Friday, June 26, 2009

Sky Saxon of The Seeds (1946* - 2009)


The Seeds: 'Pushin' Too Hard' (1967)


The Seeds: 'Mr Farmer (1967)


The Seeds: 'Can't Seem To Make You Mine


The Seeds: 'Two Fingers Pointing on You' (off Psych-Out, directed by Richard Rush, 1968)

Sky "Sunlight" Saxon, the singer and leader of the seminal psychedelic garage rock band The Seeds died on Wednesday 25 June 2009.

* He was reported to be 63 years old, though some sources differ on his actual age.

  • Obituary @ L.A. Record
  • Wednesday, June 24, 2009

    New Releases from Luovaja

    Finnish CD-R label Luovaja delighted me with three fresh releases from their roster; two of them of Finnish origins, one from Russia.

    Paanpa is the singer–songwriter–multi-instrumentalist Pasi Palonen from Tampere. His home-grown electropop draws comparisons to such Finnish luminaries as Risto and TV-Resistori. Vega Stereo is vintage analogue ambient from the Moscow duo of Alexey and Nastya. Bearly Queen is a one-man ambient project of Heikki Kippola (also known for his Palasokeri prog and Krautrock page) from Oulu. Follow the links to sound samples, further info and how to order.



    Artist: Paanpa
    Title: Ihmisen ja koneen välisestä ystävyydestä
    Format: CD-R, edition of 50
    Cat.no.: lvjcdr011
    Label: Luovaja (FIN)
    Date: May 2009

    Tracklist:

    1. Aina kun mä tuun, mä kuolen pikkaisen (3:33)
    2. Sokkarin liukuportaat (3:13)
    3. Robootti (3:18)
    4. Oi, Bianchina! (3:56)
    5. Avaruushissi (3:06)
    6. Rakkauslaulu robootille (3:56)
    7. Kone rokkaa (3:23)
    8. Hei beibi, drillaa mua (3:21)
    9. Tottele minua kone (3:14)

    Total length: 31:20

    Press release notes:

    Sci-fi–lo-fi–indie-synthesizer-pop-rock from the singer–songwriter–multi-instrumentalist Pasi Palonen's (also of Popsicle People) solo project Paanpa. After last year's wonderful demo Mehujääihmisten uneton uni (which can be downloaded here) comes Paanpa's debut album, philosophical comment on the delicate relationship between man and machine.

    Can a machine feel love? Can even a human being feel love? Can a human and a machine ever find each other, romantically? What about an intimate relationship between flesh and cold, cold metal? These are important questions of which no-one has ever written even a doctoral thesis(!).

    As a human being, as a machine of flesh, I've been coded with these biological scripts that cause us to feel crush, hate, the need to touch and be touched, the ability to feel sorrow and even so-called love - these are emotions, electrical phenomena going on in the brain, that man has located and given them names. These are the days of making a consumer product from every basic need man has, so that these needs can be sold for example as part of TV's programme flow or as a sex shop's services (not to mention all those dating sites over the Internet).

    The world we try to perceive every day is after all created by man. Man has also created every machine and every human being of today. Form is discretion, and there is no soul... So, I make a profound question: Is there really a difference between a creature grown in a womb and a machine, built up piece by piece in a factory? These both creations have (in most cases) some sort of an operating system with some sub programs.

    As an individual raised by science fiction literature, I strongly feel the urge to ask, to speculate about the thing called 'reality'. I do not expect getting neutral answers, if any. I also feel that pop music is as good a format to make these questions as a scientific (or a science fiction) publication is.

    I have been honoured to feel a machine kind of love, to be a guinea pig for a sadistic dentist's dark fantasies, to mourn my own loneliness, and between all of this I've been conceiving and amending my own views of this planet, Earth.

    I recorded this record in my bedroom where I also wrote most of the songs. When Jaakob Karhu contacted me about making this CD-R, about half of the songs existed in a form or another. Quickly I understood what it was going to be, even if my songs tend to take a direction of their own and crawl out of my reach. If I believe in something, it is that things tend to work out somehow - may the results be for good or bad. This happened to 'Ihmisen ja koneen välisestä ystävyydestä', too.

