Tag: blueneck

30 songs that blew my mind (that you probably haven’t heard of) – Part 6

In the three years it took to complete this list, you may have heard of some of these. 

  1. Beat Around The Bush (feat. Somersault) – Nothing 

I had to have a Nothing track on this list, and of course that track would be from their first and finest (don’t @ me for speaking facts) Guilty of Everything. 

Every song speaks to someone, but not everyone could tell you why. This entry was a toss-up between ‘Beat Around The Bush’ and ‘Somersault.’ ‘Somersault’s matter-of-fact simplicity speaks for us. ‘Outside the door the world’s alive/I’ll stay and hide on the other side’ – an empathetic companion at the best of times – and more so in 2020.  

‘Beat Around the Bush’, meanwhile, speaks to us – of an experience, alien and unfamiliar, but one that still resonates. We understand what’s being talked about even though we haven’t quite lived it ourselves. ‘God in men, our souls are spent/can’t be saved, can’t repent’  – if you can’t relate to the religious overtones, you can feel them. It may not tell our story, but we can sit by it and listen. 

  1. Mind the Wires – Tears Run Rings 

Say what you will about music piracy and try to convince yourself that you wouldn’t download a car, but I owe a debt of gratitude to the bootleggers of the mid 2000s who put shoegaze and dreampop mixtapes up to torrent. I downloaded music then, so I know what to pay for now. There is no way I  would have chanced upon Tears Run Rings (among other new-gaze classics) without the mixtape creators, their torrents, their seeders and the mediafire links buried in obscure blogspots.  

It’s a shame ‘Mind The Wires’ came out when it did – in a label-free music non-industry – because it has all the elements that could have made it an iconic shoegaze track if it had come out fifteen years earlier: lyrics hovering above the range of human comprehension, a haunting vocal hook, melancholy and rapture.  

Most incredibly, and like most of their tracks, ‘Mind The Wires’ was recorded remotely. More about their process of creation and AE’s stab at what the lyrics are saying here. 

  1. Low/Lilitu – Blueneck 

Please spare me your righteous anger as, for the fourth time in this series, a single spot is occupied by more than one song. You should be grateful, if anything, to receive more bang for your internet buck.  

Sonic siblings ‘Low’ and ‘Lilitu’ sit three songs apart on Blueneck’s otherworldly The Fallen Host. These are songs that are so expansive, so intricate and layered, they leave you feeling like you’ve lived an entire lifetime by the time they end. Sated, fulfilled, self-actualised, you wait to ascend to a higher plane. But instead of nirvana, you’re met with silence. Then the dull drone of reality fades in as you descend back to the mundane.  

PROTIP: avoid the inevitable deception AND get a bonus sleep aid by playing ‘Low’ and/or ‘Lilitu’ once you’re in bed. I’m pretty sure their cosmic vibrations are in tune with the human body. Melt into moksha and stave off the real world for another 8 hours.  

  1. Restrained in a Moment (I Love You) – The Royal Family and The Poor 

You don’t know this, but I’m a YouTube influencer. In a time before streaming was a thing, I wanted a space where some of my obscure, overlooked discoveries could be preserved*. There’s a whole debate to be had on the ethics of copyright and intellectual property, but the truth is that a) at the time there was no more convenient way to share a song with someone than through a YouTube link, and b) as mentioned, if it wasn’t for the songs shared by other people then, it’s unlikely I’d be supporting my bands financially today.  

I don’t even know how I found The Royal Family and the Poor. it was probably during the phase when I was excavating fossils of the 80s British indie scene. On first listen ‘Restrained in a Moment’ was a masterpiece. Why did it move me so? I was at a loss for words. 

When I uploaded it to YouTube, the comments started coming in – they still do today – and they put words to the feeling I couldn’t describe. Of the handful of videos I shared, this one gets the most heartfelt, emotional and grateful response. I have the words now, but to appreciate the intimacy of the song, just click the video above and go through the comments. 

*Fun Fact: among these obscurities was pinkshinyultrablast’s ‘Blaster’ which was subsequently pulled down when Umi released and they became a big deal. 

  1. Makes No Sense – Soundpool 

Do you know what really makes no sense? There is no other song in the world that sounds anything like the heady disco-shoegaze Soundpool invented with this one track. I would give anything to have an entire album that is composed up of nothing but this goosebumpy nostalgia for a time I never knew. The rest of Mirrors in Your Eyes comes close but even it can’t replicate, the unfiltered warmth, joy and sparkle of ‘Makes No Sense.’ It’s like a comet – you’re  lucky if you experience it in your lifetime. Yet the eternal question remains: how can something so unique sound so, so familiar? 

— 

Outtakes: AE meets Blueneck (Part 2)

On (unlikely) Influences:

I don’t know how we skipped the usual suspects, but when talking about Blueneck’s influences, Rich throws a name at me that has me caught completely off-guard.

‘Phil Collins.‘

Pardon?

‘Phil Collins! You know Phil Collins?’

Yes, I know Phil Collins. Why are we talking about Phil Collins?

‘You’ve heard ‘In The Air Tonight’?’

Yes, I’ve heard ‘In The Air Tonight’. Why are we talking about Phil Collins?

‘Listen to the start of it again, and then listen to ‘Sirens’.’

I play ‘In The Air Tonight’ in my mind.

Dear god, it’s true.

—

The scourge of the One Song:

Rich calls on me to remember that dreadful ‘Rollercoaster’ track by Ronan Keating from a decade or two ago.

‘Do you remember how it went?’ he asks.

‘Yes, but I’d rather not.’

‘That’s OK. Do you know the New Radicals?’

‘Sure – that group with the one song.’

‘Yeah that’s them. Do you remember how that went?’

‘Sure,’ I’m about to start humming ‘You Get What You Give’ and it hits me.

‘It’s written by the same guy,’ he tells me.

‘They really only have the one song.’

—

The before-they-were-famous moment

‘I met Chris Martin’s parents,’ Rich tells me. I’ve been railing against Coldplay for about five minutes now. For a moment I feel like we’re two schoolteachers discussing a problem student. ‘I was at one of their early shows – there couldn’t have been more than 200 people there. There was this older couple sitting in the corner, and I got to talking with them. They told me their son was in the band. It was Chris Martin.’

—

Settling debates with Google:

‘My childhood dream was to be in a Right Said Fred video,’ I reveal.

‘Aren’t Right Said Fred gay?’

‘What? Surely not!’ I quote their lyrics to make my point.

Deeply dippy about those Spanish eyes,
Sierra smile,
Legs that go on for miles, and m…

‘Ah yes, one of them’s bisexual.’

—

On their name:

I’m so convinced about my own interpretation of Blueneck’s name, Rich doesn’t even get the chance to speak before I’ve launched into my exhaustive explanation the story behind their name. He hears me out patiently and after what must be a quarter of an hour tells me that I’m free to go with that as the story due to its overpowering glam factor. It’s not the real reason though. The Real Reason is so superbly unglamorous that I decide to keep my own illusions, and leave the truth shrouded in mystery.

Sorry, not sorry, but you’ll never know.

—

“Don’t meet your heroes”: AE meets Blueneck (Part 1)

“Don’t meet your heroes,” he tells me, taking a sip of wine.

I’m talking to Rich Sadler from Blueneck. We’re sitting across from each other 10,000 kilometres apart. He’s recounting a Radiohead-related tale of woe that befell his friend, and I’m pretending to be surprised to learn that Thom Yorke is a twat.

I joke – there’s never any need to convince me that Radiohead are a bunch of wankers. However, in keeping me from a life of shattered dreams and cynicism, Rich’s wisdomous advice appears to overlook one tiny detail:

I’m talking to Rich Sadler from Blueneck.

I refrain from telling him the damage is probably already done.

—-

Blueneck are not a group that frequents shoegaze circles. They aren’t even a name that pops up too frequently within the community. It could be because up until recently they hadn’t even the foggiest notion what to qualify their sound as. They’ve had the label ‘post-rock’ thrust upon them by over-enthusiastic third parties (independent publications not unlike this one, e.g.) but Blueneck never set out with any such intentions. No one in the group had even heard the term before having it stamped all over them.

