La vie est presque belle- Life is almost beautiful. Benjamin Biolay (‘Novembre Toute L’année’) ‘Rose Kennedy’ (2001) is the spellbinding debut of Benjamin Biolay, an album like no other that holds a special place in this great French artist’s discography. The wonder and amazement starts with the fact that a young French musician records a …
‘Lodger’ is the final album in the Bowie/Eno trilogy of Berlin albums starting with Low (1977) and Heroes (1977). Each of them heavily is influenced by the zeitgeist of (West-) Berlin, whereas title and cover of Lodger are a direct reference to Roman Polanski’s movie ‘The Tenant’ from 1976. West Berlin’s underground scene was burgeoning with …
(Abyss Beneath Bad Attitude) You don’t care about ABBA, but are still listening to the White Album? You better start to care. ABBA- the Swedish phenomenon that took over the world between 1972- 1982 with their insanely catchy songs. Ten years of perfect pop and sweetness performed by two couples in glittery space costumes making …
The Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has become essential within the art cinema, his films are characterized by exploring obsessions such as alienation and disorientation produced by a gap between language and reality, the robotic repetition of social conventions , dystopia, and the use of catharsis as an escape route. There is no better way to …
The first, largest and commercially most successful independent record company in whole Germany until today has been Türküola. It was founded in Cologne by the Turkish migrant Yılmaz Asöcal in 1964. In the history of independent record companies as well as in the history of pop music in Germany Türküola and the many other Turkish …
The year is 1983. The setting is Washington D.C., the nation’s decadent and corrupt foundation upon which swindling political power brokers plot, scheme, and shuffle around Americans’ hard-earned taxpaying dollars like obnoxious Scotch-fueled frat boys drunkenly dealing monogrammed playing cards. The infamous Marion Barry (D.C.’s mayoral “Scarface in Miami” equivalent) presides over a city splattered …
By 2000 everyone will be bored to death. Falco (1957-1998) Ask most Americans and other English-speaking people, and they will tell you that Falco is the German one-hit-wonder with that “Amadeus” song. Dance music and rap freaks among them may also remember “Der Kommissar” and Falco’s legacy as one godfather of white rap. But that’s …
What else in hell should be so great about the USA, other than this music? When this album got released, I listened to it over and over and over again. I can still sing along to songs like It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding) und Subterranean Homesick Blues. Back then, I sat in front of …
Countless wealthy white musicians have copied, have been heavily influenced by, or have shamelessly ripped off black blues guitarists/singers who lived in poverty during the 1920s and the Depression era of the 1930s. These wealthy white musicians more often add flash without feeling, style without substance. This criticism cannot be leveled at Ry Cooder’s deeply …
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the German word Sehnsucht can be translated as “craving, desire, longing, pining, wistfulness, yearning.”, with the second syllabe ‘Sucht’ meaning addiction: the addiction to yearn and desire. Franz Schubert’s life and music are a complex experience of Sehnsucht, starting in his twenty-sixth year when he contracted an illness which inspired …
For the past thirty years, it is evident that the weirdest and most surreal place in cinema emerges from the mind of David Lynch. Since his debut film, the strange and avantgarde Eraserhead (1977), much of Lynch’s output has been the perfect fuel for nightmares: mutated creatures, bizarre murder mysteries, fractured psyches, disturbing dreams, etc. Before …
There is no greater solitude than that of the samurai unless perhaps that of the tiger in the jungle. Book of Bushido Something is wrong with Jef Costello (The Samourai‘s theme, it is one of those rare cases in which the film music is a crucial factor for the analysis of the film. It is …
