John Scofield...

...because why not?  Enjoy.

The Townhouse Interviews: Michael Lueckner (Guitar, Computerjockeys) Bonus Content!

Mr. Lueckner's answers to my initial questions sparked some more in my head.  Here's some bonus footage, so to speak, of what I followed up with him on.

EJ Where did you get all of those African proverbs from?

ML Oral tradition records of some European nuns and abbots that have been in Africa before the Africans knew they were Africans. you can't find this stuff online or released. and you can't get that in the big old kings and big city libraries.  Mostly all records of the oral tradition is 'coloured' by forms of civilisationing or education or conversion or greed for presents etc. pp.

I plan a kinda poetic work about what first men did,  dreamed and FEEL about the world when she was a virgin to explore - you can smell and taste it in those orals.  And it's beautiful to spin these oral threads in poetic pictures that go beyond religion.

Maybe sun ra wanted to fly there, but he did search that thread in the universe and lost it. Albert Ayler & coltrane in Christian love stuff that never left churches. the research is done more or less, but I need to be a senior with life-is-a-long-quiet-winding-river hands and head to do that, probably. The form isn't chosen, maybe a kinda shortnovel or 'shortthread' thing...

Wanna find a virgin?  Google 'woloktei'! hahaha, you won't find something about them.  But you will find a little bit 'Yemau' in different continents.  One day in a world before our time the Yemau met the Woloktei at the river and the Yemau said: let's change our heads. the woloktei agreed and flew away with the Yemau heads on...

EJ You mentioned that you loved the "emo" part of MBV.  What draws you to the emo-ness of MBV, and then compels you to make such blissful music?

ML Like a lot of people and musicians I split perception in reception aesthetic and production aesthetic.  Reception says emo, but production wishes and practical emotions like to work in the bliss area.  Or: you can prefer the dark room as a user and the bliss open sky plus sun for working.

EJ You: "Isn't that more poetic than the circumstances of Nick Drake's death?"  Speaking of the dialogue across space and time of Scipio and Stevie Nicks.
Me:  I suppose that speaking across time and space is one of the most poetic things that there could be.  Though I must say I am a very big fan of Nick Drake.  What do you think of him?

ML Nick Drake is unfortunately dead and buried like the Indians - we could have expected a lot from both, but the inherits of Nick unfortunately are moneysick - so, sad emotional young Drake has been killed a second time under the stupidity and absence of inspiration of some hollywood directors who suffer under thrift and didn't hire a good musician to score the sad scenes well.

It's a hard job to get the real vibe of Nick Drake nowadays, if you haven't lived in the 70's.  I started playing guitar because I saw John Martyn singing a song about him: "Solid Air" - the Scottish young folk musician John Martyn after his trip to Jamaica and bringing home a self-made echoplex between his acoustic guitar and his amp is a piece of thread in the dream pop story too for my personal shoegazer bio...

If you see him playing "Small Hours" in a 70'sYoutube vid it's a young shoegazer sound, BUT played by a young man deeply into the british island folktradition.  The sound is there, but the time hasn't been right to go the whole way up to mix and dress the voice into the sound, but you can see and hear him fighting with that strange emotion in the middle of the song, when he just sings instrumental.  I think he knew he did something absolutely outstanding in terms of sound evolution, but he couldn't find the path to spin the thread to the end, the new sound.  If he had a looper, he would have find it, but he hasn't.  This sound has blown me away as a young man - nobody did that in this time!! nobody!! Watch it here

I could write a book about John Martyn.  Drake and him were very good friends, born in the same year...

EJ You spoke about Nirvana's rise which sort of killed the budding shoegaze movement, if I understand you correctly.  Would you say the rise of Nirvana was the beginning of the death of honest alternative music?  Or is that too broad of a statement?

ML I saw them live 2 times when supporting sonic youth here in germany in cologne and stuttgart before they got famous. everyone said wow. but i just wanted to enjoy the sound of nice arranged noise with a cool couple singing like sirens to it. i do not completely understand the nirvana thing, but the long documentation about kobain shows that there has been a big misunderstanding between everybody involved: kobain, fans, top-40 fans, music industrie, us-weapon hysteria, a crazy punk girl, drugs, responsibility and on top the passion for the beatles or parts of the beatles of all of us incl. cobain. "daydream nation" is by far the more influencing album and music for me and probably other musicians than evry single beatles steal & transforming of poor kurt. there is a strange kind of mistake in the whole nirvana thing that lasts: the drummer is a worse guitar player and singer - i could laugh my self to death each time i see people 'approving' the foo fighters and taking them serious. its a music history joke.

On the other hand and to speak and conversate cool & beautiful about music (which is still behind the moon): I dont see an 'alternative music', I only see conversations and discourses. consisting of call and response...

Aloha Again

Aloha is set to release their first album in over six years this May.  For a while I didn't know if Aloha was ever coming back, but holy cow was it worth the wait.  The first singles to come out from Little Windows Cut Right Through ("Signal Drift" and most recently "Faraway Eyes") are as focused, intentional, and mature (in the artistic sense of the word) as it gets.  For a band whose only semblance of a genre distinction is experimentation and evolution, the first indicators from Little Windows are that after over a decade it's all paid off.

There are still hints of Aloha of old.  The vibes, some time signature switches, similar themes of miscommunication and whimsy, air, it's all there.  But this time around it feels like all the experimentation led to something, and that something was Little Windows.  Not to say that Aloha shouldn't, or won't, keep the experimentation up; after all, that's what makes them such a fresh group, but if these two singles are any indication of the rest of the album, this will be a more than triumphant return for Aloha.