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Well, I have to admit that it isn't the best idea I have ever had to make the 12 or so readers of this blog go blind. But then again, what should I do? I own this record. And I just can't bear this pain on my own. Please help me.
This record and this cover are so awesome on so many levels. One, it's not a "single", it's an EP. Four songs. That was unheard of back then! Two, it's not only four songs, it's four DRINKING SONGS. For better or worse. I am still a bit in doubt whether or not these are songs you should listen to while you are drinking (to enhance the liquid experience), or songs you just can't stand listening to while you're sober. I'll leave this up to you, dear reader. Judge for yourself.
But this is about the cover, not the music. This dude is the textbook definition of awesome: part Red Dawn, part King Diamond. Oh, hold on a second... must... gasp... for... breath...
Two things about this cover will poke your eye immediately: the teeth and the Spar logo. Now I don't really know what the fuck is up with that logo, but it definitely is an interesting thought that this piece of "music" was a giveaway by the world's largest food retailer. But where the fuck did they display this? In the wine section? Special offer: buy two bottles of vodka, get a vinyl seven inch for free? We'll never know.
Anyway, I would love to get a free seven inch when I go shopping for groceries. It would make a song I love come to life again.
Now I know that are quite some websites dedicated to the art of the album cover, like this or that, but as far as I know, no one has ever posted this visual atrocity. Sit back, open the image in a new browser window, and gasp for breath. Yes, this is serious!
It's only half as "funny" if you don't understand German, because the song titles make it even better. And no, I'm sorry, I just CAN'T translate it. The second song, "Wüst oder wüst ned" is a overlooked and long forgotten gem of Austropop. Even if you don't get the lyrics, it's worth a mouseclick... because... because... it's a fucking Sirtaki song, and I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!
It's a song about drinking with a girl, supposedly giving her the time to make up her mind (about whatever, the author is being unclear about this), and looking for the toilet in the meantime. And while the story itself is scary and weird enough, please take another look at the cover. The person who sings this song is the one on the left, some kind of Austrian semi-celebrity. So, uhm well. But who the fuck is the one on the right? Shit, that dude's scary! And by "scary", I mean BIG TIME SCARY.
So, dear blog reader, whoever you are - enjoy this post like you would enjoy driving past a car accident on the highway. You can thank me later. Me, I will go and see Kim Wilde and Billy Idol tonight. For free. It's gonna be fun, in an Accüsed kinda way...
"Obstacles grew out of the D.I.Y. culture and finds its inspiration and energy in the principles of integrity and immediacy derived from this movement. The band is driven by an urge to create relevant music, to transcend the triviality of our times uniform culture and to protest its monolithic aesthetics. Obstacles is the creative partnership between friends."
There. They said it themselves. I just can't think of any better introduction for this great band. They are "math rock" (for lack of a better term), they are "post rock", they are an instrumental band (one that does not bore me, yay!), and they kick ass. They have released an album called Decomposition of Movement, a 7", and a split with Auxes. I love them.
This is an interview that was never finished. But the points that were made were just too valid to disappear on a hard drive forever.
(This is my friend Emil. He is not in the band anymore.)
Obstacles? Why? And which ones? Which decomposition of what movement?
Thomas: The title Decompostion Of Movement has two sides to it; a concrete and an abstract one. First of all it's the name of a brain lesion, which means that your gestures are broken up into individual segments instead of being executed smoothly. Second, it refers to the idea that music is not about linear movement, but movement in a mass of directions. To say it briefly, it's songwriting - anti songwriting. Mathrock, as I see it, is a matter of decomposition in general, a break down of the framework of "classical songwriting". Leaving more room for playing around and turning things upside down, therefore making it more interesting, more creative and less predictable. We're not really interested in trying to write or reinvent the perfect rock song. To me, that seems so unambitious and boring. I'm not saying that what we do is super original and never-been-done-before like, but more that what we're doing is simply putting together small pieces of noise and music in formations that seem challenging, new and exciting to us. It's a collage: everything's already been done, now it just needs to be messed up!
Niels-Peder: Obstacles, as in the things we encounter in the process of writing songs, but also in a more general term. The things that are all around us, other people, trains, buses, our computers, all the obstacles that meet us everywhere we go. For me the thing is that we tend to see these obstacles as things to be passed, getting over things, getting well, the way we tend to ignore the obstacles at hand. I think we need to be more aware of all these obstacles, investigate them and then decide what is going on with them. There I think, we can truly find out what we hate and what we love. Obstacles are there to be studied, to be seen as the things that - in a strange way - make up our very life.
Obstacles does not have a vocalist. Was that a conscious decision? What are the pros/cons about this? Do you sometimes find yourself having a hard time getting your message across only with instruments?
Thomas: Can't really say it was a conscious decision. In the beginning we tried several vocalists out, but it never really worked out. It was fun and all, but we never got that 'yes' feeling. So after while we trashed the idea. I guess we wanted to do something new and different from what we had done before, and the vocalists we tried out didn't really contribute to that.
One of the things I love about being an instrumental band is the way it leaves space for the instruments (or maybe it's just an ego thing!). When we write music, we often go, "Oh, this part sort of needs a lead figure", because there are no vocals. And then it's always really interesting to try and figure out what exactly it is that's needed, what instrument, and how to play it. So in some ways I think the creative process is a bit more challenging when writing instrumental music. For us "the message thing" is just as much a matter of how we choose to be a band and be in a band as it is about writing, let's say, political songs. We play music that's relevant and means something to us. Music that moves us, be it protest songs or love songs.
To tie right into that, what sets obstacles apart from your run of the mill "postrock"-band in my book is that you are very DIY and very political - by choice, and not by necessity. Want to eloborate?
