Usual Locations: KeMPR

Couple of months ago I had this urge to track down a musician I used to listen to. His name is Richard Kemp. I got to know him a few years back when I lived in Ulverston, saw him play in several open mic nights and generally got to know the guy. Then things turned a little sour, and I moved to Lancaster. And contact was lost. I sort of tried to keep at least one eye on what he was doing musically, but then it just seemed to go quiet one day. But as I mentioned, I decided to go on a little Google/Facebook hunt and see if I could track him down again. And lo and behold I find him, under a new name. KeMPR.

Now for a little background (Pieced together from some fragments of my memory). Richard Kemp (mostly known as Kempy, when I knew him that might have changed since) used to be in a band called 12ft Machete, that apparently created quite a stir on the Furness peninsula. From what I've been told mostly through Richard's phenomenal stage presence. Sadly I moved to late into that area to actually ever get to see them play.  The only track I could track down by them is a song called 'Albino Twist' but only as a remix by master local Furness producer Howie Venton. Which to be fair is a cracking remix and makes me really want to hear the original. But on this track you can hear what a great rock singer he is and why 12ft Machete managed to create a name for themselves.



 When 12ft Machete called it quits out of those ruins came essentially two(Now three, possibly four) different projects. One that I became quite fond of was/is called Runt Hörnet, who play a delightful punk rock music with some aid of home made instruments like their monobass (Usually played by Howie Venton) that is played with wrench instead of a plectrum


for cryin out loud from runt hornet on Myspace.

and Lobe which had Richard Kemp in it and they played more of acoustic ballady stuff with some folky over tones. 

Stars Above Headlights from Lobe on Myspace.

Since then Lobe has disbanded for whatever reason. (With one half now doing instrumental acoustic stuff under the name 'dogmusiC'.) I had heard that they had been active around the open mic arenas around the Furness peninsula. The last song was from 2007. And then on-line activity seemed to cease from them. The Grapevine had been telling me that there had been a few personal issues that needed to be resolved and suchlike. Which just saddened me because Kempi (Kempy, Richard, whatever!) always struck me as someone who really could go all the way with his music. Thankfully, due to some Facebook browsing and Googleing, I managed to find him. Only to find out that he had relocated to Halifax and thankfully was still making music!

Few years back I used to own a album of Richard's (Kempi's, whatever!) in which he worked with Howie Venton, and I loved it. But due to many many computer formatting, rebooting and rescheduling those music files were lost. Amongst those songs was an orchestral version of one of his most played songs



Though my personal favourite song from that album was a cold industrial song called 'February'. This song always somehow made me feel a little homesick.



Currently he seems to be making a name for himself both as a musician and as an artist. And has recently published a new album called 'Some Days are Harder Than Most'.

Since renewing my interesting in his music what I have found both excellent and surprising is the fact that he's pretty much continued with the folk/acoustic stuff from Lobe. And that's not a complaint by any means. Kempi has a very gentle singing voice which also makes you feel so much better about yourself. Most of the songs do seem to centre around not losing hope knowing that there are friends around. Even during the most dejected and downtrodden song 'Reject-0' has that element to it.

Possibly the best example of this Hope Prevails/Friends song type is "We'll be around".



In amongst those acoustic songs we get surprises like 'Supersizer' a delightful raunchy rock n' roll song.



I do hope he just keeps on cranking the songs out. Hopefully go on a bit of a tour. There is no doubt about it, he's got the song writing skills and he's got a bloody good voice, both for ballads and rock. And he's got the personality.

Rammstein: No birds are singing anymore

I have already talked a little about Rammstein in my New German Hardness post but here I want to go into a little more detail. I was 15 years old when I first listened to Rammstein. The debut album Herzeleid to be precise. I had been spending part of that summer in Reykjavik where two of my brothers and dad(for clarification no my parents are not divorced, he was just on a business venture that didn't go so well in the end) were living. This album came at a rather intense time in my life, but I'm not going on some spiel about how it save my life. It didn't that was something completely different. My brother had borrowed this album from a friend of his and played it in the living room. I was fairly quickly completely taken to them. I can't remember if I copied the CD onto a tape(yes a tape) or not. But nonetheless I had found a new musical love in my life. Though what it was I couldn't really put my finger on. They sang in German, the guitar riffs were fairly plain, no guitar solo's(well actually one, Weisses Fleisch and the title song) and the album cover itself was a little bit suspect. But it was crushing in sound and breadth. Yes there's absolutely nothing original about it, but if I wanted originality I would have stuck to listening to Einstürzende Neubauten, whilst wearing my figmented skinny jeans and sipping red wine. But I'm thankfully not a hipster and I can like both Rammstein and Einstürzende Neubauten. And drink my beer.

