Music Spectrum

New York City-by-way-of-Romania’s RED i CLAN have produced a pitch perfect blend of hip hop/rap and European industrial dance music. Overwhelmingly, Sor (vocals), Raul (guitar), and Alex (drums) seems to be a three-person Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) in the Pretty Hate Machine era, but they’ve also invited the darker-dance-trance-beats of T.Raumschmiere and DJ Hell. “Brown Milk” sounds like a dangerous rave alley deal. The riffs on “Killohead” and “Superstar” are great hooks.

RED i CLAN

Awhile ago, my parents brought me back a disc from the Czech Republic: Sunshine, a group out of the town of Tabor, and their 2007 release, Dreamer, on the Czech branch of Universal Music. Sunshine is the !!! (Chk Chk Chk) of Eastern Europe (or should I say they’re !z!z!z (Czech Czech Czech?). With tracks like “Top! Top! The Radio!” and “Ghetto,” they’ve got that live dance club sound although with a more electronic feel that !!! (perhaps, in that way, Sunshine is a bit more like Radio 4).

Thematically, though, Sunshine feels like Dead or Alive throughout the album. You’ll notice it on the first track, “You (In Your Head),” with talk of failing relationship and its ghost. Like Dead or Alive, talk of love gets combined with themes of darkness, violence, being alone, anger, witches, and vampires. “Macabre Interlude” has the creepiness of Dead or Alive in their pre-Nine Inch Nails way leading into “Dead Leaves,” Sunshine’s most NIN sounding song.

Because of those themes, there’s also some spiritual avenues to explore here. “You (In Your Head)” opens itself to a Bible discussion with the stanza:

You can’t eat, can’t sleep, your heart is bleeding
It’s such a mess, but the angels will hold you tight
No one listens, but I hope, you will take it anyway
Another crash, another tie to hell.

The song explores a hope for more and rescue from this life (through Jesus?) despite being very entwined in some very dark alleys.

On “Ghetto,” one line (“Your faith is turning to grey”) is great for talking about what happens when you’re hitting complacency in your faith.

Sunshine
Universal Music s.r.o

A Monthly Check-in on Sounds Coming From Music Spectrum Supporter, Astralwerks

I was walking down the street listening to my Discman®, the Dissociatives as my soundtrack, and if it had been a movie, there would’ve been a swooshing sound of flashbacking to bring me back to high school days listening to my Walkman®, the Hoodoo Gurus as my soundtrack. What created the flashback feeling is the way the guitar and beats of the Dissociatives charge you with an energy, inviting you right in, and I wanted to learn every drumfill and guitar check swing strum.

The groove-jammed rock of the Hoodoo Gurus had been my constant companion through high school road trips, walks, anytime I could put on my headphones. In the process, I had learned every nook and cranny of those songs. I remember being on a 30-day wilderness canoe trip, an unbearably long time to go without music. In the middle of a lake, the waves beating us back against the shore, the wind and weariness made conversation with my sternsman impossible, so I sang in my head (and a little bit outloud) Hoodoo Gurus’ “What’s My Scene?” I played that song in my head to get to that climatic moment where everything comes to a stop before charging ahead again.

When I was listening to the Dissociatives, they made me want to know their album that well, too. I want it to be a well-worn sweatshirt that is so comfortable that you can live inside it.

While the Hoodoo Gurus land in the American Dance Rock section of the Spectrum, the Dissociatives are much more out of the English Dance Rock side of things. They’ve got that Eurorock and Electronica flavor, so it’s not surprising that they’re on Astralwerks. Daniel Johns’ vocals (and the production of it) sounds reminiscent of Turin Brakes coupled with a much more driving beat.

Part of the appeal of wanting to camp out and learn these tunes comes from their shape. These songs move, grow, fall back, and take you on that tour. “Thinking in Reverse” has a tight, pop rock beat, with a chorus that hints even more at Beatles rock, but when it hits the bridge, it’s a drawbridge that rises and sends you flying off into the sky.

There’s also a little creepiness to the sound. The album opens with “We’re Much Preferred Customers” has a foreboding air. “Horror with Eyeballs” marches along with a haunted carnival carousel backbeat. It’s an odd story, but the chorus makes me think you could use it to talk about Noah, the flood, and the Ark (“All of this time on my hands/So far has gone to feeding my animals”).

