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Mute Station
Mute Station presents an irregular sequence of transmissions from the London headquarters of Mute Records.Music
Video Episodes:
6 Views
11:13:04 05/08/08
#24 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 8)
[LESS INFO] 6 VIEWS | ADDED 11:13:04 05/08/08
The final part of our 8 part series. Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes.
5 Views
09:39:35 04/30/08
#23 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 7)
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 09:39:35 04/30/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for the final part of this series.
4 Views
13:52:06 04/02/08
#21 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 6)
[LESS INFO] 4 VIEWS | ADDED 13:52:06 04/02/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 7 of this 8 part series.
5 Views
10:26:05 03/18/08
#21 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 5)
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 10:26:05 03/18/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 6 of this 8 part series.
2 Views
17:17:42 03/06/08
#20 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 4)
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 17:17:42 03/06/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 5 of this 8 part series.
3 Views
11:23:04 02/18/08
#19 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 3)
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 11:23:04 02/18/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for the fourth and final part.
8 Views
15:16:16 02/14/08
#18 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 2)
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 15:16:16 02/14/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 3.
3 Views
14:06:38 01/22/08
#17 - Irmin Schmidt & Kumo (pt. 1)
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 14:06:38 01/22/08
Irmin Schmidt, founder of Can, the influential experimental rock group and breakbeat pioneer Kumo discuss their collaboration on the forthcoming album Axolotl Eyes. Check back soon for part 2.
8 Views
11:17:06 09/30/07
#15 - Dave Gahan
[LESS INFO] 8 VIEWS | ADDED 11:17:06 09/30/07
The inimitable Dave Gahan makes a dynamic return with 'Hourglass' - his eagerly awaited second solo album. Best known as the iconic frontman of Depeche Mode, he continues his impressive career with a blazing new side-project, which follows his critically acclaimed solo debut 'Paper Monsters'. Produced by Dave with Christian Eigner & Andrew Phillpott, both members of the Depeche Mode touring band, 'Hourglass' also reflects Gahan's growth as a songwriter. Initially showcased with 2003's 'Paper Monsters', he later wrote 3 stellar tracks for Depeche Mode's recent 2-million selling 'Playing The Angel' – 'I Want It All', 'Suffer Well' and 'Nothing's Impossible'. Hourglass highlights include the gospel-tinged 'Saw Something', which kick-starts the album with stealth before effortlessly setting the tone for the other nine tracks. “That was the catalyst that started the idea to write again,” Dave recalls, adding that is was also “the first lyric, and the key to open the door to thinking, ‘Okay, I can go here.'" Other standout moments include the exhilarating, tour de force roar of 'Deeper and Deeper', the soaring epic first single 'Kingdom' and the addictive pull of 'Use You', where he scathingly lets loose his disgust with people, and specifically, himself. Meanwhile, on 'Down' - perhaps the most confessional song on the record - he confesses, "I feel so old, down on the ground is where I’m bound to end up." Sonically, the record cuts across a range of influences and styles with grace. Decidedly more electronic than his previous solo work, he has seamlessly swapped the guitar of ‘Paper Monsters' for the synthesizer he epitomizes so well. "It doesn't feel so much that the band is my identity anymore, although I owe everything to it. I'm starting to really feel that I have my own voice, and it's definitely coming out in the songs. For me, it’s the best possible record I could make at this time. And it’s gone well beyond what I expected of myself."
3 Views
10:39:31 08/09/07
#14 - Richard Hawley
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 10:39:31 08/09/07
Richard talks about the inspiration behind "Tonight The Streets Are Ours", the first single from his new album "Lady's Bridge". The single is out now, including an acoustic version available exclusively from iTunes.
2 Views
16:42:34 08/06/07
#13 - Liars
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 16:42:34 08/06/07
Liars release a single, Plaster Casts Of Everything today followed by the brand new album, Liars - on 20th August 2007. The video for Plaster Casts Of Everything, directed by Patrick Daughters (Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs, Kings Of Leon), sees Angus on a sinister car ride across the desert and can be seen in full on the band’s newly launched website, www.liarsliarsliars.com.
