Mushy – Faded Heart

This white vinyl, limited to 300 copies, was released by Mannequin in February 2011. Mushy is a solo female project from Rome that has been around since 2003 and this seems to be the 3rd full length album.

I quickly got absorbed into Mushy’s thick and heavy atmosphere. Each of the 10 titles is colored of rich and dark pad textures with slow rhythms, reverberant drones and a touching vocal raising up from a deep cave. From the beginning to the end, it is depressing, hypnotic, neurotic and fatalist: definitely something reaching me deep inside. This is the perfect record to listen alone while thinking about the old skeletons hiding in your closet.

The song No More also involved Newclear Waves who accompanied with a drum machine and synthesizer.

Faded Heart is one of my favorite track. Listen carefully with sensibility to the details: you’ll notice divine rays of light cutting through Mushy’s obscurity.

Mannequin Label & Mailorder

Posted on June 5th, 2011 under Reviews, ,

Automelodi

As you might have read in this interview, Automelodi is the latest project initiated by the same head as Echo Kitty and Arnaud Lazlaud. I am a big fan of everything that was produced by these bands since I heard of the amazing hit Supermatos that appeared on the soundtrack of this Quebecer movie.

I have always been very excited about this artist from my beloved land of Quebec, but I’d like to say that I didn’t want to post this review because it is a local band, but firstly because it is good! In my opinion, this it is the best project that ever came out of Montreal.

Released by Wierd Records, it is the first Automelodi full length following the Automelodi fait ses courses EP released in 2009. The first song of each side, Schéma Corporel and Buanderie Jazz were the favourite hits both released on the previous EP that many fans will be happy to find on this self titled LP.

The cover portrays a nice pastel sketch that reminded me of Xavier (singer, writer and compositor) banning his head and wearing a typical French fisherman shirt. I found it pretty cohesive with the strong French scene influence the vocals and lyrics are tainted of. Airline is the only song written in English and the singing curiously reminded me of Marc Almond from Soft Cell.

A pop sound, loads of beautiful synths, deep pounding and nasal basses, spacy vintage sounds, simple and catchy rhythms, elegant and poetic lyrics with polished arrangements is what you will find on this record. Sweet, melancholic and refreshing as a rainy September day, it ran under my skin to give me the goosebumps quite a few times.

Posted on August 15th, 2010 under Reviews, ,

Nihiltronix / V.S.K.B. Split 10″

This album came out on La Nouvelle Alliance in October 2009. Nihiltronix is a solo project from the Paris area and the same artist is already well known for his previous act ICK under which he released 19 records between 1995 and 2007.

V.S.K.B. was an industrial Soviet project from the 60′s in Latvia near Riga that was conducted to do research, design and test of the new equipment produced for agriculture and agronomy. This project was closed in the 90′s and the kids that were born out of this experiment were left homeless, known as V.S.K.B., and now drawing memory lines in analog frequencies…

The Nihiltronix side kicks off with a slow, cold and demented minimal track. It gets a little more upbeat with the second and third tracks that both have an addictive drum beat that reminds of ICK. The last one is more industrial, heavy and hissing as hell.

These 4 songs are raw, dirty and distorted as a big ball of anger, tainted with a modern industrial doom sound. Not for the sensitive minds, it could lead to hate and revolt. Everytime I listen to the first track it pulls right into my guts and gets me gritting my teeth.

The V.S.K.B. side is an instrumental and mystical work. With space noise machines, it first starts with a melancholic atmosphere and it soon turns into repetitive and hissing sounds, reminding me of fever dreams. Not too harsh and still accessible, there are pleasant melodies and minimal rhythms, sprinkled with sounds from outer space. Based on the information from the inner sleeve, they are using esoteric Russian synthesizers.

The copy I got came in a pretty white and gray marble edition.

Posted on February 28th, 2010 under Reviews,

Agent Side Grinder Interview

Here’s the Original Swedish interview.

What is the significance of your name?

Our band name may make allusion to an angry man grinding throughout the power as a grinder would do.

What other projects have you been involved with and how did you meet the other members?