Rich is one of the lucky few to have had the chance to be a fan of the band before being in the band. He recalls seeing them live before they’d released their first album, Scars of the Midwest, and wondering:

‘Why are they not huge?’

Then, when they toured for The Fallen Host, he toured with them.

‘Why are they not huge?’ – a standard reaction when you first hear Blueneck. I recall my own First Time; playing The Fallen Host while at work. Even under stark white light in the middle of the morning, ‘Low’ managed to stop my world. For a little over 9 minutes, it was just the two of us, spinning in infinity.

The live experience is a grandiosity that we scattered fans can only imagine.

How do they do it?

I can’t bring myself to ask the question, even though I’m longing to know the answer. Innate curiosity fights the urge to preserve the magic of the Blueneck sound by leaving technicalities shrouded in mystery.

Curiosity wins.

‘How do you do it?’

They live miles apart, the Bluenecks. They have lives and jobs. I can’t imagine how they find the time to be in the same room for more than a couple of hours every month. With both space and time against them, how is it even feasible for them to create anything at all?

Enter, the internet.

Spending hours in a studio writing, testing and recording tracks is a luxury most groups just cannot afford – least of all when they have to balance distance, families, work, and the basics of adult existence. Blueneck aren’t any different and Rich, being the furthest away from the others, makes a two and a half hour trek down to Bristol when the tracks are finally ready and it’s time to lay them down.

They’re not the first band to embrace the dropbox method of recording. Tears Run Rings rely on a similar technique, recording albums while divided by cities. Meanwhile, The Microdance make sure lyrics and composition are perfectly in place before they hit their Brick Lane studio (or Los Angeles) to churn out an album. Epilogue, Rich reveals, was recorded almost entirely remotely, and Rich and Duncan still have an album’s worth of songs waiting to be tracked.

‘They’re not Blueneck songs, though,’ he forewarns, pre-empting my apopleptic fit. The internet can only overcome the tyranny of distance by that much and Rich and Duncan’s project is both a resolution and an experiment. He seems intent on assuring me that Menace At The Dam has close to nothing to do with Blueneck, and I can’t tell whether to be excited or apprehensive about a potential departure from the established, accepted, worshipped norm.

Despite their elusiveness, Blueneck are far from unknown, scads of fans hang on to their every note, buy their albums, go to their gigs, and pick up their merch. Sure, it doesn’t hurt to be signed on by Denovali, but it does lead you to the obvious question:

File-sharing: good or bad?

It’s not a cut and dry question and Rich takes a while to respond. Understandably, he can’t take a definitive stance.

‘I’m torn,’ he tells me. ‘There wouldn’t be a Blueneck without file-sharing.’

I’m clearly not the only one who found out about Blueneck through word of virtual mouth before buying their album. Downloads, streams – whether legit or no – do little to further the economic ambitions of a band. But they’re what drive an audience to attend a gig, to buy a t-shirt, to invest in the vinyl.

‘We never expect to earn anything from album sales,’ he says. It makes me think of a ‘legal’ service like Spotify which may pay a cent for a thousand plays. Rich knows better than to expect to turn a profit from online services alone – I think they’d be lucky if they even managed to break even – but find me a 21st century band that does.

It’s a blessing, not a curse. Without the extrinsic motivation, or even the expectation, of making money off a recording, a band is free to focus on creating what they want to create, a listener less likely to be turned off by the ‘polish’ that coats anything released to achieve a commercial or economic result.

Rich concurs, even though I never say this out loud.

“We wouldn’t care if no one bought King Nine. It’s the album we wanted to make.”

[Incoming] Dance with your Enemy – AE meets Blueneck

There was a time in my infancy when the dream of one day being able to talk to the peddlers of the sonic amphetamines that ruled my life was nothing more than that – a dream. One that would, if all went well, be realised in the afterlife.

I must have been very, very good (or very, very insistent) because it came true in less than a decade, further fueling my unshakable belief that the internet is, in fact, The Great Beyond.

Blueneck were around when I was building these castles in the sky, but it was only when my shoegaze dealer sent me a link to The Fallen Host that I came to know of them. This is also when I established: they will be mine, oh yes, they will be mine.

I’m calling them now. Stay glued.

And while you wait: