Night Kraken's Not-So-Happy Birthday

It's been a while since I've partaken in something from Shawn Reed's Night People label, yet in Kraken, the  EP from Germany's unhappybirthday, I have fallen in love. Night People have brought out some excellent things of recent times, most notably Dylan Ettinger's Crucify My Love and Merchandise's "return to form" record Totale Nite, yet on Kraken I can't remember ever having heard something so 80s indebted and yet so simple and warm. It helps that Daniel Ja's vocals are both German and have the husky, distant timbre that evokes Vaseline-lensed cameras and lily-gilded windowsills, black overcoats and gondola rides in narrow canals through an urban jungle on an overcast day. I mean, the title track could be an amalgam of Adelaide's now defunct band Bit By Bats' 'Dance The Dance' and The Cure's 'Lovesong'! Albeit in German. Nevertheless, the plink-plonk simplicity of the keys and guitar lines, the drum machine so clean and yet so basic - it reminds me that music this good doesn't have to be intricate, drawn out or segmented. The band describes itself as "raincoat pop" - it makes a quirky kind of sense. From the first strains of 'Fargo', Kraken has struck a chord and I haven't been able to stray from its New Romantic clutches. Coldwave be damned (coldwave...urgh), long live raincoat pop!

Grab Kraken here - seriously great stuff.

unhappypeople - Fargo
unhappypeople - Kraken

Video Vacuum - Dylan Ettinger, Squarehead, Pet Scenes, Bright Spark Destroyer, Elias Krantz

Having holidays is almost unparalleled in awesomeness. It is the absolute opposite to the spectrum of returning to work after a holiday. So after the highs that signified the past five days, we find ourselves hurtling towards the spiky nadir that is our first day back - looking wistfully at the sun outside knowing our boss will be telling us to fill in some form that no one understands or needs in a few nondescript hours - or something just as inane. Good times. What better way to get over the doldrums then than some great music accompanied by great moving images?

First one out of the gates is Dylan Ettinger, whose myriad releases over the last year or two is hard to fathom. Yet here he is again, with a new 7" out on Not Not Fun, called Lion Of Judah. The video takes note in the artistic endeavours of Caravaggio, yet for art ignoramuses it is just a solid video for a track that should help push Ettinger further out into the slipstream - hopefully, anyway...

Dylan Ettinger - Lion Of Judah from Not Not Fun on Vimeo.

Irish troublemakers Squarehead aim to open up their record account through Richter Collective later this year (who are also fronting the amazing new And So I Watch You From Afar record...), but are hitting us now with their single 'Midnight Enchilada'. The video for this track is decidedly silly, involving hipsters playing golf and a rabid discarded Sesame Street character, but I really like it, especially on a day like today (and they finish by drinking pints of Guinness! Cant beat that...)

Squarehead 'Midnight Enchilada' from Rupert Morris on Vimeo.

We have spoken about London miscreants Pet Scenes a few times over the past few months - they have already showcased an excellent bodybuilding based video here, and there are a few others we havent shown if you search Youtube - and they bring us the next chapter in their gradual undoing of the time-space continuum. It is a black and white warped close up of a mouth singing this song. Nothing ingenious, sure - but the song is a ball tearer, nice mixture of grunge and stoner dirge, and it really blows out the cobwebs...



Here's another London act, yet I am still unsure of whether Bright Spark Destroyer are a great band or not. One thing I am sure of is how cool their video is for single 'The Shortest Distance'. The single comes out next Monday (May 2nd). If you like what you hear here and live in London, they are playing The Monarch tonight - definitely go check em out...



Finally we have Sweden's Elias Krantz. He has come across the Hits From The Box radar before for his track 'Watussi' - now he has another great track out and an added video to boot. The track is called 'Tody Motmot', and the video features headless musicians - nice. The track comes off Night Ice, his album due out late May.

Elias Krantz - Tody Motmot from NIGHT ICE on Vimeo

Now get back to work!