3 Views
11:48:41 04/18/07
#10 - Erasure
[LESS INFO] 3 VIEWS | ADDED 11:48:41 04/18/07
Erasure - Light At The End Of The World Leave it to Erasure to hole up in a cottage abutting the woods of Mid-Coast Maine, surrounded by ocean, forest and mountains to produce one of the most computer-based, modern albums of their career. In a setting perhaps better suited to the creation of last year’s critically-acclaimed acoustic Union Street project, Vince Clarke, Andy Bell and producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Wire, Clinic, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) spent six weeks last autumn recording the songs that comprise the new CD Light At The End Of The World. The most recent release in an incredibly fertile and prolific period, Light At the End Of World proves Erasure’s creative vitality, musical influence and cultural relevance is just nearing its peak more than twenty years and twenty million albums into their historic collaboration. Heralded by the relentlessly uptempo single ‘I Could Fall In love With You’, the songwriting process for the ten-track Light At The End Of The World benefited from the organic surroundings in unexpected ways. Bell’s lyrics are some of the most intensely personal of his career - true mediations on love, loss, regret, hope and starting over. Exciting and dramatic throughout, even in the quieter moments as on ‘Darlene’ and ‘Glass Angel,’ his voice soars on a bed of Clarke’s pulsing and irresistibly melodic synths on virtually every verse and chorus, many of which are arranged quite traditionally despite the high-tech software employed to construct them. Unfazed by their iconic reputation among such chart-topping devotees as The Killers, Franz Ferdinand and Madonna and having eclipsed, according to The Times, no less than Kraftwerk in influence among today’s hitmakers, Erasure left their reputation as one of the Top 100 Most Successful Acts Of All Time at the studio door and proceeded to make one of their most heartfelt and mature albums ever. And as ever, have turned out a collection that is one of the few places where punk, electronica and disco can still co-exist naturally. Owing a tip of the hat as much to Simon & Garfunkel as their electronic forebears, Light At The End of World is as magical and spiritual as its title suggests. A snapshot, both musically and lyrically, of Clarke and Bell at this moment, proud of their legacy but unafraid to take chances, still growing as artists but true to their electronic roots, and still greeting the ups and downs of life with a song. "This album is to show people that our pop isn't finished,” Andy declares. “It's saying we can still do it, we can still write great songs," he adds, trying to pinpoint Erasure's appeal. "We're a bizarre mixture - people don't get it a lot of the time. We're quite British and working class - working people love a good tune in a pub - but we're also quite eccentric. We're the UK version of Sparks: the Gilbert & George of electronic pop. And we don't play the game."
2 Views
20:30:06 03/05/07
#9 - Grinderman
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 20:30:06 03/05/07
Foul-mouthed, noisy, hairy, and damn well old enough to know better, Grinderman are Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey and Jim Sclavunos. On 5th April 2006, Nick, Warren, Martyn and Jim entered RAK studios, London, for a week with producer Nick Launay and recorded thirteen songs. It was mixed in September at Metropolis Studios. Calling themselves Grinderman, the album is set for a March 2007 release.
10 Views
14:53:36 10/04/06
#4 - Richard Hawley
[LESS INFO] 10 VIEWS | ADDED 14:53:36 10/04/06
Today, there is no shortage of serious young men in groups, sketching out how they imagine the extremes and depths of emotion might be. Time was, though, that only those who had earned the right to sing of love, loss and striving would share such confidences - real singers, of the calibre of Scott Walker, Roy Orbison, or even Nancy's old dad, The Chairman himself. Richard Hawley understands this. The man who could well be Britain's finest songwriter insists his mind is full only with "confused thoughts and Guinness". But when he sings, he does so in a voice that's deep and low, and does not lie. His merciful, wise songs tell of the heart's truths as seen in the dark, revealed by moonlight. Remember, this is the hopeless romantic who, on returning home from a lengthy tour of America was reduced to tears by the sight of a bottle of sauce - Sheffield delicacy Henderson's Relish - on his kitchen table. Coles Corner, Richard's first album for Mute, was released on 5th September 2005. While his previous long-players, Late Night Final (2001) and Lowedges (2003), scaled remarkable heights of elegance and emotional candour, this collection is surely his best to date. Within, orchestral splendour sits alongside earthy rock and roll in songs that are by turns intimate and soaring. So go with him as he leads you down to the ocean, or reveals the secret interior of a hotel room, or shows you the seductive open road. Take the string-led, alone-in-a-crowd title track, where Hawley's narrator walks the city at night and hopes that "Maybe there's someone waiting for me/ With a smile and a flower in her hair." A smouldering take on the same ambivalence that drives Petula Clark's Downtown, it's a telling foretaste of what else is coming down the wires. Born Under A Bad Sign, by contrast, is a drifting, country confessional for glockenspiel and guitar, which slow dances around autobiography and universal experience: "What are you like?