Crowdrock - Rarities & Curiosities Session

This month in my Dandelion Radio show, we present a unique session that comes from legendary 'lost' Dusseldorf band Crowdrock. 

 

We can't, on this occasion, claim that the tracks were recorded for the show.  Rather they've been rescued and exclusively remodelled for broadcast by the estimable Phil South.  What follows are details on the four tracks, all of which you can hear in my April Dandelion Radio show, streaming at various times through the month.  There are no dates on any of this stuff but it's all almost certainly from the period 1975-1978.

 

Bach Schwachkopf (AKA Bach Cretin)

B side from the single “Ihre Mutter ist ein Sex-Objekt” written by Klaus Eins and Dieter Zwei. The title says it all, but apparently Klaus had a love hate relationship with Bach as well as Dieter’s mother.

Rock-Si-Chord Concerto (part 1)

Opening movement from the concerto written exclusively for Klaus Eins’ beloved RMI Rock-Si-Chord keyboard. There are four movements, and although a fifth movement was rumoured to exist, it was regarded at the time as a movement in the wrong direction and deemed superfluous.

Tanzkonzert Nummer 7 (AKA Dance Concerto #7)

Unreleased track composed for inclusion on the “Zwei” album but cut after Klaus Eins decided he hated it. He later said it was actually better than some things which ended up on the album. “I was a bit up my own arse back then” he said later.

 

Minuet Steak

Another track which didn’t make it onto an album, this time the difficult third album “Authentisch Seltsam” or “Authentically Strange”. Dieter Zwei couldn’t think of anything to call it so he wrote down what he had for lunch. Once again they regretted leaving it out of the released disc, saying “Why anyone thought we knew what were doing is beyond our comprehension.”

 

You can find out more about Crowdrock, and download their recent EP, here. 

Woog Riots - Alan Rusbridger (Lo-Fi to Disco)

 

 

Alan Rusbridger, the new album from Woog Riots, is set for release on 11 March.  Its title, taking the name of the Guardian editor-in-chief who oversaw the publication of the Edward Snowden documents, is entirely fitting for a collection that once against showcases the music of a band whose playful exterior has always provided a suitably off-key medium for archly observant comment.

 

It's a theme runs throughout the collection: 'Moscow Domodedovo' is the airport at which Snowden spent forty days during his  enforced exile, while 'Gentrification' applies Heaven 17-like grooves to the depiction of a world careering towards financially-dominated inertia, hidden behind blank promises of greater freedoms from an increasingly morally bankrupt west.

 

However, don't get the impression that Alan Rusbridger is no more than a Housemartins-styled poppy romp through a future dystopia.  As usual, there's far greater depth to the collection than that.  'George Harrison' has a gleefully unpretentious air of pop culture celebration about it, something else that's omnipresent at the heart of the Woog Riots sound.  'The Zombie System' offers greater philosophical depth behind its sing-a-long exterior, digging away at the existential heart of The Walking Dead and proclaiming a pure and brutal truth: in a world ruled by bankers and multi-nationals, we don't need a zombie apocalypse to bring about oblivion.  You can hear it in my February show on Dandelion Radio.

 

The album's available on the From Lo-Fi to Disco label (distributed by Shellshock in the UK) as a download and limited edition green vinyl.  For information on where you can get it, check here.   

Best Albums of 2013: 14. Banque Allemande

14. Willst Du Chinese Sein Musst Du Die Ekligen Sachen Essen - Banque Allemande (SS Records)

Sledgehammer attack of an album from this Berlin band, whose debut seemed to come out of nowhere a couple of years ago.  Then, this suddenly appeared in 2013 and tore my head to shreds both mentally and physically with its ferocious combination of visceral guitars and charging beats, a restless  and dangerously lively intelligence underpinning it all.  I've heard comparisons with the Velvets but, apart from the obvious, I don't see them: I'm thinking more Big Black at their very best, piling into a studio that Laibach had used and taking what they needed.  Limited edition LP of 400 copies and last I heard they were down to double figures, so you might want to move quick: get it here.  

Five days left to vote in the official Festive Fifty at Dandelion Radio here.  I should also mention that randomly drawn out voters will get some bunches of CDs picked by individual DJs.  

Music For The Muted - Zeit

This is exactly the kind of thing you want to find in your inbox when you get home on a Friday evening - a slab of uncompromising experimental noise that blows all the shit of the day out of your head and leaves you with the unusual feeling that everything's as it should be on planet Earth.  

Music For The Muted are, their Soundcloud page tells me, a duo consisting of Maximus and Daedalus from Germany.  I'm guessing those aren't their real names, but the music they make is the kind that gives you the right to call yourselves whatever the hell you want.
 
Their EP consists of five heavy drones that slug away at your brains until your mind gives in to their intoxicating atonal moans.  If that sounds unappetising, you either have the wrong musical diet - in which case you're probably not worthy of them anyway - or else you're wrongly imagining that such stuff has no room in it for subtlety, variety or intricacy.

As it is, Zeit has all three and plenty more besides.  This is not noise as a blunt instrument as wielded by, say, those wonderful Finns Whitewater Orgasm, but rather a woozy cocktail that mixes a whole pile of ingredients together so that what on the surface might look like an unappealing brown mush contains a brilliantly devised mix of stimulants and flavours that, while clearing all that crap out of your head, give your synapses a massage and manicure all your other bits while they're at it.  The EP as a whole comes across like some creative demiurge found his way into God's toolbox and hammered together a world that, while imperfect, is a whole lot more interesting than the real thing.

The five tracks all have numbers as titles, which is fitting because these are tunes (?) that words can have little part in describing with any success, as you've probably guessed by my exasperated attempts above.  Among their interests Music For The Muted number heavy drilling machinery, secluded drinking spots, hairdress lounges and the nightsky, along with sign language and the tactile alphabet.  That probably gives you a glimpse into what to expect better than anything else, but this is something I'd seriously advise you find out about yourself.  Get along to that Soundcloud page now and feast your ears.