Gazpacho, one of my all-time favourite bands, are (finally) coming to Switzerland!!! On 17 October 2008, they’ll play a gig at the Z7 in Pratteln/Basel. Guess who’ll be there!?!

It makes me very happy that they have recently signed WiV Entertainment as event/tour managers, because it means I’ll probably get to see them more often in the future. To help a bit, I have agreed to be their Swiss “street team” (together with Tibor from Basel), which means I’ll be distributing flyers and posters when I return from Ireland, in exchange for free tickets for Penny and myself. You should join us! Tickets are €22 and can be ordered from the Z7 concert page (scroll down, I can’t link directly, unfortunately).

According to their news page (scroll down a bit), they are also playing in Oslo on 26 September, in Verviers, Belgium on 18 October, and in Den Bosch, The Netherlands on 19 October. Don’t miss them!

NP: Pulp: Freaks

When Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, he probably didn’t expect the rise of the cellphones we’ve been seeing over the last 20 years. At first, there were C-net phone too huge to carry, but mobile still, as they communicated wireless. Then, devices became smaller, networks faster and ubiquitous, and today, the number of cellphones sold worldwide has exceeded the population.

Much like everything else, “it used to be better back then”. When phone calls were still ridiculously expensive, people were able to enjoy their peace and life progressed slow for everyone to think enough, not do or say without engaging their brains. Then, when the first cellphones stuffed people’s pockets, they did their job pretty much from the start: you could make phone calls. Some genius discovered SMS as a splendid tool to rip off customers, so phones grew pager abilities, but other than that, they just worked; I remember my first phone, which didn’t break in years.

Obviously, if you’re a phone manufacturer, you don’t like that, because once you sell a phone that works, the customer won’t come back to give more monies in ten years. Clever as you are, you devised two schemes to ensure your cash flow: make phones more brittle and crap, so that they break within a year, at most two; and drag ever younger people into the debt trap. For the truly stupid, sites and services offer ring tones and games and what not, and the lesser challenged you keep close by the continuous addition of new features that noone needs.

So these days, almost every phone can play music files, which is mighty convenient to spice up your work commute with some tunes, but our youngsters are overburdened by that, it seems.

I almost soiled myself laughing at a group of five Italians at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires, who were sitting around waiting for a bus, every one of them ear plugged and grooving to the beats (you know how dorky it looks when people silently sing along rap songs?). That’s not the funny part. The funny part is that every minute, one of them would say something, which would cause the others to unplug one ear, and form their lips to bleat “what” (making sure to add just a little bit extra of the tone of general disinterest, which is “cool”). This elicited one of two responses: either the original speaker would say “oh, nothing” and everyone nodded, or he’d repeat his wisdom, causing everyone to laugh and nod… before in both cases they replugged and returned to luff themselves. I wonder how they made it to the airport themselves, and why they travel as a group.

Worse than that, however, is that cellphone manufacturers remembered that their phones had speakers (for fancy ringtones) and consequently added the ability to blast tunes through them. As a result, groups of kiddies walk around or sit in trains, with one (or more) of those cellphones blaring into the environment.

Apart from being generally inconsiderate, what I don’t understand is how they put up with the sound quality. It’s mostly hip-hop music — you know that genre that makes some homies out there install 5000 watt subwoofers into their cars so make sure the windows rattle with the base — but these phones have a frequency spectrum comparable in width to that of your grandfather’s, way further up the scale (meaning they just don’t do base). Playing hip-hop through those is like putting a flute concerto on a subwoofer, just worse, because high-pitch tones are harder to filter by those who don’t want to hear them.

And yet, I see it all over the place, kiddies “listening” to music through cellphone speakers. Is it because silence would kill them?

NP: 65daysofstatic: The Fall of Math

People who know me are surprised when I tell them I play Guitar Hero, simply because I don’t ever touch gaming consoles, or any computer games whose complexity surpasses Pac Man, with a stick… except Guitar Hero, which is just fun.

