{"id":971,"date":"2005-05-01T10:18:39","date_gmt":"2005-04-30T23:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artsdigital.net\/fatplanet\/?p=971"},"modified":"2021-01-31T05:12:50","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T05:12:50","slug":"princess-one-point-five-johann-johannson-the-invisible-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/2005\/05\/01\/princess-one-point-five-johann-johannson-the-invisible-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE, JOHANN JOHANNSON, THE INVISIBLE CITIES"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE<\/strong>\u00a0[AUSTRALIA]<br \/>\n<strong>by the time i get to phoenix i&#8217;ll be&#8230;<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.princessonepointfive.com\/audio\/by_the_time_i_get_to_phoenix.mp3\">mp3<\/a><br \/>\n<strong>inadequate response<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.princessonepointfive.com\/audio\/inadequate_response.mp3\">mp3<\/a><br \/>\nit&#8217;s heartening to find a few north american blogs are finally discovering what we&#8217;ve known all along &#8211; australian music is undergoing an exuberant renaissance with artist after artist proving that we can clearly play the anglo-american axis at their own game. good too see\u00a0<strong>wolfmother<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>cut copy<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>the presets<\/strong>all making waves (even if they are all on the same label) &#8211; i&#8217;d heartily encourage you all to look up other great bands too such as\u00a0<strong>midnight juggernauts<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>wolf and cub<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>new buffalo<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>pasobionic<\/strong>, all of the gang from the\u00a0<strong>feral media\u00a0<\/strong>stable &#8230; i could go on, so i&#8217;ll stop now at\u00a0<strong>princess one point five<\/strong>. the lady in question is melbourne&#8217;s sarah-jane wentzki and the album &#8211; due this week &#8211; is entitled &#8216;at long last&#8217; and has been four years in the making. in lieu of hearing the full album release, we&#8217;re having to make do with the above two tracks from her\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.princessonepointfive.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">site<\/a>, both of which are beautiful downtempo tracks that present sarah-jane&#8217;s vocals in all their sparse glory. i&#8217;m reminded of\u00a0<strong>billie ray martin<\/strong>\u00a0in places, or\u00a0<strong>beth gibbons<\/strong>, maybe\u00a0<strong>stina nordenstam<\/strong>. her bio (which does name-check stina as an influence) alludes to more diversity on the album itself &#8211; &#8220;80&#8217;s\/90&#8217;s nordic and german electro-pop\/glitch and the melbourne noise art community. further in, you see she detours towards fraught and strange sex\/death landscapes more akin to\u00a0<strong>my bloody valentine<\/strong>&#8220;. wake up to this one, america &#8211; and go tell your friends.<br \/>\n<strong>JOHANN JOHANNSON<\/strong>\u00a0[ICELAND]<strong><br \/>\nodi et amo\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ultrasound.ws\/archive\/2003\/mp3\/johannsson.mp3\">mp3<\/a><br \/>\na break from the norm here &#8211; johannson is a producer \/ composer from iceland whose formidable resume includes production and collaboration with the likes of soft cell&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>marc almond<\/strong>\u00a0(the 2001 album &#8216;stranger things&#8217;),\u00a0<strong>barry adamson<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>pan sonic<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>the hafler trio<\/strong>. add to that work for stage, screen and television and the not-insignficant part he played in the formation of kitchen motors band, a self-described &#8216;art organization \/ think-tank \/ record label&#8217;. the above track is the opener from his debut &#8216;englaborn&#8217;, featuring music composed for a play of the same name, and is a beautiful mixture of contemporary classical and electronic sensibilities. this stems from the process behind &#8216;englaborn&#8217; &#8211; it was written for string quartet, piano, organ, glockenspiel and percussion &#8211; the recordings of which were all later re-processed and mixed. exemplified wonderfully here with a computer-vocal reading a latin text. now\u00a0<em>that&#8217;s<\/em>\u00a0progess.<br \/>\n<strong>THE INVISIBLE CITIES<\/strong>\u00a0[US: CALIFORNIA]<br \/>\n<strong>regret<\/strong>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theinvisiblecities.com\/sounds\/covers\/2003-12-20_regret.mp3\">mp3<\/a><br \/>\nlast week i received the latest release from norway&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>flunk<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; known for their re-interpretation of\u00a0<strong>new order<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8216;blue monday&#8217;. their new album picks up on the trend with a version of &#8216;true faith&#8217;. which brings me to\u00a0<strong>the invisible cities<\/strong>, who had the good foresight to drop their latest album &#8216;watertown&#8217; in the post to\u00a0<em>fat planet<\/em>. i mention them in the context of\u00a0<strong>new order<\/strong>\u00a0due to their re-interpretation of &#8216;regret&#8217; &#8211; a cover version that strips back the original&#8217;s lush production and cuts straight to the heart of the song. it&#8217;s the 2nd breath of fresh air this week &#8211; straight-forward, unpretentious melodies abound, topped off with sadie&#8217;s gorgeous vocals. they&#8217;ve drawn in production support from hands that have worked the desks with\u00a0<strong>frank black<\/strong>,\u00a0<strong>the pixies<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0<strong>tori amos<\/strong>\u00a0&#8211; all names that point you in the direction of their sound and style. if only\u00a0<strong>new order<\/strong>\u00a0could be as interesting &#8211; warning: steer well clear of their abysmal new album &#8216;waiting for the siren&#8217;s call&#8217;. &#8216;waiting for insiration to call&#8217; perhaps, and looks like she never arrived.\u00a0<span style=\"font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;\">[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theinvisiblecities.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">site<\/a>]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PRINCESS ONE POINT FIVE\u00a0[AUSTRALIA] by the time i get to phoenix i&#8217;ll be&#8230;\u00a0mp3 inadequate response\u00a0mp3 it&#8217;s heartening to find a few north american blogs are finally discovering what we&#8217;ve known all along &#8211; australian music is undergoing an exuberant renaissance with artist after artist proving that we can clearly play the anglo-american axis at their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[445,957,1247,1433],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fat-planet","tag-fat-planet-blog","tag-johann-johannson","tag-princess-one-point-five","tag-the-invisible-cities","missing-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15560,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/15560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stuartbuchanan.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}