An interview with MADAM-John Lee Bird exhibition ‘One Small Step At A Time’

Posted: 12th September 2017 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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It was during the ‘quietest’ part of this summer that the ‘loudest’ event happened at an old tavern in Greenwich, The Trafalgar Tavern: John Lee Bird’s exhibition ‘One small step at a time‘ accompanied by live music from MADAM. The Trafalgar Tavern opened in 1837 and served as a home for seamen during WWI and as a working men’s club between the wars. The gig by MADAM, was the second part of what seems to be an ongoing collaboration between John Lee Bird and other artists having as a starting point his exhibition of 365 portraits (one for each day of the year), entitled ‘One small step at a time’. But let’s take things from the beginning.


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QUAL-AUTUMNS Live at The Waiting Room

Posted: 20th August 2017 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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“Was he an animal that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light“ (Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis)

It becomes apparent after every gig that it is best not to expect anything in particular from a performance. That way the emotions can get to you with more strength and a certain element of surprise.

Following a brief delay in opening the doors, Autumns a.k.a Christian Donaghey, appeared on stage. With two released albums so far entitled ‘Terrible Tuesday‘ (Downwards) and ‘Das Nichts‘ (Clandestine records), the music of Autumns follows noisy, experimental, coldwave paths.

The show had no visuals and the sound did not have enough depth to become enveloping and replicate the darkness that we can listen to on the albums. The distorted sounds were quite thin and the music was not as evocative as it should have been.

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OVERTURE-Interview

Posted: 3rd August 2017 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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‘A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile, the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral…’ (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince)

In music as in life, the devil ‘hides’ in the details. In other words, no one can guarantee that a piece of music will be perceived as something more than just the sum of its parts, therefore each time a debut album such as Overture’s ‘Screaming Silence’ breaks through the multitude of releases that see the light of day, by offering music of sonic and emotional richness, we can’t resist supporting it !


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Live review-And Also The Trees,In The Nursery,Cult With No Name at O2 Academy Islington

Posted: 23rd June 2017 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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There are few gigs within each year that get my heart racing and this one was one of them from the moment I learned about it in January. I had been expecting a London date for And Also The Trees since last year when I attended both their concerts in Leipzig’s WGT, so I was thrilled to find out that this wish of mine would be fulfilled in 2017. I was also extremely excited to see In The Nursery live again as it had now been, more than 10 years since the last time I saw them in Athens’ Elfentanz festival and anxious to see Cult With No Name for the first time.

First of all the organization of this gig was very good, stage times were respected, the music we listened to between the bands’ sets was very fitting and everything else around this gig was great. These are not obvious things and they are very important.

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Live review: Evil Blizzard,The Fierce and the Dead, Taman Shud at The Underworld

Posted: 16th February 2017 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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This was not a typical gig, it was not even a gig but a real-life experience inside a surreal dimension! The evening had a giant baby, a pink ‘dog’, a (bare assed) bin-man, a terrifying ‘cleaner’, fierceness, darkness, heaviness in sound and many equally important and ‘freaky’ guests. It was none of these elements that was responsible for the atmosphere of the evening on its own, but their interactions and combined effect. But let’s take things from the beginning…

“We’re so fucking loud that anyone who comes to our shows is just subjected to such a level of loudness and occult ideas…that it forces capitalism out of this magic space…” (Taman Shud extract from an interview)

Taman Shud, opened the evening on time and offered a show that was almost shamanic in its atmosphere. The band revealed a unique combination of original elements in the arrangement as well as in the delivery of the vocals. It was neither the passion of each of the four musicians nor their complete immersion in the music that captured my attention. One of the reasons I was so captivated by Taman Shud, was the fact that the lead vocals were coming from the very back of the stage, courtesy of the skilled drummer Nick, while Greg (guitar) at the front of the stage was providing backing vocals! I don’t think I have ever witnessed such an arrangement before and its actual effect could only be fully appreciated after moving to a short distance from the stage so that the sound could completely envelop me and fill the space.

