In conversation: Alec Empire on Shivers, Patrick Wolf, and Financial Meltdown
Written by: Hugh Platt
When I first interviewed Alec Empire, over a sterile exchange of emails, I mentioned that I was glad of the arms’ length distance - no-one wants to find out that a musical hero, once off the pedestal we make for them, turns out to be a bit of a cock. So it was with some trepidation that I found myself sat next to my phone, awaiting a call from the man himself to discuss his new mini-album, Shivers, and the career-spanning ambitions of his forthcoming The Past-The Present-The Future tour.
I needn’t have worred though. As an interviewee, Empire isn’t what you’d expect. He is neither the ice-cold Teutonic electro-pioneer as his recent stage manner would suggest, not the perma-snarled noise warrior that carved Digital Hardcore out of the dripping wounds of the music industry during the 1990s. Over the phone, he chuckles as he dissects - at no short length - every question we can think to throw at him. After over 15 years of pushing the musical envelope in directions it was never meant to go, Empire can barely contain the enthusiasm in his voice as he describes his current projects, or the derision for corruption and - not once do we not think that he still means it.
So here, unabridged, is Music Towers’ most recent conversation with in Alec Empire.
The new mini-album, Shivers - why release it, when you’ve got a full-length album coming out later in the year?
“The idea was to release tracks that didn’t or wouldn’t really fit so much on the album. One of the themes for the tour is this past, present and future theme. We’re going to play a lot of stuff from older records, and also very new material that nobody’s heard yet. While in past years we’re always touring an album or something, maybe through two or three singles, so we really want to approach the show in a totally new way. That’s why we compiled Shivers a bit in that direction. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but its very different kinds of material. ‘Control Drug’ is a bit like the direction of the Digital Hardcore sound, but it’s not really DHR like used to sound, but it’s a song that in a way taps into that area. The last track, which is the German word for “dead”, ‘Tot’, this goes back to way when I started, it has its roots in when I started making electronic music. I did a lot of acid house and electro records. I approached this track with that kind of mindset.
“Shivers is a collection of very different kinds of pieces, which kind of describes my history in a way, but I didn’t just want to repeat myself and just do something that I’d already done before [chuckles]. I think some people might get a little confused with that approach, but on an album I couldn’t have really done stuff like that. So this was really the idea to get something out and stuff that people can’t really predict. I think at the moment there seems to be some confusion - some people think I’m doing like goth-industrial rock or something, other people think I’m doing breakcore, and totally different people might think I’m doing…ambient stuff [laughs]. I don’t know. It’s very strange. I think people have to get used to the idea that you can’t really put me into just one category of something.”
You’ve mentioned the tracks on Shivers wouldn’t fit on the new record, and that the new material is going to be a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven. What can we expect from the new record?
“First of all I have to say, even though if I’ve said it was a progression from The Golden Foretaste Of Heaven record, for a lot of people they might find it’s a…huge step [laughs] forward, because basically what I did for this record, and because I’m already in the middle of making it, its kinda like almost an insane approach [laughs] - not insane for me, but for other people, that’s why I have to laugh a little bit.
Watch the video to ‘On Fire’ by Alec Empire
“I really went back to a lot of really German themes, Nibelung, and the Wagner-type of themes. I wanted to make a record which was completely disconnected from pop music or rock music as we maybe know it from the last century. I think of lot of music that’s been made today is so connected to that one recipe of song writing, and the way records sound, and I was just getting so bored with it. Some stuff is synthesiser pieces which maybe ended up fitting more into a film or something, as it’s very epic and very big sounding stuff, which I was just getting into. In Berlin there was a lot of that minimal techno sound around for years, and everybody was trying to simplify music more and more to make it maybe have a wider appeal, but I was just getting really bored with it.
“One thing that we tried - and we’re going to do it over the summer again - there’s outside of Berlin there’s an old bunker from the war, and we went in and recorded some stuff there. It had a really strange and weird vibe. I just want the next album to be more, not just a collection of a bunch tracks or something, but to be one piece that works…almost like, y’know, Intelligence & Sacrifice? It was always seen as one piece of work, rather than as a selection of tracks, and this is kind of like the mindset that I’m approaching the new record with. But that doesn’t describe the sound of it. At the moment I’m into very precise and more cleaner sounds, which also have a lot of punch of course, and energy. But I think most of the noisy stuff I’ve done…in my opinion, bands like Justice, even they even include digital distortion sounds now, so to me, I don’t really want to go too much into that field anymore.”
You mentioned disconnecting yourself from traditional song writing - how do you do that in a culture such as ours in which music is so ingrained?
“It really starts with the way in your mind…I think that’s why maybe the link to The Golden Foretaste of Heaven this record, as at that time I was really getting into these Russian synthesisers, and I was playing for the first time in St Petersburg and Moscow. That brought back a lot of memories from when as a child when I visited East Germany for example, where it was just such a difference in the way music was perceived. Maybe the most famous record would’ve been maybe a Beatles song collection, for a lot of people in the GDR. They were just looking at pop music or rock music in a completely different way.
“Because I grew up in Berlin, I was stuck in the middle of both of these two worlds, and over the past maybe 10 years or so the West has taken over so much of most of the Eastern Europe countries. With something like film scores, everything non-Western is very interesting for me. When somebody maybe does an electronic soundtrack in Los Angeles, for me is very predictable as I know almost what it’s going to sound like. While if someone from Japan or something scores a really weird film,even if they would use some of the same instruments, they would just have a different way of looking at music.
