What are your predominant memories of 1990s London and its music scene?

Back then, London was an explosion of rock and roll and a melting pot of competing subcultures. People wore their music taste on their sleeves, defining their tribe through their street style – be it goths, punks, indie kids, clubbers, or rockabillies. It was such a vibrant and exciting time and a photographer’s dream.

What is the story behind your rise as a music photographer?

Following my move to London, I began studying photography and film at London College of Printing and subsequently The University of Westminster, with a stint at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia. At the same time, I was exploring the London music and club scene, and started shooting gigs and bands. Soon I was pitching my work to magazines and getting commissioned as a freelance photographer for print publications such as X-Ray Magazine, Clash, NME, The Guardian, The Independent, The Stool Pigeon, and Vogue. I also became the official photographer at ‘Trash’, Erol Alkan’s infamous club which combined guitar music with electro, and regularly hosted performances of legendary bands and artists including Jarvis Cocker, The Slits, The Kills, and Phoenix.

Artistically, how would you compare photographing with an analog camera to shooting digitally?

My Dad gave me his Nikon FM2 when I first started taking pictures, and I still use it to this day. I love shooting analog with black and white film, I adore the sharp results, the strong contrast, and the vivid black and white nuances. I do miss working in the darkroom – its stillness, the focus on the comparatively slow film development and printing processes, and of course the endless experimental possibilities. Some of the world’s most iconic images were born as a result of darkroom experimentation such as Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer’ album cover. However, a huge freedom comes with the potential of digital photography. I believe that ultimately the art of photography is less about the equipment employed and more about having a good eye and distinctive creative vision.

Tell us the concept behind your most recent book ‘Berlin Reflections – Antlitz Berlin’.

Arriving in Berlin, I had the desire to visually document the female underground scene of the early 21st Century. This photography project focuses on female creatives and encompasses international and homegrown artists, illustrators, musicians, and performers. Whilst raw, gritty photography is currently very fashionable, my portraits are elegantly glamorous and proudly beautiful. The book’s foreword is penned by Oscar-nominated actress Candy Clark, David Bowie’s co-star on The Man Who Fell To Earth. Candy was in Berlin at the time playing the lead role in a theatre production and it was wonderful to have the opportunity to take her portrait for my project.

What artistic projects are you currently working on?

My next photo book project delves deep into my music photography archive, featuring many of the bands and artists I’ve shot over the years including Primal Scream, The Cramps, Suede, Amy Winehouse, The Kills, Iggy Pop, The Cure and Sonic Youth. The hardback book will feature unseen photographs from my collection as well as unpublished band interviews conducted by artist Mark Fernyhough. Aside from the ‘Rock n Roll’ archives, there is also a new portraiture series in the making entitled ‘Dogs of Berlin and their Humans’, of which a selection of photographs have recently been featured on Italian Photo Vogue.

Which bands and artists do you have particularly fond memories of photographing?

Shooting Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth at Berlin’s Tempelhof was a particularly fantastic experience as she’s a female icon of mine. I also once photographed Gary Numan at his English countryside manor for The Stool Pigeon music newspaper. Living a rock n roll life out there in the wilderness, I remember him posing with a collection of antique swords and recounting stories about the haunted house he was living in, in particular phantom dinner parties occurring in uninhabited rooms of the building. Afterwards, he treated us to a local pub dinner with his wife Gemma, raising eyebrows with the locals. Finally, shooting Suede’s Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler at my house in Keystone Crescent, Kings Cross for a fashion magazine cover was also very memorable.

What have been some of the most exciting live shows you documented?

The Cramps were always great live. Luckily, I had the chance to take photographs at the London Astoria during their final tour in 2006 and they were fantastic. Jane’s Addiction at Brixton Academy was a pretty provocative performance too. Most memorable to me are the intimate shows bands would play before becoming more well-known. It was always a pleasure to see and photograph bands play these smaller venues, such as Interpol at the Camden Monarch on their first UK tour or Franz Ferdinand at Electrowerkz in Angel, London.

