“Like a rainbow in the dark” – Elektronisch Rocken, birthday, NONONO

“I cry for magic …
Like a Rainbow in the Dark”
DIO
The last weekend was wonderful. On Friday I was still fiddling about with my live set for Saturday till late night, kicking out one track I suddenly didn’t like anymore, accidentally cutting up other tracks by making some stupid mistakes. Cleaning the mess up seemed to take ages. I hardly made it to Elektronisch Rocken before midnight. Then I got into a little birthday euphoria and drank far too much and mixed far too many different drinks. Sick of freezing I had rummaged out my fake fur jacket so the time outside smoking has become comfy again. The Näd Mika gig and the rest of the party was a bit of a blur. A nice blur though. Thanks for the presents and the cake and the nice music!

Oh, and I do remember that some assholes tried to steal a guitar amp with such brazenness that it still makes speechless. I hate it when such idiots turn an open friendly space like the Zentralcafé into just another place where you better constantly keep your eye on your stuff.

I went home late and woke up too early with a terrible hangover. Birthday calls and txtmsgs cheered me up a bit but the whole day I was so slow-mo, it’s embarrassing. In the afternoon I picked up Johannes and Jool who had djed till 6 in the morning and we drove to Leipzig. The drive was fun cause we all were a bit beneath ourselves and sniggered hysterically at the smallest things… at road signs, at windmills, at the new TV On The Radio album (I’m usually not the type to wish someone a bit more woe in their lives but if I knew that would make TV On The Radio go back to their old haunting sound aesthetic and heartbreaking weltschmerz melodies I’m afraid I secretly would. On the new album they are all about funky breaks and Prince and Bowie and horn sections and I don’t yet know where else to look for the perfect saddo autumn album. It might be a decent album but coming from TV On The Radio it disappoints me. Musical progress is overrated. Especially if it leads to dusty old school funk.)

Well, of course at some point we got lost. The day on which I drive to another town and don’t get lost has yet to come. Except for Munich’s Kafe Kult, my car knows that way. This time it happened because none of us had thought of a map and the autobahn was blocked and we took a wrong turn when we left it. We asked for the way at a gas station on the outskirts of Leipzig at which a rock’n’roll band playing to an invisible crowd behind of the station building made for a strange sight. One of the things we were told to look out for to find our way was the Völkerdenkmal.

Of course we drove clear past without recognizing it. Unbelievable.

When we arrived at the club it already was pretty late and I was in a total daze. Eva and Wally were there, which was a sweet surprise. I did a quick soundcheck, gave the cute lit-from-below-dancefloor an ‘aaaaw!’,  got supercool glow-in-the-dark-space-invader-wallstickers as birthday gift from Nicole and our host Zacker, had a short soundcheck and off we were for dinner. A really good dinner. Although my stomach still felt a bit raddled. It’s a pretty big stomach. Just so you can imagine my suffering.

When we arrived back at the venue it was already past midnight and I got a bit excited and spent the time till my show alternating between inside (enjoying Nikolaj Tange Lange’s dj set and contemplating how good a fag would taste) and outside (chatting nervously and contemplating how good a drink would taste).Club culture 2008 my ass.
The NO NO NO crowd wasn’t as colourful and wild and gendercrossing as you might imagine it at a queer night but you can’t force that. It was a really good atmosphere, people were totally up for dancing and that’s worth a lot. My set went down well as far I can tell. It was fun for me, that’s what I can say for sure. I only had some minor glitches. I still have to get used to that touchpad. The whole tenseness and concentratedness and getting lost in music and singing is so good. And of course the feeling after too, better than a dozen aspirins: As if a perfect wave has washed away any troubling and stressful feelings. I’m definitely up for doing more live sets again.

We spend some more happy hours at the No No No night. Zacker  turned out to be a very nice host and person. He has already send us some pictures of the night that Nora Nalog took. Some of them you can see here and I have uploaded some more to my myspace photo section.

The Elektronisch Rocken boys proved that they can work their magic on the turntables two nights in a row without sounding repetitive. It was a fun and diverse set. Jool even played The Cramps which caused at least a millisecond break for Johannes to come up with a follow-up track. So much for seamless mixing anytime anywhere! 😉
Oh, and I also liked that there were lines from ‘Blind’ by Hercules & Love Affair pinned up all over the venue.

