Month: August 2019

By Posted on Posted in Depeche Mode Tagged with , , , , ,

Since last year, Mute Records is celebrating it’s 40th anniversary. But instead of ending the celebrations on 2018, they made it into a future-driven slogan aptly named “Mute 4.0 1978→Tomorrow”. There’s a bunch of re-releases and a bunch of new releases.

One of them is both ingenious and well-hearted, but possibly disappointing. I’m talking about “STUMM433”. They managed to get 58 artists from Mute (there are even ones signed to other labels right now, disbanded or even deceased) and had each one of them do a cover of the same musical piece: American composer John Cage’s “4’33″” (sorry for the excess of quotation marks, but it’s supposed to be read “4 minutes and 33 seconds”).

But this is no ordinary song. It’s an experiment. The entire composition requires the musicians to not play their instruments. So if you think this means 4’33” of silence, you’re correct. Or at least on the right track. It’s by no means absolute silence. And it’s not supposed to last 4’33” precisely either. By what we’ve been teased so far, it’s a contemplation at musical silence, yet, at the noise around us. Pitchfork gave it a 6.3 comparing it to ambient noise you hear on your daily commute.

The list of artists is impressive: A Certain Ratio, A.C. Marias, ADULT., The Afghan Whigs, Alexander Balanescu, Barry Adamson, Ben Frost, Bruce Gilbert, Cabaret Voltaire, Carter Tutti Void, Chris Carter, Chris Liebing, Cold Specks, Daniel Blumberg, Danny Briottet, Depeche Mode, Duet Emmo, Echoboy, Einstürzende Neubauten, Erasure, Fad Gadget, Goldfrapp, He Said, Irmin Schmidt, Josh T. Pearson, K Á R Y Y N, Komputer, Laibach, Land Observations, Lee Ranaldo, Liars, Looper, Lost Under Heaven, Maps, Mark Stewart / Sonskrif / The New Banalist Orchestra, Michael Gira, Mick Harvey, Miranda Sex Garden, Moby, Modey Lemon, Mountaineers, New Order, Nitzer Ebb, NON / Boyd Rice, Nonpareils, The Normal, onDeadWaves, Phew, Pink Grease, Pole, Polly Scattergood, Richard Hawley, ShadowParty, Silicon Teens, Simon Fisher Turner and Edmund de Waal, The Warlocks, Wire, Yann Tiersen and Gareth Jones.

It is rumored that Depeche Mode’s rendition was recorded at the backstage of their final show of the Global Spirit Tour, July 25th, 2018. Maybe it’s the crew just having a chat while the band plays “Enjoy The Silence” on stage? Anyway, each version will also be followed by a visual piece. So that’s a lot of material on our way. Laibach, for example, made this accompanying video that clocks a bit over 7 minutes.

Meanwhile, Mute’s boss Daniel Miller himself revived his moniker “The Normal” for the first time since the creation of the label for a piece that is exactly that: ambient noise.

 

This release will be available on October 4th. There is a mammoth 5-disc vinyl box that comes along with candles with the scent of silence (?!) and a certificate of authenticity signed by Daniel Miller among other extras. This is limited to 433 copies and costs £220.00 and as of the day of this post (24/08/2019) they are still available. A regular 5CD box set is also coming, along the usual non-physical means. You can check it all out here. No wonder the deluxe version may take a while to sell out. Is it something people will play more than once in their lives, as the Pitchfork reviewer said?

Net profits from the release of the STUMM433 box-set will be split between the British Tinnitus Association and Music Minds Matter, charities chosen to honour Inspiral Carpets’ founding member Craig Gill who suffered from anxiety and depression as a result of his tinnitus in the years up to his untimely death. So there’s a very good charitable side to it.

By Posted on Posted in Life in General Tagged with ,
19.08.2013: I was already being welcomed at the Frankfurt Airport.

