Κυριακή 29 Απριλίου 2018

"weivretnI setaB nhoJ giB" (lastdaydeaf.com)

Big John Bates


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Somewhere in Canada, there is a guy who mixes rustic punk, thrash metal, garage rock, americana noir and Southern gothic. His name is …big! Actually, his name is Big John Bates. From the first note of any single, you’ll find yourself moving your leg along with the rhythm, and after a while, you’ll catch yourself dancing in a weird way! He is the guy who can take you off to his world, but he is not promising that he will bring you back, he is just Big John Bates.
Hello Big John! We see in your music you play styles like southern gothic, garage rock and Americana, etc. Could you tell us as the introductory question how do you describe your music?
We have been calling our sound americana noir since Brandy Bones coined the phrase back in 2012. Around 2010 we were messing around with rustic punk but I think we’ve refined our songwriting since then and it is less of a verse chorus verse and more of a flow. Our drummer Ty-Ty came up with the concept of “what does the song want?” and, though Brandy and I create the song skeletons on our own, we have followed that idea pretty faithfully when we are fleshing things out as a group. Our topics are earthy and real, our settings are more rural than urban and our vision for the band follows the songs.
Your music has had some alterations all these years, from B.J.B: Noirchestra Americana to B.J.B and the Voodoo Dollz psychobilly. Did it happen by chance, or was it something that you did on purpose, or is it just that you are getting older?
The Voodoo Dollz group was all based around a show, like a psychobilly Alice Cooper. As time went on I noticed more burleseque in cities we had been playing for years and it didn’t seem as special to keep doing it. Also Brandy had joined in 2009 and we began moving in a different direction with our songwriting. We wanted to do musical pieces that were more orchestral and deeper so we folded the Dollz in 2010 and started experimenting as a trio for a couple of years. By 2012 we felt it had taken on a new life but the Big John Bates name was well known so our management thought we should continue using a form of it. We began playing as a quartet, with tuba/keys, mandolin then cellists and now with a post-rock violinist (RequiEmily), but the Noirchestra was born from the string section. It’s now actually closer to the metal I was playing when I was younger than psychobilly I think.

From your first band Annihilator’s thrash metal to Big John Bates garage rock and southern gothic etc. is a big step in regards to music style. Why did you choose to make your sound “lighter” than thrash metal?
When I was in Annihilator I was listening to a lot of different music – I still do as I get a lot of inspiration from musical history. I was very involved in the early Annihilator songwriting; writing melodies and helping Jeff with arrangements and picking riffs for songs like ‘Alison Hell‘, ‘I am In Command‘, ‘Welcome To Your Death‘ etc. I was listening to a lot of heavy stuff like SlayerVenomMetallica and Celtic Frost so it just made sense. The later songs I co-wrote like ‘King Of The Kill‘ were more just writing lyrics over the music Jeff chose and he is generally not drawn to music as dark as I prefer (though he does continue to write some very tasty stuff.) Anyway that all led to a fascination with punk-esque bands like the Dead KennedysThe Cramps, swing and early blues when I was deep into garage rock, so you can see the progression. Sometime in the 90’s I stumbled across 16 Horsepower and added a few of their ideas to my sound palate. Basically I don’t really see our current sound as lighter – in some ways it’s much heavier than it’s ever been – but it’s all different shades of black.
Are there any groups that you liked and influenced your music as B.J.B.?
These days I think Brandy and I are both influenced by more experimental and sound-scape groups like WovenhandRussian CirclesSwansTarantellaAlcest, some black metal and even some folk sounds like The Decemberists.
‘Amerkin’ is a song that doesn’t sound so familiar like the rest of your songs. It could easily be included in A Silver Mt. Zion or Fly Pan Am album. Can you tell us how this song came up?
Amerkin‘ is one of my favorite songs to play live – I wish it was 20 minutes long. Brandy came up with a bass riff and the idea of having a sort of Godspeed You! Black Emperor style build to it but we didn’t have a lot of time to develop the song, we literally wrote it in the studio. I just tried to draw it out with a twangy guitar and a spaghetti western feel and build it into a simple chord change. But man, her screams are so epic – when I first heard them I was blown away.

