The experiment continues.
Every week, I pick a handful of songs I have on repeat (playlist of these here), along with one GOLD STANDARD (just an old song I already like and am revisiting). Song recommendations are welcome!
THIS WEEK:
Doddodo “Exciseise of Mouth”
Tricky “Black Steel”
a.s.o. “Rain Down”
Shā Mò (沙漠) “Clean Clothes”
Nina Hagen “Naturträne”
Doddodo “Exciseise of Mouth”
(Bandcamp)
What the fuck is this? I love it.
This is from 2008, not that it sounds like it’s from any time in particular. I first heard it on Darren’s WFMU show, and I’m mad I didn’t hear it back then when I was super into weird Japanese acts like Kiiiiiii and was sort of a weirdo solo iPod performance art musical act myself (link redacted).
I translated the lyrics and it’s just as incomprehensible, but part of it is “the sound that is born when I meet my father's father's white sperm” if that helps.
I’ve got a bunch of Doddodo songs on repeat, some feature record scratching, some just weirdly break into Celtic folk music, all of them feel deeply feral.
Tricky “Black Steel”
(Bandcamp)
Tricky has been one of those acts I’d say I would “get around to” and given my musical intake at this time, I decided now would be the best time for it. I didn’t know much about Tricky—I knew there was a tie to Massive Attack, I knew he dated Bjork, and I knew he was an underboss in The Fifth Element. All of this, and this extended Bristol trip-hop universe is a weird blind spot for me for now.
I didn’t know that Tricky was technically a stage name (originally “Tricky Kid” from his mid-80s hip-hop group, The Wild Bunch), but Tricky is also the name of a duo with vocalist Martina Topley-Bird, who Tricky heard singing to herself one day in 1993.
I finally started listening to his/their records, and this track really stuck out, mainly because it’s not like anything else on the first album, Maxinquaye, but also because it’s a cover of the Public Enemy song “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” not that I immediately recognized it. Topley-Bird was handed the lyrics and improvised a melody on the spot. It creatively uses a sample of this Indian song from the 80s, and then has some live punk guitars and drums layered over everything.
I also learned Tricky hates Prince and loves Mykki Blanco.
a.s.o. “Rain Down”
(Bandcamp)
Well, I guess I’m on a trip-hop kick. a.s.o. is a Berlin-based duo comprised of Alias Error (real name Alia Seror-O’Neill) and Lewie Day, that owes a debt to the aforementioned acts. Their new album came out this week.
Shā Mò (沙漠) “Clean Clothes”
(Bandcamp)
I don’t know a ton about Shā Mò (沙漠) but it seems like it’s a collaboration with a Chinese and German students, also based in Berlin. I know that “anyyyy-more!” has been in my head for months now.
THE GOLD STANDARD:
Nina Hagen “Naturträne”
(Video Link)
Yeah, more Germans.
I had heard this song before—but I hadn’t SEEN it. And wow, this immediately became my obsession. I saw it mentioned on a Perfectly Imperfect list, and I keep going back to it.
The jolly roger pants, the snake puppet, the immediate reset like that was all a mistake—and that’s just the first three seconds, before the song even starts. The band is clearly having a BLAST (probably because they’re not really playing live).
If you only know “New York, New York” or other Nina Hagen punk hits, you might not know her career started long before punk even existed, as a child prodigy opera singer in East Germany. She rose to fame not because of her technical skill but because of her personality, which shown through with fashion, vocal affectation, and general weirdness long before she bought a stick of black lipstick. Her stepfather, singer Wolf Biermann, was a noted dissident, and she joined him on a trip past the Berlin Wall, first to Hamburg and then around the world. Nina quickly took to the burgeoning punk scene in London and joined up with The Slits.
Similar to Klaus Nomi, who followed a similar trajectory, she was able to wield this operatic singing voice as something of a party trick in her music, weaving it seamlessly into “Ballroom Blitz” covers and the like. But I’ve never seen it wielded as powerfully as in “Naturträne,” where she is almost taking the piss out of opera, goofing off and adding guttural screams here and there over Bowie-esque glam rock, while nailing the vocals, and claiming it’s merely a yawn, and anybody can do it.
Above: Nina Hagen with Angelyne and Cassandra Peterson (aka Elvira)
She courted controversy, for instances like her masturbation talk on Austrian television, relocated to LA, and bounced around genres and styles but never went away. Is Nina Hagen religion?