Heartland

I never see the band Syria (Christian Dörge) popping up on HL, although there's a clear connection with the Sissies. He uses Sisters-esque material (such as the Eye of Ra), uses (more than) familiar sounding song titles such as A Gift From Culture, Neverland Things, Fragments, Ozymandias, Black October, he made a cover version of Giving Ground and even stole unreleased sissies tracks to create his own (Wide receiver). Strangely enough though, the music itself is somewhat different than Sisters stuff.

Is this a fan who honours his idols in his work, or is this a creep with a lack of inspiration looking for an easy buck? Me thinks the latter (although I quite liked his early music under his own name).

http://www.infrarot.de/index.php?page=music-b-3905
http://www.backagain.de/wavegoth/syria.htm

Seems to me like a crazy fan without any other inspiration.

I'd guess it's the same as with Eldritch and Cohen/T.S. Elliot

Doesn't seem like the austere and oblique references that AE makes to his muses...

More a blatant rehash. Tut Tut.

Sounds like a stalker to me!

Dark wrote:I'd guess it's the same as with Eldritch and Cohen/T.S. Elliot

I wish people would stop spouting this every time some no-name Von-alike comes up. Eldritch uses as many references as any other established writer, but they don't have 1959 and all that to clue you in.

A lot of goth "artists" try to be Eldritch, not to assimilate their favourite bits and mould it into their own image, which is very fundamentally different from Von's approach. I'd freely admit to borrowing the "spot the reference" game from him, as well as the lack of inclination to allow my semantic field to cross over into the mundane and vapid, but the drum parts and riffs owe more to Bauhaus, The Cure or Pink Floyd. Mix and match is standard fayre - if you don't work with what people know, then it's very hard to get through to them. In turn, the artist adds their own idiosyncracies which others can take as a seed for something further.

A nod to an author is a nice way of expanding the semantic field - referencing fiction has no creative difference from referencing current affairs, you take a basic idea and run with it. However, blatantly derived song titles and artwork do no such expansion, because everything that can be said has already been.

never heard of him/them, and doesnt sound like i'm missing much.

i guess the fact that they never come up on HL means that no one really gives a damn about his "work"

When it comes to such bands, we generally do.

It just doesn't make sense to pay for it again when we've already bought Floodland

as far as the rest of it goes, i'm with motz on this one

German eh? Figures.

mh wrote:Sounds like a stalker to me!

I reckon it's Von himself, in some kind of denial about having run out of ideas.

Umm, wait a minute- Umm..

Damnit, I thought this thread was actually about Syria.

I got quite excited as I'm off to Damascus in October. Not a Sissies related decision, but it is quite exciting actually having: "...a ticket to Syria"

P.S. Any Syrian/Lebanese types on here?

Almazas all round

Shukran...

Syria? Neverland Things? Fragments? nice to see someone with a bigger Never Land (a fragment) fixation than me

d'ye think he has monkey and stuff'?

I knew him personally, he's a good artist in depth not a stalker
his version of SKOS-CN is superb as Giving Ground

taylor wrote:his version of SKOS-CN is superb as Giving Ground

Hmmmmm...

I remain to be convinced.