With the current pandemic, live music photography seems almost exotic in nature…

As a photographer, you try to freeze a moment in time. Similarly, live music photography is an attempt to translate the excitement and energy of a particular moment to the viewer – to be experienced now, in twenty, fifty or one hundred years time. Looking at these live images of musicians and audiences during the 2020/21 pandemic, a time without live shows or crowd gatherings, feels positive whilst conjuring up feelings of longing and hope for better times.

Website: www.luxrevolver.com

Instagram: heike_schneider_matzigkeit

The post Berlin Reflections: An Interview with Rock Photographer Heike Schneider Matzigkeit appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Photos by Jess Garten

Words by Sky Madden

MINNEAPOLIS TO CHICAGO

4,000 miles. 22 toll booths. -14 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Two double mattresses. One mushy red apple. A stick of powdery gum. Six friends. One black van.

I’m behind the wheel. My girlfriend is sitting next to me reloading 35mm film into a camera, cold to the metal touch I’m sure. My precious cargo is Jae and Gus from the band Boy Harsher, their sound engineer Icio Spada and Kristina Esfandiari, and their direct support act NGHTCRWLR. Jae is splayed across Gus—both asleep—in the shabby first row of a van which has undoubtedly seen the butts of many bands before it. Kris is in the back looking out the window, earbuds in, she’s nodding along to something she’s digging.

We’re somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago and there’s nothing but blankets of silvery icy white. You can’t tell the skyline apart from the sheets of frozen snow covering the rolling hills along the highway. But we keep driving. Driving into the unknown.

Even though we’ve been here before, we don’t know what’s going to happen next. There’s a show tonight so it fills us with hope to face the below freezing conditions. There’s a show tonight, so it inspires us with the chance to dance. A chance to meet someone new. A chance to feel a different way about the world.

This is a tour.  Something paradoxically filled with the mundane as well as the unpredictable.

CHICAGO TO DETROIT

After 7 years of touring intermittently with mostly California based bands and my own band Chasms, there’s one element of touring that I can say definitely keeps the morale high in any group. That element is the almost daily experience of seeing a familiar face—whether its a peer, an old friend or someone new who you’ve just connected with and made plans in the van to meet up with them at the show.

A constant buzz of excitement through the treacherous conditions of the midwest was everyone’s awaited interaction with Detroit electro techno magic legends ADULT.

We were so cold and in the van for so long I think everyone was:

A) Excited to play in a town that is historically has been in a permanent electronic music “state of mind”

and

B) Boy Harsher and now the rest of us were looking forward to connecting with Adam (Miller) and Nicola (Kuperus) of ADULT.

Never having met Adam, but hearing for years how amazing and genuine the couple that is ADULT.,  my experience with them chalked up to the reputation that precedes them. While packing up the merch table Adam struck up a conversation with me. Boy Harsher had just delivered an emotional yet entirely danceable encore. We exchanged some ‘how are you’s’ and he said, “This feels special, I feel like this is a special time. Do you feel like it’s a special time Sky?” Wow, I thought to myself. Here is an accomplished, older white male who is asking me a question. How rare! How nice! I was so pleased and I reflected, I concurred. I said, “Yes! It truly feels like a special time for music.” A little bit nervous because after all these years I never met Adam and so the brief interaction throttled me into deep thought about what he had meant and what I felt inscriably apart of on this tour with Boy Harsher and NGHTCRWLR.

That sentiment that Adam and I identified broadened for me in the wake of the Detroit show and rang true for me the entire tour. Watching the opening acts that Boy Harsher selected during this leg of their North American tour each night, I saw in our country something vital. Take Richmond’s totally wild Aesthetic Barrier whom call themselves a “minimal synth trans explosion” to Toronto’s Warden, CA, a group that enjoys an ex member of Jokers on the Scene making icy glitch electro. Then there was the refreshingly bizarre ketamine-infused drone techno of one-woman act called Unromantic in Montreal what was able to open up the show totally last minute amongst scares of an event cancellation due to extreme weather. In New York at the sold out Elsewhere show, King Vision Ultra opened, deftly alerting everyone’s attention that the night was about to change from chatter over expensive cocktails to captivation via the intense lineup. King Ultra Vision set the tone. Gruesome electronics, naked scream-shout vocals and decidedly lo-fi production, I think hit some New Yorkers upside the head who thought they were in for a nice safe little build up to the headliners, Boy Harsher. Not the case.

