Niki N. Phaser

     Well, unlike most bands I write about in this section, Swedish experiment-pop duo, The Knife, would probably prefer to be ignored. They have the media-phobia of Terrence Malick, but sure enough, they do qualify as excentric geniuses. Just like they don’t care too much (or at all) about promotion, they are really not trying to please anyone else but themselves. Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer create a new, experimental brand of pop, that is as catchy as can be, but still strange and eluding mainstream. Pass This On, from sophmore album, Deep Cuts, will make you understand better what this is all about. The steel-drums hook will make you wonder why does this sound so familiar (it’s a normal reaction to songs you’ll love for the rest of your life), while the voice, the lyrics will conjure a fascinating uncomfortableness, convincing your mind that there is something wrong here, but you can’t help closing your eyes and falling in the melodic whirpool of this weird pop. It’s a rather instinctual review of a song, I know, but that’s the way this Knife ‘cuts’.

PASS THIS ON HERE

                Since they first started, Dogstar members knew that this will always be ”that band that Keanu Reeves plays bass for”. (“in his spare time, by the way”). With this in mind, these guys decided to cut the bs and instead of going through all the compromise-rollercoasters of a starting band, they concentrated on the simple pleasure of making music together. They haven’t changed the face of rock’n'roll forever and they do have stuff that one could ignore without making the biggest mistake of one’s life, but there is also music by Dogstar that does the trick: you hear it, you like it, you wanna hear it some more. Enchanted is one the songs that prove this, at least to me. Singer-guitarist Bret Domrose describes their music as “pop-aggressive” and the mentioned song exemplifies. Ok, it might sound like a Danielle Steel kind of rock, played by male models in jeans, and there is a nice nit little guitar solo in the middle part, but somehow it works. And you don’t have to be a Keanu Reeves fan to like it.

Enchanted

Vangelis’ career is one of many interesting contrasts and considering that he started making music at the age of four, it’s only natural that he explored quite a few genres before becoming the synth-guru he is known today. Less famous than Aphrodite’s Child, his international successful band with Demis Roussous, is his first musical pack, The Forminx, which were the Greek version of The Beatles’ craze, that swept pretty much the whole world and bred countless clones, one (or more) for each country. The Forminx were quite a hit in 1960′s Greece, after seducing the youth with their catchy rock’n'roll tunes and innocent schlagers. In the latter category, Love Without Love holds an honourable place. The English lyrics sung with a bit of accent, the strange choice of words here and there (”You understand me so much”), Toto’s trumpet, they all provide Love Without Love with the 60′s charm of European schlagers. But beyond that, this is a very well done piece of music, that doesn’t conjure up laughs, but a real emotional response in the listener and hypothetically ‘translated’ into contemporary music production, it would prove to be a masterful tearjerker ballad.

LISTEN TO Love Without Love