“The next very important step of course is to not even want to please anybody. At the moment I hate that atmosphere in the music industry where everyone is so scared of not selling records, or of not selling out shows, and things like that. People’s sense of themselves is almost being taken out of the music-making process, when it’s just about ‘how many people can I please with one thing’, or always looking to please the majority. For me, art and music, that’s not what they’re about. It’s almost at the peak of trying to make profits from music, while at the same time with the digital age and everyone just taking the music, it’s an important moment where we stand now.
“For myself, I’ve just made the decision, “okay, I can make music that does stuff for me”. Not just in the sense that I like the music, but that it challenges me too. And if that is commercial or if it’s not commercial, I can’t really make that decision”. The music scene is a reflection of stuff like Wall Street even, with the MySpace boards and everybody’s trying to fake their profiles, and make it appear on Last.fm like they have thousands of listeners. I just think, why even fake this appearance? For me, if I listen to music and only ten other people in the world understand it, that’s okay. Why do we have to always think about accepted by the majority? This plays a lot into writing music, how I approach music at the moment.”
Watch the video to ‘Too Dead For Me’ by Atari Teenage Riot
Do you not feel that an established experimental artist, you’ll always have a safety net of dedicated fans that will follow you regardless?
“Hopefully. The weird thing is that’s the feedback I keep getting. Even much later…sometimes we get emails, or people talk to me after shows, and they tell me that they now understand the record that I made ten years ago. They were angry - “why doesn’t this sound like Atari Teenage Riot…it’s so weird…is he taking the piss?” - but then they’ve said they see the structure and precision and the skill, if you want to call it that, much later. It’s almost like a language. It’s the same with books - you read a book when you’re sixteen, and then maybe read it again ten years later and understand it a whole lot more, and interpret it in a different way. I think with music it works like this as well, at least with my music.
“But I also know fans who hate that, and want me to make the same stuff over and over. One reason why I put this track, ‘Shivers’, on the EP was really to piss these hardcore genre-fans off! There’s some journalists over here [in Germany] once said to me [sneering] “I think the day you write a piano ballad, that’s the day which you should stop making music”. Of course, the next thing I put out, I put a long piano track on it! Of course it didn’t sound like a normal piano ballad - it was mainly in the sort of approach how maybe Cluster would have done it - but I feel really challenged when people try to tell me what I should do. And for myself - can I do it? I work a lot with piano when I write scores for films.
“It was the same when people in techno were telling me you can’t use guitars. And right now, it’s almost as if electronic music cannot live without guitar sounds, with that whole indie-dance thing. I think it’s very stupid to judge music or musicians in that way. We always try to go against that. I think it’s fun to see if you can pull it off. Of course, you also get a lot of shit for that [laughs] from these people who just don’t want to question you again. Some fans they would rather prefer that you always do the same thing so they don’t have to think about it again. With my audience, people like that fact, that it’s not always the same. I think that’s very different to other musicians somehow.”
Do you still feel like an underground artist?
“It’s very strange - I feel very connected to that way of thinking. I don’t see music in this sort of hierarchy, like this “person is more famous, that person is less famous” - to me it really only matters what it does at that point. I know musicians who are amazing but nobody knows their music almost. To me, that’s equal to something which is really successful at the moment. I really don’t think that matters for me.
“Of course if somebody says to me, ‘hey, what do you think about that project?’ or “do you want to get involved in that?”, very often I would say ‘yes’ to things where other people wouldn’t expect me to jump on to. I produced one track with Patrick Wolf that is not out yet, which is called ‘Together’, that is very melodic and very pop almost. Some people will think “why would he do that stuff?” Maybe that’s the underground mentality I grew up with all the time, when I started making records and playing shows. For me, to network with other musicians in very important. It’s not just a thing about thinking about combining forces to sell more records, or something like that, for me it’s really personal almost. When I meet younger DJs, they don’t have that mindset at all, but from the 90, you couldn’t survive without that way of thinking, of a connected world of other sound systems in other cities. You just had to be connected in that way, whereas at the moment a lot of people think “I’m gonna make money, I’m gonna get it from music industry. Make my money, take it out, then leave”. Which is very strange for me to witness that, but then I don’t really have to deal with that.”
You mentioned Patrick Wolf - it’s a strange collaboration, and a lot of people were shocked when it was announced you’d be working with him. How did that come about?
“Somehow he had come to an Atari Teenage Riot show years ago, which I then of course forgot. Years later, when we talked about it, about certain things that happened at the hsow, I remembered: “that was you?”. He had given me some music already back then.
“He played a show in Berlin, I think about two or three years ago, when The Magic Position came out. I got this message from Universal Records, which put out the record over here, and they were like “we have this artist who really likes you, and you music, do you want to come down to the show?” It was a bit strange, because as at the same time and in the same place, on another stage, Jon Spencer and Suicide were playing, so I was in the place anyway. I thought it was really boring that show there. It wasn’t the musicians fault - it was some kind of weird theatre kind of place, where the music just sounded kind of flat in my opinion. So I was going to see this other thing, and I was really blown away by the performance that he did. In this packed place, It was so alive. For me, the contrast couldn’t have been bigger, wider, compared to this other stuff which for me was the obvious show to go to.”
