Archive for the ‘Sound’ Category
For our third and final wave of cosmic enquiry into the great anthems of intergalactic euro fame, we turn our attention to the dark side of the Moon, Germany…
…and its gets pretty freaky and druggy. Christiane F to Major Tom, please report immediately.
Ganymed / « It takes me Higher » (1979)
For all ye who, like Kelly, just cant get enough of turning your head to the stars…
1036 Ganymed is the largest Amor asteroid. It was discovered by Walter Baade on October 23, 1924 and is named after Ganymede, the Trojan prince turned god whom Zeus designated the cupbearer to the Greek gods. Ganymed is about 32 km in diameter and is an S-type asteroid, meaning that it is relatively reflective and composed of iron- and magnesium-silicates. It is also a Mars-crosser asteroid.
Perhaps it is this all too close close proximity with the red fumes of Mars which once dramatically impaired the dress sense of Viennese aliens Ganymed. This, however, didnt prevent their single “It Takes Me higher” to sell up to 1 million copies throughout Europe, topping various charts. The sleeve of the album is in itself an ode to intergalactic bad taste, showing the band members wearing large funkadelic mutant piggy outfits. In spite of such fashion apocalypse, the song remains a true gemstar of galactic disco attack.
DA–F / « Codo » (1983)
DAF (Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft) was a 1980s Austrian-German band from the short-lived “New German Wave” movement, the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW) which can be considered as the ‘dark’ side of cosmic disco, next to the more glitzy Morroderian strand.
Its line-up was noticeable in that it mixed in equal parts comedians and musicians, consisting namely of two (male) Austrian comedians and two (female) German music artists. As a consequence, DAF’s few ever released songs were a mixture of Standard German and Viennese dialect, and their performances a delight of bizarre geeky theatricality. We’ll let you judge with the bizarre and cult “Codo”, taken from their 1983 LP “DAF”. The song was a major hit in Europe, selling over a million copies, and became number one of the charts in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
Interestingly, DOF were no just pranksters but also tried to convey a message of cosmic love and harmony to the masses. Band members Joesi Prokopetz and Inga Humpe explained the story behind the song :
“Codo is an abbreviation for “Cosmic Dolm” or also “Cosmic Depp” (both meaning cosmic idiot). Codo was an extraterrestrial creature without a specific gender, which overcomes hate and brings everything that is missing to us stressed and negatively attuned human beings: a good mood, jokes, charm and above all love.”
Pray on, Codo.
Andreas Dorau / « Fred Vom Jupiter » (1981)
Finally, we give you the freakiest wunderkid of early 80s German electro pop, Andreas Dorau, who happened to be fresh out of his teens when he wrote the most cosmic of all euro-disco anthems, the super spaced out Fred Vom Jupiter… apparently as a classroom exercise !
Originally credited to the fictitious group Die Doraus & die Marinas (check out the Marinas’ amazing dance moves please, they are an inspiration to us all), the song quickly became an international pop hit in late 1982 and has remained until now one of the most bizarre sonic teutonic missiles ever conceived.
While the cosmic seed had been inserted into the body of funk, a new wave of machine-driven dance records invaded the European charts. Euro-disco was born and one of its one main strands sprung out of the minds of a new generation of Italian ‘funksters’, quickly earning itself the nickname of ‘Spaghetti dance’. While most of the production failed to evade a sort of Cuban refugee nightmare, somewhere in between the ‘tropical wet shower’ feel and a poor New Order cover, a few gems rose from beneath the kitsch to invade our minds with sounds imported straight from another galaxy. Here is a subjective selection of such Italo Disco space-age rarities.
Donna Summer (produced by Giorgio Moroder) /
« I feel love » (1977)
Legendary producer Giorgo Moroder is no less than the man who single-handedly catapulted the organic sound of funk into the new age of synthetic love, thereby influencing the course of all synthetizer music, from new-wave to techno and electro. While some of Moroder’s personal hits such as “From here to eternity” (under his own name) or “La Nuit Blanche” (under the name “Munich Machine”) are pure gems of interstellar funk, his particular place in the pantheon of cosmic disco stems from the most spaced-out of all his collaborations, the aptly named “I Feel Love” by soul diva Donna Summer. Taken from her 1977 concept album “I Remember Yesterday”, the track’s production was designed to represent the ’sound of the future’. Based on the hypnotic repetition of a robotic bassline, it created a precedent in club music which all tracks ever after sought to emulate, casting into the obscurity the age of acoustic big bands and inaugurating the age of machine funk with one long ode to futuristic love and time travel. Bowie himself, who was recording some of his Berlin masterpieces with Brian Eno as producer when the song came out, has spoken of the track’s influence in terms of a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ :
“One day in Berlin … Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ […] he puts on ‘I Feel Love’, by Donna Summer […] He said, ‘This is it, look no further.’
