Etch Wear / Psykopharmaka

psykopharmakaEtch Wear is the label run by my friend from Europ Europ… since 1994 the world is not safe from his incidental actions… always fresh and surprising and never fitting into speficic  genre styles or trends or whatever… 1994… that is a long time… 10 years longer even as my own label…

Some of the recent highlights for me are the vinyls by Epilektrician and Fräulein Luftwaffe… and very recently there came out a 3″ cd-r (one of my favourite formats ever) by Psykopharmaka… they released  a tape on Etch Wear in 1994 and were the reason to start the label… now twenty years later a 3″ cd-r is released with an amazing over 20 minutes version of the track released twenty years ago… starting out as a lo-fi electronic ambient track but after about 7 and a half minute an bass guitar kicks in… resulting in strange and weird music/muzak… like in-between Fonal stuff and Lynch like dark jazz and ambient… simply amazing…

As second track a new version of the original track is added… sounding somewhere in-between Einstürzende Neubauten and Tuxedo Moon… what else do you need?!

Here is another piece by Psykopharmaka… sit back and enjoy the trip…

Dirty Beaches

dirtybeachesEver since I came across Dirty Beaches I have been listening to his records a lot… late last year the latest record “Stateless” was released… and on his website the musician announced this will also be the last ever record under this alias…

With “Stateless” one could argue Dirty Beaches has come full circle so to speak… the musician himself says he has developed into a different direction and thus it is time for something new… still in a way “Stateless” is not very different from the first cd-r album “Old Blood” (2008)…

“Old Blood” features lo-fi ambient music but all moulded into songs more or less… after this Dirty Beaches gradually evolved his music into something more pulsating and rocking… resulting in his first major album “Badlands” (2011)… this records is like Elvis doing his thing together with Suicide…

Absolute highlight in his oeuvre is the double LP “Drifters / Love Is The Devil”… while “Drifters” continues a bit in the style of “Badlands” but a bit more synth driven at times it also has another side to it… the music reminds me of the adventurous and wild side of Novy Svet… it is more the attitude towards music and the energy floating in it as anything else… but in a strange way it does feel like that…

“Love Is The Devil” is more of an ambient record with minimal music and jazz touches to it… totally different from “Drifters” in style… maybe… maybe not… depends on how you listen to the music I guess…

“Stateless” is a logical next step after this with it is long ambient pieces… beautiful  moody soundscapes to dream away on… the saxophone gives it a sort of (cool) jazz feeling at times… but it also is reminiscent of these first lo-fi ambient pieces from “Old Blood” but stretched and produced and recorded in a different way so it does not sounds anymore like home recordings as the early stuff did…

I am sure I will enjoy the music by Dirty Beaches for a long time to come and I am very curious to hear what will be next by this musician… here is the last piece from “Stateless”…