>Time for some shameless self-promotion for a change. This is one of the bands I play with, two years ago at Kafé 44 in Stockholm, Sweden. Check the Massgrav site for loads and loads of mpthrees, videos, photos, giglogs, merchandise etc.
Category Archives: music
>Music that matters: Brainbombs
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I’ve been a fan for quite some years now, and I still get damned scared and mentally disturbed when I put on a Brainbombs album. Not to forget: I get totally mesmerized. I think it’s that combination, that enchanting horror, which constantly draws me closer to Brainbombs.
Because this is some seriously weird shit, I tell you.
The music consists of the totally degenerated sounds of guitars being thrashed to death, decibel destruction galore, with absolute deadly distortion, pacing back and forth, in and out of context. The vibe is that of a smelly toilet clogged with piles and piles of sick porno mags drenched in old sperm and vomit, chunks of dissolving human flesh on heroin spoons and insane screaming old men in pain gnawing their dirty long nails on the blood-splattered walls. Only you cannot hear the screams. Sometimes you hear a trumpet. Something like that. Truly negative vibes. The drums get a hold of your heartbeat and then slowly drain all life. The monotony is forever. Out of this thick dirt wall of noise rock guitars and hammersmashed drums and everyday darkness comes the voice of the real Satan, proclaiming in a moderate tone – without power, without soul, with slight retardation – the most vicious poetry put on tape. Peter Sotos would have been proud. The artwork adds to the delirium – sometimes clean as a newborn baby cunt, sometimes soiled with the filth of adults. I’m sorry I wrote that cunt thing. Brainbombs made me do it. Sotos made Brainbombs do it. Humanity made Sotos do it.
But in the end it’s only rock’n’roll. The very core of Brainbombs is that noise-drenched riff. Simple. Pure. Genuine. Complete. They put it best: Genius and brutality. Taste and power. Whatever that means?
I guess it means what you make of it. Because when listening to Brainbombs, sooner or later you’ll have to ask yourself: Why am I listening to this? The lyrics are about raping and killing prostitutes and children, they are about torture, sodomy, murder – all written in a descriptive realistic way, not at all funny, never humorous but just really disgusting and frightening, exploiting in detail the darkest side of humanity. Why are we listening to this? Why are their lyrics like that?
To me, it’s that enchanting horror again. To me, real culture should make an everlasting impression. Brainbombs achieve that – only they do it in a dirty, negative way. Who said art should be beautiful?
Two members of Brainbombs were also members of the band Totalitär, a band which is very popular amongst the crust-, hardcore- and punk PC-militia. I wonder if Brainbombs is accepted by these people because of the Totalitär connection? Maybe the Totalitär fans aren’t even aware of Brainbombs? It’d be interesting to hear them out. Next time I see a patched up punk I will ask.
Four years ago I wrote some notes about Brainbombs in the paper edition of Ny Moral #1. It went a little something like this:
Jag har ingen aning om hur snubbarna i Brainbombs ser ut. Bara det gör att de är ett av Sveriges främsta band – på en hel mängd plan och utan att överdriva det minsta.
Den här fixeringen vid hur ett band ska se ut gör mig så jävla förbannad… Ni kan pierca era näsor, tatuera era arslen och brännmärka era fontaneller tills ni ser ut som jävla julgranar, men gör ni inte bra musik hör ni inte hemma någonstans. Överflödig, andefattig musik är det värsta jag vet.
Efter att ha slukat en stor mängd Brainbombs-låtar (jag har lagt in allt de gjort i en fet Winamp-playlist) känns det som alla andra så kallade rockband kan dra åt helvete relativt omgående. Dock har det varit en svår process att få in Brainbombs i min lilla svartskalle.
Fascinationen för de morbida texterna och den så rått fragmentariska grafiken har funnits där sedan dag ett, likaså beundran för den totalt hängivna sången. Den sterila, men ändå livs levande, produktionen icke att förglömma eller förakta. Det är själva musiken som har varit svår. Och den förbannade trumpeten.