Stefania Rotolo / « Marameo » and « UFO robot » (1979)
Only just a few years after the “I feel love” landslide, the Italian television dusted itself up and began producing a series of outrageously funny disco-infused programs. Stefania Rotolo quickly became the queen of such shows and an icon for a whole generation. These shows, which were created on the Italian public channel at the end of the 70s, incorporated disco music to produce a new form of spectacle designed to cater for the tastes of a younger, discoball-hungry generation. They focused as much on music as on the general atmosphere of the performance, from choregraphy to costumes, aiming to offer a real ‘feel’ of a disco party to the young public. Here, in these two extracts from “Tilt”, her 1979 success show, Stefania, along with her two young fabulous astro-henchmen, is seen in a mind-blowing ballet of robotic moves that make you think those kids must have spent just about the rest of their teenagehood in rehab.
La Bionda / « I wanna be your lover » (1980)
La Bionda is such an ambiguous name. It sounds like one of those nicknames which Italians are so fond of when it comes to their porn-stars reconverted as politicians. But the ”blonde girl” was in fact no blonde and not even a girl, but rather was composed of two brothers, Carmelo and Michelangelo La Bionda. Active as producers and composers throughout the 70s and 80s, they are perhaps best known as the ones the world has to thank for Righeira’s international anthem of Spanish horror, the unforgettable “Vamos a la Playa” (”We’re going to the beach”). Before pouring such wonders onto our undeserving ears though, they took the time to produce the most kitsch of all cosmic disco gems, the mesmerizing “I want to be your Lover” whose video clip itself looks like it must have been watched over a trillion times by Daft Punk. A Personal all-time hit and a special dedication to that special someone who will never take the time to read this post. Cos that’s how the cookie crumbles in the disco wonderland.
In the next series of posts, we will chart some of the
defining historical trends which have presided over the
best of disco music. We kick off with a survey of the rise
and fall of European space-age disco or, in other words,
the great Cosmic Euro Nation. In this first post, we aim to
shed some light over early cosmic experiments within
some of the genres which have preceded and shaped
interstellar disco and to assess their legacy.
Pink Floyd / « Astronomy Domine
(An Astral Chant) » (1967)
Astronomy Domine ( or the Lord of Astronomy ) , subtitled
An Astral chant, was the first song on Pink Floyd’s debut
album and is perhaps the most important early space ode of
contemporary pop music. Masterminded by the late Syd
Barrett whose demise would relegate Pink Floyd to the
mass appeal of stadium rock, The Piper at the Gates of
Dawn is undoubtedly the most significant of all
psychedelic rock albums. This song, along with the other
cosmically-enclined track, Interstellar overdrive, contained
the blueprint for the whole space rock sound and some
defining elements for all cosmic music to come. With its
intense use of echoing effects in conjunction with an
irregular (understand trippy ) guitar pattern, along with
the additional use of a Farfisa organ, it conjured an
avalanche of psychedelic frequencies alluding both to
hyperspace travel and communication waves throughout
deep space.
Here is what the ever wordy Wikipedia has to say about that :
The song opens with the voice of their manager at
the time Peter Jenner, reading the names of stars
through a megaphone. The intention of this opening
is to replicate the feeling of outer space, with
Jenner’s voice sounding like an astronaut’s over an
intercom. Barrett’s Fender Esquire then seemingly
emerges from the distance and grows louder. At
0:19 a rapid beeping sound appears, again
reaffirming the feeling of distant space. At 0:26,
Mason’s distinctive drum fills emerge, followed
closely by Barrett’s bluesy, sinister-sounding
guitar (perhaps reminiscent of Duane Eddy) in a
figure suggestive of the brass motif from “Mars,
the Bringer of War” in Holst’s The Planets.
Wright’s Farfisa organ is mixed into the
background. Barrett’s incantatory lyrics about
space again support the cosmonautical theme in
the song, mentioning planets Jupiter, Saturn, and
Neptune as well as Uranian moons Oberon,
Miranda, and Titania, and Saturn’s moon Titan.
David Bowie / « Space Oddity » (1969)
Space Oddity is the song that gave a name to Bowie,
launching him into the spheres of fame as his fictional
astronaut character, Major Tom, got launched into outer
space. Despite being a classical pop ballad whose production
and melody remain entirely conventional, the theme of the
song, as its unashamed parallel between space exploration,
mental confusion and a heavy psychotropic subtext, have
been seminal in establishing cosmic disco-very as a internal
voyage of sorts. As Huysmans’ Des Esseintes reminds us in
Against Nature : ” What was the good of moving when a
person could travel so wonderfully sitting in a chair?”.
Nonetheless, Space Oddity did go down in History far
beyond its metaphor and has been associated by
generations with (real) interstellar travel ever since the
BBC featured the song in its television coverage of the
lunar landing.
