XXJFG


27th May 2014

A song for the drowned

Featuring:

Hand of Dust

FRONT HOD

All of the lines in the Church converge in a slab of stone framed by the statues of two weeping saints, terrible like the fragment of a meteorite hurled by cosmic titans of sadness. In the slab, the people of the village chisel the names and ages of those they have lost to the Sea. With each of her blinks, the visitor flashes back to the terminal situation each of the names refers to.

Storms made of clouds bulging and full of evil agency like the faces of hateful giants vomiting death threats and curses at you, you sneer back and ask if they want to take this outside, or rather, down-side, which they do.

Storms made of clouds numb with the indifference of a universe against which you rage with your fist in the air, all teeth and knuckles and spit, before you sink.

Storms made with geometrical precision like the circumference of the maelstrom, and the cruel centripetal forces that draw you inside, away from all warmth and away from all love, down you go, and you sing.

The song is by Hand of Dust, a band from Copenhagen whose music crashes and surges ominous, dirgeful and violent like murder ballads shrieked from a prison of black ice.

Hand of Dust – A Sight For The Living

This is the b-side in a 7’’ being released by Avant Records on the 24 of June.

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21st May 2014

How To Cover Your Dark Eye Circles

Featuring:

The Soft Pink Truth & Venom

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I reckon ^this is Drew Daniel’s version of corpsepaint. Cos he’s just made an album that seems to be based on that premise.

The ACTUAL premise – no less fabulous – is The Soft Pink Truth covers 10 Black Metal Greats. Antony Hegarty and members of Locrian are the session players.

Track two is the song that kicked all this nonsense off in the first place: Venom’s Black Metal!!!

Venom – Black Metal

Even in its original format, Black Metal is not an obvious progenitor for the genre it named, and Venom were far from being the most NECRO band.

Essentially a nastier, uglier, Geordie reading of Motorhead, Venom wrote songs about shagging prostitutes and snorting speed. They also loved prancing about in silly/awesome leathers and spikes and snarling whenever a camera came near.

Look, here is Venom leader Cronos, with Cliff Richard!

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They also had massive fireworks that they’d try and set their stages on fire with.

Venom, in fact, were BLOODY ACE. They seemed as puzzled as anyone when, 10 years after the release of the Black Metal LP in 1982, a bunch of overly-serious Norwegian teenagers began stabbing gay men to death and burning down churches, ostensibly in Venom’s name.

For his Black Metal cover, Drew Daniels reverse-engineers the DNA of this most kvlt of lineages, restoring the OTT camp of Venom’s original vision. This time, though, reciting these incantations in the purring, gay line readings of classic acid house vocals.

The Soft Pink Truth – Black Metal

The album, Why Do The Heathen Rage?, contains other similarly brill reworkings of despair-laden BM staples from Darkthrone, Mayhem and Sarcofago, among others.

It opens with a poem from Witchcraft and the Gay Counterculture by gay activist Arthur Evans. Instead of shrill one-string riffs and fog-choked vocals there are 808s and 303s that practically implore you to keep reaching for that rainbow. There’s a cover of a tune called Grim and Frostbitten Gay Bar by an Anal Cunt BM-parody side project.

I think we know where he’s going with this one.

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This is black metal – beloved of hipsters, but historically the most gay-hostile popular music outside of hip-hop – detourned. Made all the more beautiful for its obvious affection for the source material.

Pre-order Why Do The Heathen Rage? from Thrill Jockey

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12th May 2014

La quinta marcha

Featuring:

Fandango, Jessy Bulbo & Mecano

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One of your humble 20JFG scribes has recently attended several weddings in Spain, and has a partner learning Spanish and therefore listening to the classics of Spanish pop. There is no way in which he could have avoided the invasion of his sounds-space by Mecano, that legend of Spanish new wave.

This is to be welcomed, for he has a very soft spot for Mecano. Going beyond the formal pop perfection of many of their hits, theirs was the first show he attended when he was very wee, with this mom, and he has vivid memories of Ana Torroja prancing in the stage and everybody going nuts.

Perhaps this changed his life. Bands like Mecano, who do pure mainstream pop with an arty twist often are the first hit of a gateway drug into weird musical universes like those your scribe now inhabits. They are a bridge.

Me Cole En Una Fiesta is a perfect example of this. It could also work as a secret weapon with devastating impacts in the arsenal of the italo/europop/bubblegum DJ, especially if the dancefloor features members of the Spanish economic diaspora, in which case the whole situation can turn into a Spanish wedding style situation, which is something that any DJ in his or her right mind would seek to induce.

Mecano – Me Cole en una Fiesta

This was Mecano’s second single, and is included in their self/titled 1982 debut. The B-side is also a pretty great hysteric Europop instrumental.

Mecano – Boda En Londres

fandango

If we had grown up in Mexico we’d probably have similar feelings for Monterrey’s Fandango, whose ‘Autos, Moda y Rock and Roll’ provides the kind of framework atop dance crazes are generated, and youth movements kick-started.  We didn’t grow up in Mexico, so we discovered them via GTA V’s excellent East Los 106.2.

Fandango – Autos, Moda Y Rock N Roll

Which was included in their second album, with that title.

Jessy Bulbo was also included in that same radio station. Maldito’s has enough spunky vitalism to make Thee Headcotees jealous, and the video features the most awesome scenes of Aztec ramoniac raving we have ever seen. More aspirational scenarios for the DJs and promoters out there.

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