Jun
13
2017
“A dozen winters of loneliness…and a dozen summers against the world” launglidly speaks, in a trance-like state, David Tibet in this beautiful song penned by Michael Cashmore, the leader of the Nature and Organisation project, an interesting post-industrial / neo folk ensemble that penned a couple of EPs, an LP and an unfinished work in the nineties before Cashmore became a full time collaborator with Tibet’s Current 93 (in fact, all the music on Current 93 “Soft Black Star” is penned by Cashmore).
I recently stumbled again on Cashmore’s work thank to the two disc reprint of the vast majority of Nature and Organisation material, named after the band’s incomplete LP, “Snow Leopard Messiah”. It hosts a lot of key musicians in the post-industrial / neo folk scene of the time (and even then): David Tibet (Current 93), Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), Rose McDowell (Strawberry Switchblade), Douglas Pierce (Death In June) and is a very good and representative for the whole genre, in the good and the bad aspects for it (like a tendency to overindulgence).
Having said that, I found myself strangely hooked to these songs, and in particular to the longest one in the disc. that is the one I’m posting here now. It has a dreamy, addictive quality, and is not without some interesting experimentations in it (like the noisy final part, or the use of the looped “Loneliness” line, that serves as a sonic carpet for all the composition). So…enjoy a slice of summer against the world, at least for these few minutes. :)
May
20
2017
Hello fellow readers! For this week, I’m proposing you a track from the very talented electronic music pioneer Ruth White. She had quite an extensive career, her most famous record is maybe “Flowers of Evil” (1968) in which she puts into music some of the most striking Baudelaire’s poems.
For an extensive look on Ruth’s work and career, I suggest you to visit this blog, which maybe is the best online source about her.
The track I’m posting here, tough, is from her 1971 album, “Short Circuits”, in which Ruth plays with a Moog her favorite classical pieces, reinterpreting them and giving them a quite unique flavor, one of them being a complete rework and thus being credited to her directly.
This Chopin piece is one of my favorite from the record. I considered posting Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 which is also present, but then I decided to put a less known (and listened) piece instead.
May
13
2017
Here is something that I haven’t done frequently in those years of writing on Illusion City: to propose a brand new song from a brand new album for which the band is currently touring :)
Massive Ego is a very interesting Wave / Goth / Electro act from UK. According to their bio, they formed in 1996, released their first album in 2006, got a long recording hiatus and then came back with new releases in 2014 (with EPs) and finally released the Beautiful Suicide double CD in February and are currently touring Germany supporting Blutengel (if you are interested, you can check the dates on their official site).
What makes them really interesting to me is their ability to mix different styles (EBM, classic wave…) in a very fresh way. They don’t sound stale or phony, like many other releases do. It’s nothing revolutionary but this new album is a very good work.
So…enjoy your beautiful suicide :)
May
1
2017
Hello my dear readers… it’s been a while since the last time we saw each other, isn’t it? :)
I’ve reviewed a new rare movie, the very brilliant Break Up by the maverick and explosive Italian director Marco Ferreri, who gained notoriety for his very polemic movies in the ’60 and the ’70. I found Break Up to be a very fresh movie, in spite of it’s age, talking about topics that are still very actual.
I plan to start some new music again, more or less regularly, and have some more reviews and article to bring online, I hope in a relative short time.
In the mean time you can read Break Up’s review here.
See you!
Mar
25
2017
The hunt for obscure and valuable works of art continues! This time I’ve unburied a very interesting Greek movie of the ’80s on which I’ve stumbled by pure chance. It’s name is A Quiet Death and has some very interesting visual and psychoanalytical undertones. It was shot by a director, Frieda Liappa, who shot only three full feature movies and died in the ’90s because of a severe illness.
Greek cinema is really obscure today because of the lack of sources (excluding the rare famous worldwide directors like Theo Angelopoulos) and the deep crisis that hit it since the ’80s, but is a very interesting field of research indeed. It’s uniqueness plus it’s artistic and intellectual value surely deserves it to be brought to light again. A Quiet Death surely is one of those valuable titles.
You can read the review here.
Mar
5
2017
After a period of silence, a new update!
I’ve added a review for one of the best efforts from one of the most talented Asian directors, 3-Iron by Kim Ki-Duk.
You can read it here.
Jan
19
2017
After a long time a new music review. Kory Clarke’s Opium Hotel review has been written! You can read it here.
Jan
15
2017
Hello, my dear readers. For this time, I want to propose you a little oddity that I found some time ago. It’s the tile track off the first album of Mr Kory Clarke, the leader of the late ’80s/early 90s band Warrior Soul (one of the best and less understood of their times), recorded in 2003.
I plan to review the album because of it’s nature of a bizarre experiment so here I will only say that it’s songs are a very strange blend of spoken-word poetry, electronic beats, groovy and trippy hard rock filled with visions of rage, dreams and a stubborn antagonist spirit. Quite interesting, uh? Not always it succeeds, but sure is quite unique and worth mentioning.
The title track maybe is the more “traditional” sounding of the bunch. It’s a short and very nice bluesy song that I’ve appreciated a lot. I hope you will do the same.
Jan
5
2017
I’ve decided to anticipate the first update of the site. It regards the PC88 emulation section, which wasn’t updated for a long time, more than one year.
The scene saw some vitality in the latest months, so I updated the page accordingly to what happened in the emulation scene.
There is two brand new emulators (XM8 and Excite88, however the latter is still in it’s infancy) and some of the most important old ones (M88, X88000) got a recent update.
I’ve also added some more info on the page as well. You can visit it here.
Jan
5
2017
Happy new year, my fellow readers! May be this 2017 a less troublesome year for us all. Many things have shaken the world during the past year, and we’re living a time marked by great doubts, partial visions and global paranoia. However, life goes on and still offers a lot of positive possibilities to all of us, in all it’s great mystery…
To start this year, I’ve decided for once to post a very famous song. It’s one of Manson’s best, Coma White from the Mechanical Animals album, in late ’90s. I chose it because it reflects quite well the time we’re living and has, despite all, a shade of light in it, buried deep inside.
Speaking about the site, I’m planning to write some new material, but I don’t know yet when it will be released. I hope to put some new material here soon.
Again, happy 2017 friends…and now, Coma White: