my favorite historical event definitely is the fall of the berlin wall... i get really emotional when i see images of the people celebrating by the wall, crossing the border between east and west... so for this month's mixtape i made a selection of songs inspired by that. i mean, the selection is a combination of songs from some of my favorite german bands, songs that i was listening when i went to berlin (most of them were listened while taking walks through the tiergarten) and songs recently discovered that i think that go well with berlin. the opening track is the german hit (almost hymn?) from the cold-war era '99 luftballons' (yeah, i'm that obvious) and closing the mix is the german version of david bowie's 'heroes' (in my opinion, way better than the english version). hope you enjoy!
01. nena - 99 luftballons 02. candyaudioline - pretend we're smart 03. my lily of the valley - precious moments 04. the bright and shiny - hasta la victoria siempre 05. the marshmallow kisses - i wonder why my favorite boy leaves me in the rain 06. pumuky - la hoguera más grande del mundo 07. locas in love - comandante 08. cessna - we can still be friends 09. c'est tout martine - den første smøg 10. princess niko - miss pixel and all her stupid daisies 11. oppressed by the line - sunset from the 16th floor 12. seaside stars - if you think 13. handsome train - i want you to know 14. familiar trees - discreet robots 15. subterfuge - i will never ever 16. space kelly - kleine taschenlampe brenn' 17. the psychedelic furs - heaven 18. we & lisa - too close for comfort 19. tramway - technical college 20. number 4 joystreet - the flowers are calling 21. david bowie - heroes / helden
[if any song fail to be unzipped, just click and drag it into the destiny folder]
pumuky ~ de viaje al país de las tormentas (federación de universos pop, 2006)
pumuky stands today as one of the most inventive indie groups on the spanish scene. a must hear.
it all began with jair ramírez as 'alex kid en el país de las tormentas' in the canary islands trying to fill his soul with his own music. after dozens of awards and favorable reviews, he was joined by his brother and other friends and pumuky was born.
'de viaje al país de las tormentas' is their first lp and was recorded by the band in different places of the canary islands.
it's dense, idyllic, full of atmospheres and melancholy. guitars and eletronic elements flirting with (sometimes)post rock and (sometimes) folk wrapped around jair's whispery voice. the album, as a whole, gives you a sense of walking through landscapes of an island that could be situated in antartida or pumuky's own gran canaria, facing dark skies and cold winds. very beautiful, extremely sad and amazingly delicate. 'la hoguera más grande del mundo' is among the prettiest songs ever written...
sambassadeur ~ days (new album preview) (labrador records, 2010)
sambassadeur was the band that made me fall in love with labrador records... after almost 3 years, their new album is set to be released next january and labrador already gave us a beautiful gift in form of a less than three minutes song (probably the first single)... 'days' is a song with that sambassadeur aesthetic that we'll never get tired to love and beautiful (delightful!) orchestrations... ps: feel free to play it again and again.
almost a month since my last post... unfortunately sometimes we have less free time than we wanted. hope i can start posting with more regularity now.
some time ago i thought that the blog could have way more interviews so i decided to contact some bands that i wish to know more about. today you'll have a q&a with this awesome indiepop band from sunny california called the panduhs. they already showed up here with their calvin johnson ep. with their interview you'll have a video for 'the yeah!', a song from the calvin johnson ep and an exclusive track just for the readers of the blog! how cool is that!?
meanwhile you read what neil and frank said, download the awwwwwweeeeesome 'summer time'!!! and be prepared to sing along because it is catchy.
01. tell us about the beginning of the band... how did you guys meet and stuff. neil: me and frank met in continuation school the fall of 2006. he had some drums and i had a tele. we started jamming after school to stay warm, and hosted shows in his garage which we called "panduh studios". it was the place most people in our town came to hang out, do drugs, break windows, listen to music, and get in fist fights almost every other weekend. once the crowd of twenty turned into a crowd of three-hundred we started to book outside our area. barney the local sheriff was pleased with this news. 02. how's your process (if there's any) of making music? neil: i write the music, usually after i buy a new synth, break it, and send it franks way to get it circuit bent. when i write a new song, frank adds his drums and jeff does whatever it takes to rock like a champ.
