© KUMMER (via Youtube)
Ich wär gerne voller Zuversicht /
Jemand, der voll Hoffnung in die Zukunft blickt /
Der es schafft, all das einfach zu ertragen /
Ich würd dir eigentlich gern sagen /
Alles wird gut
— aus Der letzte Song (Alles wird gut) von KUMMER feat. Fred Rabe
Alles war schön und nichts tat weh
Die Musik von Casper begleitet mich bereits seit über einer Dekade und entweder ‘XOXO’ oder ‘Hinterland’ stände sicherlich auf der Liste meiner Alben für die einsame Insel. Auch, weil sich auf beiden Platten Titel finden, die ich extrem stark mit prägenden Phasen oder einschneidenden Situationen meines Lebens verbinde.
Die letzten beiden Alben ‘Lang Lebe der Tod’ und ‘1982’ (zusammen mit Marteria) haben mich dann emotional irgendwie nicht mehr ganz so ‘erwischt’, obwohl beide durchaus Lieder enthalten, die ich ebenfalls sehr gerne mag.
Fünf Jahre nach seinem letzten Soloalbum hat der Bielefelder vergangene Woche endlich sein neues Werk mit einem toll inszenierten Livestream veröffentlicht und mit jeder Rotation gefällt mir ‘Alles war schön und nichts tat weh‘ ein bisschen besser. Melancholie. Adrenalin. Euphorie. Gänsehaut. Schade lediglich, dass das insgesamt eher düstere Album für mich gedanklich zukünftig unweigerlich mit dem aktuellen Wahnsinn in der Ukraine verknüpft sein wird —nicht zuletzt auch Dank des dramatischen Song ‘Billie Jo‘, der von einem heimgekehrten Soldaten mit PTSD erzählt oder der fatalistisch anmutenden Hook von ‘Zwiebel & Mett (Die Vergessenen PT 3)’.
Andererseits liefert mir Casper –wie schon seinerzeit mit XOXO– nicht einfach nur den Soundtrack für meinen Alltag, sondern auch ein Refugium, eine kleine Rettungskapsel in die ich mich zurückziehen kann, wenn das Gewicht der Nachrichten und Bilder zu groß wird.
© Casper (via YouTube)
Ich hab’ heute wieder dran gedacht /
Dass ich mir zu viel Gedanken mach’ /
Dunkle Nächte, lange wach /
Wann hört es auf, wo fang’ ich an? /
Ging so schnell, da fühlt sich letztes Jahr wie gestern an /
So viel Schlechtes, dass ich ‘s Beste fast vergessen hab’ /
Hoff‘, mein letzter Satz, wenn ‘s Ende naht und ich dann geh /
Alles war schön und nichts tat weh
nocturnal sessions
A well balanced mixtape duo with moody music ideal for late night design sessions
Since back in the days as a young design student, I’ve enjoyed working during the quiet of the nighttime and I believe that’s something a lot of artists, programmers, writers, and designers share; We are children of the night. When it gets dark outside the demanding noise of everyday life with all its clutter steps aside to deep, overarching silence and the mind of many of us tends to be wide open and particularly creative.
At least for me, a proper soundtrack enhances those nocturnal sessions a lot —both in pleasure and outcome. Even though there are a lot of amazing LPs¹ to listen to, I’ve spent quite some time in 2020 putting together two long mixtapes made primarily for such occasions.
In total, these two Spotify playlists pack more than five hours of carefully selected and arranged tracks –90, including some Interludes and skits, perfect to get you into the tunnel and find inspiration during your extended late-night working sessions.
Apart from that, I draw on these mixtapes to find catharsis and come to rest during cold and dark winter hours and grey days in general, as well.
I often think that the night is more alive and richly coloured than the day.
— Vincent Van Gogh
Since there’s a lot of –to some extent heavy– bass and some rather high-pitched sounds, I strongly recommend a decent audio output device that can handle a broad spectrum of frequencies well in order to get the most out of this music.
part I: MANIAC
— 42 Tracks / 2hours 23minutes
part II: Wolves
— 48 Tracks / 2hours 59minutes
¹ thinking of M83, The XX, Her, Tycho, The Howl & The Hum, Howling, Son Lux, Darkside, and Portico for example
© Bendo / Macklemore / Jason Koenig & Ryan Lewis (via YouTube)
And I, know I gotta roll with it /
I’m well aware the universe doesn’t owe me shit /
I know that, all of this pain means the growth, I think /
That next year’s gonna be better than this (Let’s go)
— from the Lyrics of Next Year by Macklemore
© Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel / Andrea Love & Phoebe Wahl / Hornet (via YouTube)
My goal was to make it the cutest, coziest, warmest video ever. It’s supposed to be a little over the top, but almost in a ‘I can’t stop watching this and I need more’ kind of way.
— Andrea Love about the stop-motion music video for Merry Christmas, Happy New Year by Ingrid Michaelson & Zooey Deschanel
hellohornet.com/andrea-love.html?project=merry-christmas-happy-new-year
© ANTI / Fleet Foxes (via YouTube)
me by myself on the longest night of the year… honoring the loneliness of 2020 with a nylon string and some songs new and old.
In December 2020 on the winter solstice —just a few days after New York declared a state of emergency because of COVID-19 and forced a wide lockdown, Robin Pecknold performed acoustic arrangements of “some songs new and old” from various albums of his band Fleet Foxes as well as a Nina Simone cover (‘In The Morning’) and a traditional tune (‘Silver Dagger’) at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn. The recording of the live stream finally got a proper digital release –on Spotify for example– with physical formats to follow in Spring 2022.
