Last week me & Wulf went to see the Goldenen Zitronen play at the Kultur Bunker in Mülheim, where unfortunately it was too dark to take photos with my phone-cam. But one floor down they had an exhibition of anarchist and protest posters, so I’m posting pics of those instead.
The poster below is protesting against a population census.
The Goldenen Zitronen were dope by the way. They’re a punk band from Hamburg – their best songs are sparely composed with lyrics about how it’s easier to enter Europe as a sneaker than as a person (Ectomorph thought the sneaker song sounded like an updated DAF). On their merch table they had a poster saying ‘Schwabinggrad Ballet’. (Schwabing is a la-di-da upperclass area in Munich)
After the show me & Wulf got lahmacun with parsley, radish and pickled chillies from the Turkish street in Mülheim. Über-geil!
Excerpt of lyrics: Die Goldenen Zitronen – Mila.
What I don’t really do often, is to get lost.
I always try to travel paths that are known to me.
At least, in the countryside it was like that.
What’s it called again, that crap shop?
It can’t be possible, that they didn’t pick me up. Shit.
Everybody’s wearing these plaid Burberry sweaters that you can get from H&M. Shit shop.
You can memorise the number for the directory service yourself, you wankers.
I’m really terrified of situations where I’m assessed.
Jens said he only has 13 summers left.
Next stop: the train stops.
Don’t throw any German shepherds out the window.
Again, there’s nothing in the air.
Apart from fear.
This is true: somebody I know named his book “I Can’t Take it Anymore”.
I am Papi the dummest crocodile.
I believe I was in the same street last week, with the same questions.
I don’t dare to call any of you guys.
A topped-up prepaid card doesn’t entail an invited circle of friends.
The lights are blinding my eyes. A spark singed my knee.
Mila. Mila. You psycho. Please.
C’mon, you know what to do when you’re wobbling. No? Mila!
You’re the queen of the stone age.
I’m an idiot in pantaloons.
Tomorrow I’m going to the best Media Market store of all time.
Because that’s what they said. On TV.
Men would destroy telephone booths, but they seem to be blind in their magenta eyes.
Arabian, born K.R. Nazel on June 17, 1965 and raised in the Southern Los Angeles suburb of Compton. A kid whose dad ghost-wrote for Iceberg Slim as well penning “Black Gestapo”.
“The first club we had, it was called The Cave, in the back of an old pet store, and it was like a pet feed store and I was 16 and I had to go get a job. So I had to go to the pet store, but this was no ordinary pet store. This guy sold like 100lb bags of pigeon feed and chicken feed and stuff.”
And so began the sound system that would eventually become the World Class Wreckin’ Cru, redefining the course of West Coast hip hop as we know it.
Arabian Prince’s new anthology was released today on Stones Throw Records. The NWA and electro pioneer, also behind some classic electro records as Professor X, Arabian is pretty rad in real life. When we met him at the Academy in Seattle, the thing I remember most is this headset he would wear all the time. It was like he was in constant communication with a girl he met last week, his manager, Area 51, the CIA, or all at once.
Therefore, I think they could’ve put a picture of present-day Arabian on the cover.
Still, there are some good photos in the CD-insert like the one where he’s wearing leather cuffs.
This comp has some great moments: you’ll find there are certain tracks that you will want to play more than others but it grows on you. The track below, available for download on the Academy site right now, is one of them: all seagulls and synthesisers.
Is it the Brewery Studios, or is it a sauna? Or both?
“Some people say you can’t hear a difference of one dB. But I’d like to believe that you can.”
Not a statement worth arguing, especially coming from Robin Braun, one half of the Copenhagen duo Owusu and Hannibal, who released that infectious sing-along album on Ubiquity in 2006. That 6th dB-sense allows him to change the tone of his voice within seconds from an MJ-worthy falsetto, to a Shaun Escoffery-esque croon, to (in his words) “a choir of Brazilian orphans.”
Lately this self-taught Danish multi-instrumentalist has been “going through a girl phase.” Not that type of girl phase, dummy. He’s been working on tracks with a number of different female vocalists. No telling yet, if it’ll be made-up Portuguese or Hans Cristian Andersen-inspired lyrics, or something like the intro to their album on Ubiquity, which was about a budgie who went missing and left a suicide note.
One of Robin’s new projects, which he headed back to Copenhagen by train yesterday to start work on, is a soundtrack for a new dogma-style gritty film about teenagers. The Owusu and Hannibal project isn’t on ice though: they’re just branching out, and tying up some loose ends. There’s an older, still unreleased album that will drop soon on a Japanese label as well as a major in Denmark; while Phil ‘Owusu’ is also finishing up some of his own back catalogue.
Lyrics to ‘Monster’ by Owusu and Hannibal:
THE DEVIL’S HERE
I SWEAR HE’S AROUND
HE COCKED THE GUN AND LEFT IT ON THE GROUND
TIED AND GAGGED US ON HIS HIGH IDEALS
YOU BEND YOUR KNEES
I’LL HAVE TO BEND MINE
AND WE’LL WALK TOGETHER TO OUR GRAVES
THAT RACIST HUNG US FROM THE SAME LINE
So yesterday I was driving along the foot of the Austrian alps with Many, in Toffi’s car. One of the highlights of being down that way – apart from the beautiful and sinister green lakes that are the colour of billiard chalk – is being able to listen to FM4 on the car radio. (You need windows media player to listen online).
I’m a fan of code-switching and an ADD approach to language (or music). FM4 is that kind of station. You’ll catch a fragment of an Austrian presenter with a booming voice, then it will switch to a man singing a beautiful accapella in an unidentified African language, before commenting in English that all his songs are about how life is painful and he is asking god to help him.
Then it’ll switch to an Austrian punk rock song, then an Austrian girl giving a weather report in English, then some trashy faux acid-haus by wannabee Vienna playboy Diskokaine. As Many commented, pumping his arms, “It’s not Rimini enough!”
(Rimini being an Italian seaside disco resort of the ’90s where gogo dancers in Barney Rubble costumes were likely to end up marrying short blonde DJs)
Of course, FM4 is where you can hear Heinz Reich, Erdem Tunakan and friends every Friday
presenting their 8-hour La Boum De Luxe marathon.
Below is a song by an Austrian band called Kreisky that we heard on FM4 that day. The video is not that great but the lyrics are kinda cool. The title is referring to Bob Marley (like, Duh). Wo Woman ist, das ist auch Cry.
The rest of the lyrics are something like “you didn’t create that woman, you didn’t invent her, you haven’t found her, so give her to me.”
“And now, cry cry, cry cry” (etc)
Don’t you think German is really best-suited to punk type singing?
But if you are German, you might not want to listen to it. Erik says the Austrian dialect is really annoying to him.
Everybody’s talking
But I find to hard to hear
They’re all explaining something new
(It happens every day)
A new inspiration that can change my way of life
Another big idea
And then they disappear
Undercover at the airport
I saw your smiling face
But I don’t have a place to go
So leave a flower or you can fax me
This sinister spin
The state that I’m in
The words that I’ve read
Keep going round my head
Been driving me crazy for years
