Stylus Magazine

2003-07-05T00:16:00.000-04:00

Click here for...The New Stylus Magazine Blog!!!

2003-06-30T11:56:00.000-04:00

Siobhan Donaghy- Overrated

I doubt anyone could overrate this song. This was the girl that had the musical taste that was unsuitable for the rest of the Sugababes? It sounds like a subpar Massive Attack track. Although I'm getting to the chorus now. This is nice. Oops. Back into the verse.

2003-06-25T15:31:00.000-04:00

ATTENTION TODD!

Re; Atomic Kitten - Tide Is High.

This is a Blondie cover...

2003-06-24T02:24:00.000-04:00

My God. For once, I feel like I have ultimate clarity.

In a month I may hate this album. I dunno. I may listen to it about one hundred and twenty-five times and be sick to death of it.

"Inertiatic Esp." And I don't want to describe the music. But this vital rush suddenly takes over my entire body, and it's just the most immediate thing. And the vocals: "now / I'm / lost" - shit. But the delivery. My god, this man can howl. And as the guitars trickle in, like the hairs on the back of your neck, an impending doom, the wail reaches you down in your stomach, the pit, and my head rolls. From side to side. "I'm lost, I'm lost, now I'm lost." Apparently, De-loused in the Comatorium is about being in a coma. I feel like I'm in a dream. Like I've been touched by something else, Touched By The Hand Of God.

And drums roll in and out, and at the same time I want to run kill eat sleep feel masturbate scream birth create dance hurt drink and that primal urge to do is there. And it's so good. Punk Floyd, motherfuckers. The music is like so many things you've heard, but you haven't. And it takes you far, far away, and it's eerie, and dirty, and playful, and free - and it's about their friend who committed suicide. I have no idea what Cedric Bixler is talking about. But I know what it means to me - that freedom. Those deep inner urges.

My girlfriend told me today that she's so incredibly angry and she knows why. And that it's something big and important, but "not really." And she won't tell me, at least until she's stoned. But I think I know what it is - and even if I did, I felt like playing "Eriatarka" for her. So she could know what it means to truly be lost in something that you will spend your entire life trying to emulate, trying to make something half as good. And it's enchanting, and beautiful, and angry, and a journey - like the album. And there's pain in the voices, and the guitars sway. The guitar roars and the voices hurl. You are yanked across everything you've known.

It's almost spiritual.

2003-06-19T01:51:00.000-04:00

I'm an absolute sucker for anything on VH1, as long as it's a retrospective or in list form. After taking a much needed week-long sabbatical from cable television, I returned to the greet the top 100 songs of the last 25 years. Although this will not replace my true passion, I Love the 80s, the highlight so far is among the best moments of the network.

Yes, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” made it to #49. In the midst of yelling at Melissa Etheridge to get off my damn television (it apparently worked for Rain Pryor), I missed the build-up, but I swear to god that Steve Perry, former lead singer of Journey, actually said “I think you’re all believin’ and you can’t stop.” In the midst of all this, I found out that Journey: Tribute to America had not fully made the rounds as I had previously thought. As great as my mystical Steve Perry moment was, this is an absolute classic of post-ironic Flash animation.

2003-06-19T00:10:00.000-04:00

Saule, Apollo, Etc.

The Saule album is likeable enough, although I tend to side with Kareem with regards to its long-term noteworthiness. It lacks that wooziness and depth that makes Jeck the best of the 'vinyl citation' camp of turntablists, but definitely scores points in the 'hypnotic' department - sometimes to its detriment. After a few months with it, I've decided that the twists are even fewer and farther apart than I initially thought and that there's a certain obviousness to them (including one moment I still snicker at for pulling a soft/loud trick I've called 'the turntable Slint').. Overall, however, the surface is still pretty enough to warrant the occasional spin, and it requires the perfect amount of attention for listening while driving (which, to borrow Todd's roundabout style, might be a pretty hefty compliment in itself).

Showtime at the Apollo is mandatory summer viewing for everyone. Singlehandedly blows all network 'reality' and 'comedy' shows out of the water - theres drama aplenty, moments of a blissful surreality in which Apollo's traditionally brutal audience cheers for a scrawny Asian man who warbles through astounding versions of soul classics (a flickering vision of some sort of alternate universe utopia, I'm sure), and a monthly appearance by some eight-year-old drummer who kicks shit all over my ten years of trying to plays those things. Oh, and a clown with some of the most uncomfortable homoerotic undertones available on late-night TV. Take that, Blind Date!

Lastly, a notice for everyone fortunate enough to live in a city with a decent film community... Matthew Barney's stellar Cremaster cycle is playing in select cities throughout the next month or two. It's a truly astounding work, one of the great art accomplishments of our time, and features an alternately gorgeous and terrifying score by Jonathan Bepler... If you have to pick, see Cremaster 3, which features the most brilliant integration of sound and action I've seen since Jan Svankmajer's 'Alice' precision-punctured my ears a year and a half ago. Runners up - Cremaster 5, in which Bepler crafts the only lyric opera I've ever enjoyed so thoroughly, and Cremaster 2, the most visually arresting of the series (w/ excellent cameos by ex-Slayer Dave Lombardo and Morbid Angel's Steve Tucker as the metaphorical voice of a bee-swarmed Johnny Cash - see it and (maybe) understand).

Summer's finest pleasure so far? Closer promximity to my lady, Wolf Eyes CD-Rs from friends across the country, Duos for Doris, Todd's fucking AMAZING mix cds (tricking me into loving a Le Tigre remix and putting me under the Kompakt spell), nine hours a day of filing and headphones, inconsistent air conditioning, and VH1's constant re-running of their hilariously savage 80's series. Yikes.

2003-06-15T00:13:00.000-04:00

Saule- Saule and Saturday Night Network Television

I think the thing that is most interesting about that album is the almost hypnotic quality of it. It's almost cinematic, with movements that unfold gracefully over long stretches of time. It's a beautiful thing, but I also agree with Kareem, in part, as I haven't heard it in a few weeks and can only vaguely remember what it sounds like. Judging by how much new music I listen to, that might actually be a glowing endorsement.

In other news- and I think Joe will agree with me here- Showtime at the Apollo Amateur Night is the best thing on television on Saturday night. Far better than any of the so-called comedy shows.

2003-06-13T23:45:00.000-04:00

My take on Saule: When Kareem reviewed Saule, Todd told me I should check it out despite his negative review, because it'd be right up my alley, and guess what? It is. I gotta respectfully disagree with the review; this music doesn't just "denote" emotion, it really is emotional. At least, it strikes me that way upon one listen. I have to wait for it to really sink in to tell if it'll have much staying power, but my first impression is that it's absolutely gorgeous, and there were a number of moments that really stood out as highlights. Different strokes for different folks and all that; I'm just letting you folks know, don't dismiss this record b/c of only one review. If you like Philip Jeck or Janek Schaeffer or any of those other awesome turntable dudes, this is of similar quality.

2003-06-12T15:55:00.000-04:00

Paint It Black review: nice job, captured the essence of the record very well.

Two notes though: "Paint It Black" didn't really lead off Aftermath, it was just a single tacked onto the American version of the album, as the custom went at that time. And the mystery band left off the comp was Melt-Banana, not the Boredoms. I still want to hear their interpretation, I bet it's amazing.

2003-06-11T18:21:00.000-04:00

you Brits are so uncritical, Nick. just gushing with praise and lager you are.

2003-06-10T07:07:00.000-04:00

Are we to conclude then that we Brits like everything and you Yanks like nothing?

2003-06-09T20:21:00.000-04:00

ah, the weird, wonderful world of vincent gallo - a fine place to stop by from time to time, but perhaps not to stay, at least if the current (anti) publicity blitz surrounding his new film "the brown bunny" is anything to go by. seems his newest film has the cannes film crowd buzzing, and not in a good way - "bunny," which is primarily composed of many extended slow-mo shots of gallo himself, received the second lowest rating by cannes film judges, a meager 0.6 out of a possible 5. and gallo seems to agree with their judgment, referring to the film as a "disaster and a waste of time" in a recent round of interviews. not that that means he's taking the criticism lying down, at least not when said criticism comes from the mouth of roger ebert: a recent "new york post" article saw gallo referring to ebert as "a fat pig" with "the physique of a slave trader." ebert's take on the bizarre situation can be found here (thanks to melissa maerz, whose fine blog can be found here, for the link). ebert seems surprised that anyone is interested in seeing the film; all i know is, if it's even half as good as "buffalo 66," i'm gonna love it.

and, as a quick aside, DO NOT whatever you do rent "full frontal," by steven soderbergh. amateurish, grainy, visually unappealing, massively self-indulgent, and near incomprehensible, it almost undoes all the good work he did with riveting films like "traffic," "the limey," and "ocean's eleven." almost. and while ebert may indeed have a less-than-impressive physique (not sure about the "slave trader" reference, but that's gallo for you), his take on "full frontal" is pretty much dead-on: read about it here.

2003-06-09T13:14:00.000-04:00

Krautrocksampler Slow Off the Mark? --

Ok, so Cope may not have been the only one late to the party -- Simon Reynolds called me out months ago on my Sehr Kosmische blog entry in March and I haven't responded (though I'm not sure anyone cared). Honcho Burns also asked a few questions that I utterly ignored. But hey, since this argument is all about timeliness anyway, now seems as good as any to respond...

Without knowing for sure, I think Simon's main objection was my claim that Cope "single-handedly revived a bygone era by way of an encyclopedic knowledge communicated with the excitement of a bonafide enthusiast." With apologies for my own hyperbolic prose, what I meant was less "Julian Cope revived this dead music" (since, as Simon points out, it wasn't really dead) so much as he revived the era and made it a cultural event of sorts. And on that, I don't think there's much dispute. Witness:

Prior to Krautrocksampler, only a few of the records contained therein were available -- and those that were, were often tough to hunt down (a much more difficult proposition in the pre-Internet age). But during the time between the first and second editions of the book (I had the 2nd), almost every entry on Cope's Krautrock Top 50 list was reissued or made available -- such as those on the lovely and quasi-legal Germanofon label, who provided me with my lovely, quasi-legal version of the first Harmonia record, among others. Suddenly, Cope was everywhere, writing specials and giving interviews in every rag I can remember: Rolling Stone, Mojo (more than once, I believe). As I recall, every one of those articles used that SAME picture of him w/ his early-90s long hair and Ray-Bans -- gesturing intensely while he lectured some moron at Rolling Stone about, oh I dunno, Walter Wegmüller's Tarot. The point being, it was a fairly MASSIVE press blitz that got the ball rolling on Krautrock, which in turn got the ball rolling on more reissues, which in turn gave Cope more to yak about, which got more records reissued…and so on.

