HOLYGRAM
MODERN CULTS
Music for the lost: HOLYGRAM‘s music blends post-punk and new wave with Krautrock and shoegaze elements into a headstrong, multi-layered and thoroughly contemporary homage to the sound of the 1980s, including a resolute look to the future: driving, dark and full of catchy moments. The wide range of influences of the five band members, who got together in Cologne’s vibrating musical landscape in 2015, are unmistakable: New Order meets NEU!. Their unpretentious approach to their own icons proves that references to the past must always be future-oriented, too. Previously impossible-to-combine elements come together cleverly to become the soundtrack of a city that appears threatening in the twilight.
The band who always wrap themselves in dense wafts of mist and cool lighting on stage have played numerous festivals, such as the Mailfeld Derby, Wave-Gotik-Treffen and New Waves Day and accompanied British act OMD on their 2017 European tour. At the end of the year, HOLYGRAM are set to embark on an extensive support tour with VNV Nation through Europe and the US to introduce their debut album Modern Cults live.
The recording takes up where their self-titled 2016 EP left off and intensifies HOLYGRAM‘s contemplation of themes such as big cities, alienation and anonymity, hope and memories, love and identity: These constant reflections always interact closely with the band’s unmistakable sonic guise. The atmosphere oscillates between the brutal sounds of the big city and the fragility of the people that lose themselves in it – intelligently observed scenarios of a world falling apart in which individuals have long ceased to play a leading role. The eleven songs were created over the past few years and some of them have already been tested in a live context. Numbers such as the title track Modern Cults or the spherical Still There follow their protagonist on a nocturnal trip through clubs, flashbacks, run-down neighbourhoods and the abysses of the human psyche. The diversity of the cityscape as a reflection of the people who live in it seems like an Ariadne‘s thread that the five musicians offer to their listeners to help them navigate this broad stylistic range. Because HOLYGRAM don’t see themselves as representatives of a specific genre. Melancholy walls of guitar sounds (Distant Light) interchange with uplifting bass runs (Hideaway), chilly synthesizers meet stoically driving rhythms and together make up the projection screen for the ambivalent stories that HOLYGRAM tell in their music. While 1997 wanders through forgotten places in a broken-up relationship, the song She’s Like The Sun is an ironic confrontation with the failure to achieve unreachable targets. Autobiographical elements blend with fiction, the past melts into the present and they all become a simultaneously oppressive yet hopeful vision of human (co-) existence: a person caught in the mist of their own dreams at the intersection of outer and inner world, between fiction and reality.
This is also where the first single release Signals (scheduled for release on 7 September) comes in, featuring a new-wave guise that belies an emotionally torn lyric, elevating the deeply melancholy chorus (“Sometimes when I close my eyes I see you walk away / And everytime the sun comes up the feeling is the same”) to a pop-like anthem, illustrating that in this world people are only cogs in a much bigger, increasingly autonomous machine.
For the production of their album, which was recorded at Cologne’s Amen Studios, Patrick Blümel (vocals), Sebastian Heer (drums), Marius Lansing (guitars), Pilo Lenger (synthesizers) and Bennett Reimann (bass) enlisted the support of Maurizio Baggio, who also produced The Soft Moon’s albums Deeper and Criminal. Together they worked on the band’s established sound, enhancing it with a myriad of facets.
VNV NATION - NOIR TOUR + HOLYGRAM - EUROPE 2018
12.10 Alter Schlacthof - Dresden - D
13.10 Stadtgarten- Erfurt - D
14.10 Im Wizemann - Stuttgart - D
16.10 Futurum - Prague - CZ
17.10 Progresja - Warsaw - PL
19.10 Effenaar - Eindhoven - NL
20.10 E-Werk - Cologne - D
21.10 De Casino - St-Niklaas - B (TICKETS)
23.10 Melkweg - Amsterdam - NL
24.10 Ringlokschuppen - Bielefeld - D
26.10 Columbiahalle - Berlin - D
27.10 Altes Theater - Magdeburg - D (SOLD OUT!)
28.10 Muffahalle - Munich - D
30.10 Batschkapp - Frankfurt (AM) - D
31.10 Haus Leipzig - Leipzig - D
01.11 MAU Club - Rostock - D
02.11 Mehr Theater am Grossmarkt - Hamburg D
Daft Records has a long tradition of releasing some special and high quality releases for decades now and strikes back with two highly anticipated releases from two of their latest signed artists.