While standing outside smoking some guy outside told us funny tales about how he can’t stand it when djs destroy classic songs by adding beats or bits of other songs because to him that sounds as if they thought they were better than the original artists. OMG-sacrilege-alarmz! I politely pitied him a bit while truly pitying his take on music but when he went on boring Wally and me with some story about spice cake (the Nürnberg equivalent of boring a Munich person with some Octoberfest tale) we were more than thankful when suddenly Miss Kleenex popped up and wiped him from the scene just as nonchalant as if she would brush some dust of her hoodie. A true saviour. Her stories about how people don’t get why she wears a glowinthedark beard with her tranny looks, and about the lack of freaks in Leipzig, and about filming some gangsta rappers in some other town were clearly more refreshing.

We also met an old acquaintance who had moved to Leipzig years ago and just had been left by her girlfriend after a seven year relationship. That reminded me of how usually I tend to feel a bit lonely on birthdays. You know: cause we’re trained to see it as one of those ‘special days’, like x-mas etc. that you should spend with your ‘loved ones’ or at least pay them a visit. And since I haven’t had a partner in quite a while and both my parents are dead I got no ‘socially acceptable loved ones’ and sometimes on such days that makes Pavlov’s conservative-middle-class-childhood-dog raise its greyed head inside of mine. Well, luckily I’m more of a cat person and this year I had such a good time with friends that I clean forgot about that until I got someone else’s loneliness rubbed in. Maybe because I got even two birthday cakes. And books. And cute unicorns. And Earl Grey. And lots of glittery make up stuff. I still can’t figure if it’s good or bad that Eva said she could have made her 10 year old niece just as happy with exactly the same set of gifts…
I didn’t make it till the very end of No No No but it was pretty late when I said goodbye and walked over to my cozy hostel room and exhaustion made me sleep as good as I hadn’t slept for a week. On the next day we had a long breakfast at some café and then I drove home with Wally which was nice because we hadn’t chatted that long in quite a while. I’ve enjoyed the long drives so much that I’m seriously tempted to drive to the AUXES show in Munich tonight.

* _ *

I’ve installed a soundcard on my new computer and finally had the chance to start listening to some music I had been curious about. I can’t stand the sacral experimental side of EXTRA LIFE. I listened my way through the whole album but it makes me sick. Maybe the many hours I had to spend at catholic church in my childhood have spoiled me for that sound. If it comes to music with faux-esoteric parts the new AN ALBATROSS album rules my heart.
Hearing the first song of it on Myspace I’ve come up with the DAUGHTERS comparison just like others. It fits as far as both are attention-deficit-noise-core bands whose singers went from screamo-vocals to a more shouty Dave Yow (Jesus Lizard) approach. Apart from that you can’t compare those bands. What I really love about DAUGHTERS is their gutwreching misanthropy and I can’t hear any of that in AN ALBATROSS. It’s like comparing a well-shaken Mai Tai to a bubbling hot tub. (I leave it up to your imagination which band is which.) The new AN ALBATROSS breathes a lot of rock and bombast but in a good way. Even the huge horn sections work wonderfully with their organladen aggressive take on punk. You can hear some grindcore and screamo, you can hear some psychedelic rock and even a bit of cinematic postrock and classic metal but they’ve found their own grownup way of melting those into an impressive, tight and very unique sound.
Another album I like is THE NIGHT MARCHERS’ ‘See You In Magic’. It’s a solid new gloomy rock album by a new Speedo (Hot Snakes, Rocket From The Crypt, Drive Like Jehu) band. It doesn’t get anywere near the rip-your-heart-out intensity of Hot Snakes though. The non-rickrolled-SOULWAX-rmx of MGMT’s ‘Kids’ is wonderful. With each new track I somehow wait for the Soulwax style to get stale but somehow they still got the magic. I like MGMT‘s take on pop too, that helps. I had missed decent big screen mainstream pop hits with earworm quality and a trashglamfactor and they fill that blank. Like listening to Scissor Sisters’ ‘Comfortably Numb’ for the first time. I’ve also finally found out what the cute fantasy style of their clip for ‘Time To Pretend’ reminds me of. Compare yourself:

MGMT clip:

NENEH CHERRY clips:
‘Buffalo Stance’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EQCOshGwPI
‘Man Child’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U7_19kWuDs

And what I really love youtube for is that it even has a clip of something so rare as RIP RIG & PANIC, an early 80s postpunk band by NENEH and some members of THE POP GROUP.

That’s it for today from me.
I can’t believe I’ve written so much.

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