So no, Cope was hardly the first guy to dig this stuff up -- anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of pop history or post-punk would have known about it. I myself was hardly an expert in either, but had come across Can's Spoon reissues in the early 90s on my own and fallen pretty hard. But as I recall it, there was exactly ONE other remotely comprehensive Krautrock reference guide at the time of Krautrocksampler’s publication -- and that was in German, rendering it useless to most people who'd care.

Certainly German über-roadie, Klaus Mueller, featured in a dismissive Perfect Sound Forever "recollection" in 1997 wasn't among those who did care. At least, not much. While everyone has a right to his opinion, Mueller seemed to never have liked much of the music in the first place, and appears to have a rather crotchety sense of "I Was THERE!!!" ownership. In any event, he seems kind of oblivious to what was clearly a cultural event – if not for him and his country, for record geeks abroad. Which was kind of my point in the first place.

Hope this clarifies...

2003-06-09T12:58:00.000-04:00

the name is kilian murphy, from ireland, by the way.

2003-06-09T12:57:00.000-04:00

hey folks. new writer on stylus, posting on the blog for the first time. i already know nick, who is a fellow ILXOR. Haven't got much time to write now, so I'll be brief. The new radiohead record is a disappointment - not a patch on any of the last 3. I actually quite enjoy the electronic numbers - The Gloaming in particular - but there's a hatful of tracks that are neither texturally interesting, nor particularly melodic. As for blur, they really were at their best back in their Britpop days, but "Think Tank" is a step back in the right direction after "13" (which was let-down badly by Orbit's heavy-handed production). As for Spiritualized - they went so far into self-parody on the last record I'm not sure I could listen to them again.

talk to you later...

2003-06-05T12:48:00.000-04:00

The Music Biz in a Pearl Jam

Oh gosh, with a heavy work schedule this month this is the sort of levity I needed. An odd, agenda-pushing distortion of reality beamed in from some other dimension in which Pearl Jam’s departure from Epic spells the beginning of the end for the major labels. Apparently, Pearl Jam are the "most popular and important American rock band of the ’90s" and no longer need the services of their major label, Epic. So I guess an exponential collapse of record sales by a band that now doesn’t even go platinum is a brave step forward instead of quitting before they’re let go. Why isn’t this being called what it is? A past-the-sell-by-date group conceding their relevance and commercial appeal and selling their product directly to their now devoted but cult-like following. It probably does make more business sense in this case to sell directly to those still hanging old for dear, old times but if this isn’t going to grow the band’s audience (it’s not), how is it proof that the direct sales are the way forward?

The writer’s ideas about why PJ is still popular are precious, too. Ah, the old '70s arena rock idea that ticket sales = contemporary relevance and popularity instead of silly things like, say, radio play and record sales. I guess REO/Styx and Jimmy Buffet playing amphitheaters means those bands are really big, too. Any cursory look at concert box office reveals that circuit to be mostly a cash cow for aging rockers but a total non-starter as a window to contemporary music. He goes on to say both that "So what is at stake? Everything. If the marquee band can leave the most important label in recording history [!] with impunity, then the major label lock on the music business is over" and claim that combined sales of 1.2 million for the 72 live albums is some sort of success. What? "The marquee band" stopped making videos, working major-label promotions and—guess what?—they stopped selling records. And I suck at math, but 1.2 million divided by 72 isn’t exactly a sales record that is going to shake the foundation of the record industry. Pearl Jam: Their appeal isn’t waning only getting more selective.

2003-06-01T21:13:00.000-04:00

"Murder on the Dancefloor"

I've just come back from the May Fest in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood which essentially, along with Oktoberfest, acts as a German-American book end to the summer on the far north side. As I left, the German band -- which had moved through aryan oompa to KC and the Sunshine Band -- was playing this Sophie Ellis-Baxtor song, and I realized that what makes the song is not the psuedo disco/hi-NRG sonics but the posh English vowel sounds. Like Avril, it's all in the a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y's. Without those vowel sounds, it's a celebration; with them, it's a lament, a paean to the humdrum, soul-sucking necessity of nightlife a la "nightclubbing" -- and all the more perfect for it.

2003-05-27T16:44:00.000-04:00

re: Spiritualized - Amazing Grace

I listened to this for the first time last night and was pleasantly surprised. (And considered posting then considering this discussion). After subjecting the world to an overblown, floral misstep, releasing a more raw, direct record is the most obvious career move ever, but hell in this case it seems to have paid off. So the song titles read like bad parodies of Jason Pierce song titles and the quasi-spiritual puns are a bit much at times, this is still a redemptive record from someone I’d put out to pasture but now seems to have fury and purpose. Who’s next on the comeback trail? Mercury Rev? Ian Crause? (please, oh please let it be Ian Crause!)

2003-05-27T13:48:00.000-04:00

Anyhow, let's move a few miles from Oxford to Reading; the new (as yet unscheduled) album by Spiritualized shows that yer man Pierce still remembers how to do The Stooges. Amazing Grace is Spiritualized's most direct album and shows a welcome change from the orchestrations of Let It Come Down. If you're after rock, Sam, come here; This Little Light Of Mine and She Kissed Me (And It Felt Like A Hit) are positively dangerous.

2003-05-26T21:48:00.000-04:00

Re: Nick's comments

Don't get me wrong, man. That Blur record sucks.

2003-05-26T20:21:00.000-04:00

re: sam on radiohead

my friend, I think you're saying a lot of rather, at the very least, questionable things here. The implication that rock packs a more emotional punch, that volume and aggression is the only thing that can "shake you" is implied and I find that disconcerting, and the flat-out erroneous claim that certain things aren't "real songs" should have been a notion that died before you were born! Also, I don't see what is inherently "experimental" or "indulgent" about not using guitars! Huh? Or that somehow those three tracks mentioned are 'sketches' (and therefore incomplete). (This seems like a weird post-mp3 phenomenom in which people consider each song invididually as either disposable or worth including on a record.) As Nick points out, if anything these sorts of sounds are the norm -- esp. in less dance-phobic Britain. (well, hell, in the U.S., too.) Radiohead hasn't made many chart-friendly songs on this album, but take that echo out of the music of "Backdrifts", add a middle section, and let the Sugababes sing a sultry ballad over it and it could go top 10 -- and that's one of the more "experimental" songs on the record. Between hip-hop, pop, ragga, house -- micro or otherwise -- bhangra, ukg, jungle, techno, etc., etc., not only is this record not experimental, it's the tracks that rub up against the band's conservative past that stand out and seem out of step to me.

2003-05-26T19:47:00.000-04:00

re: radiohead and blur

Southall is otm, as usual, esp. his last multiple-sentence graf, all of which I feel the exact same about and will cover in part in a feature next month. (sorry for the plug.) (And Moroccan whatever and B&S deserve more of a savaging than polite regrets, tho! Ugh.)

My first, v. reductive thought is that pre-HTTT, it seems as if Blur = change and Radiohead = progression, evolution. Think Tank sounds like a guy reaching a specific age and trying to disengage with what he feels like was the frivolity /naivete of his youth, right down to getting Daniels in to do an anti-"Parklife." I’m not sure at all that it works, for the reason’s Nick states among many, and in the end the concept is what I hear more than the tunes, and listening to wheels spin inside someone’s head is awfully dull.

On the other hand, I don’t think Radiohead have ever denied or disowned their past, but they (until possibly HTTT) haven’t purposefully engaged with it, either. Blur’s move from guitars to rhythm isn’t some sort of futurethink or stab at sonic progression, it seems instead like another conscious rejection of their 93-95 work. Radiohead circa Kid A and Amnesiac is sonic ambition. Those are more the sounds of a rock band actually paying attention to what is going around them and incorporating it into a typical rock band structure (trying to say something, to make redemptive music that clicks with individuals and not just crowds, that offers emotional solace to a listener). (And of Radiohead’s early 00s bookends, I prefer the latter, I like the tension and I think the songs are simply better and a more well conceived blend of dance and rock. This idea that the one is better than the other because it flows better as an album sounds like some sort of tale from a topographic ocean, esp. in the Mp3 era.)

It’s seriously a shame, I think, six years after OKC, that the only big psudeoindie band to emerge in the 90s (in both the US/UK) willing to both work within a commercial landscape and continue to test rock’s sonic limitations is maligned for not making arena-size guitar music with all of the 70s trappings like big chords and hooks and proper verse-chorus-verse, etc. (irony is that the Kid A/Amnesiac songs all are v. powerful in a live setting.) Are people this running scared of technology or of the 'legacy' of rock eroding, or of rock's rigid quantative values becoming increasingly marginalized? I mean, hell, that NME review of HTTT is patently pathetic. They aren’t even trying to engage with the music, it’s as pointless and stuffy as Hornby’s silly condemnation of Kid A, but at least that guy has the excuse of talking to a "stuffy" audience and being a middle-aged man (no offense to middle-aged men sez the guy staring down 30 next month). The NME business, made worse by James Oldham’s financial connections to the New Rock Revolution, borders on anti-intellectualism and is flat-out musical conservatism. It’s as if they’ve completely given up on trying to engage with modern music and instead are trying to create some sort of alternate universe/musical themepark in which it’s always some point in time between 1963-1978. Incredible, really, the lengths that rock culture continues to go through to convince itself of its pious, unimpeachable superiority, and this Radiohead business has been one of the more lamentable manifestations of that to me. I'm glad then that although I wasn't terribly gung-ho for another Radiohead record after the hangover of Kid A/A discourse, I like a great deal of it -- although it's the first time in a while that the music feels more like a compromise, it seems to have one foot in 1997 and one in 2003. Which I guess still places it a generation ahead of the NME.

2003-05-26T18:11:00.000-04:00

The thing is that I don't even like Radiohead. I'd certainly never describe myself as a fan, and I'd never describe myself as caring about them. I was more than prepared to take apart Hail To The Thief but I can't because I think it's a very good record. It's not about trying to unify experimental influences and more straightforward rock music album and song structures and aesthetics either, and for what it's worth HTTT works much better than Think Tank although they're both aiming at very different things, musically and spiritually. Think Tank fails because it loses its flow in the middle third and after that one no longer cares about the denoument, which is a shame because the last three tracks are all very good. HTTT maintains a consistent tone throughout the record, and avoids being preachy at any point, which Think Tank falls down on twice at least (Brothers & Sisters and Moroccan Peoples...); plus Crazy Beat is just clumsy. There's no obvious single on HTTT (there are by my count three on TT) and so the rest of the material doesn't pale in compare.

