I see very diverse things together, like LPs, but also old (lovely) VHS, and what seems to me boxes of video-games. I suppose that you are somehow influenced by all of these things, right? You are really into cinema maybe? Tell me about how you started to play music. How is Mourning Dove born? The…
Category: writer
Nigel Ayers – “You don’t have to learn anything to do art or music. You learn by doing them. They are the most natural things to do in the world”
I must admit it’s hard to avoid to ask “what the hell is this?” for most of the pictures you sent. But I’ll try. What the hell is this sort of robot made with (I suppose) effects? I was really fascinated by the ‘gadgets‘ on your website, especially “The Exterminator” and “Ideal Husband Ideal Wife”…
David Grubbs – “Last year I started to throw out a batch of hardcore punk compilations and demos but a friend thankfully brought me to my senses”
I need to ask you about one close up you choose to send me, that seems to show LPs from “F” to “H”. I wonder why you chose that, but my first though was: “It’s for John Fahey, uh!?” Working here for Concrete Shelves, I keep noticing some recurring name in shelves and conversations, and…
Record Store Day 2019 – Concrete Shelves’ 10 + 1 Consumer Advises
The Record Store Day takes place on April the 13th this year 2019, and we at Concrete Shelves decided to create a special post for it, collecting a set of suggestions from some of the artists and friends that featured on our blog, plus some anticipation on future articles. These are far from being the…
Paola De Angelis – “Not only am I not scared, on the contrary I am definitely attracted by tragic figures!”
Well, I noticed two guys first: Jeff Buckley and Kurt Kobain [if I’m not wrong]. Two happy ones! Along with your beloved Nick Drake and some others in the shelves (the great Jackson C. Frank above any other), I may euphemistically say that you’re not scared by musicians whose lives are interwoven with…
Andrea Aguzzi – “I think my father was a compulsive collector. I don’t know, maybe it was a post-war reaction: a sort of ‘accumulate and conserve’ thing”
Well yes. I adore guitars and Zappa, Page, Bream, Williams, Hendrix… are the godfathers! But you know… guitar doesn’t mean only a virtuoso player. There are a lot of guitar players who think in a different way than the usual “guitar hero” way of life. Karoli is one of these. You know… almost twenty years…
Alexander Hacke and Danielle De Picciotto “When we became nomads and got rid of a lot of stuff, our CDs were the first thing to go”
The pictures you sent me are really unique! I know about your decision of living as gipsies now, without a stable house. I somehow then expected to see maybe CDs, but here are only LPs! They’re not known for being handy… and vinyls are so heavy! And the status of most records suggests to me…
Enrico Bettinello – “I try to do my best, but sometimes it happens to me to buy something again or be surprised to have a record I did not remember of…”
I’ll inscribe you in the ‘tidy ones’. It seems that you’re one of those who can locate an album in a glimpse, right? And, as expected knowing you as a journalist, I found many jazz albums, with a special relevance to “Bitches Brew” on top. Is it there by chance, or is “The Album” for…
Dmitry Vasiliev – “My mother told me that when I was less than two years old, my favourite toy was the old radio, a big box with loudspeakers inside, table size”
The pictures you took are very very dark, and in one of them I see what I guess are the (still sealed) releases of Monochrome Vision. I know you since a long time now, and I’m always impressed by the immense culture you have about anything VERY experimental in music, VERY dark, harsh, somehow difficult…
Rinus Van Alebeek – “The tape is the only time-travelling device that was ever made”
You actually sent me blurred pictures, as you told me you had some trouble with the iPad and the laptop, and I see an orthogonally disposed set of tapes, along with fascinating walkmen! There’s maybe a connection. In this era of hyper-compressed beats and HD sounds, you’re surely not the only one who loves the…