Adam from Adult’s kernel of conversational thought about the zeitgeist started to appear in the van as well as I remember it. Rewind to a drive somewhere between Ohio and Illinois. Jae knows I only drive to techno or NPR but puts on Concrete Blonde “Joey” and then Townes Van Sant, whom I’ve never heard in my life. When I announce this fact I get a big, “WHAT,” from Jae who proceeds to play “Colorado Girl” over and over again because she doesn’t know how to use my phone or Spotify.  

Jae’s buttering me up because I’ll learn what she’s leading up to is playing Orville Peck, something of an obsession she’s having at the moment and maybe for a while. Peck quietly released Big Sky in December of 2018 but is finding listeners now it seems with his debut coming out in March, aptly called Pony. Peck, another artist in the canon of current musicians releasing original music at a time that via this tour, I am awakened to. I contemplate the idea behind existing during such a “special time” some more. I think on records released in February alone such as “Stung” by the Los Angeles grown underground techno star Low Tar. During the home stretch of a post 3AM-er in the van we check out Robert Alfons’ unveiling of mysterious new TR/ST singles. I think about Qual’s Cyber Care and the return of Dead Can Dance. I think about Boy Harsher’s new music after the show while everyone is asleep in van, en route to another cold motel bed.

DETROIT TO CANADA

While Careful decidedly feels cinematic it’s also something of a statement piece from the duo. Themes of lust, night driving, and death crystalize in this new release and perhaps most obviously solidified in the title of the track and record name itself: “Careful” is the maxim. Evident in their collection of new songs, these two take a less abstract and more direct handling of the things that make up the Boy Harsher universe. Be it fact or fiction, stories of desire resulting in panic or narratives of familial hardship that on proclivities to escape yield a work that feels complete and intentional. In other words, Careful feels fully committed to and by Jae and Gus and their mixing team.

The vision is in widescreen and the production is massive-without feeling overdone or too slick. With Careful the stage version, which includes stand-out tracks “LA,” “Fate,” “Lost,” and “Tears”, Jae and Gus feel truly vulnerable as musicians but also as people. And perhaps this is why so many are drawn to them. They exude honestly and catharsis in songs that are about intensely personal things, but take the vehicle of dance music to get there—to get to their heart and to yours if you’ll let them.

Collapsing infinitely into one another on stage night after night, Jae and Gus bring Careful to life bravely while also giving the audience the intense pleasure of returning to “Suitor,” “Modulations” and “Westerners.” These tracks from Lesser Man, Yr Body Is Nothing and Country Girl are beloved by their fans.

The sound of Boy Harsher found the ears of dedicated listeners during years of tireless touring up and down both US coasts: playing in basements, dive bars, bedrooms and backyards. Now cuts like “A Realness” are given a new life in Boy Harsher’s winter 2019 tour set. Samples have been re-engineered, given a second look, and reintroduced to the dance floor as they were meant to be heard and felt through the body.

Addressing herself and the crowd unabashedly each night as direct support is Kristina Esfandiari. She is: NGHTCRWLR. After years of fronting the lauded King Woman and the fully band-backed Miserable, darling of Sargent House, Esfandiari exercises her autonomy fiercely alone on the floor, in front of stage, as NGHTCRWLR.

The project blends a drug whipped dream that canvases the terminally slowed breakbeat samples from 90’s The Prodigy, imaginative soundscapes, field recordings as well as the artist’s own darkened vocal harmonies that tie it all together. The performance is confrontational. Point blank.

