“We laugh at your empty ideas” – Castrop radio show playlist + ORCHID tomorrrrooooww!

“Old ideas from another place
Trying to tell us what we’re supposed to be about
Don’t try to define what my life is supposed to mean to me
We laugh at your empty ideas of
What hardcore means” Limp Wrist

Sooo… here’s the playlist of yesterday’s CASTROP. It’s weird, there are some weeks when I find it hard to find enough songs that thrill me enough to combine them and stories about them into a music+chitchat radio show and others, like this week, where I could have filled three hours.

Castrop on Radio Z
Playlist 5th of March 2009

CHAIRLIFT – evident utensil (MGMT rmx)
I like this version more than the original because of all the little extra sound sample thingies it sounds less sterile, a bit more organic.

Lost.FM (Seppo & Quirin’s new show on Radio Z) had a test run for it last week-end and I really hope they will be allowed to go on with it cause it was the perfect Sunday afternoon entertainment. There was just one thing I can’t let go without a counter airplay: Mr. Defect dared to prefer the – no matter how much I love them for their other stuff, and I really love Xiu Xiu’s music, even if I’m disappointed by their tour policy as since their show in 2004 we tried but couldn’t get them to play Nuremberg again… the usual ‘the city’s too small, to uninteresting for media etc.’ blabla – but back to Mr. Defect: he preferred the mediocre Xiu Xiu cover of ‘Under Pressure’ to the Blood Brothers’ version. As for Xiu Xiu I think the best cover they have done so far is “Ceremony”.
With the BB ‘Under Pressure’ cover I love how the whole pathos of the Queen/Bowie original doesn’t get lost but gets translated into the hectic screamo-emo-chaospop-hardcore cosmos of the Blood Brothers. Some news from there: Jaguar Love – the follow up band of parts of the Blood Brothers – has dropped their drummer and Cody Votalot and Johnny Whitney will proceed as a slightly more electronic duo now.


XIU XIU – Ceremony
BLOOD BROTHERS – Under Pressure

This cover version is released on a compilation that has just got republished in blue vinyl in a limited edition. It’s called ‘Dynamite with a lazer beam – Queen heard through the meat grinder of 31G’. 31G being the label that has released it. I also love Weasel Walter’s version of ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ that’s on it.

31G is the label of Justin Pearson of The Locust and Some Girls, or ex-Some Girls as they called it quits, and he has a new band project too. His bazillionst new band. It’s called All Leather and Nathan Joyner who also played in Some Girls is in it too. The first All Leather record will be released on Steve Aoki‘s Dim Mak label. That might ring the drugspoiledpartyhipster alaram for some people but let’s not forget Dim Mak also has released bands like Planes Mistaken For Stars, Monochrome (yes the german band) and Pretty Girls Make Graves (I think I remember Aoki even accompanying them and doing merch table on their tour when they played at the Hüttenschänke and K4). That All Leather album is not out yet but this song from their myspace is better than nothing and already makes me want to hear more:

ALL LEATHER – I don’t hate fags, God does

LILLY ALLEN feat. MICK JONES – Straight To Hell

I confess I have a weak spot for Lilly Allen and the way she mingles fluffy pink candyfloss pop music with at least halfway conscious lyrics on her album makes me hope that one day she will become the next and better Kylie Minogue. This cover version and the next two can be found on a compilation called ‘Heroes’ by War Child. War Child is an organisation that cares for children that have become victims of war. Those children often get marginalised and socially outcast, they are poor and live and work on the street, or suffer as child soldiers or in prisons. To better their situation War Child tries to raise some money. To do so they have gotten lots of pop music legends – thank god no Bono or Geldof – to get their songs covered by nowadays darlings: There’s Blondie’s ‘Call Me’ covered by Franz Ferdinand, Joy Division’s ‘Transmission’ by Hot Chip, The Stooges’ ‘Search & Destroy’ by Peaches and TV On The Radio cover what you could call the compilation’s title track.

TV ON THE RADIO – Heroes

Well, it doesn’t sound that bad. Still I find it kind of sad that you could bet that if they would have covered this song back in their ‘Staring at the Sun’ days they would have made an awesome tearing-yr-heart out version of it while this just sounds…  okay, or let’s say: professional

I’ve picked yet another track of the War Child compilation. The Scissor Sisters come back to what it was perfectly okay to love them for when they appeared out of nowhere with “Comfortably Numb”: a nice little mirror ball disco pop cover version. Cheesy OTT disco pop trash. I like that.

SCISSOR SISTERS – Do The Strand

There’s a new tune by queer electrogrime-duo The Fagget Fairys from Denmark. The Fagget Fairie are the ladies MC Ena and DJ Sensimilla. Sensimilla has been a dj since years and was also an active part of a music-art-fashion-collective called Art Rebels of which I’ve read a nice explanatory subtitle that said something like ‘middle-aged dykes dancing like thugs’.

