Review: Fatima Al Qadiri “Brute” – Watch: GODMOTHER “MTFTM” – Stream: Ziemba “The Longest Night on this One Habitable Star” (exclusive) – Interview: Jamal Moss (Hieroglyphic Being) – Review: Bing & Ruth “City Lake” – Watch: Federico Albanese “Shadow Land Part II” (exclusive) – NFOP x Kometenmelodien: LA Priest, Laura Clock & Lea Porcelain – Anna Meredith “R-Type” – Sierra Manhattan “Moonburned Girl” (exclusive) – Watch: Dmitry Evgrafov “Like Foam” (exclusive) – Review: FOANS “Schema” – Watch: Erasers “Returning Home” (exclusive) – Watch: Paco Sala “Square Jaw / LGO” (exclusive) – Ocean Hope “Forever” (exclusive) – Antoine 93 “Me and the Sound” – Stream: Tara King th. & Halasan Bazar “Unreleased from ‘8’ EP” (exclusive) – Arca “Soichiro” / “EN” – Stream: Mansions and Millions “Mixtape Vol 1” (exclusive) – Born In Flamez “Easier Like That (Aïsha Devi Remix)” (exclusive) – Bersarin Quartett “Jeder Gedanke umsonst gedacht” (exclusive) – Interview: S Olbricht – Interview: Sean Nicholas Savage – Stream: Feather Beds “Ah Stop” EP – Night Trap: “Someone Like You” – Interview: Sun Araw – Review: Savant “Artificial Dance” – Interview: Hauschka – Review: Helen “The Original Faces” – Guest Post: Efterklang’s Rasmus Stolberg Recommends By the Lake Festival 2015 – Auscultation “L’étreinte Imaginaire” – Watch: Kepla “Ordinant 6” – Visionist “Victim” – Review: Ducktails “St. Catherine” – Graham Dunning “Retort” – Cherushii “Memory of Water” (exclusive) – Vogelbat “Nuuk” – Stream: Hua Li 化力 “Za Zhong” – Pat Keen “Morning” (exclusive) – Doug Bleek “Inner Demon” – Zeitgeber “Monad XX” – Michael Stasis “Venus Of Soap” – Francine Thirteen “Lady Mary, The Fire/Pars Una” – Blondes “Persuasion + Rein” – Watch: Kvien & Sommer “Kwan” (exclusive) – Interview: LYKANTHEA – Stefana Fratila “Tugging” – Watch: Katapulto “Blue Eyes” (exclusive) – Review: Good Moon Deer “Dot” – Reanimator “Damaged Bads” – Watch: The Horn The Hunt “My Face In Your Eyes” – Interview: GABI – Watch: Jannick Schou “Skov II” – Norway According to Boska – Swim Platførm “SURFACE 2” – Holly Herndon and the Fortress of Music – Review/Interview: Jenny Hval – A City Is An Island – Interview with Timothy George Kelly – Win: Paula Temple Presents “Decon/Recon” Live in Berlin – The NFOP Guide to Torstraßen Festival 2015 – Star Horse “Slower Now” (exclusive) – Stream: Tasseomancy “Palm Wine Revisited” (exclusive) – Clade “Vietnamese Piano” – Grounders “Drawing Space” – Review: Róisín Murphy “Hairless Toys” – Christian Kroupa “A Dangerous Game (909 Version)” (exclusive) – This Sunday: 5 Years of NFOP at Urban Spree – Boycrush feat. Madeira “Flirt” – The Sandwitches “Wickerman Mambo” (exclusive) – S Olbricht “Trancess” (exclusive) – The German Mob Mentality Is Still Alive – Watch: Sayth “Rare Candy” – Stellar OM Source “Nite-Glo” – Interview: Erika – Nancy Leticia “Le Big Mac” (exclusive) – Interview/Premiere: Pascale Project – Oni Ayhun, rRoxymore, Aquarian Jugs & Jaguar Woman “Decon/Recon #1” – Live Review: Colleen Green at Brooklyn’s Shea Stadium – Review: Godmother “Transgenre” – Live Review: Kiasmos at Dublin’s Opium Rooms – Ellis Swan “Dice Rolled” – Aural Cinema: An Interview with OOFJ – Watch: GABI “Falling” – Devon Loch “Sleep Scale” – Ozy “Distant Present” (exclusive) – Baby Birds Don’t Drink Milk “Bombchu Girl” (exclusive) – Moving As One: An Update on Gender Equality in Electronic Music – Psychic Reality “Harness” (exclusive) – Digital 21 + Stefan Olsdal “War” – Motorama “Corona” – Watch: IAN “If You’re Cryin” – Interview: Hama – The Next Peak Series (Twin Peaks Tribute Compilation) – Ela Orleans “The Sky and the Ghost” – Interview: Nuearth Kitchen – Watch: To You Mom “Charming Karma” (exclusive) – Yowler “The Offer” – NFOP Presents: You Dont Really Know Me with Phoebe Kiddo – Interview: Jlin – Watch: Sally Dige “Hard to Please” (exclusive) – Broshuda “Flares”

