Nick Cave – Queen City Sounds and Art

Amiture’s Darkly Lurid Industrial Noise Rock Single “Billy’s Dream” Simmers With the Desperate Electricity of a Person on the Verge of Breaking

There’s something sinister about the sound and dark visual style of the video for “Billy’s Dream” by Amiture. It’s reminiscent of Dom and Nic’s treatment for The Chemical Brothers’ “Setting Sun” video. It all seems normal but there’s an underlying unsettled quality to the surreal aesthetic. But this Amiture song is more steady in its pace even when it bursts forth with the processed percussion and guitar sounds. Like an industrial song written by Nick Cave who is bored with anything resembling the standard sounds. It’s like an even more post-punk The The and the story of a man, Billy Lamb, who has lost track of who he is and slips in and out of a dream of prowling underground gambling establishments haunted by memories of his family, both his father and his son, and how he wants to escape his circumstances but seems drawn back into his personal nightmare by his own weaknesses. But the desperation is there and we hear it in the music. The steady snare strike and the contorted, textural tones generated by heavily modified guitar signal or electronically create a disorienting atmosphere where it feels like the whole thing could careen off into hysterical psychosis from its sustained emotional intensity and because of that there’s a thrilling simmer of electricity throughout the song. Watch the video for “Billy’s Dream” (directed by Cyrus Duff, produced by JZ Tinneny and shot by Owen Smith-Clark) on YouTube and follow Brooklyn’s Amiture at the links provided. The duo’s new album Mother Engine drops February 9, 2024 via Dots Per Inch Music on streaming, download and vinyl.

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Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party Charts the Dramatic Rise and Fall of the Legendary Post-Punk Band Screens in Denver Oct 10 and 13-15 at Sie Film Center

Contact sheet of Nick Cave and the Birthday Party in a disused church in Kilburn, London on 22 October 1981

Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party is a 2023 documentary about Australian post-punk band The Birthday Party. Formed in 1977 in suburban Melbourne as The Boys Next Door the band quickly realized that they needed to be where most of the music that interested them was happening meaning outside their home country. The documentary tells the story of the influential group’s modest beginnings as local weirdos into art and literature that pursued music almost as an afterthought only to become a band described in its heyday as the most dangerous band in the world. Led by Nick Cave and guitarist Roland S. Howard the group also comprised of drummer Phill Calvert, bassist Tracey Pew and guitarist Mick Harvey The Birthday Party still come off like figures of rock and roll myth.

Directed by Ian White, Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party utilizes extensive archival footage, photography, animated sequences and contemporaneous and more recent interviews with the band including the late Roland S. Howard who passed away in 2009. Dissatisfied with much of the music going on around them The Birthday Party first moved to London, England for a few years and quickly signed to legendary post-punk label 4AD on the strength of its harrowing and thrilling music and incendiary live shows fueled by tensions within the group and their collective disdain for an uninspiring and disappointing cultural milieu in the UK minus likeminded artists like The Fall and The Pop Group. That experience pushed four members of the quintet to move to Berlin leaving founding drummer Phill Calvert behind and to new creative heights before issues with drug addiction and unsustainable expectations caused its abrupt dissolution in 1983 leaving behind a legacy for excellence in deeply imaginative songwriting, unparalleled live performances and an aesthetic that was striking and unique even through today.

The Birthday Party set a high benchmark as a band and the little live footage one could find before now on more or less bootleg copies of the 1984 video release Pleasure Heads Must Burn gave glimpses of a group of artists that were universally respected by peers like Thurston Moore, Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins. With Mutiny In Heaven: The Birthday Party you get to experience previously unreleased live performances, hear unreleased material and witness the rise and collapse of one of the most impactful and influential bands out of the post-punk canon whose legacy continues in the likes of IDLES, Viagra Boys, Amyl and the Sniffers and Sprain. The documentary is currently being screened throughout the USA including three times in Denver on October 10 at 7:30 pm. 13 and 14 at 9:15 pm and October 15 at 4 pm at Sie FilmCenter. For more information and to look for other screenings please visit birthdaypartymovie.com. At select screenings and from the movie website a limited edition t-shirt commemorating the release of the film will be available.

Sam Himself Eases Himself Into Transitioning to a Better Self on the Brooding Yet Luminously Melancholic “Like A Friend”

Sam Koechlin aka Sam Himself sounds like he’s tired of struggling with himself and outmoded notions of his own identity on his single “Like A Friend,” coming to accept that what he once thought was a core part of his identity was just like an awkwardly outfit that you keep telling yourself is cool but makes you look like an idiot. Most people do this in their lives insisting truths about themselves that they embrace as central to their entire being even if it limits them and comes to hurt them long term. But rather than a self-disintegrating blowout, Sam casts this process as a melancholic, compassionate goodbye and to take this news, this realization like he’s hearing it from a good friend who knows what to say even when it’s something heavy and hard to say. A friend who knows how to tell you some aspect of your personality and identity is bullshit that is dragging you down but without brutality so that you have time to embrace the change as painful as it can be with resignation with the blow landing softly. It’s unrealistic to expect people to change quickly because of all the ingrained habits of life and mentalities that reinforce the core of who you are or who you think you are but it’s also not so difficult to make that change once you understand why the changes are necessary. The lush song and its downtempo, late night vibe with Sam Himself’s brooding croon is reminiscent of Nick Cave is paired well with a music video taking place in the gritty part of Zurich, Switzerland like something out of a Jim Jarmusch film and all the creative use of darkness and color to suggest a mood, a spiritual quality to the setting that enhances the meaning of what you’re witnessing. Watch the video for “Like A Friend” on YouTube, connect with Sam Himself on Soundcloud linked below and look out for the songwriter’s new EP Slow Drugs.