Band of the Month July 2011 - RISK RISK

The Risk Risk project started in 2009 when Stefan decided to make a record with limited, but cool analogue hardware. What he was looking for was that original, authentic early 80s sound, and he found out that most of the character of that early records was just in the fact that a lot was handplayed and not programmed in a computer.

"This is 1983" was produced without a computer and large parts were simply played by hand directly on multitrack. Using all-analog sound generators, his voice and a pair of Carrera sunglasses, Risk Risk creates classical synth pop with catchy choruses and hand-played synth lines.

Stefan started doing electronic music in 1988 with just one monophonic analogue synthesizer, a Roland TR 606 drummachine and a 4 track tape recorder. With a big interest in melodic music, he likes synth bands like Gary Numan, The Twins, A Flock of Seagulls, Kraftwerk and Italo Disco music. The music he made before "This is 1983" was never released on any record label. Stefan gave Sebastian from Astro Chicken a rough demo of his songs and he liked it (Sebastian was a colleague from work who has passion for electronic music). From that point, he worked almost a year on the songs until they had a record in their hands.

"Risk Risk has an amazing sound, heavy basslines and minmal beats with dark voices, pure eighties style with strong influences of italo disco and synth. It will remind you of Gary Newman, Ultravox (John Foxx era), Devo, Mi-Sex and Rational Youth. Stefan found the formula that every band looks for: to make a catchy album on first play. Kool Rock Radio highly recommends the Risk Risk experience to everyone. 'This is 1983' will be one of your favourite albums of the year (9/10)."

▬ Kool Rock Radio

Motley Crue's Tommy Lee: 'The days of the album are over'

Tommy Lee recently spoke to NoiseCreep about his belief that the days of full length albums are over.

"No one buys them anymore." he says. "I'll never make another full record I think. It's a waste of time cause people can only ingest a song at a time, so why not make bitching songs at a time and release them. If you want to call them singles, great, whatever; or at its maximum, an EP, four songs, done, boom. I just really feel like the days of the entire record are long gone."

"I don't listen to anybody's full record anymore," admits Lee, "and when I did, I don't think I listened to the whole record. I guess I'm just a fan of switching it up. I want to hear some of this, some of that. Maybe it's my child-like short attention span, but I'm not a fan of that long, drawn-out fucking album anymore. I don't think most people are; if you look at sales most people are buying songs at a time and they're just not really buying records."

"That's just a sign of the times," says the drummer. "There's so much more out there to play with that grabbing anybody's attention and keeping it there for an hour and a half - good luck."

Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner: I Don't Mind Being Compared To Oasis At All

Alex Turner has revealed that he doesn't mind that the Arctic Monkeys get compared to Oasis in North America.

The band, who released their anticipated new album 'Suck It And See' this week, said that Oasis were an important band to them growing up.

When asked about whether he minded being compared to Oasis, frontman Alex Turner, told Reuters: ''Not really, I mean, it's like we're both a British rock and roll band, we're kind of bound to get compared to Oasis in other countries."

He added: ''We are both from the North, similar haircut. But musically, it is a little bit different. I mean, we are huge fans of them, growing up and all that, they were a really important band for us. I don't mind being compared to Oasis at all."

He also said that though he believed the band's fourth LP was mellower than their previous efforts, it also contained fast paced songs like those in their early work.

Turner said: "I think it's pretty frantic at times. It has its moments that are a bit more like the chimey guitar thing, like reverberated out that occurs in quite a lot of the songs and I suppose that does give it quite a mellow aspect. I guess probably compared with the first two, it is not as fast and crazy. But it has moments like that."