5 Years of NFOP

Come celebrate with us: Urban Spree, May 24, 4pm

Listen to the NFOP Radio Show on Berlin Community Radio

Every Friday at 4pm CET

Watch: Moodoïd “Je suis la Montagne”

29 Jul 2013 — Andi Wilson

You can't deny that Moodoïd aka Pablo Padavoni has a vision. His concept of psychedelics takes you back to the 60's while also bringing you to an illusory, futuristic world of French hippie-ness, almost like a whimsical version of a George Harrison song. The brand new video for his single "Je suis la Montagne" (which translates to 'I am the Mountain'), experiments with comparative imagery of dessert-like food & nature. The ensemble puts a sparkly spin on their music (and faces). I first learned of Moodoïd when I saw Padavoni play guitar for Melody’s Echo Chamber, which is resulting in Kevin Parker of Tame Impala producing their first and upcoming EP to be released on September 2 through French label Enterprise.

Have a tasty, trippy peek of "Je suis la Montagne" below.

Review: Helena Hauff “Actio Reactio” / Black Sites “Prototype”

29 Jul 2013 — Evelyn Malinowski

Recent popularized artist emerging from Hamburg's Golden Pudel scene can be noted as robustly dedicated to loose-endedness. In a recent interview she did with Juno Plus, Helena Hauff admits that she is weary of hyper-focused approaches to music and feels more comfortable with experimental ones. This comes as a surprise when listening to either Actio Reactio, a dense and indulgent rendez-vous into Phuture-esque acid and electro, or her collaborative two-song EP Prototype, arguably a sober resurrection of 90s trance.

The title track of Hauff's upcoming Actio Reactio, out in a week on Actress' label Werkdiscs, is a refreshingly percussive groove which contains four cymbal splashes toward the middle of track. Such a sequence seems to signify the bulging march's about-face and command to go back to where it came from; an exclamation that the discord has gone on long enough. The gravity of this beat-scape delightfully obfuscates where and how the song in fact originated. Both Afrika Bambaataa and Evelyn Glennie would be proud.

Hauff's sound can be characterized by a conservative use of melody. She has the ability to inject her cadences with keystrokes, but mostly opts not to. With the subsequent tracks “Break Force” and “Micro Manifesto,” we continue to receive confident application of repetition with occasional variations, that is, attempts at letting melody triumph. These never end up out-weighing the relentless and – a favorite of mine – over-saturated drum bass. Every hit sounds like fire crackers exploding underwater. In other words, the slight variations within Hauff's repetition never really break free. She won't allow it. Conversely, the EP builds steadily toward a melodic center. Starting the 12" off with zero melodic workings, “Actio Reactio” bears only hints of melody which are aurally hallucinated through tones and frequencies of the corpulent percussion. “Break Force” is slightly more melodic, with TB-303 acid serving as the forefront rather than the tribal percussion. Finally, “Micro Manifesto” rebuffs the drum loops altogether and serves as the most melodic track on the EP, yet remains conservatively melodic. It is also interesting that the Actio Reactio progresses toward melodic release while simultaneously decreasing track time duration; e.g., “Actio” runs for about 10 minutes 23 seconds, followed by “Break Force” at eight minutes 27, eulogizing with “Micro” at a concise three minutes 22. Another pattern therein is exposed (each ends twenty seconds in).

