If you were at the concert by my band mockART in September last year, you already know that traffic || jammed was a very specific moment. If you read my report about the evening shortly after, you might remember how intense and concentrated the atmosphere was that night at Atelierhaus Orber Straße, during the Rush Hour Kulturfestival.

traffic || jammed – The Album

What I am happy to share now is that the music from that evening has been released.
traffic || jammed, the album, is out now on CD and in digital form.

All the pieces were written specifically for that concert. We did not take existing material to the stage but instead developed a complete program around the idea of rush hour and the people who create it, intentionally or not. Drivers, pedestrians, systems, habits, blockages. Playing this music live, in that space and in front of that audience, was an essential part of shaping it. At the same time, it always felt like more than a one-off performance.

The concert was recorded by Jörg See, and over the following months I worked carefully on the mix and master. The goal was not to document a concert for nostalgia’s sake, but to shape the material into an album that holds together on its own, even if you were not there that evening. The energy, tension and physicality of the performance were important to preserve, while still allowing the music to breathe as a listening experience.

The CD edition also includes two bonus tracks, La Bête Noire and Kör Adamın Gazeli, which we played as encores. Both tracks were previously released digitally as the single La Bête Noire (Alive).

Limited CDr with two bonus tracks in an exclusive cardboard sleeve.

If you were at the concert, this release might bring you back to that evening. If you were not, this is a good chance to experience what we were working towards.

Thank you for listening and for staying with the music beyond the moment it was played.

The post Caught in the Jam appeared first on rabirius.

All albums reissued on CD.

Some of you might have wondered, why I haven’t published many pictures recently. One of the reasons is that my latest works have become more complex. Another reason is, that I’m currently working on a new mockART album. The title will be Men Who Lost Their Heads. For the new album Christoph Dorner joined the project and we are writing and recording all the tracks together. But we are also working with some guests, as you can hear on our latest single Betörve, which means broken in English. The vocalist on this track is Hungarian singer Léda Szemerédi who also wrote the lyrics. Thanks are also due to Levente Dudás who recorded the vocals at his N/O/E/W/A Creative Music Studio in Southend-on-Sea (UK). The single was uploaded to various streaming sites including Spotify and iTunes. And certainly, there is a video clip as well.

The other single taken from the album is Lizard People. This is an instrumental track recorded by Christoph and me. You will also find it on Spotify, iTunes and other streaming sites.

If you follow my blog you probably know that the previous albums were also released on Spotify, iTunes & Co. If you need the links again, you will find them on the mockART website in the music section. But what you probably don’t know is that we reissued all previous mockART albums on CD.

Country Songs is our latest album. For this project we worked with various vocalists from different countries from all over the world. If you like to buy the CD, please visit our store on Bandcamp.

Living with Human Machines was our third album. It features three long tracks that were mainly composed with sampled noises and other effects to produce a movie in your head. You will find the CD on Bandcamp as well.

ION was originally released as a split CD with the Slovakian band Drén and released in East Europe only. The mini-album focuses more on the noisy side of mockART, with carefully hidden melodies. Now you can buy the remastered version on Bandcamp as well with all the mockART tracks.

After playing guitars in various bands, Reflux Ux Bisou was the beginning of mockART as well as recording music on a computer. We had to figure out how to produce sounds, sample our own beats and how to work guitars and vocals in the mix. Originally released as a very limited CD, you can finally find it again on Bandcamp.

The cover artwork was designed by me. For the new editions I created further artworks for the back and the insert. Certainly we would be happy if you would support us by buying a CD or follow us on the streaming site you use.

For more information about mockART, please visit the Music section or the mockART website.

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Having just written about my ten favourite albums of 2016 – here are two more I discovered before the old year ran out as a bonus:

The first one is the jubilee edition of one of my favourite albums: “Omega” by Morente & Lagartija Nick. About 20 years ago Flamenco singer Enrique Morente met alternative rock band Lagartija Nick and other musicians to record an album. “Omega” was unlike any other venture into flamenco-rock. The idea was to set some poems by Federico Garcia Lorca to music, choosing mainly his later poems written in New York where the writer experienced isolation and alienation that found their way into his poetry of that time, as well as the criticism of the capitalist and materialistic society he witnessed in a world suffering from the Wall Street Crash and the financial crisis.

What makes “Omega” such a fascinating album is how the musicians manage to capture these dark atmospheres with their sad flamenco tunes that, at times, they simply basted away with walls of electric guitars, before they slowly pave their way back through all the heavy riffs. This is most prominent in “Vuelta De Paseo” where with the line “¡Asesinado por el cielo!” (“Assassinated by the sky!”) the guitars almost strike you down like thunder.

The poems don’t really have a refrain and are not really accessible at first. To compensate for that, a few cover versions of Leonard Cohen songs are well placed throughout the album and help you to tune in much faster. When the album starts with its 10 minute title track, you get “Pequeño Vals Vienés” (“Take This Walz”) straight afterwards, giving you something like and anchor to hold on to in a sea of flamenco and electric guitars, and bringing Garcia Lorca and Cohen together in a natural way.

The jubilee version finishes the album with a bonus track that was recorded with Sonic Youth. A second CD contains demos, out-takes and alternative versions, including two more Cohen covers and another unreleased track, completing the picture. There also is a documentary on DVD and an extensive booklet with photos, notes and interviews.

Named after a fictional terrorist group in Luis Buñuel’s film “That Obscure Object of Desire”, the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus is a somewhat obscure band. Having only released three albums and an EP in almost thirty years, their sound mixes folk, Christian chants and mysticism with electronic sounds. “Beauty Will Save The World” was already released in 2015, about two decades after their second album “Mirror”, but I only noticed it in late December. Similar to their previous work, they continue to create beautiful music that takes from many genres and cultural references, but their new opus revolves around a meditative undercurrent that is hardly ever broken. Gone is the distortion and the noise present in some of their previous work and replaced by pianos, strings and ethnic percussions that carefully drive the album further and building a piece of music that seems to revolve entirely around different concepts of beauty.

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