OK Computer has becomes Radiohead's albatross and it bids fare well to destroy them; not because they're hung up about it but because their fans are, demanding and expecting a return to that aesthetic and form when they really shouldn't. They're not even, I think bothered about 'pushing' themselves either, because HTTT doesn't sound like the work of a band struggling to come to terms with ambitions like the last too (and especially Amnesiac) did. Like Spinning Plates was a pointless test; at least Treefingers worked as a segue; but The Gloaming is a purposeful piece, auditory disorientation and much more effective than it's two most direct forebears from the Radiohead canon. As for influences, well, what's that? We've all heard Autechre and Plaid now, Humphrey Lyttelton, Ornette Coleman, whoever. We've also all heard Muse (go there for Just if you're that desperate) and Coldplay (or there for High And Dry) and Travis and whoever.

Jeff Tweedy was forced into making a more abstract record when he lost his guitarist, as have been Blur, and both have recieved great acclaim. Radiohead chose to move away from their six-strung beginnings and people don't know how to dea with it; why is that? NME are desperately trying to shoo the public away from this experimental music, from electronic frippery, and back towards wholesome goodness in the form of U2-wannabes and two-bit punkers, Sutherland accusing Radiohead of creative cowardice because they didn't make a straight-ahead rock record again, Oldham recognising the most obvious piano-led track as the standout (for him at least); these people have all got ulterior motives, either in direct management positions with certain groups or else simply in the fact that they want to ensure they have careers as 'rock' critics; Radiohead aren't 'rock' and thus people don't know how to write about them. Indie's dying on it's feet in the UK in terms of being something people want to read about and there's a whole generation of rock crits who can't talk about dance or hip hop or pop music; they're running scared because they can't write about anything that's popular anymore. The Britpop surge in the UK made a lot of people very rich and famous and popular, journalists and musicians alike, but it also operated as a cover for the reception of some really quite radical records that found audiences (Maxinquaye, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, Snivilisation, OK Computer to a degree). Ever since then we've been suffering from the hangover.

Nevertheless, Radiohead have made a very good record.

2003-05-26T15:35:00.000-04:00

Re: Radiohead

A lot of people seem to claim that on Think Tank, Blur did what Radiohead was trying to do with Kid A: branch off into a corridor of experimentation and come out the other side with an actual pop/rock record that works. The silly thing that I think about Radiohead before they've even released Hail to the Thief is "well, that's nice...so what do you think they'll do next?"

I guess it's indicative of how little I care about this band anymore and what they used to be. I never thought of myself as one of those reactionary OK Computer/Bends lovers who hates the new stuff, but more and more through my conversations with people it appears that I am. But I don't think this album regains any of the force at all. And I don't think anyone is claiming that, either...

What am I trying to say...Radiohead is boring because I already listen to all of the influences they distill already. There.

2003-05-26T02:23:00.000-04:00

Re: Nick and Radiohead.

This shit gets so boring so quick. I don't really feel like being rock-criticky - fuck, let's face it, I'd be surprised if anyone even reads this - but the album abounds in masturbatory, "experimental" loads of suck.

Funny that I like the direct rockers more than any tracks on here - I'll take the startling thrash of "2 + 2 =5," the yearning heartbeat of "There There," and the massive guitar build-up of "Go To Sleep" over "The Gloaming" anyday. It really was a shame when the band hung up their guitars - I'm not saying Kid A wasn't one of the most magnificent albums in recent history, but Jesus, just listen to "Just." I mean, damn. When this band wants to visibly shake you, they sure can - and they've still got it.

And I'm really glad that the band flirts with good ol' rock 'n roll on this one. But despite the indulgent sketches of "I Will," "Scatterbrain," and "Sail To The Moon" - much like another highly awaited return (Think Tank) this album features more than its fair share of ... well, not real songs - shit like the all-out techno shimmy of "Sit Down. Stand Up," and eerie lounge of "Wolf At The Door" (think a fucked up version of "The Tourist") encourage me to listen to this mess more and more. Radiohead still pushes themselves ... kind of.

2003-05-25T22:23:00.001-04:00

Distance: A Microhouse Mix

Markus Guentner- Sunset
Dntel- The Dream of Evan and Chan (Superpitcher Mix)
Sascha Funke- Safety First
Todd Sines and Natacha Labelle- Skin (il travaille devant un ordinateur toute la journee)
Gustavo Lamas- Juvenes
Sami Koivikko- Obela
OM1- Opium
Superpitcher- Time to Cry
Luomo- Tessio (Mathias Schaffhäuser's Decomposed Subsonic Remix)

2003-05-25T22:23:00.000-04:00

Colin's review of Cex's newest effort is right on the money. In doing an interview recently with him, in which my tape recorder didn't work (sorry, rjyan!), I get the feeling that Cex is getting closer and closer to a major breakthrough artistically. His warts and all approach to releasing albums has garnered a lot of skepticism, even among artists on his own label. While quality control and restraint may not be his strong suit, it seems like a privilege then to be able to chart easily the constant evolution and progression that this guy is going through. I'm guessing that the Maryland Mansions EP that should be upcoming in fall will be his final practice run and that his next LP will his first record deserving of something approaching mature and considered work that will vault him into the big leagues.

2003-05-25T06:39:00.000-04:00

Say something interesting about Radiohead...

Thumb Yorke and my brother JR (it stands for Jesus Rises) share the same birthday - October 7th, 1969 - and used to vaguelly know each other when Thumb was at Exeter University in the late '80's / early '90's. My brother was at the time in a band called The Love Children (which is, incidentally, a great name for a band - top song = There's A Banana In The Woods Over There) and Thumb used to DJ occasionally at a University venue called The Lemongrove where The Love Children used to play. JR tells me that the nascent Squint-Rock Messiah's DJ sets contained not, as you would expect, experimental ambient compositions by a certain Richard D James and Thelonius Monk jazz work-outs, but rather a blend of particularly bland and teary- eyed indie-bollocks. Anyway, to cut a long story short... Thumb Yorke fancied some bird. Said bird refused to go out with Thumb Yorke because a; he was a squinty little twerp with shocking taste in music and also b; she was vaguelly seeing my brother the Local Pop Star. Said girl called Thumb Yorke a "creep". Thumb pens song detailing the soul-rending existential horror of being called a "creep" by a girl that you fancy. Thumb gets in some indie band. Indie band release said song. Song goes massive. Thumb gets very very rich and very very pretentious. JR becomes big fan of Thumb Yorke's band. Bizarre, eh? And all completely true too. According to JR.

2003-05-24T18:52:00.000-04:00

Phenomenal Video Producer

Can be found here. Contained within are videos for Aphex Twin, the Blood Brothers, Squarepusher, and Radiohead. Definitely check the Blood Brothers and Aphex Twin, if you have to choose.

2003-05-22T11:43:00.000-04:00

Andrew's Wilco review
I haven't heard the EP yet, but nice job. My only comment is that the line "I'm not a poet/and I know it" that you poke fun at is obviously a take-off from Dylan's line "I'm a poet/and I know it" - which makes sense in a song named after him. I don't know if that makes it more or less clever, but in any case the blame can't rest squarely on Tweedy for that one. ;)

2003-05-20T17:51:00.000-04:00

Radiohead - Hail To The Thief

So where are Radiohead now? No-man’s land. Is Hail To The Thief a return to form? Yes, if only because Amnesiac was a poor refraction of Kid A. Is it more like OK Computer? It is more like OK Computer than Kid A is; but it still has more in common with Kid A than with The Bends. What did you expect? Garage rock? The shameless platitudes and U2isms of Coldplay? How foolish you have been. No need to be scared now.

Techno-fetishisation still abounds. ‘2+2=5’ is the most direct thing they’ve done in years; ‘The Gloaming’ the most abstract. There is a sense of purpose here that had been left outside the rehearsal room of the last two albums. They are better for it. Putting ghosts inside machines and making the repressive beautiful. Kid A now appears inspired. There are still no singles. ‘Where I End And You Begin’ replenishes itself organically while ‘Backdrifts’ eats itself and ‘Stand Up. Sit Down’ propels itself into the future-noir. This is no-man’s land because nobody else can. Magnificent.

More on Monday.

2003-05-15T21:42:00.000-04:00

Marah - Float Away With the Friday Night Gods
Fiction Plane - Everything Will Ever Be OK

2003-05-12T14:49:00.000-04:00

Re: Ed's K-os Review

Excellent review, I think Ed really nailed this one. My one minor quibble is that "Superstar Pt. 0" has been in heavy rotation on BET's Rap City for about a month now, so this kind of style is not exclusively relegated to "MTV2 and its ilk." Nevertheless, it's a pretty interesting diversion from Rap City's usual fare (I don't think I've ever seen an Astralwerks artist on the show before). Just a reminder that Rap City is ground-zero for a wide variety of hip hop entering the popular market.

2003-05-11T06:49:00.000-04:00

Paul McCartney is standing in a big stone circle on his farm in whereverthefuck and he is shouting at the sky and saying “I am The Beatles! I am I am I am! Me me me me me me me! The others are all dead or Ringo and I am all that’s left, ha HA, I won John you fucker! I am The Beatles!” Every album he has ever recorded ever is being released this month after being remastered by angels on God’s mixing desk, and we must own them all by sundown or be shot in our beds. There’s an advert on British tele at the moment where Paul is seated in a big room with every instrument ever made ever and some that haven’t been invented yet too and he’s playing Band On The Run on all of them at once and it sounds like that chap from The Beach Boys, the fat one who went mad and put his piano in a sandpit, yes, him, it sounds like him being skyfucked in his dreams by a big beautiful bird with a piano and an accordion in it’s brain and a jew’s harp up it’s ass and now is the time to turn back to Macca and say, quietly but firmly, “Paul, the others may be dead or Ringo but you are STILL THE BORING ONE, Jane Asher or not, now FUCK OFF back to bed.”

