Alu


Alu – Solidarnosc

A friend of mine posted this song on Facebook a couple of years ago. How could I hear a song like this on such a common medium? This song deserves to be led in on one of those elevated boards noble people lounge on, carried by commoners, as they journey to their throne while they are eating little grapes dangling from a servants hand. Look, I am completely against aristocracy but this song is fucken royal.

Nadja, the vocalist has a way with the rhythm and cadence of her lyrics that really works well with the synth driven industrial beat. But it’s her non-lyric vocalizing guttural breaths that really get me. It’s a technique that is difficult to do well, but it is rightly done here. I listen and listen, repeat and repeat.

Alu is a German band from the 80s and that’s all I know about them but some Google searches lead to the info below. It was the best I could find.

From this website:

No need to be ashamed if you have never heard of Alu, a German trio, that came from the band Sand. Their ‘Golem’ LP was one of the classic krautrock records of the seventies and later on released by World Serpent on CD. After Sand broke up, Johannes Vester and Ludwig Papenberg formed Alu, sometimes together with Nadja on vocals. They released two LPs, one 7″ and two cassettes, in the period 1981-1985. I remember owning one of the LPs and the 7″ (don’t know why not anymore, but that’s a different story), which had a strong rhythm-box, synth, guitar and vocals, all in a pretty raw fashion – world’s apart from the Sand sound. ‘Autismenschen’ is not a re-issue of any of the old stuff, but rather the first LP that was never released, from 1981, except for two tracks, ‘Bitte Warten Sie’ and ‘Liebe Machen’ (which is a cover of ‘I Just Want To Make Love To You’ from Willie Dixon), which are now included on this CD too of course. In recent years there have been many young musicians wo rking in ‘electro’ music, the synth-rhythmbox stuff from the eighties, but you may call me a retro freak, I prefer the old stuff, like Alu, or The Screamers or Suicide, with whom Alu has in common that they both combined the speed and energy of the punk rock, combined with analogue synthesizer stuff. Some of the more lengthy pieces, such as ‘Halt Dich Fest’ sound, with lenghty guitar doodlings show their krautrock background, but Alu is at their best in their shorter pieces: a screamy voice, full of doomsday paranoia, a continuous rhythm-box, simple melodies on the organ and guitar in a distorted mood. The real stuff that can’t be beaten by a groove-box and microphone. The best re-discovery of 2005!–Frans de Waard, Vital Weekly

Chinatown

Chinatown

The movie was over and we heard the ghostly howl of a lonely dog.

I walked around the corner into the anachronistic little alley full of cages and cleaning supplies.

Big roaches scurried by. I didn’t see a dog just a lit lamp in the window. People are home and dogs are wailing.

It was all of a sudden silent, no hound to be seen or heard. A guy with a baseball cap walked by me in the dark. I scooted to one side.

I met my friends again. The wine was finished.

The dog once again began it’s deathly howl.

Three songs about heroin


Marianne Faithfull – Before the Poison


The Stranglers – Golden Brown


Velvet Underground – Waiting for the Man (didn’t for the obvious one)

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the drug chaos in Mexico. I learned that the heroin trade in Sinaloa, Mexico was started by Chinese immigrants who moved to the region in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The difficult-to-traverse mountains provided a perfect place to start a drug trade that continues to this day.

Book recommendations:

Murder City by Charles Bowden
El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency by Ioan Grillo
2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Illusions

“Being tired of all illusions and of everything about illusions – the loss of illusions, the uselessness of having them, the prefatigue of having to have them in order to lose them, the sadness of having had them, the intellectual shame of having had them knowing that they would have to end this way.”

Fernando Pessoa

Fuck explanations