Joachim Witt’s acclaimed Werkreihe Bayreuth phase of musical career and set of albums didn’t, in fact, come to a close with the 2007 best-of Auf Ewig. Instead, there was room for one final Bayreuth-release: Dorian Hunter Theme, the main theme for the successful German horror audio drama Dorian Hunter, which is based on the Dämonenkiller series of books by Ernst Vlcek. Currently five parts of Dorian Hunter have been released, with another five coming and the series ending sometime in 2010. Witt not only composed the main theme song, but he’s also responsible for all of the soundscapes present in the play. The theme song is pretty awesome - a haunting, dark and very electronic song that has more in common with Bayreuth I and Eisenherz than Witt’s latest works.

The Dorian Hunter Theme was released last month as a digital download and also as a CD single, and it contains the original version of the track, three remixes and as a bonus five short clips from the radio play. You can listen to samples and buy the single on at least Amazon.de, where you can also order the Dorian Hunter audio play CDs themselves. Alternatively, you can order everything from the publisher Zaubermond instead.

According to Witt himself, Dorian Hunter now finally wraps up the Bayreuth-era and next productions are looming in the horizon. I personally can’t wait to see what he has in store for the future. In the next few days we’ll at least be talking about Leichtmatrose, a new band Witt was recently completely enthralled by and which he gave a big hand by mentoring and providing artistic guidance, so look forward to seeing a post about that project soon!

Joachim Witt - Dorian Hunter Theme
1. Dorian Hunter Theme (Single version)
2. Dorian Hunter Theme (Moorland remix)
3. Dorian Hunter Theme (Forma tadre remix by Moorland Music)
4. Dorian Hunter Theme (Orchestral remix by Moorland Music)
5. “Mein lieber … Rest!” (snippet from part 1)
6. “Lilians Irrsinn” (snippet from part 1)
7. “Finde Dorian” (snippet from part 1)
8. “Sagen Sie mir die Wahrheit!” (snippet from the epilogue of part 2)
9. “Jeff Parker sagt Tschüss” (snippet from part 5)

Our European readers are probably more or less familiar with the format, but for everyone else, do you happen to know what the Eurovision song contest is? It’s an annual, Europe-wide search for the best performer in the whole of Europe - although here the best performer means the cheesiest and kitschiest goddamn pop artist you can find on our continent. Just about all the performances in the contests are beyond horrible, gimmicky eurotechno or pop groups, that are comparable to in-your-face insults to some music lovers and cringe-inducing, hilarious and boombastic comedy spectacles to others. For some reason, this show enjoys huge popularity and significant audience, so much that it’s even aired outside Europe and has spawned numerous spin-offs in other parts of the world. Anyways, after all the artists, one from each participating country, have presented their song in some huge stadium in the country where the contest is held this time, points are awarded according to the votes of the audience (conducted via SMS), and it all concludes in a wild, apocalyptic celebration of the winner who’ll go on to sell tens of millions of records all over the place. But what’s this got anything to do with German music anyone seriously cares about?

Well, the biggest single music event in Germany, Bundesvision Song Contest 2009 is right around the corner. On the 13th of February, a total of sixteen bands from each of the German states (Bundesländer) compete against each other for glory and fame in Metropolis-Halle in Potsdam. In execution, the contest is identical to Eurovision, and it also got its start when the German musician, entertainer and an all-around celebrity Stefan Raab held a contest to find the contestant for Germany’s 2004 Eurovision song contest. He then became bored with the insanity of Eurovision, and decided to devise a Germany-only competition of his own in 2005. However, that’s where the similarities thankfully end. The greatest difference is that just about all of BuViSoCo’s contestants are really good, proper artists who one might very well listen to without seeming risible. For example, germaniac favourites like Subway to Sally, OOMPH! and In Extremo have participated in the show. In other words, it’s an actual music competition rather than a celebration of everything that’s wrong with pop music, like it’s completely bananas big brother Eurovision.

This year, www.germaniac.com is set out to cover every single one of those sixteen bands entering the competition. In the next couple of weeks, you can look forward to seeing introductions to all of the artists and their songs, and of course ways for you to listen to them and where to buy their records. I’m sure you’ll be able to find a lot of great music and even new favourites from such a large selection of music from all around the country. So, don’t forget to tune in! We should have our first post up in a few days or so. But before that, here’s a list of the contestants:

BUNDESVISION SONG CONTEST 2009 ENTRIES
Baden-Württemberg: Cassandra Steen
Bavaria: Claudia Koreck
Berlin: Peter Fox
Brandenburg: Sven van Thom
Bremen: Flowin Immo et les Freaqz
Hamburg: Olli Schulz
Hesse: Fräulein Wunder
Lower Saxony: Fotos
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: Marteria
North Rhine-Westphalia: Rage
Rhineland-Palatinate: Pascal Finkenauer
Saarland: P:lot
Saxony: Polarkreis 18
Saxony-Anhalt: Angelas Park
Schleswig-Holstein: Ruben Cossani
Thuringia: Chapeau Claque

Nothing like a piece of breaking news to start off the year, eh? Many people were already afraid of this when it seemed that Florian Schneider wasn’t going to play at any of Kraftwerk’s shows in 2008, but according to the fansite Technopop now it’s finally official: Florian Schneider, the other one of Kraftwerk’s founding members, has left the pioneering band after 40 years for reasons unspecified.