Watch the video to ‘Vulture’ by Patrick Wolf
“I saw Patrick without even knowing the music. I knew some of the early EP stuff that he had done, kind of programmed beats, almost like Warp or something, intellectual fucked-up programming. He would play strings on top of it and stuff like that. But the show that I’d seen was completely different, full of energy. And we talked about it, ‘yeah we should really do stuff’, and then it took quite some time - a year or something - for anything to happen. I sent him a track, and I didn’t hear back…. Then he came over to Berlin and we spent quite some time in The Hellish Vortex Studios over here. I think it was a really good collaboration as I think he wanted to push his sound into a new direction, and I think the whole Berlin thing was good. The way we approached a lot of the other material he was working on is that….there’s this kind of myth about Berlin, with Eno, Bowie, old synths and big reverbs and stuff…in a way it feels out of that tradition somehow. I don’t know why that is, but it’s maybe because that’s the Berlin I grew up in at the end of the 80s, middle of the 80s, where that kind of sound was really still around and important for people. The Patrick Wolf tracks, all the stuff that we’ve done are like very different from each other. ‘Vultures’ is more like a harder electro track that he really loved, but there’s also a track called ‘Battle’ which sounds maybe like what most people would expect from it, very hard guitars and very hard beats. It could’ve been an Alec Empire track, just with different vocals and I think that’s great.”
Talking about Past-Present-Future Tour - what made you decide to re-incorporate ATR material into the set?
“I really wanted to avoid that all the time. To me, it would’ve been…I just couldn’t. I felt with the Atari Teenage Riot songs, when Carl Crack died, and the way the whole thing ended, I didn’t really feel that I wanted to go back to that at that time. I think now, one reason, to be honest, the political situation made the decision for me. The past maybe six months, or even longer, I feel so angry about just about the banks and all that stuff. For me, I haven’t looked closely enough at the British situation, but the way people react in Germany it’s like…are they walking zombies? It seems like so many people don’t want to see where their problem is. A lot of these songs that we’ve written with Atari Teenage Riot describe it so well, what has been going on with the Iraq war, and they way the financial world is tied in with all that. To me it was “why don’t we play some of these songs?” I don’t even need to re-write new stuff, because we’ve had it.
“Also, what I quite liked about the idea was we have to re-work that stuff to see if it works now. The songs won’t sound so different that you can’t recognise them anymore, but it certain stuff had to be updated. I felt also distanced enough, it was the tenth anniversary of the May Riots, when we played the streets of Berlin, and it really made me think back about what has changed, how do people react to the political situation, and somehow I thought I can’t ignore this.”
Watch Atari Teenage Riot perform at the Berlin May Day Riots in 1999
“For example, a record like The Golden Foretaste of Heaven I would not have done this year, because it just not felt like it. I think the weird thing is that a lot of people at my shows now don’t really know Atari Teenage Riot so well. That’s the feedback I’m getting most of the time. People go ‘you played in this another band?” as they were just too young when it happened. Most people maybe when I started years ago, they started with Intelligence & Sacrifice. It’s kind of strange. We’ll see what the reaction will be, but we’re looking forward to doing stuff like that again.”
On the last tour, the vast majority of the set was the lighter, Golden Foretaste material. How do you marry the harder stuff up with your newer electro sound when playing live?
“I always remember when we once did a 3CD compilation called The Geist of Alec Empire, which was almost like a ‘Best Of’ from all Mille Plateaux albums I did in the 90s. I remember when we compiled it we were like ‘can we even do this? This might not even fit’. The weird thing is, when we compiled it, it made perfect sense. I find that very often with my music that even if one record feels to be so different from another one - maybe if you were to play them next to each other and you don’t know the context, it would be weird - but in a live situation, these things are much more linked together than most people would think.
“To give you an example, we played a show in Spain last month, and tracks like ‘New Man’ and ‘The Ride’ and harder stuff, completely was working very well next to each other. I think sometimes it’s much easier than some people think. And it wouldn’t like “now they’re going in one direction, then they’re going off like this”, it’s because there’s this signature on all of these tracks. I haven’t found this to be a problem so far to be honest.”
Watch the video to ‘The Ride’ by Alec Empire
On the subject of film scores, do you ever have difficulty in writing to someone else’s specifications, as opposed to following your own creative path?
How do you translate that into the performance of playing the instruments and stuff, it’s very complex. But I don’t find that a problem at all. I think its fun most of the time. I really like doing it. You can actually do stuff in films that you could never do in tracks that are supposed to be set to the radio or something. You can score a scene in a film which is very dramatic and very intense, something that even a more mainstream kind of crowd would think that it’s an exciting scene, while if [the score] would be played on daytime radio, they would all turn off the station. Maybe, that’s a theory. Sometimes the people run these things think maybe people are too stupid to be challenged, but I think films, even mainstream cinema, you can do stuff like this.
People thought with The Fast And The Furious when this Atari Teenage Riot song appears in this one scene…when we put [‘Speed’] out, most people were going ‘oh this is so crazy!’, ten years later it appears in a Hollywood film [chuckles]. Maybe it’s also got something to do with the way the images go with the music…but I really love doing stuff like that.”
So when is the full-length album out?
“We’re trying to really wrap it up as soon as possible. If we didn’t do the tour [laughs] then I’d say I’d finish it at the end of May (which is still the plan…), but the idea is to put it out the end of August, maybe early September. At the moment there’s no delay or anything, as most of the stuff is done.”
Apart from the upcoming shows, the album, subsequent tour…what’s on the agenda?