A Very Lonely Solstice is a haunting depiction of the isolation a lot of us experienced in one way or another throughout the last two years and another beautiful cultural-historic document of our time. Furthermore, it’s the perfect score for dark winter days and a wonderful alternative to the more traditional –and often cheesy– Christmas time songs.
© The Howl & The Hum / Kobalt (via YouTube)
Hostages (Live Alternate Version) is probably one of my favourite songs this year, Human Contact is very likely one of my favourite albums this year –the studio version I missed in 2020 as well as the current live version– and The Howl & The Hum is most definitely my favourite band discovered this year. I might have a little crush on those lads.
© Phoebe Bridgers / Dead Oceans (via YouTube)
I keep coming back to this one. And to this nice little moment, when Bo Burnham was in the audience, experiencing how much his song touched everyone —something he wasn’t able to due to COVID when he published his stand-up. Guess it might be time to watch it once again.
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
© ibi / creative commons license (via YouTube)
Another YouTube channel with beautiful music accompanied by beautiful, atmospheric imagery, fitting my current autumn mood extremely well. What’s more, the music by ibi is published under the creative commons licence (CC BY, to be precise), so you are allowed to use it for your own projects if you credit the Berlin musician. The free wav files are available via bandcamp.com.
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape / Label Engine (via YouTube)
© PaprTape (via YouTube)
While watching the short Antonio Carusone did for the release of the –beautiful looking– new book Selection: Architecture by Carl Barenbrug and Ivan Moreale, the used ambient music caught my attention. Apparently, it’s from Tony Yang aka PaprTape, who has a lot of atmospheric videos on his YouTube-channel.
His ambient EP “A Midafternoon Dream” is available on Soundcloud and Spotify, and some of the tracks are being sold digitally via Bandcamp, in case you want to support the work of the musician more directly.
Kunzite – VISUALS
»Ride on the rays of the farthest sun«
About a decade ago I came across the electronic rock from Ratatat for the first time because of their features on one of my favourite albums, Kid Cudi’s masterpiece ‘Man on the Moon: The End of Day’. The recognizable sound the Brooklyn-based duo was contributing to the tracks ‘Alive’ and ‘Pursuit of Happiness‘ –probably one of my favourite songs of all time– lead me to listen to their music quite extensively back then, first and foremost to the extremly catchy tunes of their earlier released album ‘Classics’.
Just recently –six years after the last vital signs of Ratatat– said album (which nowadays is available on YouTube in its entirety) popped into my head again while listening to ‘VISUALS’, the just-released second longplayer by a band called Kunzite. Only after doing my habitual research on the music project unkown to me hitherto, I discovered my association is not by chance;
The 2018 formed duo is a collaboration between the musicians Agustin White and Mike Stroud, the latter being the guitarist of –you guessed it– Ratatat, for which he plays a variety of instruments. I guess a lot of the infectious groove on ‘VISUALS’ caused by synthesizers, pipe organs and lap steel guitars is to a great extent attributed to him, at least it undoubtedly sounds a hell lot like his other music project.
In fact the whole record sounds like Ratatat got inspired by the island vibes of Hawaii –where White and Stroud recorded large parts of the longplayer, decided to dial back the weirdness just a tiny bit and, most notably, add hypnotic pop vocals to their repertoire.
The result is a psychedelic joyride and probably one of my favourite albums of 2021 so far. I can’t wait for ‘VISUALS’ to drop on vinyl later this year (November), until then I have to be careful not to listen to it repeatedly ad nauseam in its digital form —especially since it oozes summer fun and therefore matches the current late summer sun way better than the dark winter months ahead.
There’s rumored to be an exclusive track with the grande Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry on the physical record, though, so I’m going to put it on as soon as I get my hands on it, no matter how often I’ll have played it already till then.
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
© KUNZITE (via YouTube)
© UMG / Xavier Rudd / Axel Massin (via YouTube)
Music is a memory machine —one reason why I enjoy collecting records so much. Xavier Rudd for example was one of my favourite artists over a decade ago when I was still a student but already transitioning into a completely new phase of life. His old album ‘Solace‘ –I still own on CD– awakens a lot of happy memories of said carefree days whenever I put it on.
Currently my life is changing to a greater extent than ever before and even though I’m not trying to live barefoot, planning to move to Berlin and thinking about getting dreadlocks anymore –ironically I do have long hair for the very first time nowadays–, Rudd has been on heavy rotation again with his new song latterly. Now Stoney Creek for me will inevitable be linked to the life events of the challenging yet incredible fortunate last weeks.
Coz baby, the wind is blowing /
And there ain’t no other place I’d rather be /
And the wind owes me nothing /
But it’s blown me here with you /[…]
This is home
© Ed Banger Records / Because Music / Genesis (via YouTube)
We were really attracted by the epic visual appeal of cymbal making: bronze, fire, hammers —something almost mythological and elemental like Vulcan or the Nibelungen. We chose Bosphorus Cymbals in Turkey because they had this very traditional process that barely changed in centuries; in this video I am just a link in the chain of production and quality control, after all these cymbals have been melted, hand hammered, and lathed into a musical object.
I’m not sure why Gaspard Augé created only such a short teaser video for the first single from his upcoming solo album, even though Force Majeure is already out in the –seemingly– full version on Spotify and YouTube (without a proper video). Either way I really would’ve liked to see more of the shown traditional craftsmanship paired with the driving electronic music —probably because Augé’s music helps me to cope better with the recently announced break-up of Daft Punk.