In some ways this is the apex of the artist. Esfandiari has always been a surveyor of highly contrasting sounds. Take her long term project King Woman that while during its most active period helmed doom, stoner and folk metal while her other project Miserable is more personal, taking cues from the best parts of The Stone Roses and The Breeders. NGHTCRWLR is on another planet. I had the chance to ask about where Kristina’s head was at for the design of NGHTCRWLR and she stated that artists as disparate as Dean Blunt to Warren G inspired her as well as visions from the film Belladonna of Sadness, and also brainwash-style Christian cartoons that she was exposed to as a young person contributed to the imaginative live set.

DRIVING HOME: MONTREAL TO JFK

I am told by other such traversers of the American East Coast that there are twelve such pathways to enter this port and play music in a circle where you’re able to drive effectively to New York City, Chicago, Detroit and somehow come and go from Toronto and Montreal, Canada all the while making time to hit Baltimore, Cleveland and somewhere in Massachusetts or Connecticut.

Apparently being in hyperspace is the only way to achieve this feat: being nowhere and everywhere all at the same exact time.

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As Thomas told Indie Through The Looking Glass:

“I think this was a session for Japanese mag Music Life. I dragged Count Dracula reluctantly out into the grey daylight of mid February 1981.

I got him and his sidekick climbing walls, swinging on lampposts & jumping into building sites, before sending him back to his crypt.

A few months later I photographed him at The Lyceum in a frightening black woolen onesie that his mum probably knitted for him.”

His sidekick is Bauhaus drummer Kevin Haskins and I love these photos, they seem so care free.”

For more of Justin Thomas’ work and to buy prints…

Read our interview with Bauhaus’ Kevin Haskins Here

The post Rare and Unseen Photos of Bauhaus from 1981 appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

In our third Gallery of 80’s Goth and Deathrock Culture, we have curated even more fascinating and beautiful pictures of goths from around the world, with candid portraits two industrial heroes snuck into the mix—way before either of them ever attempted dreadlocks.

Check out the various international photos below, one again courtesy of the Now This Is Gothic Tumblr.

Be sure to pick up a copy of the book Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace by Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje.

The post Dark Entries | A Gallery of 80’s Goth and Deathrock Culture III appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Also in the mix are a few band photos—such as The Gun Club from Los Angeles (featuring Patricia Morrison), along with Japanese Goth band Madame Edwarda.

Check out the various international photos below, courtesy of the Now This Is Gothic Tumblr, and pick up a copy of the book Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace by Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje.

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Debbie Graves

Jez Smith

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

Above Photo from the Steve Pegrum archive

The post Big Hair, Fishnets, and Eyeliner | A Gallery of 80’s Goth and Deathrock Culture Part II appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

But despite being well known for working with Joy Division and New Order, Cummins also worked with Morrissey and The Smiths—The Birthday Party, Slaughter and the Dogs, The Fall, The Stones Roses, The Happy Mondays, Oasis, Bjork, PJ Harvey, The Manic Street Preachers, and many more.

Visit Kevin Cummins official website for information on exhibitions, and watch this full talk below hosted by Louder Than War’s (and The Membranes) John Robb, full of anecdotes featuring many of the musicians mentioned above.

The post An interview with photographer Kevin Cummins on Joy Division, Morrissey, The Happy Mondays, and more! appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Check out the various international photos below, courtesy of the Now This Is Gothic Tumblr, and pick up a copy of the book Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace by Andi Harriman and Marloes Bontje.

The post Oldschool Gothic | A Gallery of 80’s Goth and Deathrock Culture appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

This would be none other than Fred H. Berger.  With humble beginnings, Propaganda Magazine began from Berger’s own desire to be a part of the NYC hardcore scene in 1981.  But after all the angry energy from the moshpits of the Peppermint Lounge, all it took was Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” to attach himself to the dark, romantic sound and look of post-punk.  The photographs from NYC’s gritty street kids to the shots of post-punk and goth heavy hitters (Sisters of Mercy, Clan of Xymox, X-Mal Deutschland, to name a few) capture the mood of the city in the 1980s that few have been able to achieve.  Before forging onto bigger things, such as moving to Los Angeles and becoming an internationally sold publication, Propaganda told a unique story of New York City’s underbelly.

