Archive for September, 2019

Weird music from Europeans you’ve never heard of, part 2

Sunday, September 29th, 2019

Laza Ristovski
The Green Coast
Puzzles
Figuera

One of the best things about doing deep crate digging and going out on a limb on a few records is that you’re occasionally reminded that the world is really fucking big, and that just because you’ve never heard of someone doesn’t mean they’re not a superstar.

Before I started to research this post, I knew nothing about Laza Ritsovski. I bought this record because I gave it a listen at the store and I liked it. That’s as deep as I went. And when I decided that I would feature him here, I figured it would be a bit like King-Kong, or countless other European synthesizer acts that I haven’t yet written about, meaning that I would find next to nothing about him and be forced to kind of bullshit for a bit.

That ended up not being the case. Turns out that Laza was in not just one, but two of the most important bands of the Yugoslav rock scene; Smak and Bijelo Dugme. He wasn’t a founding member of either, but he was in both bands during the apparent heights of their fame (at least, I think so, I’m just going off of Wikipedia, Discogs, and a few prog sites). He probably wasn’t a household name in Yugoslavia, but he was far from a no-name. You could spend hours upon hours in a wikihole just reading up on the bands he was in, let alone his solo career.

Like a lot of keyboardists in prog bands, when Laza went solo he skewed more towards purely electronic music that rock. I’ve skimmed a bit of it, some of it could be classified as new age, other ambient, but some is just hard to define. It’s just…80s electronic music. Too percussive and upbeat to be new age but not fast enough to be disco or dance music. Some of his work reminds me of Mark Schreeve or John Carpenter, but more fun. I highly doubt there are films featuring murder scenes set to the work of Laza Ristovski.

This is exceptionally true for the tracks I’m sharing here, which come from his 1984 album, Roses For A General. It all sounds like video game music for a game that never got made. And I mean that solely as a compliment. It’s just so bright and bouncy. When I play this, I feel like I should be exploring a world in Phantasy Star, or shooting up monsters in Fantasy Zone. Some of it, thanks to synth slap bass and fake steel drums, even has a Super Mario World.

Of the three tracks I’m sharing tonight, the opener “The Green Coast” is the one that gives me the strongest “1989 SEGA” vibes. As the synths burst in seconds in, I feel like my spaceship should be coming down from the clouds, or I should be making a tight turn in my sports car, blonde by my side. The same goes for “Puzzles.” This is so joyful and happy sounding that it reminds of end game credit music. This is some “congratulations for saving the galaxy” music.

The final track “Figueras,” is a bit more low-key. It has a slight mysterious vibe to it, but with overtones that everything is going to be okay. This is the one that gives me the Mario vibes. It’s a bit too heavy on crescendos and solos, but the basic feeling of the track reminds me of a desert level in a Mario game. Although to be entirely honest I can’t place why.

From digging a bit into Ristovski’s discography online, I feel that the album of his that I would like the most is 2/3, which came out just before this one in 1983. That has a slightly darker groove, the kind of thing that a 2019 synthwave act would sample the hell out of without giving any credit. I gotta track that one down.

Might take a break from the oddball European electronic music to bring out oddball Canadian disco. You can decide for yourself if that’s a step up or a step down. I consider it a lateral move.

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Weird music from Europeans you’ve never heard of, part 1

Monday, September 23rd, 2019

A little bit of an odd one today, and expect more like it this week or next (hence the part one) I’ve bought so much stuff like this as of late (oddball 70s/80s European rock/electronic music) that it just makes sense to bundle it all together. All of them are radically different though, so if you don’t dig what I’m posting one day, just wait, you might enjoy what comes next.

Their all pretty fucking weird though. Up first, blues krautrock!

King-Kong
Flyin’ Through The Motions
King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 1
King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 2
Time for another episode of “I found a band so obscure that I can’t even write that much about them!”

This album first grabbed my attention thanks to its freaky cover. Which led me to believe at first that it was some piece of early-80s EBM or dark electronic music. Scanning the back cover and seeing that it was a Sky Records release, I decided to give it a spin at the store. I dig most everything Sky put out back in the day, as most of it was early electronic music or kraut/prog with a heavy electronic edge.

This is kind of that, but different than most Sky albums that I’ve bought. It rocks a hell of a lot more. I say “rocks” I don’t mean it in “yo, this shit rocks man” I mean it in the literal (well, more literal than not) sense that it is much more of a rock and roll record than the stuff that I was used to hearing from Sky. But at the same time, it still has a bit of that electronic element that was essential to the Sky label. It’s also oddly bluesy? I mean, no one is going to mistake this for a B.B. King or Stevie Ray Vaughn record, but it has an indefinable blues/southern rock element that’s hard to miss. “King Kong’s Fight With The Devil, Part 1” (great title) is just a few steps away from a Doobie Brothers record. Remove the pulsing synths, put it in a major key, and add some twangy guitar and there you go.

