пятница, 4 февраля 2022 г.

Nervöse Leute — Retrowelle (2022)

 


Hi everyone, we're happy to announce that Nervöse Leute have reunited in an original lineup to release an EP "Retrowelle".

This is indeed a retrowave EP with gentle minimal synth sound. Pure 80's flavor! All music has been written by Vladimir Laznev, and I picked and mixed the samples and also shot a cover picture.

The picture was taken in Petrozavodsk, one of the most depressing cities I ever visited.

But Nervöse Leute has always had a creepy part, and this time all the creepy stuff comes from the samples I used. Guess you know a meme about "I May Not Know My Flowers", that's how the title track's called, and you may know the funny movie "The Gay Deceivers" from which it comes from, but the creepy part is that in Russia you gotta be really careful when joking about gays. Certainly you may hurt their feelings, but there's also notorios "Gay Propaganda Law" oficially banning any coverage of the topic. To be fair, there's nothing in the samples which could be considered as propaganda: a joke's a joke. But if you know the origin of this joke, you sort of know the subtext and context, and you're, like: "Yeah it's something which may be banned in here, alright".

Alright, we're moving on. The second track also features creepy samples. "Why Tragedy in My Life?" is a title of an old YouTube video where an old lad tells and comments on the story from The Bible and discusses the topic of tragedy as part of God's Providnece. "God permits tragedy to get your attention", the old guy says. And here comes the creepy part: this is Edarem himself, a musthave in any "Top Creepy Old School YouTubers" list. Edarem was condemned for a really tough crime, and he was prohibited to use Internet, but he did use it to publish his videos, and it ended in second inprisonment; so he died in a prison hospital quite soon after that. He's creepy and what he says is creepy: someone has to die just to make me "pay attention" to God? No, thank you, sir.

The third track is titled "You Look Depressed", the samples were taken from some tape from the 90's with lessons of English. Nervöse Leute have always been keen on using analogue samples, tapes, etc., and this is the case. The thing is that overall mood of the tape is kind of blaming the listener for being a homebody, for being non-social and depressed as if it's a bad thing. You gotta go out, you gotta watch TV to be "up to date", you gotta meet people you dislike just to remain a normal guy in their eyes. Actually, it's about shaming of depression and other psychiatric issues.

The final track has shortwave (Nervöse Leute's hobby horse) samples of a radio show discussing Covid-19 and Omicron in general. It's just the feature of the time. We're having disastrous numbers of Covid victims here in Russia, kids get sick and die, children's hospitals have no vacant places, etc. It's horrorful when you look at the amount of victims of the pandemic. 

Well, we're proud of our work, I must admit. Nervöse Leute change, but remain truthful to their ideology. Let's see if we go on exploring creepy terrotories.

Check out the EP here: 


Stay tuned!

Sincerely yours,
John "Grey Lenses" Grey

Комментариев нет:

Отправить комментарий