Entertainment for the Braindead
Entertainment for the Braindead is the stage name of Julia Kotowski, an independent musician from Cologne, Germany. She plays folk music, some of it lo-fi Three Chords and the Truth music, and some of it more ornate stuff featuring guitar, ukelele, recorder, concertina, and vocal harmonies--Julia refers to it all by the joking title "acoustic dilettante post-something".
All her music has been released under a Creative Commons license. As a result, between Bandcamp, Aaahh-records, the Free Music Archive, and the Internet Archive, all the music can be downloaded for free.
Discography:
- Hypersomnia (2007)
- Hydrophobia (2008)
- Raw Timber EP (2009)
- Seven (+1) EP (2009)
- Roadkill (2010)
- Trivialities EP (2010)
- Berlin Kitchen Sessions (2011)
Entertainment for the Braindead provides examples of the following tropes:
- Everything Is an Instrument: Household objects like salt shakers, kitchen utensils, and drawers get pressed into service as percussion.
- Hikikomori: In "Resolution", the speaker has to promise to "leave the house at least once a day". By the end of "Relapse", the speaker "[doesn't] plan on leaving the house this year / if by then you need me, you'll find me here".
- Minimalism: On Roadkill, Julia uses a banjo as her sole instrument. However, she averts Three Chords and the Truth here by overdubbing and coaxing an entire band's worth of sound out of that instrument.
- Self-Backing Vocalist
- Three Chords and the Truth: Raw Timber is a collection of simple guitar songs, recorded in the middle of a forest. Berlin Kitchen Sessions was similar, just recorded in friends' kitchens.