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Live review: PJ Harvey at O2 Academy Brixton

Posted: 29th December 2016 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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r-8381428-1460646507-1375-jpegIt’s been a while since I last saw PJ Harvey perform live and a lot has changed since that day at a Rockwave Festival in Athens of Greece. Both her music and her stage appearance seem to have changed dramatically in the last 10 years. Her albums are now big productions with more musicians in her band than ever before and her live concerts have become much more theatrical. Compared to the past, PJ Harvey has changed the nature of her movements and the way she responds to her songs 1and this has added more layers to the lyrics. I couldn’t help but notice that her gigs lately give out the impression that one listens to a whole orchestra especially because all the musicians are multi-instrumentalists. Come to think of it, the whole world has changed since the early 2000 and PJ Harvey has proven that she has very strong social reflexes and always finds clever ways of incorporating social critique in her work (i.e. lyrics, videos).

A few days before the gig I received an email from the venue, informing me that there will be no support band(s) for this gig, yet when I arrived at O2 Brixton Academy, I realized that there was also no dedicated DJ for the evening. Doors had opened on time, at 19.00 that was, but until 21.00 when PJ Harvey appeared on stage, everyone was waiting in complete silence…I am sure something better could have been done there.

The time was now 20.40 and the crowd that had completely filled the venue had started to become impatient (especially because the announced stage time was 20.30) so there was a little bit of shouting, persistent clapping and a shared feeling of excitement. I was kind of worried because PJ Harvey, in my experience at least, has been famous for being punctual and it was now 20.55 and there was no sign of her. By the time I had finished that thought, the lights turned off completely and the deep sound of drums presaged the procession of the band on stage.

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Live review: Sudden Infant, Dario Sanfilippo+ SEC_, Les Énervès at CAFE OTO

Posted: 4th December 2016 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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CAFÉ OTO has consistently exposed its members and devotees to pioneering music and acts that are artistically difficult to understand by conventional standards. Sudden Infant, Les Énervès and Dario Sanfilippo with SEC_ were no exception. Sudden Infant together with Merzbow who took Cafe Oto’s stage a few days earlier, are probably two of the most disturbing and ‘hard to swallow’ acts that an unfamiliar audience can come across…or so I thought.

30But let’s take things from the beginning. The evening started at 9 o’clock with Les Énervès, who, facing the stage offered us a deconstructed, almost cubist in style, sonic experience. Their set consisted mostly of a series of syncopated sounds without any vocals or musicality. The result was an extremely fragmented sound and felt as if someone was trying to fix faulty equipment. Both Giulio (Nacera) and Ron (Grieco) were manipulating sounds through computers but overall what I heard seemed to have neither a rhythm nor a logic behind it. This absence of rhythm seemed to almost prevent the audience from truly engaging with what was being played. The duo has released their debut album entitled ‘Estate’ in .mp3 format, earlier this year.

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Sudden Infant- The interview

Posted: 26th November 2016 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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Following a captivating gig by (now full band) Sudden Infant a.k.a Joke, Christian and Alex kindly spent some time with Blauerosen to discuss the changes that Sudden Infant has gone through the past three years, their next album, their plans for the future, art, creativity, London and Berlin.


a-75331-1400673614-8383-jpegBlauerosen: The name of the band consists of two words that most people would be frightened to pronounce together because they bring to mind a disturbing situation (i.e. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). Was this a way to filter your audience in the sense that, those people who wouldn’t freak out by the name would be the people who would be open to your work and the rest not?