    – Pasi Palonen, Tampere in May 2009




    Artist: Vega Stereo
    Title: Quark
    Format: CD-R, limited edition
    Cat.no.: lvjcdr01
    Label: Luovaja (FIN)
    Date: June 2009

    Tracklist:

    1. Green Beauty
    2. Blue Up
    3. Green Charm
    4. Red Truth
    5. Blue Down
    6. Red Strange
    7. Blue Beauty
    8. Red Down
    9. Green Truth

    Total length: 61:11

    Press release notes:

    Moscow duet VEGA STEREO – Alexey and Nastya

    Long suite of hypnotic ambient landscapes, electronic minimalism and relaxed floating through soft spaces of colors – created with vintage analog synthesizers. The other member of this mysterious Russian duo is also known for his project Analog Concept.




    Artist: Bearly Queen
    Title: Void, Oh The Void
    Format: CD-R, edition of 50
    Cat.no.: lvjcdr014
    Label: Luovaja (FIN)
    Date: June 2009

    Tracklist:

    1. Void, Oh The Void

    Total length: 44:14

    Press release notes:

    Even though the title of the previous album may have suggested otherwise BQ hasn't split up. There was some hesitation however if the next album should be something different. After working awhile simultaneously with two different tracks BQ soon realised that these two songs were not ment to be together on the same album. Both needed more space and time. The spacier of the two caught more attension because it had the spirit BQ had been searching for; this could be BQ's Atem? So instead of something different you get more of that familiar slow and dark BQ sound you have learned to love. Better luck next time. Maybe.

    H. K.

  • Official site
  • Thursday, June 18, 2009

    Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon In Memoriam


    Eon: 'The Spice Must Flow' (1991)

    Via Blissblog:

    Ian Loveday a.k.a. Eon, a legendary British electronic dance music producer, passed away on Wednesday June 17 from complications with pneumonia at the age of 54. Loveday was known for such rave tunes as 'Spice' (1990) and 'Fear The Mind Killer' (1991), and the album Void Dweller (1992). He also recorded under such monikers as Minimal Man, Tan Ru and R. Rash. I interviewed Ian Loveday for pHinnWeb in 2002, through his connection with J Saul Kane's Electron Industries label, for which Eon released such 12"s as 'Wave Angel' (1995) and 'Phaze Test' (1996). Rest in peace.

    More:

  • Eon interview @ pHinnWeb (April 2002)
  • Partial Eon discography @ pHinnWeb
  • Eon @ MySpace
  • Eon @ Discog

  • Obituary @ The Daily Swarm
  • Obituary by Louise Gray @ When That Helicopter Comes
  • Tuesday, June 16, 2009

    Chicks on Speed: Cutting The Edge (Chicks on Speed Records)



    Artist: Chicks on Speed
    Title: Cutting The Edge
    Format: 2-LP/2-CD
    Label: Chicks on Speed Records (Germany)
    Cat.no.: COSR 042
    Release date: June 2009

    Tracklist:

    CD1/LP1:

    01. Intro
    02. Girl Monster
    03. Art Rules
    04. Art Speaks Out
    05. Vibrator
    06. Airport Connection
    07. Buzz
    08. Extended Paintbrush
    09. Globo Cop
    10. Sex In Der Stadt
    11. Strip Song

    CD2/LP2:

    01. How To Build A High Heeled Shoe Guitar
    02. Super Surfer Girl
    03. Sewing Machine
    04. Black And White Diva
    05. Coolhunters
    06. The Worst Band In The World
    07. Scream Song
    08. Art Rules Christopher Just's Hard One Intro
    09. Art Rules Christopher Just's Hard One
    10. Instrometalized
    11. Sarah Baker makes partying into art
    12. Cutting The Edge
    13. Dangerous Ones (Hidden Track)


    Press release notes from Chicks on Speed Records:

    The Chicks have been busy in the last 2 years, filming video, making art installations, Girl Monster extravaganzas, reading books, exhibiting all over the planet, making patchwork fashion collections (for Insight, Crystal Ball and Yoox.com), building high heeled shoe guitars, high tech Super suits that trigger sound and video and other Objekt instruments ... AND THEY EVEN FOUND THE TIME TO MAKE THIS NEW RECORD!

    CHICKS ON SPEED’s fifth album Cutting The Edge utilises the collective as a mechanism for the production of instantaneous sound and music recordings. The Chicks worked with: Whomadewho, Mark Stewart, Joe Robinson, A.L. Steiner, Kathi Glas, Anat Ben-David, Christopher Just, Fred Schneider, Gerhardt Potuznik, Patrick Pulsinger and especially UK Super producer team “A Scholar and Physician”.

    The studios, where the album was made, included hotel rooms, trains, bathrooms in cellars of art galleries, over Skype and live recordings taken from their Art Rules performances @ MoMA and Centre Pompidou.

