Just in time for the holidays, Reflecting in the Chrome has gone live with the best possible gift one could give a Nine Inch Nails fan: a downloadable audio archive of nearly every available NIN show since 1988. It’s taken the site’s founder, Ryan J., six years to compile, clean, and organize all the files, and he’s now made them all available as a free torrent (via Radio.com) All told, the drive contains 527 GB of music from 900 different audio sources and some 575 concerts. Ryan recommends a 750 GB hard-drive at minimum to store the entire archive and any future updates. He also warns that seeding the file will be a slow process until more seeders make themselves available.
For those unwilling to wait, Ryan is willing to fill hard-drives sent to him as long as there’s return postage for the trip back. Is this dude a giver or what? The quality of the files are the highest quality available, with FLAC being the majority. Ryan is still working hard to upgrade from any mp3 versions in the current archive and fill in any gaps.
What’s more, the next phase of the project is to put together an equally comprehensive collection of video for the drive. For all information. PANOS HERE: This is the last post at Scoop.It, I've moved PopMart to Wordpress :. This one will stay up for all posts from the beginning, November 1st 2014 up to this one. Since its premiere 35 years ago, Tony Scott’s chi-chi vampire movie The Hunger has defied any sort of critical consensus, yet both its harshest critics and most ardent defenders agree on its best quality — namely its bewitching trio of stars, Susan Sarandon, Catherine Deneuve, and David Bowie.
The various taglines used in the film’s print campaign — “Nothing human loves forever,” “Pour survivre ils ont besoin d’amour et de sang” (“To survive they need love and blood”), “So bizarre So sensual so shocking” — align The Hunger with the strain of trashy, erotic vampire films from the preceding decade, with titles like The Vampire Lovers, Daughters of Darkness, and The Velvet Vampire. But in its trailer the film was sold less on its genre elements than on the unprecedented alchemy of its leads: “The timeless beauty of Catherine Deneuve, the cool elegance of David Bowie, and the open sensuality of Susan Sarandon combine to create a modern classic of perverse fear,” purrs the narrator. In 1993, the quartet of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andrew Fletcher and Alan Wilder - regarded as the 'classic' Depeche Mode line-up - was a band vastly changed from their synth-pop roots. 'Violator', the 1990 album that preceded 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion', was the conclusion of a journey that took the band from Basildon boyband pop through various plunges into ever darker places, culminating in the clever, sleek stadium-friendly electronic structures of 'Violator'; girls in my school duly covered their folders and workbooks with photos of the clean-cut looking lads with leather jackets and tidy haircuts. The Depeche Mode of 1993 arrived in the noisiest of fashions with the first single to be lifted from 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion', 'I Feel You'. From the first moments of that track it was clear that Depeche Mode wanted to put their past behind them, the track opening with seven seconds of howling feedback that some journalists compared to the soundtrack to David Lynch's Eraserhead, before a dirty blues riff from Martin Gore and crashing, processed live drums kicked in; organ grooves, gospel ascendancy and stirring, rousing vocals from Dave Gahan made it clear that this was a Depeche Mode who wanted to be taken very seriously indeed by the rock press.
Jan 23, 2018 - (851MB ) George harrison - All Things Must pass [FLAC]. (431.00MB ) George harrison - All Things Must pass (Unreleased DCC). (192.53 MB ).
And to go with that harder sound, with any trace of 'pure' electronics buried almost immeasurably deep beneath a murky rock cacophony, came a new image for Dave Gahan. In the downtime between 'Violator' and 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion', Dave Gahan was suddenly re-cast as the quintessential rock frontman - long hair, a body literally covered in tattoos, and all the nihilistic excesses and tendencies we have come to associate with rock royalty. The change of image somehow gave credence to Depeche Mode's new, more organic sound but it came with a dose of ballsy hyperbole from Gahan during the promotion of the album and its tour, the singer even going so far as to risibly claim that Depeche Mode were responsible for the development of grunge; his growing chemical dependencies would also lead to painfully slow progress at the recording sessions in Madrid and Hamburg, much to the frustration of the rest of the band. Image reboot to one side, the other big change was Martin Gore's lyric writing. With songs like 'Condemnation' and 'Walking In My Shoes', Gore was suddenly striving for a sort of religious salvation, almost as if he was in need of redemption for some vast life of sin. Previous albums had contained songs that referenced spirituality, but here was a whole album neatly split between the album title's themes of faith and devotion. 'Condemnation', with its world weary imagery of a man accepting his punishment with bitter grace was the album's towering moment, full of hand-wringing angst, regret and disappointment.
