MATHIAS DELPLANQUE - La Plinthe

(CD, Optical Sound)

On his sixth album as a solo composer / producer of minimal electronic soundscapes, Mathias Delplanque, once again opens up strangely fascinating and transcendentive worlds of sounds and noises. Wherever it comes from, it is definitely not from this world, but it will suck you in with ease. Within this world, or worlds, nothing is quite foreseeable. "La Plinthe" is mostly a very low and silent work, though not always soft or easy. Sometimes the noise, though not pressuring or abrasive, becomes almost too much. But usually things ease out after some time. Melodies and rhythms only shine from afar, as if sunken in the sounds. The minimalism is more aimed at the fact that there are usually only a few layers of sounds at the same time and those are clearly identifiable against each others. Their sources remain in uncertainty, though, as do structure and meaning. It is not ambient, because it does not creep into the background or does nice shapes in your room. And it is not drone because it has too many changes. But it has elements of both of these as well. Sometimes it is challenging and harsh, and sometimes it is soothing, but mostly it is both at the same time. 35 minutes later you'll leave the capsule, look about and see the same old world unchanged, yet nothing has remained the same. Then you have two alternatives: get out and face this newly strange world or get back in for another round.

www.optical-sound.com

TODD HERFINDAL - Collective

(CD, single recordings)

Gladly I am reminded again and again that the West Coast rock sound is still alive, and not only by overhyped posterboy-bands like Incubus. This sound that has feelings and emotions, grand arrangements, real issues amidst abounding harmonies and that doesn't find a contradiction between honesty and a chorus that makes it 100 % fit for radio airing. Maybe that is why Todd Herfindal has his head in the clouds. But in between he strums his electric guitar in front of a full blown band, strikes the chorus harmonies perfectly and always has the correct timing and structure for the bridge or the guitar solo. Most songs on "collective" are in midtempo and are great to listen to while driving, dreaming of the highway. Not close to anywhere alternative country, apart from the basic rock syrup that is always purely US-american, of course. There are some ballads thrown in for good measure. I don't know, because I have never been there long enough to find out, but there are probably a few thousand people like Todd Herfindal in Los Angeles alone (and then double that number in Nashville), but on the other hand there are eleven songs on here, all of which would be chart hits for other, better known bands (with names like Matchbox 20 or the like). On the third hand (if that is a correct saying...) it would be great to sit in a small roadside cafe in the evening and listen to Todd and his band play while people are enjoying themselves. Check the credits of the pop-records you buy in the future and you might find the name Herfindal in there.

www.toddherfindalmusic.com

OCTOBER EQUUS - charybdis

(CD, r.a.i.g.)

The quintet October Equus step right into their thing: modern avantgarde jazz. It is so complicated and has tricky structures that all musicians play along with great ability, that it called by prog-jazz without hurting anybody or anything. I know that mentioning these denominators I am already hinting at a fusion that a lot of people will pass by in a glance - but that might be a mistake. At least that is the reaction I get when I mention the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Miles Davis fusion double albums (especially "On the corner" or "Agartha" - though those have recieved coolness credits after Nick Cave mentioned to like them.) On their third album "charybdis" the guitar / bass / drums / keyboards / saxophone - mix of October Equus, with the addition of a waterphone at some point, won't make things easy for you. As soon as you have settled for one thing to listen to, they'll play something else. At all times the music is controlled and structured, everbody seems to be knowing what they are doing exactly beforehand, and there is great mastery in this melee. It is the sort of chaos that seems to be on the exact opposite of the soundspectrum that ECM is still looking for, though the atmospheres and the arrangements are the same. There have been a few strange and challenging albums released on R.A.I.G. in the last years (e.g. Boschs with you,  Wogulow Taroutz Vermo or the Actual Music Quartet RSM), and even though "charybdis" may sound like one easier to digest at the beginning, this is not true. At least not if you are really listenting to it. If it is important only time can tell, but with the current trend towards Hippie-rock and Jazz and less punk and metal the signs are there for another prog-rock-revolution.

www.raig.ru

RECKLESS KELLY - Reckless Kelly's bulletproof

(CD, Yep Roc)

