One of the grooviest dudes on stage that I’ve even seen, spearheadin’ a band of 5 groovy bangers, has rocked the core of Utrecht’s Trivoli Vredenburg (a breathtaking venue!): BLANKO is an artist I’ve discovered quite recently, but for the last 3 months his 2 albums and his live performances have been favorite listening – literally, hours on repeat. I’m convinced his music is among the most exciting and life-affirming in the contemporary indie scene in the Nederlands, and A Casa de Vidro offers here both a review of the kick-ass concert, a bunch of videos and an exclusive interview with the artist.
Let me try to describe this music to as I hear it: the mood is up-lifting; the sound is both funky and rock’n’rolling; he sings as if to invite us to sing-along and he plays as if he wants the audience to dance insanely (“I just wanna see you covered in my sweat”, a line from “Damn Pandemic”, gives it all in a nutshell); the lyrics often evoke an ethos of hedonism, lust-for-life Iggy Poppism, but they are also evocative of loss and degradation.
Some of my favorite lines penned by him come from the bluesy “Holes”, laments the fading out of what once was. “The night is full of holes / I came here with something, I’m leaving with nothing again”. The musical poem reaches its apex with this very well crafted metaphor: “all that was real, all that was true, is lost like the lines in a fading tattoo.”
BLANKO sings wonderfully, in a style similar to Dan Auerbach Mr. (Black Keys) and Alex Kapranos (F. Ferdinand). He’s also a dancer of groovy hips, which sometimes seems genuinely entranced, “a slave to the demon of rock’n’roll”, which adds up to his live performance tremendously. I’ll explain this further by sayin that Blanko’s body is never a statue. He is in a state of continuous kinesis. These are songs made for body-movement of a certain kind and “She Makes A Dead Man Dance” starts off the 2nd album and the show making blastful statements about body shaking ( (“I got struck by lightning, it hit me in the head…”).
In a song that is both reminescent of AC/DC hard-rocking and Beck‘s sexyness onslaughts in songs such as <“Sexx Laws”> A dead man has been brought back to life – and we ain’t talking bout Jesus and Lazarus; we’re dealing with a hip moving witchy dancer of healing skills…
Opening act LOREM IPSUM was good enough, but still a bit imature; in comparison, BLANKO sounds more mature, his songs already in a state of well-grown, succulent fruits, while Lorem Ipsum’s are still promises, drafts for a good song that perhaps one day might be. It reminded me of new-wave mixed with riot grrrl stuff like Elastica or Luscious Jackson.
Songs by BLANKO, upon first listen, impress us with the evidence of his dexterity in songcraft – yeah, the dude crafts cool songs. In one of the best of those songs, a duet with Lorem Ipsum’s vocalist Miche, we’re thrown into a boy vs girl singed controversy. “Give What You Got to Give” plug us into a high tension wire:
“No regrets” is an attitude the male character adheres to – but not in a mood similar to Edith Piaf’s “Je Ne Regrette Rien”. BLANKO uses humour to highlight the “no regrets” connection with his amnesia, his bad memory, or even his degraded cerebral neurons, probably because he has smoked “all kinds of cigarettes” – he sings to her, joking: “I can’t remember what I should regret”. She is kinda mad at this, af if she wants him to fucking regret, but also she’s kinda hooked – she says: “you’re still the man that I love to hate.” The song is of tension and release, of antagonist and catharsis, of sexual energy mixed with animosity. It’s Eros and Tanatos entangled in a sweaty floor at midnight, moral principles shattered, lust for life trying to make its difficult journey from one (an individual) to two (a couple). They exchange shut ups, they scream and yell at each other, they both have affirmative conducts of autonomy:
-Don’t tell me how to live! – they scream at each other, simultaneouly, in a brilliantly craftet chorus that set Blanko and Miche both in harmony (musically) and in dissonance (emotionally).
It’s a tremendous love song. It’s sexy, funny, outrageous. The couple is clearly not perfectly synced. And the music cleverly express that through the “lags” between the singers. Blanko sings and Miche answers never in perfect conformity; even when they’re sayin’ the same words simultaneously, “just shut up! just shut up!”, there’s no uniformity. A hard tension wire is electrified by two antagonists – these lovers, intermingled, locked in the same groove, trying to speak the same language, sometimes get stuck in dissonance, discord, de-sync. It’s definetely one of the greatest tracks in More Music By Blanko, the 10-song, very consistent, all killer no filler album released by the artist in 2023.
Besides groovyness, BLANKO’s music can sound like an electricity thunderstorm – the icon here are the “lightning strikes” that hit him on the head at the album starter track. The Woman is here lifted up to the status of a deity of thunderstruckin’ powers, capable of dispersing dark clouds, that is capable, throught dancing, of spreading the means of un-deadening us. The same spirit bleeds through a song like “Alive At Night”, with its imagery of nocturnal animals rockin’ out in underground pubs to deafening loud music, and Blanko states it quite clearly for his antagonists: “You call this depravation, I call it celebrating.” This is music un-ashamed to be hedonistic; songs that truly want to act as up-lifting, life-affirmative, not for flagellants.
Propelled forwards by a very good band, very well rehearsed, BLANKO has proven on stage to be one of the greatest and most promising musical artists in the Dutch contemporary scene. He’s also a gifted guitarist – when he solos, you might think you’re hearing a disciple of Rory Gallagher or Derek Trucks. If BLANKO is headed for superstardom, or if he’s to remain an underground sensation, only time will tell. In the following exclusive interview for A Casa de Vidro, BLANKO explains a bit about his life, origins, influences, unveiling some of his secrets at the art of groovin’ out like a master and an astonishing trickster. Read on for our Q&As:
Q: Hey BLANKO! – Since when have you been making music and writing songs? When and where were you born?
A: I started playing guitar at 11 and I wrote and performed my first song at 13. I was born and grew up in Volendam. It’s a small fishermans village just outside Amsterdam.
Q: What artists and bands do you feel most inspired by? Could you list at least 5?
Artists that inspire me are people like David Byrne (Talking Heads), Prince, Paolo Nutini, St. Vincent, but also bands like Pearl Jam and The Black Keys.
Q: Explain what RHYTHM means to you and how it corelates with THE BODY – in other words, how do you manage as an artist to coordenate / synchronize the elements of singing, playing guitar, dancing’, band-leading etc.?
Rhythm or ‘groove’ is everything. Almost all of my songs have a very strong groove or ‘moveability’ to them. I think it makes the music more attractive, appealing and sexy. The singing, playing (and sometimes dancing) at the same time requires practice. Sometimes I record a guitar part in the studio and then when I have to play it live I find out that it’s really hard to do at the same time as the vocal part. You have to break it down into little pieces and make it 100% ‘your own’ so it feels natural when you play it live.
Q: Your music is very groovy, funky, and rock’n’rolling, with an up-lifting vibe. How did you evolve as a musician to reach this results?
My music is constantly evolving. I’ve just released my second album and I believe it is already so much better than my first. In every aspect. When you create, record, release and play something, you learn from it. Gradually you become more aware of who and what you are and what your strongest and weaker assets are. The evolution is in doing the hours and hours of creating, thinking and playing. I believe my third album will be a lot better again and I will have evolved more into the artist I can be.
Eduardo Carli de Moraes
Utrecht, Nederlands
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Publicado em: 20/01/24
De autoria: Eduardo Carli de Moraes
A Casa de Vidro Ponto de Cultura e Centro de Mídia