Jag tror det var under en feberknäpp en sen aprilnatt som allt föll på plats. Nästintill livlös och svettandes under dubbla täcken malde jag Brainbombs låtkavalkad nonstop i säkert sex timmar. Läsandes texter som ”I detta satans rum ligger någon på en bädd av blod och skriker”, ”I kill Anne Frank, open her like a butcher”, ”You’re a sexy bitch, but you stink” och ”Sixteen years old, fucks like a whore” så föddes min fascination.
Har upptäckt att Brainbombs funkar bäst under sjukdom.
Att texterna är svinigt influerade av Peter Sotos är lätt att se. Att de maler likt mantran gör det än mer fascinerande. Det här är inga ord som göms bakom poetiska dimridåer. Det här är ord som får en att rygga tillbaka med skräckblandad förtjusning. De psykotiska meningarna som avlöser varandra har någon slags mystisk dragningskraft. Genius and brutality. Men med tanke på att folket i Brainbombs härstammar från Hudiksvall och verkat i Uppsala kanske texterna känns mer relevanta om man främst sätter dem i ett amerikanskt perspektiv. Det är som sagt Sotos som inspirerat.
Hur beskriva musiken? Trasiga gitarrer, taktfasta komp, långa, monotona stycken, sällan mer än två riff per låt. Även på låg volym är det ganska störigt, och trots de få ingredienserna kan det säkert uppfattas som stökigt. Sången pratsjungs med en stel, högtravande röst som trots det rymmer en jävla känsla och kyla. Att höra Peter sjunga ”Starting to masturbate, into the child’s face” är en ondskefull upplevelse, och man är nog smått sjuk på riktigt om man inte någon gång under färdens gång frågar sig vad fan det är man lyssnar på. Cannibal Corpse må skriva liknande lyrik, men Brainbombs känns allvarligare än så.
Det som kan störa transen man försätts i efter idogt lyssnande är den satans trumpeten. Den poppar upp och väcker en från dåsigheten. Inte bra. Men kanske nödvändig ändå. Måhända fungerar den i alarmistiskt syfte.
Ett gäng släpp har dessa fyra herrar bakom sig, och mer tycks komma. Mycket av det de gjort är dock samlingar där samma låtar återkommer gång efter annan, och sådant hatar jag. Samlare som man är så tvingas man punga ut med pengar för porr man egentligen inte behöver. Så funkar materialismen, men i fallet Brainbombs känns det viktigt på något löjligt vis. Dyrkan kan anta skrämmande proportioner.
Den ultimata (och enda?) Brainbombs-siten, Genius and Brutality – Taste and Power, hittas här: http://anka.dyndns.org/brainbombs/
Idioter som tycker att Tomas Ledins Sommaren är kort är bra har givetvis ingenting att hämta i detta helvete. Ni kan ta era studentlägereldsspexiga låtar och era löjliga rättstämda guror och dra till ett annat hades.
Brainbombs are very much alive and kicking. They debuted with the songs I detta satans rum and Psychout kid on a compilation tape 22 years ago. 22 hours ago I got their brand new LP, Fucking mess, and it slays as always. They are like 44 years old and they slay yo mama. On December 12 they play live in Paris.
Check out Skinned alive from the new album. And then read and worship on the ultimate Brainbombs site.
>Wojciech Kilar, Dracula and Coppola
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I condemn you to living death. To eternal hunger for living blood.
Polish composer Wojciech Kilar made me do it. I believe his soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola‘s amazing movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) is what got me interested in classical music in the first place, the kind that spawns darkness, uneasiness and black magick. As with the film, the music is a Wagner-esque operatic epic love story, spanning continents and centuries. The dark and brooding chords mixed with the voices of the damned sets the tone already at the beginning of the film – this is the renunciation of God accompanied by the sounds of the undead avenger. It’s nothing but a musical masterpiece.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula is often ridiculed for being overdramatic, and in a way that’s completely true, but what a lot of people don’t seem to understand is that it was purposefully created that way as a homage to the old and grand. This is Coppola’s interpretation. The acting is big, the music is big, the sets and costumes are big – this is opera in the flesh, and it all fits perfectly together. While Werner Herzog‘s Dracula, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979), is more ”on location”, Coppola chooses a stage. This is highly noticeable in the theatrical dialogue as well.
