Storm Stereo #11

screenshot_2016-04-28-00-28-58My loves,

Another sensitive show yet again. [shrug] My excuse this time is that I’ve been popping pills all week thanks to horrible toothache which has led to insomnia and migraines. In turn my nerves are shattered and my emotions are a wreck (but hey, when aren’t they, amiright?). My motion is slow, like walking against the wind, and my mind even more so, so I figured I’d get one more show out to you before having dental surgery tomorrow. This time we open with a love letter from Panama, then take a little trip into the past and discover some rock and psych from Turkey, Algeria, Iran and Cambodia (all discovered and acquired while working at Revolver Records); we make a stop at Space Station Berlin with some new wave and electro-pop, and close it off with Sensitive Riffs For Sensitive People, a set inspired by the inconvenient harboring of hope and created for those mornings when all you want to do it stay in bed and cry. Download it here.

A recent discovery I made by accident was the movie Ashik Kerib (Strange Lover), a 1988 Soviet production—directed by Soviet-Georgian and Armenian filmmakers Dodo Abashidze Sergei Parajanov, based on a story by Mikhail Lermontov—which tells the tale of a poor young man by the name of Ashik Kerib who must venture on a journey for 1,001 days and nights to gain his fortune so he can marry the woman he loves. It’s an intriguingly surreal movie with a minimal, voiced-over script and often bizarre scenes that border on visual art,  rich in Azerbaijani references, visual metaphors, trick montage and outlandish landscapes. Brilliantly conceived and well worth checking out, with enchanting music by Dzhavanshir Kuliyev.

For those of you who haven’t already fallen for her stunning voice and fiery riffs, Selda is a popular rock and folk singer, guitarist and composer from Turkey. She recently gained some fame in the west for being sampled by Dr. Dre and Mos Def, but she is better known at home for her protest style of music and her satirical, political lyrics, which not only got some of her songs banned from Turkish radio for criticizing the status quo and some for being sung in Kurdish, but it also landed her in jail a couple of times between 1981 and 1984. We also venture to Algeria where we are swept away by mighty horns and delirious drum rhythms, thanks to a killer compilation by Sublime Frequencies, a Seattle-based label that is dedicated to exposing obscure sounds from around the world, be it urban or rural, traditional or modern. We also listen to Mao Sareth off Cambodian compilation Groove Club Vol. 2: Cambodia Rock Spectacular, in a track that’s distinctly darker and rockier than most of the other tracks on this superb collection. Cambodia had a rich rock’n’roll / folk rock scene during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, but Mao Sareth—like many musician in Cambodia at that time—was eventually killed by the Khmer Rouge communist regime, who “began wiping out all traces of modernity and Western influence. Intellectuals, artists and musicians were specifically and systematically targeted and eliminated. Thus began one of the most brutal genocides in history, killing an estimated two million people – a quarter of the Cambodian population.” There is a very moving documentary about the Cambodian rock scene that I highly encourage you to track down and watch, called Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten: Cambodia’s Lost Rock and Roll.

Matching the grey skies that loom over Athens right now,  the rest of the show is pretty much your expected mix of haunting beats (like Curcuit 7, or The Oppenheimer Analysis and their bleak narrative on ‘Behind the Shades’) gloomy dreaminess (like Belgium’s Autumn and their love song ‘Night in June,’ which can be found on the comp Cold Waves + Minimal Electronics Volume One and a reissue LP on Minimal Wave Records), pop sensitivity straight outta Sarah Records, riffs and vocals that pull at your heartstrings (like the Nivens and their dreamy melancholia on ‘Yesterday’ or the Dogs and their beautiful guitar work on ‘Lovers Again,’ whose opening melody brings to mind the Rolling Stones and which could have easily influenced the Raveonettes) and lyrics that are just waiting to be quoted in a drunken sext… (“Can’t hide my desire when you come around/I’m feeling dizzy, my ego is bound/when I smell you coming I feel like a hound”)

What can I say… sometimes we hang on to hope even though all it does is drag us down. I guess some of us are fools. Until next time, do whatever you want. With numb love from outer space,

—Obsessionist

Storm Stereo #10 – Earth Angels Special

ss10My lovelies,

A new month is here already (welcome eclipses), the weather is cooling off and I continue my social hibernation. A quiet home and a silent phone. Spring cleaning the dust out a season too late but relishing in the order and structure that neatly sit in its place. Living with the windows open but my eyes shut; a reaction to societal boundaries, an ironic need for space in a limitless universe, a creeping sense of enochlophobia. Noli turbare circulos meos!

