Another Year Gone By

Blimey, that year seems to have whooshed past in the blink of an eye. So what has been the crack with Antichrisis in 2017?

First of all we’re still working busily on the forthcoming Antichrisis-album „Foxfire“. Our plan was to spend our annual vacation in October completely on finishing that album... but on the very first day of our vacation diggers and bulldozers turned up in front of our house to dig up our street.

And as it doesn’t make any sense to have recording sessions while there’s construction work hullaballoo right in front of one’s house, we had to change plans and fled down south for a completely relaxing and hubbub-free (but also completely non-productive) holiday instead. That’s why it will still take some time until „Foxfire“ will be released.

Nevertheless we’re also working on Ayuma’s first solo album which is going to be released next year — and besides I'm currently doing some soundtrack-work for an animated short film called „Relicts“ which I’m really looking forward to, as creating soundtracks really has become my main interest in the last few years.


Relicts Teaser #1 - Totem (Breakdown) from Relicts on Vimeo.


But what about the music I have been listening to in 2017? To be honest, I’m that much occupied with creating and producing my own stuff that I don’t spend that much time on listening to music of other artists. It’s a shame, I know — but there’s only a limited amount of listening time left between working in a full-time job and running Antichrisis in your spare time. Anyway, there have been 5 albums in 2017 that caught my attention:

• „Every Valley“ by Public Service Broadcasting: this is an album of such emotional intensity that it really made me cry. When following the story of this concept album that depicts the history of the mining industry in Wales while focusing on the rise and decline of the country's coal industry, one has to have a heart of stone if not being close to tears when listening to the album’s last track „Take Me Home“. An absolutely fantastic and inspiring album.

• „Selections from 50 Song Memoir“ by The Magnetic Fields: It's as simple as that — Stephin Merritt never ever failed me (you hear that, Morrissey?)! Each and every album of his band The Magnetic Fields contains pearls and jewels in form of wonderful, out of the ordinary and enchanting Pop songs. To me, he's one of the finest, wittiest and most astute songwriters in contemporary Pop Music. "Selections from 50 Song Memoir" is nothing more than an adorable, stirring but also deeply entertaining album. One can't do much better — but I guess Stephin Merritt will.

• Almost the same goes for „Goths“ by The Mountain Goats: A band being bold enough to call one of their songs "Andrew Eldritch is Moving Back to Leeds" is just my cup of tea, especially when that song is performed with the disarming charm of singer John Darnielle. The Mountain Goats started as some kind of LoFi-Folk-project but developed swiftly in broader musical directions. On "Goths" they sound like an anti-gloomy version of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds — or like Paul Simon's Californian kinfolk.

• Although I'm not a fan of digital distortion, I have to admit that I was deeply impressed by "The Underside of Power" by Algiers: they're raw energy and fury reminds me of the early recordings by the Bad Brains — only that Algiers are not rooted in Hardcore or Reggae. Instead they deliver a hot boiling mixture of Gospel, Soul, Industrial, Metal and HipHop, and that Franklin James Fisher is a really fantastic and powerful singer! The only fly in the ointment is the production of "The Underside of Power": less distortion and compression would have done a much better job in my opinion.

• „Is This The Life We Really Want?“ by Roger Waters: agreed that Roger Waters’ voice has lost much of its tonal capabilities in recent years, but nevertheless this album radiates so much anger and rage that it left a real impact on me. But please, Mr. Waters: get off of that annoying BDS-involvement of yours: of course one can quite justifiably criticise Israel’s home policy (and I would opt for a two-state solution, too!), but according to that scale you would have to stand up against China, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia or the USA just as well! When I last looked, Israel was still a functioning democracy — something that is hard to find in the Middle East. To me that BDS-movement is just another disguise for yer plain old and nasty antisemitism!

So all that’s left for Ayuma and me to do is to wish you all the best for 2018 — and don't forget: many people await New Year’s Day just to make a new start to their old habits. We wish you otherwise.

Happy New Year and see you again in 2018!

Happy New Year 2018


Goodbye to the Radio Wave Surfer

Holger Czukay died last night at the age of 79 — and although I have to admit that a lot of his music always sounded a bit too weird to me, I do acknowledge and honour his wonderful open-mindedness to all new musical ideas & influences as well as his phenomenal creative achievement both with Can and as solo-artist.

Holger Czukay was beyond doubt one of just a few German musicians exerting influence on countless musicians across the board, and I do hope that his seed of ingenuity and the spirit of a boundless musicianship will linger on.

Holger_Czukay

Interview

Kurt Mitzkatis of German Rock e. V. did an Interview (in German) with Sid on the subject of the pros and cons of physical sound carriers and why Antichrisis does release their albums as digital download only these days.

Thanks a lot to Kurt for a very pleasant talk and also for providing the interview online on the German Rock-website, where one can also find another interview (again in German) with Sid from 2012.

Atmosphere

"Atmosphere" is definitely one of Joy Division's masterpieces — and I always wondered what that song would have sounded like if Ian Curtis wouldn't have felt sad and gloomy about the person he was singing about, but if he felt angry and irate instead: not begging for not walking away, but with wide shoulders demanding to stay and face the facts!

Hence we did our version of "Atmosphere" in a more "pulling your punches"-way without compromising the beauty of its melody and its excellent arrangement .



Alice's Curiosities

When Axel of At Sea Compilations asked us if Antichrisis would be interested to provide a track for his Paul Roland tribute sampler "Alice's Curiosities" Ayuma and me were baffled at first, because both of us knew neither Paul Roland nor his music despite that sedulous soul being around the music scene since 1979 and having worked with the likes of Robyn Hitchcock and Nick Saloman (which we knew).

Anyway, as we started checking out Paul Roland's musical works we soon got stuck with one of his earlier tracks called "Blades of Battenburg" and decided to do a cover version of that song for Axel's sampler — but in a very different style from Paul Roland's original psychedelia goth version.

And here is how we did it:



"Alice's Curiosities" is available via At Sea Compilations' website - and don't forget to donate!