This november 11th, 2016, Psy'Aviah launches an EP that closes the "Seven Sorrows, Seven Stars" album era, called "Chasing The Speed Of Light". Featuring tracks "ALCUBIERRE DRIVE ft. Kyoko Baertsoen" and "NOT WHAT I EXPECTED ft. Fallon Nieves" taken from the album in RADIO EDITS, as well as an unreleased track "ALONE" feat. Lis van den Akker on vocals. The EP is available in a limited physical EP with 7 bonus tracks, and a digital version that holds the other 10 tracks out of 17.
With Kyoko Baertsoen (ex-HOOVERPHONIC, LUNASCAPE) and her unique timbre fitting so well this sorrowful blend of trip-hop rhythms and EBM basslines on “Alcubierre Drive” and Fallon Nieves and her powerful vocals with attitude on the floor-packing “Not What I Expected” and its incisive synth lines and hypnotic grooves à la PRAGA KHAN, Yves Schelpe nicely summarizes PSY’AVIAH’s amazing dichotomy of sound stretching from moody mid-tempo electronic tunes to modern upbeat club songs with a dark industrial edge.
Besides their exclusive “radio edit” versions, both title songs are also featured in alternative remixed versions by AVARICE IN AUDIO vs. STUDIO-X giving “Alcubierre Drive” a modern electro-rock trip-hop vibe while CYBORGDRIVE and KONER both put their very own stylish touch to this brilliant song, also reworked here in a touching and beautiful 9 minute plus dreamy version full of ambient electronics and liquid drum’n bass by DISKONNEKTED vs. J. WOLF. Last but not least, young rising talent ANTIBODY gives a full-force aggrotech turn to the aggressive “Not What I Expected”…
Yves Schelpe also offers to us a beautiful bonus and exclusive 3rd song “Alone” featuring the unmatched voice of Lis van den Akker from the melancholy Dutch band MISERY, a track also nicely mutated into 2 different trance dance remixes by renown act ETASONIC.
This EP also comes as a very limited physical fan-edition with some 7 exclusive bonus tracks: besides 2 previously unreleased club remixes by trance/dance producer Tim Iron for “Lessons from the Past" and "Last of Us", Yves Schelpe also reveals the melodic and floating “Hal9000”, a very early PSY’AVIAH demo work written back then under the MARION XUE moniker; as well as 4 atmospheric recordings he made back in 2002 as a soundtrack for a theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s classic novel “The Portrait Of Dorian Grey”. Compositions so nicely fitting the overall spacey atmosphere of PSY’AVIAH’s last studio album “Seven Sorrows, Seven Stars”. Open-minded electronic music with heart and soul!
The Pretenders will release their brand new album, ‘Alone’ on October 21st through BMG.
It is the first Pretenders album for eight years and was recorded in Nashville. Originally intended as a solo follow-up to 2014’s ‘Stockholm’, it soon dawned that those driving guitars, ragged but righteous arrangements, tough yet tender lyrics delivered by the most beautifully distinctive voice of a generation, sounded fantastically familiar. The Pretenders were back. 36 years after their remarkable first album, ‘Alone’ could be the older, wiser, badder sister to that exhilarating debut.
The Pretenders have revealed a brand new video for ‘Holy Commotion’ today. ‘Holy Commotion’ is the first track to be taken from their new album. The part-animated video was shot in Nashville at Dan Auerbach’s studio and includes footage of Chrissie and Dan, edited by Director / Animator Luca Monterosso Whittmann.
Chrissie Hynde recorded the album in Nashville with Dan Auerbach, from The Black Keys, who stood as captain, producer and multi-instrumentalist on the record, an album which sees Chrissie at her searingly honest, most incisive best.
The full band joining Chrissie and Dan on the album features Johnny Cash’s former bass player Dave Roe and country rocker Kenny Vaughan on guitar plus sundry members of Dan Auerbach’s side project The Arcs: Richard Swift, drums, Leon Michels, keyboards and Russ Pahl providing sly curlicues of pedal steel. The album was mixed by Tchad Blake (Arctic Monkeys, Peter Gabriel, Elvis Costello). Duane Eddy also features on the punchy ‘Never Be Together’.
Of the new album Chrissie Hynde said the following: “This record is what I love the most - real people playing real music. I sang and recorded every vocal in a 48 hour period - 48 hours to sing them, 40 years of preparation!”.