To get an idea of how important Florian and Ralf Hütter’s collaboration has been to modern music (although you should’ve already known all about it), I’d like to direct you to Greg’s excellent essay on Kraftwerk and their influence he wrote about a year back. But indeed, Florian Schneider has been an instrumental figure in developing and utilizing techniques that have been essential to not just electronic but all kinds of music, he was for example one of the first musicians to use computer-generated speech synthesis in music. He really is one of the most influential musicians the world has ever seen, and it is a shame to see that his long, long career in Kraftwerk has come to an end. Hopefully leaving Kraftwerk doesn’t mean he has also lost his will to make music, and he’ll continue his adventures in sound design despite this. We wish him luck in all his future projects.

Kraftwerk’s already-announced South American tour and other dates for 2009 will not be affected by Florian’s departure. Stephan Pfaffe, who replaced Florian last year, will presumably continue as the fourth member of Kraftwerk. I for one am still waiting eagerly for any sort of indication of a new Kraftwerk album…

Greifenkeil, who released their album Blood Mystery last May, have changed their name to GriffonVox. Along with the new name comes a boatload of new stuff:

Annual Christmas gift
It seems Greifenkeil/GriffonVox have made it their tradition to release a free Christmas song every year. Following last year’s NoChristmasSong, this year’s track is called White Christmas (Law of the Land), and it’s the very first release under the new band name. You can download the mp3 here, or if you fancy, a 45 MB .wav file here.

New style, new releases
Sometimes when a band changes their name, nothing else is different. This time, however, GriffonVox seems to be seeking to distance themselves from Greifenkeil’s “psycho-acoustic performance art”, as now GriffonVox’s sites tell us they’re an “electronic wave performance” act. Last time I checked, Greifenkeil’s music was a very interesting kind of ambient and psychedelic industrial, so it’ll be interesting to see just what this new direction means for the band. If the new Christmas song White Christmas is of any indication, the sound is a bit less crushing and industrial than before, and seems to have a touch of trance or something like that to it. Nevertheless, it’s really good.

To really drive home the fact that the band has changed, GriffonVox is releasing the album Blood Mystery again done entirely anew in the new style. According to their MySpace site, Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will be available for free for everyone who bought the original version of the album, or as Blood Mystery Kultbox which will have both the original Blood Mystery as well as the new version. Alongside the transformed original songs, the Electronic Wave Mix also boasts some older songs they performed during their shows, presumably played in the new style. Blood Mystery - Electronic Wave Mix will see the light of day at the Wave Gothik Treffen 2009 festival in early summer.

In WGT 2009 will also be released a brand new EP, She’s Lost Control. She’s Lost Control is a cover of Joy Division’s 1979 hit song, but the EP will have at least two other tracks as well. Whether these are remixes, other cover versions or completely new GriffonVox songs remains a secret. Also, not content with releasing this much stuff already, early spring 2009 something known only as Law of the Land will be available as a free download. I’m afraid there’s currently no information on this one. Keep your eyes peeled.

Blixa Bargeld’s multi-media project The Execution of Precious Memories will soon be performed for 5 nights in San Francisco, California, from November 19th to the 23rd. Alongside Blixa will be the musicians known as Nanos Operetta and Yannis Adoniou’s dance company Kunst-Stoff. Blixa is also expected to sing 4 original songs as part of the performances.

About the project
The Execution of Precious Memories originates from 1994 and actually makes use of the individual memories of hundreds of local citizens near where the show will be performed. Weeks ahead of the performance, questionnaires are distributed to the local population, their responses are collected anonymously and organized, and then artistic interpretations of these memories are what the audience ultimately experiences through a fusion of music, spoken word and dance. Therefore, the performance is completely different each time it is done in a new city, and it is said to be especially powerful for anyone who completed the surveys and also attend the performance.

Ticket and theater info
If you are in the San Francisco area and enjoy a thought-provoking experience, be sure not to miss The Execution of Precious Memories. The performance is for 5 nights only at the Project Artaud Theater at 450 Florida Street in San Francisco. The performances from November 19th through the 22nd will begin at 8 PM, while the November 23rd performance will begin one hour earlier at 7 PM. Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at Brown Paper Tickets (which is a great site, by the way, because they don’t have ridiculously high service fees like some other sites *cough*Ticketmaster*cough*) or by phone by calling the ODC box office at 415-863-9834 between 2 and 5 PM Wednesday through Saturday.

