A review collection of my brother’s music recommendations:
Music That You Can Moog To – Captain Cool Presents: “28 Big Ones” by Hot Butter
The moog synthesiser is an incredibly interesting instrument: as versatile as the human voice, essential to the rise of prog rock in the 1970s and still a hallmark for synthesiser virtuosity today. What a shame that one of its first popular instrumental compositions has been appropriated by a blue CGI frog that lived only to…
A Study in False Advertising – Captain Cool Presents: “Floating Harmonies” by Júníus Meyvant
When you’re being recommended an album titled Floating Harmonies by an Icelandic singer-songwriter making music under the name ‘Júníus Meyvant’, your first instinct, like mine, may be to expect a record à la Björk or Emilíana Torrini. Something soft, whimsical, introspective, something in line with the Scandinavian aesthetic one may find on the Etsy front…
A monochromatic debut – Captain Cool Presents: “Never Enough, Always Too Much” by Scotch & Water
The cover to Scotch & Water’s debut EP Never Enough, Always Too Much depicts a person diving headfirst into the water of a purplish, black and white collage. Escalators arise at the bottom, leading up into the stream, flanked by subway stations and tiled pillars. A collection of cables severs the image into an above…
Captain Cool Presents: Why we need live music or “Are We an Electric Generation Falling Apart?” by Matija
The current global situation is having a dire impact on the present and future experience of live music. As much as we enjoy the ease and convenience of Spotify, YouTube and co. to consume recorded music basically at any time and in any space, the uniqueness and appeal of live music performance has established a…
Still in the Beta Phase – Captain Cool Presents: “Duty Free” by Kid The Child
In January of this year, Munich music collective Kid The Child released their first EP, Duty Free. Led by simple melodies and danceable rhythms, the band presents a spectrum from first class indie dance pop to surprisingly straight-forward rock notes. Sadly, musical structures are firmly build and only experimented with to a certain extend. There…
Growing Old not Growing Wiser – Captain Cool Presents: “Beast Epic” by Iron & Wine
Time is a funny concept. It passes without us physically noticing, it is a human construct yet with real effects. How do we experience time and how much do we think about its end? How do we and the world change over the course of a week? A month? A year? What is growing older?…
Confessions of a Wandering Man – Captain Cool Presents: “Vagrant” by Riley Moore
It feels weirdly ironic in these self-isolating times to be listening to music recorded on the road. To be listening to music that praises the life on the road. To be listening to the music made by a man who completed his tour on foot, without a car, without a coach, without a bus. Travelling,…
Swing into the Future – Captain Cool Presents: "It Flew By" by The Electric Swing Circus
Electro swing music has garnered a growing number of followers in recent years, making its way into the mainstream and onto the dance floors crowded with Western cosmopolites. However, despite its increasing success and presence, most would associate the genre with cover artists who take either swing classics or contemporary pop and EDM hits and…
Send in the Swiss – Captain Cool Presents: “Wohri Fründschaft” by no future
Thinking of Switzerland I think of mountains, chocolate, cheese fondue, Wilhelm Tell and political neutrality. When no future think of their home country, they think of friendship, the compulsory military service and reggae rock. Wohri Fründschaft (True Friendship), released in 2008, is a left wing reggae rock EP covering political issues as much as celebrations…
Sticking to the Rules – Captain Cool Presents: “Idreamt” by Idreamt
As I am writing this first line, my foot is already tapping along to the music and I catch myself typing away in unison with the rhythm of the tune. I haven’t intentionally listened to indie rock in ages, have forgotten about its intrinsic catchiness. But maybe I’m going too fast. Let’s talk about the…
Grainy Polaroids and Spy Kids – Captain Cool Presents: “The Return of Stravinsky Wellington” by Bonaparte
What do a city in the German Harz, 21st century anxiety, language barriers, and the musical rendition of a Spy Kids film have in common? They’re all topics set to music on Bonaparte’s 2017 album The Return of Stravinsky Wellington. This recommendation was part of a long list Captain Cool sent me some two weeks…
The River and the Sea – Captain Cool Presents: “Ik Wil Alleen Maar Zwemmen” by Spinvis
Spinvis makes music that drifts. That swims around in the air, airy without the usual abundance of synthesisers. That feels restless without the stressful element, not panicking about the fact that it hasn’t found the direction of its journey yet. Floating with the musical current instead of fighting it, adrift among the chords and lyrics…
Simplicity is Scary – Captain Cool Presents: BOY’s “Acoustic Collection”
Indie pop has always been a genre closely linked to the label of acoustic performance. The importance of the acoustic guitar, the non-electronic piano, the percussion provided live (usually on a cajon), the only evidence of production interference located in the microphone picking up the sound. The quality stamp of simplicity. Not that contemporary music…
