A compelling artifact of post-punk’s minimal synth trajectory in the early 80’s, Music For Sick Queers conveys both icy tension and challenging experimentation.
Resurrected here for the first time on vinyl by Superior Viaduct with previously unreleased archival bonus material.
Preview here
• First time reissue of only LP, originally released in 1985
• Liner notes by notoriously mysterious band member Sandy Stark
• For fans of Pere Ubu, The Residents, Suicide, Psychic TV
• "A masterpiece of minimal synth combined with experimental and noisy synth punkish elements!" (Mutant Sounds)
Trevor Powers, whose stage name is Youth Lagoon, began writing his debut album The Year of Hibernation in 2010. Based around the idea of psychological dysphoria, Powers tried to document the trails of his mind through songs of minimalism and hypnotic ambience. Powers later described his writing process as "my mind communicating with me, not the other way around...it can take me to scary places but I've realized those bizarre thoughts I have don't define me." After signing with Mississippi-based label Fat Possum Records in 2011, he toured much of the following year before going back into solitude to write.
Wondrous Bughouse, Powers' sophomore album, was spawned from what he describes as "becoming more fascinated with the human psyche and where the spiritual meets the physical world." During the time he wrote, Powers became intrigued with the metaphysical universe and blending those ideas with pop music. "Youth Lagoon is something so personal to me because writing music is how I sort my thoughts, as well as where I transfer my fears," explains Powers.
"My mental state is usually pretty sporadic... a lot of this record was influenced by a fear of mortality but embracing it at the same time. Realizing that human life is only great because it is temporary. Experimenting with ideas about dimensions. I'm not a gifted speaker, so explaining things is difficult for me. But music always makes sense."
TRACKLISTING
1. THROUGH MIND AND BACK
2. MUTE
3. ATTIC DOCTOR
4. THE BATH
5. PELICAN MAN
6. DROPLA
7. SLEEP PARALYSIS
8. THIRD DYSTOPIA
9. RASPBERRY CANE
10. DAISYPHOBIA
Stand all night, the new single by Jill Is Lucky will be released in february on PIAS.
Peek A Boo is proud to present you the video.
“In our case, it’s never simple.” José González is describing the entire process – writing, recording, life – that went into the creation of Junip, the upcoming, self-titled album from the band he fronts alongside drummer Elias Araya and keyboardist Tobias Winterkorn, due for release on 22 of April 2013 on City Slang. “All the ups and downs were very ‘Junip,’” he adds, “so titling it with our name seemed appropriately iconic. It’s truly a band album.”
The distinction is important in Junip’s case, whose evolution has been a long, strange trip, indeed. The group actually formed in 1998 in Gothenburg, Sweden, but Junip didn’t actually release its acclaimed first album, Fields, until 2010. That delay stemmed largely from the success of González as a solo artist. The renowned singer-songwriter found international acceptance with his individual albums, 2003’s Veneer and 2007’s In Our Nature, which went on to sell over a million albums worldwide; audiences were captivated by the stark combination of González’s uniquely haunting voice and sinuous acoustic guitar on hits like “Crosses”and “Down The Line,” and distinctive interpretations of covers like The Knife’s “Heartbeats.”They were startled and beguiled, then, by hearing González in Junip’s band context, and one with such a propulsive, experimental bent: sprawling away from the stark folk aesthetic of González’s solo efforts, Fields teemed with driving motorik rhythms, psychedelic atmosphere, and dense synth textures.
Junip avoided the protracted evolution of Fields, however, and as a result resounds with immediacy. “With Junip, and this album in particular, it’s not the kind of stuff that ends up on my solo recordings,”González notes. After touring extensively in the wake of Fields, Araya, González, Winterkorn found themselves gelling as a unit like never before, able to access uncharted new sounds and emotions with newfound fluidity. “We’d press ‘record’ when we started jamming, and end up with a pretty complete song structure when we finished,” González explains.
Just as with the first album, Junip was recorded in the trio’s rehearsal space over the course of a year, self-produced by the band with help from Don Alsterberg (sound guru to artists like Soundtrack of Our Lives, International Noise Conspiracy, and Graveyard). The song “Villain” proved to be a breakthrough for Junip, with a tribal garage-rock stomp, fuzzed-out analog bassline, and electro-pop synths contrasted by a spooky, subtly sinister vocal. According to González, “Villain” represents “the sound of us not constraining ourselves. We weren’t concerned about noise, or being too distorted or musically correct. It was more about vibe, or feeling – it didn’t matter what we did, as long as it felt good.”
Just as Fieldspushed boundaries and expectations, Junipexpands the stylistic palette yet again with unexpected juxtapositions. “We’re somewhere between a German jazz band and an African pop band,” González cracks. As such, infectious album opener (and first single) “Line of Fire” layers Beatlesque melody on top of a hypnotic groove that splits the difference between flamenco syncopation and krautrock repetition, González’s heartfelt vocal cresting with emotion as the track builds towards a symphonic climax.“Baton” also introduces González’s infectious newfound whistling technique, where he creates hooks literally out of thin air. “I’ve been doing the whistle thing a lot,” he says. “I bought these expensive Neumann mics, and noticed if you whistle into them, they give off a slight distortion; there’s something about the overtones and coloration hitting the root that gives it a Brazilian vibe. It’s a nice way to find melodies – you get the pure melody and nothing else.” “Your Call,” meanwhile, proves a total departure – a synthesized pop-disco confection suggesting the union of Hot Chip and Human League, its infectious drum-machine handclaps and exuberant singsong chorus belying a melancholy sentiment (“It’s your life, it’s your call/Stand up, or enjoy your fall”). “It felt like trying on new clothes when we first listened to it – it took a while to get comfortable with it, but now I like it a lot,” González says.