Thanks to The Dissociatives and Katie @ Astralwerks for the review CD.

Ms. Hanson was our Advanced Placement European History teacher my junior year. She was neither hip nor humorous. She fulfilled many stereotypes of a middle-aged, spinster history teacher. However, she was approachable, and clearly wanted us to enjoy learning about the world. So Ryan Lee asked her one day after class if she had ever seen or heard of the ballet Kurious Oranj.

It wasn’t like Ryan was completely off-base in asking Ms. Hanson about the ballet whose music was composed by the post-punk band the Fall. After all, Ms. Hanson knew all things European, or so it seemed. The Fall’s music tapped into history, supporting Mark E. Smith’s strange world with incredible flying buttresses. There was a chance that Ms. Hanson might have come across Kurious Oranj in all of her dedication to Europe. . .but no, she hadn’t. She told Ryan she’d keep her eyes open for something about it, but I don’t think she caught on that the Fall was more likely to be in NME than in Studies in Modern European History.

Whatever moments you’ve had with the Fall, Castle Music has now reissued 1982’s Hex Enduction Hour with bonus disc of Peel Sessions and live tracks. The fourth album by the Fall showcases all of their odd angles, chant-like ranting vocals, jazz jamming, live sounding production coupled with tape sequences production, raucous tunes, and mellow musings.

When the band in falsetto sings, “He is not,” and Smith adds, “appreciated,” on “Hip Priest,” the atmospheric jazz vamp tune has become somewhat of a biography of Smith—the unappreciated leader of hip music, defining and influencing artists for years while never gaining any widespread recognition. For instance, the guitar here trades influences with the Violent Femmes.

Reworked for Kurious Oranj as “New Big Prinz,” which points to the track record in a self-deprecating nod, Smith actually seems to proudly claim his role as unrecognized leader, doing the hip while being told that he’s anything but hip.

I may just have to adopt it as personal theme song. While going around town in Vans with an earring and long hair, listening to my Discman, I may be applying for the job as Hip Pastor of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, but the teens in our youth group remind me all of the time—I’m not hip. The community’s popular and rebellious crowds tell me there’s nothing hip about a pastor. “He is not appreciated.” Sing it with me now!

Of the bonus tracks, “I’m Into C.B.” from a 7” released a month after Hex rocks with a jungle funk beat. The song is a regular Who’s Who of the potentially deranged people behind the fun callsigns on the C.B. With the repeated title as chorus, it follows a common Fall structure of story verses and chant choruses—such as “Carry Bagman” (Frenz Experiment). The bonus live “Stars on 45” version amps up the energy of this song even more while throwing in bits of other songs.

Among the bonus live tracks is “Jazzed Up Punk Shit.” Doing their best at disrupting the traditional jazz combo musings, the Fall wander about on the bass of Steve Hanley. The title aptly describes all of the Fall’s music, knowing as how it is an English Rock jazz interpretation of punk with some dance stuff thrown into the mix. With the clink of glasses and light chatter from the Manchester crowd, the Fall punk up that shit for a jazz atmosphere—and go down in history doing some of the hippest rock artistry of the last century.

Thanks to Sanctuary Records/Castle Music for the review copy.

The Cure could transverse lines of genre, cultural groups, ideologies, nations, economics, and inhibitions. If the Cure couldn’t cross those boundaries, a shy, sheltered, white, Christian kid from the Midwest wouldn’t have been able to find such a vast connection with this music that hinted at a dark world of funeral, scorned love, experimenting, freedom, streets, England, sex, and men wearing makeup.

I didn’t know anything about Goth in the 80’s, but I listened to the Cure, the original Goths as it were. I listened to their imitators, Dead or Alive. I even later listened to Nine Inch Nails before I became aware that there was a macabre, black-clad world of Goths. The Gothic tones led my friend, Jessica, to dye her hair black in 7th grade, an outrageous, rebellious act in the suburbs, but it only made me love her more. The Cure made the darkness come alive with possibilities rather than just shame-filled alleys.

