Something Happened – A retrospective for the year 2015 (in sounds)

So “another year’s over“, as that guy from Liverpool used to sing. Starting this blog has been probably the most important thing for me this year, and with this I want to thank everyone who actually read, and felt, and understood why and out of what kind of vision and intentions this blog was born.
It would be pretentious to list a “Best of” 2015. First it’s clearly impossible to listen to any release, there are too many. Second, I like things very different, it’s more a matter of attitude than of actual sounds.
So this is just a list of music that has been inspiring and mind-opening and heart-moving during the last twelve months, listed more or less in chronological order with no aim to create a chart.
Keep asking the sky. Always.

Follakzoid – III

Angles of walls of skyscrapers made with steel, glass and concrete.

Spectres – Dying

Radical. Uncompromising. The rebels with a cause.

Serpent Power – Serpent Power

A kaleidoscopic journey to the shores of the wildest and most unconstrained fantasy. Technicolor surreal.

10000 Russos – 10000 Russos

Dance to the underground, to the abandoned underground of a lost civilization. The new barbarians.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Freedom Tower / No Wave Dance Party

Can you feel it? Can you feel the blues? Can you stand their bites and can you walk with them? They can.

The Telescopes – Hidden Fields

Not strawberries fields definitely. Un voyage au centre de la Terre.

Singapore Sling – Psych Fuck

For we’re all lost in a labyrinth of morphing mirrors, life itself is probably just an illusion, and a good heart these days is very hard to find.

Gunman & The Holy Ghosts – The Story of Radiate & Novocaine

That book with the melancholic ending you have finished to read before going to bed, and you dream about in the night. Tales for the new bohemians.

The Japanese Girl – Sonic-Shaped Life

A cursed castle overlooked by bats and a full moon. A sorcery. Let’s do that time warp again.

Throw Down Bones – Throw Down Bones

A leap of pure faith. A flight on the wings of the white dragon.

Serpent Power: “Feels like I’m levitating”

It was early May when listening to debut album from Serpent Power inspired incredible stories and images, captured in the most allucinatory “review” I had ever written.
Is this what music is supposed to be, right? A one way ticket for unknown destinations!
We’ve been waiting long to have a few words for a Q&A from the two sorcerers behind this album, which was actually born out of the collaboration between The Coral’s Ian Skelly and The Zutons Paul Molloy. 
It’s actually a few words, music clearly speaks louder for them, but there are hints and references worth a check.
Here they are, with the usual generous dose of images and sounds.
Yeah!

Q –  Did you start to write songs together just out of a common love for same sounds or did you have from the very start the plan of releasing an album?
Paul – We kinda just connected I guess. Mentally and artistically.
Ian – We had and have a mutual love for music, art, literature and movies.

Q –  How is the songwriting process? Who came with ideas and how you developed and refined them?
Paul – We write together and separately. There is an extremely interesting process in the creation but it’s almost unanalytical like most art.
Ian – Sometimes we can have a conversation and it then turns into a song

Q – Where did the name of the band comes from?  Serpents – especially big ones! – are popular creatures in many folk tales and myths.
Ian – Yeah I was reading the book on ancient mysticism and it came from there.

Q – Who takes care of the visual and graphic side of your project?
Do you have any favourite visual artists you would recommend to check?
Ian – Yeah I do the artwork for the band and in the case of Serpent Power they usually come from the themes and characters Paul and I write about.
Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby are great.

An intergalactic football game. 1972 – Jack Kirby

Steve Ditko – Mr. A

Q – Your lyrics are dense with characters, surprises, surreal situations. Even if they’re not direct references or inspirations, what is your background as literature and poetry readers?
Paul – Yeah some are make believe and some are based on actual people. We love H.P Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe and stuff like that. All kinds of stuff really. A lot of gothic horror and sci fi.
Ian – We pass around a lot of movies. They are a constant really and inspire us as much as records.

Q – Do you see a future for the Serpent Power project or should we consider it more like a one-off?
Ian – Yeah definitely we’re already working on the second album.
Paul – Yeah we are just in the arrangement process now.

Q – The term psychedelic is meant to refer to music to listen to for “mind travelling” (the famous third eye…). Do you see also the act of composing psychedelic music as a trip in itself?
Paul – For me personally yeah I almost feel like I’m levitating when I’m making or playing music. There is a trance like and altered state I think goes hand in hand with it.
Ian – I think our music is not just psychedelic. It has a lot of different resonances. I guess you can call it psychedelic because it is colourful and trippy but it has many different facets.

Serpent Power – Serpent Power

What time is it? You wake up on a cotton amaca in a pine wood. Golden rays of sun are filtering the dusty, boiling air. Still half-asleep you reach for the sea. There are pirates playing poker games sitting in circle around an old Moog. Are you drunk or their faces look so alike Syd (Barret), Roger (McGuinn), Brian (Wilson) and Arthur (Lee)? And the beardy guy in the corner playing sitar, isn’t he George (Harrison)? You’re still wondering when everyone stands up and runs to the shore waving at a group of sirens half-dressed in tricot’s bikinis. There are romantic dances and scene of hopeless and tender loving.  At sunset, all together you head to the bar at the end of the pier – or maybe at the end of the world? It’s actually a saloon, where a skeletons’ band is playing vaudeville music and bits of Morricone‘s soundtracks. The whole gang is drinking absinthe like it was tea time at the Mad Hatter’s table and the sirens have turned into gypsies.
What time is it?
Serpent Power is the collaboration between The Coral’s Ian Skelly and The Zutons Paul Molloy, this is their debut album, recorded at Castle Grayskull studios in Merseyside and  just released on Skeleton Key Records, and you’d better not miss it.
The pirates are watching you!