December 22, 2010
Cult With No Name – Adrenalin (Trakwerx)
“Adrenalin” is the fourth studio album from London duo, Cult With No Name (aka Erik Stein and Jon Boux). Its electronic backed tunes move through stark piano-led delicacies - “This Time (Or Any Other)”, “The Way You’re Looking At Me”, “Gone” – through the trip-hop, electro, washed-out balladry of “Adrenalin”, via the slow paced disco of “The All Dead Burlesque Show” and “Breathing”, before closing with the glitchy beats of “Make A List!” and “Generation That’s”. On the way through there are influences from Pet Shop Boys and David Sylvian worn on their sleeves and a slight smattering of psychedelia, such as the phase-heavy “7”, and “Youlogy” having a comfortable numbness about it.
The overall subtlety (extending even to the pink and silver foil embossed sleeve) tends to distract from the moments of sexual desire and transgressive lyrics but the desolate and deep blue “-7” more than makes up for that.
www.cultwithnoname.com
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'Lies-all-lies-all-lies' from 'Adrenalin' has been nominated for the listener charts at Music World Radio.
Vote for it here...
"Music World Radio Top Choons"
The Alternative chart at Music World Radio is
presented live on air every Friday night - a guarantee for airplay to every track that makes it to the Top20. A wide selection of nominations are equally given a spin on air during the chart show - and over the week by all the MWR DJs.
To purchase a physical copy and hear audio samples of this amazing new release by Cult With No Name go to the MMG, Inc. Shop. The limited edition disc is packaged in a stunning foil stamped cover in various colors. Hand assembled with no 2 sleeves alike, only 200 copies were produced so this should be a collector's item.
Terrascope Rumbles July 2010
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Countrymuziek op Dark Entries? Nu ja, dit is niet zomaar het relaas van een losgelopen cowboy maar wel de nieuwste release van 17 Pygmies en mensen die een beetje hun weg kennen in de Amerikaanse post-punkscene weten meteen dat dit één van de meest baanbrekende groepen uit het genre is. Het begon allemaal toen in 1982 één van de Savage Republic-leden (Philip Drucker) samen met twee andere gasten in één of andere garage wat begon te jammen. 17 Pygmies wordt terecht vaak in één adem genoemd met deze postpunkgoden uit het Zuiden van Californië, maar toch was hun post-punkaanpak iets anders. Het bekendste voorbeeld hiervan is hun klassieker “Jedda by the sea” waarin ze de Joy Division-podtpunkinvloeden gingen vermengen met Braziliaanse sambaritmes. Ondanks enkele sporadische opnames werd 17 Pygmies niet meer dan een herinnering te worden van muziekfanaten die zeer goed wisten dat deze band garant stond voor kwaliteit maar zoals wel eens vaker het geval is : gedoemd om nooit meer weer te zien… En nu plots zijn deze heren hier terug met nieuw werk en zoals we aangaven bij het begin van deze bespreking : dit heeft niks meer met het oude geluid te maken. Je kan er natuurlijk duizenden meningen op na houden wat een groep moet doen : zichzelf blijven herhalen of gewoonweg niet bang zijn om iets nieuws te proberen? De ware muziekliefhebber kiest natuurlijk voor het tweede, ook al houdt dit in dat je favoriete groep daardoor wel eens flink op de bek kan gaan. Ook al verkiezen deze heren om hun oorden te gaan opzoeken in de muziekwereld van de blues en folkwereld van voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog blijft deze cd aan het lijf plakken en is dit werkje duizendmaal eerlijker (en beter) klinkt dan de doorsnee nu-countryrommel waar de “alternatieve” pers ons recentelijk met om de oren slaat, meestal omdat ze niet weten waar ze anders moeten over schrijven. Inderdaad, iemand die Bonnie Prince Billy geniaal vindt zou deze “The outlaw J.D. Ray” het achtste wereldwonder moeten vinden maar soms is logica in de muziekwereld ver te zoeken en is deze release nu al gedoemd om letterlijk in de kelders weg te rotten. No one ever said that life’s going to be easy…
Didier Becu 28/06/2010 Loose English Translation
Dark Entries in country music? Well, this is not just the story of a wandering cowboy but the latest release of 17 Pygmies and people who know their way a bit of the American post-punk scene know immediately that this is one of the most pioneering groups of the genre. It all started when in 1982 when one of the Savage Republic members (Philip Drucker) along with two other guests began to jam in a garage or other places. 17 Pygmies are often justified in the same breath as these post-punk gods from southern California, but had their post-punk approach to something else. The best known example is their classic "Jedda By The Sea" in which she went podtpunkinvloeden Joy Division mixed with Brazilian samba rhythms. Despite some sporadic shooting 17 Pygmies was no more than a reminder of music lovers who are very well aware that this bond had a guarantee for quality but sometimes as often the case, doomed to never see again ... And now suddenly here are these guys back with new work and as we indicated at the beginning of this discussion: it has nothing with the old sound. You can of course have thousands of opinions on hold after what a group should do: keep repeating themselves or simply not afraid to try something new? The true music lover chooses the latter course, even if it means that your favorite group ever so well on the mouth can go. Even for people who prefer to visit the music of blues and folk world before the Second World War continues to this CD to the body stick and this is drawing a thousand times fairer (and better) sound than the average nu-country stuff which "alternative" press beats us recently with the ears, mostly because they do not know where else to write about. Indeed, someone who Bonnie Prince Billy genius would find "The Outlaw JD Ray "the eighth wonder of the world but sometimes have to find logic in the music business to look far and this release is already doomed to literally rotting in the basement. No one ever said thats life's going to be easy ...