03. what's next for the panduhs? new songs soon? a single, an ep, a full length? neil: no plans for a full length right now. frank: neil hates full lengths. neil: it's not that i hate full lengths, necessarily. i feel like most full lengths are about three good songs and five fillers. why not simply release those three good songs on an ep? i'm trying hard to push the band in a new direction, and as long as frank stays by my side, i should be successful - well i hope to be. we recently took our "calvin johnson ep" on tour. we hit san jose, portland, seattle, and berkeley. we hope to have a new ep out soon and as far as a new single goes, we just got done recording. it's called "summer time" and "chaotisch und charmant" is the first to receive the single, free of fucking charge.
04. are you guys living the dream of being musicians 24/7 or do you have to face reality and go to work? and most importantly, do you wanna be musicians 24/7? frank: i have yet to face the reality of a 9 to 5 work schedule. i'm hoping to soon be able to live the life of a 4/20 musician. neil: i go to school full time as a culinary student but do my best to play shows as often as i can. it's not that hard when you have a really good manager booking your shows. i'd love to be a full time musician - maybe one day!
05. let's talk about the video... it's quite simple and nice and it makes you think 'oh, it would've been nice to be there'. how long did it take to get it ready and who came up with the idea? neil: the video was shot by ben barker and directed by cherub freed our manager, who came up with the idea. she likes videos, so she makes her own. check em' out: http://www.vimeo.com/user413240/videos she says "i just wanted people who haven't ever been to a panduh's show to know what it feels like to watch them play and dance around with everybody - plus, their music feels so retro and fun to me, and that's why i have the frame story of a 50's girl time-traveling to their show."
06. name three songs you'd like to cover. neil: well, we cover a song written by our friend uni & her ukulele called "on my way". i'm real strict on covering songs, the band hates me for that. frank: the ronettes- "be my baby", the beach boys- "darlin", and the pixies - "where is my mind".
07. if you could give a perfect place and time to hear your songs, what would it be? neil: perfect place: your bedroom, jumping on your bed with a descent pair of head phones on blast. perfect time, when your bored. frank: listen to "the yeah!" while reading "youth in revolt" instead of watching miguel arteta's film. why are good books butchered?
08. finally, recommend something you've been listening to lately... frank: weezer, the pixies, daft punk, css, and bonde do role neil: i recommend el guincho, quiet riot, selena and vicente fernandez
09. anything else you feel like to say? frank: read.
neil: thank you so much for the interview and for the ep review, it really means a lot and it's blogs like yours that drive me to play shows and write better music. thank you!
today we'll have an interview with the lovely agnes, from moofish catfish. this all girl band from sweden already appeared here on the blog with 2008 debut release 'on a sunbeam to your heart' and 'yours to share', released this year. both highly recommended with the last one already on my list of the best of music this year. here's what she says to say...
01. how it all began? and how 'moofish catfish' became the band's name? ehm, you could say that it all began with me (agnes) sitting on my bed with my guitar writing stupid little popsongs some years ago. it was only me then, but i wanted to play many different instruments at the same time, but as its impossible i had to find some more bandmembers! so i did. first i found emilia, and then wågis and then wågis found kristina and then moofish catfish was born. this was in 2006. the bandname was my idea so i guess i have to be the one explaining it. sadly though, i can't really. it came to me in some kind of fantasy and it doesn't really mean anything. i had a better explanation once but i forgot it. nowadays, it's just a name.
02. do you guys get to live of music or you have 'real jobs'? we do have to have 'real jobs' as well to be able to pay the rent and other important things, it's very hard these days to make a living out of music, especially if your an indieband with a relatively narrow fanbase. i mean we cover our expenses but we do certainly not get rich doing this.
03. both of your albums are available to download for free. talk about that and your views on music distribution. i think that its already to late to try to stop people from getting music for free. its out there wether you want it or not. i think, if your a band in our size you earn more if you let people have the music for free and then, if they want, they can buy the album for a quite small amount of money to support us if they really like us. i think, if you restrict your own distribution to much at this stage you risk not reaching people. for us its a way of getting people to listen to the music, and also it's an attempt to distribute music in a democratic way.
