If you had some doubts, now it is sure: The Arch is back on a roll! Quick reminder: early 2018 the band from Breendonk started to release each month a new song along with a video, which should then form around the end of the year a new album with 12 tracks. It seemed a bit ambitious. The intervals between songs got longer, but the quality has been impressive. The last single 'Yoga Noise' was released early November, and look: one month later we're surprised again with 'Joan's In Prison'. Again you'll hear a nice combination of guitars and electronics, and again there's a beautiful video where the band asked some common friends and acquaintances to sing the song in front of the camera. (xk)

Last week The Arch also proved to be in great shape live at our Dark Entries Night. Anyone who wants to see the band live in the coming months can do so at the following locations:

• 19/01/2019: met Clan of Xymox, Garagesound, Bari, Italië
• 19/04/2019: Wol'n Bak Festival, Jeugdhuis De Schakel, Sint-Lambrechts-Woluwe, België
• 27/04/2019: met Clan of Xymox, De Cacaofabriek, Helmond, Nederland
• 28/04/2019: Wavefest, Baroeg, Rotterdam, Nederland
• 18/05/2019: New Waves Day, Oberhausen, Duitsland

Read our interview where The Arch speaks about the first six singles of 2018

PiL used to sing back then 'This is not a lovesong'. Now guess who's imitating them... Before Rammstein there was Oomph, the pioneers of what was later called the Neue Deutsche Härte. This mix of electro and guitars has not gone unnoticed and the band experienced one success after the other in the 90's. They've kept being active and will come back early 2019 with their 13th album. It will be released on January18th but a first extract is already available. And so let's get back to 'This is not a lovesong', as the song is called 'Kein Liebeslied'. The song's not about love, but about the evolution of mankind and the question about what we have already achieved after all this 'progress'. The new album promises Oomph grand cru! (xk, Dark Entries Magazine)

Oomph: website / facebook

Today, forty-seven years ago the late David Bowie released his first masterwork, Hunky Dory.

“Look out, you rock & rollers."

Following on from the garage-rock of “The Man Who Sold The World” the formula was now in place for Bowie to push the boundaries that bit further and make the world sit up and take notice, his travels to America had inspired the writing of his first masterpiece, the culture and the music soaked into his songs, from the Velvet Underground to Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, all would play a role in the dynamic of David Bowie’s creativity.

From the infectious opener “Changes”, an instant pop-classic with the catchy chorus which would foretell Bowie’s career, the path he would take and the warning to the music world of his arrival.

“Oh! You Pretty Things”, this was “Starman” part-one, the full lineup of the Spiders coming into their own for the first time with the aid of Rick Wakeman on piano.
As “Life On Mars?” became the pivotal Bowie track of the day, the transcendent chorus, the uplifting piano working in partnership with the guitar solos, images of America and childhood dreams:

“It's on America's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again”.

On “Quicksand” he went shoulder to shoulder with the songwriting greats of the day in this tale which dealt with the occult, the Second World War and most surprisingly Aleister Crowley and The Golden Dawn. Bowie was at his darkest, pulling images and characters from the abyss and casting them in his latest play;

“I'm the twisted name on Garbo's eyes,Living proof of Churchill's lies, I'm destiny. I'm torn between the light and dark, Where others see their targets, divine symmetry”

The driving acoustic guitar of “Andy Warhol”, a psychedelic-ballad, an ode to art and it’s creator, though being able to sum up Bob Dylan in one line is an accomplishment all of its own, in his tribute to the folk-troubadour Bowie nailed it perfectly on “Song For Dylan”;
“With a voice like sand and glue”

“Queen Bitch”, was the template for the following albums, Bowie on acoustic guitar, Ronson tearing up a riff similar to The Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane”, the melodic bass-run by Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey hammering out the drums, Bowie went at a sonic pace into area of a Glam-Rock.

The sinister folk of “The Bewlay Brothers”, a nightmare which would have fit in on the “The Man Who Sold The World”, the schizophrenic lyrics are terrifying, closing the album in a weirdness, to leave fans and critics warped;
“With our backs on the arch
And if the Devil may be here
But he can't sing about that
Oh, and we were gone”.

