© Sigrid (via Youtube)
When the world is on your shoulders /
And the weight of your own heart is too much to bear /
Wеll, I know that you’re afraid things will always be this way /
It’s just a bad day, not a bad life
— from Bad Life by Sigrid feat. Bring Me The Horizon
Looking forward to the second album “How To Let Go” by Norwegian singer and songwriter Sigrid to be released on Friday, three years after her debut “Sucker Punch”.
© Love Hultén (via YouTube)
This beautiful wooden sound machine called TE-LAB by audiovisual artist Love Hultén is inspired by the Turntable Sequencer from Lomond Campbell and built around modules from Swedish electronics company and design studio Teenage Engineering —whose products and design language I admire a lot.
Read more about this unique instrument on the company’s blog.
Alles war schön und nichts tat weh
Die Musik von Casper begleitet mich bereits seit über einer Dekade und entweder ‘XOXO’ oder ‘Hinterland’ stände sicherlich auf der Liste meiner Alben für die einsame Insel. Auch, weil sich auf beiden Platten Titel finden, die ich extrem stark mit prägenden Phasen oder einschneidenden Situationen meines Lebens verbinde.
Die letzten beiden Alben ‘Lang Lebe der Tod’ und ‘1982’ (zusammen mit Marteria) haben mich dann emotional irgendwie nicht mehr ganz so ‘erwischt’, obwohl beide durchaus Lieder enthalten, die ich ebenfalls sehr gerne mag.
Fünf Jahre nach seinem letzten Soloalbum hat der Bielefelder vergangene Woche endlich sein neues Werk mit einem toll inszenierten Livestream veröffentlicht und mit jeder Rotation gefällt mir ‘Alles war schön und nichts tat weh‘ ein bisschen besser. Melancholie. Adrenalin. Euphorie. Gänsehaut. Schade lediglich, dass das insgesamt eher düstere Album für mich gedanklich zukünftig unweigerlich mit dem aktuellen Wahnsinn in der Ukraine verknüpft sein wird —nicht zuletzt auch Dank des dramatischen Song ‘Billie Jo‘, der von einem heimgekehrten Soldaten mit PTSD erzählt oder der fatalistisch anmutenden Hook von ‘Zwiebel & Mett (Die Vergessenen PT 3)’.
Andererseits liefert mir Casper –wie schon seinerzeit mit XOXO– nicht einfach nur den Soundtrack für meinen Alltag, sondern auch ein Refugium, eine kleine Rettungskapsel in die ich mich zurückziehen kann, wenn das Gewicht der Nachrichten und Bilder zu groß wird.
© Casper (via YouTube)
Ich hab’ heute wieder dran gedacht /
Dass ich mir zu viel Gedanken mach’ /
Dunkle Nächte, lange wach /
Wann hört es auf, wo fang’ ich an? /
Ging so schnell, da fühlt sich letztes Jahr wie gestern an /
So viel Schlechtes, dass ich ‘s Beste fast vergessen hab’ /
Hoff‘, mein letzter Satz, wenn ‘s Ende naht und ich dann geh /
Alles war schön und nichts tat weh
© The Howl & The Hum / Kobalt (via YouTube)
Hostages (Live Alternate Version) is probably one of my favourite songs this year, Human Contact is very likely one of my favourite albums this year –the studio version I missed in 2020 as well as the current live version– and The Howl & The Hum is most definitely my favourite band discovered this year. I might have a little crush on those lads.
© nomena (via Vimeo)
© nomena (via YouTube)
nomena is investigating new types of space perception. research and practice, academic and commercial, technology and aesthetic.
As mentioned in the about section of this blog, I love projects which cross-scale in media and studios (and creatives) who work interdisciplinary. Japanese studio nomena by Shohei Takei is such a studio, working at the intersection of art, design and science to create amazing tactile projects.
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
Another YouTube channel with beautiful music accompanied by beautiful, atmospheric imagery, fitting my current autumn mood extremely well. What’s more, the music by ibi is published under the creative commons licence (CC BY, to be precise), so you are allowed to use it for your own projects if you credit the Berlin musician. The free wav files are available via bandcamp.com.
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape (via YouTube)
While watching the short Antonio Carusone did for the release of the –beautiful looking– new book Selection: Architecture by Carl Barenbrug and Ivan Moreale, the used ambient music caught my attention. Apparently, it’s from Tony Yang aka PaprTape, who has a lot of atmospheric videos on his YouTube-channel.