04. 'on a sunbeam to your heart' is slightly different from 'yours to share'. the first seems to be calmer while 'yours to share' has powerfull guitars and really danceable melodies. is this something you had in mind or it's an unconscious "variation"? yes, you are right about that. they are quite different and it's both conscious and unconscius at the same time. for me it was a natural evolvement in my way of writing songs, you can't keep doing the same thing over and over again, it would be boring. i didn't sit down and plan that the second album should sound different in the way that it does. it was more of a natrual change for us. and the songs i'm writing on now will sound different from the ones on "yours to share" as well, so it's a neverending change i guess. and thats partly the fun of it.
05. are you working on something new? what can we expect? yes we are! we are working like maniacs on new material. at the moment i can't say really when it will be released and in what form because we are discussing this a bit back and forth, but i can tell you that we have big plans and that its going to be awesome! so keep your ears and eyes open.
06. what about your inspirations... movies? cartoons? historycal figures?... well, that's a tricky question because i get inspired by almost everything that i see and hear, but thats a boring answer. so far, most of my songs are based on things that has actually happened or people that do exist. but i always exadurate a lot to make the song better. but i also get ideas from listening to other peoples music. it could be a line in a text that get me thinking of something that i want to write a song about or maybe the arrangement of the song or a cool riff on the guitar. i just pic pieces from both myself and things around me, and when it comes to arrangement of the songs everyone in the band is working with it, and it finally ends up being songs.
07. name three songs you'd like to cover. hmm, we don't really do covers. if a song is great you wouldn't want to ruin it. if it's bad you don't wanna play it. if i had to, i'd choose a song by ulf lundell. he's this old swedish guy singing about women and liquer.
08. if you could give a place and hour to hear your songs, what would they be? probably in your headphones at 5 am in the morning, when your walking home through an empty town. you have just had the worst or the most fantastic night ever, you are crazy in love or recently dumped. desperate to die or to just fly away. kind of.
09. finally, recommend something you've been listening lately... i usually listen to more old music than new music so it wont be the most up to date musicrecommendation. lately i've listened a lot to sonic youth and the modern lovers wich i truly recommend everyone to do. and also, i always listen to envelopes if i want to be in a good mood.
the señors of marseille ~ davey (holiday records, 2009)
three boys from brooklyn making an upbeat sound that fits perfectly to those days when you're feeling not very special... awesome piano, uplifting percussion and amazing vocal melodies. i got to know them via holiday records (of course!) where they released the song i'm posting today. 'davey' also can be heard on their ep. i'm also posting another song from their ep called 'the coolest girl in new york' that follows the same path of the uplifting-lo-fi-acoustic-pop. oh, and it has such a lovely video! feel free to jump and do-a-dance while listening to this guys...
the honeydrips ~ hej då karolin (sincerely yours, 2007)
here's why i really like about this swedish artist: i got to know him making songs with hard guitars and lo-fi recordings... then, he came with his first debut and it was a surprise to here all the bits and blips... and after that, subtle and calm melodies created perhaps, for a muse or something like that. it has been 2 years since his last release, what's next? of course 'here comes the future' is a great album but particularly i prefer his previous stuff... his shoegazy and heavy guitars period... but anyway, today i'm talking about a christmas single released in december of 2007 as a free download on the site of the (amazing) label sincerely yours. it came out after the electronic album mentioned before and has such a nice - and different - feeling... it's a ballad with a (haunting) choir, (beautiful) orchestrations and sang in swedish. very melodic and heartfelt.
this post also has another song called åh, karolin - probably recorded at the same time, since both talk about a certain 'karolin'. the mood is quite similar but this has a noir feeling... you can even picture a smokey bar lost in the 50's. the trumpet (it's a trumpet, right?) is delightful... (not sure when and where this song was released. i found it on the honeydrips' website).
01. hej då karolin
and here'såh, karolin with a live performance video.
site myspace -------------------------------- read the comments, eric has a great thing to say about 'åh, karolin'.
(you can download full albums clicking on the album's cover.) this blog is build solely on my love for the music i post here and has no financial purpose. the albums are temporarily available. if you like an artist or band give your suport buying their albums or tracks and/or going to their concerts. if you want to recommend, suggest or show me something please, don't think twice and contact me at chaotisch.charmant@gmail.com
