In-between days

Apologies as no posts last weekend as I was at the Sonar festival, but will hopefully get the review done next week. No posts this weekend either as I will be away for the long weekend as it is San Juan here in Barcelona. I need a break after the worst week of work in my life I think.

But not all is bad. My musical salvation of the week has been an astounding podcast by Ben Klock for Chris Liebing and the CLR label which can be heard here. Ben Klock's remix of Jooris Voorn, Rejected and Edwin Oosterwal's "For the people" also caught the ear too. Maybe a headliner for Sonar next year?



Chris Liebing was also the subject of a fascinating Resident Advisor exchange if anyone is interested in his story.


Finally, there is a nice video for a new Workshop single by the ever interesting Move D aka Dave Moufang that is due imminently.



Out today is also a 4x12" package called [In Loving Memory 4:4] from the silent, but deadly dub techno label Styrax from Berlin. Featuring tracks by Sven Weissemann, Tony Daly, John Beltran, STL, Morphosis and more it looks even more a bargain with an extra set of some rare and unreleased tarcks from Ron Trent, Larry Heard, Isolée and DJ Qu.









More soon.

Ambient Music

Another mini-collection of random tracks that have come across my path recently, this time of ambient music.

Expo ‘70

Justin Wright’s Expo ’70 project has given rise to many decent releases over the last five or so years on labels like Beta Lactam Ring Records and Kill Shaman, but last year’s double vinyl set “Where does your mind go?” is perhaps his high water mark. Recorded live with no overdubs, the four long-form kosmische tracks are totally organic and immersive, clichés for ambient music maybe, but here entirely accurate.

A new album “Inaudible Bicoastal Trajectory” has also just been released this month on the seminal Aguirre label.

Motion sickness of time travel

In a short space of time Rachel Evans’ Motion Sickness of Time Travel project has gone in leaps and bounds. Already with a handful of releases in 2011, her highlight is perhaps still last year’s beautifully packaged “Seeping Through the Veil of the Unconscious” on the Digitalis label. Droning and peaceful, the key is perhaps her ability to capture a group sound, not so much reminiscent of kosmische music as much as space rock groups like Windy and Carl with a touch of Slowdive thrown in for good measure, all while simultaneously appropriating from new age ideals to produce a kind of healing music.

One of the tracks off “Seeping through…” also reminds me a little of one of ABBA’s ambient/instrumental pieces, the title track to the 1976 “Arrival” album.

Mountains

While still on “group sounding” ambient, one of my favourite groups over the last few years is Moutains, the duo of Brendon Anderegg and Koen Holtkamp, who have made their home on Thrill Jockey. Originating in a more guitar-orientated sound, the duo latest album “Air Museum” is however, decidedly more electronic. Its shorter length is also an interesting feature and it feels almost poppy at times, which is not to say shallow or disposable, but is an interesting development for a group whose sound often takes time to develop over long durations, such as on the exceptional “Etchings” live album from 2009. There is also a little hint of Spacemen 3 in the sound of “Air Museum” that makes their current live incarnation seem more than appealing should they come to town.

BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa

Last year was an excellent year for seminal Austrian label Editions Mego. They released the Emeralds excellent “What happened” album, Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Returnal” as well as several Fenn O’Berg albums and deluxe re-editions of classics such as Fennesz’s “Endless Summer”. Buried alongside these was the double vinyl album “Space Finale” by Sweden’s BJ Nilsen and Stilluppstepya (the Icelandic duo of Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson and Helgi Thorsson) which was one of the year’s highlights. Slowly unfolding and glacial, it had a powerfully disarming effect, changing without giving the ability to notice it and rising and falling in volume and intensity. The collaboration has recently been extended to a new album called “Big Shadow Montana” on the    Helen Scarsdale Agency label.

BJ Nilsen & Stilluppsteypa - Big Shadow Montana (album preview) by experimedia

Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer

One of the landmark albums of the year will most certainly be the collaboration of Ricardo Villalobos and Max Loderbauer reworking the ECM catalogue. The work is a return to form for Villalobos who has had several pedestrian releases lately, while for Loderbauer it continues his recent ascent following on from the growing interest in his old Sun Electric project and his involvement with Moritz von Oswald in his trio. The double CD set is an intricate and patient tapestry of sound, embellishing different worlds of jazz, classical and fragmented electronica into often sparse, but still richly detailed sound forms the evolve in unpredictable ways. Here the duo explain the origins of the project

While excerpts can be found here

Orakel

Just released now on the Dutch label 4Lux, is the album “When time doesn’t know itself” by Austrian group Orakel which shares many similarities with the Villalobos/Loderbauer collaboration in that it is a dense collage of jazz and soul fused into a hip hop and down tempo landscape. Perhaps not truly ambient, but well worked and a great foil for heavier club-sounding music.