“There’s a lot of stuff! At some point Big Pink wants to come over to record more stuff here in Berlin. There is such a hype right now over them, they are always so busy that we’re always trying to figure out a date where we can all make it. [laughs]
“One project I really have to start working on, which might happen in Spring 2010 - but we really have to do all the work for it this year - is a theatre piece about Mozart. It’s going to be showing in Berlin. I don’t know if you know of the French performance artist, Costas, he’s slightly older than me, and performs very outrageous kinds of performances. There’s a very interesting screenplay that an author gave to us, which is basically a very confrontational story…you can’t really prove it, but there are certain signs that Mozart was abused as a child…so I don’t want to give too much of the story away, but a lot of people look at Mozart as a composer in that neurotic way, and you can’t really mention any negative sides, and it’s almost as if the bourgeoisie has completely absorbed that composer and that theatre piece is going to be insane. I’m doing the music for it and it’s going to be a really exciting project.
“Over here at the moment all the tabloids are so angry….there’s this film coming out, Chaostage - Days of Chaos - it this German punk film, and it’s starting this month I over 40 cinemas over here. There’s a very controversial scene where a cop gets shot. Now the government want to index the film already. Bild-Zeitung, it’s kind of the equivalent of The Sun in England, ran this really large article about how this kind of film should be shut down and stuff like that. I think at the moment it’s an exciting time as with certain statements people feel so provoked, they react in such an extreme way, it really feels almost like something is changing. People are so busy keeping things down, and to be active against so many ideas even, stuff like that. I’m working all the time.”
The new mini-album from Alec Empire, Shivers, is out on Eat Your Heart Out Records on May 8. Empire is also touring the UK before its release.
Alec Empire May 2009 tourdates
01 London Camden Underworld
02 Manchester Satan’s Hollow
03 Glasgow Ivory Blacks
05 Norwich The Waterfront
Something For The Weekend: Secret Wars London Semi-Finals
Written by: Hugh Platt
Okay, okay - we know it’s only Tuesday, put we thought you could do with an early heads-up for the Secret Wars Semi Finals, taking place in London town this weekend. Imagine two street artists going head-to-head while everyone goes seven shades of apeshit-crazy to kickass music, and you’ve pretty much got it.
Our good friend, Session, is going to be manning the decks on this one, so you’ve got no excuse not to have a good time. Also: a credit-crunch busting £2 entry fee. If we weren’t going to be lost on a boat adrift outside Helsinki this weekend (no, really), then we’d be there like a shot.
Check out their official website for more details.
The Music Towers 2008 Almanac: Better Late Than Never
Written by: Hugh Platt
Well, here it is - the Music Towers 2008 Almanac. It was a crazy-ass year and no mistake. We appreciate we’re late with this one, so we’re gonna keep it brief.
It’s been a terrible year for most of the Music Industry. Well, the ‘industry’ half of things at any rate. Distributors have closed down, there’s virtually nowhere on the high street to buy records from anymore, and everyone is wringing their hands and being depressed. But this is supposed to be us looking back on the GOOD stuff - the ‘Music’ half of that Music Industry equation. Let’s get to it.
By far the best discovery of 2008 has been Turbowolf. It’s to my eternal shame that I haven’t written more about them - since stumbling onto them quite by accident at Stag & Dagger, I’ve seen them a half-dozen times (each time = AMAZING) and even got them to sit still long enough for us to film a long-lost video interview with them, but for a variety of stupid reasons this has never made it into print. The Bristol four-piece make the kind of electronic punk-rock party music that makes your head swim and your balls drop.
Anyway, fuck the self-recrimination, all you need to know is that Turbowolf are the best goddamn band you never saw in 2008. They’re hitting SxSW and Canadian Music Week later in the year, so even you guys on the other side of the Atlantic will get a chance to catch these Bristol mentalists. Get involved!
There’s been plenty of other rock’n'roll highlights - anyone who came to any of the Beef Warehouse parties knows what I’m talking about. The year ended with a highlight with our Christmas shindig, but Leeds Festival, once again, was the Party Of The Year. Not only did we get to spend the day watching Cancer Bats, Rage Against The Machine and getting our heads sewn up from the time some C**T gashed our head open during Queens Of The Stone Age (check our review of the weekend here) but we then got to party all night on a giant £40K soundsystem. It didn’t matter than the rain had reduced the site to one giant mud-bath, we had ‘em dancing till dawn every bloody night/day. Check out our review here: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
There were some great albums too - I’m sure you’ve had your fill of Top 10’s by this stage, and don’t need to be told AGAIN how good certain records are. You might’ve missed them but ‘American Demo’ by The Indelicates and ‘This Gift’ by Sons And Daughters. The record that was on the stereo the most though was ‘Hail Destroyer’ by Cancer Bats, and I never even got round to reviewing that one. Ho hum.
Gig-wise, those cheeky Cancer Bats made our year with a sweatbox performance at the Kingston Peel. Close rivals were The Bronx at KCLSU, KISS at Download Festival, and, again, the mighty Turbowolf at pretty much every show we saw them at.
See? I managed to get through this without mentioning Guns ‘N Roses once. Oh. Go and listen to Turbowolf and I guaran-damn-tee you’ll start to feel better again.