I went to a funeral and cried more than my friend who had just lost her father. Her positivity in the face of loss and her trust in the subtle powers of the cosmos echoed across the emotional landscape of the days to follow. I thought about all the people who’ve come and gone in my life. I counted the friends who manifested like forks in the road, permanently altering my path. I thought of those who helped shape the bigger picture—like dots of a constellation or colourful specs on a pointillist painting. I thought of the bullets I’ve dodged because I had a friend to warn me and the wounds I’ve healed because I had a friend to help me. The long-term impact of those seemingly inconsequential moments that make up our daily, modern interactions sometimes only felt long after the fact.

Not all friendships last forever, and not all friendships are substantial, and sometimes not all friendships are even healthy—that’s just how the cosmic cookie crumbles—yet I still learned something from all of them. Some people only came threw fleetingly and some will stick around forever; either way a collection of songs was left in their wake. So here are 59 minutes of music as a result. Download it here.

Until next time, focus on the people who make you happy and work towards dismantling the things that don’t.

With love from outer space

—Obsessionist

blackhole
‘The whole of reality is contained implicitly in each moment.’

 

DAVID AXELROD – The Fly

NELSON RIDDLE – Out of the Night

GROWING – A Painting

JULIANNA BARWICK – The Harbinger

SLOWDIVE – Crazy For You

NAUGHTIEST GIRL WAS A MONITOR – To Love Nuclear

CHELSEA WOLFE – Flatlands (Lust for Youth remix)

FOREST SWORDS – Friend, You Will Never Learn

BURIAL – Forgive

FLOCK OF SEAGULLS – Space Age Love Song

MARTIN DUPONT – Inside Out

THE CHAMELEONS – Dust to Dust

HOLY GRAY – Now I’m so Angry

TELEVISION PERSONALITIES – Silly Girl

THE TIMES – Looking at the World Through Dark Shades

Storm Stereo #9

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Happy new moon season my lovelies!

I took a break from this here space for a while to spend a few weeks in Berlin on a sorta working holiday. It was a thought-provoking stay and, while I haven’t been listening to a whole lot of punk or hardcore lately, I do have a bunch of jams I discovered, both new and old, which I will be sharing with you soon. (I swear I haven’t given up on punk just yet…) I’ve definitely lost track of the many great new bands that have been popping up on my punk horizon in the last six months or so. I guess I’ve been consciously avoiding too much new information. I need to de-clutter my brain from the vast amount of junk that already resides there. And, if you couldn’t tell already, this podcast isn’t really about delivering new music anyway, it’s autobiographical sets of music you may or may not enjoy.

Download it here

I always listen to the radio a lot in the summer, and find myself reverting back to a teenager and getting excited with ridiculously pop songs. Is ‘Drunk In Love’ a certified banger and one of the sexiest mainstream songs to come out in the last five years? Yes. Can I deny how catchy Jarfaiter is, or how fucking annoying Drake is, or how cheesy the Chainsmokers and Tove Lo are? No. But I like it either way, I don’t know what to say… It’s not so much a guilty pleasure; more like declared deviance from the path of punk.

In some cases they’re actually gems of motivational, linguistic brilliance, like The Streets and their masterpiece ‘Turn the Page.’ Or diamonds in the rough, like Burkinabé musician and singer and song-writer Victor Démé. In others it’s a testament to artful songwriting that sounds stunning even at the wrong speed, like Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene.’ Some of it was purely circumstantial—I heard ‘My Broken Heart’ covered by Personal Best in Berlin, and I’ll admit I prefer the original. Other times it was regional, dropped pins on a mental map. Like last summer when I lived with summertime Sadness  down on the West Coast; I couldn’t escape Lana Del Rey. And there’s something so quintessentially West Coast about Best Coast, that it brings back so many memories from when I lived in the land where they swing their cars.

The songs all made it into my mental music library. Some seeped their way in subtly, insidiously, reluctantly even. Some left their mark indelibly, like dates circled on a calendar. Others have been orbiting my existence forever, like Fleetwood Mac, Lou Reed and Lee Hazlewood; tracks I first discovered as a young child sitting in the back seat of my mother’s yellow 2CV, enchanted by the music coming from the dusty speakers up front. I guess some experiences come with a soundtrack whether you like it or not, and—topped only by my weakening sense of smell—music is the strongest thing to evoke those memories of summers past. Some of them seem like a lifetime away, more like a hazy dream on a hot day after a long drive up the coast. My my, how the seasons go by. Halfway through August already. Exactly one year ago I was in LA having one of the dreamiest weeks of my life, unaware of the leaps and bounds I would be making a couple months later. Funny how often ‘dreamy’ is synonymous to ‘bittersweet.’