2003-05-09T02:44:00.000-04:00

nick southall is totally crazy, and those were great.

i just want to post, for a second, about the greatness of this guy called osymyso, who for those of you who dig cutups should be pretty familiar for his bizarro 12-minute mash-up "intro-inspection," which was easily the best thing to come out of that phase. (should that really have been past tense? is mash-up as a trend over yet? whatever.)

anyway, i'm not posting about "intro-inspection," though, you should all already know about that. i'm posting about "rabbit to rabbit," this totally great 4-minute track that apparently turned up on a 10" or 7" or something equally rare at some point, but now can be found very easily thanks to this wonderful Internet thing i'm on right now. the song is a mess of WB Bugs Bunny-isms with bluegrass guitar and vocals (singing "run little rabbit, run," what else?) and some great beats. it's totally silly, but so much fun, which is what osymyso does best. i've tired of a lot of mash-up stuff pretty quickly, but osy's music seems to have a longer shelflife for some reason, and now i've rediscovered this song like a year after i first downloaded it.

yup, still as great as a nick southall rant.

edit: googlisms. i get it now.

2003-05-07T10:36:00.000-04:00

post-rock is the latest manifestation of one of these inward contractions
post-rock is this faux white
post-rock is a term that's not meant to be taken literally
post-rock is the modern equivalent of prog
post-rock is like rock but with hardly any singing
post-rock is what happens when the pretensions of prog get a good thrashing by punk noise
post-rock is
post-rock is meaningless
post-rock is the new prog
post-rock is to small
post-rock is rooted in the rock era
post-rock is a critical invention? name me a single band that is self
post-rock is the indie hipster's version of new age music
post-rock is a strange place if you're a girl
post-rock is 'wankey'
post-rock is over
post-rock is that some of it doesn't rock
post-rock is supposed to be
post-rock is post
post-rock is a reaction against all rock music that came before
post-rock is just a gussied
post-rock is so indefineable that most people don't understand it anyway
post-rock is a lazy and overused term
post-rock is a genre known for innovation
post-rock is an unfortunate label
post-rock is uncertain
post-rock is rock that doesn't
post-rock is 'shite'
post-rock is less a definable style of music and more a lazy generic label
post-rock is like jazz
post-rock is a terrible millstone
post-rock is one of those musical genres that seemed like such a good idea a couple of years ago
post-rock is bad enough
post-rock is that mogwai do it very
post-rock is a genre
post-rock is what they're calling it
post-rock is just a
post-rock is that
post-rock is back heart
post-rock is to use disney's view at his kodak picture spots
post-rock is and why it's called post
post-rock is this accessible and this pleasurable without straying into poppier waters
post-rock is a uniquely british phenomenon that was seized by american bands in the late '90s
post-rock is the indie kid's equivalent of those tapes you find in your parents' car called "meditations"
post-rock is just a new term for prog
post-rock is the order of the day for friday 15 november
post-rock is a genre which mixes electronics with live instrumentation while avoiding any semblance of the pop/rave nonsense we're all subjected to by rolling
post-rock is alternately enervating and narcotic but always winning
post-rock is the "krautrock" of the '60s and '70s
post-rock is too 'cliquey' and should try harder to be more successful
post-rock is so early 90's anyway
post-rock is there
post-rock is nu enorm in trek
post-rock is the latest in shoegazing artistry
post-rock is dead techno
post-rock is horrified to be associated with the past
post-rock is the new rock

2003-05-07T10:34:00.000-04:00

electronica is about swimming
electronica is focused on digital
electronica is the leading exhibition for electronic components with more than 83 000 trade visitors from 62 countries
electronica is the term i like to use as an umbrella description for all the kinds of music listed on this web site
electronica is the music i listen to the most
electronica is an online design firm based in austin
electronica is a peer
electronica is the word that generally describes the most experimental side of electronic music pionneered by cult labels such as warp
electronica is highly graphical in both format and content
electronica is one year old
electronica is one of them
electronica is a term used to describe all sampler
electronica is about being involved in developing raw acts to their
electronica is all about mystery
electronica is a catch
electronica is an international known and current trend barometer of digital media art and illustrates the cultural and social
electronica is organized within the ars electronica festival
electronica is an open platform for the entire spectrum of disciplines in the field of digital media design at the interface of art
electronica is organized by the ars electronica center and the austrian broadcast corporation
electronica is genetic engineering
electronica is also awarding the movie titanic itself
electronica is an online tutorial created for anyone interested in becoming proficient in electronics
electronica is the new punk
electronica is hardcore or speed techno
electronica is hardcore or speed garage
electronica is more than strange lights and chaotic dancing
electronica is becoming so popular is that the rest of our culture is finally catching up with the electronic vanguard
electronica is cutting edge electro industrial for the 90's and beyond
electronica is a manufacturer of door phones and video door phones which takes pride in being among the elite in the sector
electronica is a different experience
electronica is dance grooves that will shake a club to its foundation
electronica is so difficult to classify
electronica is the next big thing in
electronica is to help you get a good web site running that will promote your sound and improve your chances of building your
electronica is in your diary – from november 12 to 15
electronica is awarded in the categories computer graphics
electronica is becoming more and more a part of our lives there is no better music to represent our days
electronica is available at texas a&m university
electronica is an
electronica is indebted to popular science
electronica is a broad category
electronica is a company specialized in electronic engineering
electronica is prohibited
electronica is not to take stock of the past
electronica is
electronica is providing online updates on an almost
electronica is held
electronica is in trouble
electronica is a music and a lifestyle
electronica is my main passion in mu
electronica is a reductive definition for moby
electronica is very much about the hypnotic power of looped samples and the textural possibilities of digital sound
electronica is beveiligd tegen impulsen van gsm
electronica is the world's largest festival of electronic arts
electronica is a general paleontological journal of the widest possible scope and is accessed through a world wide web
electronica is all about mystery; flight; dreams; visions; escape; meditation
electronica is music that is almost entirely produced with electronic instruments like synthesizers
electronica is an opportunity to deepen customer relations rather than launch new products
electronica is following the genetic theme again next year
electronica is a company devoted to the design
electronica is the most diverse and progressive music in the world
electronica is no stranger to controversy as the next sex theme in 2000 had a sperm race which created a stir and net artists are still grumbling about
electronica is currently played by and for younger people
electronica is shared as much as it is distributed
electronica is interesting for sure
electronica is restricted to a beat
electronica is part of an ongoing area of my practice concerned with the exploration of my work through electronic means
electronica is the premiere interanational festival for interactive art
electronica is such that the show is huge
electronica is the world's first electronic palaleontological journal
electronica is timed to coincide with comtek
electronica is divided into 17 segments
electronica is providing online updates on an almost daily
electronica is hot
electronica is connected to the following things
electronica is a blanket term that is used to describe electronic music in general
electronica is een gerenommeerd bedrijf wat ruim tien jaar bestaat zich toelegt op de verkoop en installatie van consumenten hifi en video apparatuur
electronica is long on beats and texture
electronica is able to
electronica is an enhanced internet browser built specifically to find free music on the web
electronica is the place to be
electronica is the next big thing
electronica is a renowned meeting
electronica is the world's biggest electronic art contest annually held in linz
electronica is the leading international electronic components/equipment exhibition in russia and the nis countries
electronica is currently receiving

2003-05-07T09:56:00.000-04:00

indie is out there
indie is your music?
indie is the reason¤
indie is not a style of music
indie is dead
indie is your music? by ed howard think you want to start listening to indie music? wanna have
indie is more than just a computer trade magazine
indie is all about doing it your way
indie is foregoing its traditional spot in the shadow of the international film festival to
indie is a network of filmmakers helping out other filmmakers
indie is where their tastes intersect
indie is an online artist development company thats focus is the three t's; distribution
indie is a fairly new 1 genre of music which was added/invented/dreamt up to serve a rather particular purpose and group of individuals
indie is a fairly new
indie is an authoring tool that enables non
indie is clearly interface independent
indie is in birmingham
indie is short for independent
indie is independent
indie is proud to be associated with liquid dreams records
indie is living in a small town in maine with her mate
indie is a danish band
indie is an internet database full of information
indie is proud to present the fantastic twigs from bergen in norway
indie is a company formed to provide services and resources catered to the needs of independent artists and labels
indie is no longer taking submissions
indie is
indie is all about being self reliant
indie is a compilation of indie tunes whose playlist is still very much under development
indie is the primary theme
indie is more about personal reactions to films rather than media studies deconstructionism
indie is very similar to the typical contract between a label and an individual artist
indie is a heuristic bottom
indie is a seven month old purebred english labrador retriever
indie is the same as it's always been
indie is he for putting that on his list? oh
indie is also a member of the american academy of pain management
indie is voorgoed voorbij
indie is an attitude with a sound
indie is a programming language that combines the popular features of java and c++ with some interesting features of more eclectic languages like dylan
indie is a new constellation of seasoned musicians
indie is being maintained in a small
indie is wendigo
indie is a term that holds no sure footing in anyone?s musical vocabulary
indie is a name that was carried down from generation to generation
indie is suddenly all the more important
indie is an award winning screenwriter first
indie is so cool
indie is an engaging mix of homegrown cinematic entrepreneurial spirit and enlightened self
indie is the new scourge of the british music scene
indie is the non
indie is only as good as its distributor
indie is a genre
indie is on track to become the slamdance of toronto
indie is screening twenty
indie is a web site and monthly newsletter dedicated to showcasing and promoting independent artists from around the world
indie is currently available at a list price of $2295
indie is struck by lightning
indie is jpc
indie is a source for the best independent bands online
indie is a fun thing to have
indie is looking for all types of rock/alternative music
indie is what goes on in olympia
indie is a map turtle and belongs to my friend and rehabilitator
indie is voor deze voc een goudmijn
indie is purchasing a
indie is an attitude

2003-05-06T19:17:00.000-04:00

One

Two

It's funny because it's Cex.

2003-05-04T16:11:00.000-04:00

Jacksonville sucks.