Joke: Yes, you are referring to the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This is actually where the name of the band comes from. I was playing in a hardcore punk band in the 80s and then I became a father, I was 24 years old it was the end of the 80s so I stopped with the hardcore bands and I wanted to spend more time with my family but I didn’t want to stop making music. I was really interested at the time in industrial and experimental music. I love Throbbing Gristle, Suicide etc so I started my own project when my son was born and I was looking for a name, of course, I was reading a lot at the time about sudden infant death syndrome but I thought that yes it is, a very hard name, it’s something shocking…I took just the first two words as I didn’t want to name my project Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and then I put them in a different context when I started  my solo work but also ‘sudden infant’ can mean something different, like an adult person that becomes an infant suddenly, doing stupid things or whatever and it is not only connected to this negative situation, it can have a lot of positive meanings as well…so the name has stayed all these years and the whole project changed into what you experienced tonight as a band for 3 years now with Christian and Alex…

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Live review: Hypnopazuzu at Union Chapel

Posted: 11th November 2016 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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The only way you can attend a gig of David Tibet’s is by going through some sort of meditation in order to prepare yourself for the energy that will envelop you. The only question will then be, which chords will be struck and how strongly.                        

Stargazer’s Assistant- A meditative introduction

sa_11The evening started with a mesmerizing set by Stargazer’s Assistant, who have released the album ‘Remoteness of Light‘ through House of Mythology this year. Starting off with sounds that replicated sa_13the atmosphere of an unknown, ‘wild’ place, David J. Smith and the band used droning sounds enriched by awakening and mystifying sounds of bells, chains, accordions, various objects and percussion all skilfully positioned within the arrangement. There were influences from dark ambient, oriental music as well as tribal and pagan music in slow rhythms that ensured our total spiritual immersion in the atmosphere.sa_4Soon after the band started to weave their soul-numbing sounds, I realized that this was the meditative process that I was seeking to go through prior to listening to Hypnopaz?zu’s music. sa_19Stargazer’s Assistant used different wind instruments including the unusual bagpipe and embarked on the demanding task of creating an enveloping sound for us. The alterations in the rhythms and styles were subtle and the resulting sound felt as if it was bearing messages from unknown/forgotten worlds.sa_21 It was only after the band had finished that the actual impact that the sound had on each one of us was truly apprehended. The discussions among different groups of people revolved around how powerful and subtle the impact of the music had been!

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ANOHNI- Hopelessness The Performance

Posted: 12th July 2016 by blaue-rosen in Live reviews,Interviews
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Hopelessness, an uneasy feeling  transformed to an artistically attractive spectacle…or how I made up my mind about ANOHNI’s album

I have never felt so tormentingly undecided about an album before. Despite the fact that the powerful album’s title attempted to set my mood before I even had the chance to listen to it properly for the first time, this title was not the reason for my indecisiveness. After the album’s title, it was the cover with its distorted image of ANOHNI and the titles of the songs which, like the many heads of a hydra, attempted to monopolize my attention. Both the cover and the titles of the songs are in agreement with the album’s subjects and especially the titles of the songs are evidently R-8469589-1462215565-8684.jpegdarker than all the titles of songs that Antony Hegharty a.k.a ANOHNI had previously released. Finally it was the lyrics of the songs which tried to capture my undivided attention as they are filled with ideas and thoughts with most of which I could not agree more. The album’s essence was not hidden amongst these different aspects and this only became crystal clear after I had finished listening to this album for the fourth time. It was by then, that individual verses from the lyrics of some songs were imprinted on my mind and that my favourite song from the album ‘Obama’ had a very strong impact on my mood, not only because it feels like a mantra but because its overall atmosphere has elements that surpass its subject in so many ways! Somehow it had become obvious from the delivery of the lyrics, that ANOHNI’s voice was one more instrument and the aim was to articulate both the lyrics and the emotional awe that was provoked by the subjects of these lyrics. This album is so much more than a passionate performance of a few verses and the more I listened to it the more I realized that even though ANOHNI was actually singing, she was at the same time conveying a message at its purest possible form…Nevertheless, I still could not determine whether I actually liked the music. Indeed, the music in ‘Hopelessness’ is miles away from that of ‘I Am A Bird Now’ and ‘The Crying Light’ but the voice is still the same except this time, the stories she sings about, are much more sinister. If Antony’s voice in ‘You Are My Sister’, ‘Cripple And The Starfish’ and ‘Twilight’ had the qualities of a caress, we could confidently say that in ‘Hopelessness’ this voice and its mood incorporate the violence of a whip.

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