Pale Saints - Barging Into The Presence Of God [12"]

Came across this 12" EP by the PALE SAINTS recently. Sight Of You (on the A-side of this BARGING INTO THE PRESENCE OF GOD EP) was a single taken from The Comforts Of Madness album. A pleasant song; a bit in the vein of The La's with a sing-along chorus. She Rides The Waves on the other side is a lot noisier, and my favourite song on this EP. Mother Might is a sad and slow song with a very irritating guitar (?) sound throughout the whole song, which kinda ruins it for me. A typical B-side song, i guess. But overall a pretty cool EP.

Label: 4AD
Year of release: 1989
Cat.nr.: BAD910

SIDE A:
01. Sight Of You

SIDE B:
01. She Rides The Waves
02. Mother Might

School Of Seven Bells - SVIIB [12", LP]

It's been a few years since SCHOOL OF SEVEN BELLS released an album. Their previous one, Ghostory, is from 2012. It was the first that Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Deheza did as a duo, after Alejandra's sister Claudia had left the band. A lot has happened since then. Benjamin was diagnosed with Lymphoma and died from that terrible disease in 2013. The songs you'll find on SVIIB were written not long before his death, and completed by Alejandra in the past few years. It's become a beautiful album. Heartfelt, honest lyrics. Sad at times, and with reason, but also joyful and uplifting. I think it's amazing that she found the strength to finish this chapter by completing the album. Musically it's one of their strongest albums as well. A worthy farewell of the band in this form. I sure hope we'll continue hearing of Alejandra though, because she's a great songwriter with a beautiful voice.

Label: Full Time Hobby
Year of release: 2016
Cat.nr.: FTH257LPA

SIDE A:
01. Ablaze
02. On My Heart
03. Open Your Eyes
04. A Thousand Times More

SIDE B:
01. Elias
02. Signals
03. Music Takes Me
04. Confusion
05. This Is Our Time

Vök - Circles [12"]

As one of the concert DJ's at our local music venue i am receiving a monthly update of bands that'll be playing there, to request to play at gigs of choice. When i saw VÖK was booked it didn't instantly ring a bell, but the moment i had checked out some of their tunes on Spotify i was hooked. Definitely my kind of electronic music. So i got the job for that evening and i must say it was an amazing show. Excellent performance of a great bunch of talented young folks from Iceland. It's not without reason that they won the annual local band contest Músíktilraunir in 2013. Their debut full length should be coming out later this year, but so far they released the Tension EP in 2013 and this CIRCLES EP last year. Luckily they had these 12"es with them at the merch stand so i bought both of them after the show. The 4 songs on this EP are almost equally brilliant, but If I Was is definitely my favourite. It's got a great groove, which reminds me a bit of Austra. And of course you can't deny the catchiness of their very strong single Waterfall. The EP sounds excellent and was mixed and mastered by Biggi Veira of GusGus. I actually had some GusGus ready to play after their show, but when the band had chosen Crossfade as intro tune, i skipped that plan. I tried to re-create my playlist of the evening by the way if you're interested: Vök - Leiden 09/03/16. You can find Waterfall in there, marking when the band played. Definitely worth to check them out if you never heard of them before and are into artists like the xx, Austra or The Knife. And now let's wait for this killer debut album to be released!

Label: Record Records
Cat.nr.: RELP043
Year of release: 2015

SIDE A:
01. Waterfall
02. Adrift

SIDE B:
01. If I Was
02. Circles

Iggy & Ziggy - Sister Midnight Live At The Agora [12", 2LP, Unofficial]

Today it's been exactly two months since DAVID BOWIE passed away.

This particular double live LP SISTER MIDNIGHT LIVE AT THE AGORA captures an IGGY POP show from 1977. March 21st, Agora Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio to be exact. Bowie fans will know this, but other people might not: Bowie was part of Iggy's band for the Idiot Tour, a one-and-half month tour in the UK, USA and Canada during March and April 1977. He didn't do any solo stuff, but just wanted to be a band member, playing keyboards and doing some occasional backing vocals. The other band members were Tony and Hunt Sales, who helped record The Idiot album (and who'd both be with Bowie in Tin Machine just over a decade later - a band in which Bowie also wanted to be just one of the guys), and Ricky Gardiner. Ricky had worked with Bowie on the Low album, as well as The Idiot. 

The recording of this bootleg is pretty good. There are quite a few other versions released of this show over the years. Wild Animal on the French Revenge label is probably the most wellknown. Also on the official RCA album from 1978 TV Eye Live 1977 there are a few songs from this show. Although the tour was to promote The Idiot, there are mostly songs from The Stooges present here. Turn Blue, Sister Midnight and Funtime are therefore almost the only ones on which you clearly hear Bowie's backing vocals. Besides that, he does some fine repetitive keyboards on I Wanna Be Your Dog. I would've loved to see one of the shows on this tour. Quite a package, Iggy and Ziggy on the same stage.

Label: The Vinyl Countdown / Store For Music

Cat.nr.: SFMVC1206

Year of release: 2012

SIDE A:

01. Raw Power

02. 1969

03. Turn Blue

SIDE B:

01. Sister Midnight

02. I Need Somebody

03. Search And Destroy

SIDE C:

01. TV Eye

02. Dirt

03. Funtime

SIDE D:

01. Gimme Danger

02. No Fun

03. I Wanna Be Your Dog