She lives beyond the grace of God, a wanderer in the outer darkness. She is “vampyr”, “nosferatu”. […] We are dealing with forces beyond all human experience, and enormous power. So guard her well. Otherwise, your precious Lucy will become a bitch of the Devil! A whore of darkness! […] Hear me out, young man. Lucy is not a random victim, attacked by mere accident, you understand? No. She is a willing recruit, a breathless follower, a wanton follower. I dare say, a devoted disciple. She is the Devil’s concubine!
As for the special effects: if you know your film history you’ll be amazed. Coppola, with his son Roman Coppola and effects legend Michael Lantieri, uses classical film techniques to create the unique effects – optical matting, reverse shooting, lighting transitions. You name it, it’s all there. Jonathan Harker’s first travelling sequence is the first of many complex time transition sequences that breath life into what otherwise would have been some dead looking CGI effect. Darren Aronofsky – whose acclaimed new film The Wrestler is showing at the Stockholm Film Festival right now – did pretty much the same thing in The Fountain (2006), and it’s equally fantastic. Organic instead of plastic. Read more about the effects here, and check the In Camera: The Naïve Visual Effects of Bram Stoker’s Dracula feature on the special edition DVD/Bluray.
Had it not been for the stiff acting of Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder (some people claim that was done on purpose as well, but I still haven’t found anything from Coppola saying so), and some lagging in the second act – the love story with Mina and Dracula, as well as the not so impressive ending, I would rate this film 10/10. Now I’ll go for 8/10. As for the music, there’s no doubt: 10/10 all the way.
There is a special concert version of the soundtrack available on The Pirate Bay, described as an attempt to ”arrange the music in a form which one might hear in a symphonic concert setting rather than as action accompaniment. It is a single movement, much like the tone poems of Liszt, Tchaikovsky, or Rachmaninoff (Isle of the Dead), just to name a few. The emphasis is on a coherent musical narrative, offering a compelling listening experience without any reference to action in the film.”
Download the special version here.
Download the original soundtrack here.
Listen to the opening theme (the best audio quality I could find):
>Music that matters: Brutal Truth
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In a time when people raise billions of dollars for sickening presidential campaigns where the outcome really doesn’t matter in the long run it’s time to face the brutal truth.
Why not start with Brutal Truth then? Back in the day it was one of my favourite grindcore bands, and the old stuff is still relevant. Read the lyrics to Displacement (taken from their excellent album Need to control (1994)), listen to the energy and then kick somethin’ that means somethin’ (you know, The Pharcyde song). Like Brutal Truth stated with the debut album in 1992:
Extreme conditions demand extreme responses.
Listen to Displacement here.
Sing along here:
No more – blind falsity
No more – tears left to see
No more – fear left in me
No more – pain inside my head
No more – corporate casualties
No more – progress, myths and lies
Would you – call upon a book of lies?
Blame aside, watch you try and rationalize
Push walls to the threshold of pain
Genetics unmatched in the inhuman acts of capitalist fucks
Cashing grants, the majority oblivious to pain and suffering
Greed, payback in the form of black disease
Would you, fall from grace, desensitize?
Crawl inside socially fed mass genocide
Would you, face the truth or capitalize?
Falsify, bloodshot cracks in visions eye
>Repetition
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I’m a huge fan of repetitive, monotonous, minimalistic music, be it rap, noise, doom, shoegazer, kraut, black metal, experimental, ambient, classical, instrumental… I guess it’s the bewitching trancelike state it may put you in. I can experience total relaxation listening to the most vicious noise, which might seem odd to most human beings, but the intensity and power of something truly monotonous should never be underestimated.