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 21 - 24
Written by: Hugh Platt
By the time you read this, it’ll be Christmas Day. Music Towers will have shut up shop for a while (at least until we’ve put the finishing touches to our 2008 Almanac), and will have settled down to watch the Dr Who Xmas Special with a big bottle of gin. Later on you will find us wandering the streets, drunkenly singing the four songs you can see below. We might be dressed as Santa, we might possibly just go naked - in either case, it won’t be pretty, but gosh darn it will be entertaining.
Have a very merry Christmas, from all of us here at Music Towers. We just hope that someone got us that White Zombie boxset we’ve been dropping hints about over the last month….
Day 21 - ‘Christmas Is Awesome’ - Rueben
Day 22 - ‘Merry Christmas Baby (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
Day 23 - ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ - John Lennon
Day 24 - ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ - Twisted Sister
Zavvi goes into administration
Written by: Hugh Platt
Well, as predicted, Zavvi, the UK’s largest high street music retailer, has gone into administration today. The death knell came when the collapse of Woolworths took distributors EUK down with it - without it, Zavvi found themselves unable to re-stock, and the current financial climate was just too severe for them to survive.
The downside is, of course, that now HMV are the only major player when it comes to high street music retail. Sure, there are still a smattering of independent stores (all of whom will be struggling) and supermarkets (just don’t expect to see anything other than the most MOR of the mainstream on their shelves), but as far as the high street goes, HMV is all we’ve got. Regardless of your views on the players in the retail game, this can only be further bad news for the music industry.
Well, I doubt that’s going to be any consolation to the 3500 Zavvi staff who found out they’re going to be made redundant on Christmas Eve. That’s got to make for a merry bloody Christmas.
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 16 - 20
Written by: Hugh Platt
Have you done your Christmas shopping yet? We have. We’re so up on Christmas like you would not believe. We’ve taken to striding about our office dressed as Santa Claus. Local children are terrified when thye see us struttung up and down the high street like a gaggle of red-clad drunks. It’s amazing.
ANYWAY - here’s the last five days of our splendid musical advent calendar - we really love Joel Moss Levinson’s bitchin’ song we used yesterday.
Day 16 - ‘Last Christmas’ - Wham!
Day 17 - We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ - Weezer
Day 18 - ‘Fairytale of New York’ - The Pogues ft. Kirsty MacColl
Day 19 - ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ - My Chemical Romance
Day 20 - Christmas Kicks Hanukah’s Ass!’ - Joel Moss Levinson
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 11 - 15
Written by: Hugh Platt
OHMYGODTHERE’S
JUSTTENDAYSTOGO! No, we don’t know why Christmas makes us so exicted here at Music Towers. Maybe because we know we’ll be getting that White Zombie boxset we’ve had our eye on for the last few weeks. Or maybe because there’s a Doctor Who special on TV. Or maybe because of the vast amount of mince pies we’re going to eat. Or maybe it’s the mulled wine. Or the mistletoe! Or the fact we’re going to get dressed up like Santa and ruin someone’s office party. Or that we’re going to hire a snow machine and set it off in our garage.
Or maybe it’s because the best is still yet to come on our amazing Musical Advent Calendar? There are some real gems coming up in the last ten days. In any case, here’s the last five entires, which you may have missed if you’ve been out Christmas shopping or something.
Day 11 - ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas (Rave Mix)’ - DJ Cool
Day 12 - ‘It’s Christmas And I Hate You’ - Paloma Faith & Josh Weller
Day 13 - ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ - The Darkness
Day 14 - ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ - Girls Aloud
Day 15 - ‘Someday at Christmas’ - Stevie Wonder
More reasons to be Christmassy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Did you come to the big Music Towers ‘Oh Christmas!’ party last night? It was amazing. The police turned up. There was blood everywhere. People danced till they hurt, and everyone who could get sexy, got sexy. Jon Bon Jonas and Death & Glory stole the night with a sing-a-long ‘Love Hurricane’, and John Doran of The Quietus and our faves, Beef Warehouse, kept the tunes spinning till late, late doors. If you missed it, then you are an idiot.
But hey, the real reason I’m bothering you this evening is to let you know of the recession-busting sale going on at Xtra Mile Recordings. They’re knocking a shocking 20% - TWENTY BLOODY PERCENT - off some of their records till December 18. Included in this sweet little Xmas shopping shortcut are Million Dead, Lights Action, Reuben, Jonah Matranga and Frank Turner. That’s him in the picture up there. He’s got a new single out, ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ which those of you with magic radio boxes might’ve heard aready. We tupping love it here at Music Towers.
Watch the video for ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ by Frank Turner:
Frank Turner is also touring the fuck out of 2009 - he’s all over the place alternately with The Levellers, The Gaslight Anthem, and Anti-Flag. You ought to buy some ticket - BEAT THE RECESSION!
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 6 - 10
Written by: Hugh Platt
The results of Days 6 through 10 of our Musical Advent Calendar, presented for those who might’ve missed a day.
Day 6 - ‘Christmas Duel’ - The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
Day 7 - ‘Dick in a Box’ - Saturday Night Live and Justin Timberlake
Day 8 - ‘Heavy Metal Jingle Bells’
Day 9 - ‘Christmas Tree’ - Lady GaGa
Day 10 - ‘No Presents For Christmas’ - King Diamond
Are you as excited as we are that it’s NEARLY CHRISTMAS!?!?!?!?!!!
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 1 - 5
Written by: Hugh Platt
What do you mean, you don ‘t read Music Towers every day? Are you some kind of cretin? Man, you used to be cool.
