2011, 2012..Have a look at vonlynX's new KOENIG LUDWIG event series in Berlin and elsewhere maybe soon.
this is euRoClAsh on pIrAtE sAtEllitE
you've safely reached the euRoClAsh headquarters in Berlin.
this site hasn't changed much since 2002, so it's terribly
outdated now. thought about throwing it away,
but it's still useful to anyone who hasn't heard
enough of this sort of music yet.
one of our most useful features are our
NEWSLETTERS,
especially if you're based in Berlin, so you may
want to subscribe some at the end of the page.
we let you know about happenings in town.
our own artists and parties are listed on
EVENTS.
from adult to zyntherius...
the gr8 encyclopedia of NU WAVE
call it synth kore, electro punk or electro clash .. whatever.
the æsthetics of late 70s early 80s electronic pop music, new wave just
as it began, is coming along anew and really strong. it was an intellectual
underground movement which quickly became one of the fundaments of 80s
pop music, and it's as if history is happening again, and there's
nothing wrong with that, because there clearly is a new approach.
take the best from the past to have a brighter future. the legacy of techno
is still incumbent on many productions, insensitive at times and clogging,
in other cases instead enhancing and innovating. the only real rule is to
put the old-fashioned ruleset of deep house aside and let your heart and
ear decide.
fight the clichees.
this music movement is influencing the mainstream in many ways, but
only few of its original artists have their clips on rotation on the
music televisions. and the danger of getting stuck in clichees is there,
as music industry loves to think in clichees. it's easier for them.
this site tried to keep an eye on the whole thing as it evolved,
but the nu wave clash scene is expanding so
fast no-one can really keep up with it. i mean, everyone, even you, is
thinking of doing something like this.
which is fine. we all want more good music.
sorry for putting music into drawers, but it is really helpful
for the beginner to see artists grouped by musical relationship.
obviously this can only be a raw and subjective categorization,
and the names for the categories are completely made up.
and no, it's not as serious as it looks.
the sound mostly defined by fischerspooner and ad*lt,
just enter the FS website to hear what we are talking about.
fischerspooner triggered
something for a lot of people, even though they were not the first. just the
right mixture of minimal electronica and elaborate multilayered vocals.
the new album also features great guitar riffs and disco beats. we love it!
*kissogram's
"if i had known this before" is more nu wave in the original version than
the techno remixes (which scored high on the german dancefloor charts).
toktok have an amazing long story
of experimental krautrock electro dating back to 1993, but it's only with
swedish vocalist
soffy o
that they made their breakthrough in 2000.
crossover
two NYC models, "desmond and verona" (actually mark ingram & vanessa josti), who sound like fischerspooner's little sist*rs in a way.
*westwerk from leipzig (not the other group named that way). no clue why they file themselves under the old-fashioned category "trip hop". unfortunately the website does not feature their excellent first album.
somebody said, the new new wave doesn't just sound like 80s new wave.
it features a mixture of synths, rock instruments and vocals, more or less.
so here we go with the people who fit these criteria.
first, an example for this type of sound: glass danse from the faint.
*the faint, omaha, nebraska. their music sounds new waver than new wave, works great on the dancefloor, and since i saw them i must say, their live show is glorious, impeccable, divine!
BIS,
started doing girly new wave punk rock, then moved to elaborate electronically enhanced new wave as early as 1998!
*2raumwohnung, the dream flat, features inga humpe from DÖF and other neue deutsche welle experiences covering a range from electric to rocking new wave and neo pop.
*boy from brazil.
he's really a man, and he's a rock-electro artist from.. ah.. forgot..
sweden? well, he's living in berlin and has done this e-clashy shuffle
jive cover song sung in french which is really really nice. alright,
that was just a fun song and his real stuff is different. but how?
i don't know - i only heard that song and liked it a lot.
peaches played it, pointed her finger to him and said - you gotta know him.
*mina, have just entered
new territory with their "desktop" single which sounds like instrumental
blondie (atomic) with a soft and sweet female voice on top
(multi-talent masha
qrella who's out and about doing solo performances now).
excellent. the name of the band is quaint,
because the famous italian singer of the 70s, mina, is still active at the
top of the charts in italy.
just slightly different than the stuff above.. these musicians care less
about the new wave and rather like to scream and yell and hit the guitar
to the 133bpm beat. the most obvious difference to 90s grunge and current
derivates is that those people scrub the guitar all the time, they don't
make it scream to the beat. in recent years the indie rock scene has
produced truckloads of compatible bands, these are just the neo-pioneers
in a way.
