In English

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Artikel: Bo Anders Persson

Jag skriver om Bo Anders Persson i nya numret av Shindig!. #shindig #boanderspersson

Ett foto publicerat av Johan Jacobsson (@johanfredrikjacobsson)

The year is 1966. The season is that tentative limbo that follows fall and precedes winter.
The city is Stockholm.
Through the hallowed halls of the Royal Academy of Music recently admitted student Bo Anders Persson tiptoes to class.
He doesn’t yet know this – of course – but the compositions that he’ll write during the following twelve months are going to cause a sensation in 2014.
This because the always excellent Subliminal Sounds label recently released a double LP called “Love Is Here To Stay” – a collection of Bo Anders’ early works. This because “Love Is Here To Stay” is absolutely amazing. Its seven tracks – all but one previously unreleased – are all suggestive, thought-provoking and profound. Within their doom laden drones, Terry Riley-esque tape loops and expressive wordless vocals one finds both dystopian nightmares and organic beauty.

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Intervju: James Donadio (Prostitutes)

I thought we should begin by talking about A Day in the Desert II.
– I played on a little plateau, a natural amphitheatre made out of stone. It was like a pagan ritual. There were lasers … It was almost too intense. There were a billion green lights everywhere. It was so dark; it was a little bit cloudy that night so there wasn’t much moon. Basically it was pitch black with a bunch of green dots flying around. I couldn’t see the audience, I couldn’t tell if they were sitting or standing … I couldn’t even tell if they were there!
Ideally, what kind of audience reaction are you hoping for?
– [laughs] Anything more than bottles being thrown … The audience at A Day in the Desert wasn’t really my audience; there was a much more free love mellow vibe which is not really where I’m from or who I play to usually. I’m used to playing on the floor of dingy dark basements with people right in my face, and to be on this big stone stage in this giant vast desert with some faces out in the darkness – it was more like an out of body experience than a show.
Did you enjoy the experience?
– Oh, it was excellent. A friend of mine lives in Los Angeles, we went together. He drove me out there. We both had an incredible time. I live in Cleveland you know, just all that open space…
When ‘Sup Magazine approached you and asked you if you’d like to play at A Day in the Desert, what were your first thoughts?
– My first thought was “why the hell are you asking me?” My second thought was “absolutely, yes.” I didn’t even think twice about it. It was a great opportunity to do something that I usually don’t do.
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Linernotes: Pistol Disco

I have tried to capture Pistol Disco in words before.
  I have compared them to Xinlisupreme, Suicide and Spacemen 3. I have taken my laptop outside and fought alongside their sounds in hypothetical riots. I have torn pages from my own boring diary to shreds in a vain attempt to force relations between an indifferent public and their records. I have banged my head against the wall and poured coffee over my already twitching fingers…
  …yes, I have tried nothing and everything to make Pistol Disco appear as text.
  But so far I’ve failed. Failed miserably.
  Perhaps this is because I’m not a good enough writer? Or perhaps this is because Pistol Disco is one of those bands that simply defy easy categorization? One of those bands that must be heard to be understood?
  You tell me.
  Anyway, what I’m getting at is – of course – that Pistol Disco was fucking amazing. When I first heard them in 2005 I fell unequivocally in love. Here was a two person gang driven by a righteous anger, an all consuming frustration and a keen sense of beauty, rhythm and noise – marry me? And when I put this compilation together – a total honour, by the way – I fell in love with them all over again.
  A rare thing indeed. Some artists enter your life with a bang and leave it with a whimper. Most artists disappoint you sooner or later. Pistol Disco, though, they never let me down. They were there when I needed them. They always delivered the electricity and passion I craved. They were, as I said, always fucking amazing. Even right up to the very end.
  So let us not mourn Pistol Disco, let us instead celebrate them. Because what you hold in your hand – dear buyer – is a piece of the massive puzzle that was Pistol Disco. Cherish it forever, play it extremely loud, let it heal whatever ails you.
  Or, more succinctly; enough of my trials and tribulations in the world of letters.
  Enough of my opinions.
  Now it’s up to you. Presenting: Pistol Disco.

Pressrelease: Scott Mou

Is beauty an inherently melancholic thing?
  Do certain frequencies trigger certain memories?
  Can longing comfort you? Can distance act as a mediator for intimacy?

Questions prompted by “End Times”, Scott “Queens” Mou’s latest full length.

Because “End Times” is, on the one hand, something of a conundrum. The way its songs are constructed out of opposites – light/darkness, movement/stillness, life/death – is remarkable, puzzling. The fact that whenever you listen to it lost loves and lost times begins to act and react in front of you – naked skin, summer nights, vacant eyes, falling rain, fateful tarmac – is an almost magical fact. And the taste it leaves you with – a taste of both ecstasy and sorrow – is intoxicatingly unexplainable.

Suffice to say, “End Times” is a remarkable record.

Sure, Scott has made albums similar to “End Times” before. As Jane – a project he had together with Noah “Panda Bear” Lennox – he for instance realized a handful of releases between the years 2002 and 2005. One of these – 2005’s “Berserker” – was brought out in both LP and CD format by the mighty Paw Tracks label, but most were CD-Rs/objets d’art sold only at Other Music, the record store where Scott and Noah used to work.

In Jane, Scott and Noah paid homage to and expanded upon the rhythms and soundscapes created by the techno vanguard. The lion’s share of their material was recorded in Scott’s apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn on cheap equipment – an approach that added extra layers of sincerity and spontaneity to their slow burning dance lullabies.

This approach – this self-made creativity – is also evident on “End Times”. Whenever “Berserker” flows out of your speakers you feel like you’re right there with Scott and Noah; that guitars, drums and vocals are being laid down in front of you, in real time. But “End Times” is even more direct; whenever it flows out of your speakers you’re in Scott’s head.

A wonderful place to be.

A place that gives you all the answers you need.

Because “End Times” is, on the other hand, very straight forward. If you’d like you could put on your music journalist hat and call it an original amalgamation of past works; if you can somehow imagine a mixture between John Fahey’s “The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death” and “Womblife” and Deathprod’s “Treetop Drive” you’d kind of get its gist.
  But.
  The main reason “End Times” is so amazing, so wonderful, so intelligent, so passionate, so cinematic, so enigmatic is because Scott Mou did it. Simple as that. Remarkable people makes remarkable records. The questions that opened this text will keep hanging in the air…

…until the next Queens’ album.