I see that you haven’t made a lot of videos available on the net (I’m not talking about live ones, nor audio ones) but in these I’ve seen, you are trying to pass the atmosphere of your songs and you are doing that in a very cool way. Tell us if you are about to share more videos and what these videos will add to your music?
So far we have done videos with friends of ours that are filmmakers with similar vision to ourselves (we did two with Reverend Blackclaw at The Helm) but we are always interested in adding sound to vision. We have our songs in a few movies and TV shows as well. Brandy tends to push us towards the vignette style of film as opposed to a standard story-boarded video as you can see from what we have on YouTube.
Your latest lp (‘From The Bestiary To The Leathering Room‘) got released 3 years ago, in 2015. Is this period of time long enough so that to wait soon for your next record? If so, can you provide us with some information?
Brandy and I have slowly written over the past 3 years but we haven’t wanted to rush anything as we wanted to make sure the direction was natural and we had time to find the right people to work with. We definitely took a few wrong turns before we found our way. The Bestiary LP has a few different drummers and people from different touring groups, which is cool as it had a lot of different feels but she and I had slightly different visions for it. The four of us currently in the Noirchestra have played together for a few years now and have toured Europe, North America and Japan – we even recorded some tracks in Kyoto with Ultra Bide. We are planning on recording most of the bed tracks for the next album in Wilhelmshaven (Germany) with our friends from TRÜMMER while we are on tour in July/August 2018. We will finish the album on board the Caleuche when we are back in Vancouver and I foresee the LP coming out in Spring 2019.
I know that writing songs, singing and playing the guitar makes you an one man show. Which one do you think is the most important, the one you cannot stop doing?
The one thing that I do without thinking is play my guitar. I have been playing since I was 15, though it wasn’t long before I started singing and writing songs. I think I developed a somewhat unique style of playing but I always prefer to have a partner in songwriting, to bounce things off or get ideas from or whatever – Jeff in Annihilator, sCare-oline in the Voodoo Dollz and Brandy in the Noirchestra have been the most important people to me.
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Nowadays we see that music industry but also society has changed a lot. When does a group get more famous now, through live shows, through videos, or through internet?
I think bands have to give people something special, an experience or feeling, to get noticed and live is the best way to do that. I doubt anyone is really looking through most live bands looking for a hit – those are for pop groups and that is industry not artistry – a great live band has a sound and creates a unique atmosphere. Online playlists are great to find new things as well – I wish there were more of them for music like ours. Video is a terrific way to share music with people and the Internet is a good way to interact with people. I think you need all of these elements to succeed even in the most modest way.
For the last question, I would like to tell us which albums of yours do you like most, and which are your favourite bands?
My favourite record of ours is the ‘Headless Fowl‘ EP, maybe because it was the first one to see the light of day and signify the style change. It still feels very fresh to me and it was mixed by Robert Ferbrache, who worked with 16 Horsepower, Tarantella and our friend Slim Cessna. We kept our favorite first 6 songs for that record and released it on our own label. My favorite bands these days are the groups that put on intense live shows, Nick Cave for instance, The Black Angels are really good as well.
Photo credits: David Jacklin
Konstantinos Pamfiliss

"tsilyalp 8102 gnirpS noitalletsnoC si sihT" (lastdaydeaf.com)

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Σάββατο 14 Απριλίου 2018

"tseN s'ookcuC ehT revO welF enO - namroF soliM" (lastdaydeaf.com)


10 definitive stills – One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Director: Miloš Forman


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In memory of Miloš Forman (18 February 1932 – 13 April 2018)
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Πέμπτη 12 Απριλίου 2018

"etioN - ogadreuM eD ergnaS" (lastdaydeaf.com)





Sangre De Muerdago – ‘Noite’
(Sick Man Getting Sick Records / Neuropa Records / Música Máxica, 2018)


