Griff says: Trivial Pursuits

Keen monitors of the 'Griff says' articles will hopefully remember my previous post about one-woman-band and all round creative marvel Julia Kotowski who operates under the name of entertainment for the braindead. As I made clear at the time, observing the continuous and varied expression of her artistic vision has been an enduring joy for me over the last three years. You can presumably imagine the frisson of excitement I felt yesterday then when I saw her myspace bulletin announcing a new release. It's called Trivialities and as ever it's available as a free download, though on this occasion just at bandcamp.

Perhaps not too surprisingly I think it's wonderful and I'd really like to describe it to you. However, rather than do that I'm going to reprint Julia's own description as I love the honesty and feeling of the following passage and I don't think I can top it:
"Now this is nothing for the Greatest Hits Collection. No excellent piece of craftsmanship, no mentionable artistic value. Just stuff that happened, songs that happened while I was planning on something else, like a comma in the short story that is my life. That's how it rolls, you're designing your career, planning out your steps, willing to create something big and meaningful, and in the meantime there are all those little things going on... friends become strangers, strangers turn into friends, maybe one of them reminds you that life's not so bad or meanwhile you've found comfort in nihilism, and then there's this little ukulele that you've owned for years but rarely ever played... yet suddenly it's overflowing with music.

No experiments this time. No exploration of unknown terrain. No concepts, nothing big.
Sometimes I feel so sick of sounding lovely all the time, of always sounding the same, but then again I can't help it. So, fuck creativity! Fuck belief in progress! Maybe I should be elsewhere already. We always feel urged to move forward, do better shit than yesterday, more accomplished, more brilliant, more fancy, and maybe it's almost considered stagnation in personal development if someone just wants to lean back and play some boring ukulele folk songs to comfort himself. Sure I want to be more brilliant and fancy and better than ever, too, but for now maybe there is no need to reinvent the wheel as long as I'm happy playing my rediscovered ukulele for a while. All the flamboyant shit can wait until tomorrow.
So once more I'm not taking a creative leap forward but rather just sitting down on the very spot I happen to stand right now. But maybe someone wants to sit besides me and listen? "

Phew! Quite a statement of intent and a position perhaps best summed up by another rather more famous German; "Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht Anders tun. Gott hilfe mir. Amen." (Just joking, Julia. You're nothing like him, I don't even think he played the ukulele!)



Personally, I love Trivialities. I think it's a mature return to the magical sounds of Hypersomnia and Hydrophobia. I also love it that, in the passage above, Julia displays such naked passion in defending an art-form (bedroom folk) that's often portrayed as safe and wimpy. The attention-grabbing, toddler tantrum antics of some musical genres has unfortunately meant that music that is gentle and thoughtful is sometimes mistakenly labelled as bland and insipid. Nothing could be further from the truth, this is music with genuine feeling and sentiment. It exists because of the artistic urge. What more are you looking for?



For musos amongst you, Julia has rather helpfully provided an inventory of the instruments used on this recording:
"A soprano ukulele, a bowed guitar, a bluegrass banjo, a mandolin banjo, glockenspiel, one concertina, another concertina, a wooden flute, borrowed drums and a cardboard box, casio mini-keyboard, shaker & tambourine."



I hope that clears that up. Enjoy!

Griff
xx

Griff says; 'That's Entertainment!'

Hello all. Well, as promised in my last post, I'd like to talk a little bit more about aaahh-records wunderkind 'entertainmentforthebraindead'. This is the musical psuedonym of Julia Kotowski (pictured) currently a student at Cologne's Academy of Media Arts but, to those of us in the know, also a self-taught, lo-fi musician of breathtaking originality.

I first came across 'entertainmentforthebraindead' on myspace in 2007. At that time Julia had a collection of amazing, sparse, lullably-like yet melancholy songs which she'd recorded at home on a laptop with a USB microphone attached. Julia used guitar, ukulele, recorder and glockenspiel on her early work, all to great effect. The best feature of all though was the amazing, unconventional percussion. On these early songs Julia can be heard clapping, crumpling paper, opening and closing scissors and tapping on any household implement which comes to hand all to surprising yet artful creative effect. To my great joy, Julia released this collection of early songs as an album, called 'Hypersomnia', in Spring 2008.