If you’re a big Rammstein fan, you probably know that the band’s name was inspired by a tragic airshow accident that occured at the Ramstein airbase. It happened 20 years ago on this day, August 28th, 1988, in what was West Germany at the time. The Italian Air Force’s show team Frecce Tricolori was performing a maneuver known as the “pierced heart” when 3 planes suddenly collided in mid-air and plunged into the crowd below. Sadly, 70 people were killed including the 3 pilots, and an additional 346 spectators were seriously injured.

Let’s take a moment to remember this event and the people who died on that day. Then, get our your Herzeleid CD and listen to the song “Rammstein” which was created in memory of this disaster. Music always sounds better when you know what emotions inspired it.

New Atrocity video and stadium appearance
We’re getting a double dose of news from Atrocity today. First of all, they recently filmed a new music video for the song “The Sun Always Shines On TV” from their current album Werk 80 II. The song is a metal interpretation of the Norwegian synthpop band a-ha’s 1985 single. Personally, I don’t think either the song or the video are that great so I’m not going to post it here, but you can still watch it on Youtube if you want.

Second, Atrocity will appear at the Gottlieb Daimler Stadium on May 17th for the VfB Stuttgart vs. Arminia Bielefeld final soccer match. The game is sold out which means they will be playing in front of 56,000 people, quite an experience I can imagine.

Wumpscut’s Schädling out in America today
Just a quick reminder to all Wumpscut fans in the USA and Canada: Schädling was just released here today on Metropolis Records. We have been keeping up pretty well with the news about this latest release from Rudy Ratzinger, so check out my post with the tracklisting and other details or Valtteri’s review of the Schädlingsbox if you haven’t been there already.

4lyn is heading to China
Yesterday, 4lyn announced on their website that they will be travelling to the Chongqing region of China to participate in a the German Cultural Weeks during May. They also plan to return to Chongqing, which is one of the most populated areas in China, for next year’s events. These cultural programs are being planned by the Goethe Institut to promote cultural exchange between the countries.

Piscide is now available on iTunes
The German electro-industrial band Piscide just released their second album Elekktroshokk a few weeks ago on March 14th, but it was only available as a physical CD. Now you can find Piscide’s music on iTunes if you prefer to download MP3s instead.

Last friday I picked up a large parcel from my local post office. Guess what it contained?

click for larger image

Yep, the limited box edition of the electro-industrial legend :Wumpscut:’s record for 2008. It was one of those “well, why the hell not”, spur-of-the-moment impulse buys, the first :W: box I’ve bought. What wonders could await inside?

Find out just what, a review of the album and more behind the link!
(more…)

Documentary about Einstürzende Neubauten planned
The Berlin-based film maker Uli Schueppel is planning a documentary about Einstürzende Neubauten’s first concert which took place on December 21st, 1989 in what was then East Berlin. This should be really interesting to see when it’s completed, but for now Uli is in search of anyone who attended that concert and who can provide some additional information for his documentary. Anyone who can help should contact him at info@schueppel-films.de.

Diary Of Dreams has a clothing collection
I don’t know how old this news is, but it caught me by surprise as I was browsing Infrarot.de. Apparently Diary Of Dreams has launched a clothing line in association with the gothic clothing company Aderlass. They have several different styles of jackets, trench coats, pants and skirts available. You can see them all on Infrarot.de here, but I have to warn you, they are pretty expensive. The prices range from €89.90 to €239.90.

Lacrimosa begins work on new album
Lacrimosa, the Swiss gothic metal band headed up by Tilo Wolff, has begun working on their next album. This will be the band’s 10th studio album since they formed in 1990, and their first major release since their 2007 live album Lichtjahre. If you’re in Europe, be sure to catch one of their upcoming concerts or the Blackfield Festival in Gelsenkirchen where they will be headlining.

Dependent Records announced it would be shutting down operations back in August 2007 after owner Stefan Herwig said MP3 file sharing was eating away his business. Now he is acting as the tour manager for Seabound’s upcoming U.S. tour and has posted an open invitation for anyone across the country to sit down with him and have a debate about file sharing during the off-hours of the tour. If you are interested in voicing your opinion in person to Stefan and perhaps having a bit of an argument, send him an email at stefan@dependent.de and let him know.

Personally, I think this is just the wrong discussion to be having. Arguing for or against file sharing is pointless. Illegal music downloading is not going to go away, so you have to adapt to it. You can’t fight it. It’s like a new rule in the game called the music industry. You can’t play a new game by the old rules, so record labels and bands have to change how they play the game in order to remain successful. Stefan really should be asking people what changes should be made so that downloading is no longer considered a problem. That would be worth talking about.

News via the Side-Line blog