Sounds Like Denim Jackets and Cold Light Beer – Captain Cool Presents: “CAAMP” by CAAMP
Grab that guitar. Hop on that train to nowhere. Light that campfire. Tell those stories. Tell the stories of the love you once lost, the woman that left you alone in that long forgotten town. Whisper to the children, their eyes alight with eager interest, they’re hanging on your lips, entranced by the sound of…
Run Rabbit Run – Captain Cool Presents: “The Tales of Antheon the Rabbit” by LOKI
What if alt-J were a one-man-band that went on a coffee date with Bon Iver, briefly hooked up with them and then decided to write an atmospheric indie concept EP about the adventures of a grey furred rabbit? It would probably sound a lot like LOKI’s The Adventures of Antheon the Rabbit. This is a…
The Rough with the Smooth – Captain Cool Presents: “Heart Like a Grave” by Insomnium
Close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Feel the darkness surround you. Sink back into the unknown. Loose all sensation of space. You exist in a vacuum, in a nothingness, in a room without walls or floors or ceiling. Welcome, to Heart Like a Grave. This is a first for me. I have never sincerely…
Captain Cool Presents: Cari Cari’s “Anaana” or How I Found the Desert in Austria
When you study popular music you tend to ask a lot of questions: Why was this piece of music recorded? Who was it recorded for? When and how was it recorded? Who is the target audience? How did the artist intend people to listen to their music? It can be a distraction sometimes when you…
Some Magical Hip-Hop-Hybrid – Captain Cool Presents: Goldroger’s “Avrakadavra”
MLXMLK was the first track by Goldroger Captain Cool recommended to me. What I remember distinctly, and what brings me back to this track again and again, was the impact of the beat paired with the intricacy of the lyrics. Textual loopings paired with the energy of a clap track, syllables so satisfyingly constructed and…
The Human Experience – Captain Cool Presents: “Karavaan” by Diggy Dex
It shouldn’t be a big deal for male artists to write lyrics about sharing their feelings or reaching out in times of struggle or the beauty of life’s simpler things. And yet it feels like one. It’s quite remarkable to listen to Karavaan by Dutch rapper Diggy Dex and find all those things compressed on…
Why Am I Doing This To Myself? – Captain Cool Presents: Cristian Steiffen’s “Arbeiter der Liebe”
In the summer of 2016 I started a spotify playlist to collect all of the best-worst songs ever recorded, most of them in German. Over the years (and with the help of Captain Cool and some other friends with the same wonderful knack for terrible music) this playlist now contains an astonishing 114 songs and…
Where Does Funk Stop? – Captain Cool Presents: “Psychology” by Pigeons Playing Ping Pong
Wah-wah pedals galore, saxophone scales in the background, groovy drum shuffles and a super laid-back bass – we’re talking about funk this week. I am fairly certain that the main reason for this Captain Cool recommendation was the brilliantly wacky band name and its tongue twister quality in combination with the name of their second…
Politics Is Not a Joke. Or Is It? – Captain Cool Presents: KAFVKA’s “Hände Hoch!”
Out of all the music recommendations I get from Captain Cool, I think the genre of German, politically left oriented, crossover rap/rock/punk is the most common. And if this genre description doesn’t make any sense to you quite yet, don’t worry. Listen to KAFVKA’s 2016 debut album Hände Hoch! and I think you’ll get it.…
I Thank You – Captain Cool Presents: Kjartan Sveinsson’s “Der Klang der Offenbarung des Göttlichen”
I often wonder what urges people to recommend music. Do they feel the desire to have a shared experience, to know for a fact that somebody else will hear what they already have? Or do they know that this music could help a person, make them feel something they haven’t felt in a while, make…
A Well Overflowing With Sound – Captain Cool Presents: Glasvegas’ “Glasvegas”
Music can paint the picture of a place. A specific town, a specific street, a specific view. Music can transport us to certain places or make us see familiar spaces in a new way. It can help us find our way around in a new environment. When I moved to Glasgow in September of this…
An Album to Read – Captain Cool Presents: “Public Library” by The Burning Hell
Most of Captain Cool’s recommendations are for singular songs. But in recent years I’ve adopted the habit of listening to albums only. For a long time I used to always put music on shuffle. In the glorious days of my metallic orange iPod nano 6 that meant randomly putting on my entire music library, consisting…
A Bass like Honey – Captain Cool Presents: Honig – “The Last Thing the World Needs”
The Last Thing the World Needs is the most recent studio album by Düsseldorf based musician Stefan Honig and his band of indie musicians. It is also an album that has been recommended to me by my brother, the infamous Captain Cool (CC for short). It’s the first one in a series of albums he…
The Dad Anthology 