Well, since it IS getting near Christmas and all, we’ll forgive you. And to show that we really mena it, here’s a recap of all the wonderous Christmas videos from our Musical Advent Calendar (it’s up a bit and on your left) from the first five days. Enjoy.
Day 1 - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ - HemorRhage
Day 2 - ‘Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy’ - David Bowie and Bing Crosby
Day 3 - ‘8 Days of Christmas’ - Destiny’s Child
Day 4 - ‘City of Christmas Ghosts’ - Goldblade ft. Poly Styrene
Day 5 - ‘NOT the Cliff Richard Christmas Single’ - Beau Bo Do’r, Doghorse and Eclectech
Something For The Weekend: The Tunics
Written by: Hugh Platt
Music Towers got mugged after getting off a nightbus once. We were coming back from DJ’ing at some shindig or another, and had a big box of weird records with us. We got off at our usual stop in North London, and a pair of goodofrnothing thundercunts threatened us with knives. EL BASTARDOS. We later found a lot of our lost recrods in a nearby hedge. Apparently our collection of Shellac records wasn’t what the little oiks were looking for. Perhaps they expected more macho chav music?
Anyway, we’re not looking for sympathy, we’re bringing it up as it meant that ‘The Cost Of Living’ by The Tunics struck a chord with us. The Croydon 3-piece are releasing it as a single on Monday through Manta Ray Music, and we thought it was a perfectly good track for our Something For The Weekend selection.
Watch the official video to ‘The Cost Of Living’:
The band’s debut album gets a full release on January 2nd. Worth picking up when you’re off credit crunching those January sales, we think.
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Office Parties: OUT. Rock’n'roll parties: IN
Written by: Hugh Platt
We love Christmas here at Music Towers. We’re running a video advent calender at the moment up there in the video box - go on, look up and to your right a little bit. Every five days we’re going to collect them all so you can catch any that you’ve missed. Think of it as an early Xmas present.
Speaking of which, Christmas is also the time for parties. We’ve all been to office parties before, and I think we can all agree that they suck harder than an elephant given a bowling ball-sized gobstopper. You get drunk with people you wouldn’t normally socialise with even at the barrell of a gun, eat some stale crisps, get off with that girl from accounts, and pass out on the bus home and are late for work the next day becasue you woke up at the bus station in Ealing with a hangover that rates alongside Hurricane Katrina in the damage-stakes.
Well, we here at Music Towers want to put a stop to Bad Christmas Parties. So much so that we’re throwing one of our own. On December 11 - next week, calendar fans - alongside our friends Beef Warehouse (that’s them there in the picture up at the top) and BigSexyLand, we’ll be throwing a FREE party over at new venue, South Of The Border. It’s right in the heart of Shoreditch, mere minutes walk from Liverpool St Station and Old Street tube. If you’re going to be about next Thursday, drop us an email to david at musictowers dot com to RSVP!
VIDEO: The Gaslight Anthem - ‘Old White Lincoln’
Written by: Hugh Platt
Last month we mentioned that The Gaslight Anthem had a new single, ‘Old White Lincoln’, coming out to co-incide with their December mini-tour, but didn’t have a video for it. Well, we do now, so have a gander:
The video for ‘Old White Lincoln’ by The Gaslight Anthem:
Speaking of tours, the band are coming back in February and March for a proper jaunt around the UK, so if you miss them this week, you’ll still be able to catch them in a couple of months time if you’re as taken by their The Boss-esque rock. You want tickets? Then click here, dear readers.
December
3 - Glasgow, Garage
4 - Manchester, Academy 3
5 - London, LA2
February
2 - Portsmouth @ Wedgewood Rooms
3 - Birmingham @ Academy
4 - Manchester @ Academy 2
5 - Bristol @ Academy 2
6 - Brighton @ Concorde
8 - London @ Shepherds Bush Empire (NME Awards Show)
March
2 - Norwich @ Waterfront
3 - Nottingham @ Rock City
4 - Dublin @ The Academy
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ALBUM: The John Henrys - ‘Sweet As The Grain’
Written by: Hugh Platt
Country Music frightens me. You know that scene in Terminator 2 where he walks into the bar, beats that guy up, melts his face on the kitchen hob and nicks his threads? Country music was playing in the background. Not to mention every brain-scarring psycho moment in Deliverance - remember the kid with the banjo? Exactly. Country music is the twangy veneer on nasty things.
Except The John Henrys don’t play up to my self-created stereotype. At all. The Canadian five-piece have about as much darkness to them as an over-enthusiastic children’s TV presenter, locked in Dr Smile’s House of Happy Pills.
The John Henrys play ‘Thought Yourself Lucky’ live:
Their 60’s shake-shuffle and hazy blues might not be enough for me to get over my fear and prejudice of all things country, but in amongst all that twanging I hear an album that smells like the first whiff of a fresh whiskey bottle, rather than the glum final dregs. The John Henrys are Good Time Boys, not Good Ol’ Boys, and foo to you if you can’t enjoy a bit of that.
‘Sweet As The Grain’ came out today on True North Records. For more info, check out their official website and their MySpace page.
