The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'bands'

2008/7/21

I recently heard from a reliable source that Australian 1990s band The Paradise Motel has reformed. Well, not in its entirety; the lineup apparently includes Charles Bickford and BJ Austin, with a new rhythm section and Merida Sussex emailing in her vocals from abroad, and they're several tracks into recording a new album.

The Paradise Motel were, IMHO, one of the great underrated Australian bands of the 1990s; they made noirish pieces like something out of a David Lynch nightmare, with beautifully melancholy vocals, cinematic string arrangements (by Matt Aulich, who was, in all probability, a fan of Angelo Badalamenti), and sudden violent explosions of fierce intensity, when the mainstream market wanted (and the major label they got signed to specialised in) 3-chord grunge-rock. Most of their members came from Tasmania (with the exception of Merida, who was born in England and was discovered whilst working at the St Kilda public library), and brought the desolation, distance and dark, troubled undercurrents of this into their music. In an alternate universe, where they were signed by, say, 4AD, they could perhaps have fared a lot better. Unfortunately, their label was part of the Mushroom empire, then heavily invested into facile, populist JJJ alternative-rock, and didn't really know what to do with them. They released a few EPs (the starkly lovely Left Over Life To Kill and the atmospheric and somewhat experimental remix EP Some Deaths Take Forever), an album (Bad Light), and a few more EPs, before moving to England. Then they released a second album, which was more of a driving rock affair, and, around 2000, disbanded.

Anyway, it will be interesting to hear what their new sound is like; the chiaroscuro of "the violence and the silence" of Bad Light, the sparse atmospheres of the early EPs, the more conventional rock of Flight Paths, or something else altogether?

(via Andy) bands music the paradise motel 0

2006/12/7

Spare a thought for Robert Smith, frontman of The Cure, who's having trouble coming up with relevant lyrics. Presumably more so than normally:

"I want them (the words) to mean something, it's not enough that they rhyme," Smith said in a recent interview. "I find myself stopping short and thinking I've done this before, and better.
"I've given myself a deadline to finish the words before Christmas. If I don't I should be shot," he said.
The article points out that The Cure made an early splash with "tight, three-minute post-punk songs" (quite unlike the bloated six-and-a-half-minute stadium-rock epics they were pumping out a few years ago), and paved the way for the emo movement, which may prompt some people to agree that perhaps Robert Smith should, in fact, be shot.

Perhaps he could write a song about the sense of loss at no longer being able to come up with lyrics?

bands music the cure 0

2006/10/1

I just found out that Data Panik, the brilliantly rocking band formed by the members of Bis, is no more; they broke up a bit over a month ago, after finding no interest from record labels and very little from venues, and getting sick of driving the length and breadth of the UK playing self-funded gigs and selling self-published 7"s. The individual members have their own projects, though (Manda and Stuart have solo projects and John and Stephen are involved in a "techno" project named Dirty Hospital), so there will be more music of some form coming out. Nonetheless, it is a rather sad end to this story; they deserved better, but the music scene didn't want a bar of them. Perhaps they didn't sound sufficiently "indie", as per the NME's current definition, for corporate sponsors to throw money at them.

Anyway, you can download some of their demos here. And here is Manda's solo project's MySpace page, with a fairly decent biography.

(via Bowlie) bands music 0

2002/7/25

Site of the day: Theo's wunderbare Welt der Bandfotographie. Band photos like they only made in Europe. Check out the matching jumpsuits and soft-focus photography. Not to mention the very serious-looking costumed metalheads on page 2 and the Santa Clauses with the MIDI keyboard on page 5, and classy names like "Golden Showband". Replete with (what look like) sarky comments in German. (via Reenhead)

artwork bands europe kitsch unintentionally hilarious 0

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