I’m in a strange mood. Not fragile or down, but not exactly booming with energy either. I’m laying low and mentally —and to some extend physically —detoxing until the fall. That requires a certain level of solitude. Ideal for focusing on the two new jobs I just landed and getting into a healthier routine. (Though I could never give up some of my bad habits…) For now I am happy to pause my bouncing around and just stay in one place for a while, shut the world out and work work work work work. Securing my assets, taking stock of my loses and making worst case scenarios in case the apocalypse finally decides to grace us with its presence. We all have our battles, our problems and ambitions and it’s easy to be disheartened by fear and distracted by self-doubt. Sometimes you just need the comfort of silence. ‘To let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.’

Find your mountain and climb it. Send me a postcard from the top.

With love from outer space,

—Obsessionist

Continue reading Storm Stereo #9

Storm Stereo #8 on Berlin Community Radio

lydsHallo meine Lieblings!

Today was a special day, as Storm Stereo was broadcasting live from the studio at Berlin Community Radio! Dead chuffed that the lovely people at BCR invited me to host a show, and even though I was so incredibly high on coffee and crunched for time coz of my nervous banter, it was a mighty fun show. Sadly there was a glitch I only just became aware of, and ANALOG BLOC was not played (but instead it was MISS KITTIN twice! Ooops, sorry!) But you should check it out below!

Of course, time flies when you’re having fun, and I realized I had to cut my sets shorts, so no KAOS, ANTI… or EFIALTIS, but I managed to squeeze in some Greek synth personal anthems, some Yugo and Polish punk, some electro beats, and more! Always too many lovely people to mention, so just know you are all in my thoughts no matter where you are on the planet: from Barcelona and the UK to Japan and Canada, and from Athens and Australia to Lyon and the far, far West!

Until next time, stay posi, stay strong! With love from outer space

—Obsessionist

JOSE LARRALDE – Quimey Neuquen (como una daga en mi corazón)

LOWER – But There Has To Be More (seasonal existentialism)

FELIX DA HOUSECAT ft. MISS KITTIN – Silver Screen Shower Scene

COSMETICS – Black Leather Gloves

LED ES EST – Scissors

LUST FOR YOUTH – Barcelona (como una daga en mi corazón)

TUXEDOMOON – No Tears (ADULT Remix)

SECTA – Oposición (ugh, that riff gives me goosebumps every time!)

DEAD HERO – Oi!

BARCELONA – Caudillo / Infierno de Cobardes (I •love• those vocals!)

ODOS 55 – Attiki Victoria

ERA OF FEAR – Mizeria

PARAF – Fini Dečko

MOSKWA – Ja Wiew, Ty Wiesz

MRR #398

mrr_398_cvr1“I’D SELL MY SOUL BUT NO ONE’S BUYING”

The Diät tour had ended, and we had made it safely back to Berlin.

Berlin: a place where addictions come to reinvent themselves. Where drinking beers on trains is no biggie, the party starts after 4am, and rolling a big fat jozza by the canal is common practice for locals and tourists alike, who both flock here from all corners of the earth. It’s a chunky city, with wide streets and pavements, clusters of massive, modernist buildings, colourful murals on post-war project housing, green parks and grey skies, and a canal winding through the centre, lined by leafy banks and cobbled walkways. It was the beginning of spring and the budding branches seemed to extend skyward, as if stretching away the stiff winter and welcoming warmer days with open arms.