Orakel - When Time Doesn´t Know Itself by ORAKEL

Mule Musiq – Enjoy the silence vol 2

The second label sampler of ambient tracks from Japans’s Mule Musiq doesnt need any complicated introduction, only to say that it is a very accessible collection of short ambient pieces reminiscent of Kompakt’s celebrated Pop Ambient series. The sounds here a perhaps a little more classical-leaning and closer to say the Type label then the more electronic angle of Pop Ambient. For example, one track has Terre Thaemlitz remixing John Cage which again sounds similar to the Villalobos/Loderbauer project.

John Beltran

Another new collection of ambient tracks, this time fromAmerican  John Beltran on the always fantastic Delsin label run out of Amsterdam. The set collects tracks from as far back as 1995 and the results are somewhat different from the fore mentioned Mule Musiq and Kompakt compilations on one important level: the overt positivity of the tracks. So much ambient music is somehow dark, depressing or evocative of gloomier moods. The overt sunniness and alegria of Beltran’s collection is a marked contrast and while perhaps it seems superficial at times, this is perhaps only because it is indeed lighter and uplifting and not inducing a dire introverted state.

Explicit content

Everybody is talking about Rihanna and video cencorship this week after her video to the track "Man down" came under fire from parent lobby groups, particularly in the US, for its depiction of the singer shooting in the head a man who apparently abused her. It is unclear if the video is meant to be a direct or veiled reference to former boy friend singer Chris Brown who was charged twice with incidents relating to attacks on Rihanna when she was his girlfriend.



The timing couldnt be worse for Rihanna as the video was released almost simultaneously with a commissioned report in the UK assessing the Sexualisation of Children. The report cited tv performances by Rihanna and Christina Aguilera and videos by Lady Gaga as particularly controversial but also attacked the clothing and advertising industries for targeting younger children.

There are two sides to the issue, one is about choice and of course whether children are able to make informed choices, or, and perhaps more pertinently, whether their parents are able to choose adequately for them. The other side of the coin is the over sexualised and aggressively manipulated arena of advertising and commercial retailing which undoubtedly creates social pressures and expectations that can influence the ability of children and parents to decide  their own level of development, create their own self-ideas and image and map their own goals without excess influence. Overshadowing this world is of course the spectre of fame and the illusion of riches and wealth.

For example, it is wrongly assumed by the media, and in a sense by society as a whole, that public figures should act in the moral good and represent role models for children to follow. This is of course pure nonsense as children should never be encouraged to worship or behave like over-groomed pop stars or football players etc. Why should society or the media expect moral behaviour, particularly from artists? Surely artists, whether of the lowly calibre of Rihanna or the upper echelons of Nobel Prize winning authors, should be upheld as paragons of themselves, of free and infinitely variable individuals? I am reminded of a retort by Australian singer Nick Cave several years ago (which I cannot find in exact quote) to a question that he was sexist. He replied that he wasn't, but in a sense that it didnt matter if he was as he was an artist and had to take particular points of view to express his art or to generate a character to express an idea. "Political correctnes," he quipped (in my own paraphrased words) "is for politicians". Afterall, Nick Cave killed Kylie Minogue in "Where the wild roses grow" without much controversy, perhaps because it truly is more art than pop?

"All beauty must die"

The real question is perhaps why has it taken so long to commission a report or to debate these kinds of issues when music videos and advertising as a lecherous whole have essentially been over sexualised for a generation already? Sure, Madonna received some of the same criticisms levelled at Rihanna, but where did it lead us to if not to Rihanna? Asking for censorship or greater regulation of the internet and particularly video servers like Youtube is likely to be impossible as well. There are plenty of other "naughty" or explicit music videos out there if you look, such as this classic from Add (n) to X.




Explicit lyric content has been a thorny issue in the music business for a long time already. It was perhaps serendipitous that this week I came across this track by Lost and Beezy called "Snake eyes" as part of a three CD mix set of dub step by DJ Hatcha, pathetically marketed as 100% Pure Dubstep, clearly for the novice or entry level dubstep fan. The lyrics are decidedly seedy and almost funn, but of course have not raised any controversy possibly because the debate has been done to death and the track contains suitable warnings (even on Amazon where you can buy the CD or the tracks with a warning), but probably also because Lost and Breezy aren't famous enough.