Yep Roc was the suprise label this year, bringing back country rock onto the map of alternative rock. Means, they have to sell tons of records in the USA because they sure don't sell them around here (except for Giant Sand and Ron Sexsmith, that is.) There is nothing so bad it doesn't have good sides to it. So when the famous country traditionalist label Rounder sacked their sublabel Upstart, because of the challenges of new country / No Depression bands and music, Glenn Dicker took the money and started Yep Roc. There is a quite diverse roster on Yep Roc, from old Eighties almost-legends such as Robyn Hitchcock and The Fleshtones to crazy motherfuckers such as the Reverend Horton Heat, Southern Culture on the Skids or The Gourds. Reckless Kelly - to finally get to some point - was a suprise to me. Solid, fat country rock in the vein of Steve Earle, most definitely in the sound of the voice of lead singer Willy Braun. There is even a political songs named "American Blood" amidst the "Love in her eyes" and "Don't say goodbye". The drums pound forward in 4/4, the chorus starts at the right point and the chord changes all stay in the same key, no minor/major changes rummydummy. This is music by a band from Austin, Texas, and so you know what you are in for. Either to drive underneath that big sky or to drink from the big can. Oh yeah, of course, the name of the band and the cover are takes on the legend of Ned Kelly, the Australian (?) bandit, who covered himself in a selfmade armor made of  iron. Mick Jagger played him in a movie in the Seventies and in the Nineties there was a good hardcore band of the same name on Allied. 

www.yeproc.com

JUXTA PHONA & OFFTHESKY - !escape kit!

(CD, somnia)

With the cover made from soy print / recycled paper, sewn and sealed in was, I thought this might be the first instant of economically and ecologically consciential and sustainable electronic ambient music. I have no idea if that is true. Offthesky aka Jason Corder is a name quite well known around labels such as 12k and autoplate / thinner and the music is in the same quality of what you might expect from there. I have no idea who Juxta Phona is, sorry, probably just another pseudonym of Corder. "!escape kit!" is a little different than your usual ambient / idm / electronica fare. One reason is that it stays away from the slowly fading and ebbing dynamics of most ambient with a beat. In some places the album is quite chaotic and seemingly unstructured. Of course, there are some parts that flow with that undeniable grooving beat ("death dubs us art"), but in between they do mix it around a lot. Then the sound sources aren't purely electronic and, which is probably more important, not in the settings available. A lot is noises, little bitparts sampled from here and there, probably even real instruments. A lot of the tracks seem to happen submarine, with echoing beats and noises flirring about like tiny fish while big waves of sound move the whole thing in various directions slowly. It is quite fantabulous.

www.somniasound.com

GIGI'S GOGOS - live at Alter Schlachthof Wels

(CD, zach)

The concept of the big band sounded never so intriguing and nice as here. Usually big bands are either an ugly, conservative retainment of traditions or a superfluous, over-theoretical piece of artsy-fartsy happening. Gigi Gratt's collection of musicians on one stage is far from both. Of course, a big amount of conducting and organisation is needed to gather fourteen people and make them play meaningful things together (and I don't even want to mention the logistics). The fact that the musicians are not always perfectly in sync and miss their timing by the milliseconds that matter so much in other kinds of music (as in heavy metal...) makes the whole bricollage even more heartwarming and passionate. This bunch of musicians doesn't want to carry the ash of tradition nor spark a new fire. Their aim seems to be to revive an idea of collectivism and avantgarde musicmaking that is bound by fun and joy of life. Yes, it has all the ingredients of a hippie-collective-meeting and I do not mainly talk about the costumes here. But the music is too heavy and weird for that. There is a fair amount of sideways hornblowing wrestling with multi-guitar riffing. The "Gogos" include three basses as well as three drums. One more sign on the sky that prognoses the return of prog into alternative music. Guess it is time to search for those old Gong-records again and update the life and deeds of Steve Winwood.

www.zach-records.com

DANNY FEEDBACK - the divalution of ...