Rather pleasingly, and a little smugly too perhaps, I can reveal that I am the proud possessor of a hand-made physical edition of this album complete with Julia's lovingly crafted lino-print cover. But you'll also be pleased to know that the album is still available as a free download which you can get from 'here'.
Such talent couldn't go unnoticed for long and the lovely people at aaahh-records soon picked up on Julia's work. Her next collection of songs was written, recorded and mixed and ready for public exposure in August 2008. Released as 'aaahh002', her second album was named 'Hydrophobia'

and is self-decribed as " 10 songs that mostly circle around the idea of drowning." It can be freely downloaded from the aaahh-records homepage. It has a similar gentle folk-pop sound to 'Hypersomnia' but better production values. Julia also introduces a xaphoon into the mix and, of course, the charming percussion is still evident; at one point a pepper-mill is even employed.

Julia's seemingly boundless creativity has also provided us with 'Seven (+1)' (also on aaahh-records) and 'Raw Timber'. Both were released in 2009. Today though I'd really like to talk about her latest work 'Roadkill'.

This is aaahh-records newest release and shows Julia at her creative, unconventional and frankly contrary best. You see, on this album, Julia accompanies herself almost exclusively with that most unloved of instruments....the banjo. Now, the world of lo-fi indie-folk is awash with ukulele, glockenspiel and melodica players, but banjo players are rather more thin on the ground. However, don't let that put you off, I'll let Julia explain herself:

"Sometimes a tiny, coincidental discovery can open completely new horizons. Like when you're on a crowded party and that one person you decide to talk to turns out to be the love of your life. Or when you're in a room full of instruments and for once you decide to not to pick the lute, not the weird, fascinating cello-like instrument on the wall... but the banjo.
The Roadkill EP was born from one of these discoveries. There are lots of instruments that I'd always really wished to own or be able to play, a piano, a cello, a harp, a clarinet... but I would never had expected that one day I could fall in love with a banjo.
Yet since this is exactly what happened, I decided to start exploring this instrument's versatility by recording a couple of songs equipped with nothing else but a banjo. (Well... I admit, there's a tambourine in one song..)
Over the last four months I collected those songs. They occasionally sprouted, sometimes several a day, sometimes none for weeks, and then grew and ripened. I harvested them at home, though a bit more carefully than usual. They tell little tales of friendship and failure, of discovering the world and of hiding at home, and the banjo helped tracing their contours and gave them a shape.
It brought me through a very cold winter. Now maybe it can brighten yours a bit, too?"

For those of you who still need convincing 'Streetlamp' have rather kindly provided two videos (below) of songs from 'Roadkill' for your listening pleasure. Enjoy!

Now get downloading!

Griff
xx

Griff says; 'Open your ears wide and say Aaahh!'

Today I'd like to talk about another of my favourite netlabels, namely aaahh-records. Purveyors of 'free and charming music', aaahh-records are champions of Creative Commons Licensed music. In their own words:

"We would like to introduce a quote from Richard Stallman who once said: “[…] To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech”, not as in “free beer”". Although he was talking about free software, we would like to apply this attitude towards “free music”. So, all the songs realeased by our label are not only free in price. They carry the freedom to share, to remix and, of course, to listen to wherever, whenever and however you like.
Like many other netlabels, we would like to give you an interesting answer to the ongoing changes in the so-called music industry. But hold it .. in case you think we dislike good ol’ cd and vinyl, you should know that we will offer you real records, too - records you can touch, lick or nail to your wall. The difference is that the balance between free music and expensive records will be turned upside down. So again, “free”, in this sense, implies music the artist wants to share with the world, because he/she doesn’t like to see his/her music as an inflexible or colourless product."

If you've been paying attention at all to this blog you'll recognise that the above philosophy is music to my ears. However, a philosophy itself doesn't make a great netlabel. To win that description the label must also give us wonderful music. In this respect aaahh-records does not disappoint. Those of you who share my love of indie-folk pop will be delighted to make the acquaintance of acts such as 'The Wind Whistles'

and Emilie Lund

Sad blue mountain, by Emilie Lund from ictioscopio on Vimeo.

aaahh-records are also responsible for the release of work by one of my favourite artists of recent years; the incomparable Julia Kotowski who goes by the rather unwieldy moniker of 'entertainmentforthebraindead' but makes music of unsurpassed originality. Readers of 'Streetlamp' can expect a feature on Julia to follow very soon. In the meantime, as a present to you from aaahh-records in honour of their second birthday they have decided to compile some of their favourite remixes as a free download album. This can be downloaded from their homepage and, as if that's not good enough, there's more! They are giving away 10 unique handmade physical copies for free and will even ship them to you. If you would like a chance to win this wonderful remix compilation as a CD, you can send them an email, their address is: info@aaahh-records.net. They will pick 10 of you by a magic wonder randomizing algorithm and contact the winners via email. What are you waiting for?

Griff
xx