Something funny happened this summer. I was going home after work and had probably had a terrible day since I was exhausted beyond comprehension. As soon as I got on the bus I drifted into darkness while listening to Om‘s absolutely stunning Pilgrimage album. Sure, I know this one is repetitive as fuck, but I remember kind of waking up from my slumber thinking ”How insane are these guys? They’ve been playing exactly the same riff for ten minutes now, no variation whatsoever! What the fuck?!” … And so I looked at my mp3-player and realized I had accidentally pressed the ”AB Repeat” button and the player was repeating only two seconds of the whole song in a goddamn perfect loop, and it had been going for ten or fifteen minutes just playing the same two seconds over and over and over again… Wow.
When I pressed the play button the magic disappeared.
I came to think of the famous horror monologue in one of my top ten movies of all time, Apocalypse Now (ignore the Redux version!).
And then I realized — like I was shot…like I was shot with a diamond…a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, “My God, the genius of that, the genius, the will to do that.” Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.
Watch Marlon Brando, in the role of Colonel Kurtz, improvise horror:
I’ve been trying several times to find that perfect loop again, but have not succeeded. It’s never as pure and complete as that day on the bus. Maybe I’ll find it on Thursday as I’m going to Gothenburg to watch Om perform live at Nefertiti. Or maybe tomorrow when I’ll listen to Mogwai at Cirkus in Stockholm. Or maybe tonight when listening to Loop… Within monotony the possibilities are endless.
On another note: Sleep (who split up in 1998 which resulted in two of the members forming Om) will perform the album Holy Mountain as well as selections from Dopesmoker and more at All Tomorrow’s Parties next year. It’ll be two world exclusive performances that will not be repeated.
Even repetition must come to an end.
Now here is Om.
>Chomsky on demoralized societies
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Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power pp. 397-398
The vestiges of an integrated, socially cohesive, functioning society, with some kind of solidarity and continuity to it, have just been destroyed here. It’s hard to imagine a better way to demoralize people than to have them watch T.V. for seven hours a day – but that’s pretty much what people have been reduced to by now.
In fact, all of these things really illustrate the difference between completely demoralized societies like ours and societies that are still hanging together, like in a lot of the Third World. I mean, in absolute terms the Mayan Indians in Chiapas, Mexico [who organized the Zapatista rebellion in 1994], are much poorer than the people in South Central Los Angeles, or in Michigan or Montana – much poorer. But they have a civil society that hasn’t been totally eliminated the way the working-class culture we used to have in the United States was. Chiapas is one of the most impoverished areas of the Hemisphere, but because there’s still a lively, vibrant society there, with a cultural tradition of freedom and social organization, the Mayan Indian peasants were able to respond in a highly constructive way – they organized the Chiapas rebellion, they have programs and positions, they have public support, it’s been going somewhere. South Central Los Angeles, on the other hand, was just a riot: it was the reaction of completely demoralized, devastated, poor working-class population, with nothing at all to bring it together. All the people could do there was mindless lashing out, just go steal from the stores. The only effect of that is, we’ll build more jails.
[…]
See, there’s an experiment going on. The experiment is: can you marginalize a large part of the population, regard them as superfluous because they’re not helping you make those dazzling profits – and can you set up a world in which production is carried out by the most oppressed people, with the fewest rights, in the most flexible labor markets, for the happiness of the rich people of the world?
[…]
Can you have an economy where everything works like that – production by the most impoverished and exploited, for the richest and most privileged, internationally? And with large parts of the general population just marginalized because they don’t contribute to the system – in Colombia, murdered, in New York, locked up in prison. Can you do that? Well, nobody knows the answer to that question. You ask, could it lead to a civil war? It definitely could, it could lead to uprisings, revolts.
Isn’t that pretty much what happened in France in 2005 and 2007?
Here’s what the French duo Justice has to say about it, this is STRESS (boycotted by several TV-stations):