(CD, no money music)

Danny Feedback kept me awake a few nights wondering about a bunch of things. Especially, how fucked up is this guy? When is obscenity funny and when isn't it? And how far can you take it? This concept album about a drag queen takes the sex / shit-humour of Frank Zappa and the themes of Lou Reed's "Walk on the wild side" one step further and mixes it with a strange mid-eighties / early current century heavy fuzzed garage rock, somewhere around the hips of Turbonegro. Sometimes it rocks like cool and you will tap along to it, but then it gets to campy too quickly and then you realize, hey, they are having a joke on me! Afraid of being turned gay, aren't you? All of you are fucking bigots, anyway, only Danny is a real Tease. "All the children want to be me, all your fathers want to suck me, all your mothers want to love me" he sings. But he won't let go of that electric guitar, which is his claim to fame. Oh yeah, and then it all becomes pretty weird, in a psychedelic sense of the word. As much as the concept album is concerned, there is not much of a story, as the title "divalution" would hint at. The concept is more in self-praising and of the songs all circling around the character of Danny Feedback. It ends as it starts, with sex and the recognition of Danny Feedback as the centre of all lust in this universe. Anyway, we should thank this album for several acomplishments but first of all for mixing the world of drag queens with those of rock music. And then maybe for having somebody fake an orgasm while having to pee. 

no fucking URL - try google

JEFF WAGNER'S TUNNEL OF LOVE - an eternity of love

(CD, glorious alchemical)

And another concept album about the strange and mostly dark sides of love and horror. Well, not only, but the overall atmosphere of this strange collection of weird songs is dark and cyncial but also funny and campy and filled with the sex and blood fumes of the late Sixties. It takes spirited tastes to really be able to like this, and you guessed it, it is right up my alley. But here is another scent, which says that behind all these acts and descriptions of sexual and social deviancy there is one man responsible: the dark one, hewhoshallnotbenamed, every stranger's new friend, you know him, when he grips you. You may think the devil only works in the movies, but it is not at all true. He has his preachers all around. I cannot yet decide if Jeff Wagner is praying to or against him, but his description in "Shiny Claws" is beautiful indeed: "Not a man exactly, but he walks on legs. and upon his feet are shiny wing tips but inside those shoes the beast it grips its claws through the soles." Yeah, the ornery scavenger. The music is fitting to the concepts, sometimes straight forward, sometimes noisy as hell (no pun intended), but based solidly in the roots of rock and blues even when it pounds and shakes like a wagon pointed straight down. Jeff Wagner vibrates between the whisper and intonation of Matt Johnson singing his favorite Hank Williams songs ("No sleep 2-night") and the crooning of Mister Jeffrey Evans (of '68 comeback). A great, late night record, when your eyes are too blurry to watch any more seventies horror movies, your mind is too numb from the alcohol and all the thoughts you have already spent, and you need something to get the party going in midtempo and to let those dreams and visions seep right in. And please remember, deep in their hearts almost everybody is a helpless romantic, even at 2 am in the morning in Tunnel of Love.

www.insidethetunnel.com

INVERZ - songs

(CD, granny)

Savvas Metaxas aka Inverz was co-responsible for two favourably remembered musical moments in the last years here at Cracked. One was the album "armed angels, frustrated youth, ..." by 2L8 on poeta negra in 2005 and one was the split album of eventless plot and goodbye mr. gorsky early this year also on granny records, where Metaxas play with mr. gorsky. Two of a bunch of records that made the impression of the strength of the greek alternative music underground clear to me. (Having some friends with greek roots this scene is somehow dearer to me - as are the current events before christmas, see the predicting title of 2L8 album. So they probably have more pressing issues at hand than my forgotten reviews, but I guess that is just the way things are on a global perspective.) Why I never got around to give the proper praise to his solo album of electronic compositions made from various kinds of guitars, synths and field recordings is way beyond me. As far as ambient electronica and soundscapes go in 2008 this is among the best that I have heard (along with Curtis Crayon and Black To Comm). Dense, full and dynamic tracks that vibrate and hum with organic life and praise the details and most minimal things in life as the most important. The simplicity and straightforwardness is just on the surface, but if you dive into the tracks, or let them drown you in their gentle sparkle, then you'll realize all the microscopic sparks glistering around you. In some ways Inverz still has the organic structure that I am missing so dearly with Fennesz these last years. This album burns with its own translucent beauty.

www.grannyrecords.blogspot.com

EDWARD S. - untitled silver

(CD-R, Quasipop)

