NY

LA

Stats

Yup, some more stats, this time about the 7 months I spend in London doing my placement at UCL.

I was in London from 26 October 2009 to 23 May 2010, that's 7 months, or 29 weeks or 209 days. I have seen a total of 171 bands during this time, which is 24 bands per months or 6 per week. Impressive, no? In total, I have now seen 521 bands, so my London residency makes up 32% of my total. My files go back to 2004, so it took me about half a decade to see the other 68%. If I continue at this pace, I'll reach 1,000 on 11 December 2011.

Surprisingly maybe, I've still got a lot bands I want to see. These include:
Sufjan Stevens
Perfume Genius (and he's playing in London on 13 July)
Zola Jesus
Interpol with Carlos D (not gonna happen)
David Bowie
Crying (not sure whether they actually exist yet though)
Infinite Body
Maps & Atlases
Washed Out
Dum Dum Girls (playing de Affaire :) )
Toro Y Moi (also playing de Affaire)

Best bands I saw in London:
Former Ghosts

(appropriate distance)

Parenthetical Girls
LCD Soundsystem
Los Campesinos! (first time was the best)
Vega (though he was officially performing as Neon Indian)
Wolf Parade
Cold Cave
The National
YACHT
Phoenix
Beach House
Grizzly Bear
Xiu Xiu
Islet
Shy Child
Memory Tapes
Fever Ray
Mew
The Whip

Scarecrows on a killer slant

I love this band, and for once not because of their music, but because it reminds me of a week when everyone I met told me I was absolutely crazy: the Four Day Marches. I participated in this madness, and the day before I was supposed to start walking a marathon a day and would have to get up at the very appropriate time of 3 in the morning, I went to see Liars. They were awesome. I can now say that I did manage to finish on the fourth day, even after seeing Late of the Pier the night before and going out till half two in the morning. I especially loved my supposed insanity: the friends who where also walking the 40k thought I had completely lost it as they were happy to reach their bed at the end of the day and some of the party people at the festival believed I was taking drugs of some kind (which, just for the record: I was not). As to this video, given the awesomeness of the title, I am slightly disappointed, but hey, what else would you expect from Pitchfork?

Clip van de dag

De clip van de dag heeft elke dag een nieuwe clip, hopelijk zorgend voor een blijvende stroom van nieuwe, leuke, en/of goede muziek. Vandaag is de clip van de dag...

*tromgeroffel*


‘You Won’t B Here’ van Perfume Genius! Op 21 juni zal het debuut van Perfume Genius, ook wel Mike Genius uit Seattle, uitkomen onder de titel ‘Learning’, wat ook meteen een van de meest briljante nummers is die ik de laatste tijd gehoord heb. Om maar met wat namen te gooien: Perfume Genius klinkt een beetje als Bark Cat Bark met zang of Anthony Hegarty maar dan net-wat-minder-camp-maar-nog-steeds-heel-goed. De clip is niet bepaald opvallend, maar als je nog thuis woont bij je moeder zullen je middelen ook wel beperkt zijn. Voorlopig staat er alleen nog een London-date op het programma, en wel op 13 juli, wanneer ik net London verlaten heb zou hebben (note the doubt about actually leaving London before that date due to this announcement). Maar aan de positieve kant is dat ook net voor de Affaire, en gezien Los Campesinos! ook heeft geluisterd en nu op de bill staat, schat ik de kans reëel dat Perfume Genius hetzelfde doet. Yup, I deem my powers limitless. 






‘Evelyn McHale’ van Parenthetical Girls! “Evelyn McHale, a 23-year-old woman who jumped from the Empire State Building observation deck on May 1, 1947 and was photographed immediately after by Robert Wiles in beautifully serene repose atop a crushed car." En als je dat eenmaal hebt gevonden op Wikipedia, dan is de accompanying video met kalkoenen, kippen en een ezel natuurlijk meer dan logisch. Het nummer is afkomstig van het laatste album van Parenthetical Girls, dat nog steeds aan het uitkomen is. Patrick Wolf mag het misschien leuk vinden om zijn laatste album in twee delen uit te geven, (((Girls))) gaan daar overheen door hun album in vijf delen uit te brengen: iedere drie maanden één deel. Privilege part 1: On Death and Endearments kwam eerder dit jaar uit en het tweede deel zal snel volgen zodra ze dit hebben geschreven en opgenomen na hun korte Europese tour samen met Former Ghosts. Bijkomen zal sowieso ook even nodig zijn gezien alle 500 limited edition LPs met de hand genummerd zijn met het bloed van Zac Pennington. Nice.