Coming October 3rd, everything comes full circle.  Berger will make a rare appearance at Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy Museum for a special Q and A with Oddities personality, Evan Michaelson,** who is hosting the evening.  If you live in the area, this is your chance to ask Berger whatever your little gothy heart pleases!  Afterwards, you can enjoy a melange of oldschool music, a photobooth and you can even purchase treasured and rare Propaganda merchandise!  Tickets and more information can be found here and here.

In celebration of this event, I’ve collected a few iconic shots from Berger’s Propaganda portfolio (more can be found here).  Click through to see the collection.

** Michaelson will be doing her own goth lecture the night before in conjunction to the event.  Details here.

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Greg’s only analog in music journalism is perhaps the UK’s Mick Mercer, Chronicler of The Batcave scene—furthermore, while Fred Berger of Propaganda Magazine was integral in the initial covering of Gothic Music in the US (predating Greg by about 2 years), he is more renowned for representing the fashion aspects of the Gothic subculture in NYC (and beyond)—whereas Greg Fasolino represents the die hard music nerd fandom that in my opinion dwarfs High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon by comparison.

In a series covering Greg’s music fandom throughout the years, we begin with 1984.  It was in this year that Greg started his own fanzine Heaven Down Here, as well as his first band “The Cave” (which would later be followed by The Naked and the Dead, and Bell Hollow). He has always been an avid photographer, and in 1984 he documented legendary acts such as Sisters of Mercy and Nick Cave in the Bad Seeds in their prime. We have featured Greg’s pictures of many of these classic concerts here on Post-Punk.com in the gallery below.

The Sisters of Mercy

The Psychedelic Furs

The Cult

Xmal Deutschland

Siouxsie and The Banshees

The Cure

Gang of Four

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds

The Cramps

Ramones

Public Image Ltd.

Nick Cave and Bad Seeds at Danceteria.
June 8, 1984.

Blixa and Barry

Nick sits down to deliver “In the Ghetto

The Cramps at the Peppermint Lounge, NYC.
May 19, 1984.

Lux swallows the microphone

Lux grabs someone’s panties.

Gang of Four “farewell” tour at the old Ritz, New York City.
April 26, 1984.

Andy Gill of Gang of Four enveloped in smoke

The Cure’s classic concert at the Beacon Theatre in NYC.
November 17, 1984.

Lol Tolhurst

Phil Thornalley

Porl Thompson playing Keys

Someone threw this caterpillar doll onto the stage at the Beacon, and The Cure respond with a rare rendition of “The Caterpillar.”

Robert Smith does the “Caterpillar” dance

The Cure closing out their Beacon show with an epic rendition of “Forever.”

PiL at the Beacon.
November 2, 1984.

John Lydon tries to figure out who is taking his picture.

Anja Huwe casts a spell with Xmal Deutschland at Danceteria.
September 19, 1984.

Wolfgang Ellerbrock on Bass

Siouxsie and the Banshees dazzle us at the Beacon.
July 13, and 14th, 1984.

The Cult at Danceteria on their first American tour. They played in front of about 10 people and blew us away.
July 18, 1984.

Billy Duffy on his grand Gretch

Jamie Stewart on Bass

The Sisters of Mercy at the Ritz in NYC, opening (if you can believe this bill) for Black Flag. The smoke machine was stupendous.
August 9, 1984.

Wayne Hussey on Guitar

The Psychedelic Furs at Radio City Music Hall, NYC. November 19, 1984

Ramones at Final Vinyl Records in Baldwin.
October 18, 1984.

Dee Dee Ramone

Johnny Ramone

Joey Ramone

Richie Ramone

Joey Ramone walks the fan gauntlet after their record store appearance at Final Vinyl Records in Baldwin.

Stay tuned for 1985…

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