Last night, my friend/photographer Matt and I went to Jacksonville with the purpose of seeing Schneider TM. We walked around a part of town known as Five Points, where we bought juice at a Shell station. No big deal, except that the seemingly female sales clerk had a beard and a voice that makes Tom Waits' growl seem like that of a little girl singing nursery rhymes. We went to the park across the street, which, from afar, looked beautiful, but turned out to have a pond full of sludge that pitiful ducks opted to fly over. I was harassed by a wino, and so we left. Backstage at the show, we were entertained with tales of our hometown by members of Les Savy Fav and sneered at by members of the Faint. The gentlemen from Schneider TM were very nice, and the show itself was great. We spent the night dodging indies we knew from our respective towns, basically because we were too tired for small talk. Despite having had fun, we were really tired. Overall, everything went well except trying to navigate the hell known as I-95 and I-10. Post-show, we tried to get back to our hotel from I-95. We had to get back onto I-10 to get to where we needed to be. As could be expected, we got lost. Jacksonville, besides being a really ugly town that spat out Fred Durst, has a screwed-up interstate system. We ended up in what could be considered a rough neighborhood, trying to find the on-ramp for I-95. We're traveling along this backroad when we see signs designating an on-ramp for I-95. Imagine a little back-alley in a residential neighborhood that branches DIRECTLY ONTO THE INTERSTATE. Don't ask me why this freaked me out so much, but it did. It just seems wrong to have an interstate on-ramp made of dirt branching out from an alley behind someone's house. The hotel we stayed at consisted primarily of loud truckers who started their rigs at 3 a.m., continuing until check-out time. I'm sleepy, borderline delirious as a result of sleep deprivation, and I'm transcribing an interview.

Things have to get better from here, but just so you know:

JACKSONVILLE SUCKS.

2003-05-04T15:21:00.000-04:00

I cannot, for the life of me, stop listening to this Hugo Largo Drum EP. It has completly taken over my week. All week it's been that and "Something/Anything?" by Todd Rundgren which a friend of mine in England copied for me. The amazing thing is that I found the album on vinyl for $1 at my local used record shop. It's in perfect condition, too. Wait -- now I can't remember if it was more than a dollar but I clandestinely slapped a $1 sticker on it, or if it really was a dollar. Nevertheless, I purchased it for a dollar. My only complaint about the record is that Michael Stipe couldn't just stick to producing the EP, but had to inject his nasally vocals into some otherwise perfect tracks. In my daily allmusic.com browsing I found out that the lead singer of the group, Mimi Goese, released a solo album under the name "Mimi" in '98. It's classified as "Club/Dance." Should be interesting. I'll have to add it to my records-to-hunt-for-till-I-completly-forget-why-I'm-hunting-for-it list.

2003-04-30T01:13:00.000-04:00

Weird.

2003-04-23T16:59:00.000-04:00

Oh, and John Darnielle updated his site with a piece about Coil today. He got all the names of their albums wrong and even misspelled the one he was actually writing about, but it's still great to see such an enthusiastic response to them. He also picks out "Red Birds Will Fly Out of the East and Destroy Paris in a Night," which must surely be the best song the band has ever done, and one of my favorite songs period.

2003-04-23T16:52:00.000-04:00

I'm glad someone reviewed that David Lynch album. I've loved the tracks from it ("Go Get Some," "Pretty 50s," and my personal favorite "Mountains Falling") that are included on the Mulholland Drive soundtrack for a while, but I wasn't too sure the album would be worth picking up. Sounds promising, though...

2003-04-23T05:24:00.000-04:00

Just a quick plug for my blog, Auspicious Fish, which has finally got off the ground with some content. That's all!

2003-04-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

Namelessnumberheadman- Unproven Theorem

Anyone heard the new Grandaddy yet? Anyone really disappointed with it? This is the band that fulfills the promise of what Sumday should have been and this is the song that encapsulates it all. A shimmering guitar holding down the beat, a bouncing drum machine mixing with live drums, and an ever upward spiral of lead guitar crashing into oblivion- then the outro where the first lyrics come in augmented by a piano and that same drum machine and what sounds like a theremin. And it all ends with synthetic strings! Incredible.

2003-03-26T11:55:00.000-05:00

R.E.M. Enters the Anti-War Song Arena

This new R.E.M. song - yet another net-only anti-war tirade - is actually pretty good. It's a return to their old folky, jangly style, with a more subtle use of electronics than on their last couple of albums. Lyrically, it's typical Stipe, which basically means that it doesn't hit you over the head with its message the way Zack and the Beasties did. It's pretty vague, actually. But it's nice to hear an actual decent song from R.E.M. after the disaster of Reveal.

2003-03-22T00:22:00.000-05:00

Re: Zach's new song

What kills me about this song is how Shadow completely mimics the sound of Rage at their noisiest and most overtly hip-hop oriented. And Zach sounds exactly like he always has. This might as well be a new Rage single with some particularly funky effects from Morello. Musically, it's pretty great, and in other respects, as usual Zach is the last person in the world to go to for intelligent political commentary. But the whole thing is noisy and angry and messy, the way all the best Rage tracks were (think "Year of the Boomerang," "Born Without a Face," etc). I have a feeling I'll wind up being in the critical minority on this, but then I've always liked RATM.

However, although this song is hardly a shining example of political discourse, I think it's far from a failure in that respect. Rage was always good at dumbing down liberal politics so they'd be accessible to a mass audience. And certainly, as a result, a lot of people don't get the message at all and just slamdance along to the riffs, but as simplistic as their view is, I believe it does awaken some level of consciousness in kids who might otherwise be totally apathetic. Maybe that's too idealistic, but I do believe that Rage at least got people to pay some attention to things, and this song pretty much serves the same purpose. It's rallying music.

That Beasties thing is a travesty though--is it just me or have they lost what little sense of flow they once possessed? They even lost the quirky, intentionally bad but distinctive vocal style that always set them apart.

2003-03-21T17:32:00.000-05:00

The latest from Zach De La Rocha, "March Of Death"

Has some stellar production from DJ Shadow - per norm - but I don't know why I love this song so much. Zach doesn't really have anything too interesting to say, as he just spits out his usual rhetoric anarchist shit. But Shadow lines up a swirling, crashing beat, fading in and out of Zach's signature growl, and the continuous, over-the-top, bubbling drum loop really riles me up. Yeah, it's a hell of a lot better than the lame-duck Beasties' latest attempt in the war commentary arena, "In A World Gone Mad", but while they don't really make any interesting and constructive points either, perhaps it's noticeable to say that in a world of once-hipsters commenting on the current situation, the production is what stands out? Not what they are saying? Perhaps Billy Bragg's "The Price Of Oil" does the trick better than the rest ... but does a 19-year-old really want to hear what he has to say?

When Zach commands the listener "On the left! Left! Right!", though, it brings actual importance to this song, simply because of the urgency. Perhaps, then, that's what the war needs - dope beats and liberal "spokesmen" crying for attention. When the only reason that someone Zach is surely trying to speak to can only think how nice his voice sounds as just another musical layer in the context of the song, though, I think he really has failed.

2003-03-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

Lil Kim

Gotta disagree with the lackluster beat comment here, Gavin. The beat is infectious, aping that Neptunes keyboard squelch from "When the Last Time" and also apparently sampling "Get Ur Freak On" in the chorus for some extra melody. I love the continual clicking beat, though, sounding like eternal handclapping that just can't stop. So weird that Mr. Cheeks is on this song, though. He appears to be doing a lot of "Yeah!" and "Girl!" on the track. Maybe his verse wasn't very good and got cut out at the last minute- on the album it sounds like he's just doing the announcing at the end "lil kim back in 2003, etc."? Did you see her on 106 and Park the other day? She said that a lot of what she wanted in the video didn't get in, actually, and that Swizz Beatz wrote the treatment for the video.

2003-03-18T13:24:00.000-05:00

Lil Kim - The Jumpoff

Lackluster Timbaland-in-autopilot beat. Lyrics that go through the ubersexual Lil Kim motions. An unecessary Mr. Cheeks "guest spot" that is little more than a cameo. But... The video! It has to be one of the most visually stimulating 4 minutes in heavy rotation on basic cable, and not just from the prevalence of heavy editing -- jerky cameras, Fight-Club-style coloring, a new shot every 1.5 seconds. What really makes the video is Kim herself: rarely have I seen a performer genuinely look like she's having as much fun as Kim appears to. Whether obscuring her striking blue eyes with oversized Gucci shades, or adopting wig after ludicrous wig, her smile constantly stretches from dimple to incredibly perky dimple. Her energy is infectious. The song is average at best, but the video makes it a hit.

2003-03-10T04:05:00.000-05:00

Very strange situation. Having a meal in a pub with the family on Friday night, and I get a text message from a friend asking me if I'll judge a BotB competition the next night at the leisure centre. Being half-cut (drinking with boss and colleagues since 5.30) my ego kicks in and says "fuck yeah, I'm Simon Cowell to the power of 10!" So come 7pm on Saturday night I'm sitting next to Muse's ex-manager and a world-champion windsurfer watching a load of plebs play a Van Halen cover! Fucking magical!
A brief run-down of the five bands;

First up = Idle Crash - Van Halen cover. And a Dire Straits cover as well! Lots of widdly bedroom-heavy metal 80s geetah, aweful, no stage presence, came last (provincial band stereotype n.1).

2nd = Kinetic - 3 12-year-olds who can barely hold instruments who play some fucking weird, largely instrumental jerky grunge-funk-shoegazing stuff (not a provincial band stereotype!).

Third = Intoxia - The Nu-Metal ones who try and incite a riot, have never been in the same room as a melody, and get their mates dad to threaten the judges (provincial band stereotype n.3)!

4th = Pseudo Podium - ironic college 'funk', ie; whiter than white widdly Hendrix-meets-Jamirorquai shite as purveyed by EVERYONE EVER from a band in Devon who's done an A level (Reef, Rootjuice, et al). Covered the Transformers theme, and if they'd just done that they'd have won - it sounded like Geoff Love! (Provincial band stereotype n.3)

5th = 4play - The Oasis/Coldplay one. Sounded more like Bon Jovi doing ballads than Oasis blowing up the 100 Club. Thuggishly sensitive lad rock with NO BASSIST! Very scary audience frenzy for a band who were hideously shit - I'm sure I've seen at least two of them fighting on the lawn in town on a Friday night, and here they are being 'sensitive'?! (Provincial band stereotype n.4)

So who won? The grunge-funk-shoegaze 12-year-olds, that's who! I know the guitarists's older brother (I knew someone in every band except the nu-metal one, one way or another) and I'm gonna offer to manage them to huge international acclaim so they can unite the world Wyld Stallyons stylee! Awesome. Picking them over the Oasis band or the funk band nearly incited a fucking riot, and all the judges made a swift getaway in order to avoid teenage muggers! SUBERB!

2003-03-06T00:58:00.000-05:00

Re: that Krautrock article Todd posted.