/ You've had a right life/ Taken a long ride/ But oh, at what cost?""Every time I felt myself pushing it orchestrally, I thought of the Sun studio, one-mic, one guitar thing," explains Hawley of this juxtaposition of town and country. "It's all roots music to me, even with a string section, and I wanted to prove that side by side, both work. I think there's a flow to the record - I'm expressing how I feel, truthfully. And when people tell the truth, no matter how ugly it is, it can't help but be a beautiful thing." Recording took place at Sheffield's Yellowarch Studio, with Hawley and Colin Elliott at the producers' desk. Remarkably, several songs on the album came to Hawley fully formed and were nailed in just one take. "Last Orders was written in a cab on the way to the studio," he confirms, still slightly disbelieving. "I had a minging hangover, but I had this melody in my head, so I walked in and said 'Mic the piano up and tap me on the shoulder when it's time to record'. We got it in one take. With Wading Through The Water, we were all wearing overalls 'cos we were plastering the studio walls. All I did to change was to wash the plaster dust off my hands... we did that in one take too, and then went downstairs again to get back to work." In a career that began playing r 'n' b in German beer halls in 1981, Hawley has never been a stranger to toil. His early musical life involved playing guitar for lost indie heroes Treebound Story. He commenced his solo career with a self-titled mini-album in 2001. Recent activities have included producing songs for Nancy Sinatra, who invited him on her UK and European tour in 2005, gigging with his rockabilly band The Feral Cats, and getting over a vicious attack of pleurisy. In between came the realisation that the music he had always loved - whether Fats Domino, Bo Diddley, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Little Walter, or any number of past giants - would be his salvation. "I've been around but I'm not jaded," he says. "I've been through what I've been through, and I've come out of it, quite alright, you know. I don't remember the hang over, I just remember the party. 'Cos there's hope in a beautiful record. Just recently I've come out of the other side of a couple of years of complete shit. People very near me, several of them, got sick. It seemed like every time the phone went someone else had cancer. But when I started recording this record, gradually, one by one, I started getting phone calls saying they were all right. Now I feel quite optimistic, that I can almost believe that I might actually sell some records, and my oddball music might be heard." As is often the case, blame the parents for just how oddball he is. The son of a Gene Vincent-obsessed Sheffield steel worker, Hawley grew up close to rock and roll - his mum once sang with the Everley Brothers on the back steps of Sheffield City hall, and he later learned guitar via his father. Indeed, his dad Dave once played with Eddie Cochran, and recounts a tale of the doomed rocker standing in a shower at 3am holding an umbrella, "so water wouldn't go in his whiskey". Perhaps this upbringing is why it's so hard to find a comparative voice in the here and now. "There's a lot of factors involved in music today that aren't music," he muses. "But once all the crap is gone, the good stuff's still there. If the core of what you're about is tangible and worth it, and it goes down to your fucking boots, you've got to stick with it because it will stick with you. If the world was just like a fucking Coca Cola advert all the time, all the individual expressions would be denied. So it's good I'm in the position I'm in now. 'Cos I'm not going to be denied anymore." Now we leave him to play a series of high-profile shows with R.E.M., and to spend his rare free hours searching eBay for the few Santo and Johnny albums he has yet to track down. There's just one last thing to clear up: What is Cole's Corner?" It's where Cole Brothers, an old department store in Sheffield, used to stand," says Hawley. "There's a blue plaque there now. It was a convenient place near a lot of tram and bus stops, and for well over 100 years Sheffield's couples, lovers, friends, mums and dads or whatever, would meet. I've always found it quite a romantic notion - how many kids in Sheffield are knocking about as a result of a meeting at Cole's Corner?''I'll meet you at Cole's Corner...' People still say it, even though it hasn't existed for years. It only exists, really, in the ether." Cole's Corner was demolished in 1969. In Richard Hawley's dreams it's still there. You can visit, if you want. Just close your eyes, and listen.
05/08/08