Actio Reactio will precede Black Sites' Prototype, Hauff's production partnership with fellow Hamburger F#X, due to debut on PAN. The opener “Prototype” offers a return to Hauff-y screeching and grinding before exuding a trancey bass counter-melody, then straightforward house keys. The keys and bassline strobe together through the percussion loops whenever they can. Aware that the synth is probably F#X's contribution, or a result of the collaboration, the stylistic duality is quite audible and enriching. They continue to playfully combat with each other until the trance and house are engulfed by the acid and the drums.

“N313P” is a pure dance track. It is dynamic, melodic, and adorned with a melancholic bass drop, all with Hauff's grind. I'm reminded of a cured Josh Wink, or Woody McBride and, of course, Marhsall Jefferson doing Phuture's “Acid Trax;” yet, if the reverb were increased a little more, we'd be hearing a track on an Oakenfold mix from an alternate dimension.

Depending on the context, the rhetorical use of “conservative” and “preservative” can seem one in the same. If Hauff is conservatively melodic, it is because she wishes to preserve her creative energy for reflective listening of her creations. She told Juno Plus, “I lose my energy and I lose my perfection when I take too much time on things.” Nevertheless, her avoidance of perfection permits dense, concentrated, “cavernous reverb” which are honed into electro and acid house thematics. Hauff busies herself with relinquishment of control in order to simply let her sounds churn through tropes and cadences; she just likes to jam on the drum machine.

Actio Reactio is out August 5 on Werkdiscs. Black Sites debut Prototype will likewise be released in August by PAN.

Live Review: Ducktails at MoMA

29 Jul 2013 — Henry Schiller

On July 25, Ducktails played a free set in the outdoor sculpture garden of New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

When I say free, I mean that the show was free for museum guests; so anywhere from 14 to 25 USD. MoMA is far and away my least favorite museum in New York City. It's corporate and bland, and it reminds me of a very modern office building or a research facility. MoMA feels as though it is meant to present you with a packaged version of New York pretension.

I mention this because I was wholly expecting Ducktails to be pigeonholed into MoMA's bland aesthetic, their sound somehow compromised by its whitewashed plasticine walls; I couldn't have been more wrong. The set felt like it was somewhere between watching buskers in Central Park and going to a Summer Stage show. The set was wonderful, but moreover, the experience itself was wonderful. There were no more than 50 seats up by the stage area and the show was otherwise not particularly crowded. The group’s sound – based as it is on heavily modulated guitars – was complimented tremendously by the space’s natural reverb, but not overwashed in the way it might be by an amphitheater. Matt Mondanile’s vocals were soft and clear: he was singing to a living room, not a stadium.

Ducktails started as the solo project of Real Estate’s Matt Mondanile, but he's now backed by members of New Jersey band Big Troubles. As such, the Ducktails sound has changed from lo-fi guitar loops to something that rests in the intermediary of Van Morrison, Destroyer, and The English Beat. Ducktails played a couple of tracks from this year’s The Flower Lane LP, including “Under Cover”, “The Flower Lane”, and the Peter Gutteridge cover “Planet Phrom.” Jessa Farkas from Future Shuttle jumped on stage for the shared-vocal dream pop number “Letter of Intent” and the set ended with a new(?) piece that sounded like Coltrane via Grizzly Bear and was the best thing I heard all night.

The show was very much geared towards “museum goers” and as such had an unusually chill atmosphere. Mondanile mentioned how local to the Manhattan area his group is (hailing, as they do, from New Jersey and Long Island), and posited that we, the audience, were probably from around here too. There was a startling intimacy to the whole thing. During the entire set, which took place in front of a large window into the museum, patrons could be seen snapping photos of Mondanile and co.’s backs. This show was a part of MoMA’s ongoing MoMA Nights series in conjunction with PopRally, so if you’re in the New York area I would consider spending a Thursday night at the MoMA. Ducktails is playing another free show (this time with Titus Andronicus) in New York’s Hudson River Park on August 8.

