What happens when you lose everything?

You just start again. how true, how impossible.







Maxïmo Park - Apply some pressure

what a show...

Get out of the office and into the spring-time

The last couple of days brought quite cosy temperatures to Austria. Nature's exploding and so do my eyeballs. Hello allergy my old friend, you have come to talk with me again? Due to this inconvenience my weekend life has been reduced to sneezing (new record! nine times in a row!! after such an attack you don't need any drugs no more - your body is shaking automatically), rubbing my eyes and being miserable.

hence, saturday's going out in my hometown wasn't that pleasant as you can imagine. moreover, the bar where i wanted to hang out was closed.

The place looks crappy? Certainly. Still, it's original. The 80 year old owner of the bar tells you - given he's in a good mood - about his adventures in southern France in the 60ies, when in a bad mood, he doesn't even notice you. Additionally resident DJ Sonic (the legend says he owns more than 6.000 records and has a special room in his flat for them) showed me some of the greatest music ever.

here are two songs i just caught on the radio, i like them somehow:
Squarepusher - Love will tear us apart
Gui Boratto - Beautiful life

italy in 2 and a half weeks - yeeha!

Signs of the times

or: this is the end. The record dealer i trust dies a slow death. Since weeks he has been selling out his store. And by saying store i mean it: you can buy everything from the italian flag, which used to hang in it, to the racks. This week's special offer: every record at half price. So today i also went there and made myself guilty of robbing dead people (there's a really beautiful german word for this deed: Leichenfledderei). After having made my way through the remnants of what used to be one of the best arranged record dealers in my area and leaving Robbie Williams behind and finding a couple of records which have been so far neglected by the greedy sell-out-crowd, i came to ask the vendor on what will happen with the shop and it's owner. well, he will open a store for cellphones. yeah. that was the answer i wanted to hear. me (rather disillusioned - i already imagined him as, minimum, the guy who helps a young promising band to make it's breakthrough. seems as if i was hopelessly romantic...) expressing my disappointment on this, she only answered that one had to follow the signs of the times. yeah, sure, of course. brave new world.

good news on the other hand: lovely Seewiesenfest will take place again, bringing a fine mix of austrian and mainly north-american indie-bands onto the stage, among them "someone still loves you boris yeltsin". nice name, nice music.

Someone still loves you Boris Yeltsin - House Fire

terrible name, nice music: Maserati (i don't like sports cars. just think of the people driving them.) those guys may also be no musical revolutionaries*, still, they do good post rock.

Maserati - 12/16

so that there's also some other music than the usual rockist pabulum:
Timbuktu feat. Simone Moreno - Vem pra bahia

hasta luego,
burns

*question: what was the last really "revolutionary" stuff? happy hardcore? euro-dance-trash?? the strokes??? ahem.

Una festa nel LUI...

...una bella compagnia

Doris, leaving Linz but still happy

Steff and me dressed up.

Showing some attitude

nice party, long night, and Steff: your wodka-soda may be delicious but is also a killer.

200 Sachen - Una festa sui prati

Nothing to talk about...

...but anyway, i try to keep posting stories. just come from buying a new camera, so probably there will be a bit more foto-stories on this page. let's see. tomorrow you should see a couple of pictures i hopefully will take tonight at Doris birthday-/goodby-party. i'm rather sure that the party will be good fun, though a bit sad as Doris is leaving Linz for a job in Vienna. i fear this won't be the last farewell to someone leaving Linz this year :/

below you find the links to some songs i currently listen to a lot. i think i don't have to make any special remarks on Joy Division, The Jaguar club was mentioned a couple of days ago. AI Phoenix are a really nice band from Norway - surprisingly those weird people from upnorth can produce some good music as well ;) the last song is by frenchman Da Silva (i know, i know, the name doesn't sound french at all...), a song i once heard down in LUI (!) which - due to its sheer beauty - didn't get out of my head since that very day. enjoy.

Joy Division - Atmosphere
The Jaguar Club - The Sirens
AI Phoenix - Call me in, Piccard
Da Silva - L'indécision

Heroes making dinner

[currently i'm wiping out the remnants of the Tiramisu i made on Friday - 100 grams sugar and 1/2 kilo of pure fat (well, mascarpone, but in the end that doesn't pose any difference). mjam. so, time for blogging:]

another weekend over, though a really pleasant one. in the beginning i wasn't too sure if it would become so good, especially as the dinner party i hosted in my flat was, hmmm, a kind of an experiment - having people from three different circles of friends may work sometimes, more often it doesn't. luckily us 13 people seemed to enjoy the other - unknown - people's presence. at least that's what i was told ;) thx Sophie, Vegard, Karin, Manuel, Andreas, Vito, Doris, Doris, Olivia, Dani, Alex, Scharli!

to something different now: 2007 has so far been aw-some, at least musically speaking. i mention the new albums of Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, Cold War Kids, The Good the Bad & the Queen! and yet more are to come - Modest Mouse and Wilco's new records are to be released soon and said to be amazing. Radiohead also will release a new album in summer...hach. marvellous. here's a new band from Brooklyn/New York City - The Jaguar Club (http://amiestreet.com/thejaguarclub). they might not be the innovative band that changes the course of time, ahm, i mean rock and roll, but still they do good music. people who like Joy Division and New Order and their heirs like Interpol will propably fall in love with them. at least i did.

p.s.: it's amazing how much time you can waste with facebook :/

Indie - a boy's issue?

during the last couple of days a serious debate emerged on the web-platform of "my" radio-station FM4. the debate uprose as a (german) study was made public saying that radio itself was a "female medium": the listenership of basically all radio stations is a female one - by far more women listen to the radio than men do. this study is said to be also valid for austria - with one exception: Radio FM4, the only nationwide broadcasting station in central europe (at least as far as i know) which airs nothing but "alternative" music, a station that defines itself as modern, progressive, and more or less feminist. FM4 is the only station that has a significantly larger male than female listenership. Martin Blumenau, host and "mastermind" of FM4, wrote ensuing an essay, trying to find out the reasons for this said "anomaly" (http://fm4.orf.at/blumenau/217568/main). ending his thoughts he raised the question, if music consumption/listening-habits were a question of education/rudiments - girls still being raised to become consensus-orientated and compliant, to take the way of the least resistance and boys tending to be rebellious.

in an answer to this essay listener "salx" offered a different, yet similar answer (http://fm4.orf.at/blumenau/217576/main): core-thesis of it was that men "define" themselves via rebellion, while women "defemalize" themselves by doing so. on the other hand, women/girls are from their early childhood on being seen as being not the norm, while men/boys state the norm. as a consequence, men define themselves via their autonomy of dependencies, their ability to dominate, while women, as the non-norm, never have the possibility to dominate. therefore, they seek free space for themselves within this sphere of domination. on the other hand, youth culture is per definitionem a game with autonomy and counterweight. it is hence the ultimate boy's corner, so "salx". and as in kindergarten, boys don't tolerate no female intruders in their realm, and if, only to the prize of defemalization. and as mainstream music/radiostations do not state youth culture, but have their place in the male sphere of domination, they pose the perfect free space.

so far the theories.