I find it funny that this guy who makes such a big deal of being "there" during the whole Krautrock thing dismisses Faust as a record company fabrication, when in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. They were the ultimate nightmare for a record company - used their journalist friend Uwe Nettlebeck to con Polydor into a contract, got a huge advance which they proceeded to spend on beer, drugs, and electronics, and only produced some exceedingly weird, uncommercial music when the money started to run out on their communal party.

I certainly agree with a number of points in that guy's article, though, mainly about the revisionist glorification of some terribly dull, wanky German psych bands who are lumped into a grand unified Krautrock movement. His point about Can was also really interesting - they do sorta sound like they tried copying American blues-based rock but got it all wrong, and I hadn't really thought about "Ege Bamyasi" like that until now.

But he definitely gets Faust all wrong. If there was more interesting, forward-looking, innovative music coming out of Germany during that period than the first three Faust LPs, I certainly haven't heard it.

2003-03-04T09:38:00.000-05:00

Dizzee Rascal Interview

The best new MC in garage, as linked to by Simon Reynolds already. Click here.

2003-03-03T10:14:00.000-05:00

Kraut Rock Fever

Did anyone else see Ted Nugent cooking food on Conan the other night? Very interesting. I think his book is called: Kill It, Then Grill It.

Anyway, a couple of questions and comments regarding your post, Matt.

I don't think post-rock is neccesarily dead- but I do agree it's gone down a lot of dead ends. It seems like Kraut-rock has been somewhat exhausted as a genre to incorporate interestingly, hence the lack of Chicago-type bands that really seem to excite anymore. Things like this go in cycles, though. The new Tortoise album will probably ignite a new revitilization in this movement just to spite them. Take a look at bands like Tarentel, though- I think post-rock may have moved to modern classical/musique concrete type stuff as a pervasive influence. Then we have a lot of the Thrill Jockey bands who seem to be mining free jazz type territory. I don't think that post-rock is neccesarily dead or creatively exhausted. It's just trying to find itself right now, reterritorializing as it were.

I think the main reason the Kraut-rock still sounds so fresh today is because it sounds so much unlike anything going on in popular music discourse in the United States until it got "rediscovered" by Cope. Most other underground genres that originated in the United States and England perhaps got melded into the melting pot of popular music and reterritorialized by pop music that you hear all the time. Kraut-rock sort of slipped under the radar and has only gone through one major recycling- in post-rock.

I'm interested to read this book sometime soon, though. As with Reynold's Generation Ecstasy, if the writing is good it's good enough for me. God knows Reynolds talks about music that means absolutely nothing to me in the way that it is meant to him. But even if I can't get everything out of the music that he is writing about that he does, I still feel like there is worth to it- because of the obvious passion he has for it. Sounds like the same sort of writing/experience, although you seem to connect a lot better with Kraut-rock than I do with, most specifically, the Orb's "Blue Room".

And...have you read this: http://www.furious.com/perfect/krautrock.html ?

Finally, where was this record store you're talking about? I need to get there and get me some Kraut-rock.

2003-02-24T13:30:00.000-05:00

‘Sehr Kosmische’
Krautrocksampler and When Julian Cope Reached For the Stars -- Eight Years On

When he passes into the Great Beyond—which he will undoubtedly do with grand, epic flair—Julian Cope should be remembered as much for writing about other people’s music as he is for the music he wrote himself. That is no slap against his own prodigious musical output; indeed, his astonishing website, www.headheritage.co.uk no less than 33 recordings to his name under a myriad list of monikers cutting a wide swath of styles. Most are worth a listen, nearly as many worth your money.

Still, his writings, which include two—two!—volumes of autobiography and a manifesto on antiquarianism are nearly as accomplished – perhaps even more so. And with his 1995 masterpiece, Krautrocksampler (sadly, out of print), St. Julian very well proved himself, if not pop’s greatest writer, then certainly its foremost writer-fan. How else can you describe a book that single-handedly revived a bygone era by way of an encyclopedic knowledge communicated with the excitement of a bonafide enthusiast? It was as if your best friend wrote a book on your favorite music before you had even discovered the stuff.

I was a lucky man: I had not only purchased Krautrocksampler but in this pre-Napster/Audiogalaxy/SoulSeek era, lived mere blocks away from a record store that seemed to have every last recording the book recommended – and available for listening! Indeed, I couldn’t get enough of Damo Suzuki-era Can, kosmische supergroups Harmonia and the Cosmic Jokers or commune-turned-bongo-beating-rock-groups Amon Duul and Amon Duul II. I may have been raised agnostic, but in a matter of pages, Julian had converted me totally. And as any cursory listen to Stereolab, the Chicago post-rock scene or reading of The Wire would confirm, I wasn’t alone; long lampooned as the sound of acid-drenched German hippies incapable of carrying a tune, Krautrock was suddenly everywhere, with previously impossible-to-find records reissued by the VW busload. It had become a full-fledged revival, and whatever else people try to tell you, Julian Cope was largely the reason why.

Eight years later, Stereolab’s Mary Hansen is dead, post rock is creatively exhausted and the Krautrock namechecking has faded some. But while the hipsters have moved onto other genres to plunder—post-punk, garage, electroclash—Krautrock remains among the most fascinating, exciting of them all – the music classic and the release of Cope’s book certifiably historic.

Such were present and generally acknowledged circumstances when I pulled out my old paperback copy of Krautrocksampler recently. Unlike every other book I owned during the period, Krautrocksampler remains in almost mint-condition, as though I had barely touched it. To the contrary, for a full year, I hardly put the 140-page book down, constantly reading and re-reading passages about the latest album I’d bought or, worse, was considering purchasing. But the book was the Holy Bible as far as I was concerned: it was unlike anything I’d ever read and I suppose I felt it deserved some measure of respect.

And upon revisiting Cope’s chestnuts, I found myself as much in awe of the book and its subject matter as ever. Where so much music we grow up worshipping fits like a suit two-sizes too small in adulthood, Krautrock somehow remains surprisingly potent – its energy and passion as relevant to someone bidding adieu to his twenties as it was to pimply-faced Euroteens in the 1970’s. Why this is, I’m not entirely sure – many admired, equally mind-expanding musics fail to induce the wide-eyed wonderment in me they once did. But somehow, for some reason, Krautrock still resonates with me today. Still, I should add that with Cope’s words forever intertwined with my impression of nearly every Krautrock record I bought, distinguishing his impressions from my own has become nearly impossible.

Which I suppose could merely be the mark of a very good writer. A more academic reading of Krautrocksampler might find the prose to be overly gushy – despite claims that he does not use such terms lightly, there are countless “visionaries,” “geniuses” and so on strewn throughout the book – many made in reference to people like Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream’s Edgar Froese, hardly poster children for quality control since the mid-1970’s.

But as even a cursory listen proves, Cope may very well have been dead right. As the wild abandon, the freeform, the motorik, and exotic-to-the-extreme textures would confirm, post-war Germany was dying not only to take part in the Sixties, but to take charge. From the MC-5-on-Mars of Ash Ra Tempel’s first record to the zero-gravity Arabesques of Cluster’s Sowiesoso—the entire Krautrock scene really did seem to have been populated by visionaries and geniuses just itching to take music into the future.

And, because this is pop music after all, there were charlatans as well. But far from the disdain one might expect for the parasitic corporate interests, Cope actually loves and admires their zeal, portraying them as grand architects of their artists’ visions. In fact, where Cope saves his most effusive praise—and that’s saying something—is for not a musician at all, but one Rolf Ulrich Kaiser, owner of famed Ohr Records and brains behind the Cosmic Couriers (it is perhaps because of R.U. Kaiser’s shadiest business practices that so many records were as quickly reissued as they were upon Krautrocksampler’s publishing in 1995). Particularly inspiring is Cope’s account of Kaiser’s unauthorized release of superjam sessions he’d arranged as the Cosmic Jokers in an effort to reclaim the affections of a woman feared lost to acid-guru Timothy Leary. As Cope tells it, Kaiser’s pilfering of the recordings in his semi-insane mental state was both noble in intent and heroic in execution.

Little released in or around the wake of Krautrocksampler aspires to such heights – by comparison, Tortoise’s Millions Now Living Will Never Die today sounds positively inert. As much its own moment as a recounting of another, the book’s greatest lesson might well be that today’s would-be visionaries would be well-served by a little passion – or at the very least a greater willingness of those unencumbered by major-label contract obligation to grab hold of their freedom and take real chances. It’s hard to imagine many of Krautrock’s disciples ever doing something knowing full well of the risk in making a complete ass of oneself. Surely, Cope himself has made a career out of that lesson: I’m looking at an album sleeve right now where he looks to be wearing nothing but Ray-Bans and a diaper.

And I’m not laughing, so why should you?

2003-02-21T09:40:00.000-05:00

New-ish blog added to the links from Perfect Sound Forever contributor, Jay Hinman. 's called agony shorthand.

2003-02-10T00:49:00.000-05:00

Lou Harrison

As reported by various new agencies and the incomparable Dusted Magazine, Lou Harrison died last weekend. Aside from a vague rememberance of a Wire article recently which had amazing graphic design, as I remember, I knew nothing about the man until his death. That's when Joe Panzner IMed me on Monday night. The conversation started something like this:

Joe: Hey, you remember that composer guy I was supposed to go help bring from Chicago to Columbus?
Todd: (thinking to himself: this can't be good, is Joe OK?) yeah...what's his name...is everything ok?
Joe: Well...he died on the way here.

And so began my one week crash course in Lou Harrison's life and times with a slight break for a live show from the Blood Brothers (not bad at all). As I was talking to Joe, trying to get details into his death, I began to look at online details of Harrison's life, trying to get a feel for his relative importance or worth in the 20th century compositional world. A world that is Steve Reich, Rhys Chatham, Philip Glass, Lamonte Young, a few others, and not much else. I think the word is "tourist"?

In any case, the next few days I began to look into this Harrison fellow, found that he was known for incorporating world music into his compositions, that he worked with Schoenberg, that he was one of the first openly homosexual composers, that he was a renowned critic. And then I went to some of the concerts on campus that were held, now in his honor: chamber music- the guitar pieces sounded very similar to John Fahey (it's the only touchstone I have!), with an Asian tinge, gamelan music: the alto saxophone and a large gamelan ensemble do, in fact, work very well with one another!

And now I find that Joe had something to do with picking the pieces that were played at these concerts. I guess the point of this blog post is to smoke Joe out of his mass of work to say something acutally interesting and definitive about Lou Harrison, like I know he is capable, but these are my two cents on a composer whose work I never would have heard if it hadn't been for one of my good friends being with him upon his death. Funny how these things work...

