Nina Kraviz - Nina Kraviz [2012]

I don't know much about this chick but this is a really good album. Very deeep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD_cXE9uxao

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GHSRhLWNoU

Wow, phenomenal

"Pain in the Ass" is great too

h: Oh, okay. Cool! Are you still doing your residency in Russia at the club?

NK: No, I haven’t been doing that for almost a year.

h: Okay, I didn’t know. There haven’t been that many interviews with you recently or they weren’t very substantial so I was just trying to figure it out.

NK: No worries, I was just answering that I haven’t been doing it for a year already.

https://halcyonline.com/2011/qa-nina-kraviz/

I don't know, I could just listen to stuff like this all day long. Sounds like 4am at a Moodymann show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOg9bYgTOw8

doesn't that make you want to see her live?

she popped up in the khodorkovsky documentary entirely unexpectedly (billed as a "dj and dentist", lol). just for half a minute and i think the director was trying to depict her as some moscow party girl who didn't care about ~fighting~ for this ~political prisoner~ but tbh in the very one-sided documentary it was kind of refreshing to see one person who was like "hey khodorkovsky isn't some kind of democratic hero, he was stealing from russia too".

um yeah the new album is okay, maybe a bit understated for me but nice enough, solid three stars, but this from 2009 is her classic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqh4UE4fIJ0

the bass drop at 3.5 mins in >>>>>>>

That one would go really nice with "Hey Hey"

Wow, great!

i like the album, maybe a bit disappointing after her amazing singles, but its different so i'm still kind of adjusting to it. i appreciate that she didn't just take her best tracks so far and jam them into an album with some other stuff. 'taxi talk' is too short.

"oh shit, lenny's got another daughter" - me, anytime i see this woman's name

looking forward to this record. tho i think i am sort of an outlier b/c the youtubes in the OP sound better to me than her other singles. "ghetto kraviz" is just a jam

"oh shit, lenny's got another daughter" - me, anytime i see this woman's name

lol, saw her come up in lex's recommendations and thought the same thing!

but it's not spelled the same!

yeah, what?

It's already close enough.

i'm saying that i instinctively read a "t" into Kraviz

overrated

Total Thomas Brinkmann vibe to some of this, which i love. thanks for the tip x

k listened to this and i love it, need to listen more but yes i appreciate the tip as well

this is my new other favorite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5BEcgbHsI4

I love the low key night music vibe of the album

yea i think i'm gravitating most towards "taxi talk" and "turn on the radio" atm but that one is another solid cut

god i can't stop listening to this, so gooood

has some of the warmth and subtle detail that appealed to me about the robag wruhme album but with the added bonus of gorgeous vox that make more direct gestures at intimacy. this is def a late night album but it's more like a euphoric late night in someone else's bedroom as opposed to the communal comedown type vibe i get from other late night music

On first listen it put me in mind of Dani Siciliano crossed with... I dunno, Norma Jean Bell? I need to listen to it again though.

psych otm

this needs to be played next to that lee foss track

she is v v pretty btw

v v v

It's a rule. You can't mention Nina Kraviz without saying how beautiful she is. Or how she may be fancying Ben Klock. The fanboys getting very hot under the collar. Really liked "I'm Gonna Get You" but none of these are really grabbing me. I saw her play a couple of times last year and she played tougher. The vocals sound a bit Luomo.

Not really feeling this, it's kind of drab.

otm, it's def not sitting at my desk/driving in my car music

This could never be as drab as Benoit and Sergio or Art Dept

not saying much

Benoit and Sergio occasionally nod in the direction of a tune. This doesn't

otm

b&s backlash make me sad :-(

Goddam those soulless house music producers with their lack of tunes!

i think this stuff is quite tepid

like the best track on here is a smoothed out version of tantakatan which itself was like a smoothed out version of a radio slave track

Goddam those soulless house music producers with their lack of tunes!

― Tuomas, Monday, March 19, 2012 4:25 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, what the hell are these fools talking about? this record is all about sounds for me (including her voice, which i love). i'm not coming into it looking for pop songs.

b&s backlash make me sad :-(

― flopson, Monday, March 19, 2012 4:17 PM Bookmark

backlash implies that we liked them in the first place, which NO. FUCK THAT.