Today marks the 6th anniversary of my permanent arrival in Berlin. I had visited the city four times in the previous two years. There was almost this voice in my head: “if you build Berlin’s new airport, AirBerlin will come to Rio with a non-stop flight to pick you up”.

To no one’s disappoint, Berlin’s unfinished airport’s current opening date should be fall 2020. The original plan was to open it some time in 2010, but then the delays started. In one of my trips, I even got to get a flight ticket with BER written on it as my destination. About one month before the trip, Lufthansa emailed me saying the destination would be at good old Tegel airport instead. The airport has had so many unfulfilled openings, that no one takes whichever is the current one seriously (me neither). Along with the eternal delays with the airport, AirBerlin ended up filing for bankruptcy because they were counting on the new airport . They even did actually have plans for a Berlin-Rio non-stop flight. But it never materialized and it’s all history now. A buried past for AirBerlin and a mysterious future for Willy Brandt Airport, Berlin-Brandenburg (in case you were curious to know the full name of what Berliners simply call B-E-R).

Enough with Berlin trivia. If you want to get to know tons of information about the city that not even Wikipedia will tell you, I strongly recommend Notmsparker’s books.

There are many first-world-problems to whine about Berlin. “Berlin is not Germany”, some will say. They’re not that wrong. But to me, it’s almost like a Dorf (a small village) with the infrastructure of an European capital. Yes, there are stereotypical yoga-vegan-punk Berliners. But part of the German way of life is present, nonetheless. People say good morning, hello, thank you. The “bitte” culture is nice. I sometimes say it two or three times in one sentence just to be sure. But, hey, Germans, it’s not that us, foreigners, are rude for not saying the almighty “bitte” once in a while. Its just that sometimes it’s already understood in our mother tongue’s spoken language. The intonation implies everything. And sometimes one language interferes with the other and the bitte gets lost in translation. But when in Rome… I mean, Berlin…

Also, traffic is not an eternal gridlock. I laugh at the face of Berliners that complain about traffic. The maximum speed limit is 50km/h (I think there is one avenue that has an old limit of 60km/h, a relic from East Germany times). I had to cleanse myself of all the rage I had built upon the vicious circle of hate that is the traffic of Rio. People drive badly, so you drive even worse, which will lead someone else to drive badly… you get the point, right? Leave all that behind and simply drive calmly and with attention, specially with bicycles. And what’s not to love in a flat city much more welcoming to bikes? They’re not perfect, but don’t get me started on Rio’s bike situation.

There are some trade-offs, of course. The consumerist mentality is quite different. Apart from a handful of times per year, normal shops are not allowed to open on Sundays. Movie theaters have almost half an hour of advertising before the film starts. And, despite the magical convenience of simply hopping into a train or subway without barriers on the platforms, Murphy’s law says you will be controlled exactly on that day you forgot your monthly ticket expired the day before. And obviously, the one thing from Rio de Janeiro that Berlin can’t top: all seasons are more or less the same. In Berlin, it’s like living in 4 different planets every 3 months. But I will always have room for both cities in my heart. Rio, ich liebe dich, mas Berlin é a minha amante. pobre, mas sexy*

*(Rio, I love you, but Berlin is my poor, but sexy mistress)

By Posted on Posted in Depeche Mode, Music Tagged with , , ,

Just yesterday I was skimming quickly through the latest edition of Classic Pop magazine devoted to Depeche Mode that came out this week. There is an interview with D. A. Pennebaker about “101” and a candid revelation that a 4K restoration of the film could be in the works. I was very excited by this. He even mentioned extra material could see the light of day.

Then, just a few hours later, almost like a cruel prank from destiny, news of his passing away surfaced. Sadly it wasn’t an internet prank and he had died two days before the news were made public. Regardless of how an eventual restoration of “101” could be affected, it’s a sad loss. Music documentaries won’t ever be the same. But he died at the age of 94 leaving an immense legacy of political and music documentaries. Aside from Depeche Mode, he directed Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Look Back”, David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” and “Monterrey Pop”.
RIP, Donn.