http://www.12rec.net

Post rock en su más fina expresión, sin pretensiones absurdas ni resagos prog…solo una banda más, comprometida con su música y con un toque delicado entre una gran maraña de distorsiones.

*****

“ Milhaven are a postrock-band from Bochum we discovered two years ago. Sven Swift recorded and produced their first album and this brand new EP. The story so far…

After the release of Bars Closing Down in the early days of 12rec, Milhaven soon became one of our most downloaded artists. In the Winter of 2006, nearly one year ago, we met in their old, dirt-laden rehearsal room and started to record new songs. Hooked by the success of the debut LP, Sven thrashed the old tape-recorder and spend all his money on a 10-channel audio-interface. Milhaven gone digital! We were planning to release the EP in the spring of 2006 until Milhaven got thrown out of the rehearsal room- the ancient school-building we were recording in was said to collapse! Two months went by searching for a new location. When it was found in the blooming hills of a small city at the edge of the Ruhr-area, the sound was completely different to the old room. All set to zero, we re-started the recordings.

In the scorching heat of Summer we banned this four songs on tape. While the debut was recorded wearing woolly hat and scarf, this time the band was lost in sweat and fatigue. I.M. Wagner is less intimate than Bars Closing Down, but there’s a trace of frantic power in the new songs that’ll be new to you if you’ve never seen Milhaven live on stage. Check the noise-eruptions in half-improvised Lord Of Birds or the all-consuming end of Oh! Great Pacific. Still, there are expanded moments of gentle guitar-play you can find a lot of beauty in; the initial parts of Clean Room and the final acoustic-track Firnis maybe just the most obvious examples. Milhaven refined the songwriting both at the quiet and the loud parts and managed to record a dignified successor to their highly acclaimed debut LP. Go spread the word!”

Reseña oficial 12 rec

http://www.12rec.net/

Rob Steady robbin’ steady. It’s Stéphane Obadia, solo cutup-virtuoso, keeper of countless aliases and Stockholm’s hottest underground export.
Born in France, he studies art but soon realizes exposing and presenting himself the regular way can’t be the right thing for him to elevate. So he starts throwing his ideas in everyday life without documenting- an attempt to release poetry from the museums of art of boredom, as Stèphane says.
A few years later, after photo, film and discreet events, he begins collecting small prosaic phrases soon to become the funny and clever songtitles you know him for: music has become the next thing for Stéph to devour and digest. And like everything he spits out again, it turns to be magnificent! He creates fragments that makes you think of Hip-Hop, mainstream R&B, Funk or ‘Folktronica’. Popculture broken into smithereens, postmodern sketches for your bedroom and discotheque: between breaking ya neck and feeling alienated from the whole world (Georg Cracked).

When you go through the reviews Stèphane received for his Obadia-release with Autres Directions, you’ll find critics being confused about how to judge his music. Is it danceable, does it move my butt? Might Stèph even be innit for Pop-Music as you can always find a moment of melody to stick to? Or are there more academical reasons, something about recycling, glitch-asthetics and stuff? Thing is, as we here at 12rèc believe, Stèphane prefers fooling around with genres. If you listen to the hot new Rob Steady EP, you’ll find him getting more abstract and experimental.