*radio4 are the pure energy deliverance team. their live show motto is - hit them with as much power as you can, then get out fast. don't dare to stand in the front row without dancing, or you'll end up playing tamborines!
i've been loving *SubsOnicA since 1999, an italian band which made a mixture of techno and rock only comparable to jesus jones. now you could say they were simply ahead of time for dancefloor punk. related artists: motel connection, bit reduce and the fabulous god on keyboards: boosta.
So is this were the electro new wave is really coming from? Surely
Kittin with her 1997 song "frank sinatra" was one of the very first
to kick this thing into movement.
*miss kittin started making that new wave sound together with the hacker in 1997, which has become archetypical for the whole clash movement. actually it is being imitated so much it has become a cliche. in the meantime she has moved on, writes beautiful songs and chooses varying production partners to put it into the sound of european dancefloor avantgarde. she's the boss.
*taylor savvy keeps on taking us to the savvy show, and his great songwriting is steadily finding more audience. it was about time! sorry if my previous statement about him sounded negative, it was just a bad formulation, i like his stuff since the first time i saw him at volksbühne and his shared dream has never left my record case since then! rock on, daddy!
gonzales, third in the canada-conquers-berlin-club. these three are said to have been living in a single room for months before they got their record deals. it must be love. and they were a band together, called FEEDOM. gonz on drums, peach on bass and daddy on guitar. no wait, maybe it was the other way around.
felix da housecat's kittenz album even looks back on late 70s synth pop! very nice.
*danton eeprom, the man who rocked marseille and the maria, and gave legowelt a hard time keeping up. ;)
*turntablerocker with two new songs out "love supreme" that are closer to new wave breakdance while "time for music" was warmhearted neopop. the old production wore a little bit of old-fashioned 90s hip hop while the new one sounds totally fresh. and i like how they alternate a major and a minor chord on the same note, just like matt bianco in "more than i can bear"
theones and other stuff at atoc like the nu wave hookers,
les rythmes digitales, the former project of stuart of zoot woman, sometimes
sounds like breakdance, sometimes like 80s dance music, sometimes very pop,
sometimes he makes songs with nik kershaw called sometimes,
but whatever he does - it's always very warm-hearted!
he also goes by the names of jacques lu cont and the thin white duke, an
obvious tribute to bowie btw.
*ladytron, from liverpool. great new ave electro pop. within a year reuben has worked his deejaying skills to a formidable level. go dance to his view of new wave and the clash movement. his party in rome was great.
*phoenix, french group, a little prog, a little hip, a funky squaredance and a lot great poprock.. for a moment i thought.. the new supertramp.. wonderful live show. six people. very tight. they worked five months to get it that tight, they said. and they had heard of euRoClAsh. yoohoo!
*commercial breakup have broken up, but they will resurrect. singer elke is staying with
*paula now, which sound
similar (wow what a great concert!)
flash & gordon. this blond boy can play piano as if we were in 1978. sounds like billy joel, supertramp, hall & oates, joe jackson, lucio dalla, freddie mercury, or something. glad this piano playing is coming back, we haven't heard it since the mid 80s!
the realtruth hurts from toronto came up with a late 80s sound in the mid 90s, my favourite: bide your time. unfortunately they no longer release, but in exchange you can download two albums of beautiful music!
human league! even before the fischerspooner hype they came up with »all i ever wanted« with a rock solid bass line. what a vision!
essentially this music rediscovers the good techniques of early 80s dance
music, but certainly with a different twist to it.
in other cases it uses digital noises, clicks and cuts, for percussion,
and yet puts classic songwriting on top of that.
a very good example for this type of music is the new album from
erlend øye (the tall recently mustachoed guy from kings of convenience).
although every song is produced by a
different guru of elaborate pop house they are all tied together by erlends
style, singing and songwriting. too bad »poor leno« is missing. ;°)
*coloma, hawaiian guitars
static clicks and the wonderful vocal power of rob taylor.
but their real strength is the excellent songwriting.
galleon, philippe laurent and gilles fahy from marseille: "so i begin", "i believe" and their new song
"one sign" even explodes with a guitar solo just like in "private eyes"
from hall & oates (in the radio version at least). when can i have
your album, galleon? i love this stuff, even if it is technically compatible
to mainstream french house.
alexander robotnick released a few disco new wave tracks in the early 80s italian underground, and now everybody is asking for more.. so here he is back again! alla grande. :)
röyksopp's electro normally sounds quite dancefloor-oriented, but
"poor leno" sticks out like a stop sign. after a while i found the usual
culprit: erlend authored quite a bit of that song.
now this is a really classic style. music inspired by depeche mode, giorgio
moroder, kraftwerk or vince clarke. the usual suspects. but even if the music
just sounds like 80s pop, that's very much electro-pop to today's ears.
distain! are working on a new album finally, but 1999's tears of joy and its album homesick alien are brilliant. if you like soviet you should really check out these guys.
the german gothic scene has been carrying on with EBM and electro-pop
throughout the years when nobody else would care. unfortunately in many
cases they got stuck in clichees or even got influenced by the most plain
of techno rave sounds. it's hard to find material suited to our purposes from
these bands, but something new could be coming from this direction.
early home computers sounds and computer game style music..
trackers and demo makers. or passing the whole day figuring
out the best sound of ancient analog equipment. something
like that. pick a track from figurine as an example..
or look at the great flash-based video clip of
push my button.
*jeans team's
"keine melodien" is very impressive when remixed by techno deejay mj lan.
also peaches' cover version rocks like hell.
their regular style is more computer-oriented though.
op:l bastards recently even started to sing, very nu wave!
they used to make melodic electronic techno.
in 1978 kraftwerk released their most influential album, which made everybody
forget about telex's moskow diskow. although all new wave of then and now has
some influence by the old grumpies from düsseldorf, some current musicians
clutch very close to the kraftwerk style of then, more than anybody else.
japanese telecom instead sound a lot like YMO. great stuff. everyone talks about "pagoda of sin", their geeky song, but listen in, they have much more interesting material than that. see also dopplereffekt, electroids and arpanet.
anthony rother is another one who's really good at making the music
that kraftwerk should be making. he's the man behind recent sven väth
productions.
clash scapes.. ellen allien is another one of berlin's great dj goddesses :)
last night i saw someone who picks up where kate bush left off in
1985. just like that. planningtorock is no dance music. it's wild female voices on
top of wild chord progressions. where will this lead us to?
realize that we're far from being through with the "new wave" feel.
let PtR rearrange
your synapses.
BASTARD POP (mash-ups)
A hot new trend, which made it into the mainstream in no time:
mixing up old and new tracks recklessly to obtain
something like a new song. Most notable is the Kylie and New Order
mash-up which she even performed live at the Brit Awards.
Bastard Pop is the name of a London party series, which has
found a follow-up in Berlin headed by the
hammond inferno boys.
Some of this stuff is really brilliant, especially when the melodies and
chords of the tracks go together well. Some other productions are just an
excuse to play the old pop material over again. Sometimes they are cheaply
done, like putting some a-capella rap on top of the hottest new dancefloor
track. Those really get on my nerves.
2manyDJs (when they are not soulwax)
girls on top (richard x) famous for putting whitney houston's
singing on top of kraftwerk's numbers has released a "best of" compilation. :)
alright, you haven't seen many updates on this page since around 2004,
and several substyles described above have converged into electronic rock.
some call it nu rave, even though it's neither like rave rock nor like
techno rave. the approach is more of the rock band type getting influenced
by all variations of electro. several former electronic acts like mount
sims and soffy o have chosen this path. also several new players entered
this ring, in particular with the new attention of the indie crowd and
generally a much larger audience than in the early electroclash days,
this list can in no way be complete. bands of this kind are
coming up from all parts of the world, and mainstream
candidates such as franz ferdinand and kaiser chiefs
kind of belong into here as well. but do you see them playing in a
techno club at night?
i guess everyone tends to use the same genre name also for electronic
acts with a disco rock sound attitude. many of the names in the "old"
categories have evolved into here. fischerspooner's second album
fits, for example. i'll just mention some obvious new names.
digitalism
chromeo
boys noize (derivate of kid alex)
teenage bad girl
many of these artists really ride several waves, so the
distinction is pretty artificial, just like this entire website anyway.
but you may find it useful.
the TWENFM radio show, also downloadable as mp3. some people carry
the shows around in their usb sticks, some even play them in bars
and parties.
this.is.radio.euRoClAsh.