2003-01-28T09:57:00.000-05:00

Atmosphere - "The Woman With the Tattooed Hands"

Maybe it's just me, but this song has been eating up all my listening time lately. I'll play it constantly, five times in a row, whatever, I can't get enough of it. It's got one of those slightly funky piano-driven loops in the background--you know, the kind that every rapper seems to throw on when he's gonna tell you a story. But damn, that story. The lyrics verge on the ridiculous, and I'm not really sure why they work for me, but there's something about the way he takes this bizarre-ass subject and somehow makes it poignant that really gets to me. I mean, it's about a woman with tattoos of God and the Devil on her hands masturbating--if you can get emotion out of that, you're good.

2003-01-27T16:22:00.000-05:00

It’s demanding to defeat the evil machines

PFM on the Lips/JT TotP collab. *Duh, shock, pfm’s fearless leader is lazily anti-pop/doesn’t seem to grasp the spirit of Top of the Pops/yadda yadda yadda, but is it me or is amazement/surprise/barely concealed disgust over the Justin/Lips collaboration also a colossal missing the point of just about everything the Lips have done in the past five or so years?

And: "Cry Me a River" is better orchestral pop than "Yoshimi…" anyway.

* Alternate blog entry: PFM’s ethos police remind me to boycott major-label acts who came to national prominence playing silly pop songs on teen TV…oh, and justin, too.

2003-01-21T10:30:00.000-05:00

The City’s been dead / Since you’ve been gone

Nick, thanks for the thought. Truth be told, the pre-"Change" Dismemberment Plan is exactly one of the rock bands that I’ve treasured over the past four or so years, even as I’ve began to listen to mostly non-indie sounds. I feel, like Colin says, "sad but relieved" because I’d like more bands to do something extraordinary in the present and not go on past their sell-by dates. But Nick really did nail why they mattered to so many people: The Plan, like Scritti Politti or the Talking Heads or the Clash, accomplished the trick of actually paying attention to the musical world around them and deftly mixing those sounds into their own unique worldview and incorporating it into their music. And they put on a hell of a show, too. Ed, I hope you get your wish. (edit: and I think Ed's right that this is the sort of adventure and thrills that pop music should offer, which makes the Dexy's thing that Colin mentions curious: those old new wave days seemed to be the last time that pop/rock radio offered an anything-goes approach -- even more so than the early 90s alternative days, although at first, say, 1993, that seemed to be happening.)

2003-01-20T22:51:00.000-05:00

sigh... The most depressing thing about the D-Plan disappearing is that I've never seen them live yet. I'm going to struggle as hard as I can to get to see them in the next few months, but I have this weird fatalistic feeling that, like the other times I've tried to see them, all sorts of factors will conspire against me. I'll admit to not being too excited about the next Plan record after hearing their new songs on the Net, and I'll also admit that Change didn't exactly get me excited either (though it was pretty cool), but damn I was still really upset when I heard they were breaking up.

They were (along with Modest Mouse) one of the first bands to ever get me into "indie" music. I took a chance on Emergency & I, and it blew me away--I had never heard anything so totally all-over-the-place and crazy. And though it took me A LOT longer to really get into it than it did to enjoy MM's Moon & Antarctica (the other record I bought that day), I eventually came to love the Plan even more than my other indie gateway drug. That album just seeped so slowly into my mind, it seemed like every time I listened to it I appreciated something new. There were a few songs I liked the first time around ("Back & Forth," "The City," "Spider in the Snow"--all three still surely among my favorite songs ever) and these tracks kept me coming back to the album as a whole, until eventually I was totally into it, as impressed by the depressive crawl of "The Jitters" as I was by the outright mania of "I Love a Magician." It was an album that, as I opened up to its multitude of charms, also had me opening up to all kinds of other musics I'd never explored before. Basically, the Plan was the start of my current absolute OBSESSION with music, and I told Travis as much when I interviewed him over the phone a year later. And though all kinds of people will tell me that they're crappy people, or arrogant, or obnoxious, Travis wasn't anything but nice and interesting and remarkably talkative (he gave the best replies to all my crappy questions), and I've been equally impressed by his consistent, always very human updates to the D-Plan website. The Plan has been a very positive musical force for me these past few years, and I've made it a personal mission to convert everyone I possibly can to them--and been more successful at it than I have been at pimping any other act out there; a testament to the weirdly universal appeal that these guys can have. I still say "The City" or "Spider in the Snow" or "Following Through" should have been massively popular radio hits.

Anyway, I know that was really long and rambling, and I'm sorry, I just felt the need to get all that out. Only a few days ago I was talking about what the Plan's next record might be like, and now it's a moot point. I'm surprised how sad I am about this.

2003-01-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

Open letter to The Dismemberment Plan.

I just found out The Dismemberment Plan have split up. Well, not split up, but… Ended. Finished, to all intents and purposes. Travis is going to go into the studio and record some songs. They might play some gigs together in the future. They’re going to honour the touring commitments they have at the moment. But… No new records. The Dismemberment Plan, as a creative entity, is over. The Dismemberment Plan want to take time out to do things which they have been precluded from doing by being in a band. I’m not sure what that means, specifically. Is it the old ‘spend more time with the family’ cliché? I have friends with kids, and I can understand that. It always seems to ground them and give them a sense of contentment and purpose. It’s fair enough. But my friends aren’t The Dismemberment Plan. If they were, I’d encourage them not to end it just for that. There’s no reason why the two can’t exist in parallel, or even symbiosis. There’s no-

Fuck this. Fuck reasoned thought for a moment, because if ever a band was given to little Tourette’s-like outbursts of pent-up emotion in the middle of trying to be sensible and thoughtful about something, it’s The Dismemberment Plan. This fucking sucks. Joe Strummer just died, for fuck’s sake! You can’t split up now! I’ve spent the last 6 months trying to convince people that The Dismemberment Plan’s next album is going to a; blow the back of their fucking head off, and b; unite the world in peace, love, harmony, and blissfully schizophrenic sonic freak-outs. You can’t finish it now! You’re not fucking done yet! You can’t be! You bastards! Being in England means these things go straight underneath the radar until it’s too late, always. My first thought on hearing the news? “Fuck, gotta get to DC and see them live before it’s too late!”

I read Scott Plagenhoeff’s ‘Whatever Happened To Our Rock n Roll?’ article on stylusmagazine.com about how rock was a huge, ugly, necrophiliac beast content to sit on its ass of the past and churn out stodgy, dull, safe and backward records that the public lap up like some kind of ‘60’s worshipping Pavlov’s Dog, and the first thing I thought was “fuck, he’s right, the good rock bands are few and far between, and precious few of them are great”. And the second thing I thought was “The Dismemberment Plan! We’re safe!” I’ve been meaning to email Scott for some time and suggest to him that The Dismemberment Plan are the band he was describing, the exciting, sonically precocious rock band that weren’t afraid to exist completely outside the received canon, grabbing everything they hear and mixing it up in their own music, a band who started off as a narrow post-hardcore DC group and who expanded their sound exponentially over the course of ten years until they were doing things which showed that there were roads left to be travelled in ‘indie rock’ or ‘alt rock’ or any fucking stupid, spent, lame genre of rock you care to mention. Fuck it, it’s all music. It’s just that the stuff people make with guitars these days tends to be shit. Tended to be shit. Until The Dismemberment Plan. And now, sadly, it looks as if it’ll tend to be shit again. For a while.

I was gonna talk about how the idea of The Dismemberment Plan was great, how the ‘top ten songs in the world right now’ list on their website was by itself a braver artistic statement than the recorded output of almost any other ‘rock’ band you care to mention, just because it showed that the guys obviously loved music and loved all kinds of music… I was gonna talk about how it was great that you could hear in their records how much they loved music, loved to play, loved to listen, loved to incorporate everything they heard, was gonna say that a band who took equally from Talking Heads, Fugazi, hip hop and drum n bass simply must be wonderful, never mind if they can write songs or not. And then I was gonna talk about how they could write songs and they were great songs and how they just were wonderful in actual reality, never mind how good the idea alone was…

This letter was gonna be demanding that The Dismemberment Plan don’t split up, a list of reasons, unarguable reasons, why they can’t and mustn’t split up. This letter was gonna change their minds. But… The more I think about it, the more it strikes me that really, rather than spitting fire and indignation and trying to change the minds of people I’ve never met and who don’t know me from Adam, I ought to just say ‘thank you’. Because, you know. Four albums. A promising debut. An excellent sophomore. A third album that, well, escapes and defies description and categorisation by being so eclectic and surprising and downright fucking wonderful that I am still flabbergasted as to why it isn’t given out free to people on the street in order to help them live their lives better. And a fourth album that, while not quite the shocking headfuck of the third (I mean, after that one, we were expecting greatness this time), was still awesome on every level. That’s a damn site more of an achievement than most other bands can even dream of making.

So, The Dismemberment Plan, thank you, fuck you, and good night. You were great. You really were. Maybe I’ll see you in DC some time.

Lots of love,

Nick S.

2003-01-20T00:26:00.000-05:00

The Dismemberment Plan 1993-2003

I'll jump on the "sad but relieved" train. "Some Freedom" and "Change" looked to be great, innovative songs, but "Angry Angel" and "Born In 72" were relatively lame.

When I first heard them in my own personal indie summer of 2000, I was blown away and knew from the first notes of "The Dismemberment Plan Is Terrified" that I'd found a group to add to my shortlist of favorites. I think that they rarely get the credit they deserve from their detractors. No matter how much you may hate their music, and perhaps even them as people, (as someone said) they digested everything around them, and that's everything with a capital E. Here now in 2003, you have the indie media openly accepting things like modern-day top 40 stuff like Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguliera and older "un-hip" bands like Aztec Camera and Dexy's Midnight Runners without the slightest pretense, and this is something you just didn't see 2 or 3 years ago. The Dismemberment Plan has, since their inception, openly advocated this stuff and I think that that attitude really manifested itself in everyone else around them. If not for their fantastic music, this is what they will/should be remembered for.

2003-01-19T15:02:00.000-05:00

Joe Strummer dies just before Christmas and now The Dismemberment Plan have split up. Fucking hell. This is being set up to be a really, really shitty year.

2003-01-15T01:05:00.000-05:00

Domotic- Bye Bye

Thank god for year end lists. Among the many cringe inducing and "wow, this looks like every other list I've seen", this release found its way to my ears because of a year end list on the (embarrasingly I can't remember the name right now!) site, which I know I've read somewhat often, but have failed to put in my permanent links file yet. (because, you know, I'm soo discerning- see the right side of this page, if you don't believe me!).