But no, they were industrial, and as I said before crushing and quite frankly fun to listen to. There was nothing like them around, at least not in my music-o-sphere. The closest thing would be an Icelandic band called HAM. But they had quit many many years previous to that. Primal force that just pulverises you with direct sophisticated and precise musical attacks. That is what Rammstein was about. And singing in German, which was pretty unheard of, well except for in Germany of course... and Austria. But, no, what I mean is that it was unusual to hear a band NOT singing in English. Which also meant that if you didn't understand what was being sung you could use your imagination a lot more with the music, and the vocals became for as yet another instrument. Talking about vocals, Till Lindemann has got one of the best baritone vocal tones I know off. I have no idea what he is singing most of the time, but the emotions he carries are immense and intense. Generally just the one tone, one frequency that he uses, but for example when he wants to sing a ballad like Seemann he has your full attention. Oh and the use of the bass on that song is just brilliant. But yeah Till also writes all the lyrics, and when you actually get them translated you can see that he is a brilliant wordsmith, he's even published a few poetry books alongside his Rammstein career. But with that voice you can easily hear a Sergeant wading into battle on top of a horse with an enemy head in one hand and a sword raised to the air in the other.

Where Herzeleid really really succeeds is in the simplicity of, well everything, but when you start listening a bit more deeply you start noticing these little bits added in the background that make the song really really good. It's in the background where Flake shines. With some interesting samples and well played and well layered keyboards. Listen to Wollt Ihr Das Bett Flammen Sehen, and you get little samples from the classic game Doom. The start of Heirate Mich is also a good song to show Flake's prowess, he even manages to get in a bit of Hammond Organ in there.

Kruspe and Landers do provide the meat of the material. With their relentless riffing throughout every song. They tend to not deviate a great deal from the blueprint, and usually keep to one riff per song. The thing is though that their riffs are good enough to hold up those songs. Doom Schneider is of course the man who keeps this industrial beast in sync with his relentless near-computerised rhythmic beats. Every piece from every member seems to provide a little detail that makes the big picture. Without one, it would all fall to pieces. And the picture would never be finished.

The following year when Sehnsucht was released their popularity exploded! Especially due to the songs Du Hast and Stripped. Even though Stripped wasn't on Sehnsucht. But now I was part of a crowd, rather than a group of one. Which to me was a bit of a novelty at the time. Sehnsucht has a slightly more raw sound to it than Herzeleid, it is probably my least favourite album by Rammstein. But that is not to say that I don't like it. It's got brilliant tunes on there like Tier, Klavier and Engel.

Now the pinnacle of their career. The piece that they will never be able to top is Mutter. This is where their bombasticity became Epic. This is still my favourite album by them. Here they are sophisticated, direct and brutal in their attack, with re-inforcements from Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg. Individually the songs are all very good and very strong, but with the orchestral addition that power just becomes overwhelming and envelopes the listener, takes them by the scruff of the neck and pounds the enjoyment into the earholes. From the German marching Links 2 3 4 to loneliness of the title song to the obscure sexuality of Zwitter(this song is also the only one I can think of that makes great use of the outro, which is an aspect of songs that I generally hate with a fucking passion) and the abandonment of Spieluhr. This album is the crown jewel of Rammstein's career.

Now, I'm not saying that the stuff that came out after Mutter are not worth listening to. Reise, Reise and Rosenrot are both very good and are to some extent fairly major departures from the sound that they created in the first three albums. Now Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da, is probably their best album since Mutter, and they are obviously having time of their lifes on that album. Their gleeful poking at porn and shock rock is the perfect example of that.

