Before they were widely tipped as one of London’s most exciting new post-punk bands, Bar Italia spent years patiently grafting. The trio, consisting of Nina Cristante, Jezmi Tarik Fehmi and Sam Fenton, put out multiple releases via Dean Blunt’s avant-garde World Music label, including their debut LP ‘Quarrel’ and follow-up EP ‘Angelica Pilled’.
Despite this reticence, the London trio now seem to have their sights set on making their reintroduction with ‘Tracey Denim’. Recorded and produced by the band themselves with mixing from Marta Salogni (Björk, Black Midi, M.I.A.), their third album should be enough to shift to one side those hasty (albeit somewhat justified) comparisons to The Cure and Joy Division.
The mid-eighties was a transitional period for bands who traded in synthesizers and post-punk guitar earlier in the decade. Along with The Style Council, Aztec Camera, Sade, and others, Prefab Sprout was one of the vanguard in England to adapt that earlier and increasingly dated (at the time, anyway!) sound with more textural and thematic sophistication. They did so by infusing the dynamics of post punk and new wave with warmer and more soulful atmospheres in instrumentation, arrangement, and production values. It even had a name as christened by the music press; sophisti-pop.
This song is one of the greatest examples of that musical movement. This was not just about the elements of jazz pop and soft rock that can be found here. It’s also about the song’s subject matter and how communicating it to an audience stood in contrast to the less emotionally direct styles of songwriting found at the height of the new wave and post punk era. This is a long way from Joy Division. In this new paradigm, it was time for songwriters to face the music when it came to matters of the heart.
On 7 March 1983,New Order finally ditched the comparisons with their previous incarnation Joy Division with the biggest selling 12” single of all time.
Released three years after the death of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, Blue Monday was influenced by the flood of new music technology and a lot of time spent sampling the early 80s nightlife of New York.
Featured a jackhammer drum machine beat and octave-leaping bassline, the record was a huge hit in clubs across Europe that summer, prompting people to buy it in their droves when they returned home.
The tittle was inspired by a book that New Order drummer Stephen Morriswas reading at the time: Breakfast Of Champions or Goodbye Blue Monday by the noted science fiction author Kurt Vonnegut.
She Wants Revenge is a kick-ass band from Los Angeles, California. They are heavily influenced by Joy Division and early New Order. Their music is highly enjoyable. Their music is characterized by a dark and sexual nature. She Wants Revenge with Interpol and Editors created a revival post-punk media scene in early 2000 that crossed borders.
His self-titled debut album was released with three singles “These Things” (where his video clip features the performance of Garbage vocalist Shirley Manson), “Out of Control” and “Tear You Apart” The post-punk dance rockers, released last year their latest banger of a single “Big Love.” Tonight in concert at Sala Salamandra.
The split 7″ where bands cover each other’s songs is a proud indie rock tradition, and we now have a new entry into the canon. Prrotomarty and Preoccupations, two likeminded postpunk bands from cold and desolate corners North America, recently went off on a co-headlining tour together. And today, they’ve released the new split Telemetry At Howe Bridge, on which they leave their own marks on each other’s tracks.
“Pontiac 87″ originally showed up on Protomartyr’s 2015 album The Agent Intellect, and it’s a sinuous and brooding song, a little less splenetically word-heavy than a lot of other Protomartyr joints. That makes it perfect for Preoccupations, who hone in on the song’s heady churn and inject a bit more Joy Division-style dread into it.
The five piece released last year debut album ‘Superior State’, a record that takes inspiration from the brooding post-punk of Protomartyr, Joy Division and beyond, but harbours a shimmering gothic heart, recalling the widescreen, arena-bound synths of Gary Numan. Tonight in concert at Razzmatazz 3.
Preoccupations (formerly Viet Cong), to the rescue of post-punk. Disturbing and profound both for their forms and for their lyrics, Preoccupations await you in Barcelona today at La [2] of Apolo. They are a project that you should listen to almost by obligation. For fans of Savages, Clinic, This Heat, Liars, Deerhoof, Sebadoh, Echo & The Bunnymen or Pavement. We go back even further to see the flavors of bands from the 80s like Joy Division, The Church, or The Fall. They pick up their sober and dark style and place it today.
Radio Magazine about Barcelona's indie and alternative music & culture scene. Live broadcast every Thursday from 10.00PM to 11.00PM and Saturdays from 1.00PM t0 2.00PM at Barcelona FM 100.5
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