It is easy to forget that childhood as a developmental stage has not existed in its present form for very long. The Victorian age and Industrial Revolution saw much child labour and it was only with the propagation of school systems and the introduction of child labour laws that saw the protection of children from essentially entering the adult world at a young age. Prior to this in the Middle Ages, one cannot imagine childhood being a particularly innocent or sheltered time either. Finaly,this theme of children reminds me of Peter Greenaway's controversial 1993 film the Baby of Mâcon which details the story of the exploitation of a child in a 17th century Italian town by the mother, church and local politicians.

Random electronica

Here is a collection of tracks unrelated by themes and generally by lesser known or newer producers which caught my ear recently for one reason or another.

Italo Johnson.

The third single by this unknown producer Italo Johnson has just come out on his own eponymous label and is as great as the two preceeding it. Johnson’s style is in a certain way unambitious. By that I mean instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, he prefers to tinker with it to make it work as fluently and elegantly as possible. Well made, catchy, but deceptively simple and even obvious, a path many forsake by trying to be too clever.

DJ Qu

Not really an unknown, but Ramon Lisandro Quezad aka DJ Qu’s work has gradually been accumulating more prominence of late. His most recent output includes an album of four 12”s called “Gymnastics” on his own Strength Music Recordings label, shown here as a series of highlights from each track.

In addition, the New Yorker has been working on a commission for Nike with P Funk and has several other recent and acclaimed releases such as a split single with Jus Ed on the later’s own Underground Quality label (shown below) and a single for Deep Vibes that sports two exceelent and lengthy remixes.

P. Laoss

P. Laoss aka German producer André Müller first came to my attention for his “Back Diffusion” e.p. on the Barcelona-based Pong Musiq label last year. The opening track “Additive effect” was one of my favourites of the year for its sublime blending of minimal and dub techno into a seedy and sleazy late night track perfect for drifting away into states of dream and confusion.

2011 has seen him release the debut single “Bamboo Mat” for US based label Pronounce which sees him delving into deep house territory with occasional well-timed dub embellishment.

Alteria Percepsyne

Dub techno gets a bad rap for generating too many artists that follow the same generic mould of whispy, sexless beats made for nerds, but in truth, the same could be said for any genre from techno to house: there are few innovators and plenty of decent enough artists just holding up the background. But while generic dub techno is a dime a dozen, the great tracks and well-produced ambient pieces still have a tingling effect when you come across them. Alteria Percepsyne’s limited CD-R album “Cloaks of Perception” on Belgium’s Other Heights label is one example of the later. While it won’t turn heads for challenging the established paradigm of dub techno, it is undoubtedly one of the better quality dub techno albums to come out recently. It escapes the shackles of mediocrity by playing up its moodiness and weaving through the mix enough changes to make it progressive and not monolithic.

Textural Being

Sticking with dub techno is a recent album by US producer Sage Taylor under his Textural Being moniker entitled “High Speed Travel” which came out on the French net label ZeECc. I must confess to not being overly impressed by the album as a whole after only one listen, but the first track “High Speed Travel Part 1” has a pleasant warmth and attractive simplicity to it, especially if you are a dub techno fan.

Bill Youngman

Another fledgling Berlin techno label is hardly what the world needs, but this one is a little different as its source is the legendary Killekill night (German for tickle as well as punning on “kill” in English). The night is run in part by Nico Deuster (aka DJ Flush), who is one of the men close to the heart of Shitkatapult, in addition to Tobias Schleinkofer. Together they are also the masterminds behind the Krake Festival shown here in preview from 2010

KRAKE festival for experimental dance music from lasal on Vimeo.

The modus operandi behind the Killekill label is a blending of experimentalism with dark edged techno such as on their latest release by Bill Youngman which also features a fantastic Sandwell District mix.