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EP: Kono Michi & The Stone Ghost Collective - ‘The Grey Eulogy EP’
Written by: Hugh Platt
I love Christmas. Society takes a step back from all the bollocks it preaches for the rest of the year (Don’t Drink So Much. Don’t Eat So Much. Stop Snogging Random Strangers You Meet In the Pub. Be Miserable. Be Quiet.) and instead everyone acts like they should (Drinking Too Much. Eating Too Much. Enjoying Mistletoe Too Much. Having Fun. Singing Songs). Big Coats! Mulled wine! Presents! The slim hope of snow! Dr Who Xmas Specials! And the record industry slowly grinding to a halt as everyone starts chucking up Best Ofs and re-releases for the Christmas rush. Meaning we get to spend more time with our feet up, listening to the records we think we like, rather than those we think we ought to cover. Yes, Christmas is a good thing.
Another reason to celebrate this Winter (well, if you live in The North, that is), is because Kono Michi and The Stone Ghost Collective are embarking on a mini-tour to promote their new collaborative release, The Grey Eulogy EP. Four tracks book-ended by covers of ‘The Look Of Love’ and ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’, it’s at once both wintry and warming. With both acts solid staples of Shark Batter Records, their covers were never going to be straightforward. ‘The Look Of Love’ slips from a whispering murmur to the edge of ghostly nervousness, as opposed to the retching sweetness of the Bacharach original. ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’ pairs an unexpected outback twang with Kono Michi’s violin, and the addition of Brendan McAndrew of The Stone Ghost Collective on vocals - sounding like a young Tom Waits if he existed solely on a diet of honey and lemon - suprises us by finding a new spin to put on a song we thought well and truly spun out.
Kono Michi & The Stone Ghost Collective hang out and practice in France and Switzerland:
It’s with the two original tracks that the EP crackles and pops though. The title-track, described by the band as a “death-bed ballad”, mixes maudlin lyricism with a warmly uplifting melody, mulling over its sense of mortality. It feels right that we’re listening to it now, during the onset of Winter, with the song feeling delicately crisp, rather than glum and grey.
‘War Correspondence’ reminds us a bit of long-forgotten LA-electrolocists, Snake River Conspiracy¸ only without that boring obsession with making bad covers of The Smiths. Combining a killer chorus of “You lie on your back / it’s a mortar attack”, it manages to be robotic without having to sound like a cheap automated sex-product (Goldfrapp: take note). It’s addictive like an arcade game that you can’t stop pumping pound coins in till you’ve blown your bus fare home. A genuine contender for Track of the Year.
‘The Grey Eulogy EP’ by Kono Michi and The Stone Ghost Collective is out now on Shark Batter Records. They’re on a micro-tour of the north of the UK from tomorrow - get yourself here to see if there’s a date near you.
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Live: Kenan Bell @ Hoxton Bar & Grill - 19 November
Written by: Hugh Platt
I know fuck all about hip hop. Okay, so I’ve got a few albums lying about here and there from acts both American and British, but I’d be a big fat lying fucker if I pretended they weren’t tokenistic inclusions in my record collection. There’s some Task Force nestling up against some Phi Life Cypher, but it’s got an inch of dust on it. It’s just stuff to play at parties when you want to mug off the responsibility of DJ’ing to go drink’n'flirt with the hot girls in the kitchen.
I’m might know jack shit about hip hop, but I know when I’m having a good time. And on Wednesday night at the Hoxton Bar & Grill, that’s exactly what Kenan Bell made me have. It’s hard to enjoy anything at the Hoxton Bar & Grill. It has the stupidest name of any venue ever. It has the worst bar staff and bar prices in London, a city famed for it’s shittiness of both. It’s always too hot inside, the venue always feels too empty as the ceiling is far too high, and the tiny stage that’s too high up never does anyone any favours.
It certainly doesn’t Kenan Bell and his band any at first once they take to. Intermittently pleading and berating the crowd for not gathering at the foot of the stage, and about how in debt this tour has made them, the Californian and his cohorts seems somewhat indifferent of the fact that London is crunching to a recession-frozen halt. We’re all broke these days, chaps, and moaning about how hard done by you feel will hardly engender you to a be-credit-crunched crowd.
Watch Kenan Bell and his giant sunglasses playing performing ‘Enjoy’:
They’re saved by a gradually swelling crowd, and the fact that there’s talent in his songs, rather than the sub-standard self-aggrandisement I expect from hip hop. Tracks like ‘Save Your Life’, ‘Good Day’ and ‘Enjoy’ manage to be engaging without being unbearably “positive”. You know what I mean - those positive-thinking positive-message types who seem to see the stage as theit platform to preach from, rather than to entertain from. Kenan Bell sidesteps this with hooks that still feel like they’re tugging on my ears when I’m on the tube ride home.
Seeing as the biggest impact the UK urban scene has had on me recently is that they had to abandon their own awards ceremony descended into a mass brawl, it’s a little sad that I’ve had to look across the Atlantic to find something that’s made me want to investigate hip hop again. But if it means exposure to more acts like Kenan Bell, well, I’m all for it.
For more info on Kenan Bell, go check out his Official Website. Alternatively, go check out his MySpace page.
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Something For The Weekend: White Lies
Written by: Hugh Platt
I first heard this track, White Lies’ forthcoming single, ‘To Lose My Life’, on Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6Music radio show last night. It was one of the tracks being reviewed as part of Lamacq’s Round Table feature, where musicians and celebrities listen to new releases and give their two-cents on them. We were quite taken with it, as was the awesome Marcus Brigstocke, who’s love of The Cure has always made him a bit of a hero here at Music Towers. It wasn’t universally popular though - Huey the bore-off from The Fun Lovin’ Criminals thought it “sucked”, but then he hasn’t made a decent record in over a decade. It’s easy to see why he’d be bitter about a track as awesome as this.