Gahan had never sounded like he does on 'Condemnation' before; his voice has a gravelly, almost slurred quality that adds to the wretchedness of the man on trial here, the slow motion wonky piano, drums and humming in the music giving this a queasy sense of muted euphoria. The combination of Alan Wilder's studio expertise and Gahan's vocal development on 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion' were the crucial elements required to execute Gore's lyrical themes; Wilder, in conjunction with the album's producer Flood, gave Gore's songs a grainy atmosphere that was more or less the polar opposite of the far cleaner sound of 'Violator'. Grinding bass, skeketal, creeping synths, an unlikely funk guitar on 'Mercy In You', uillean pipes on 'Judas', a string orchestra on the haunting 'One Caress', scratched distorted hip-hop breaks on the affirming gospel of 'Get Right With Me', the psychedelic uplift of 'Higher Love' - all of this was virgin territory for Depeche Mode, setting 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion' a world apart from anything else they'd done. Only the electro-rock angst of 'Rush' seemed remotely related to the earlier Mode sound.
'Songs Of Faith And Devotion' is one of several pivotal albums in Depeche Mode's back catalogue, not least because it would be the catalyst for a massive change in the band. The accompanying fourteen-month global tour would see Andrew Fletcher quit the band temporarily through stress and Gore suffering from seizures brought on, in his words, by extreme exhaustion. Alan Wilder quit the band completely when the tour was over to focus on his Recoil side-project leaving a major studio gap in the band that subsequent albums have never quite filled.
As for Gahan, the excesses of rock star life caught up with him savagely, the singer overdosing from a cocktail of hard drugs and actually dying for a brief few seconds, narrowly avoiding becoming another rock star fatality. That the band are still together, and back producing some of their strongest songs yet, remains something of a surprise after the career pinnacle that was 'Songs Of Faith And Devotion' and the ensuing strain it caused - but thankfully they are. Βy Mat Smith for Clash Music - March 25th, 2013. “Music For Installations is a collection of new, rare and previously unreleased music, all of which was recorded by Brian Eno for use in his installations,' reads the press release for the set. 'He has emerged as the leading exponent of ‘generative’ music worldwide and is recognized as one of the foremost audio-visual installation artists of his time.
Eno’s visual experiments with light and video have proved to be the fertile ground from which so much of his other work has grown and they cover an even longer span of time than his recordings, paralleling his musical output in recent decades.' A cursory glance at the Irish singles chart of 1978 demonstrates the global appeal of disco. The Bee Gees, Boney M and John Travolta/Olivia Newton-John all enjoyed number ones. Abba had a couple of chart-toppers and fellow Eurovision winners Brotherhood of Man also reached the top spot. It would have been impossible to escape the distinctly Irish take on Kris Kristofferson's gospel tune 'One Day at a Time' and Gloria's version - in the charts for a record 90 weeks - occupied the top spot on two separate occasions in 1978. But that year also boasted one of the strangest and most extraordinary songs to ever top the chart.
Forty years ago next weekend, the debut single from Kate Bush, 'Wuthering Heights', was the most popular release in Ireland. It replaced Danny Doyle's take on Pete St John's 'The Rare Ould Times' on St Patrick's weekend and stayed for three weeks until the arrival of Brian and Michael and their one-hit wonder, 'Matchstick Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs'.
It sounded quite unlikely anything else and four decades on, it still stands out as a gloriously different pop song. Pink Floyd would have been a perfect match for the visually oriented era of Pinterest and Tumblr had the band emerged today. At the height of Pink Floyd’s popularity in the 1970s, the Floyd’s visually arresting album covers and iconography complemented the artistry of the its music and generated buzz that would make the Word of Mouth Marketing Association proud. Nowhere is the power of Pink Floyd’s visual appeal more apparent than the cover for the album The Dark Side of the Moon, released 44 years ago. The Dark Side of the Moon is not only one of the greatest albums ever made, its cover became an visual icon for Pink Floyd itself — a quiet, mysterious team of four musicians who let their music and visual stories speak for them. For its ability to create mystery and intrigue for four decades, The Dark Side of the Moon joins my hall of fame of memorable album covers.