Thomas: The way I see it, there's a huge difference between being an indie band that is really independent right until a major label shows a bit of interest, and a band who wants to run it themselves, because they believe in doing it that way. Of course a band is a business in some ways, or at least it becomes one when you release a record or go on tour. But for us it's important to bear in mind that, when we got involved in music - touring and releasing records. We were only able to do so because people were ready to help us get started, you know, booking tours, doing shows, releasing our music and so on. And it's still like that. We did a tour in Russia some months ago, a really great tour. And again, we could only do that because people over there worked their asses off to bring us there, without getting anything but the experience in return. To me, that's really something. It's not just about chords and beats, but about deliberately choosing alternative ways of organization. A subversive approach to the whole promotion thing is, as I see it, the core element in being a "political" band.
Niels-Peder: Being political is in essence, as I see it, not about saying the right things or having a radical attitude. To me, the political side to the project is, as Thomas puts it, about deliberately choosing another way. The meeting between people and the exchange of ideas and experiences this brings.
Obstacles will play at the Rhiz in Vienna on August 16, together with Alarma Man.
www.obstacles.dk
This record is a tricky beast to write about, for a number reasons... one, I really, really like it. A lot. And when I find myself liking a record, it gets hard to write about. Bad reviews easy, good reviews hard. Two, it's kinda old. Not "old" as in 1980s old school old, but it has been out for quite some time now. But then again, GLW/DRK has never been about being up to date, and that's that. And finally, three, it is an Austrian hip hop relase. In Austria, we speak German, or at least a version of German. And since this album (or is it an EP?) has German lyrics, I really wasn't sure whether or not I should write this review in English. It's a hard knock life, I'm tellin' ya. But here it is, in English, because I truly feel that this album can be enjoyed even if you don't understand the language. I know that at least I can like French hip hop, or Turkish hip hop, or Japanese "post-core" without being able to understand a single word.
I have mixed feelings about Austrian hip hop. There are many (new) acts, there are many good acts, but a lot of the output these days is just tee-rash. I don't know, maybe it has to do something with the nature of German language, but, in the words of Markante Handlungen, "muas I eana schau wieda mit da Peitschn deiten, wei's die Deitschen biten!". Average and Huckey don't do that. They do their very, very own thing, and it's easy to admit I am stoked.
Ganz schön hässlich is some kind of a concept album, very loosely based on the 19th century children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" by Heinrich Hoffmann. (There is an awesome adaption by Bob Staake available from Fantagraphics, and there was an anti-fascist version during WW2, called "Struwwelhitler".) There are six tracks about the stories in the book, and then there are 5 more remixes. Average is a young (dope!) MC, and Huckey is an old (dope!) MC, so it's pretty much like this, only with words and rhymes. It would be wrong that say that me and Huckey are friends, but we have known each for quite a while now, and that relationship goes back to the days of his old bands, Target of Demand and Seven Sioux, so I am more than stoked to see that he still kicks ass. (He actually never stopped kicking ass, and this is the evidence.)
So what has to be said about this record are three things:
1. The beats are amazing. The choice of samples is great. The cuts are right on. Seriously, this is up there with the best of the best.
2. The words and rhymes and the flow are top of the game, and they are one of a kind. There has been no Austrian release like this before, drawing influence from a classic piece of literature, turning into something unique and original, and above all, pushing limits and staying "true to the game".
3. Kamp makes an appearance, and so does Flip from Texta, and the features and the remixers don't ruin it, in fact they add a little extra something.
Ganz schön hässlich is a hip hop record for the heads and for people who don't even like the music. It's everything that made hip hop so amazing in the first place, it's deep and fresh, and it works in the club just as well as it does on your headphones. Big up!
www.tontraeger-records.com
Something about this record screams "No Idea", and I can't quite put my finger on it. Sure enough, they're from Florida (well, at least 3/4 of them), they rock hard, scream, and - dare I say it - well, yes, they are standing on the shoulders of giants, who, for what it's worth, never ever could pull off an album like Of Misery And Toil anymore. But still, there is something underneath all the noise and melody and gruffness that makes Young Livers stand out.
Maybe it's the fact that this record came into my life at the right time. Maybe it's got something to do with a desperate need for someone to tell me that everything will be OK, no matter how hard it seems sometimes. Lines like "We face up to look down. We breathe out just to hear something else." just ring a bell. There is hope. Repeat: there is hope.
Music is just sound, and books are nothing but words, but they serve a deeper purpose. They help us humans to understand the universe. They explain things. They make you feel less alone, and less miserable. And sometimes, music and words touch your soul.
The feeling I get from this record, way beyond the screaming and beyond the realization of "Hey, wait, they didn't have all these hard rock guitar melodies on the first album", is this: there are times when we, as humans, feel completely lost and lonely and desperate, and we think that no one can relate to the pain we feel. It becomes something universal, bigger than life itself, and we become so absorbed with it that we just can't see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is the task of the poet that make us feel less alone, to touch our hearts and minds, to explain things, to make us understand. And fuck yes, drunk punk rockers from Florida can be the true poet that touches your heart and soul every now and then. Young Livers did that to me.
Behind this wall of noise, there is a soothing beauty. Behind all the screaming, you can find stories of desperation and fucking up, of falling down - and, more important than anything else! - of getting the fuck back up again, brushing off the dirt and tears, and asking the universe: "Is that all you have to fucking offer?"
There is hope in failure. There is hope in pain. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. Always. We only need a little reminder now and then. My own personal reminder sounds fucking amazing and is called Of Misery And Toil.
"It's veiled now in our patience. It's kindled in remorse. Failed, as we have become what we loathe."
www.noidearecords.com
Well, I have to admit that it isn't the best idea I have ever had to make the 12 or so readers of this blog go blind. But then again, what should I do? I own this record. And I just can't bear this pain on my own. Please help me.
