances of its inception were quite different to what had been
expected. This colored the album quite significantly. The lyrics were all written there
on the spot. It’s a vomit of emotions, anxieties, empowerment, and of thoughts like,
“How can this go on? How can we go on?”
Along with a tour starting soon (I just heard that her Brussels gig is postponed,
what a bummer) in Europe, then to the UK and America, a record of 6 remixes
of Change songs will see the day of light on 11th February.
More info on Bandcamp
First taster is a remix of the title track by British electronic musician Planningtorock.
She turned the song into a trippy and vibrant electro beat-breaker. Anika‘s distorted
voice changes the mood of the original song. More mystifying and mesmeric, more
femme fatale-like.
Stream/buy here…
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ANIKA: Facebook
ALL tour dates here
Eye-catching music art
17 January 2022
µ
Band: UNIVERSOUND
Who: A project of 5 young musicians born in 2016 in Ancona, Italy. They call
their explosive, engaging, exciting and innovative sonic journey ‘Deep Funk’
Artwork: Cover of new single MOONLIGHT DRIVE
from their forthcoming second album.
The lyric video…
UNIVERSOUND: Facebook
Back in time
17 January 2022
Artist: LOU REED
(2 March 1942 – 27 Oktober 2013)
Anniversary album: MAGIC AND LOSS – 16th LP
Released: 14 January 192 – 30 years ago
Info: “Magic and Loss was originally intended to be primarily about themes of magic
after hearing stories about magicians in Mexico. However, when tragedy struck during
the writing process, Reed expanded the album’s focus to themes of loss and death as well. Inspired in part by the illnesses and eventual deaths of two close friends, Magic and Loss was written for songwriter Doc Pomus, who had given Reed his start in the music business some 25 years earlier and a woman Reed has identified as “Rita”, popularly assumed to be Rotten Rita, who along with Reed was a familiar figure at Andy Warhol’s studio, the Factory, in the mid-to-late ’60s.
Rolling Stone wrote: “This is an album about death — and how to live with it. It is an eyewitness account, documented in compelling songs, of a losing battle with cancer, the mourning after and the little miracles that, for the mourner, mark the beginning of the
healing process. It will probably bum you out the first couple of times through.”
Score: 4/5.
Turn Up The Volume: Seeing Lou Reed playing the album from start
to finish in Brussels – 12 March 1992 – was goosebumps magic.
Full album…
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LOU REED: All Albums – Facebook
TURN UP THE VOLUME 