‘Cover the Walls’ van Internet Forever! Hey, ik woon in London, zal ik dan ook maar iets dat daadwerkelijk uit London komt bij mijn clips van de dag doen? Okay, technisch gezien komt de band voor 1/3 uit Cambridge, maar de meerderheid is toch Londons - in ieder geval dat ze daar wonen, het aantal Londenaren dat ook daadwerkelijk als Londons zou kwalificeren is bedroevend laag. ‘Cover the Walls’ is de derde single van Internet Forever, die live ook zeer vermakelijk zijn - al stonden ze toen ik ze zag in het voorprogramma van Jeremy Jay, en het is niet heel moeilijk om een betere indruk te maken dan eerdergenoemde. Een debuutalbum is nog niet in de planning, maar erg lang zal dat, of in ieder geval een EP of some kind ook niet op zich laten wachten. Eerder deze maand releasden ze nog een single ‘Break Bones’ op het label Art Fag, waar ook bands als Best Coast en Dum Dum Girls bij thuis horen. Niet dat ik ook maar in enige mate een gelijkenis hoor met said bands, maar hey, oordeel zelf.

Ed Ruscha

Capsule reviews - The End (for now)

So this was my last week in London, for now at least. I'll be back in two weeks, but it still feels like a farewell. For this reason, I had planned a crazy week with music every night. That could lead to one enormous review, but this once, I still stick to the capsule concept. Not because it's 27 degrees outside and I prefer lying in the park with a book, but because I saw the best gig in my entire life this week and all the other things seem rather bleak now. So no long renditions of how much Oh No Ono seem to enjoy exhibiting their Mew and MGMT inspired psychedelic rock; no endless rants about the Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug comedy roadshow (also known as Wolf Parade)  and Spencer Krug's fabulous 80s TV show haircut; no whining about the abysmal support act Crystal Castles ended up with after both HEALTH and Male Bonding were taken of the bill; or even the brilliance of Neon Indian doing Vega tracks as an encore. Even a festival like Stag and Dagger with the likes of Team Ghost (with that other guy from M83), LoneLady, Comanechi, Active Child, The Radio Dept. and A Place To Bury Strangers couldn't measure up to seeing Former Ghosts live. Nope.

The only band that came close was Parenthetical Girls, who conveniently played on the same night at the Luminaire, which I have to say is a great venue. And not just because they tell people to shut up during gigs by writing this on the walls: it's also got a giant disco-ball. And as Zac Pennington said, you can tell if it's a good venue if they let you sing on the bar. As the venue is only half filled, there is enough room for Zac and his freshly painted silver microphone to go about the audience, and even dance in the back where nobody's standing anyway, or hang from the rafters in front of the stage (which is quite up front, so to put it, if you're standing on the front row - though as Zac is blessed with one of the most theatrical faces in human history it's definitely worth the occasional crotch in your face). As the Dance Dysmorphic Tour ends in London, and this end happens to coincide with a certain Steven M's birthday, Parenthetical Girls (who are by the way supported by Former Ghosts's Freddy Ruppert on samples and occasional guitar) treat themselves to some foamy champagne, and us to 'Handsome Devil'. If anyone should be allowed to cover the Smiths, it should be this band.

I can't even begin to describe how very special, and mostly intense, Former Ghosts' performance was. I've seen over 500 bands live (yes, I keep an Excel-file in which I track each and every band I have EVER seen, and no, I don't think I'm OCD), and nothing even begins to compare to Freddy Ruppert. At first, I was a bit disappointed as it was just going to be Freddy Ruppert, no Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu) or Nika Roza (Zola Jesus) to back him up, but as it turn out, he doesn't really need them anyway as I ended up just staring at my wall for about an hour when I came home afterwards. I just couldn't do anything else. In a way, his performance reminded me about how it felt to hear patients' stories during lectures in my first years as a medical student: at the end you're not sure whether to applaud since, though it's very brave of them to tell their story to a bunch of barely post-pubescent students who are struggling to keep awake, it sort of feels like you're applauding the fact they've got a disorder of some kind. Freddy Ruppert puts some much emotion into what he does, that the process itself seems to be killing him. After the first song he is already out of breath (which might also have something to do with him beating the drums with a vengeance all Rocky films combined wouldn't even come close to), but he just keeps pushing himself to go even further. As a result, 'New Orleans' seems more like torture than an actual performance (though in the best possible way), and Freddy needs a few moments to regain control of himself before he can even carry on.

I already loved last years Fleurs, which I've now learned contains an epic amount of reverb: if you take out all the instruments and then line up just the reverb, you've got 8 3/4 years of sound. That's just amazing! Some quick calculations have told me that my entire music collection (some 22,000 tracks, roughly) wouldn't even fill two months. And as I need a terrabyte-size external hard drive to accommodate my music, I don't think that's just me.

Live, it's even better, just through the sheer display of emotions. When Freddy tries to announce his last song after a truly amazing 'Mother', he can't even control his voice. He seems at the verge of breakdown, and if what he did wasn't so brilliant, you would want him to quit right now.


(Freddy Ruppert photos by Stella Kowalski, Zac Pennington photo 'lend' from the Flicker stream on Last.FM)