This on the other hand probably never was meant to be reviewed. Though it definitely deserves to be mentioned. Edward Sol is the mastermind behind the quasipop label that brought us such beauties as the Rapoon-remixes, a collaboration between Lasse Marhaug and Anla Courtis and then some Merzbow on top. Here he presents 23 tracks of various kinds of noise in 23 minutes and 23 seconds on a self produced disc in a limited edition of 23. It is ideas like these that I like a lot about the international avantgarde noise scene. Useless and probably contra-productive, but great anyway. He does not only do power noise on this little release, but also some white frequency funk and opposes these with vocal samples and field recordings. Sometimes it sounds as if you are inside the big bells of the Kreml, then again inside a mosque with the preacher and then inside the dragons mouth on a stuck vinyl record. With the time limitation the tracks never play out their full potential, but that is on purpose. They are more vignettes, giving a nice overview of the universe of sound that Edward Sol inhabits or invents. Most noise artists would take the amount of ideas on this CDR and use them for at least half a dozen, if not a full dozen full albums. Edward S. takes them and puts them on a nice litte record intended to be distirbuted to just a bunch of people. Maybe they'll all turn up on later records, but in the meantime such grandeaur needs to be applauded. Noise from the east is still the best.

www.quasispop.org

POINT - demo march 08

(CDR, none)

No label, no adress, no email, no name, no fucking nothing - yet when I came home that evening slightly drunk, uncovered this CDR I couldn't remember who gave it to me, but I popped it into the player anyway and was in for some astonishment. A weird, eerie, dark and strange bricollage of sounds confronted me. Not tracks in the farthest sense of the word, but soundtracks to movies that would make David Lynch look like Steven Spielberg. Some instruments aimlessly playing in the back, sounds wandering back and forth, mumbled vocal samples, a few rhythms, and more insanity. Later on there are some hard, pumping grooves, very much like Portishead on really bad acid. The next morning I asked around and found out the producer was somebody I know from our shared hardcore-punk past, who was the singer in a short-lived band from Vienna that is still somewhat of a legend within a group of people that frequented the same punk hangouts in a certain year or two. "Point" as his project is called, is his night time hobby, where he puts together these crazy soundscapes. Probably to keep away the nightmares. Or to lure them in, who knows? He promised to send me some information and a proper cover, so I could get a good look at his work, but I never recieved anything. Meanwhile this album sat beside the CD player and gave me some interesting nightly hours, reading anything from HP Lovecraft to Fernando Pessoa to its sounds. So the moral of the story is: if you are giving away your demo, at least put your name and adress on it. And if you want to get your thing out, send people what you promised to send them. Or you'll end up in the leftovers and nothing but a single music writers secret treasure.

MAJA S.K. RATKJE - river mouth echoes

(CD, Tzadik)

I remember that I never reviewed this because I never built up the muscle to do it. The musicologist muscle, that is. Maja S.K. Ratkje was known to me before from her collaborations with Hild Sofie Tafjord as FeMail and the work with John Hegre. Now she is known to me as the composer whose consequence in form, formality and structure was almost too much for me. Actually, she is much more than that, because her work covers a wide range of compositions and performances, from the harshest brutality to softest acoustic. Moreover work for theatre, film, dance, installations and so on. Moreover prices and awards amongst others from the Ars Electronica. Maybe it was this status of real serious artist that frightened me with my punkrock attitude towards all things artistic. Well, whatever. On "river mouth echoes" she collects six pieces she finished in the last ten years that range from electroacoustic works, chamber pieces and sound explorations. Within this album of works the strict formality remains kept up, though to various degrees. There is a certain amount of humanity that music played by humans, as opposed to real computer music, will never lose, no matter how harsh the rules and the regiment. The wild yet joyful playing during "essential extensions" is an instant of this. Probably also the vocal samples on "Wintergarden". Most declarative of the working process is "Sinus seduction" where a saxophone is manipulated into a sine wave and then back and forth and onwards. The central piece though is the almost twenty minute suite for four viols. All of the pieces are challenging, nerve-testing and grinding to even the most veteran listeners to all things from the fringe. Within context they are also liberating.

www.ratkje.com

YOUR HAND IN MINE - every night dreams OST

(CD, inner ear)