The songs were refined so well the album only took two-weeks to record at Trident Studios, he always worked at a frantic speed, creating the cabaret melodrama set the course for his career, his partnership with The Spiders and a world ready for the name Bowie.
A year later the glamrock-alien Ziggy Stardust would land to earth, taking the guitar driven elements of ‘Hunky Dory’ and releasing an album which would change music forever.

Tracklist:
01 “Changes”

02 “Oh! You Pretty Things”

03 “Eight Line Poem”

04 “Life on Mars?”

05 “Kooks”

06 “Quicksand”

07 “Fill Your Heart”

08 “Andy Warhol”

09 “Song for Bob Dylan”

10 “Queen Bitch”

11 “The Bewlay Brothers”

Kevin Burke Dec18

Blutengel are on the hunt and the hunt promises to be a victory because the band concentrates on its strengths for Vampire to create a new hit and a potential classic.

Vampire is the second single from the upcoming album Un:Gott. It has a bombastic arrangement in the tradition of songs such as Black or Walk Away. Promising, when looking forward to the new album...

In addition Pseudokrupp Project and Six Faces have both contributed a remix. The first very danceable, the second one rockin'.

This day forty-years ago was The Fall entered the Sound Suite In Camden, Greater London and recorded their first long-player:
“Live At The Witch Trials”.
Although recorded in one day on the fifteenth of December and mixed the following day, the album would not hit the shops until mid March 1979.
This however was the very moment the alternative, indie and punk scene exploded under a collision curated by the late Mark E. Smith, the Mancunian rebellious wordsmith, one part Johnny Rotten and one part Ian Dury.

The man who steered this ship of alternative post-punk was as scathing as he was intelligent, not yet the commander and chief but his dominance was already in its infancy and rearing its head.
The fearless nature of the collective unit was the original mark of brilliance which made this a standout release in the late-seventies punk movement, its acts as a time capsule of both the social and economic state of Britain forty-years ago, a narrative of council estates, unemployment;”Rebellious Jukebox”,”No Xmas for John Quays”, “Industrial Estate” and of course the opener, the claustrophobic masterpiece “Frightened”.

Martin Bramah, the original guitarist is solid, melodic and at times the centerpiece, he effortlessly provides a backdrop of intensity, as for Marc Riley and his solid bass which holds the band’s direction together but it is the drumming of Karl Burn which was as wild and ramshackle as they come when it came to providing that extra menacing aspect to the music, this was the classic Fall lineup.
The extra ambiance of keyboards by that unsung hero Yvonne Pawlett was the perfect balance to Smith who, is at the very front on the mix, every word and syllable is clear, unlike later recordings, but here they are friends and comrades which adds to the easy flow of “Live At The Witch Trials”, it was never again this relaxed, this brilliant.


Frightened (Smith/Friel)
Someone's always on my tracks
And in a dark room you'd see more than you think
I'm out of my place, got to get back
I sweated a lot, you could feel the violence
I've got shears pointed straight at my chest
And time moves slow when you count it
I'm better than them, and I think I'm the best
But I'll appear at midnight when the films close
'Cause I'm in a trance
Oh, and I sweat
I don't want to dance
I want to go home
I couldn't live in those people places
Oh, they might get to know my actions
I'd run away from toilets and feces
I'd run away to a non-date on the street
'Cause I'm in a trance
Oh, and I sweat
I don't want to dance
I want to go home
I feel trapped by mutual affection
And I don't know how to use freedom
I spend hours looking sideways
To the time when I was sixteen
'Cause I'm in a trance
Oh, and I sweat
I don't wanna dance
I wanna go home
I'm frightened
Amphetamine frightened
I go to the top of the street
I go to the bottom of the street
I look to the sky, my lips are dry
I'm frightened, frightened, frightened.

Original 1979 Track List;
Frightened
Crap Rap 2 / Like To Blow
Rebellious Jukebox
No Xmas For John Quays
Mother-Sister!
Industrial Estate
Underground Medecin
Two Steps Back
Live At The Witch Trials
Futures And Pasts
Music Scene

Kevin Burke Dec 2018