Kassem Mosse

Another not-so-unknown producer,but  Gunnar Wendel aka Kassem Mosse has been wearing away at the fringes of experimental house for some time, the centre of which seems to belong to Actress, at least for the moment. But the Workshop labels unique and beguiling sound is the perfect playground for Mosse’s patient explorations of the abstract dancefloor. The recently released Workshop 12 is another fine example of his fascinating sound, here on the B side

and also from last year’s 12” for the Nonplus label

Lapsus Records - Pina

Here is a nice record I picked up recently from a Barcelona-based label called Lapsus Records. Only a few releases so far, but a determination to put out both interesting objects and music. The earlier releases included a picture disc of remixes of local producer Wookie who was one of the opening acts of Sonar last year. He actually works (or used to work) at a local record store where he is forever grateful to me as he gave me a full three day pass to Primavera Sound by mistake in place of a ticket to Atari Teenage Riot which I faithfully returned to his relief.

This single is by Pedro Pina who has also released drum n bass under the name of Sloan on the Donna Lee Records label. There are many high points here from the nice cover design, the clear vinyl and of course the miusic, which is fundamentally IDM, but gives the ilusion of other styles, for example the faux techno in the final track "Terminat". With eight tracks it seems a little bit homogenous by the end if listening straight through, but nonethless each track does bear a particular character that makes it overall a compelling release.

The Berlin Trilogy

David Bowie is always hard to pin down.  If you are looking for one definitive musical statement as to who he was, whichever one you pick you will be wrong. There is always a conceptual paradox that you will have to accept or a style somehow not reflected in a particular era. But for Bowie the man at least, there is one particular moment where it all came down and came together; an era when one could see Bowie at last playing himself. Before he’d always been a man playing a god and once “Let’s Dance” turned him into a megastar, it was a man who had transcended to be a god playing a man. But the era of Bowie in Berlin is naked Bowie, is a raw man exposed and looking for somewhere to hide.

The so-called Berlin Trilogy of albums, “Low”, “”Heroes”” and “Lodger”, actually a quintet with Iggy Pop’s “The idiot” and “Lust for life” recorded at the same time and place, represent the creative fulcrum of his career. The three combine pop, poetry and theatre, the critical elements of what had come before and what would come after, but added to them the contradictory elements of experimentalism and the quotidian. Quotidian for Bowie and his entourage that is.

After all, the Berlin Trilogy is not only about Bowie, but about a triumvirate of characters, all looking for the same thing at the same time and finding different outcomes. Bowie had come from California and years of cocaine abuse that had left him on the brink and often delusional, including several mythical television appearances.

With him came Iggy Pop, inspiration himself for the Ziggy Stardust character that had led Bowie to the brink. Ironically, Pop had been rescued by Ziggy, both physically from drug addiction and financially, hauled from jail to the studio to get it back together.



Brian Eno, meanwhile, had shed the feathers of his stay in Roxy Music (leaving after their second album) and wound down a solo career to find a new direction with these two misfits. Producer Tony Visconti is a noble fourth, but overall his character has less influence to play here and especially afterwards.

All three eloped to Germany in 1976 to collaborate and invent a new musical future for each of them. Destination German had been chosen for its fervent musical scene (Bowie and Eno, particularly had already been heavily influenced by Kraftwerk, but would soon extend their local music interests).  But also with it came the anonymity they sought, away from their former characters and the shackles of fame, to be themselves. Divided Berlin at the time was an ideal place to lose and find yourself and was a society that understood split personalities and paranoia.

But Berlin was also France and the Château d'Hérouville near Paris where most of Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” was recorded as well as the first side of “Low”. Finishing was done at Hansa Studios in Berlin where the next albums were recorded, though Bowie’s bookend to the era, 1979s “Lodger” was finished in New York and its hazy mixing has the cocaine edge that suggests that coming down hadn’t quite gone to plan.

David Bowie – Low

“Low” was the second album of the 5 to be recorded, but the first to be released, first seeing the light of day in 1977 where it was critically praised but did not seem to make much immediate impression. “The Idiot” was ready to go, but apparently Bowie’s ego meant that his album was to go first so that it would not seem as if he was drawing influence from Iggy. Hailed as the greatest album of the 70s by Pitchfork, “Low” presents the true low of Bowie’s life: cocaine paranoia, drinking, break up of marriage with Angie and artistic burnout after a decade of high living and creative overload. The first side, recorded in the Chateau is Bowie scraping together his life in little bios and half-finished song.