Every morning for a week, my kind host Iffi and I would wake up, jam our new radio pop song obsessions while eating porridge with ginger and almonds, then head to Static Shock Musik, where we’d jam the Chain of Flowers record hella loud while opening up shop. At least Iffi was jogging every morning to detox from tour—I was waking and baking at the house and day-drinking on the bench outside the store. I was on a hedonist’s quest, sans most of the resulting pleasure. I helped out with some odd jobs at the store (once a shitworker always a shitworker), walked around the Russian Memorial park twice and yet still failed to actually find the massive statue (what a loser), smoked a joint by the Brandenburg Gate and contemplated the evolution of identity in the age of the selfie stick, and lay under the sun in the park staring at the clouds that looked like dicks with wings, listening to Lust for Youth (so unpunk) and thinking about Blake, the demonization of the body and the absurd things we sometimes do to dismantle the illusions in our head. I went to Bis Aufs Messer Records (they also sell their own yummy coffee!) and with beers by the canal, reunited with the lovely Beeney, who was a MRR shitworker my first summer in SF! I saw a packed Diät gig at Tommyhaus, and danced to punk 45s and tunes by London’s Scraps at the Acid Baby Jesus show at Urban Spree, and drank divine Moscow Mules lined with dingos on the balcony at Kastanienkeller where Warsong from Zaragoza joined locals Sunbather in a packed and fun show. By far the most exciting band (and tightest drummer) I was introduced to this time around was Sick Horse, who play a mix of sinister psych garage and tense, snarky punk.       On what I thought was my last day—because I don’t know how to read a bloody calendar—I woke up to barking dogs and smeared make-up. I stumbled out the house and through Alexanderplatz (the smell of sausage practically nauseating), walked through Museumsinseln but didn’t actually go inside any of the museums and almost fainted with dehydration by the canal with no corner store or café in sight for blocks or bridges. Poisoned by nicotine and negativity. With an extra day in town I felt suspended in my own mind so I decided to avoid humans and sat on a bench by the river in the sun with Low on repeat for three hours. Then I drank my way to an early night at the store. An earth angel came my way—in that way they do out of nowhere—and, after chatting for a while, about my meanderings, my life in the US, she realized I was the writer of what has comically devolved into MRR’s emo column, sans any of the music. “Yeah, you’re more confused in person than you come across on paper.” Ha, I liked her immediately! After Static Shock closed we went round the corner to hers, where she cooked me up a mini feast and gave me beer and the most delicious home made vodka-lemon drink that her dad makes back in Poland—it was like heaven in a shot glass. We talked and smoked and jammed Total Control and made each other lists of bands to check out, and her hospitality and open-heartedness humbled me. The next day it was “goodbye Berliners,” and a done deal to return for the festival two weeks later.

Continue reading MRR #398

Storm Stereo #7

originalHello my lovelies!

“Sometimes I stare in space, tears all over my face. I can’t explain it, don’t understand it, never felt like this before. It’s like a heat wave!” And you would be right, because it’s Day 4 of boiling hot weather here in Athens and doing anything but hiding underground in such mind-melting heat is a challenge. I managed to get sun stroke on the beach the other day, so I am soothing my suffering with some cool jams from summer soundtracks past and present. It was the summer solstice and strawberry June full moon yesterday, so it seemed an ideal night to channel my energy into some chill sonic vibrations for you all. Download it here. (Let me know if you have trouble accessing the files, I will send them to you directly!)

On this show we move away from guitar-driven music, though there is some of it (have we met?) and venture through the cool hallways of electronic experimentation and beat-based composition. Featuring electronic favourites (that LFY remix is on repeat rotation) and guilty pleasures (if we have met then you know that every now and then I get hooked on some ridiculous radio pop song or other), we ponder the paradox of existence, explore and experiment with various concepts of love, stimulate the senses with hot textures and cold liquids and ride through this breeze-less night in cinematic style in search of some sonic relief.

This three-hour mix will no doubt extend its tentacles into many more pools of sound in future Venn diagrams to come. After all, the sonic psycho-synthesis of this obsessionist is as simple as it is surreal, the music chosen to both match and moderate one’s emotions, driven by the primitive desire to assign music to memories, and kept in check by that natural idiosyncratic inner metronome; that constant psychosomatic ticker, that keeper of carnal experience: the human heart. “Transfixed between rapture and anguish.”

We’ll resume next time with neu punk from around the world, selections from over 1000 years of female composers, LGBTQI hits and more! Until then, stay posi, stay strong.

With love from outer space,

—Obsessionist

Download it here.

MAX RICHTER – Summer 3

THE PRIMITIVES – I’ll Be Your Mirror

NICO – All Tomorrow’s Parties

OBSCURE BY DEGREES – A Woman Like You

SUICIDE – I Remember

THROBBING GRISTLE – Distant Dreams (Part Two)

CHRIS & COSEY – Obsession

LENA PLATONOS – Λαθός Αγάπη (Lathos Agapi, Wrong Love)

DZ LECTRIC & ANTON SHIELD – Experimenting Love

[QUANTIC – Time is the Enemy]

HEAVY METAL – Don’t Call Me Brother

DELACAVE – Uniform With No Brain

HYSTERIE – Service Secret

SCORPIO VIOLENTE – Uberschleiss

DECEMBER SOUND – Kill Me (Before I Kill You)