The Dark Side of the Moon cover art created intrigue when the album landed in record stores in March 1973. At the time, Pink Floyd was on the cusp of becoming a mainstream success with a growing fan base.
The cover, depicting white light passing through a prism to form the bright colors of the spectrum against a stunning black field, invited listeners to explore the music inside — and still does today. The mystery began after you heard the mind-blowing music on the album coupled with bassist Roger Waters’s deeply personal lyrics exploring themes of alienation, loss, and materialism. Steve Dahl had his dream job as a boisterous disc jockey at Chicago’s WDAI, the city’s longtime rock station. But as midnight struck on New Year’s Day 1979, the station abruptly changed its format to disco. Dahl claims he was fired. When he resurfaced at WLUP that spring, he declared war on the music that had rendered him unemployed. Every day at his new gig, Dahl began playing snippets of disco records, dragging the needle across the vinyl, and cueing the sound of an explosion.
Listeners loved it. Soon he was printing “kill disco” membership cards and destroying more records at “death to disco” rallies. But the night Dahl made history was July 12, 1979, when he promoted the “Disco Demolition” at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Fans who brought a disco record could attend a doubleheader between the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers for just 98 cents. The park expected a few thousand extra attendees; 59,000 showed up.
After the first game, Dahl, wearing a military uniform and driving a Jeep, drove onto the field, where thousands of records had been rigged with dynamite. He blew them to smithereens, leading the crowd in a chant of “Disco sucks!” Read more. Music’s worst kept secret is finally official: Three-fourths of Smashing Pumpkins’ founding lineup — frontman Billy Corgan, guitarist James Iha, and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin — are reuniting for a US tour. Dubbed “Shiny And Oh So Bright,” the tour will see the trio celebrating songs from their first five albums: Gish, Siamese Dream, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Adore, and Machina/The Machines of God. Tickets go on sale beginning Friday, February 23rd.
As you may have heard, bassist D’arcy Wretzky will not be taking part in the festivities. Depending on who you believe, either Corgan lied to Wretzky about her involvement from the get-go, or Wretzky “always deferred” overtures from Corgan “to participate in demo sessions, or at the very least, meet face-to-face.” Regardless, Wretzky essentially blew up any chance of her participating when she sat down for an explosive, tell-all interview and questioned whether Corgan had a brain tumor.
As far as the music goes, 'Low' and its siblings were a direct follow-on from the title track of 'Station to Station.' It’s often struck me that there will usually be one track on any given album of mine which will be a fair indicator of the intent of the following album. —David Bowie, 2001 I see 'Low' as very much a continuation from 'Station to Station,' which I think is one of the great records of all time. —Brian Eno, 1999 The 'Station to Station' sessions represent the highwater mark of Bowie’s prodigious drug intake. By this stage, Bowie had practically stopped eating and was subsisting on a diet of milk, cocaine and four packets of Gitanes a day. He was leading a vampyric existence of blinds-drawn seclusion in his Hollywood mansion, spliced with all-night sessions in the studio.
There were times when he’d start recording in the evening then work all the way through until ten in the morning—and when told that the studio had been booked for another band, he’d simply call up for studio time elsewhere on the spot and start work again immediately. Other times, he could vanish altogether: “We show up at the studio,” says guitarist Earl Slick. “‘Where is he?’ He shows up maybe five or six hours late.
Sometimes he wouldn’t show up at all.” At this stage, Bowie could go five or six days without sleep, the point at which reality and imagination become irretrievably blurred: “By the end of the week my whole life would be transformed into this bizarre nihilistic fantasy world of oncoming doom, mythological characters and imminent totalitarianism.” Read more. Age-old commercial strategies are being overturned as record companies big and small fight to adjust to the new technological reality. Nowadays, physical albums that might previously have shifted hundreds of thousands of units are not even being released because no-one thinks they will sell. Take, for instance, the case of Despacito, Luis Fonsi's Latin pop hit that was one of the biggest songs of 2017. It topped the charts for weeks in the UK, but strangely, there was no hit album to go with it. It wasn't for lack of material.
