Knowing Your Audience

Phlow, Germany's greatest national treasure after Holbein, Dürer, Beethoven, Beckenbauer, lager, speaking better English than the English, terrible perms, adopting The Hoff, and BDSM - there's a career arc for you - is worse than superglue. I picked up this album from them months ago and I can't shake it loose.

Julia Kotowski AKA Entertainment For The Braindead comes from Cologne, and made the ten tracks for Hydrophobia in her parents' living room with little more than a guitar, a flute, a USB mic, percussion made from household implements and a light, airy voice that makes me go a bit misty. Her recording situation accounts for the album's light background hiss, which actually sounds reassuringly analogue and vinyl-like. She deserves applause just for making music under such circumstances, never mind producing such a winning album, which she describes as "songs about drowning".

As the readership of CTW (how big? Think Chinese TV statistics) know, sometimes I recommend a track to help you decide whether an album is your cup of tea. Have a listen to this...

Entertainment for The Braindead - Run!

...and if you like it, feel happy - there's another nine tracks of it.

Hydrophobia's sound is sparse - most of these folk/pop songs rest on a bed of guitar picking and fluttering flute, leaving the bulk of the work to a winsome voice that is judiciously chorused to lend emphasis when a song needs it. Ms. Kotowski sings close to the microphone so we can chew over her lyrics, like these from Resolutions:

Cast the yellowed postcards away

Leave the house at least once a day

Don't let the monsters lead you astray.

Other highlights include Colours (dreamy vocals), Mi Corazón (featuring *gasp* synths and a drum track), What You Get (an I-told-you-so-you-idiot ditty about infidelity) and the title track, Hydrophobia, which sounds like...a sea-shanty. Other instrumentation used in these gentle songs: ukelele, jars, cans, peppermill and Edgar Allan Poe. What else would you expect from an innovative student at Cologne's Academy of Media Arts? Perhaps Germany has a new treasure to add to its collection. File under "Eftb".

This is a simultaneous release by aaahh records (where you are most welcome to buy the CD or make a donation towards this excellent Creative Commons release) and Aerotone netlabel, whose byline is: "We are a netlabel and we love melancholic music." Bless.

Entertainment For The Braindead - Hydrophobia (individual files & zipped album at aaahh Records)

Entertainment For The Braindead - Hydrophobia (ditto at Aerotone netlabel)

Entertainment For The Braindead - Hydrophobia (ditto at archive.org)

entertainmentforthebraindead.com (where you'll find another album, Hypersomnia. Yay!)