I knew i'd be brought up on that throwaway tunes comment, but i don't find it this particularly atmospheric or anything either. Seems like this and Voices From The Lake are the two most acclaimed dance albums recently and i find both of them incredibly boring.

Rev I think yr crusade against hipster druggy house doesn't really apply to anything B&S have done in the past 12 months.

They've basically turned into a 2012 equivalent of Justus Kohncke.

I can understand disliking "Where The Freaks Have No Name" et. al. on your stated grounds, of course.

one man's "boring" is another man's "low key late night music"

maybe ppl are just confused cause it's on rekids? doesn't remind me of anything i've ever heard from that label

yeah, i could see that. rekids stuff is usually more overtly banging for sure.

yea, and her RA podcast, other singles etc were a lot different too.

backlash implies that we liked them in the first place, which NO. FUCK THAT.

― The Reverend, Monday, March 19, 2012 9:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we did. i was there. i was one of them.

i can understand not being wowed by the kraviz album cuz it really is very understated, but it works really well at creating mood. there are too many actively annoying elements to benoit & sergio

ya idk if i'd call it a 'grower' but it definitely helps to be in the right mood. which, it turns out, i usually am.

couldn't imagine hearing this stuff 'out', it's so intimate and understated. i could imagine someone hating this record if they were sitting around anxiously waiting for something to happen or sweep them off their feet... this isn't 'just' wallpaper but it works really well in the right setting/with the right expectations... i think i gravitate towards records like this tho maybe others don't. also maybe cold rainy pacific northwest winters naturally complement this type of thing

i love b&s but this really is nothing like b&s, can we have that debate elsewhere?

maybe cold rainy pacific northwest winters naturally complement this type of thing

ha, you too?

yea this is my second pdx winter and i'm trying to embrace it rather than continuing to hold out for whenever the hell it's supposed to be sunny again

It's very effective at creating mood but that mood is really boring, this kind of druggy blankness. I'm not a massive deep house fan at the best of times but I actively leave rooms in clubs when it gets like this, there's nothing to really hook into here. I don't really get why we're talking about Benoit & Sergio here at all.

why have actual descriptive comparisons when we can have tribalist statements of allegiance and enmity.

ftr my tribe's position on Nina Kraviz is "indifferent," we just showed up to defend our Tribal Deities Benoit & Sergio's honour

the mood reads as warm intimacy to me

fwiw, the only track on this i'd actually want to hear (or play) out is "ghetto kraviz"

i also just really like how loose and breathable her stuff is. as far as the album goes it's not a "major" album, it's casual, but with a very defined vision, which feels kind of rare in this protooled-within-an-inch-of-its-life world which shows every sign of worsening

I hardly think that's a major issue in the genre context in which she's working.

maybe not, i have no idea!

i guess the reason it occurs to me is that the SOUNDS she uses are very, very nice, pristine almost, but it's in service to loose and almost ramshackle songs, which is a neat combination

(though "songs" is maybe overstating what they are..)

There are a hell of a lot of dance music albums like that though. It's practically traditional at this point.

i guess i am just way out of it.

No it's good news. If you like this kind of thing then there a lot of great albums for you to check out. Start with Kalabrese!

Also I stand by my Dani Siciliano reference above.

i love kalabrese! they/he seems more jam-packed and maximalist to me though. not skeletal and spare like this.

some of those dance albums with pristine sounds and ramshackle songs ALSO have ramshackle voices, be warned (iirc i thought kalabrese was one of these)

Oh yes I would expect you to have some issues with Kalabrese, lex. Also Noze.

yup nôze have always repelled me slightly apart from "remember love". just...disgusting vocals

there's also something just a little bit evil and twisted about nina kraviz that i'm responding to. like she is going to drag you down into her dark world if you let her. looseness + great sounds + evil = turkish delight for tracer hand

yea i think dani siciliano is a fair comparison, maybe luomo too. it's not mining any strikingly new territories but honestly it doesn't matter because it nails the vibe it's going for perfectly - and i don't get 'druggy blankness' at all. again, i can't imagine hearing this in a club, but maybe it codes that way in that setting.