Fonsi may be a newcomer to British music fans, but in Latin music circles, his career stretches back 20 years, so it would have been child's play to cobble together a greatest hits CD and rush it to the shops. In fact, that's what happened in France, where the album Despacito and My Greatest Hits made the top three and has spent more than 30 weeks on the charts.
Fonsi's record company, Polydor, said it was 'not prepared to discuss the matter' with the BBC and would not give any reasons for not releasing the CD in the UK. But if label bosses thought it was commercially viable, they would presumably have put it out. So why are albums that would once have been considered sure-fire sales winners no longer being marketed? Every hardcore band you loved in the '80s and beyond, from Black Flag to Minutemen to Fugazi, had one unfortunate thing in common: Nazi skinheads occasionally stormed their concerts, stomped their fans, gave Hitler salutes in lieu of applauding, and generally turned a communal experience into one full of hatred and conflict. Punk rockers had flirted with fascist imagery for shock value, with the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and Siouxsie Sioux wearing swastikas in public, but, as early San Francisco scenester Howie Klein, later president of Reprise Records, recalls: “Suddenly, you had people who were part of the scene who didn’t understand ‘fascist bad.’” By 1980, a more violent strain of punk fans was infecting punk shows.
“Pogoing became slam-dancing, now known as moshing, and some of ’em didn’t seem like they were there to enjoy the music, as much as they were there to beat up on people—sometimes in a really chickenshit way,” says Jello Biafra, whose band, Dead Kennedys, put out a classic song about it in 1981: 'Nazi Punks Fuck Off.' In the era of Trump and the alt-right, Charlottesville, and 'very fine people on both sides,' fighting Nazis is sadly newly relevant, and veterans of the hardcore-vs.-skinheads battles of yore are happy to help with war stories and advice.
(Spoiler alert: Most advocate punching Nazis in the face.) Here's an oral history on how punks took back their scene. Throughout his career David Bowie was constantly reinventing himself, magpie-picking and absorbing the shiny trinkets of influence and reworking them into his very own sound, look and orbit reassembling it all into a brand new way forward in his own image. ‘Bowie is at the centre of the musical world’ uttered one critic, and when you look at the list of artists, producers and musicians he worked with over fifty plus years it’s hard to argue. A shapeshifting multimedia polymath who dipped his toe into various styles, sounds and blurred genres, turning his hand into art, acting and theatre he was perhaps the first postmodern pop star and would influence those who would follow in his wake, He was a man who created successful identities and then discarded them. His frenetic work throughout the 70s and early 80s set a benchmark for creative streaks in the world of music. It is no wonder then that the list of his collaborators is as long and as it is varied. Here we shall focus on twenty-five of his finest.
You can generally split his collaborations into three parts – the artists and producers he returned to work with repeatedly throughout his career (Tony Visconti, Mick Ronson, Iggy Pop, Brian Eno, Nile Rodgers, Carlos Alomar, Gail Ann Dorsey, Mike Garson); those he worked with a few times ( Ken Scott, Lou Reed, Robert Fripp, Arcade Fire); and the one-offs (Trent Reznor, Tina Turner, Bing Crosby, Cher, Giorgio Moroder, Pet Shop Boys, Placebo, Massive Attack Scarlet Johanssen) there are a few we might gloss over too (Tin Machine, Mick Jagger). This is by no means a definitive list but here are twenty-five of my favourite Bowie collaborations. It was the voice that really transfixed you. Back in the days when bands recorded cassettes with hand-written song titles and shopped them around music hacks and record labels, one Limerick act’s four-song TDK began to stand out from the crowd. It found its way into my hands in early 1990 or thereabouts and what seemed a rather inauspicious band name (changed from the torturous pun The Cranberry Saw Us) did not hint at the treasures within. The indie identikit guitars were in thrall to the wintry jangle of Johnny Marr, the rhythm section was rudimentary but effective but then you heard the singer. Dolores O’Riordan, a 19-year-old from the small townland of Ballybricken, had the looks of an indie waif straight from central casting but her plaintive voice was a thing of wonder able to go from tremulous pain to banshee wail in the space of a few octaves.
