Here’s another of my stumble-on bands while listening to music discovery nominally inspired by a resurgence of 1980’s-era post punk and bands like Kælan Mikla, Mochat Doma, as in addition to older bands such as Dead Can Dance.
Another criteria for inclusion is a preference for bands that use a language other than English for their songs, although that is not an absolute requirement. I am more interested in discovering music that I would not have otherwise encountered save for going where the labyrinth leads me.
If you want to listen to other bands that I’ve found, you can follow my YouTube station (all ad revenue goes to the evil overlords, not me), or hit play in the embed at the bottom of this post.
I did not expect it to take me to Аметистовые Вены (translation: Amethyst Veins), a Russian band (specifically, from Naberezhnye Chelny) that popped up in my feed.
Аметистовые Вены, photo used under fair use principles; all copyrights are retained by the original holder.(more…)
Any of you who read comments (or more than surface level at what I write) will have likely figured out that I went and bought myself a low- to mid-range electric bass last night. It may seem rather sudden, but it has been part of my thinking for quite a while. Years, in truth. And several months in earnest. I don’t just drop money on anything over $25 without some serious thought.
So it wasn’t on a whim, as much as it might have seemed to have been.
When I first saw the the Berlin-based band on the upcoming playlist, “Pink Turns Blue”, I almost outright dismissed them. The name evoked for me a sound other than what I thought I was looking for because it reminded me of the song “Pink Turns to Blue” on Hüsker Dü’s 1984 seminal album, Zen Arcade. I figured that if a band had intentionally named themselves after a hardcore band from my youth, they would probably play hardcore punk as well, which is not the music I was looking to discover at this time. If the name shared an accidental (or esoteric) relationship, it still seemed like an odd name to choose for darkwave. But, following my commitment to discovery via music “radio” I gave them a whirl anyway, figuring that I could skip the song part way through if it turned out not to be the genre I was looking for.
I’m glad I didn’t instant-skip.
Pink Turns Blue; Photo: Daniela Vorndran, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
How I have never managed to hear of Pink Turns Blue is a bit surprising to me. I’ve found plenty of indie bands over the years that were not easy discoveries to be made back in the 80s and 90s. A German band playing a darkwave, guitar-based sound during my old-school goth days falling off my radar? That seems almost criminal.
The band was formed in 1985 and, yes folks, they named themselves after that aforementioned song (which I’ve included on my YouTube playlist for this series, if you are curious). The song that I heard first heard was “Your Master is Calling”, but it is one of those songs from the 80s that, while it caught my attention, also followed the habit common to the period of overstaying its welcome at over seven minutes, so I elected to share a different song that still captures the vibes of the band but is of a shorter duration.
This is not like the synth-oriented sounds of the genre, but has more of a 3-piece sound: guitar, bass and drums. Some people would likely class the band as more gothic or more straight indie rock, but I can heard some of the precursor sounds in the band’s songs that feel very borrowed from earlier acts like Joy Division while avoiding some of the more Velvet Underground sound of Sisters of Mercy.
If you listen, you’ll have to let me know what you think of this discovery in the comments below.
Seeing as now that I have more time to actually get on with doing actual writing instead of kvetching about bugs in my commenting system, I plan to fall into a bit more of a rhythm with this series of posts. The current plan is to post the “Towards the Within” series of musical discoveries on Wednesdays and Saturdays each week.
My current flavor of discovery is focused on trying to find international artists who record darkwave/coldwave/post-punk, or feel as if they might be inspired by that sound. As I listened, I started marking down bands and songs that caught my attention. I always have a handful other than my twice-weekly pick to choose from to write about. Lucky for me, I have been managing to find standout songs new to me that grab me and so that I give it a good couple of listens.