This is one of the most beautiful releases of 2008 in all ways, and it is a shame it is being hidden back here. The soundtrack to a silent Japanese movie from 1933 which was concieved for the 48th Thessaloniki Film Festival comes with a booklet with black and white sketches of scenes from the movie in a digipak made of black paper with graphics so refined and basic it sets the mood for the music without the first tone being played. Manos Mylonakis and George Papadopoulus, who make up the duo Your Hand In Mine, then proceed to spin fine melodies on acoustic instruments ranging from guitar, melodice, ukulele, glockenspiel, zither and others to electronic programming, without ever losing the gentleness and refinement necessery for this task. Looking at the booklet with the sketches of people meeting and watching at their live passing by, in the center a couple that finds each other in spite the fact that they are from different worlds and the bad luck that live has in store for them, the movie unfolds in front of the inner eye. The scene is set in a sea port city and the swinging, waltzing rhythms of the global seafarer trade are echoing throughout the twenty-two short tracks. The love, desire, pain and agony of love are set down equally well as the swinging joy and fun of scenes set in bars. Unavoidably the mind drifts away from the original story to other lives and experiences, probably your own, real or imagined, and life starts to settle down. The melancholic undertone that runs through all the melodies on "every night dreams" is especially intriguing and beautiful. If I had kids, I would play them "every night dreams" to settle them into a peaceful, beautiful sleep filled with dreams of better worlds.

www.myspace.com/earinner

JOHN HUDAK - on and on

(CD, Presto)

This fascinating CD contains a single meditational piece on nature, the anticipation of spring and the beauty of birdsong. It is played on an acoustic guitar manipulated via midi processor to sound like a dulcimer - actually a guitar pitched somewhat higher also gets close to the description. Anybody reminded of Jim O'Rourke's "Happy Day" is right on track, but the music is less dense and there is not so much of formal structural development as on "Happy Day". More like birdsong there are certain melodies evolving as by themselves, there are many holes and spaces in between the single plucked notes and the structure is more random, like slowly softly falling rain. The atmospheres filling the room when this CD is being played are very much like the weeks of transition, when it is not winter anymore but spring is also not yet around. Or when summer slowly turns to autumn. Not so much from spring to summer or autumn to winter, maybe because there is the hope of something new and beautiful ringing through the notes, and summer and winter are too harsh of seasons to bring this kind of anticipation. Which is of course only true around here, where an alpine climate rules the weather with hot summers and cold winters. Closer to the sea the weather is regarded to be less changing. Presto is a new Italian label for electronic and electro acoustic music and this is their first release. A very promising start. I hope they are doing well.

www.prestorecords.com

TAUB - bedtime stories

(digital, nonine)

Nonine was a discovery for me in 2008: an online-label dealing with ambient / drone / idm that has very interesting and well sounding albums on its roster. Usually online labels fill their catalogue with a lot of trite and boring music that all sounds the same and listening through all of this crap to find the few pearls is ugly work indeed. The source of the problem is that it is cheap and easy to release online. All you need you have, so why give a damn? Because the quality pays off in other ways. Taub is David Hillary and Me Rabenstein, the latter being the founder of nonine as well, so it is something special and also in some ways defines the sound of Nonine. They present post-urban dreamscapes of electronic ambience filled with sparkling effects, square yet grooving rhythms, not too many breaks (no idm!) and originality. They don't shy away from using noise as shaping modules ("sparkle") as well as recognizable, real instruments like piano notes or electric guitars here and there. Maybe that is what makes the difference between real musicians and just a bloke in his bedroom playing around with the software on his computer. That doesn't mean technical ability or formal musical education as much as an attitude to produce something unique and interesting, not something you think some of your friend might find cool. The second version usually treads the same boring water and washes their tracks down until they contain only what has been done before. Taub go a few steps further, including avantgarde parts in their tracks and end up far away from the overrun paths of electronic ambient music, but find a little way that seems to head to modern composition as well, before they head back to the club to chill away the early morning hours.

www.nonine.com

ANDREAS BRANDAL - insects

(CDR/download, twilight luggage)