Didier Becu |
CULT WITH NO NAME - and the cult with a name - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Cult With No Name, the honorable post-punk balladeers, have done it again. But this time they score in a different away. After two great albums for the Trakwerx label - Paper Wraps Rock (2007) and Careful What You Wish (2008) - Erik Stein and Jon Boux, instead of a giving us a proper album, introduce us to a new DVD score for the silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Trakwerx 2009). This may sound odd given that CWNN themselves are real maestros of 'real songs', but then they didn't waste the chance to prove that their ability to write good tunes is not just one dimensional. Indeed, they have further improved and enriched themselves in an area where you would expect them to be limited. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is not only a teaser for Erik and Jon's next adventure, but an integral part of their legacy and musical personality.
Plastelin: So, how they decide on doing an original soundtrack for the silent movie classic?
Erik Stein: - Well, the short answer is that we were asked. Cult With No Name will attempt anything. Our label, Trakwerx, had already released two fabulous new scores for classic silent films, namely 'Nosferatu' and 'Battleship Potemkin' (both by Del Rey and the Sun Kings). Our initiation was to compose a piece for a compilation of short films by the pioneering filmmaker Georges Melies that Trakwerx were putting together. Trakwerx had always mentioned that they'd like us to do a silent film score, but I guess it wasn't until they heard our Melies track that they asked us to attempt something bigger.
Jon Boux: - Yes, we were very fortunate to be asked and I think it quickly became apparent that the format sits well with our approach.
Was it more challenging than usual to compose a score because you're following the imaginations and creative direction of other people, or was it good because you discovered new strengths within yourself?
- I don't know if challenge is the right word, it was just different. It was very daunting at first, because you're not sure where to start, especially given that it's 51 minutes of continuous music. Jon suggested including some songs, which was a great and bold idea, as it immediately set us apart from modern Caligari (and most modern silent film) scores that had gone before. Luckily we had some songs that fitted perfectly. We also had some help, as we sampled part of Jeff Brenneman's abandoned score. In terms of the rest of the score, we split the film up into smaller pieces and Jon dissected them further in his laboratory. Of course, writing a score retrospectively is very different to composing a new score to a new film. It immediately struck us how unsettling it is to write to an old silent film because everyone you're engaging with is now dead.
- I would say that it definitely allowed us to explore a new way of approaching our sound. The songs in the score work really well for me. Some of my favourite modern soundtracks use song and lyric so effectively (e.g. 'Donnie Darko'), so the feeling was why not try it with silent film! As Erik says, there is a sadness to Caligari that we really tried to capture. Not only are all the actors long gone, but the character Cesare is someone quite tragic - a victim really.
So the way that you approached the writing and recording of Caligari will affect they way you approach other projects?
- Working on Caligari did stretch our creative boundaries - I think we have come out of the other side with some new ideas and ways of working. Having said that though, we did stick to some tried and tested methods when putting together the soundtrack. We know each others strengths which works well.
- I think one thing that working on Caligari has shown us is that we have a much wider pallette of sounds than we first thought. It's given us a wider and richer source of atmospheres and moods to draw from.
Do you have a favourite work in this field? You mentioned Bill Nelson's Caligari score once to me?
- It's funny, really. I have a few thousand records but within that maybe only a dozen soundtracks. With the exception of 'A Clockwork Orange' by Walter Carlos, soundtrack music is not something that had really ever interested me that much... until now. So, it would be unfair of me to choose a favourite new score, as I haven't seen or heard enough of them. Having said that, I can tell you that 'Battleship Potemkin' by Del Rey and Sun Kings is excellent.
- I'm greatly influenced by soundtracks and have a number of faves including Vangelis ('Bladerunner') and Michael Nyman ('The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, Her Lover') but my favourite soundtrack composer has to be Ennio Morricone, with stand out scores for me being 'Once Upon a Time in America' and 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'.
Many artists return to this form. Do you have any plans for something similar?
- Love to - I feel we've only just scratched the surface!