So, to ease the pain of the end of Friday in the office, why not take a couple of minutes to watch the video. It has soup in it. Amazing:
‘To Lose My Life’ (the single) is out on 12 January 2009, with an album of the same name out a week later. Both are being released by Fiction Records.
Listen to Chinese Democracy - NOW
Written by: Hugh Platt
A week ago we heard Chinese Democracy for the first time….and now you can too, before the album is released in stores next week. Because in this world of shady internet backroom deals, the whole record is now available to stream over on MySpace.
Click here to hear Axl’s Roses new baby.
Let us know what you think - did you disagree with what our resident word-monkey had to say, now that you’ve had a listen? WE WANT YOUR OPINIONS.
What do you mean, you haven’t seen…The Computers
Written by: Hugh Platt
We here at Music Towers are big fans of The Computers. We’ve caught them playing live a couple of times, and when we got hold of their debut mini-album, You Can’t Hide From The Computers, a few weeks back, we were more than a little impressed.
Well, on last week we busted down to the Camden Barfly to catch the boys play a killer set to mark the release of their mini-album. We brought along our trusty (ie, creaky and useless) video camera, and before the show we pinned down bassist Nic Heron (that’s him on the left) and drummer Will Wright (on the right) for a chat. In one of the Barfly’s gloomiest back passages. No, that’s not a euphemism, you filthy-minded oiks.
Anyway, why not busy yourself for the next three minutes with the end result?
We’ve got some more live footage, if that’s your cup of tea. Let us know if you want to see more.
‘You Can’t Hide From The Computers’ is out now on Fierce Panda. For more info, tour dates, that sort of thing, go check out the band’s MySpace page.
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REVIEWED: Chinese Democracy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Is there any dance move, stage gesture or physical act of defiance, more rock’n’roll, than the pelvic thrust? You can keep your devil horn throwing, your crowd surfing, your stage diving, your head banging, your mosh pit’ing – the pelvic thrust sums up everything about rock’n’roll. The ill-restrained sexual desire. The disregard for what others may think. The fact that if anyone other than a rockstar attempts it anywhere but on a stage in front of an audience, it looks totally fucking stupid.
If records were dance moves, then Chinese Democracy would be a pelvic thrust. If anyone other than Axl Rose had made this album, it would sound totally fucking stupid. Despite holding the lion’s share of ex-GnR members, there’s no way Velvet Revolver could’ve made this album. It’s over-wrought, over-the-top, over-budget and completely, unequivocally, a Guns record.
There’s no point in even trying to review this objectively. Notwithstanding that this is possibly the most mystery-shrouded record release in the last twenty years, notwithstanding the fact that this review will make fuck-all difference in altering your decision whether to buy it or not, and notwithstanding the fact that this review is a result of a single playback in a record company boardroom, it’s impossible to listen to Axl Rose’s new baby without the dull ache of regret in the pit of your guts. For all the acres of talent used in it’s creation – the liner notes for this record go into exasperating detail – and the years spent making it, the crushing realisation hits you that this is just a capable album, not an exceptional one.
You’ll have already heard the title-track by now – opening the album, it feels more portentous than it did as a stand-alone track. Those Elton John urges he squirted out indiscriminately with ‘November Rain’ – well, they’re back with ‘Street Of Dreams’, only nowhere near as grandoise. The rumoured dalliances with industrial metal chug? See ‘Shackler’s Revenge’. “Don’t ever try to tell me how much you care for me / Don’t ever try to tell me how much you’re meant for me,” Axl sneers at us. Oh, if only you knew, Axl, if only you knew.
‘Better’, which is being lined up as a potential second single, has a pumping chorus, but its refrains of “Now I know you better / You know I know better” never quite get under your skin the way you desperately, fervently hope they will. As a fan you want this record to succeed, but as a fan you can’t really deny that it fails.
‘I.R.S’, played live at Rock AM Ring, 2006:
There’s one, huge, elephant-in-the-room problem with Chinese Democracy – bangers. Or rather, the lack thereof - the title-track is the fieriest bombast the album can manage. Oh, there are acres of solos, from the Bill & Ted excess of the guitar wanking in ‘Street Of Dreams’, to the big, stabby mentalism of the one that ‘Riad N’ The Bedouins’ indulges, but none of them have the soul-fucking, spine-ripping, raw gonzo genius of classic Guns. A few tracks like ‘Scrapped’ might come close to the cocksure riff attitude of old, but they can’t hide the fact that there’s not one true anthem of the ages here. No ‘Paradise City’. No ‘You Should Be Mine’. And certainly no ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’.
If anything, Chinese Democracy goes to show that without Slash, Duff and Izzy to keep a stern rock’n’roll eye on him, there’s no-one to curtail Axl’s wanton musical excesses. The hired help just smile and do what they’re told, whereas the classic Guns would take their frontman’s wild ideas and give them that juiced-up wild-eye’d rock finish, and make them into the solid-gold genius that those early GnR records had in abundance.
When legends die young, they become cannonised as they’ll never tarnish their legacy with ever-decreasing returns. When Chinese Democracy was the joke of the industry – the album that would never come – then the legacy of GnR was unimpeachable. Now? Guns N’ Roses were one legend we wish had stayed dead.
‘Chinese Democracy’ is out on November 24.
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