In den letzten zwei Jahrzehnten hat Xiu Xiu eine beeindruckende Reihe von hochgelobten Alben und Kollaborationen veröffentlicht, die stets für Aufmerksamkeit sorgten. Mit insgesamt 17 Langspielplatten, die in renommierten Zeitschriften wie The New Yorker, The Wire, Rolling Stone, The Guardian, NME und vielen anderen positiv besprochen wurden, haben sie sich einen bedeutenden Platz in der Musikszene erarbeitet. Die Band ist unermüdlich um die Welt getourt und hat dabei nicht nur abgelegene Orte wie Kasachstan und den Libanon besucht, sondern auch in bedeutenden Kulturstätten wie dem Guggenheim und dem Centre Pompidou gespielt.
Xiu Xiu kündigt heute ihr neues Album 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips an, das am 27.09 über Polyvinyl veröffentlicht wird. Auf diesem Album präsentieren Angela Seo und Jamie Stewart einige der faszinierendsten und hypnotischsten Songs der Bandgeschichte. Abgemischt von John Congleton (bekannt durch seine Arbeit mit Chelsea Wolfe, Swans und Lana Del Rey), unterscheidet sich dieses Werk von allem, was die Band bisher aufgenommen hat. Es ist geprägt von der bewussten Zerstörung früherer ästhetischer Konzepte und dem kürzlichen Umzug der Band von Los Angeles nach Berlin.
In diesem Song werden Jamie Stewarts eindringlicher, bekenntnishafter Gesang von quietschenden, hymnischen Gitarren untermalt. Stewart beschreibt den Song als "eine Boogie-Umarmung für queere Perverse im ganzen Multiversum". Zur Veröffentlichung von "Common Loon" gibt es ein NSFW-Video, das von der Performance-Künstlerin Alicia McDaid unter dem Pseudonym "Mcdazzler" gedreht, inszeniert und geschnitten wurde. Im Video schlüpft McDaid in die Rollen von Britney Spears, The Angelologist, Schlumpfine, Garfield, Pepe, Anna Nicole Smith Joker, Led Zeppelin Groupie, Galactica Darkstar, Jason Voorhees, Frida Kardashian, Viagra, Goth Monica Geller, Chemtrails, Ghöstmilf, She-Hulk, Carmela Soprano, Cathy, Bret Michaels, Andy Warhol und Odie.
"In dem Song 'Common Loon' geht es für uns um das Schwelgen in Perversität, Verrücktheit, Queerness und das unstillbare persönliche Bedürfnis, sich auszutoben. Als riesige Fans von Alicia McDazzlers Arbeit konnten wir uns niemanden vorstellen, der diese Lebensweise besser verkörpern und auf die Spitze treiben könnte als sie. Sie ist eine Inspiration und Ikone für alle LOONS!"
-Jamie Stewart
Schau dir das Musikvideo zu "Common Loon" an!
Xiu Xiu wird uns auf ihrer Welt-Tournee auch in Deutschland besuchen!
27.11. - Nurnberg, Germany @ Soft Spot / Kantine
29.11. - Berlin, Germany @ Lido
Tickets HIER!
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Eugene S. Robinson, East Palo Alto, California über Xiu Xiu und das Album
There’s a dance, and on occasion a place to go dancing, where we while away the inevitable in the distinct hopes that we can better embrace what’s left of clocks that only run one way. You see, time is the issue and the issue is all about doing a dance that measures out life, and chance, and smooths the groove into something that can comfortably be swallowed.
Like 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips?
Precisely like 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. Which, on the face of it is the newest record from Xiu Xiu, but only on the face of it. Underneath that face, the sinews and struggles of a need that seeks to name itself over every record, and every song on every record, ever written by Xiu Xiu of course, but also anyone who ever sought to make a record that’s worth a good goddamned. And this record is precisely that.
That is: a good goddamned. Nine songs of it, in fact. Nine songs to seal the deal for those who will still listen to all nine songs, in order, because an album is a message that can’t be read piecemeal. Mixed by John Congleton with a band-directed dictum that he should feel free to both “go crazy” and if there was ever any doubt as to what that meant please, by all means “choose iconoclasm.”
Which, if your ears are not liars, he has very specifically done. Even if it was not that heavy of a lift to do so since Xiu Xiu has made doing so their raison d’etre for the better part of forever. Formally formalized here under Xiu Xiu’s sense that “the destruction of an original aesthetic notion as a motivation was new for us.”
Were it also a marching order for anyone committing to actualizing a musical experience of some significance, it seems we’d all be a lot better off. Or at least feeling a lot better off. Which in the end is the only measurement that matters in the face of lives of weighty import. Or even lightweight frivolity. It’s there and everywhere in-between.
And while it sounds like in a volitional sense something easy to do, doing so song after song on record after record doesn’t always clarify or make things easy. Something driven home on their song “Veneficium,” a word with Latin roots connected to poisoning potions.
“Being lost, literally lost, emotionally lost, lost in a smashed psychological dimension beyond your control, being overwhelmed by the weight of one’s insignificance in the face of time, space and death and pointlessly railing against what does not notice let along care about you”
This record though, it must be said, sounds (and feels) like it does care about you. A sense that might mask the randomness of our place in space or more completely, sets it off as the true face of all of our public endeavors.
Beyond that? Songs like “Common Loon,” “Arp Omni,” and “T.D.F.T.W.” tip the scales toward a dangerous kind of listening experience. One that both takes a lot, but gives more, in almost equal measure.
Something set off by Xiu Xiu when they say, as they do, that if they want us to feel anything for this record, it would be “unafraid.”
Damned straight. We’ve had our fill of that shit lately, and if Xiu Xiu’s move to Berlin is any indication – “we wanted to stay ahead of disaster this time” – it is no less important of a thing than anything else we measure life and death with.
So, 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips?
Yes, 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. While regret is for children and old people, rest assured that if you’re not one, you’ll be the other. And out of the long laundry list of things on your regret list, you will most definitely not find 13" Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips. It’s a mitzvah. For what we should be well pleased.
You are alive. And, oh yeah, long live Xiu Xiu.
–Eugene S. Robinson, East Palo Alto, California
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Trackliste:
1.Arp Omni
2 .Maestro One Chord
3. Common Loon
4. Pale Flower
5. Veneficium
6. Sleep Blvd.
7. T.D.F.T.W.
8. Bobby Bland
9. Piña, Coconut & Cherry