I remember seeing them playing in Iceland during the Mutter tour and it has to be said that it is probably still the best concert I've ever been to. It would have been that if only Rammstein had played but no, it was also the time when HAM decided to re-unite. But only after lots and lots of peer pressure from the Icelandic nation, which never would have happened if the guitar player of HAM hadn't said that they would only reunite if Rammstein came to Iceland. They had it all, the pyrotechnics(though not as much as it was a closed environment), Flake on a dingy, Flake the Subservient and Till the Master. It was not so much a concert but more of an experience, with all the theatrics that was on show. The band came on like robots, or possibly humans without a soul and Doctor Flake flicked the switch that put the spark back into them.  And they rocked.

Music doesn't have to be super complex or obscure or original. Some times it helps, but the main thing is if the music is enjoyable. Whenever I want to have a little headslamming session these guys are perfect, when ever I just want the hairs at the back of my neck to rise these guys are perfect, whenever I feel like a run or just want to work out a little bit these guys I perfect.

Rammstein - A mass grave,
Rammstein - no escape!
Rammstein - no bird sings ... more
Rammstein - and the sun is shining.

Glorious surprises, Disillusion comes out with Gloria.

One of my favourite albums of all time is Back To The Times of Splendor by Disillusion. I still pull that album out regularly to listen to, 6 songs spanning nearly 57 minutes of eternal beauty. I bought my copy in 2004, and I was captivated. But also perplexed as to why they didn't get the press that they deserved! Here's a band that shits out an instant classic first time trying and barely a whimper was registered in the metal press. And I could not wait for a sequel. Which never came. But never mind, they did publish another album called Gloria in 2006.

What an absolute off the wall straight from the left field that was. And I loved it. Most people didn't. Most people wanted 'Back to the Times of Splendor II'. But with 'Gloria' Disillusion were showing their progressive side, which for some reason seemed to irk people. There were shouts of sell-outs going of course, but you can't really be a sell-out if you are not delivering what people want.

So what happened. Welll, what seems to have happened is that Andy Schmidt, nee Vurtox,  got sick and tired of playing BTtToS live over and over again. And having the stress of trying to find a backing band and preferably a small orchestra as well. Probably wanted to play something slightly simpler. More hard hitting in some ways, and rest his larynx!

Andy uses on this album mostly, baritone singing, bass singing, occasionally he'll a sort of melodic spoken word or pure spoken word and only couple of times will he break and use his death rattle. I loved his vocals on BTtToS but he really does come into his own on Gloria. His vocal performance on here is simply glorious. The overtly German pronunciation of some words that has sometimes distracted me in the previous album and the EP's released before that.  I might be putting a lot compliments onto him, but the man deserves it. Though of course I don't really want to take away from the rest of the band, the drummer Jens Maluschka does fantastic job as well if only in keeping up with Andy's vision. The fills and the rhythm are just right every time and always interesting as well. Just listen to this song:



Though where Gloria really wins is how unusually built it is. It weaves, breaks and turns in all sorts of directions, but those weaves, breaks and turns are never unnecessary and most importantly never for show, well maybe a little but it never feels like it. I hesitate even calling this album Metal, because there is so much else going on but no other label really fits, and with metal being THE most diverse genre going it is probably the only label that fits. The closest would be industrial metal, some people will probably complain(and did) about how similar Andy sounds like Till, but the proof is in the listening. And while I love Rammstein, they haven't put out an album that sounds as interesting as this one. Yes in one song "The Hole We Are In" starts out as blackish Death metal song, but then just towards the end swerves into sort of lounge-ish dance song.

Then there are two instrumental songs one of the called Lava which always makes me envision flying over Iceland and seeing two separate volcano's going off in between grassland and black deserts. Maybe the reason I imagine flying is because of the previous instrumental called Aerophobic. Both of these tracks are very bass heavy and often it sounds like they've thrown away the guitars and replaced them with basses.

So as I said previously no it isn't 'Back To The Times of Splendor: In search for more money' that everyone was hoping for (me included) but it is a brilliant album completely blew away any misconceptions (mine included) about these guys and proves that they are quintessential progressive musicians. But the only problem is that this album was released in 2006, and nothing has been heard or seen since of these guys. Which makes me a very very sad blogger.