    The songs range from self-referencing pieces, like “Art Rules” and “Extended Paintbrush”, full of insider information and irony, poking fun at the art world (to encourage people to be courageous and humorous) 60’s bubble gum pop “BUZZ”, which is all about the lost glamour of flying, Fassbinder inspired “Black and White Diva” featuring Kiki Moorse, who departed the group 2 years ago, to persue a solo career. “Sewing Machine” came about after the Chicks found a photo of themselves in El Pais crediting them as being Kraftwerk on stage. “Vibrator” ended up sounding so B52’s-ish that the Chicks just had to call up Fred Schneider. And yes, the recording happened over Skype.

    The "Objekt Instruments" are the newest addiction the Chicks on Speed have, they’re the ultimate culmination of fashion, performance and wearable sculptural art, taking advantage of the latest technological developments in science and new media. Most of the songs on the album have been created by using the "Objekt Instruments"; amplified rocks, a high heeled shoe guitar, sax going through a guitar amp, plucking a gutted Piano, and the inspiration for the album title, the scissors.

    Watch out for these "Objekt Instruments" handmade by the Chicks @ the new COS live shows and exhibitions the world over.
    Oh and by the way, experimentalism has never sounded so Pop!

    * Objekt Instruments made in conjunction with Hangar.org, Modul8, Christophe Coppins, Kampnagel theatre.

    More Info/Media/EPK: www.chicksonspeed.com/cuttingtheedge.html (pw: chicksedge)

    Booking: all European/Asian/Australian booking enquires: cris@primary.uk.com

    All other enquires: management@chicksonspeed.com; organisation@chicksonspeed.com

    P & C 2009 Chicks On Speed Records GmbH, Kolosseumstr. 6, 80469 München, Germany

    CUTTING THE EDGE
    Chicks on Speed are Melissa Logan and Alex Murray-Leslie who've conspired together since they ran their illegal bar together, behind the Munich Art Academy in the late 90s.You can try this at home. Sew these ingredients together and you got Chicks On Speed's happy white girl howling surprise of a fifth album, "Cutting The Edge":
    1) Take a lot of art and heart and make it smart with catchy, scratchy melodies and pithy, echoey words that lacerate and negotiate the crazy state of human play. Primp and prep primary popping colors and lock them down with hooks that click tight, in saucy, defiant songs that spin you across the shiny dancefloors of your mind.
    2) Make tunes that matter. Dramas and meditations in pop song form. Vibrator, whose B52's panache lured that band's Fred Schneider to join its sexy romp. Super Surfer Girls' funny beach fantasies; Art Rules Pop's scalding satire of art's money dance; Sew- ing Machine's found sounds from the sweatshop and inter-linguistic lyrics, the provocative textures of Extended Paint- brush's bouncy hedonistic agit-pop; the sheer provocation of Sex In Der Stadt's recycling porn ads; and the title track's timeless question - Are you fake? Or are you real?
    3) Choose your collaborators wisely. You must trust them abso- lutely. We're talking serious threats like Mark Stewart; Anat Ben-David, Joe Robinson, Douglas Gordon, A.L. Steiner, Kathi Glas, Christopher Just, Fred Schneider, Gerhardt Potuznik, Patrick Pulsinger and especially UK Super producer team A Scholar and Physician.
    4) Work across nations and oceans with tools like Skype and OBJEKT instruments you make yourself - amplified rocks, guitars like stiletto heels, saxophone warbling through guitar amps, piano strings plucked by hand.
    5) Wear your own designs of "super suits" that trigger sound and video, made of futuristic textiles with ancient cat's eyes that see into the present.
    6) Let a smorgasbrod of symbols slash expectations as you smash the grey part- itions between art, fashion, music, museums, government, industry and the way you choose to live your life & dreams.
    7) Don't forget the scissors, just as effective as a big bass drum, cutting you off from what you want to leave behind and giving this record its name.
    8) Add a dash of heartbreak, hilarity and wicked insight.
    9) Record on the run, in hotel rooms, trains, bathrooms in cellars of global art galleries, over Skype and live on stage at Art Rules performances at MOMA in New York and the Centre Pompidiou in Paris.
    10) Keep stitching. The departure of Kiki Moore after their last album two years ago, caused soul-searching. Would the Chicks survive? But COS's exuberant art needs kept them flinging their own glitter. Feel it? It's our time to shine. Fuck off, vampires, it's too late.
    by Vivien Goldman

    Vivien Goldman is a writer, broadcaster and musician whose post-punk cult classic 'Launderette' is re-issued on COS's Girl Monster. Her fifth book is The Book of Exodus: the Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century. Known as The Punk Professor, she also teaches Reggae courses at NYU and writes for the New York Times, the New Statesman, the Observer and many more.