i'm actually glad that it wasn't produced by someone like matthew herbert tho, it wouldn't have the same warmth. tbh i think siciliano, kalabrese and noze actually accomplish something a lot more twisted than this record. nina gets a little 'evil' as tracer mentioned but if you're looking for disjointed alien sex jamz you have come to the wrong place

yeah i meant psychologically twisted rather than anything specifically in the sonics

more of that indie tech house

2012 landfill indie house

Big up the ghost of DFA

Blondes/Talabot/Kraviz

Your time

yea we've already talked about how none of those things have anything to do with dfa

lol @ 'landfill' in the context of three albums as they compare to the glut of post-dubstep blah (talk about BORING) put out in the first few months of 2012. and talabot might be a bit indie but don't you like sun araw and shit?

This is mega Berlin 2012 DFA tech indie house if ever I saw it.

so what (it isn't, but so what anyway)

i agree with some of those qualifiers but still sorta fail to see how dfa has anything to do w/it (maybe ndf/benoit & sergio at a stretch)

plus, dfa is great! i love all of those qualifiers except "tech house", but i guess that term can be stretched to mean p much whatever you'd like

when i think 'tech house' i think of maetrik or smthg and then i want to fall asleep

I keep wondering why I have such an urge to post negatIve comments on this thread, but then I realise that's because I've listened to the incredibly mundane music linked in the youtubes. Come on, it's Beatport fodder super-clean quasi deep "t-shirt house" with a marketing angle. Lee Foss mentioned above is probably about right for the sort of music you'd have in the same set.

I don't want to be a hater, but I can't help myself with this one.

Hope that wasn't too harsh :/ I'm a little dunk

would have never guessed this would be something so many people would take such a strong disliking to :/

still my favorite album so far this year tho all y'all can suck it ^_^

Its some kinda turbo bland stealth tech house vibe washing over ealy 2012 like a brown turd fog.

Every time Jimi references DFA in these discussions his point loses a bit more credibility.

Surely the default negative comparison point for dark, smoky repetitive pre-and-post minimal techo-house is Poker Flat (though nb. I love loads and loads of Poker Flat).

And this does sound like an album that might have been released on Poker Flat literally at any time between 2001 and 2011.

well dfa is the only indie house explosion I can remember I'm not that old.

shitty live-ish drums on some kinda techy disco house grid with some kinda deep house vibes.

+vaugly loose analouge synth work... its all there DFA is all over this shit.

depressing old man indie house

I like DFA and I like this and this sounds nothing like DFA.

And I don't see what this has anything to do with indie or live drums or disco house.

or old men

This is just grid locked DFA Papa house.

DFA is THE indie dance label of ye olde times.

This shit has live sounding drums locked to a house grid.

+I keep seeing Nina/Blondes/Talabot as the only dance album on indie forums this year.

They're the dad house indie house tracks of the year so far.

u make no sense

Jimi, you tell me some albums from indie artists that have crossed over to dance forums so I can come vomit on them, plz.

jimi, step your guilt by association game up, please

Beach House

I don't mind a cross over.

It's just that this stuff is kinda shit/boring.

jimi i love u but i don't hear anything the tiniest bit live-sounding about these drums, and it doesn't read as DFA-ish at all to me. i hear it as analog-ish straight-up house (and i don't have the dance music background to be able to really distinguish between different genres of house, but i want to say it sounds like 'classic' or 'regular' house, whether that means 'deep' or Detroit techno or whatever), and the vocals are the one thing giving it some identity and personality (and that's not a diss, necessarily).

Jimi would you like to borrow a shovel to save some time.

jimi i love u but you're bringin me down

its all sampled kits clipped from dads drums and clicked to a grid

to make it sound generic in that dfa kinda way.

the early dfa comps went right into this sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OROghdWYfcM / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7u3Po15_L8

Nina just sounds like a minimal dub version of that.

sounds like drum machines to me

and huge lols at dissing something by comparing it to "casual friday"

(which nothing on this sounds anything like)

to make it sound generic in that dfa kinda way.