- Yeah, no plans yet. As usual, we're waiting for our invite.
What other plans are there for CWNN in the future?
- We have at least two performances of the Caligari score coming up, which will be exciting. Other than that, we're contributing some music to a play entitled 'Bored Stiff', and are working on a collaboration with someone quite high profile on a possible album release. I shouldn't really say who at this point. We also have at least another album's worth of material half-recorded. Business is good.
You had Blaine Reininger of Tuxedomoon guest on your last album. When will new one be out?
- Well we'd certainly love Blaine to guest again! We have links with lots of amazing people now, but it's important not to have guests on your album for the sake of it. They need to fit...join our cult, even if just for one day. We'll have to see what's needed, and then seek the appropriate help. There are no release dates yet for new material, but rest assured we're busy cooking.
People that haven't heard your Caligari score can listen to and download it from Last.fm. It works great on its own, as well as with the film. Why did you decide to offer up the soundtrack separately?
- Thanks very much for saying that the music works on its own. I'm so pleased you think that. It's a record label decision to make the music available as widely as possible, and obviously that's great for us. With a thousand different ways to access and listen to music these days, it would be suicide to only make your music available one way and make everyone conform to you. We're not dictators, nor suicidal (although sometimes we may sound it).
- One of the really pleasing things about the soundtrack is that people have enjoyed the music with and without the image. I'm with Erik in the sense the more ways we can make the music available, the better.
http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/cwnn3
www.cultwithnoname.com
Author: Mileta Okiljevic
TODAY IS BORING presents an interpretive evening of film,
minus its original audio, accompanied by improvised live music and sounds.
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Admission £4 advance / £6 on the door
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CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI
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Max Renn runs an unauthorized cable channel in Toronto that caters to viewers demanding increasingly violent and pornographic material. One night, in search of new programming fodder, he stumbles across a scrambled satellite transmission emanating from unknown regions -- a startlingly graphic broadcast that routinely depicts the brutal torture and murder of women. Excited by his find, Renn attempts to track the show to its origins, but he continually encounters resistance, including a warning from one of his programming suppliers that the broadcasts are not dramatizations but depictions of actual murders. Undaunted, Renn finally traces the show to Pittsburgh, where he encounters the transmissions of a Messianic madman known as Brian O'Blivion. Although O'Blivion is dead, his daughter continues to spread his twisted gospel by broadcasting old videotapes of his sermons, encouraging people to embrace the barbarous new TV world as reality. Eventually Renn finds the man who is controlling all the hallucinatory video violence. But by then, Max has begun his own descent into madness, an insanity culminating in physical manifestations of the exploitative sleaze he has profited from over the years. ( David Cronenberg | Canada | 107 mins | 1983) TRAILER
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OUR PERSONNEL FOR THE EVENING ARE AS FOLLOWS:
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'Post-punk electronic balladeers' Cult With No Name, comprise the East London duo of Erik Stein and Jon Boux. Having been the first international signing to LA label Trakwerx in 2007 (founded by Jackson Del Rey of Californian punk legends Savage Republic), CWNN's two studio albums to date - 'Paper Wraps Rock' and 'Careful What You Wish For' - have been met with considerable critical acclaim. Leading music journalist Mick Mercer proclaimed the band his discovery of 2007 (with both albums sitting in his annual top ten lists), Blaine L. Reininger of genre transcending legends Tuxedomoon collaborated on their second album, Don Letts spun tracks on BBC6, and more recently Brett Anderson asked CWNN to open for him for the launch of his new album. Having provided the music for two blacker than black comedies at the Edinburgh Festival ('Moz and the Meal' and 'Bored Stiff'), it’s fitting that Cult With No Name have now turned their attention to cinema for their first DVD release, 'Lightwerx: The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari'. Cult With No Name’s compulsive and compelling soundtrack extends their ability to instantly create evocative moods over 51 breathtaking minutes, on a journey that takes in warm ambience, nerve-shredding distortion, electronica, and vast, futurist soundscapes.
Copies of the DVD will be available for sale on the night, at an 'exclusive-to-the-event' price of £4.
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TODAY IS BORING brings you a new themed film night which couples a live freeform audio score from various performers, giving us all the chance to see and hear a completely new experience. We hope there will be many more to come. The films you see may or may not be familiar to you, and will not be restricted to silent films, as is often the case with standard 'film with live music' excursions. Our intentions are to remove the primary source of direction and literal meaning from the experience of a film, its original sound, and give the visuals a completely different context, exploring a range of feelings and atmospheres, not necessarily limited to conventional 'music' per se.