The standout song on that fabled demo was Linger, a composition of crestfallen angst which captured Dolores' prodigious talent for expressing heartache and an almost oceanic sense of longing. When Depeche Mode came back together in 2012 to begin work on a new album, all three members were coming off of solo ventures and ready to settle in and focus what would become the band’s 13th effort together, Delta Machine, which was released March 22, 2013. Frontman Dave Gahan had spent the previous years as the primary lyricist and singer for the electronic remix duo Soulsavers on their album The Light the Dead See. Keyboardist and guitarist Martin Gore reunited with former Depeche Mode member Vince Clarke on the electronic project VCMG, completing an EP and an album, and band co-founder Andy Fletcher continued to perform DJ sets around the globe. All that out of their system, it was time to reach the conclusion of a trilogy of albums with producer Ben Hillier, who had previously been behind the boards for Playing the Angel (2005) and Sounds of the Universe (2009).
Like its immediate predecessors, Delta Machine is chock full of throbbing beats and slithering synths, but there are also some cues pulled from the past, most notably from the Depeche Mode apex, 1990’s Violator. Out of the gate though, with first single “Heaven,” there was a bit of a bluff with Gahan crooning his way through the moody and crawling number, which he and Gore would later admit didn’t sound like the rest of the record, but did capture the feel of it. Depeche Mode is, without question, one of the most important rock bands out there. They defined their sound by bridging 80s synthpop with the budding alternative rock, creating a fusion that would cement itself forever. Still rolling as powerfully and anthemically as ever today, Depeche Mode's longevity is here to stay forever.
It all had to begin with the classics, though. Depeche Mode carved their own legacy out in Violator, their seventh album that brought them success internationally. Violator was Depeche Mode's breakthrough performance, released in 1990, just as the new decade had begun.
Looking at the biggest hits from the record, it's easy to see why this album did the trick for them. 'Personal Jesus' is punchy and almost industrial, its punchy guitar riff blending perfectly with the dark electronics. It's the perfect representation of the band's music with a poppy edge; not too deep into the oppressive electronic sound and with just enough swagger to give it all the catchiness it needs. 'Enjoy The Silence' is much less industrial and really focuses in on the sensual vibe of Violator, the chorus expressing real love: 'All I ever wanted / All I ever needed is here in my arms / Words are very unnecessary / They can only do harm.' The singles aren't the only defining features of Violator, though. The grimy, dark 'World In My Eyes' brings the record in, really setting the tone fo what's to come.
It's fairly minimalistic, as is most of the record, but makes due with what it has going on. The background harmonies are almost operatic as they are ghastly.
Dave Gahan really sells the sensual aspect of the record on songs like 'Sweetest Perfection,' while the dark and cinematic atmosphere of 'Halo' is bound to grab at you. Closing track 'Clean' takes every aspect of the songs before it makes something huge: it's a slow drama, pounding and damning while maintaining a sort of western vibe, building to massive proportions after starting from little to nothing.
A huge way to end out an otherwise barebones - yet effective - album. Violator may be minimalist, but every note has a clear purpose. It's freeing, sensual, and most notably, its invigorating.
It captures you in an atmosphere and it keeps you there in a sort of eidetic oblivion. Depeche Mode carved their own legacy out in Violator, setting a standard for the fusion of electronica and rock to come, all the while cementing their place as legends in music. By Dylan Yadav for Immortal Reviews. When Marr left The Smiths in 1987, ending the group’s run after four brilliant albums, Morrissey felt bewildered and betrayed. “The split is our final loss of innocence,” Moz writes in Autobiography, the 2013 memoir that reveals little about what actually what actually broke up indie’s Leiber and Stoller. To make matter worse, Morrissey soon learned he was contractually obligated to give EMI another album. Such was the impetus for his debut solo, Viva Hate, released 30 years ago today (March 14, 1988).
When news arrived that this week’s edition of New Musical Express (NME) would be its last, there was an outpouring of nostalgia tempered with the cold truth that it had become culturally irrelevant. As a final roll of the dice in 2015, it became a freesheet and set out to become a one-size-fits-all pop culture compendium, broadening its remit beyond music, to include film and fashion, but by this point it was arguably failing to do what it set out to do – reporting on music that mattered. It had been banging the drum for indie music for a bit too long and was no longer chasing music that young people were listening to, perhaps through stubbornness or nostalgia prior to this. The other pervasive view of its demise seems to be: “Because, the internet”. Last week saw the release of the painfully bland new album by Vance Joy, one of the many proteges of Taylor Swift, who took him out as a support act on her 1989 world tour (though apparently they don’t talk any more). Swift has form for bigging up other musicians: she has championed not just Vance Joy, but Haim and Ed Sheeran (who in turn has championed Foy Vance, another singer-songwriter confusingly close in name to Vance Joy, but no relation).