If it's generic, how can you assign any of its characteristics to a source?

Did shovel do the drums for DFA?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie78VtBtwBI

at this point, i'm just going to sit back and commend your trolling.

http://notes.tomhenrich.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/slow-clap.gif

The only trolling here is generic house like Nina the Blondes & Talabot.

http://i199.photobucket.com/albums/aa258/thefreshprince101/snoopsmh.gif

LOL @ this sounding remotely like black leotard front. that would be AMAZING but unfortunately it is not true

This reminds me a bit of Blackdown's eternal crusade against "winebar house".

also - wtf are "dad drums"? i think i like them

This shit has live sounding drums locked to a house grid.

oh man that is just THE WORST. Live drums and house music is SO DFA

never mention the fact that there is absolutely nothing resembling live drums on this at all

all these 'criticisms' make me want to like this even more than i already do

and yea it is weird how earnest posts about an understated album have inspired so much vitriol.

i feel like i can listen to something on hessle or swamp 81 and think to myself, "i have no idea where or why anyone would listen to this stuff" but that doesn't mean i'm not willing to accept that i might have overlooked smthg or be listening to it in the wrong context and maybe i should just let it slide and post about stuff i actually enjoy

LOL @ this sounding remotely like black leotard front. that would be AMAZING but unfortunately it is not true

― akadarbarijava (psychgawsple), Wednesday, March 21, 2012 12:42 AM Bookmark

yeah, really!

this is kind of cool. reminds me of kate wax, julia holter, emika and all the other chicks from the arty electro thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE5uHNoGOHU

Sascha Funke vs. Nina Kraviz
http://open.spotify.com/artist/1meuzXhsNqB8rtK4Cc2MUy

"vitriol" seems kind of hyperbolic

jimi's just offering a gentle "idgi"

idgi it either but tim's comment about it sounding more or less like a poker flat album from the last 10 years kinda covers any other comments i could add to the thread

i don't hear even any vague similarities between nina kraviz, blondes, john talabot and dfa. also the only people who have heard of nina kraviz are huge dance heads, not indie people

also the only people who have heard of nina kraviz are huge dance heads, not indie people

I played her for Rev in the outloud room one night, which I think was his first time hearing her. I'm neither a dance head or an indie people.

neither/nor, rather.

</grammarcop>

you're head people.

nina released records on dj jus-ed label, can't get realer house than that.

"it's not house cos i like house", "it's not indie cos i hate indie"... jesus, state of some of you.

"it's not indie cos i hate indie"

who said this?

superfluous "not" there

ok, gotcha

I am frequently surprised by the lengths people will go to in order to categorise things together based on their own feelings of love or hate rather than, um, what the music sounds like.

This is mega Berlin 2012 DFA tech indie house if ever I saw it.

lmao dude

still gotta hear this album but i like what i've heard from nina kraviz. also she's hot. and hey is she dating ben klock??

she's def popular with teh dance heads.

i don't get the "indie" thing or the dfa comparisons either. haha ok i just relistened to some kalabrese and i don't know what i was remembering because kalabrese is certainly not "jam packed" or maximalist, by and large. there is a lot of overlap with what nina kraviz is doing for sure. it's more interesting to me to figure out why they're different, though, and to my mind they are. damned if i can really explain it. i can also see the comparisons with poker flat but again i've been bored silly by most poker flat stuff i've heard and not this, which despite its surface-level boringness and songs which develop maybe 2mm from where they started still manages to keep me listening (some more than others, obv; i don't really like the ultra-leaden voice on "ghetto kraviz" for example). perhaps one point of distinction between kraviz and somebody like dani siciliano (or kalabrese) is the sense of cheapness to it, for lack of a better word. half thought-out. which is maybe what jimi was getting at. but me, i like cheap if it sounds like this!