    Chicks on Speed on Style.it


    Chicks on Speed on ABC Sunday Arts


    Chicks Speed: 'Glamour Girl' live @ Music Terminal, Taiwan (August 2009)

    Friday, June 12, 2009

    Kompleksi Basso Interview in English



    Kompleksi's April 2009 interview in Basso can be now read as an English version.

    The original interview in Finnish is here.

    And there's also the complete, unabridged raw version in Finnish.

    Thanks to Taru the interviewer and Risto @ Basso!



    Thursday, June 04, 2009

    Vladislav Delay's Forthcoming Album, Tummaa


    Vladislav Delay: 'Lumi' (2007, directed by Timothy Jaeger)

    Vladislav Delay (a.k.a. Sasu Ripatti) announces a forthcoming album called Tummaa ("Dark"), out on Leaf, 24 August 2009. Fact magazine (UK) has published a new interview with Ripatti concerning the record.



    Artist: Vladislav Delay
    Title: Tummaa
    Format: CD/ltd.ed. LP/digital download
    Cat.no.: BAY 72CD/BAY 72V/BAY 72E
    Label: Leaf (UK)
    Date: 24 August 2009

    Tracklist:

    1. A. Melankolia (10:58)
    2. B1. Kuula (Kiitos) (9:02)
    3. C1. Mustelmia (8:13)
    4. D1. Musta Planeetta (5:11)
    5. B2. Toive (11:09)
    6. C2. Tummaa (10:19)
    7. D2. Tunnelivisio (11:16)

  • Album info @ Leaf
  • Monday, June 01, 2009

    Tampere Electronic Music Phestival, 4 - 7 June 2009



    Frozen North Recordings & Music Got Me! present:

    Tampere Electronic Music Phestival

    4 - 7 June 2009
    @ Out of Juice, Hämeenkatu 23, Tampere, Finland

    Thursday 4 June 2009

    Toiminto LIVE (Swaeg)
    Herman Prime LIVE (Plauge)
    Hank Over LIVE (Plauge)
    Plauge DJs

    Friday 5 June 2009

    Sami Koivikko LIVE (Spectral / Shitkatapult)
    Teemu T LIVE (Pohjola / Instabil)
    Burdock (X-Rust)
    Jussi-Pekka Parikka (Frozen North)
    Sipitron (Disko Tekno Kollektiv)
    TP (Rikos Records)

    lounge:
    Trackmaster Jay (Sleazemasters / Frozen North)
    drS (Plauge)
    gr & Kimo (Spinni)

    Saturday 6 June 2009

    Phonogenic LIVE (20:20 Vision / Cocoon)
    Sasse (Moodmusic, Berlin)
    Joyce Muniz (Man Recordings, Vienna)
    Jussi-Pekka Parikka (Frozen North)
    Sipitron (Disko Tekno Kollektiv)
    TP (Rikos Records)

    lounge:
    Rooster Egg & Samino (Houseforest)
    Herman Prime (Plauge)
    DJ Sakke (Arabuusimiehet)

    Sunday 7 June 2009

    Jere Dangerous (Voltti Selectors)
    Sipitron & Monoder (Pakkas Levyt)
    Kek-1 & jammyG (Blazing Sound)

    Can Anyone Recognize This Video?

    Via Jan Jahsonic:


    unknown music video, early 1980s

    From YouTube: "A very obscure early 80's video in the vein of The Residents. Does anyone know who the artist is and the name of the song? It has been driving me crazy for years!"

    Update:

    thanks for the swift answer, Superjohan! So, the track is 'B' by Colin Newman (of Wire fame), released as a 7" and on his album A-Z (both on Beggars Banquet) in 1980.

  • Colin Newman: 'B' video @ YouTube
  • Colin Newman: 'B' 7" @ Discogs
  • Colin Newman: A-Z LP @ Discogs
  • Jorma Elovaara Interview @ Ylioppilaslehti




    Namechecking also pHinnWeb's Jorma Elovaara tribute page, Ylioppilaslehti of 15 May 2009 features a brand new Elovaara interview by Perttu Häkkinen (a.k.a. Randy Barracuda of Imatran Voima):

    http://www.ylioppilaslehti.fi/2009/05/15/saapasjalkamies/

    pHinnWeb Chart June 2009...




    ... can be found here.