However, Swift’s proteges have tended to be artists already on an upward curve, already with major label deals and some success. She has not yet mastered the art of picking up on an artist no one has displayed any interest in and incessantly shouting about them, until all her fans have gone to the gigs, bought the T-shirt and discovered for themselves how dubious their hero’s judgment is. Unlike this lot Read more. 'The giant auditorium was filled with Walter Carlos' recorded cybernetic music from Clockwork Orange, as several layers of curtains parted to reveal a giant screen on which was projected an animated film of the cosmos rushing at light speed at the viewer.
A single spotlight opened up on a set of large concentric spheres welded into a cage and suspended 50 feet above the floor of the stage, in the middle of which was standing a stern and staring Bowie clad in a black silver silk garment, the first of what would be five different costumes that night. It was truly an amazing sight: Bowie the noted acrophobe, who won't fly in planes or ascend above a certain level in buildings, coolly gazing at his adoring fans, while his band, The Spiders From Mars, augmented by six additional musicians on horns and percussion, cranked into 'Hang Onto Yourself'.
At times Bowie acted out his role as a straight pop singer, a sort of hyperthyroid Anthony Newley; at others he would change into a progressively more skimpy costume and whip his arse around, a campy gamine leg-throw here, a cute barefoot pirouette there. Those songs dealing with Bowie's starkly paranoid themes of rock-star death, impending planetary doom and coming suicide were treated as little theater pieces, playlets recited and acted rather than sung and played.'
- Stephen Davis for Rolling Stone Magazine. For years, disruptive digital businesses have countered complaints like mine with assurances that everything will be different in the future, once millions and millions of people around the world adopt their application. Well, here we are. Spotify now claims 140 million active users, 70 million of whom are paid subscribers, and the total consumption of audio streams in the U.S. Jumped by an estimated 50 percent last year.
But while it’s clear that some are earning significant paychecks from streaming as a result—“Happy days are here again,” Billboard gushed last March, reporting the fastest growth for the industry in decades—most musicians are not. The basic reason is simple: According to the data trackers at BuzzAngle Music, more than 99 percent of audio streaming is of the top 10 percent most-streamed tracks. Which means less than 1 percent of streams account for all other music. That makes streaming more concentrated at the top than current album or song sales.
Of course, the most popular releases have always dominated the music market, but it seems these new services increase that disparity rather than reduce it. The rising tide is lifting only certain boats. What is to be done? Spotify, Apple Music, and the other corporations seeking to control music consumption aren’t likely to change their trajectory. So what follows are some thoughts about ways we might adjust—as both creators and consumers of all music, not just the top 10 percent of it—in order to counterbalance a system built for the benefit of a small minority. There are no quick fixes, which is also the point: It’s the dream of quick fixes—and fortunes—that got us into this mess. If we’re going to find our way out, it’s going to be through slow collective effort, based on a better understanding of what we’re being offered now and exactly how and why that’s failing us.
As far as sophomore album’s go, The Velvet Undergound’s White Light/White Heat is extraordinary, both for its unapologetic abandonment of the mournful moods established by their debut and for its dissonance, which replaced the measured doses of pop art-minded bliss (inspired by Andy Warhol and contributed by vocalist Nico) with a total overdose of arty audacity and even aggression in their absence. On its 50th anniversary, the record holds up as an outrageously unique collection of weird ideas and organically driven psychedelic soundscapes. It elevated the instrumental, mental, and sexual tension that encapsulates what the Velvets were all about and allowed for its individual players to act out sonically. Singer/guitarist Lou Reed, bassist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker were all clearly challenging themselves, their listeners, and each other on this one, and the result feels like precursory punk rock, especially listened to today in the context of all that came after it. In an interview with David Fricke for Mojo, marking the record’s 45th anniversary re-issue, guitarist Sterling Morrison explained, “Maybe our frustrations led the way But we were already pretty much into it. We had good amps, good distortion devices. We were the first American band to have an endorsement deal with Vox.” The album, he contended, “was just us using the Vox amps and playing them emphatically.” But White Light/White Heat was a lot more than an excuse for the band to tune out and amp up; it was an opportunity to redefine who they were, to defiantly lay to record what it was they were doing onstage at the time, thus making it their most representative raw and true recording, a six-song snapshot of the late-’60s New York avant-garde music and party scene.
