15 months into the pandemic, and life feels like the ending of the Sleeping Beauty fairytale: a heavy veil is slowly lifting and awakening us from a sleep which for many was filled with endless nightmares of multiple kinds. But while the sleeping beauty’s gentle awakening was entwined with roses and initiated by a Prince’s …
Novalis once wisely wrote, “Philosophy is really homesickness: the urge to be at home everywhere.” This same truth is found much more deeply in music and poetry. 2020 – 2021 will be remembered as the homesickness years. We were separated from loved ones and quarantined inside our homes and, during this trauma, some of us …
It was on Canadian radio where I heard songs from Low for the very first time, that was in 1977. The older brother of a friend owned a copy of the record, it had just been released. I remember how especially the instrumental tracks struck me. They felt almost plastic, like a landscape that as …
Grantchester Meadows” (Pink Floyd)Opening with one minute of chirping morning skylarks and buzzing flies, Roger Waters perfectly sets this idyllic scene with his acoustic guitar, pastoral lyrics, quiet singing, and, around the 4-minute mark, the sound effects of a flowing stream and flying geese panning across the stereo. “Misty morning whisperings and gentle stirring soundsBelie …
On the morning of Pentecost Sunday on May 26, 1828 a strange 16-year-old young man arrived at the city of Nuremberg, Kingdom of Bavaria. The boy could barely speak and stand upright. He carried with him a letter from an unknown author, addressed to the chief of the local garrison, which assured that the young …
We live in a computer world, so we made a song about it. Ralf Hütter In 1981, Edward Snowden‘s revelations on how Imperial America mass-surveilled its own citizens and the citizens of the world were still 32 years away. Yet, the seeds for today’s surveillance capitalism and globalization as 21st century version of colonialization were …
I was just recently talking about Sabotage by Black Sabbath again. I always wonder if there had been Nirvana without this album. Probably not. It’s everywhere in Nirvana’s music. This is the music that I loved when I was 15 or 16 years old. I had the album on cassette, and I listened to it …
Director: Paul Poet Death is a sad and solemn business? Not always. Especially when it works as natural and just selection, it is a reason for absolute celebration. On October 11th in 2008, I met with friends at Bar Tabac in Cologne to celebrate the death of Austrian Neo-Nazi Jörg Haider by drinking, singing and …
I bought Road To Ruin on vinyl in 1983, I forgot where. My friends Kenny, Benny and I all bought different Ramones albums to share them, and I think I chose Road To Ruin because of its comic cover. The John Holmstrom illustration is great, in the style of the Zap-comix. A classic. Just like …
Like in literature, Russians can allow themselves a fastidious arrogance when their electronic music has to measure up with comparable art from the rest of the world. Take a band like Kraftwerk, the German pioneers of electronic music which have always drawn from Russian art and were never really popular in Russia. The Russian avant-garde …