Kraftwerk / « Tanzmusic » (1971)
Kraftwerk, the art pioneers of electronic music, have been
instrumental in catalyzing Krautrock, the first truly cosmic
music movement with its long effusions of synth waves and
psychedelic riffs, into a more concise pop format, thus
leading the way to the later appropriation of space hippie
shit by the infamous heir of funk, disco music.
Tanz Music is a piece which bears testimony to this
transition, with its Kraut pattern, all trippy waves and
mellow hallucinations, brought back to a recognizeable
melody, the essence of pop. It is also a song of a rare
hypnotic beauty which lays the foundation for the very
sound which will conquer the minds and embody the
future over the following decade. The electronic virus, in
the meantime, has been inserted almost surrepticiously
into the body of pop. Nothing can ever be the same.
Cosmic Euronation, act 1. The rebirth of the space age
into a disco apparatus.
Roxy Music / « Ladytron » (1972)
Meanwhile, the 70s’ excess offered a fertile ground for all
sorts of experimentations. Following his chance encounter
with one of Roxy Music’s members in an underground
station, pioneering weirdo Brian Eno subseqently joined the
band, orchestrating the fusion of art rock’s quirkiness with
glam’s sleaze to produce a series of genre-defying sonic
objects. In these early Roxy songs, a classic rock matrix
collides with Bryan Ferry’s honey-infused crooner style
and Eno’s own sound alterations behind the mixing
console and various synthetizers. The Glorious Ladytron,
taken from Roxy Music’s eponymous debut album, bears
witness to the cosmic results produced by Eno’s
collaboration with the band. As a matter of fact, the sound
which opens the song was created by Eno after Bryan
Ferry asked him to produce something reminiscent of the
Lunar Landing.
( Image : House of Coma)
Starring: Blessed are the Meek / Process Wave Generations / 12-Bit Voyages / Discount Haackula / Radioactive Mind Dessert / UFO Answering Machines.
Space is the Place by Robot de Niro (Click here to listen / Right click to download)
For the doubters of the sincerity of Brooklyn Neo-Tribalism, brought on by the Sigh-Chedilia of MGMT (originally known as ‘the Management’), here is the heavenly inspiration of the scene godfathers: Gang Gang Dance in their own words.We continued like this for a while, doing vaguely structured but mostly improvised shows around town, playing fairly consistently. We recorded our first record after about a year of doing this, then shortly after recording, Nathan was struck by lightning on a rooftop in Chinatown and died. This was obviously a very intense thing for us, but very joyous in many ways as well because he had always wanted to be struck by lightning. When this particular storm rolled into the city, he made a point of going to the roof and offering himself to the sky, as he always did, and this time the sky obliged. After Nate moved from earth to elsewhere is when something began to drive us to really work harder on the band and to buckle down a bit and begin really bashing it out. It seemed very unconscious in a sense, as if Nate was pushing us from the heavens, telling us that it was urgent and important to do this. And really from then on we have been playing quite militantly and have immersed ourselves in Gang Gang.
Tyger! Tyger! burning brightIn the forests of the night,What immortal hand or eyeCould frame thy fearful symmetry?In what distant deeps or skiesBurnt the fire of thine eyes?On what wings dare he aspire?What the hand dare seize the fire?And what shoulder, & what art.Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
Oh the shopping trolleys and dark alleys.Our very first monthly whoroscope,is a tribute to the Disco of Tescoand the Dorian Gray sexiness of Video Art.Videoclip for the song “Hands around my throat” by Death in Vegas,taken from the album Scorpio Rising.Directed by the Fearless Richard himself,starring the uber French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.The clip was banned from major music video channels as it shows the belle Emmanuelle caressing her intimate parts before she sets out to strangle herself. Enjoy…Accompanying text : extract of “The Tyger”, a poem by William Blake.
Who said that charity events brought to the mind images that aren’t necessarily so tightly linked with the sweet smell of excess, beer and rock’n'roll frenzy ?
mmm ?
Well…
THINK AGAIN folks !
Following the good lead of Miss Freebush who certainly knows how to entertain a demanding audience, and pushing behind the curtains for a night its visceral anti-humanist stance, Metamoderne champions a good cause and invites you to join an evening of charity riffs and discobeat oblivion brought to you by the Huberd Heroes crew in aid of Centrepoint.
Starring : regarder les filles au telephone qui passent dans l’espace /swinging kiss / nice callas / sexuelle et sans suite / gout acide /ronde enfantine / la pavane de l’architecte / electrophonique /cosmic satsuma / karmic disco
Music To Watch May By mixed by L.A von Metamoderne (Click here to listen / Right click to download)
Starring : the creepy & the cookie / communist robot preachers / Steve Reich discomobile / psychedelic America / the Persian wedding centre / dissonant lamb drawings / shameless capitalist bluesmen / cannibalistic confessions / I know you know I know you want me
Totally Wired by House of Coma (Click here to listen / Right click to download)