Fueled by escapist environments, their boho brethren, the harsh realities of NY urban life, and probably some pretty good drugs, the band captured attention with their dark and dramatic aesthetic and complex sound. Their association with art scene hip kids notwithstanding, their live performances lacked pretention (even when they were over-the-top poetic) and often ended in instrumental freak-outs. While White Light was an entirely different cup of Sunday morning tea (excessively spiked, best listened to after a long night that probably never ended), it does maintain moments of Warholian hedonism.
Andy suggested the black cover, after all. Also, the catchy, chorus-driven title track that opens the record kind of recalls the exuberance of the debut’s more upbeat moments and might be one of the strongest numbers of their entire catalog.
David Bowie sure liked it, even giving it renewed appreciation when he put it out as a single in conjunction with the opening of the Ziggy Stardust concert film (recorded in the ’70s, but released in the ’80s). By contrast, the 17-minute psych-tinged climax, “Sister Ray”, might start out straightforward but veers off wildly. It’s a tempestuous tale of drag queens, sailors, orgies, shooting up, and murder backdropped by Cale and Reed’s rhythmic clash of chords and effects. Recorded in one take, it was apparently so assaultive live, according to Reed, that the engineer walked out before it was laid down. Terribly, terribly sad news.
Mark E Smith, frontman of The Fall, has died at age 60. Word came from band manager Pamela Vander: “It is with deep regret that we announce the passing of Mark E.
He passed this morning at home. A more detailed statement will follow in the next few days. In the meantime, Pam & Mark’s family request privacy at this sad time.” The Fall canceled most of their 2017 autumn tour, including what were supposed to be the band’s first NYC shows in a decade, due to Mark’s failing health. The rescheduled NYC dates were canceled again a month ago. Few bands of the last 40 years have been as influential to indie, alt, what-have-you, as The Fall, and few bands remained as relevant for as long either.
Bilious, scathingly funny, thoughtful, crazy, often inscrutable (both literally and figuratively), MES was a one-of-a-kind. Rest in peace, Mark. Hansa was amazing. The feeling you’re in the same studios where so many important albums have been recorded was overwhelming. Sitting at the big studio 4, trying to imagine how was it when the Berlin Wall was just on the other side and David Bowie was there recording Heroes. Or when Gareth Jones had that crazy idea of sending the bass sounds of People of People from two floors above (Studio 2) and how the whole place would be shaking. Or when U2 struggled a lot to transform to a proper 90s band till the moment they started playing the notes to One.
Last, Depeche Mode live at the wonderful Mercedes-Benz Arena. Full crowd, had a great panoramic view from upper section. Gig started and wow! What a crowd energy. That was pretty unique, Depeche Mode in Berlin is indeed a different experience. Of course the setlist was safer than ever, probably the very first time they didn’t play the lead single of the album they’re supposed to be promoting, but the gig was so intense and the crowd so up to it that it didn’t matter as much as it would in any other place.
7 Jan 179.4 MB 1 0 unknown Today 266 MB 1 0 unknown Today 1.1 GB 1 0 unknown 26 Jan 4.4 GB 0 0 unknown 26 Jan 17.6 GB 0 0 unknown Today 2.5 MB 0 0 unknown Today 43.1 MB 0 1 unknown Today 1.8 GB 0 0 unknown Today 319.3 MB 0 0 unknown Today 1.4 GB 0 0 unknown Today 314.4 MB 0 0 unknown Today 275.9 MB 0 0 unknown Today 867.5 MB 0 0 unknown Today 349.5 MB 0 0 unknown Today 1.9 GB 0 0 unknown Today 2.5 GB 0 0 unknown Today 177.8 MB 0 0 unknown Today 581.6 MB 0 0 unknown Today 23.3 GB 0 1 unknown Today 2.3 GB 0 0 unknown 7 Jan 1.2 GB 0 0 unknown Today 366.8 MB 0 0 unknown.