cool

play

stock man

Ladytron 'Best of 00-10' out now on Nettwerk Records.

Visit Ladytron Online:
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Ladytron - Discotraxx - Best of 00-10

Dee D Jackson - Automatic Lover (Extended Version)

an unreleased femme fatality track from 2004

Television Man

"Electroclash" band Hong Kong Counterfeit from New York with the brilliant track "Metal Disco"

Hong Kong Counterfeit - Metal Disco

Cut The With The Cake Knife was recorded by Rose McDowall in 1988/89 following the break up of her group Strawberry Switchblade. Produced with the aid of several musicians in several studios, the album features songs written for the fabled second Strawberry Switchblade album. More importantly perhaps it showcases the honest, direct and life-affirming songs of one of the greatest unsung songwriters of the modern pop era at a tumultuous time in her career.

Tibet opens the set and could be one of the best pop songs you’ve never heard. The innate sadness of the songs’ content – the loss of a friendship, impending sorrow – is heightened to heart-melting level by McDowall’s pop nous and melodic sensibility. Choruses and hooks are everywhere on Cake Knife, from the outsider take on stadium 80s pop in Wings Of Heaven to the spiraling, ecstatic So Vicious, a glorious anthem that highlights the human fragility in McDowall’s vocal performance, an instrument that has never lost the naïve purity it first exemplified in Strawberry Switchblade’s early 80s recordings. The centerpiece of the album, the title-track, is the greatest Switchblade pop chart hit that never was. Like the veiled melancholy of her former group’s hits, Cut With The Cake Knife hints at a darkness beneath the gloss, a darkness that saw McDowall delve into more esoteric territory with her subsequent recordings and collaborations. Cut With The Cake Knife serves as the bridge between the pop music McDowall had been making with her friends Jill Bryson, Lawrence from Felt and Primal Scream to what became a more extreme, deep sound informed by neo-folk and post industrial music.

Rose McDowall’s role in the canon has always been one of an outsider. Beginning in Glasgow’s East End in the avant proto-noise group The Poems, achieving fame briefly in the 80s and then disappearing into counter-cultural folklore, the emphasis in the internet-age has been skewed towards her image and cultural significance. Unseen to many, her solo work, her groups Sorrow and Spell and her collaborations with a whole host of underground luminaries have still touched lives. As McDowall elucidates: “They're real sad songs, about real life. I've had people come up to me to say I'd connected with them and helped them. I remember a gig in America when we made a whole room cry. It was bizarre. A couple at the front of the stage started crying and then these two boys beside and  suddenly everyone was crying. And I thought, "that's power."

Night School’s issue of Cut With The Cake Knife includes unpublished photographs, extensive sleeve notes from Rose McDowall and 2 bonus tracks culled from the bootleg 7” “Don’t Fear The Reaper.”


ROSE MCDOWALL - Cut With The Cake Knife (from Cut With The Cake Knife LSSN027)

SNOZI KNOWS - NIGHT TIME SPECIAL

Fisherspooner - Emerge

Total Macchina is John Langdon & Katya Casio 

Total Macchina - Werewolf in New York

Lyrics:

Past eleven
got me feeling like heaven
oh baby
oh my
it’s so fine
to have you by my side
it’s alright
if you wanna stay the night

I don’t mind
if you’re shy
I don’t care 
if you’re scared
you and I
we’ll get high
tonight
(tonight)

it’s been five minutes
since I turned around
there you are sleeping
you’re so cute

it’s alright 
if you wanna stay the night
it’s okay 
oh baby

I don’t mind
if you’re shy
I don’t care 
if you’re scared
you and I
we’ll get high
tonight
(alright)

Don't Mind

Self Healing

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/album/1HU6ecyi0pW7feEDChnQWw?si=8jSFr99tTly8PlYfWOGfWg

support me / dowloand here: https://itsdogland.bandcamp.com/track/without-thinking-of-you

Without Thinking Of You

VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5h5nqGxWYY&ab_channel=OllieHodgkinson

She's Always Online

Turbo 50
Tiga & Zyntherius
Sunglasses at Night Remixes

In Tiga’s Words:

Luck is everything, and it only takes an instant for your life to become your dreams. The fact that my life was changed, altered, and ultimately bettered by covering an MOR Canadian rockers 80's pop tune is a quirk of destiny that gives me faith in the magical comedy that we call existence. This is the short story of how the shit went down.