Junip’s powerful instrumental interplay, meanwhile, reveals itself throughout: having nimble players to react to pushes González’s picking to raggedly virtuosic sublimity on tracks like “Suddenly,”where he hybrids the singular pocket of Western African guitar music into his own sound. “When José first showed us the idea for ‘Suddenly’ on guitar, Elias and I were blown away,” says Winterkorn. “It’s so beautiful – it sounds like improvisation, but it’s not.” “I stepped out of my comfort zone in that song,”González confirms – not just musically, but lyrically as well, due to its uncharacteristically uplifting message (“Found myself in deep dark thoughts/When suddenly there was you”). “I always felt like it would be nice to write a song free of any negative subjects or thoughts,” González says. “It’s a song that you’d feel okay playing to your baby, or at a wedding.”
“Suddenly” is the album’s exception, however. The intimate beauty of the music on Junipoften contrasts with a surprisingly dark melancholia, commencing with the very first lines heard on the album. “What would you do/If it all came back to you/Each crest of each wave/ bright as lightning/What would you say/If you had to leave today/Leave everything behind/Even though, for once, you’re shining”:so go the opening lyrics to “Line of Fire,” suggesting an existential crisis or journey that plays out over the course of the remaining nine songs. “It’s about growing up and taking responsibility in that moment when all of a sudden your life changes, you’re in a new situation,” González says. “Your ideals are challenged, and you have to think things through from a new angle.”
There’s a reflexive temptation to read that mood as influenced by events in González’s personal life. “There’s a tendency to ask these questions when there may not be answers,” González says. “That’s, in fact, the theme to “Beginnings,’ whereas ‘Line of Fire’ is more about taking responsibility and doing what you can to change your life in a new situation.”For González, the words aren’t meant to be specific, but meant to “make you feel something, and create an emotion. Stuff I think about is more about human nature in general: songs are about love and death – not necessarily relationships, really. There’s a high ambition to reach deep emotions, and I tend to write about these topics.” For him, the key topic remains redemption – “those life-changing moments that shake people up, which unite all the themes. It’s ultimately about how the grass will grow after snow melts away: finding that hopeful feeling between the lines, that’s what the whole record is about.”
Apparat, aka Sascha Ring, announces the release of “Krieg und Frieden (Music for Theatre)”, and album of music based on Sebastian Hartmann’s theatre production of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
Sebastian Hartmann is considered one of the big innovators of contemporary German theatre, and asked Ring to contribute to this mammoth project, which was commissioned by the renowned German arts festival Ruhrfestspiele in Recklinghausen.
During the first meetings with Hartmann it became clear that there was no script or anything comparable, Hartmann instead develops the whole text with the entire ensemble. After time spent with Tolstoy’s original text Ring returned to Germany and spent four weeks in an old abandoned factory building and rehearsed with the whole 30-piece ensemble. Says Ring, “This is anything but conventional theatre. It’s a free space, where a bunch of freaks can go wild. It starts with the lights and stops with the actual actors. At night, we worked on the music in the empty hall. It was kind of magical.”
Featuring artwork by Tilo Baumgärtel, whose work forms part of the theatre production, Krieg und Frieden was recorded with Philipp Timm (cello) and Christoph Hartmann (violin), who form part of Apparat’s live band.
The project was intended to be over with the last performance of the play, a release was never planned, but they found they hadn't fully exhausted the potential of the songs yet. “Because it evolved out of a process, and transformed all the time, there’s always been a certain freshness to it.” explains Ring.
Beautiful motifs only popped up for seconds before they faded again in the performance so the trio decided to give it a try, went into a studio and drifted, meandered through their musical achievements: “In the studio the material got another twist, became a real piece of music. I took the recordings with me, wherever I was – at home, at a hotel room, in an airplane, and straightened it up. I decided to not go completely crazy about the editing, I didn’t want the music to become demanding. Every record tends to become mere work at some point. Euphoria then turns into the feeling that you are standing in the middle of a huge construction site. I actively wanted to avoid this feeling this.”
For Apparat, aka Berlin-based Sascha Ring, experiments in sound are strongly linked to exploring emotions. Over the course of seven album releases he has developed a multifarious, emotional universe. From early works, such as “Multifunktionsebene“ (2001) and “Duplex“ (2003), which took the abstractness out of electronic music and introduced a new spectrum of feelings beyond electronics’ well-tested modes, through collaborations with Ellen Alien (Orchestra of Bubbles) and Modeselektor (as Moderat), Apparat is always in transition. In 2010 he founded the Apparat Band and opened himself to a new sonic cosmos that culminated into “The Devil’s Walk” (2010), his first release on Mute.
