In German language, there are many wonderful folk songs and little lyrics. I’ve never been very impressed with the dreary English-language birthday song (apparently under copyright too) “Happy Birthday to you”. There’s not much wit or spirit or flair for language in that tired ditty. It’s made its way around the world, in dire local versions.

Fortunately in German, there’s a much better song than “Happy Birthday”. It’s called “How Wonderful that You were Born” (“Wie schön dass du geboren bist”) by Rolf Zuckowski. We’ve just done a video for our sons’ aunt’s 60th birthday. For that video, I made an English translation as I couldn’t find a good one online. Here is my translation:

Wie schön dass du geboren bist
Heute kann es regnen,
stürmen oder schneien,
denn du strahlst ja selber
wie der Sonnenschein.
Heut ist dein Geburtstag,
darum feiern wir,
alle deine Freunde
freuen sich mit dir

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.

Continue reading Happy Birthday Song in German | Wie schön dass du gebornen ist at uncoy.

Watching this video is tough for someone who loves music, musical instruments and antiques. trip pop Russian band Cats Park destroys a gorgeous old C. Goetze signed black upright piano. When the paint started to flow I thought it might just by water based and wondered how they would clean it off. How wrong I was.

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If Hollywood can blow up cars and buildings (less and less, more and more done purely in CGI), indie music videos should have the right smash old pianos in the pursuit of art.

Apart from the death of the piano, a quite beautiful and simple video. Like most good videos, there’s a single strong image and it’s followed through consistently. We create and then we destroy. There is no permanence. Echoes of Shelley’s Ozymandias.

Continue reading Blowing up pianos – Cats Park Your Love is a Sin at uncoy.

Here’s a fantastic song which comes with a music video to match, Master Hunter. What’s very special for us at Uncoy is that the video is principally a modern dance performance with Marling playing the guitar in the background.

Continue reading Laura Marling is just the start at uncoy.

The most similar revelatory experiences I’ve had would be Anna Azema’s Le Jeu d’Amour followed by Rachel Smith’s The Clearing or earlier Tori Amos’s Little Earthquake and Van Morisson’s Veedon Fleece.

Sadly I have to start with the video. I first heard the music in the dark without any visuals. Horn’s pretty face and passionate delivery are a distraction from the depth of the song. As much as her profoundly emotional voice, it’s the guitar works which makes Under löven work.

When I first listened to Under Löven, I couldn’t figure out how the guitarist managed to be both so quiet and so active at the same time.

Continue reading Melissa Horn, Under Löven: Music to change your life at uncoy.

PARA – Žena from Martina SLOVAKOVA

Things are happening culturally in Bratislava, a lot of the work is just underground.

In the narrow street of the old town in the video (it’s just south of Michalska Brana and the Oesterreichisches Institute is on that street), last weekend I saw two guys catch another guy drag him down and kick him three times in the head. After the victim ran right past me.

They kicked him once but it took me twenty seconds or so to recruit a group of about three other people to help intervene. From our group somebody found some police, who then called backup. The attackers were spoiled boys with rich fathers in black designer suits.

Continue reading Bicycles and Bratislava at uncoy.

For years I’ve been hearing about Benoît Lachambre and how splendid and illuminating his work is. From the same crowd who love Jerôme Bel and detest Anna Teresa de Keersmaker and passionately loathe ballet.

Hence Lachambre’s work has always appeared conceptual and fairly painful to me. In the best case, instructive or prophylactic, like a trip to the dentist. The tangy taste I had of his work with Clara Furey at the Franz West Tribute did inspire me to attend a full show. What impressed me there was his intensity. Lila, under Lachambre’s mentorship for the summer, told me that his main speech to DanceWeb was all about intensity on stage. A very good point to make.

Benoit Lachambre Snakeskins: LaChambre is bottom left, Albanese is bottom left
Rowe is on top of the rig pounding a thunder sheet
photo Christine Rose Divito

In “Snakeskins”, Lachambre begins by hanging upside down in a harness under a vast set of cables which dip four metres out to the audience.

Continue reading ImPulsTanz 2012: Benoît Lachambre – Snakeskins at uncoy.

Afternoon of a Faun, Bolero and Carmina Burana are Volksopera’s dance corps chance to shine outside the shadow of the main ballet.

Afternoon with a Faun immediately brings memories of Nijinski, the famous photograph. It’s a dangerous standard to lance against. Choreographer Boris Nebyla has never lacked courage and plunges straight in. The stage is spare with just four white ceiling to floor breaking the all black stage, light slips through from behind. At the front of the stage, Mihail Sosnovschi poses front foot under him back leg extended. His powerful physique impresses right away. Sosnovschi strikes a series of poses to Debussy’s music, sometimes balletic, sometimes more from a bodybuilder’s show.

Faun: Mihail Sosnovschi

At this point, one is optimistic about the duet to come. Lovely Brazilian Tainá Ferreira Luiz creeps across the back of the stage between the columns.

Continue reading Volksoper Ballet: Carmina Burana – Afternoon of a Faun – Bolero at uncoy.

Winterreise is one of the best concerts you will ever attend. A splendid evening of Schubert music. Choreographer Jochen Ulrich worked hand in hand with composer Heinz Winbeck to develop a full length score of the best of Schubert’s music for orchester and a singer.

The singer Martin Achrainer fills each song full of portent and passion. Fans of German lieder would swoon. I hope there’s a compact disc for sale. In his dramatic performance, Achrainer often takes the role of the composer Schubert himself, writing out sheafs and sheafs of music on stage in the first act.

The stage is dramatically decked out with a huge round mirror overhead, about 15 metres across, which can flutter in moments of dramatic importance offering a strange through the looking glass feel. At the front corner of the stage there is an impressionist painting of Schubert’s time.

Continue reading Winterreise Linz: Jochen Ulrich and Heinz Winbeck at uncoy.

dark side of the lens whales

dark side of the lens gulls

dark side of the lens diver

This film is supposed to be about surfing and underwater photography.

For me it is about the sea and it is a paeon to this monument of beauty spanning most of the planet.

I see this and I wonder how we continue to relentlessly despoil this unrepairable wonder with oil spills, deslickers, polluted rivers, radioactive waste.

The wickedness of civilisation, at least in its capitalist extant, is to borrow the profit of today against the misery of tomorrow. Man has been at this a long time though. The folk of Easter Island expired when they consumed their entire food chain.

Even archeology has not been enough to sober world leaders apart from that fleeting glimpse of a president Gore.

Continue reading Paean to the Oceans: Dark Side of the Lens at uncoy.

In the middle 030 drags a bit, it even seems like director Jeppe Kolstrup is going to back off the logical conclusion of his own idea. But no, he takes it to the end. Leaving a clear view of the face of the model to the end is a nice touch.

Flash
Flash

Full length UNCUT version of ‘030’ by The Good The Bad

Sex sells. Especially good sex.

Continue reading Guitar Porn at uncoy.