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Propaganda by another name:
17 Pygmies: The Outlaw J.D. Ray
Trakwerx Records
The stylistic turn from 17 Pygmies' last full-length, 2008's instrumental space-rock opus Celestina, to its latest, an eleven-song collection of post-civil war folk-blues settings titled The Outlaw J.D. Ray, is about as extreme a change as could possibly be imagined. The difference is so great, few if any would guess they're from the same creators. In both cases, the group wholly inhabits the persona of the genre-associated outfit to such a degree that any ‘real' identity below the surface disappears. In short, there's no moment where the mask drops or the curtain's lifted, no ironic gestures to acknowledge the conceit, no hint of tongue-in-cheek tomfoolery (as might be found in The Residents). It's hardly the first time the group has shifted focus. In 2007, 17 Pygmies issued Ballade of Tristram's Last Harping, a self-described stab at “retro ‘60s Psychedelic-‘70s Classic Rock” (also designed as a tribute to the Art Nouveau movement) and has produced scores to classic silent films such as Battleship Potemkin and Nosferatu. The band's been around so long (since 1982), it's presumably long ceased to let its artistic direction be overly determined by trends or sales figures.
On the new album, harmonicas wheeze, and banjos, acoustic guitars, and mandolins strum in songs typically set in lilting 3/4 waltz time and with Jackson Del Rey (aka Philip Drucker) and Meg Maryatt acting as vocal raconteurs (a washboard even surfaces during “Atlas Shrugged Blues”). It's a concept album once again, with this time the story centering on a man wrongly accused of murder who flees his farm and family rather than rot in jail for the rest of his days. Of the two vocalists, Maryatt's singing is the more appealing, with her pure voice and harmonies helping render the songs “I'll See You In Heaven,” “Captured In Amber,” “She's Gone,” and “I Know My Train's A-Comin'” memorable. Even if the music stylistically speaking isn't one's cup of tea (I'll confess early American country-folk music isn't what I normally gravitate towards), one nevertheless comes away applauding the band's wholesale commitment to the project and to presenting the material with an imagination and attention to detail other artists would do well to emulate. The cardboard covers, aged paper stock, period typographic design, and tinted photography (there are even diary records written by the titular protagonist) collectively attest to a level of dedication to the project that can't help but admire.
May 2010
Lucid Culture posts review for Smoldering Ashes' latest release "Songs In The Key Of Mountain Birds Blue"
The cool folks from down under, Sideways Through Sound features 17 Pygmies on their weekly radio show April 14th
Listen live at 107.3FM (in Sydney) or stream at: www.2ser.com/stream, at 9 PM (21:00) hours, Sydney, Australia time. It will also be broadcast the following Sunday to get to our overseas listeners at a more reasonable time, please see the website for details.
The show will also be available as a free download to you after transmission only from the Sideways Through Sound website.
Original 17 Pygmies LP 1983 available on ebay
ebay Auction starts today. 
Label:Trakwerx
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Usually "going back to their roots" is the last refuge of a musical scoundrel; a sign that the artist has run out of ideas and has nothing better up their sleeve than to play milquetoast takes on the music they listened to when they were wet behind the ears.
Yet it's hard to see American roots music as the music of 17 Pygmies youth. A brief look at their career shows a band with little or no connection to blues/folk/country music. Perhaps that's why they are able to successfully present a collection like "The Outlaw J.D. Ray" where other musicians fall on their faces.
The music on "The Outlaw J.D. Ray" *is* American roots/folk/proto-country music. But in the hands of 17 Pygmies it has a light, fresh quality that brings a smile to my face. This is not country music as rural goth.
The playing comes across as both light and filled with quiet confidence. This is the music that matches those old photos of folks who wear weathered faces from a life time of standing up to hardship and continuing on. The world may be heavy, but the heart can still be light.
The minimal instrumentation is played beautifully, lilting and unrushed. It also seems that there's a story-line running through these 11 songs, making this into a good, old-fashioned concept album.
My favorite tracks are the back to back winners of "I'll See You in Heaven" and "Captured in Amber".
PS: As always with Trakwerx the packaging is terrific.
17 Pygmies~
http://www.myspace.com/17pygmies
Trakwerx~
http://www.trakwerx.com/label.htm
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Playlist for the Week Ending: Mar 7th 2010 Haints: Highwayman | |
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No doubt it's adrenalin that causes Cult With No Name to record and release albums at such regular intervals. And yet their work has not become banal. Using a heritage of eccentric and intelligent pop from the last century, with Sparks and The Associates being just two of many, CWNN produce music that's not so usually heard in this one. The combination of Erik Stein and Jon Boux is perfect. One that avoids rushing anything, or spoiling what would otherwise be a great record. CWNN also have a perfect correspondent in their label Trakwerx, who rather than tutor them, let them fly off into their own world with little regard for modern hypes and trends. For those that have not heard them, CWNN have a very recognisible sound, more minimal and yet more colourful than standard pop music, all woven round Stein's voice, Boux's piano, and shared synths.
Trakwerx
