Last Hero of the Western World

To the Camp!

Boris Rogowski — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 13:32:46 +0000

It’s taken quite a while, but as of now The Society Islands have their own little corner in the world’s greatest music distribution network; please admire it here.

Bandcamp is also the place where you can head on August 31 in order to order the wolves to your gate; see you there!

Remains of the last hero, fed to the wolves

Boris Rogowski — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:26:07 +0000

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Wolves

Y'okay, I'm a lazy blogger (it's not because I don't like writing; however, using the respective former post as a template and then adding data from a thousand sources which in many cases require FTP passwords I can't remember - every fucking time - is no real fun. So allright - I like writing, I hate code. And yes, it's all my fault, I know - there sure are optimized methods of constructing blog posts. I will learn them as soon as I have the time, presumably around 2015). The lack of posts should not be interpreted as creative stagnancy though. Quite the contrary. The Society Islands are working on a new album, and !yay!, there's even better news: it'll be released song by song, starting on August 31 (yes, 2011) with "Wolves at the Gate". After that, new songs will be made available every 20 days or so on all major digital platforms (and on Bandcamp, which I love best of all). Of course each of them will get a cover of its own (see above) and of course there will be blog posts (haha) as soon as shit gets serious. This is just the right time to satisfy the need for closure (honestly, is there really such a need?), so I hereby give you the remaining four songs from LHOTWW. There:
50.000 GallonsThe FeudBrotherIn Cold Blood

Basic Tectonics – The S.I. at work…..

Moishe Lichtfuss — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:05:39 +0000

Maybe Mr. Rogowski is tempted to comment…I just took the photos…

Boris: Thanks, Mr. Lichtfuss. I would like to use this opportunity to welcome on board the great Efanque (it’s the guy in the yellow hoodie) who is recently on lead guitar duty at TSI. You should check out his fantastic work as beatsmith and vocalist here. His new album is available as a free download and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the spirit.

...

No Place Home

Boris Rogowski — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:42:27 +0000

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27 Rooms

(“Dude… he said ‘Plimsoll Mark’”)
Y’allright, hayfever season has officially begun and my brain and CNS show some major impairments… the price of spring, poetically put. For all of you who have never experienced it: it’s bad. Then again, the raised histamine levels plus the inevitable lack of quality sleep can have some rather interesting side-effects with regard to perception; frame rates drop, colors blur, sounds bleed into each other. In the best (or worst) moments, your surroundings are some kind of amorphous puzzle that you’re not able to put together – if you try harder, you’ll get frustrated, but if you surrender to the in-tense-ity of the moment, you might well discover the true color of spring (“Skylarking” by XTC makes a perfect soundtrack, by the way).
Please listen to “No Place Home”, the second to last song on “Last Hero of the Western World” – and yes, it is about allergies, through and through.

Tis not quite the season to be jolly, but once it commences I’ll have used up all my jolly anyways, so…

Boris Rogowski — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 10:38:54 +0000

All right, it’s been some time since the last post (although time, as we all know, is quite relative), during which I’ve roamed Europe a bit, played two nice shows in Cambridge and recorded five new songs which I might throw at you before the year ends – but don’t pin me down on it.

In other news, TSI are hiring… as much as I love the trio approach and the intimacy involved I realised that the songs require more firepower. So if you happen to be an excellent guitarist, keyboard player and/or singer who is living in the vicinity of Cologne and would love to play songs with Mr. Lichtfuss, Mr. Kriegeskorte and yours truly, I strongly advise you to give me a ring (not on the great white telephone though, huh-huh-huh).

Expect more songs from LHOTWW within the next days; I finally figured out how to wrap text around images and according to the stimulus-contribution theory that should result in a gradual increase in posts (you know, I love wrapping text around images). And now I’m eating this Vanilla Ghost… Halloween be damned!

Cambridge

Boris Rogowski — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:29:49 +0000

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Poster

If you have no plans for the 24th of June as yet you should pay a visit to the beautiful town of Cambridge and see The Society Islands live at the CB2 in the evening. We’ll be playing as a trio (Mr. Lichtfuss on the bass, Mr. Kriegeskorte on his Sci-Fi drumset and yours truly on vocals & guitars; instruments are subject to change without prior notice) and this will be the first show in a, as we hope, long line of concerts. Bottom line: you should come, say hi and have a couple of beers – the latter advice I will doubtlessly follow myself; Cambridge has a bitter called Yorkshire Terrier which I had in January but exchanged for a Carlsberg after a few sips. I promise to give it another chance. I always second-guess.