Packaging weirdness is one thing that makes noise / avantgarde labels stand out from the rest of all the other subgenre microlabels. The vitality and energy at the structural base of this genre will keep on exciting me. Twilight luggage is a prime example. The album of Andreas Brandal either comes as an mp3 version including the artwork as files or as a CDR-version in a wooden frame with an original picture of Brandal. Enough reason to mention it. The music is a wild mix of squarely played and manipulated instrumentals on real instruments, harshly cutted glitches and sparks, weird soundscapes and a little power noise chaos. You gotta like that. Only the CDR-version has the epic (15 minutes) "Two injuries" track, which is the grand finale of this album. It is either the biggest fault or the highest virtue of this record, that it is completely out of focus. That probably depends on the way your personal aesthetic rules settle. Brandal offers a wide variety of changing and mutating tracks, that never seem to settle for a centre or try to decide for a path. They sort of wander aimlessly like those small paths in the wood were you can never be sure where they lead to. Sometimes to crazy, big, orchestral rock-noise, and sometimes to a tiny spark of slowly burning notes. Deep in the woods the wild creatures howl. Or something. Anyway, you will never be able to point your finger at one part of this record and say, this is it. Because that movement makes it something completely different instantly.

www.twilightluggage.com

HORACIO POLLARD - gas giant

(CDR, twilight luggage)

And another release from scandinavian darkwoods by the great Twilight Luggage label: "Gas Giant" by euro-trotter Horacio Pollard is another instant of great, dark ambient noise. Mostly linear and one-layered he works through his soundscapes without compromise. Eerie, distorted and dark landscapes arise, post-apocalyptic urban ruins or burned down woods and the like. If you like your life to revolve around Wolf Eyes' "Human Animal" epic, then this could be a record for you as well. The best moments are though when there is some low humming in the back, like the big mother bear singing to her kids. This brings a little tenderness to the otherwise nightly grimness. Maybe I am all wrong and there is a lot more beauty, warmness and emotionality to this release than I suspected, but overcoming prejudices is as hard as overcoming old habits. And since it is damn cold outside and close to new year's eve, I actually don't give a damn about minor differentiations. It is ambient noise and pretty good at that.

Twilight Luggage has strange packaging, I mentioned that above, but they also seem to prefer DVD-packages to regular jewel cases, which is interesting in a time where with all those mp3 players packaging becomes superflous. On the other hand, if people get a lot of digital albums, they have more place to store bigger packaging for regular releases, right!?

www.twilightluggage.com

BARTEK KUJAWSKI - Murlull Movies

(CD, warsztat8r)

Usually Kujawski produces electronic music aimed to entertain people under the moniker 8rolek, four albums worth of between 2001 and this year. Under his born name he shows a completely different side. Not the direct aspect of entertainment pointed from the artist to the listener is dominant, but the artists posture as producer of a mystery the listener has to want to solve, even on the risk of failing. Probably inspired by the soundtracks of old black and white crime movies he cuts, distorts, rearranges and mutates sounds into abstract and enigmatic pieces of electronic composition. Little sparks of noise slowly but decisively form into rolling thunderous percussion giving a fundament to warped steel drums until the whole bottom burns out with noise. As the title of one track says: "expectations lead to disappointment", there is nothing on this album easily categorized, but if you sit down and let it work on you for some time, then you will probably start to understand its structure and posture. Tiny echoes of orchestral and instrumental pieces pop up here and there, but are usually gone as fast. A lot just blinks shortly never to be seen again, while other parts of the composition drag on forever. Then some weirdly cut up vocal samples crop up forming into a bricollage of sounds and contra-sounds. Not many things remain recognizable, like a mutated or mutilated trumpet solo on "Wilt Thou". The CD ends with a strictly formal piece consisting of five parts spanning afternoon to morning each taking exactly two minutes. It is a new world that Kujawski opened for himself with "murlull movies". But he also opened it for the listener.

www.warsztat8r.pl

GASOLINE - the new discipline

(CD, sopot)

Gasoline are also from Poland but they are a real band with real instruments. And they play purely instrumental music that always seems to build up from a small and simple idea to become bigger and bigger and then reduces itself again as if by magic. More organic than post-rock and never rocking at all, but growing and moving, therefore rather to be compared with Planes Mistaken For Stars, Tristeza or others. Well, you can't do without mentioning Tortoise in this connection, but there is little math in the epic beauty of Gasoline, even if the e-guitar picked flageolett tones on the beginning of the third track do sound like the glass vibraphone. It is warm, gentle and it will help you waste away many a sunny, dreamy afternoon.

www.sopot-records.com

TRIP FONTAINE - dinosaurs in rocket ships

(CD, redfield records)