Thomas Jerome Seabrook in his excellent book on this topic makes the valid points of fade outs: everything on this album fades out, shrinks away, worn out or induced to hide again. This is most pronounced on the second side where Bowie’s only lyrics are meaningless words called out from the abyss of “Warszawa”, the opening track of side two and the usual opening track for Bowie’s subsequent tours. Bowie had effectively been rendered speechless from his life and was also fading away. “Warszawa” was also the first key intervention of Eno, who performed most of the music alone, to which additional parts were added. His and Bowie’s fascination for the “very unfocal” forms of the kosmische/krautrock music they were immersing in were essential for fashioning the atypical song structures that would dominate this track and all the albums, especially the ambient tracks which were a shocking inclusion for an album in 1977, Punk’s year zero. This was also the song that gave the early incarnation of Joy Division their name: Warsaw.

But if the ambient side to “Low” and subsequently “”Heroes”” were to illuminate Bowie’s limitations, the lyrics on the first side of each album are full of clues to his vulnerability. For example, the single “Sound and vision” gives Bowie’s state of mind and creative method in intimate and simple detail.

“Pale blinds drawn all day

Nothing to do, nothing to say

Blue, blue

I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

And I will sing, waiting for the gift of sound and vision

Drifting into my solitude, over my head”

Iggy Pop – The Idiot.

According to legend, the lyrics to Iggy Pop’s “The Idiot” where largely improvised in Berlin, made up in the spur of the moment with the tracks largely written by Bowie, were already completed in France. As with Bowie’s output, the lyrics are largely biographic, detailing the duos attempts to quit years of drug addiction by drinking, particularly noticeable in the seedy, psychedelic stagger of “Nightclubbing”.

“Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing

We're walking through town

Nightclubbing we're nightclubbing

We walk like a ghost”

Alternatively, “The Dum Dum Boys” is a literal biography of his former group The Stooges written at the behest of Bowie.

“Where are you now my

dum dum boys are you

Alive or dead

Have you left me the last

Of the dum dum daze

Then the sun goes down

And the boys broke down.”

The title of the album was often said to refer to both Bowie and Pop and their social failure at the time, as well as referencing the novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Critically, while the album is hailed as a classic, many also complain that it is not really an Iggy Pop album as it seems too far removed from the dirge rock of the Stooges. “The Idiot” has also gone down in rock infamy as being the last album listened to by Ian Curtis on the night he killed himself.

Pop and Bowie subsequently went on tour together to promote the album, with Bowie playing keyboards and trying to keep a low profile and maintain the life style as straight as possible. But inevitably a certain friction began to develop, particularly in the eyes of the critics who viewed Pop as something of a pawn in Bowie’s game, much as Lou Reed had been seen around the time that Bowie and Mick Ronson had recorded “Transformer” with him, an era when Reed had far less influence and fame than he has now come to be associated with.

David Bowie - ”Heroes”

““Heroes”” needs no introduction as it is perhaps Bowie’s most recognisable song. The parenthesis was apparently for irony, though this somewhat undermines the beautiful elliptical lyrics and the wrenching waves of guitar from Robert Fripp providing the signature sound, with the three takes recorded in one day and mixed together on the fly by Eno. This song forms the centre of the trilogy, being its high water mark while also being emblematic of time and place. The lyrics probably refer to Bowie’s declining relationship with his wife, but also recount the story of producer Visconti and his lover, a backing vocalist, meeting for a tryst beneath the Berlin wall which could be seen from the studio window.

The track was also used to great effect in the controversial film “Christiane F”, with a group of disaffected and doomed teenagers running through the empty corridors of a shopping mall in front of the Zoobahnhof station, situated below the forever wounded church that is a reminder of the war. The film uses the bilingual English-German version called “”Helden”” whereas a French version “”Héros”” was also made.

Legend also has it that the name was in part inspired by Neu! and their track “Hero” from their final (official) album “Neu! 75” played here in a rare live version.

The instrumental track “Seed of doubt” from the second side also showcases part of Bowie and Eno’s methods of composition at the time, which often relied on Eno’s “Oblique strategies” method. The Oblique Strategies are a series of cards with cryptic phrases on them and used much like tarot or John Cage’s I-ching compositional method to overcome creative blocks and obstacles or to forge new, unexpected directions. In this track, both Bowie and Eno had drawn contradictory cards, putting them in compositional opposition to each other with interesting results.

“”Heroes”” is also ostensibly a drinking album, with many tracks mentioning alcohol or taking place in bars, such as the line from “”Heroes””

“And you, you can be mean

And I, I´ll drink all the time”

Whereas

“Joe the lion

Went to the bar

A couple of drinks on the house an' he said

"Tell you who you are…””

Meanwhile the track “Blackout” says it all in the title, referring to a dark episode in Bowie’s life where he may have even suffered is first heart problems.