His ambient EP “A Midafternoon Dream” is available on Soundcloud and Spotify, and some of the tracks are being sold digitally via Bandcamp, in case you want to support the work of the musician more directly.
Kunzite – VISUALS
»Ride on the rays of the farthest sun«
About a decade ago I came across the electronic rock from Ratatat for the first time because of their features on one of my favourite albums, Kid Cudi’s masterpiece ‘Man on the Moon: The End of Day’. The recognizable sound the Brooklyn-based duo was contributing to the tracks ‘Alive’ and ‘Pursuit of Happiness‘ –probably one of my favourite songs of all time– lead me to listen to their music quite extensively back then, first and foremost to the extremly catchy tunes of their earlier released album ‘Classics’.
Just recently –six years after the last vital signs of Ratatat– said album (which nowadays is available on YouTube in its entirety) popped into my head again while listening to ‘VISUALS’, the just-released second longplayer by a band called Kunzite. Only after doing my habitual research on the music project unkown to me hitherto, I discovered my association is not by chance;
The 2018 formed duo is a collaboration between the musicians Agustin White and Mike Stroud, the latter being the guitarist of –you guessed it– Ratatat, for which he plays a variety of instruments. I guess a lot of the infectious groove on ‘VISUALS’ caused by synthesizers, pipe organs and lap steel guitars is to a great extent attributed to him, at least it undoubtedly sounds a hell lot like his other music project.
In fact the whole record sounds like Ratatat got inspired by the island vibes of Hawaii –where White and Stroud recorded large parts of the longplayer, decided to dial back the weirdness just a tiny bit and, most notably, add hypnotic pop vocals to their repertoire.
The result is a psychedelic joyride and probably one of my favourite albums of 2021 so far. I can’t wait for ‘VISUALS’ to drop on vinyl later this year (November), until then I have to be careful not to listen to it repeatedly ad nauseam in its digital form —especially since it oozes summer fun and therefore matches the current late summer sun way better than the dark winter months ahead.
There’s rumored to be an exclusive track with the grande Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry on the physical record, though, so I’m going to put it on as soon as I get my hands on it, no matter how often I’ll have played it already till then.
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
Bo Burnham – Inside
»Should I be joking at a time like this?«
Five years after he turned his back on performing, Bo Burnham is finally back on stage —or rather would’ve been if the pandemic hadn’t prevented his return last minute. Instead Burnham used the forced isolation during the last year to write, perform and edit the new Netflix comedy special –an improper label, by the way– all by himself at home. Basically he’s coming full circle more than a decade after starting out as a teen performing quirky comedy songs alone in his small room for a fast-growing YouTube audience.
The new program, aptly titled Inside, is a wild amalgamation of sketch comedy pieces, documentary elements and –of course– catchy musical performances. One of its great achievements is how well the seemingly disjointed bits are pieced together to archive a somewhat coherent narrative to follow along, not unlike a four act story structure. Burnham always had immense talent for witty writting and pinpoint timing and he has clearly perfected his craft, adding some political awareness and meta humor to his already poignant zeitgeist commentary.
In earlier shows he brought up his personal struggles every now and then, be it him coping with newfound fame or suffering from anxiety, but this new experiment blurres the line between his stage persona and the artist’s mental inside entirely, delivering multiple gut-wrenching insights and a painful character dissection throughout its 87 minutes runtime. That’s why I think labeling it a comedy special doesn’t do it justice, probably even bringing people in with completely wrong expectations. To me those highly emotional, dark and intimate moments intensify the comedic value and vice versa, but I totally understand how they might catch viewers off guard if the expectation is easygoing, mindless fun.
I’ve heard people calling Inside an arthouse film and I think that’s probably the best way to characterise the project. Not only because of its content, but because of its arrangement as well. It’s absolutely incredible what the comedian, musician, actor, director and screenwriter is able to archive basically with a tripod, a small consumer camera and various LEDs all by himself. The meticulous planned motion picture is brilliantly framed, illuminated and edited, resulting in a visually gorgeous, highly cinematic piece, in spite of its claustrophobic single room setting. It’s an inspiring example of how far creativity can get you even –or maybe especially– within strict limitations.
I think Burnham has crafted a true masterpiece and an exciting contemporary document —of the pandemic and its isolating impact in particular as well as our self-centered generation and modern (internet) culture at large. Inside is probably the best thing I’ve seen for a very long time and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone willing to go through this emotional rollercoaster ride. I’m pretty sure the two three four viewings of mine won’t remain the last.