No, this is not about David Gilmour's latest tour, it has absolutely nothing to do with prog. Trip Fontaine are a young band from Germany who play a sort of softer emo-core pop music that has its roots deftly inside US-music from Fugazi to Mars Volta and on the other hand the pop appeal of The Notwist. They are also one of those rare instances were a few friends in early teenage age form a band - without yet playing instruments or having any idea about being a band apart from that it is cool. But that is obviously a few years back, they are a real band made of five real people now who sing about whatever might be important in their lives at the moment. And if it turnes out to be "vicemagazingestalt" (which has a far more important and intellectual ring to it if read in a english context than it would have in german) then so be it. And if there is nothing really important happening at the moment, as it happens when you grow up in the country, then they make up lyrics from scratch. Favorite track and probably from the sort described last is "shine you lazy liason", because it takes me back a good five, ten and fifteen years at the same time. I won't go into details here, but the song has a punch some of the other songs are missing. Summing up, too good to be missed. But that, sadly, is true for all the albums mentioned in this piece.

www.redfield-records.com

FRANCIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT - we are jealous, we are glass

(CD/LP, siluh)

2008 was a good year for Austrian alternative music, with many cool releases in a wide variety of styles. Why I missed out to review "we are jealous, we are glass" is a true riddle to me. It is one of the few albums that has a sort of international potential - meaning many songs sound way bigger in harmony, arrangement and posture than a small band from small Austria should have. Or usually has. But then, thinking big seems to have become standard, which is definitely good. And as it is good tradition to find international, which means american or english band, as orientation points for Austrian ones, I would like to hint at Coldplay and The Cure. The first for the grandeur of some of the ballads on here, the size of the words and melodies sung and the unavoidable and necessary (dis)illusion of importance. The latter for some of the melodies and that melancholig dinge in singer Markus Zahradnicek's voice. But actually what Francis International Airport remind me of mostly is a pop band called Del Amitri, who are really good, nobody knows them and they haven't managed to find the success they ever wanted yet, because they won't let go of the idea of producing good songs. When they get down to making bland and trite music, then they'll be the next Coldplay. Or should have ten years ago. Anyway, Francis International Airport are still at the very beginning of that way. It'll be interesting to see where they are headed. What are the kids doing these days in the garage? They are conquering the world with music.

www.siluh.com

DANIEL PADDEN - pause for the jet

(CD/LP, dekorder)

The jet is gone by quite soon right at the beginning of the album, and then it is a world full of music that is at the same time abstract and square but also easy and soothing, even when it is harsh and unstructured. Daniel Padden keeps far away from chaos, though, he always keeps an eye keenly on the direction he is headed to, but then he also likes to take little detours, drive in circles and do little dances before heading onwards. Which means that you might have settled into a nice drone which is suddenly interrupted by improvising reeds, a voice singing in a lamenting voice or percussions. "pause for the jet" contains equal parts krautrock and free impro, humour and seriousness, future and past. And it proves that you can dance squares in the form of circles and vice versa. If that isn't true art, then I don't know either. As far as the label Dekorder is concerned, this might be one of their most apprehensible and easily digestable releases. Which is saying something, relatively.

www.dekorder.com

THE SPACE SONGS - ballads for the age of science

(CD, sopot)

Taking a science record from the Fifties aimed to tell little children about astronomy in strange country and folk songs and rework that into a beautiful pop-album with a certain sixties chanson-pop charm is a crazy idea. Only The Flaming Lips should be able to do it, but they were to concerned with their Mars / Christmas-movie, so Treu, an artist from Berlin, asked two singers, Chloé Leloup and Miss LaLaVox, to join him and they did it. Respect for a wonderful idea beautifully executed. The songs are somewhere between "Strawberry Fields", Stereo Total and some Eighties pop music and therefore charming, encompassing and fun. The lyrics are reworkings from the original album and add a character of weirdness and strangeness to the whole production, that is in direct contrast to the nature of the content: scientific facts about the universe. I guess, this is the kind of music that my friends of Monochrom like to listen to in their spare time. "How many stars in the milky way?" and "Why do stars twinkle?" are questions answered in a manner rarely heard but definitely enhancing attention. School could be fun again if Miss Leloup and Miss LaLaVox would do the teaching. Learning about how the universe works while dreaming about your teacher probably would do all kinds of good for the PISA-tests. Which explains the sleazy, early Seventies arrangements and melodies.

www.sopot-records.com