Watch: Wanda Group “Masculinity is a Wonderful Thing”

26 Jul 2013 — Trey Reis

Nearly the entire act of listening to music is about hearing what is there. You hear this combination of sounds so you hear this song so you hear this artist so you hear this genre and this so on and this so forth. The mysterious WANDA GROUP kind of just takes that way of listening, burns it to a crisp, and sprinkles the ashes through your speakers. You start considering what was there. After 99 per cent of the original sound space was piled high with effect pedals and broken cords, the one per cent still floating at the top can still get a breathe in. And after digging through the layers of the unrecognizable remains, it reminds us there is still something remembered here, but in such a foreign, sonic space, all original source material feels familiar, like seeing an English word you can’t pronounce while visiting Japan. This artist becomes an artist. This genre becomes any genre. It’s noise music of the highest quality: the kind that forces you to ponder what it is to hear music. Ignorance is bliss, but I wouldn’t miss this one.

Masculinity is a Wonderful Thing is out August 5 and available for pre-order through Where to Now? Records now.

Win Tickets for Luzia Open Air with Octo Octa and More

26 Jul 2013 — Henning Lahmann

So I will try and write this post without talking about the weather (40 degrees on Sunday? Wtf??), but that's sort of complicated because (1) everybody seems to be doing it, these days more than ever, and (2) it's summer, as one step outside your door will tell you immediately, and this is supposed to be a meaningful piece about the one thing summers were invented for in the first place: open air music events. So lets hope this current weather (there you go) stays with us for at least another week, as two of our favourite Kreuzberg locations – Oranienstraße mainstays Luzia and Voo Store – invite all of us to a full day in the sunshine, replete with incredible music, namely DJ sets by Kim Ann Foxman, Perlon's Maayan Nidam, and Hrdvsion, plus live performances by Portable, and as the icing on the cake none other than cherished long-standing NFOP fav Octo Octa.

Appropriately enough, the whole thing takes place by the water in Rummelsburg on Sunday, August 4, from 12pm. Find out more details about the event on RA or Facebook.

We're giving away 2x2 tickets for the event. Just write a mail to henning@nofearofpop.net with the subject Luzia Open Air before 12pm on Wednesday, July 31.

Watch: Redder “Faster”

26 Jul 2013 — Tonje Thilesen

There might finally be something new, electronically leaning coming out of Finland these days to get all excited about (something we've felt there has been a lack of ever since Albert Swarm) — Redder, a Helsinki-based duo whose sound came together over a mutual appreciation for the gothic and melancholic soundscape. Deptford Goth or Fyfe seem to be a distinguishing references to the duo's ardent tribute, having ended up in the self-released debut EP Border/Lines, out on August 19th. Watch the captivating video for "Faster" below.

Hockeysmith “Let’s Bang”

26 Jul 2013 — Henry Schiller

Earlier this month we posted Hockeysmith’s debut track “Now I Want To,” a dream pop piece of mystical guitar ambience and low, warlike beats. Hockeysmith are already back with “Let’s Bang,” the duo’s first legitimate single. “Let’s Bang” has a danceable beat and a soft melodic structure reminiscent of Hounds of Love era Kate Bush; it’s a much cleaner and more decisively pop-influenced song than “Now I Want To.” It’s obvious that Hockeysmith owe a lot to the new wave experimentations of groups like Talk Talk, having as they do a knack for mashing together electronica flair with classical elegance. The kinetic guitar parts, roving piano melodies, and exceptional vocals that cut like a fine breeze through a fierce wilderness, are all that it takes to make you forget that you’re listening to a song called “Let’s Bang.”

Physical copies of the “Let’s Bang” single are available at Hockeysmith’s website.

Shadow Shadow “1000001”

26 Jul 2013 — Parker Bruce

Swedish man of wonder, Mattias Friberg aka Shadow Shadow's new song, "1000001," is cinematic to say the least with those ballooning drums that are also to be found in Beyoncé's "Halo," Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love," and anything Ryan Tedder ever produced. Voluminous drums usually do enough, but Shadow Shadow and singer Kicki Halmos, who's part of Masquer, are not content with mere heft. Kicki sings "I can't fight the nights all by myself all the time." I don't think you've ever heard synths yearn this much or drums heave as if they were carrying the weight of the world. Pair this with some lovely Au Palais. Santa Monica's Nonchalant released it on July 23 so go here if you want it in a digital manner. But I mean let's be real, you know you want that palm tree image on vinyl. It's Shadow Shadow's first North American 7" release, and the a-side is "Riviera." Suffice to say, I'm enthralled. Watch the video for "Riviera" below.

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