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Deep in the woods of Galicia there is a place where goblins live. It’s true, although no one has seen them. These goblins make music, music that can show us what (or where) the truth we are looking for is. Of course I’m talking about a Pablo C. Ursusson’s project: Sangre De Muerdago.
In their latest CD with the title ‘Noite‘ (means “Night”) we hear their familiar sound, their haunted melodies, with the escort of sad but optimistic vocals. As in all their records so far, you can see how vocals and music become one, but still you can see their uniqueness.
For me, ‘Noite‘ is a record that takes human feelings and transforms them into music. In these 12 songs, you can see your life in a way you had never seen before. You can see you’re hiding secrets, but above all, you can see your truth. You can feel yourself travelling towards you. Of course S.D.M. doesn’t claim that we might like the truth, they claim that the journey will be interesting. And this journey is!
From the first song ‘Medianoite‘ we start to float into this ‘Noite‘.  The opener is an instrumental song, a prologue to all the best things (tracks) to come.
This is just the start of this inner trip, a trip to the dark forest or to the dark corners of our own selves. Even in their previous records I had this same feeling. I knew that, even back then, their music was to me something like magic, or mystery stories from a forest somewhere in the world, or …close to home.
The second song ‘Xuramento‘ could easily speak for a lost love, a love that we’ll never forget, even if that love was only in our mind and never in our reality.
But as life has its brightest moments, so does ‘Noite‘. Songs like ‘Roubando o Viño do Fauno‘, ‘Lume de Solsticio‘ and ‘Mariñeiros‘ with their powerful music take us to a place where intense colors and the bright sun prevail. All these tracks are instrumental, but we can add the lyrics we like as we stand in this sunny place.
In the rest of the tracks, we see their familiar ritual folk, this atmospheric feeling which is produced by sad violas and flutes (amongst others), the exotic sound of the guitar with the soft sound of harp and the vocals of the forest fairies singing their chants.
The last track of the album (‘O Amor‘) is an epic close, where vocals and music stand as one in the beginning of the track, just to leave later vocals have their place in the music, just to leave us with bittersweet feelings, but full of hope.
Of course I understand S.D.M. music is something subjective, but —at the end of the day— what is music? Music is the sound of us, of what we are, of what we ever wanted to be. Comparing this album with their previous full-length ‘O Camiño das Mans Valeiras‘, I can see that their journey continues. We don’t know when it’s going to end; we only know that we can let ourselves join them, because life after all is a fairytale, a S.D.M. fairytale of goblins in a dark forest somewhere.
Konstantinos Pamfiliss

Τετάρτη 11 Απριλίου 2018

"selpatS ennovY" (lastdaydeaf.com)

Spring 2018 playlists : Yvonne Staples perfroms Gospel songs from Heaven – A tribute to late gospel/soul singer


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Δευτέρα 2 Απριλίου 2018

"18# epatxiM" (lastdaydeaf.com


Mixtape#81, (31/03/2018)


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  1. Khruangbin – ‘Evan Finds The Third Room
A beautiful band from Houston, Texas, Khruangbin (stands for ‘engine fly’), that “We found the happiest lady in China. We told her that you don’t need a real hula hoop to have fun. She agreed” (Josh King, one of the director trio), resulting in one of the most feel-good music videos in years. You can find ‘Evan Finds The Third Room‘ from their latest album ‘Con Todo El Mundo‘.
Christos Doukakis
  1. Sangre De Muerdago – ‘A Danza das Ánimas
This song is a music fairy-tale. It’s been sang not from an elf, but from a band called Sangre De Muerdago.  S.D.M. music is for dreamers, for those who have “eyes in their heart”, for those who live in this planet but in their own way. Their upcoming album ‘Noite‘  maybe is their best work to date. It will be released on April 20th.
Konstantinos Pamfiliss

  1. Varathron – ‘Into The Absurd’
Varathron, one of the most significant black metal acts in Greece which along with Rotting Christ and Necromantia form the “Unholy Trinity” of Greek black metal, have a long history since 1988. Although, Stefan Necroabyssious is the only remaining original member, the band has managed to grow its reputation. On April  27th Varathron release their sixth album ‘Patriarchs Of Evil‘ via Agonia Records.
Mary Kalaitzidou

  1. PRODUCT – ‘Holographic Rebirth
Off of the newly released 10-track album ‘Smoke Cloud Hologram‘, Connecticut-based rapper, PRODUCT’s ‘Holographic Rebirth‘ is just over two minutes of throbbing beats and crashing vocals. ‘Rebirth’ melds together the industrial, rap, and electronic worlds in a way that’s reminiscent of Moor Mother or Dedekind Cut. Featuring a stomping outro that brings to mind a robotic giant’s footsteps, the track is one of the standouts of the LP.
Sarah Medeiros
  1. Jo Passed – ‘Millennial Trash Blues
The indie rock band Jo Passed from Vancouver shared a new video for ‘Millenial Trash Blues‘ of their upcoming debut album ‘Their Prime‘. The album is out on 25th May via one of our favorites record labels Sup Pop. Their music doesn’t lack of experimentation featuring some cool genre-mixing like punk, neo-psychedelia and noise. The cult video that is directed by Justin Gradin is the perfect visualization of their new track. Enjoy!
Eleftheria Gesou

Compiled by Christos Doukakis, Konstantinos Pamfiliss, Mary Kalaitzidou, Sarah Medeiros & Eleftheria Gesou