I also listen to a bunch of music, whenever possible, basically, and there are plenty of songs that I’d love to try on Guitar Hero. Mel and I decided that e.g. Shine on You Crazy Diamond or Comfortably Numb are far up there (and they probably exist somewhere), but today I listened to Damn the River by The Phoenix Foundation and thought the same, yet I doubt that this song has been transcribed, which is a shame.

I am well aware that sites exist, or must exist, which have songs for download, or you could make your own (check out Metallica’s Master of Puppets there!). But that sounds like a lot of time lost, which I prefer to spend otherwise…

… like today it occurred to me that Guitar Hero 2000 is long overdue. Guitar Hero 2000 is the Guitar Hero game that takes your song on audio input and scans it in advance and that fits the song to play to the five frets in the game in real-time. It can’t be that hard. Where is it?

NP: Pure Reason Revolution: The Dark Third

The Japanese post-rock band Mono delivered an amazingly powerful album in 2006: You Are There. It features beautiful and spacious sound scenes produced with real instruments (as opposed to electronic music), in some ways much more so than Mono’s other, earlier albums, which I adore as well.

This album captivates me to the point that I can’t really to work to it; yet, it’s also just too good to turn off. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place, it seems.

On a related note: I am going to see Explosions in the Sky in Zurich’s Abart club next week. The music is very similar, not only because both bands are published by the same label, Temporary Residence (along with many other really good artists).

And I am excited about this for two reasons: first, because they rock. And second, because I’ll be with a certain someone then, whereas now I’d have to say that “you are there”.

NP: Mono: You Are There

From Berne, the Swiss capital, hails a band I really like by the name of Züri West. The name itself is a pun: the folks from Berne love their city (rightfully so!) and join the rest of Switzerland in looking down a bit upon Zurich, which is “metropolitan” and “hip” and has often been considered the real capital of Switzerland. Located west of Zurich, Berne is thus “Züri West”, and by using this name, the Bernese band ridicules the Zurich folks a bit. Well, that’s my interpretation anyway and I make no claim over its correctness, and I surely don’t want to get mixed up in local politics!

Where was I? Oh yeah: Züri West (Flash-using homepage] make rock music, and they’re good with their instruments. The result are groovy and melodic sounds, which everyone in Switzerland knows.

What I find particularly amazing about this band are their lyrics. Kuno, the singer, sings almost all songs in the Bernese dialect, which I’ve learnt to the point of understanding it, though I can’t speak it yet. It’s a beautiful dialect, and Kuno displays magnificent control over it.

When I say beautiful, I do not only mean its sound, but also the way it allows one to express thoughts, situations, feelings, etc.. It’s very lyrical, often poetic, but always very much to the point. It sounds natural, yet not at all blunt.

In addition, Züri West’s songs display no haste. Again, this is a bit ironic since the Bernese are said to be slow, but what I mean is that the band is unafraid to take their time to recount what they have to say. Forget 4/4 beats and verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus, it’s a lot more as if the band shaped the music around the story they’re telling.

(Of course I have no reason to claim that the Bernese are actually slow. According to my dear (Bernese) friend Isabel, they are just considerate to give the rest of the world enough time to parse and understand their sophisticated verbal and non-verbal output).

I won’t be able to convey all of the lyrical beauties of their music to you, but what I want to do is translate my favourite of their songs, which is based on a story by Peter Bichsel and it’s called “America does not exist”.

Keep in mind that their version rhymes, which I won’t be able to achieve in the translation. I’ll try to keep the flow though. Imagine a jazzy, slightly Latin groove to it. And it’s sung, not spoken.