BAUHAUS - DANCE - THE SEA: these are the engaging themes of the new highly seductive video for Xeno & Oaklander, "Palms" by Lauryn Siegel. The pace is fast, the edits are quick: the video captures the electronic and pulsating energy of the song. We see Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride of the synth band Xeno & Oaklander chase each other as Liz dances atop a mirror cube in a Black and White set inspired by Bauhaus - geometrical shapes are suspended, cylinders, grids, a microscope and Xeno & Oaklander's favorite: flowers. SKOTE, a NY performance art duo, dance in choreographed moves, half Vogue, half Bauhaus. Abstract images of Diatoms, sea life from the deep, are inter-cut. Glossy 3D geometrical renderings swirl in and out. Scans of 35mm photographic snapshots and rolls of analog negatives cut in. Scratches and dust and all things analog abound in this high-energy video that never ceases to surprise you.
Xeno & Oaklander's latest album Topiary out now on Ghostly International.
What are we searching for, if it is all about loving, missing, hoping or, in one word: feeling? Isn’t it intensity, authenticity, absolute simplicity in absolute complexity? It’s the search for a world of its own, that unites everything from never ending depths to staggering heights. And despite this world is everything at once, it still stays one unity.
Wherever words are not enough to describe such a world, people have tried to put it into music. But only few made it that perfectly as the “new romantic of present time” of MODEL DEPOSE from Groningen, NL. They combine the immortal attitude from Icons such as THE CURE, DEPECHE MODE, PLACEBO and SPANDAU BALLET with their completely own mixture of Synthpop and Indie Rock and create a sound that is unique, authentic and intensive at the same time.
Initially in 2009 the five musicians of MODEL DEPOSE were inviting their audience to their world. Now, some minor releases later, the guys from Groningen are back with their debut-album “Splitting Light”, where they reinvent themselves once again. With “Splitting Light” the musicians from the Netherlands made it to create a whole world in 14 tracks, that is bursting in emotion of all facets. Intensity, authenticity and absolute feelings combine themselves to a unity, that nearly never was to be heard before, rather than to be experienced.
The heart-capturing voice of Roeland van der Velde and the instruments of his band-colleagues make this experience accessible not only to the heart, but to the ears as well. An example is the song "Nightwatch", which already has absolute hit-potential and enriches the creation of MODEL DEPOSE by another wonder of the world.
So, what are we’re searching for, when we feel? Maybe there is an answer in the music of MODEL DEPOSE. Anyway, “Splitting Light” is a good starting point for all those seekers.
The Danish band will release the opera Leaves - The Colour of Falling on Nov 4, 2016 via Tambourhinoceros (Palace Winter, CTM, Cancer). The opera is composed in a close collaboration with award-winning composer Karsten Fundal.
Karsten Fundal about creating this song with Efterklang:
“This song is very special to me as it really got under my skin when we made it. Efterklang have arranged and adapted the composition in their usual hyper sensitive understanding of what the music is about. In some ways we shifted roles on this one – I made this relatively catchy melody and its simple harmonies and basic arrangement. Efterklang added the string and vocal arrangements. The lyrics are very impressionistic and somewhat melancholic as they evolve around the colour green – the colour of love and the colour not of love. It works beautifully in English because of all the wordplays. It’s a really great example of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s poetry as she plays with triviality while abolishing linearity as she calls for our innermost emotions in the secret meaning behind the words”
The opera is released on Nov 4, 2016 on a limited blue vinyl, CD and digitally via Tambourhinoceros. It’s available for pre-order here: http://smarturl.it/EfterklangLeaves
Efterklang and The Happy Hopeless Orchestra will perform the opera around Europe in the beginning of 2017:
Feb 22 - København, Store Vega, Denmark
Feb 23 - Uppsala, Uppsala Konsert & Kongress, Sweden
Mar 02 – Eindhoven, Muziekgebouw Eindhoven / Cross Linx – Holland
Mar 03 - Groningen, De Oosterpoort / Cross Linx – Holland
Mar 04 - Rotterdam, De Doelen / Cross Linx – Holland
Mar 05 - Amsterdam, Muziekgebouw / Cross Linx – Holland
Mar 09 – London, Barbican – England
Mar 10 – Bruxelles, Ancienne Belgique – Belgium
