Lukas Hermann

BADBADNOTGOOD — BBNG2

Lukas Hermann — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:23:46 +0000

I played Jazz in a quartet for some time during my career as a German pupil. Although I really was a beginner with that genre, I already recognized the abilities and facets Jazz and especially playing it has to offer. Since those days, I am always excited when I stumble upon really innovative and unique music with jazz elements. My newest discovery is the band BADBADNOTGOOD, some young boys who record music in short sessions and publish them for free on the Internet. Their deep, vanguard and very virtuosic music has even made possible a collaboration with indie and hyped hip-hop artist Tyler, The Creator. Rightly.

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Dig deeper/Get the LP for free

Brand New — The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Me

Lukas Hermann — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:42:13 +0000

About half a year ago, I was desperately searching for a birthday present for a (female) friend of mine. I am only able to give away CDs or LPs as present but fortunately, her taste in music is that widespread that I could experiment with the possible candidates. The final choice I made was a record from this band, their forth one called Daisy. Before packaging it and driving to her birthday party I, as any music lover would do, imported it into my iTunes — just in case, you know what I mean. I rushed through it in a trip of joy, fear and grief in the light of their ability to create disturbing musical contrasts. Immediately after I finished listening to it, I started to look for the rest of their discography. When I finally touched this record the band evolved from a favorite to a symbol for me. It became the symbol of emotions. Their music has a touch to it which has the ability to do with me whatever it wants: from making me sad or angry to just put me in a warm, melancholic mood. When you get your hand onto that record, just listen to “Jesus Christ” and its lyrics and you’ll understand.

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Listen on YouTube (except from you, Germans)

Muse — Absolution

Lukas Hermann — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:18:35 +0000

The whole Muse discography was living a dire existence for more than two years within my iTunes music collection. Finally, some friends of mine brought me to listen to a live version of “Stockholm Syndrome”. That was it for me. I literally rushed through every record and YouTube videos I found and just two weeks later, I already could perform all distinctive riffs their records could offer, from “MK Ultra” off The Resistance to “New Born” from their aggressive, noisy second record Origin of Symmetry. But my overall favorite is and will ever be Absolution. On no other record or live publication they combined their original energy with Bellamys creativity which reached its peak on this album. It offers all of the band’s abilities, it’s calmative but also corrosively stirring. Not to forget: all those haunting melodies and songs like “Hysteria” or “Time Is Running Out”. This is just Muse at its best.

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Rustie — Glass Swords

Lukas Hermann — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 13:28:24 +0000

Innovative dubstep — to most music addicts a paradox word combination since the first hype in 2008 slowly faded. Artists seem to rewind all their tracks, make remixes of remixed remixes without changing a lot. The genre marks time, innovation is rare. All the more I was very lucky, when I got my copy of Rustie’s “Glass Swords”. Definitely not produced for the mainstream ear, his efforts of making dubstep more crystal, clear and full of light just like the album art is putting forward was like the first breath of fresh air after a long party night to my Skrillex-aggrieved ears. The record’s a tour de force of strange sounds, which sometimes are lovely desultory and complex rhythm and song structures — you do not get bored at any time.

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Years Of Rice And Salt — Nothing Of Cities

Lukas Hermann — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 18:32:40 +0000

I already posted some Mogwai stuff here and I do not just admire them a lot, but am also listening to post-rock music in general with a lot of fun and passion. Many musicians from this musical direction do not ever raise to great prominence and have to publish their music by themselves. Years Of Rice And Salt are one of my favorite bands when it comes to this kind of absolute independent publishing. Their music — it’s post-rock perfection: making unique, polished and long evolving songs with deep love for sounds and emotions is something not everyone is able to achieve without any good promotion chances. They are offering their current records Nothing Of Cities digitally for drop-dead 5 pounds. Just grab it, you won’t regret it, I promise.

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Listen to Xhin (signed to SA)

More info/Grab the LP

Labelling: Stroboscopic Artefacts

Lukas Hermann — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 17:06:51 +0000

Today I’m going for something new on this site. Besides discussing single artists and their work, I decided to also showcase independent record labels, whose work I really admire. I start out with the Berlin-based experimental electronic label Stroboscopic Artefacts. I’m a big fan of the dub duo Dadub and some days ago I desperately wanted to dig a bit deeper into their direction of making music and so I obviously started out with their own label.

SA got a small artist base of about 13 signed musicians or combos, but they’re are doing very passionate work and descent album releases with this rather small amount of creative resources. They’re focusing on dub and experimental electronic music with lot of noise and base drums but you will also find some tracks incorporating some techno or house elements, like those produced by DJ Marcus Suckut, who is also regularly doing remixes of other SA artists.

If you dig deeper into the range of publications, you will soon notice, that album or sampler releases aren’t the most fascinating publications of the label, but the record series are: With the Monad Series SA regularly puts forward some of the best, most creative pieces of dub/ambient/IDM music published as small-sized, affordable EPs. And the brand new Stellate Series as the very opposite of the Monad Series is a high-standard-boxset-roundup-kind-of-thing, merging the label’s best music onto two 10″ vinyls and refurbishing them with carefully curated artwork and booklets.

Exploring experimental music is not often that easy and entertaining.

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Listen to Lucy (signed to SA)

The Gaslight Anthem — ’59 Sound

Lukas Hermann — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:38:05 +0000

There are definitely not many musicians who evoke a certain feeling within me every time I fire them up on my stereo. The White Stripes do so, as well as Led Zep and Muse, but, in fact, they do so because they are by far my most favorite bands of all time. The Gaslight Anthem isn’t, but their music still has a feeling to it beaming me back into summers in school, lying in the grass and watching the sun going down with my best friends. I do not now how they exactly achieve this, but to be honest, I do not care. Their music is so personal to me, that any attempt to describe them technically or lyrically would destroy this feeling. So just listen, maybe they can be magical for you as well..

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Luke Abbott — Holkham Drones

Lukas Hermann — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 10:30:04 +0000

Making music through analog modular synths and still creating a coherent, overall fitting sound is one of the hardest achievements to reach for in electronic music. Only really passionate instrument and sound adorers dare to strive for that kind of production processes. Luke Abbott, an ambitious young man from Norfolk currently is to me the most interesting “machine lover” as this article on RA puts it forward. His 2010 record Holkham Drones is full of weird drum parts and exploding, waving and glittering synth parts — all of them created uniquely using DOEPFER A100 modular systems and analog Roland synths. It comes directly from the machine’s heart.

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Das Synthetische Mischgewebe — Frequency Conquistadors

Lukas Hermann — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 06:42:02 +0000

Today I’m featuring a very noisy and experimental record off the PAN label currently based in Berlin. This article on Resident Advisor, an interview with its owner Bill Kouligas on the label’s cover artwork and distribution called my attention to it. I started listening to some of the demo tracks and DSM caught me with its haunting, dabbled sounds and samples.

DSM began in Berlin armed with a visual education from the early 80’s. They quickly became part of the international industrial cassette scene. Composing for light installations with open-reel machines, cassette recorders, microphone and guitar fuzz boxes with both loud, quiet, occasionally full blast and frequently sneaking in little sounds, all alternating within a few seconds, create an electroacoustic anti-music.

Made my mind flew through galaxies, urban ground systems, communications processes and the world of animals. Very expressive.

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