“C’est chic” – Funny Games, mp3 release, Daughters

“Aaah – freakout.
Le freak. C’est chic.”
Chic
Exciting news for all my fellow chaos-noise-shizzle-rock-casio-grindcore-lovers: There will not only be ROLO TOMASSI and CUTTING PINK WITH KNIVES be playing in Nürnberg (10th of August), and not only THE LOCUST on the 30th of August, noooo, and not only GET HUSTLE in September (please don’t miss them just cause you haven’t heard of them – it’s a brainmeltingly excellent noise band on Justin Pearson’s 3.1.G label), oooooh, and not only will MENEGUAR play one day before my birthday, noooo – now we also have invited the mighty DAUGHTERS to Nürnberg again. While their debut album was really good, their ‘Hell Songs’ album is plain awesome. Technical brilliance meets experimental spontaneity, Chaoscore that reminds of The Locust meets sick and sleazy noise core à la Jesus Lizard. I will be deaf after all those shows but it will have been worth it. I really don’t want my blog to turn into a commercial space but I love those bands and am so damn happy that we’ll get them all to play here.

Tomorrow it’s party time again: MELTING POP at the K4! With verrry special deco and with yummy summer cocktails and of course the bestestest music in town cause any of the 10 dj teams will doubtlessly play a set of their greatest hits. Here’s the flyer once more, artwork is once more by www.ilikeyourbadbreathdaddy.de
Melting Pop Poster

Phew, and I’ve only just recovered from last Saturday’s WE ARE SICK OF MUSIC AND WE HATE EACH OTHER which was … I don’t know… mindshaking. Thanks to my dear fellow dj Paluka and to everybody who danced their asses off. It was awesome. I was a bit drunk and in my memory parts of the night are just a vague blaze of loud beat goodness, dancing bodies and thinking about nothing than what tune to play next. I’m sure they meant no harm but those half-naked gogo boys on stage seemed a bit much, didn’t they? But then I guess we were to blame ourselves cause we played so many straight-in-your-face acid and nu rave tracks or wot u call it that I wouldn’t have been surprised if people had pulled out rave whistles. The set really could have been a bit more diverse but at least we also had some Akufen, some Bonde Do Role, some Wiley, and my favourite track of The Bug. That night sure blew all the worries and heartbreaks away for a couple of hours, so: Mission accomplished. One of my favourite moments was: when I was playing a couple of punky guitar tunes at the end of the night one guy screamed his guts out while he was dancing. I loved it.

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Good news: STARVING BUT HAPPY will be revived. Maybe some of you who have followed the netlabel scene remember STARVING BUT HAPPY’s nice indietronica compilations and other stuff. Now, after a long break René (CKID, germany) and Nicolas (FINISH YOUR MEAL, belgium) start all over again, and among other artists they asked me if I wanted to do a release. I instantly accepted and I wish them success as I really like their attitude. I’ll keep you updated.

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I don’t like it when male djs use girls’ tits and asses on their flyers to attract people. I don’t even need a heavyweight term like ‘sexism’ to back up my dislike. I’m tired of explaining so it has to be enough that those kind of flyers simply feel lame. In 2007 an exciting party in a small club should work without the plump use of female body parts to attract guests. It seems like that opinion isn’t as prevalent as I had thought because I’ve been called a “freak” when I asked some local dj please not to post his tits flyers in my comments. Well, I guess at least that makes me chic.

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Last night I zapped through a few TV channels before I went to bed and I ended up watching FUNNY GAMES (by M. Haneke, the guy who also made the PIANO PLAYER movie after E. Jelinek’s novel). I missed the first minutes so I didn’t know what I was about to watch. I like that. It wipes your mind from any prepossession and has become a rare pleasure in these days of ‘Making Of’ obsession. I first associated Clockwork Orange and weird austrian movies with J. Hader. I felt slightly uncomfortable, didn’t like any of the characters but somehow couldn’t stop watching. I won’t say more as even if knowing the main plot doesn’t necessarily spoil watching it yourself but I think it’s more … erm … ‘fun’ to watch it without knowing too much before. It didn’t disturb me as much as IRREVERSIBLE or BREAKING THE WAVES but it was the first movie in a while that left me a bit scared, unsatisfied, unsettled. It is one of those movies that doesn’t actually show much physical violence but still is more cruel than most splatter movies I’ve seen. I think what’s so scary about it is:
– that the violence happens without any reason whatsoever (and in that it even goes beyond B.E. Ellis’ ‘Below Zero’ or ‘American Psycho’)
– the v-effect of you being directly adressed from time to time
– and that it doesn’t really let you stick with any of the characters as point of identification. You can’t hide in any of them. You are you, the voyeur that just keeps watching and doesn’t step in.

Of course one could discuss if the moral is too blatant but I don’t think so. The moral is quite obvious (fictitous violence not being really separable from real violence etc.) but FUNNY GAMES shows it in that special pseudo-naive way that’s so typical for quite a few austrian movies, and if you look twice you’ll see a second face, just like in one of those holo-pictures that, viewed from different angles, give you different pictures, and that second view is a glimpse at the deep absurdidity of everything. I recommend it, watch it. Maybe not when you’re home alone at night but watch it.
Oh, and better do so before the US remake is out next year.

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