It was the winter of my discontent. I was supposed to travel to India with my family for Christmas 2000, but was unable to go for personal reasons. Upset but determined to make the most of the situation I invited Jori Hulkkonen to DJ with me at my club (SONA) for a NYE party. Jori had done a
mixCD for Turbo and we had cultivated a fine friendship based on ridicule, shared 80's obsessions and ridicule. I had a small home studio that was gathering dust and producing nothing more than frustration; and I threw out the idea (I think I did, although maybe he did) of "making some tracks". I didn't know what I was talking about.  My own creative career had followed a typical early 90's trajectory: houseclubs-ectasy-techno-rave-DJ-travel-raver-promoter-radio-recordstore-nightclub impresario etc... all successful ventures that, at the turn of the
millennium, had led me to a position of relative affluence and respect. But the elusive jewel in the crown was production; and this block  was slowly destroying me. Then came the J-fool.

My memory is bad. In school it was perfect, but it's been eroded by a potent cocktail of reefer, airports, timezones, sleeplessness, computers and time. Now, my memory is not to be trusted. I'll try my best: i think the show went ok. Jori probably played a few records I loved, and a lot that iI hated. It was very cold. New Years Day came, I think he was sleeping at my place. I had an MPC, a Nord Modular. an 808 and a JUNO, and a puppy named Uma. Recently, at a small record store in Calgary of all places, I had bought a copy of 'Sweet Dreams' by Miss Kittin & The Hacker. I thought it was incredible. It's hard to imagine now, but at the time the idea of covering a pop song in a techno style seemed interesting. This is before the world went crazy and eclectic. So we decided to try a cover.

I don't remember details of the day. I had no intention of "singing" but I couldn't really do anything else, so that became my job. I also had to walk Uma, make tea, take phone calls, make jokes. Jori did most of the work. We tried a criminally poor cover of "When Doves Cry" which thankfully is lost
to all mankind. We did a version of "Small Town Boy" with falsetto singing so bad that if you could distill the sound into a liquid it would be the pure essense of "embarrassing". We did a midi-file based cover of New Years Day, which I still love, that came out on an old Turbo comp. And then (I think it was last) we did Sunglasses At Night. Corey Hart was a Montrealer, it seemed fitting. Our lack of sample memory in the MPC combined with my hesitancy to sing complex notes (or ANY notes for that matter) is what resulted in the "genius" of eliminating the bridge and pre-chorus. I remember Jori thought it was amazing. I didn't really like it. Score one for Zyntherius.

I remember going to my record store , DNA, which was just on the corner and playing it: the first of hundreds of "listen to my new track" sessions..... my first taste of the cold sweat of public testing, and the sheer horror of hearing MY voice on speakers. I hated it.

A few months before that day in studio i had done a mixCD called Mixed Emotions, which is still one of the best things I have ever done: it featured an "electro-funk" cd and my face on the cover. Both attracted the attention of DJ Hell in Munich, who of course at the time was a hero of mine. I had a contact thru licensing a song from them, so I think I sent him the sunglasses demo. He fell in love as well. I still didn't like it.

The rest of the story is like a montage in a movie, albeit a small film, Hell came to montreal, burned dubplates, played 6 times at Love Parade,  SAN got huge in germany, , ended up selling a quarter million, doing TOTP,  and being one of the big "electro" anthems of the period. I got to ride my own
coatails  all the way to where i am now. All my dreams came true, including the one about being voted #41 on the DJ top 100 list.

I still marvel at how easily it could’ve NOT happened: My dog stepping on the power switch a little earlier, or Jori getting tired, or the phone ringing at the wrong time. And I cant help but wonder how different my life would have been. While I was never a huge fan of the record I will say that
it was a very pure creative effort, in its own way a real punk track: two friends making something without any label or plans or scene......and crucially without any expectations. To spend 90 minutes on that, in a vacuum, and to then feel your entire life altered by the results.... that
is the magic of pop culture, and testimony to the awesome transformative power of ....... the Roland Juno-60.

Love from Montreal, and love to Jori Z and a special shout out to Hell and Josef.

In Zyntherius’ words:

When I was a child I dreamt about being a god.
When I grew up I realized I could become one.
In 2000 I noticed that the post for the god of synthesizers was not taken. I didn't even have to apply for the job. No real god would have to do that. I just declared myself as ZYNTHERIUS - the god of synthesizers.
Nowadays I'm feeling much better, but occasionally I still get the urge.
Which is why you should be aware of the wrath of Z and respect the holy Oscillators.


Hong Kong Counterfeit - Metal Disco

Herbert