Last year the Fagget Fairys had a blog hit with Uzela and some critics called them a hype and dissed them as one hit wonders that just make a few beats and sugar them up with sexy moaning vocals and that’s how they get themselves into the spotlight. I actually don’t think so. Not every lezzy couple that goes sexy in the spotlights necessarily does a Tatu. In my opinion they really stand out because of their sounds not just being ‘some beats and synths’. There’s a lot of lo-fi queer electro out there whereas the Fagget Fairies sound fresh and well-produced.

FAGGET FAIRYS – feed the horse

This Saturday we’ll have the third edition of the ORCHID night at the K4 and I’m excited and nervous and yet somehow I know it has to become a great night because quite a few people told me how much they look forward to it but I can’t get rid of negative thinking. Like ‘i won’t find time to make enough fake moustaches’ and ‘no one will turn up’ and ‘there will be technical problems’ and ‘the music we’ll play won’t please the people’ … you know the kind of sorrows that instantly are forgotten as soon as the first 50 people fill the room and start dancing. I wonder if everybody who puts up parties gets nervous like this even if it’s the hundredth night she or he hosts. So – please feel invited and come over and have a good time.

I’ve invited guests this time: KATJA GUSTAFSSON of the swedish queer party Combustion will be there as a dj and me too.

And we have a live band for you too: I HEART SHARKS, a quirky electro indie band with guys from London and Berlin.

I HEART SHARKS – Kino

Another band that I will be happy to finally get a chance to see live is coming to Europe in June: Limp Wrist, the poster boy queercore band. Or I should rather say: the poster bear queercore band per se. AFAIK the show closest to Nuremberg will be at the Komma in Esslingen on the 28th of June. Limp Wrist are a hardcore band that has existed since 1998 and whose members have played in bands like Los Crudos and Kill The Man Who Questions before that. This is a Limp Wrist song about not letting other people’s empty ideas of the hardcore scene spoil what it is for you.

LIMP WRIST – Define
Los Crudos, among other things the former band of Limp Wrist’s singer, were a band that always stressed their hispanic background and sang almost all of their songs in spanish. Their lyrics were about a broad range of political problem fields, from the rights of immigrants to police violence or homophobia. In Limp Wrist on the other everything is focussed on gay subjects: there are songs against homophobic tv christians, about dissociation from mainstream rainbow gay culture or also from homophobia in the actually rather homo erotic hardcore punk scene. In the early two thousands Limp Wrist got a bit quiet with members living in different states but since 2006 there’s been new signs of life from them, even a new 7″ release and like I’ve mentioned now they will finally tour Europe.

LIMP WRIST – Angry Queen
Sometimes it’s a bit sad that only certain bands get remembered for a niche scene, that’s why I’ve also picked an equally pissed-off song by another queer core band, The Mukilteo Fairies. AFAIK they’ve only existed for a year around 1993 but they had a couple of releases, for example on Kill Rock Stars, and an equally extroverted singer as Limp Wrist. And what sadly still is the exception if it comes to hardcore or grindcore bands: they even had a female in their band.

MUKILTEO FAIRIES – Queer enough for you

One of the Mukilteo Fairies might ring a bell if I tell you the name: Jason Reese. Today you might know him as the drummer and sometimes singer of And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead who have just released a new album, ‘Century Of Self’. It debauches in pompous rock and emo-melodic-noisecorepunk, and I don’t know what to make of it. I like it better than all their Beatles-spooning albums but I think they will never manage to touch me again as they have with their ‘Madonna’ album.

…TRAIL OF DEAD – Far Pavillions

There’s a new Thermals track. w00t! They have a new single out, with the title track of their album and a few other songs, demos and a non-album-track, and they have switched from Sub Pop to Kill Rock Stars for their new release and I can’t wait for it. The Body The Blood The Machine still is one of my favourite albums and I really really hope their next one will live up to it. Kill Rock Stars kindly offers the song for free download on their website but of course I suggest you go buy the record too because The Thermals as well as Kill Rock Stars deserve it.

THE THERMALS
– Now You Can See

It has been produced by none other than John Congleton, the singer and guitarist of another favourite band of mine, The Paper Chase.

As last song for this episode I’ve chosen a track by Agikakaluna!, a cool gameboy musician from around here whom you might remember from playing at the M TO THE V FEST in January and you can see him live with Dagatil today at the Raum 4 in Fürth. Oh, and after that show I recommend the new house/deeptechno night of the Elektronischen Rocken bwoys: Pumping Velvet at the Desi!

AGIKAKALUNA! – 80080080

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