Sadly, the album as a whole is really uneven. Two meandering tracks that are both over seven minutes long bog the whole thing down and come across as either third-rate krautrock and fourth-rate prog. And since their both so damn long they really suck the momentum out of the album proper, which is a shame.

But these tracks are really something special. Album opening “Flyin’ Through The Motions” is a good track that showcases the best of what the album has to offer, its one-of-a-kind mix of European avant-garde with (then) modern rock flourishes. And while I’ve already expounded on the dope qualities of it’s prequel, the album’s final track, “King Kong’s Fight With the Devil, Part 2” is a fantastic closer, showing more of the rock/electronic hybrid sound that should’ve defined the album as a whole.

So who the hell is King-Kong? The main member seemed to be Holger Schmidt. He’s the credited writer for nearly all the tracks, and it looks like he performed most of the instruments on them as well. According to Discogs he was also the album’s producer, albeit under the assumed name of Karl Kraftlos. Aside from King-Kong, the dude has had a lengthy career, however, it would appear that he never quite hit the mainstream. It looks like his closest thing to hitting it big was Tiger B. Smith, a krautrock/hard rock hybrid that has gathered quite the cult following online. Most of his other stuff seems to be electronic/new age/synthpop that, again, failed to make any impact. A lesser known name of the German music scene to be sure, but if you dig on this stuff I think you might want to look up his various other bands too. I know I am now. Tiger B. Smith fucking jam.

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I survived America, here’s synthpop and Robert Wyatt

Thursday, September 12th, 2019

Yeah, sorry.

I really, really wanted to keep updating the site when I was in the states. I had some posts half-written, had songs picked out, the works.

But, like always, between the jet lag, family time, seeing friends, going shopping, traveling from state-to-state, taking the boyfriend sightseeing, and suffering the occasional nervous breakdown due to the combination of all those things, I just couldn’t squeeze in the time.

But I’m back now bitches! Let’s celebrate with some random remixes from a near-forgotten 80s synthpop band and some weird shit that no one has ever heard of.

Revenge
Slave (Extended Mix)
Slave (Remix Edit)
Slave (Instrumental)
Slave (LP Version Edit)
This is my third post featuring remixes of Revenge tunes, yet I still have not bought their album proper. Because I’m stupid like that.

Revenge was one of Peter Hook’s side-projects. They released a single albumin 1990 but petered (hah PUN INTENDED) out before they could do much else.

In the lexicon of failed New Order side projects, I’m not sure where they rank. As I already said, I don’t have their album so I can’t really judge them fairly. I’m going to go out on a limb though and say that they definitely rank below Electronic and The Other Two (who are both great) and above Bad Lieutenant (which was awful).

This song, and the remixes, are good. I definitely pick up a strong New Order vibe with the bassline, although the song as a whole has a slightly more industrial/aggressive vibe than what New Order was doing at the time.

The 12″ single from which I pulled these also included a “Bonus Beats” track but I’m not including that as it was featured on the easily available re-issue of the group’s sole album, One True Passion. Why they chose to include that minute and a half bit of filler and none of the other, longer, better, more interesting remixes is beyond me.

(The artwork above is from the CD single and I snagged it from Discogs. Sorry, my back hurts far too much for me to dig through my records to properly photograph the 12″.)

 

Robert Wyatt & Bertrand Burgalat
This Summer Night (Hot Chip Mix)
I haven’t talked about it all that much, but I will (hopefully) be starting a podcast soon, in which I, Jeremy Parish of Retronauts fame, and our friend Elliot will be discussing progressive rock. So keep an eye on that.

In the first episode of said podcast, I discussed Soft Machine, which gave me the excuse to dig into original member Robert Wyatt’s discography a bit. I have to say that I dig his stuff (especially his early stuff) far more than anything Soft Machine did after their second album. From that point on, they went full jazz-fusion. And I’m sorry, I just can’t with jazz fusion. I’ve tried my best several times.

Robert Wyatt is an interesting guy, with a deep discography that can be intimidating at times. But if you’re looking to jump in, I recommend the EP’s compilation which, surprise, collects the EPs that he put out early in his solo career. It features fantastic covers of “I’m A Believer,” “Yesterday Man,” and “Biko.” It also includes the Soft Machine classic “Memories,” which was later made somewhat famous by Material’s version that featured a very young Whitney Houston on vocals.

Odd trivia, the members of Material were originally a Gong offshoot by Daevid Allen called New York Gong. When he split, they continued on as Material. Of course, before Allen was in Gong, he was a founding member of…Soft Machine. I assume that’s how the members of Material became aware of “Memories” and decided to cover it.

Anyways, back to this song. The original version of this track was originally including on the Bertrand Burgalat album Cheri B. B., which came out in 2007. I know nothing about him so don’t ask me. I grabbed this remix from a 12″ single of said song.

And if you listen to this song and thing “boy, this Wyatt guy sounds really weird, I wonder his voice was always like that,” the answer is yes. He has sounded like a frail old man on the verge of death since 1968.

 

 

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