I am frequently surprised by the lengths people will go to in order to categorise things together based on their own feelings of love or hate rather than, um, what the music sounds like.

i feel like this has been the scourge of dance discussion here and beyond for a long, long time. not that there hasn't been plenty good discussion. really wish it would stop, there is this constant thing everything some people hate is labelled as a word they've already decided they hate and vice versa, regardless of the music.

oh come on, makes perfect sense, this music sounds like shit, that other music sounds like shit, qed

that post was indie nonsense.

only a soulless dance fan would say something like that

on the essential mix...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01h5gtt

Loving it so far. Very much making me want to don a pair of shades and sway by a rooftop pool rather than being in the basement shop of a university selling Polo mints.

Ghetto Kraviz is so ghetto.

awful, gay, indie, dfa, live, drum, old, man, brown, turd, fog, house, music

Proverb states soulless dance fan gets glass in feet.

I saw her over the weekend and she only played super-super-super-SUPER-SUUUUUUPEEEEEEEEEERRRR-tracky techno with barely any synth lines or anything and no real obvious breakdowns or buildups and most people (self-included) had no idea what to do with it. Like people would just dance for a little bit and then stop cause there weren't really any cues in the music to ease back here, go nuts here, whatever.

Like it was all pretty banging and stuff but not really in the service of anything.

you probably forgot to do drugs first.

I did have someone ask me if I knew where to get any E. But I didn't know. :(

only track of hers i know is zlobnii mikrob - representative?

this, which despite its surface-level boringness and songs which develop maybe 2mm from where they started still manages to keep me listening

i don't know, but maybe there's less songcraft getting in the way of the good bits? i hear, like, refrains, and fragments of refrains, and of backing vocals, but less of a heavy effort to sculpt them into house's version of a 'song'

even if it is there somehow.

cuz anyway good refrains or groups of refrain-like parts don't need so much in the way of development

DJ Kicks mix is sultry and moody and deep and basically what I expected, not hugely thrilling but not boring and definitely cut from the same cloth as her album.

Fabric mix is tight!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUhQV6QBeck

tracked down a decently priced copy of her album for REKIDS on cd.
cannot wait to hear it.

Is this the record from 2012 that's self titled

yup.
saw it on cd in my local hmv in the week of release and thought i'd get it at some point.
never saw the cd edition again except for £££ via amazon.
however, someone who used to work for the label is on discogs and has a clearly has a couple of copies up for grabs :
https://www.discogs.com/Nina-Kraviz-Nina-Kraviz/master/414521

Absolute classic record. Enjoy!

also from the same bloke,
got the radioslave/rekids/mixmag covermount ordered as i never got the mag.
and ...
shhhhh, but a hopefully few extra edits and stuff that are not allowed to be advertised on discogs
cannot wait.

ok, package arrived yesterday.

the standard NK cd album with skinny promo (perfect for the car !)
along with a copy of mixmag with NK on the cover and a covermount cd of a mixtape of unreleased extras aka 'Mister Jones'.
(alongside a few REKIDS extras, but hey i dont want to brag)
blood and sand, it's a good album.

in other news : just found out today that Radio Slave had a proper artist album out recently !
clearly i am no longer on the ball, as i had no idea.

and weirdly, NK is this months cover of Mixmag, with 2 cover variations available.

ty for reminding me about this album

it's a cool album, i like it

canceled

https://www.residentadvisor.net/news/44688

Yeah that was all garbagey yesterday.

lol I saw the initial instagram post and scrolled right on past

I absolutely don't want to delve into that conversation, hoo boy

mh otm.

having attended a panel talk that included Frankie from Discwoman a couple weeks ago that touched on similar issues... I would absolutely not advise Nina to do the "well, actually.." stuff and slowly back away

(it was a really good panel)

It would appear 99% of Nina Kraviz fans (sadly) can't see that she did or said anything wrong.

things that make you go hm

Trying to imagine getting Russians whites on board w the concept of complicity in global anti blackness is kind of a mindfuck, it’s already an ordeal in actual former slave colonies and original colonizer states

https://undergroundandblack.com/2019/10/29/keeping-it-real/

ash lauryn weighs in

Yeah, her response is embarrassing but it's also clear there's a total disconnect and she just doesn't get it (and also isn't particularly interested in getting it, which is the main thing driving people crazy I think)

i think ash lauryn nails it more than anyone else is ever likely to.