The cover of “”Heroes”” also seems to contain some kind of code. Beautifully showcasing Bowie’s mismatched eyes, the oblique hand gesture and robotic poise seem to hide or suggest something else. Indeed, the cover of “The Idiot” sports a similar poise and both were apparently influenced by Erich Heckel's painting “Roquairol”, though some have also claimed a lot of influence from Egon Schiele as well.

Iggy Pop –Lust for Life

After the chagrin of appearing as Bowie’s “stooge” on “The Idiot”, Pop took a more active role in the writing and production of “Lust for Life”. The music is more optimistic and the lyrics more self-confident, particularly on the title track which given the circumstances is a remarkable transformation, but somewhat contradictory given Iggy's behaviour at the time.

“I'm worth a million in prizes

Yeah, I'm through with sleeping on the sidewalk

No more beating my brains

No more beating my brains

With the liquor and drugs”

The first tour to promote “The Idiot” had been somewhat more restrained, but with Punk now in full swing and widely hailing Iggy and the Stooges as their ancestors, it was not long before Pop was back into old, dirty habits and riding the wave of success to oblivion. This video of “The Passenger”, the second iconic track from “Lust for life” shows Pop clearly wired and stoking the vibe.

“Oh, the passenger

He rides and he rides

He sees things from under glass

He looks through his window's eye

He sees the things he knows are his”

The release of “Lust for Life” effectively spelled the end of Pop and Bowie’s close relationship as suggested by this famous video from the Australian tv show Countdown, filmed here in 1979, with an erratic Iggy showing with body language at least, that he was uncomfortable with living in Bowie's shadow. Bowie did however, return to cover “China Girl” and “Tonight” on his respective “Let’s Dance” and “Tonight” albums in the 80s,the later with Tina Turner, paving and payign the way for another Iggy Pop return.

David Bowie – Lodger

Lodger is perhaps Bowie’s first failure to really find new ground since his breakthrough a decade before. This is perhaps not surprising after such a long creatively rich period and the gradual breakdown of artistic relations with both Pop and Eno. Indeed, Eno apparently was charged with directing many of the sessions for Lodger in Bowie’s absence, using only his Oblique Strategy cards which somewhat offended Bowie’s team of musicians.

“DJ” is proto-Talking Heads from the lyrical phrasing to the edgy, post-punk rhythm. It is no surprise that Eno went on to work with them after the “”Heroes”” sessions, appearing first on their 1978 album “More Songs About Buildings and Food” but with more rewarding results on 1979s “Fear of music” and 1980s “Remain in light”. The lyrics also touch on one of Bowie’s major themes emerging from this time, which is fame, mixed with his usual preoccupation with existentialism.

“I am the DJ

I am what I play

I´ve got believers

Believing in me”

Parts of the video were filmed in central London with a real Bowie surprising real people in the street for an unrehearsed walk.

“Look back in anger” is indeed one of Bowie’s angriest moments and had a video directed to recall Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Grey”, perhaps again signifying Bowie’s clash with fame and existence/identity as he aged.

“Look back in anger

Driven by the night

Until you come”

Legacy.

The legacy of the five albums from the Berlin period is uncountable. Not only are their numerous high profile covers, from Grace Jones to Siouxsie and the Banshees as well as many imitators, particularly Gary Numan. But perhaps the most significant legacy is Bowie’s breaching of the divide between pop and electronic instrumentation and the recasting of the pop arrangement into more fluid forms. As influenced as Bowie, Pop and Eno were by Krautrock, the legacy also turned full circle with Krautrock paying its homage to them. Kraftwerk’s Florian Schneider had been name dropped on “V-2 Schneider”, the opening track on side 2 of “”Heroes””, but Kraftwerk also returned the favour in perhaps their most famous song "Trans Europe Express", dropping the line:

“From station to station, back to Düsseldorf City

To meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie

Trans Europe Express”

(around 3 minute mark).

Station to Station of course also clverely refers to Bowie's 1975 album of that bname and neatly fits into the groups railway themed lyrics.

Agoria vs Sonar

The June issue of Spanish street press Go Mag comes with a mix by Agoria who will be playing Sonar by day on Friday 17th. The mix is a nice warm up to the festival featuring most of the key artists all blended with Agoria's usual eclectic style. Enjoy!

Go Series 81: Sónar 2011 Selected & Mixed by Agoria by gomag