NEW SONG WITHOUT A PROPER NAME

Stung by gossip and hearsay regarding an apparently ‘awesome’ electro workout by some ‘other’ band, I have laid the groundwork for our own electro epic, based on our own highly regarded Transglade, er, I mean, er, Closed Timelike Circuit(that’ll do)

Download it here (now):

<previous version removed: see below for latest…>

Update: Yes, the mix is a bit busy in places. That’s cos I didn’t have the stems for the guitar & drums, so I’ve just dumped a load of synth on top with nary a care in the world for good mix principles

Update 2: PVK recommends the name First Earth Battalion. I like it.

Update 3: I listend to Muse’s album Black Holes and wotsit. It’s hugely ok in places, but a bit sub-Radiohead overall. And too many Mexican brass section bits.

Update 4: I’ve tidied up the synth riff a bit and bothered to EQ it slightly so the mix isn’t quite so overloaded (it is still is though, yeah!)

Download the latest version here (now!):

First Earth Battlalion

I’m not going to do any more to it, as you guys need to have a play with it (or we jam it) so this is just a sequence of ideas, not necessarily ‘the definitive structure’ or anything.

[note to all and sundry: tracks posted in blog posts like this are 'works in progress'. Feel free to download 'em, but if you want more polished demos, please head over to the box to the right and download those tracks]

Krautrock prog tonight on BBC4!

Huzzah, finally! A documentary about German instrumental progressive rock between 1970-1979. And about time too.

Tonight: BBC4 Krautrock: rebirth of Germany
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nf10k
(tons of great krautrock youtubes on there too)

Following on from last week’s Synth Britannia (which was really only about early 80’s pop music and the bands we are all overfamiliar with these days), I’m really looking to learning some new things tonight.

Despite my claims that On Rails is inspired by Krautrock, I’m not actually a massive obsessive of the rockier end of the genre. I used to listen to Can and Faust a bit, but I don’t know that much about them. And I only heard Neu! and Harmonia for the first time a few years back. (At which point I realised that Stereolab weren’t quite the sonic pioneers I’d previously thought…)

Thinking about it, I was definitely more on the electronic side (surprise!), so was far more obsessive about Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Manuel Gottlieb etc. I expect those guys will get a mention too, but I think the programme will concentrate more on the ‘rockier’ and more experimental bands.

Anyway, am looking forward it.

One caveat: I notice on the programme’s press release they cite Kasabian as influenced by Krautrock. Surely some mistake? They may ’say’ that to get a bit of credibility, but they pump out the same dreary indie-rock as anybody else – and are about as related to interesting music as Robbie Williams. Fuck off Kasabian. And Franz Ferdinand, while we’re at it.

If you want to hear a proper modern band influence by krautrock, listen to On Rails.

Can you see us getting to #1 in the pop charts? EXACTLY!

Our first enthusiastic review!

As a new band it’s great to get the first few positive responses from reviewers – they meant the most – so we were delighted to receive this from official Hype Machine blog, thedecibeltolls.com

We always hoped we’d be described as “fucked-up kraut/electro/experimental/intergalactic instrumental pop”, but we didn’t imagine for one moment it would happen so soon – cheers guys!

I might add that Mr Kenny Bloggins, the reviewer, has his own band  called Meridian Signals, and their Fog track is flipping brilliant: myspace.com/meridiansignals. You should listen to it. Now.

Totally live music

It may look like we use three laptops but we will be playing this stuff as live as we can..promise!

Drawing lines on postcards

A possible idea for graphics that I had.  Old plus Futuristic is responsible for such things as Bladerunner (love), Steampunk (actually I don’t like steampunk), and a general sense of cool melancholy.

White Light White Heat – (mp3 in player)

What the world needs more of, in my opinion, are songs that are sung through vocoders. Here, for example, is the Velvet Underground’s ‘White Light White Heat’ sung though a vocoder.

See what I mean?

Mathomat (mp3 in player)

A ‘Mathomat’ is a geometric tool used by Australian school children. It may well become the cover of our first album.

I (Oli) vetoed Pat’s suggestion to rename the song Mathopat though.

Linear C (mp3 in player)

>Linear C was the very first track to come out of a jam sessions. Pretty much the only think remaining is the synth bass of the chorus. The track is indeed linear, and in the key of C.

To Syracuse (mp3 in player)

Named after an obscure city in Scicily, Syracuse was originally part of the Ancient Greek empire, founded by the Corinthians. Despite Syracuse being near the Ionian Sea, the track is not written in the Ionian mode. Or if it is, it’s a co-incidence. None of the facts about Syracuse relate in any way to the track.

Synth solo!

Broken on the Wheel (mp3 in player)

Named after the saint who gave her name to a firework, BOTW is a motorik grooved funkster, and one of the first tracks written. It was inspired by the same group that Stereolab have based their career on: Neu!