The first one:
KnK - Dead Body Music III (D1070CD)
On their 2nd full length album this Belgian duo takes you once again on a remarkable dark experience with their DBM (Dead Body Music), a perfect blend of old skool industrial with haunting vocals from the grave.
The second one:
ALVAR - I Sew A Blanket Of All The Broken Clouds D1071CD
The long awaited and brand-new 11 track album from Swedish dark-noise and EBM act ALVAR, who made an impressive performance at last year's BIMFEST, stunning friend and foe!
ALVAR, pulsing, shadows, thrilling rhythms, furious loops and a feeling of total takeover of your soul.
Both releases are due 15 October 2018
More info and previews at www.daft-records.com
Today it’s exactly 41 years ago that Iggy Pop released Lust for Life (29th August 1977). It was his second solo studio album and also his second collaboration with David Bowie, following The Idiot that was released earlier in the same year. As well as achieving critical success, it was Iggy Pop's most commercially popular album to date, and remains his only Gold-certified release in the UK. The recording sessions for this album took place at the Hansa Studio by the Wall (Berlin) between April and June ’77, almost immediately after the The Idiot promotion tour which ended on 16th April.
Pop has stated, "David and I had determined that we would record that album very quickly, which we wrote, recorded and mixed in eight days and because we had done it so quickly, we had a lot of money left over from the advance, which we split.”
Lust for Life reached number 28 in the UK Album Chart and is his second highest-performing release in that country after 2016's Post Pop Depression. Initially the album did well in the US too but the sudden death of Elvis Presley (16th August 1977) caused record label RCA to quickly reissue Presley's catalogue and any promotional focus for Pop's album was lost.
Bowie, Pop and engineer Colin Thurston produced the album under the pseudonym "Bewlay Bros”, a name retrieved from a track on Bowie’s album Hunky Dory.
Besides probably the most popular track Lust For Life, The Passenger also found its way to alternative clubs and dance floors all over the world. Even if it was initially released as the b-side track of the 7” single Success.
Siouxsie and The Banshees made a cover of The Passenger in 1987 for their all-cover-versions album Though The Looking Glass. Iggy Pop praised their version and stated: "That's good. She sings it well and she threw a little note in when she sings it, that I wish I had thought of, it's kind of improved it … The horn thing is good."
David Bowie covered Tonight (minus the opening lines referencing drugs) with Tina Turner, along with Neighborhood Threat, on his 1984 release Tonight.
Lust For Life (tracklist)
A1. Lust For Life
A2. Sixteen
A3. Some Weird Sin
A4. The Passenger
A5. Tonight
B1. Succes
B2. Turn Blue
B3. Neighborhood Threat
B4. Fall In Love With Me
Interpol releases new music video 'If you really love nothing' and album 'Marauder'!
The most notorious Belgian Rockrallyfinalist of 2018, Diane Grace, will release her debut EP on Starman Records from 7th September 2018.
The highly strung boy band has recorded three tracks together with bassist / producer Pieter Van Buyten (Kowlier, The Kids) that create … Pan!C.
Along with this EP, the trio also made a short film bearing the same name, starring a coke-sniffing pig, the spirit of Diane Grace and Mauro B. The voodooslasher is sent out in three parts, and will have it's avant-premiere live on 23rd August at Filmhuis Klappei, Antwerp, with subsequent concert.
Below you can watch a promising trailer!
Diane Grace sluit duivelspact met Starman Records
De beruchtste Rockrallyfinalist van 2018 Diane Grace lost vanaf 7 september 2018 haar debuut EP op Starman Records.
De fijnbesnaarde boysband heeft samen met bassist/producer Pieter Van Buyten (Kowlier, The Kids) drie tracks opgenomen die Pan!c vormen.
Tegelijk met de EP maakte het trio ook een gelijknamige kortfilm met in de hoofdrol een cokesnuivend varken, de geest van Diane Grace en Mauro B. De voodooslasher wordt in drie delen de wereld ingestuurd, en beleeft live zijn avant-première op 23.8 in Filmhuis Klappei, Antwerpen, met aansluitend concert
Hieronder alvast de veelbelovend trailer!
