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Monthly Playlist-February 2018

Posted: 8th March 2018 by blaue-rosen in Music News,press releases
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Art has nothing to do with taste.Art is not there to be tasted…” (Max Ernst)

This playlist is weird in every sense! Its sonic imprint contains dream pop, industrial, punk, post punk, gothic, post rock and psych rock melodies in mysterious combinations, some protest songs and an album which could not have found a ‘comfortable’ place in any playlist. This album is entitled ‘Thoughts Of A Dot As It Travels A Surface‘ by CV&JAB-Zin Taylor and could have been the sonic form of Kadinsky’s book ‘Point And Line to Plane’, but was instead inspired by a series of wall drawings. In an unexplained manifestation of ‘madness’, I decided to include this album in the monthly playlist, but could not for the life of me decide where to put it! If I said that its overall style was minimal electro you would probably expect to listen to something completely different from what it is, so I will just say that you will need to be familiar with the music of John Cage or Erik Satie, in order to appreciate it to some extent. Gothic music in its more ‘traditional’ form, could not be absent from this playlist and it has been represented by the second album of Poetry of Thorns, entitled ‘Poetry of Thorns‘, whose music blends neoclassical with ethereal elements and creates mystifying soundscapes whose colour palette is rich with all the different red shades of purple. This album is entirely different from the aesthetics of both Fever Ray’s ‘Plunge‘ and the rather funky  psych rock album ‘Fear On The Corner‘ by  Mamuthones.Fever Ray have further evolved their sound by positioning impressive samples next to elements from breakcore and house music in their melodies, without forgetting the dark minimalism of their older songs such as ‘Keep The Streets Empty For Me‘.

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1.The Truth,The Glow,The Fall/2.The Mysterious Vanishing Of Electra/3.Ugly and Vengeful/4.The Marble Eye/5. Ka?llans Återuppsta?ndelse
Release Date: March 2018
Label:City Slang

‘O holy light of morn!
O air that dost the whole earth compass round
Oft have ye heard my cries of grief forlorn,
And oft the echoing sound
Of blows the breast that smite,
When darkness yields to light’
(opening quote: Sophocle’s Electra)

Before putting on this record, choose a relatively calm place, at dusk or late at night and your favourite drink, in preparation for a certain ritual in an attitude that evokes an open shape and not, as Genet was saying, “…a physical attitude that summons a, closed, submissive intellectual attitude…discourages spiritual attempt…”(extract: ‘Fragments of The Artwork’).

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Now that the beautiful white snow has melted, the coming of Spring is not the only reason to be looking forward to the end of March, as the music menu of 2018 will have gained some momentum by then and there are plenty of gigs planned, that will continue to excite us and enrich our weeks. People with diverse music tastes will have to make some hard choices as far as live shows are concerned, but it will all be worth it in the end and here is why:

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27th WGT-The first confirmations

Posted: 5th March 2018 by blaue-rosen in Music News,press releases
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The Wave Gotik Treffen frenzy has already started, earlier than usual this year, as the 3-day gothic festival, the biggest in the world, will be carried out very early this year, from May 18th-May 21st 2018. Even though some bands have announced their participation in the festival, before the end of 2017, most of the bands have kept this information to themselves. So far, there are a few important highlights in the festival’s line up, the first of which is the live appearance of Siglo XX exclusively for the audience of WGT! We could not believe our own eyes when we saw the band being confirmed in this year’s line up.The band from Belgium celebrates 40years in the music industry and our hearts with an exclusive and special performance at WGT which will follow the re-release of their album ‘Answer’ (originally released in 1983) and of two 12″ EPs, ‘The Art of War’ (originally released in 1987) and ‘Dreams of Pleasure’ (originally released in 1983). Siglo XX have taken their name from an anarchist group during the Spanish Civil War and have been one of the most popular bands of the Belgian coldwave scene of the 80s. The band has been inactive since 1991 before the first WGT and has never played before in the festival before. Antonio (Palermo) and Klaas (Hoogerwaard) of Siglo XX have formed a new band called Honeymoon Cowboys in 2015, which has released two albums so far and in which Dirk (Chauvaux), Erik(Dries) of Siglo XX have also participated as guests. For many fans of this band, having the opportunity to see Siglo XX perform live is a dream come true (as is the opportunity to see Trisomie 21 perform live in this festival).

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If only all the gigs in London were as good as this one! We had an amazing time at this gig and so did everyone else who made this, a sold out gig. Apart from a few, quickly resolved, technical problems with the sound for both Red Sun Revival and Das Ich, this whole evening went exactly as planned. The announced stage times were fully respected, the music in between the bands’ appearances was great and relevant and apart from very few exceptions, everyone was well behaved.

Sadly I had to miss the futuristic show of Machine Rox and their special live cover version of Iggy Pop’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog‘, but I managed to be on time for Astari Nite.

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Das Ich, Astari Nite,Red Sun Revival Live in London 2018

Posted: 17th February 2018 by blaue-rosen in

EMKE-TWO EP

Posted: 9th February 2018 by blaue-rosen in Album reviews
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1.Symbols/2.Mambo/3.I’m Dying Mommy/4.Pretty Boy
Release Date: December 2017
Label:Two Gods

If the portraits of Marlene Dumas could sing, they would probably sing Emke’s  ‘Mambo’

Not many musicians can support their music visually and through their stage appearance so that they can ultimately offer a complete work of art and not just a presentation of songs. A few years ago, we went to a beautiful gig that was headlined by Cold In Berlin with support from Winter Severity Index and Black Nail Cabaret. We had a great time and it was impressive to see Black Nail Cabaret on stage for the first time. Since then, the band has changed its line up and now consists of Emese and Krisztián, who released the third album entitled ‘Dichromat‘ in 2016 before playing live at WGT in Leipzig in 2017.

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Monthly Playlist-January 2018

Posted: 6th February 2018 by blaue-rosen in Music News,press releases
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Color possesses me.I don’t have to pursue it.It will possess me always…” (Paul Klee)

Paul Klee might have been referring to painting in this quote, but he was born in a musical family and played music in the Berne musical orchestra, so his opinion about colour was surely informed by musicality as well. I will borrow this quote in order to introduce the first monthly playlist for 2018, made up of releases that were made during January 2018. We have listened to 68 albums and EPs and we picked our favourite songs from 29 of these releases.


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In the cacophonic world of popular music, with its high-impact effects and productions, the music is often somewhat lost as it ends up being premeditated…The world of pop is a world where everything always has to be more than anything else. (Morten Harket)

A-HA, a.k.a Morten (Harket), Magne (Furuholmen) and Paul (Waaktaar-Savoy), the band from Norway that was so fascinated by the UK that settled here from the middle of the 1980s, count 34 years in the music industry and our hearts. Their debut album ‘‘Hunting High And Low‘ was released in 1985 right when MTV was gaining a momentum and the fascination with experimental electronica and industrial music was at its apogee. The band made an impressive start taking into account the cut-throat competitive aspect of the music industry those days. The very first song from this debut album, ‘Take On Me’, became a number one hit at the US charts while ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV‘ from that same album became number one at the UK charts.

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