This is the story of Colombo
not the one from the TV show
but of a guy who once lived in Spain
and who was a bit of a freak
capable of nothing
and always telling weird stuff
without giving it much thought
until one day someone told him: you’ve got to learn a trade
you have to live your life
nobody takes you for real like this
and most just laugh about you
what are the options
he asked - what do you do
I’m an explorer - the other guy said
I sail my ship out to the sea
through the various parts of the globe
that sounds very interesting - I’d like that too
and so Colombo said - I’ll become a famous explorer

And he told it to everyone
and everyone just started laughing
and he said: just wait and see
and the people didn’t believe him
and he got sulky
and the people almost died laughing
and he left the town
and hid somewhere in the forest
where he remained for 13 weeks - 13 weeks in the shrubs
and the people searched and felt ashamed
and noone knew where he might be
and noone laughed anymore when suddenly on a wonderful morning he was back
then everyone rejoiced
and when he said: i told you so
I discovered a new land
it’s out there somewhere in the sea
then everyone listened
and was kind to him
and tried hard to make some dreadfully serious faces

The explorer from the first verse
Amerigo Vespucci is his name
just happened to be in town
and said: good for you, but I won’t believe you until I see it myself
and went off to set sail immediately
and after exactly 13 weeks and a day and a night he was finally back
and the people all went down to the port
and Colombo was nervous, almost ill because he had lied
and he was horribly frightened
and pale
and looked noone in the eyes

But Vespucci smiled and stood in front of the people
and blinked at Colombo and told that he had found it
and Colombo was so glad that he didn’t tell on him
and called out Amerigo Amerigo and the people joined in

And Colombo became famous and until the end of his days
he was never actually sure and never dared to ask
whether America really existed
over time, more people went there and when they came back
they told stories and they tell the same stories until today
and noone knows anything more than he knew before
and everyone saw exactly the same
and that sounds very dodgy
and tastes a bit like screenplay and Hollywood

America doesn’t exist
they never found it
America doesn’t exist
it’s all just a tale
America doesn’t exist
it’s all lies and made up
America doesn’t exist
America is just a rumour

NP: Züri West: Züri West

I’d like to make it publicly known that I think Pulp are awesome.

NP: Pulp: It

I spent the night doing all these normal things in my dreams: washing dishes, coding, shopping, cleaning up my desk, etc..

The only thing that was common to all was that I sang Bohemian Rhapsody all along. In the morning, I was afraid I could have kept my flatmate awake, but he denied hearing anything.

Regardless, I am declaring today Queen Day and I’m already grooving.

NP: Queen: A Night at the Opera

I just saw The Cure, supported by 65daysofstatic, to which we arrived late. But the organisers had a reason why they started early. True to the concept of a Cure concert, the band played three hours, and two minutes more. And boy was it good. It felt like they were having the time of their lives on stage. Flawless.

If you have a chance, see them.

Solar Project_ are a German progressive band. I like most of their music, but they ruin it on almost every song by opening their mouths. The problem is not that they can’t sing, the problem is that they sing ein English. Even zough zey doo not häve äi Dschörmän äccent, they still can’t pronunce their words, usually stressing the wrong syllables or resting too long on a vowel. For instance, they love the word “animals,” but they always pronunce it aa-niiii-mals.

As a result, I tend to think I am listening to some sort of “Learning English — Special, First-Year Edition for German Folk Singers” CD, rather than progressive rock. What a shame.

When The Beatles sing “O komm doch, komm zu mir” to the tune of “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, I get the chills; when Peter Gabriel sings “Eindringling” instead of “Intruder”, I turn off the stereo. But those experimented with their curiosity and translated their originals into German, which is applaudable even if horrific; well, it’s “art”, right?

Solar Project seem to think English is so hip that they don’t even bother with German. That’s not uncommon either, many German bands sing English, but none have rubbed me so badly as Solar Project has.

NP: Solar Project_: Chromagnitude

Continuing my enjoyment of Scandinavian art, I have become almost entirely hooked to the music of Gazpacho_. It’s hard to classify this Norwegian band, but their website has a number of streams, so you can make up your own mind. In fact, they’ll stream the entire album Night to you, which is my favourite by far — but that doesn’t make the other three albums I bought any less good.

Their music is very innovative and creative, borrows from a plethora of styles, is technically attractive, and has a high potential of addiction. Very high indeed. As someone who’s not too much into vocals, I am all the more impressed by how much I dig the unison of voices and music in most of their tracks.

Highly recommended. It took me a bit to get into the tunes, so don’t lose your patience.

Now take some time off, sit comfortably and just listen to Night for 53 minutes. It’s powerful.

NP: Gazpacho_: Bravo