Filing Cabinet

Boris Rogowski — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:47:28 +0000

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Sign

“Filing Cabinet” is the tenth and last song on Last Hero of the Western World, closing the album on a rather un-heroic note. The lyrics are based on a dream about some city-dwelling business friends dressed in fashionable sportswear visiting me (a world-weary locavore) and my wife (a rather statuesque life-affirmer without a cause) in our timbered house in the country. I have no such wife, house or nutritional habits, let alone classy business friends… but here’s the lyrics:

Youʼre bending down to pluck a rose
youʼre waving with your pantyhose
but Iʼm at a loss
Iʼm down with the crayfish

Their scissors snap, the water curls
around my feet, Iʼm waving back
“come down if you like
Iʼm not coming up now”

And donʼt make me tell you lies
about how great it is to be alive
when lifeʼs nothing but some casual payoff

You say that there is fun to be had
hidden in your filing cabinet
but I ainʼt got no reason to believe it
no I ainʼt got no reason to believe you after all

Weʼre spending every summer here
by the lake and on the pier
and nights underneath
the big yellow stone ball

And donʼt you dare romanticize
the steady pace of our rural life
itʼs just getting by
why scare the cows now?

You say that there is fun to be had
hidden in a filing cabinet
but I ainʼt got no reason to believe it
no I ainʼt got no reason to believe you after all

And oh… your semaphoric release
the cherry pollen settling on your lash
youʼll stand and wink for nothing
on the night of the crash
And all our Sta. Rosa colleagues
theyʼre bitching about the mildew in the cracks
theyʼll guzzle down my Lager before
heading back

Swans come
Swans go

At the end of the song you can hear the door to the recording booth shut for the last time. After that, the actor steps aside. You don’t get to witness that part.

The vessel arrived and has been released on y’all

Boris Rogowski — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:05:37 +0000

Yay! Today marks the official release of Last Hero of the Western World (though Amazon kinda bailed on me here by postponing it for one month – quick! it’s soon to be fixed). Also, the CDs arrived from the factory just in time. I celebrated all this by eating chicken soup, driving around in the rain and listening to that new Spoon album which I have madly fallen in love with (ask Mr. Lichtfuss, he’ll tell you the same). Plus I laid down a couple of lyrics for the follow-up to Hero… recording sessions shall commence once temperatures rise a little; no rest for the wicked.

Fuck Bunny

Boris Rogowski — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:06:13 +0000

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Neon

“Fuck Bunny” is song number 5 on Last Hero of the Western World and for those who are interested I have 5 fun fun fun! facts (sorry, been reading James Frey recently) about it:

1. The lyrics do not contain any form of profanity (but your interpretation of them might).

2. With the exception of the noise guitars all instruments were tuned to 435 Hz (the 1885 Viennese standard pitch). The guitars were tuned to 440 Hz which we didn’t realize before mixing. At the end we decided to embrace the dissonance and not change the pitch digitally.

3. The bass guitar and the banjo were plucked with a rubber seal ring because I was too lazy to look for an appropriate pick.

4. I had forgotten to write lyrics for one of the parts and since I didn’t want to pause and pick up a pen I quickly made them up, starting with a line from an earlier part, “stay on these roads”, which I had stolen from A-ha in the first place.

5. I fell asleep shortly after finishing the song and had one of the most unpleasant nightmares of my life.

Got picked up at UIO, LIS, LAX, NRT, I forgot; wrought iron fences through cab window through the condensation and the hems peering upward until hotel arrives now putting hair straight steam from storm drain hazy check-in second round in discounted ambassador suite on 4th floor head hurts get cleaned up looking at skyscrapers moving out without briefing air and traffic noises hurt big house of god sleeps in square liana garden calm inside despite evening service pew hurts my back holding your weight holding you forever unease is bearable not quite seizable drinks somewhere resembling cannon street fingers eyes scalp itch waiting for another cab back at the hotel the room changed you notice spread eagled on the center bed you changed I notice your body lifts off the mattress hovers face down right below the ceiling

wtf?

Last Hero of the Western World

Boris Rogowski — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:52:04 +0000

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Lego Death

This is the shortest possible version of the first song on Last Hero of the Western World. The ideal version plays for about two days (48 hrs) and features two Turbojet engines and a choir of 1011. If you happen to be very rich and want to help with the realization of this project feel free to shoot me an email. This is not a joke.

People approached me asking if the lyrics on this one were a riddle – not a Nik Kershaw type of riddle which is not a riddle at all, albeit believed by many to be one (the problem is that I still believe that the Nik Kershaw riddle is, in fact, a riddle). Others asked me if the song contained allusions to the Cold War, their reasoning for this assumption being the image of an armed girl swimming across the Bering Sea (some reasoning I have to say). Another group of people wanted to know if this song was about the end of economic hegemony and if they should sell their [xxxxx] stocks (in trade for what, you idiots? money?). A 7-year-old was pretty sure it was about the follow-up to World of Warcraft. A citizen outraged tried to hit me in the face crying about “your sinister heritage, son, which deprived me of the last moment of placidity my ever so challenged mind was allowing me”.

My answer is yes.