I knew Boy George clearly had sexual issues, but somehow Robert Smith seemed less flamboyant. It doesn’t make much sense, but because the Cure’s sound resonated with me so much, Smith didn’t get stuck in some homo-erotic camp. Much like my love for the Smiths, embracing the Cure could’ve easily led to other teens making assumptions about my predilections. For a self-conscious boy, this may have proved too much, but instead, in 8th grade I let my bangs grow out and spiked them with a full can of hair spray in fine Smith fashion.

The ways in which the Cure could have remained completely other to me were actually invisible. Listening to the Cure simply made sense. With Rhino Records reissuing the Cure’s first albums (Imaginary Boys back in December, and now Seventeen Seconds, Faith, and Pornography), the music has taken me back to those days when the confusion of junior high met the Cure’s words and music which brought a confused clarity to the emotions and experiences.

More than a personal reminiscence, though, the reissues could actually make new history for many Cure fans. For those of us who were too young to catch the Cure on their rise, 1986’s Staring at the Sea – The Singles hit just in time for us to have on one cassette the most powerful songs in the Cure’s discography. Unlike many throw-away greatest hits collections which served to bastardize the concept of an album, collections like Staring at the Sea were so strongly crafted that they became like an album themselves. (Echo & the Bunnymen’s Songs to Learn & Sing worked in this same way). Arranged in chronological order, Staring at the Sea became the only Cure album many of my friends owned. Yet, there was no question to the fact that we were wholly dedicated to the Cure.

Now, with Faith reissued, I can see why “Primary” and “Other Voices” were the singles released from the album. By far, they are the strongest songs. However, while Staring at the Sea gave the listener glimpses of each stage of the early career, letting you hear the flow and growth of the sound from track to track, Faith is only represented by “Primary” and “Other Voices” (and in some respect “Charlotte Sometimes,” a non-album single released during this time). Staring at the Sea, then, “quickly changes the tune,” shifting into the much-more tribal sound of “The Hanging Garden” from Pornography.

By going back to listen to Faith, you realize that “Primary” and “Other Voices” represent an entire feel from that album. Certainly, echoes of the singles are in the other tracks; you could almost start singing “Primary” alongside “Doubt.” More than showing a band who had only written two songs three times over to make an album, it shows a band intent on creating the feel, sound, and atmosphere as a complete work. Approaching the album in this mindset, “The Holy Hour” sets the stage, “Primary” and “Other Voices” present the drama, and the rest of the songs rework, revisit, and reimagine that drama.

As an aside, predating Angelo Badalamenti’s soundtrack to the TV series, Twin Peaks, the Cure’s “The Funeral Party” certainly could have been the inspiration. The feel of the song would resurface again on “Plainsong” to lead off 1989’s Disintegration.

These reissues are all 2-CD sets which then include outtakes, live versions, and demos. The second disc for Faith, “Rarities 1980-1981,” includes the aforementioned “Charlotte Sometimes,” definitely a strong cut from this era. Well worth the deluxe purchase are the live tracks, especially “Other Voices,” “The Drowning Man,” and “Forever.”

The “Rarities” disc also gives you an insight into why some songs didn’t make it onto the album. “Going Home Time” and “The Violin Song” are studio outtakes that, while actually quite solid songs, do not lend the same timbre that the band was striving for on Faith. Another outtake “A Normal Story” sounds like the early Smiths in the studio four years too early.

The outtake version of “Primary” shows how much a transformation may take place in the growth of a song. This version is sluggish and overly happy with reverb/echo effect on the vocals. It is surprising to hear just how far the song was from being worthy of the album, let alone worthy of being released as a single.

The sixth track on Faith is “Doubt,” part of the section of the album that reimagines the drama laid out in “Primary” and “Other Voices.” The “Rarities” disc finds Robert Smith at home with drum machine and guitar producing an early demo of “Doubt,” laying out a guitar funeral march. Go back to the album version, the same guitar march is double-timed, a frantic run alongside the hearse as it peels out and races towards the dead end street. The Rhino reissue gives the listener the chance to hear how a stray hummed tune could become a murderous rant, strained with all the emotion that was always contained in what Smith was writing quietly at home.

Thanks to The Cure and Rhino Records for the review copy.