Frederic Sanchez's tip sheet

INTERVIEW: So, Frederic, what's going on in Europe right now?

FREDERIC SANCHEZ: With the 1980s revival, a lot of popular music got to be very cold-sounding. But now there seems to be a new romanticism creeping into music. It isn't a nice, pleasant kind of romanticism, but rather a warmer, dreamier sort like there was in Berlin in the 1970s, when Lou Reed recorded Berlin [1973] and David Bowie did Heroes [1977]. This group from Iceland, Worm Is Green, recently released an excellent record called Automagic [Arena Rock]. They do a cover of Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart" with female vocals and turn the song inside out. There is also a band from Germany called Sack und Blumm. Their album Kind Kind [Staubgold] mixes clinical electronic sounds with jazz compositions reminiscent of Kurt Weil. There is also a reissue of an incredible record by Virginia Astley, >From Gardens Where We Feel Secure [Rough Trade], originally released in 1983. It's just this woman playing piano in the English countryside with children's choirs, church bells, and winding streams in the background. Yet it sounds so contemporary today.

I: Does this romanticism have anything to do with people's consuming music digitally?

FS: People seem to be looking for something more tactile. In Europe, people are going out to see live music more. The way people consume music now--and most people do it digitally, on compact disc or MP3--they can tailor their listening to their immediate desires. But if you go to a concert, you experience the music in a visceral way, and it's not often that people experience that with music these days.

I: Is this a backlash against the cold, cleaned-up sound of digital music?

FS: With digital music, there are no pictures or album art--there is no album--so without the imagery, it's easy to forget that music is done by people. There seems to be a desire now to have some sort of relation to the artist--to see who is making what you're listening to--and this new romanticism has a lot to do with peoples' desire to make that connection.

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