THE RAVEONETTES – Beat City

HEALTH – We Are Water

THE RAPTURE – Olio

[NU – Man O To]

FELIX DA HOUSE CAT – Free Love

PETRINA – Texture

BEN CLOCK – Subzero

THROBBING GRISTLE – Hot on the Heels of Love (Ratcliffe remix)

ZK – The Paradox of Existence

PAROV STELAR – The Sun

MOLLY NILSSON – Keep the Change (aMinus Drives in Milan remix)

LUST FOR YOUTH – New Boys (I’m Falling Club remix by Sean Ragon)

TAYLOR SWIFT – Bad Blood

MIA – Bad Girls (Nonsens remix)

MSSING NO – 124th

RIHANNA – Pour It Up

BEATS INTERNATIONAL – Just be Good to me (Chris Richardson Late Night remix)

RENNIE FOSTER – Devil’s Water

UNKLE – Touch Me (Rui da Silva cover)

JOHN CARPENTER “Night” (Zola Jesus & Dean Hurley remix)

ZOLA JESUS – Night

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN – I’m On Fire (Cousin Cole’s Bad Desire remix)

BAT FOR LASHES – What’s a Girl to Do

Storm Stereo #6 – Greek Folk Special

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The Smyrna Trio, featuring Roza Eskenazi

Hello my loves!

June is already here, the heat is setting in in Athens and I have so many tracks to share, I’ve got three shows waiting in the wings for you all. On this rather special-edition show we warm up with some early punk, psych rock and garage from the US, UK and Australia, we have some ’60s soul for those damn crush mixtapes, and we take a trip back to the 1920s and ’30s and explore the Greek blues, the Rebetika: heartache, drugs and outlaw life from the underground hash dens of Greece, Turkey and the US, as well as some other folk expressions from the regions of Epirus and Crete. Tracklist at the end. Download it here. (Let me know if you have trouble accessing the files, I will send them to you directly!)

Thanks to friends visiting from abroad, I went on a week-long roadtrip around the Peloponnese, and have also been walking around downtown Athens quite a bit, making some new memories in a city I left disdainfully hating. I felt a bit like a tourist guide (“Lydia’s Lonely Planet Guides” coming soon) pointing out sites and areas that were significant to the modern history of the country, which has included bloody civil wars, flooring fascism, population exchange, famine, genocide, military juntas, communist exile, student insurrections and the geographic and emotional uprooting of millions. And that’s just the first chunk of the 20th century.

Growing up only half-Greek in Athens—and in constant debate with myself about what parts and how much of my Greek identity I was supposed to embrace or reject—meant that for the better part of my childhood and teenage years I just ignorantly scoffed a lot of the things that were considered “traditional.” [My adolescent disinterest in the notion of “Greek rock” (whose bad renditions have plagued the Greek music landscape for decades) was also the reason why it took me longer than most Greek teen underground dwellers to discover and appreciate Greek punk (which claims a vivid and unique early history, in part thanks to the distinct sound of the Greek language).] After living in the US for almost four years and missing some aspects of Greek culture more than I thought I would, I warmed up to some of the sounds of my once-home, especially the rebétika, and would play them for hours on days when I felt homesick. After all, I wasn’t the first person to leave Greece for a land a few thousand miles away.

Rebétika can be best described as the Blues of the Greeks. In style it was an underground type of folk music, with varying sub-styles and also styles of dance to accompany it, and it was played by rebetes and rebetisses, who usually lived on the margins of society. However, in spirit it was so much more. It was in essence deeply personal protest music against the status quo and its allied bullies, against the prohibitions on personal freedom and expression. Rebétika became popular in the 1920s and ’30s, were banned in 1936 by order of the dictator Ioannis Metaxas (the apagorevména hasiklídika have reached cult notoriety), and then saw a revival and gained more popular acceptance during the German occupation of WWII, and then again during the Greek military junta (1967-73). The music is heavy on bouzouki, baglama and guitar, violin, cimbalom, lyre, clarinet and (my favourite) kanonaki, but also finger-cymbals, laouto and mandolin, among other instruments. The lyrics can get dark and heavy, as they usually describe the woes and worries of the poor, wretched songwriters. And while the rebétika captured a spirit of freedom and resistance that came about as the result of certain conditions and events of that time, the deeper emotions rebétika express are relateable and timeless, the roughened voices and profound, passionate words echoing true to this day.

Continue reading Storm Stereo #6 – Greek Folk Special