During the 90′s, I have been playing with my band Berliner 6 Bahn that had continuously changed of forms to experiment with new approaches. The best way to describe it would be some kind of circus and synthesis music. In the early 2000 years, i started to collaborate with my colleague Mattias Leidebjer AB from the independent label Lobotom Records. From 2000 to 2005, Lobotom really was at the heart of the Stockholm music scene.

In 2004, I started to think about starting up a new band, when I meet Johan Lange, during a recording session with the Thomas crew. I have been impressed by Johan’s talent, and Johan has been impressed with my instrument collection and this is how it started. We started to meet once a week and experiment until we could put together some song fragments. Only 6 months later, we got in contact with Kristoffer Grip when his girlfriend, that I already knew, convinced us that Christopher was the singer we were looking for.

During 2005 and mid 2006, we tried to find the sound we were looking for. In the summer of 2006, we had our sound set and we made a concert in Amsterdam at the Hex club were we meet Martijn (Enfant Terrible label) who asked us right after the concert if he could release a 7″ single with us!

By the end of 2007, Johan went in the U.S. for almost 19 months, this is when we were working on our recording techniques that we decided Henrik Sunbring and Alexander Blomqvist would join the band. Since everything was working good, we wanted Henrik and Alexander to become full time members, and when Johan got back from the U.S. we were 5 members instead of a trio.

After listening to the upcoming album teasers released by Enfant Terrible, when I compared it to first LP, I had the impression Henrik and Alexander brought a new dimension to the band. How do you explain this evolution towards a more upbeat and aggressive sound?

ASG is always doing this, even when we produced the album it was an objective to get our music more dynamic, our interaction is one of the principal pillar of our music. Now that Henrik and Alex are with us Johan and Henrik can focus on the hard and solid play to concentrate on the melodic layers while Alex is following their bass lead, and I play with my tape loops, pedals and other sound machines and Kristoffer are all in the show! All this probably means that we can now be more brutal than before. But there is the dynamic that we are which is our focus!

Read more…

Posted on November 1st, 2009 under Interviews,

Sickdoll Interview

Here’s the original Deutsch interview.

You released the first Sickdoll 7″, Sohn Geht Ab! in 2006. Did you ever worked any other musical project in the past? When did you started composing music?

Yes that’s right, 2006, the first EP came out. Before that, a 7″ and two CD compilation samplers were released.

As a child, I learned a few years of electric organ at a music school. But then puberty hit me like an hammer, I worked a lot next to the school and bought myself an outrageously expensive electric guitar at that time. A Fender Squire Fat Strat protons in a fairly hot black paint and silver pearl. So I became one of the worst guitar player the world had ever heard and started with a few equally talented players in my school to form a grunge punk band.

We were so poor that it was stripping the walls with our sounds. But of course we did not realized it at the time, and found ourselves quite a toll. At some point, the whole thing got lost in the sand and we did split apart…

Then I had some large debts and I had to sell the hardly earned guitar for a mere pittance. From that day on, I vowed to NEVER AGAIN take a guitar in my hands (and the world was probably a little better off this way). But I did not say I would never do music again, in the attic I played the organ from time to time. Later on, I moved aimlessly out into the world with a thousand ideas in my head, any instrument, a lot of anger in the belly and a lot of potential in the ass.

So after a while, I started to write lyrics again and collected everything that was cheap to get. Joined medium shot guitar effects at cheap keyboards and such a trash. That saved me over the crazy times and brought me back to life. It became a passion. I then made some demos to survive has I had no job… Well then came a couple of live appearances. I collected a couple of synthesizers and other stuff. Eventually, I no longer wanted to play alone, but nobody wanted to join my moronic borderline project. Well understandable, but somehow tiring…

But at some point a guy told me that because he knows a guitarist … she would like to live an experience and wanted to get involved in a project. Well – we met and it went from Sickdoll to Sickdoll & The Nuclear Shades. Anyway, I wanted some change. At first I did not want Alex to integrate because of the coolness factor – that is the guitar, but I got with a guitar again because you can play something different and can create other sonorities. I just wanted more.

Now I want still more. I want to expand the project to create more bandwidth. Today nobody wants to play with us. But – who cares – the Katzenbölzer must go on…

Read more…

Posted on October 1st, 2009 under Interviews,