Parenthesis aside, this album is simple, melodic IDM that is stuff that Gavin and I would usually stick up our noses at, I think, but somehow it's worked it's way into my consciousness as something that almost defines "solid, unassuming, yet omnipresent on my playlist". I keep coming back to it, late at night, when I wake up, on the way to class. So, in all, if you like that Morr Music bizness, I highly suggest checking this thing out. It's not nearly as interested in pop as that sort of stuff, but it's the easiest/laziest signifier that I can think of right now. Maybe ISAN would be better. Whatever. Check it out and report back to me with a full analysis by Friday.

2003-01-14T00:13:00.000-05:00

Anthrax- I'm The Man

You have Sam Kinison's yell kicking this one off. Amazing, since I can't get his scene with Rodney Dangerfield in "Back to School" out of my mind ("what he cares about, I've no idea!"). They then cop some of the Move's idea of playing traditional classical melodies on the gee-tar. Yeah, the Move didn't think of it first- whatever. In any case, the line "He's never on time, he's always...sleeping?...LATE!" brings this track to a whole new level. Along with the Cold Crush Brothers it vacillates wildly between parody of the Beasite Boys (was this done before them or in response to them? I think I heard a line about Mike D, though (?)) and maybe a warning to anyone trying to cash in on this whole rhyme thing. I guess what I'd like to believe is that they're making fun of the Beastie Boys and trying to show that Run DMC, etc. is doing the right way. And god knows Rick Rubin's production style was waiting to get parodied. Gavin and I had an interesting conversation that didn't really get resolved at all regarding the roots of rap rock. What was Limp Bizkit listening to while they were in their formative years (hopefully Rush)? Was it the colloborations on the "Judgment Night" soundtrack? Gavin says Prodigy have something to do with it, but I don't really understand where he's coming from on that.

2003-01-11T01:23:00.000-05:00

Oh holy shit - I am totally and utterly fucked.

Have any of you ever been in a band? Do you remember your first gig? Well, ours is in about six weeks, and we're shooting for ten songs. Problem is, we don't really have a full band - I'm on the bass, a former Stylus writer will (hopefully) be singing for us, and another friend will be playing lead guitar. We also have a rhythm guitar player/little bitch, a nervous wreck keyboard player, and a drummer in another band on the bill, who will probably bail on us. But I'm stuck in the sort of nervous frenzy, you see: I need to do this. This is like the chance I've been waiting for. Shit, who cares that we're gonna play Pavement, Radiohead, and Flaming Lips covers: it's fucking high school students. As long as we play some of our weird Sonic Youth-gone-pubescent jamming, too, they'll shut the fuck up.

But I just can't suck. I have to do good. And I feel like everything is just falling apart. What if the other three band members/helpers bail on us? What if our lead singer decides he's too good for us, and says Fuck this, this isn't gonna be good. I just can't do that.

We're such a schizophrenic combination, the guitar player and I. Sometimes we wanna play some shitty indie pop songs about life ("I haven't been around the block / but I'm not lost yet") and bitch about the band name - which we don't have - and then we just wanna fuck around, making looped depth-charged bass feedbacks squeals, on top of incessant trumpet and guitar pickings. And some 7/8-time beatbox. We just wanna make good music, you know? I mean, shit, this Zwan single is complete utter crap - but there's no way I could make something this good. Well, I guess if I had a professional producer and mixing board, maybe ... but that's what I tell myself. You know, why can't I do this? Why am I inadequate? Fuck this writing shit. I just wanna write a song half as good as Ian Brown can. I wanna be adored.

2002-12-25T22:25:00.000-05:00

I just read Edwin Faust's year-end thoughts, and wow... basically summed up everything I could ever want to say. It's been completely puzzling me how much praise has been heaped on the Neptunes and mainstream pop/R&B lately; I can't see anything original or innovative about it either, and in a lot of cases, it just annoys me as much as the psuedo-angstful posturing of today's mainstream rock bands.

That said, I have to disagree with one point in the article: rock is most certainly not dead. Lester Bangs has been declaring it a dead form since the early 70s, and it seems like every critic since then has been eager to re-declare the form dead. But I refuse to believe that interesting, provocative things cannot still be said with rock music. Certainly, mainstream rock is in an unbearable slump, and has been for a while now, but that doesn't mean rock is dead. Maybe we'll never hear a band as good as Nirvana (or even the Smashing Pumpkins) on the radio again, but that doesn't mean that the great rock bands aren't out there. Listen to the Fire Show's last album, and tell me that they weren't doing something new and inventive with rock. On a simpler level, this year alone has seen its share of great straightforward rock bands like Hot Snakes--nothing new or inventive, but the music sounds fresh and exciting and true to the spirit of rock anyway.

Anyway, good argument in that article, I really enjoyed it. I just have quite a knee-jerk reaction to people presiding over the supposed corpse of rock music. I've heard too much good rock music in recent years to believe that stuff.

2002-12-24T10:30:00.000-05:00

Joe Strummer-- RIP: Sunday, December 22, 2002
Joining Joey Ramone, and Dee Dee Ramone,
one of punk rock's uberPioneers calls it a life.
Only 50 years old and he's gone (heart failure??)

Is it just me, or does anyone else get the feeling that
Punk's First Wave is fading away...and not burning out.

2002-12-23T11:53:00.000-05:00

Thug Lovin'

With the prevalence of thug-related songs this year (Thug Mansion, Thug Holiday, multiple Thug Loves/Luvs, et. al) it takes a little something extra to stand out. Something like Bobby Brown. Ja Rule's latest single takes full advantage of Brown's talents, not the least his notoriety.

Watching the video will give you the full picture. Brown shimmies and glides all over the set (with mobile cameras heightening the effect): his New Edition blood courses through his veins. He moves incredibly gracefully, and quickly -- his talent as a dancer is immediately obvious. But his frenetic (perhaps even spontaneous) moves work in tandem with his gruff vocal delivery. Brown sneers at the camera; his rough-hewn mouth has never looked more menacing. He's confident, arrogant. "I know you miss my lovin', thug lovin'," he growls (to Whitney?), a far more convincing thug than Ja Rule. He looks like he's on fire, like he's once again in his element. For a brief few minutes, Bobby Brown reveals himself, all the talent, charisma, menace, and tragedy collapsed into one irrepressible package. The image is startling.

Needless to say, Ja is completely upstaged.

2002-12-23T05:34:00.000-05:00

Joe Strummer RIP.

Not many finer.

2002-12-19T20:00:00.000-05:00

I find that the only thing worth listening to at Christmas is the insatiable heaving of ravenous tweenage souls as they gorge themselves on ideological filth and hyper-contemporary £apitali$t consumer detritus, today's Beyblade being tomorrow's landfil and the next day's cancer-stick.

That or a nice version or Troika.

2002-12-19T12:25:00.000-05:00

The Vince Guaraldi Trio – “Christmas Time is Here (Vocal)”

Seriously, fuck Christmas and all that—Lord knows I’ve got tons of Baudrillardian or Debordian sentiments on the topic filed away in some seldom-used (or too-often-used, too-seldom-exercised) part of my brain. But I can envision a moment where this seems to be about all that matters, musically, for me, and that moment is right now. Maybe it’s because all those involved (yes, even the kids) seem to have discovered the secret of holiday music, pre-empting the inevitable listener response by making it already sound as sad as humanly possible. There is some antiquated hi-fi grit lurking in the margins of my 330kbps mp3. Maybe it’s line noise, or radio static, or dust pressed directly into the vinyl. Whatever it is, it makes it better.

2002-12-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

I don't know, man.

I really like that Coldplay record. Maybe the reason I like it is because ... I look at it on a much different level than you do, Nick. I don't go to this record for spontaneity, much less creativity. I agree - Chris Martin probably went into the studio, said "sweeping strings here, little orchestral flushes here ..." almost like a producer would. Which is why this album succeeds in my mind - it is an incredibly well-produced and arranged stadium pop album. This is even more so apparent when it comes to the material - no one gave Martin, as Mani would say he has, "a bullshit-meter," for when his ridiculous over-the-top melodies go over the top. There is no way I will ever forgive him for that mid-section crap on this album where he simply wraps his increasingly generic melodies in piano, strings, and fake-ass Matchbox 20 guitar. I feel like I'm at a Dave Matthews Band concert or something. Everyone pull out your lighters, here come the fatties.

I know that this is exactly what's wrong with music, the heart and soul are gone, the studio apings are in ... blah blah blah. I don't care if it's not inspired. Neither are the Vines. And that shit's fun to sing along to too, as long as you don't go "oh, Cobain-in-a-bottle, how derivative is this." That's what this album is - enjoyable on that ignorant level.

But - there is a lot on this album that works. Even "In My Place," shamelessly ripping off the beginning to that Ride track, accentuates the snare drums to the front with a little mini-syncopate thrown in here and there. Those epic "yeah" harmonies work fine, but when all tracks are yanked out and the guitar is left quivering - yeah, it's a ploy to get me to cry like a baby, too bad - that's simply beautiful. "Politik," a sort of abrasiveness-for-dummies track, is fun, and ultimately rewarding simply because of that thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump guitar/high hat deal. The same goes for "God Put A Smile On Your Face," another over-produced shit on the indie world's chest. It's hard to deny a rock clang ... you know what I mean. Oh god, and those rolling pianos on "Clocks," the most beautiful studio-canned emotion I've ever heard.

I digress. Is this all there is to Chris Martin? Will he be a massive tool his entire life? I don't care man. I know you hate he's doing the wrong thing. For now, I just don't care. Go off and do your thing. Or ... someone else's thing.

2002-12-13T18:31:00.000-05:00

Some further thoughts on Coldplay...

If you excuse the pun, on a very basic level, they leave me cold. There's something depressingly average about Coldplay that I can't get over. I've heard the new album a few times, and the singles, obviously, lots more, and yet still nothing from it sticks in my head. Their songs have that quality of being both instantaneously ubiquitous and immediately forgettable. I know many other people find the songs memorable and touching and emotive, but, for me at least, they are unexciting and temporary. I remember the first time I heard In My Place in TV, and being completely struck right from the start that there was nothing about it that made me ever want to hear it again, no hookline, no groove, no level of mystery or surprise or sense of any real depth, of there being underlaying levels of meaning or passion that would be worth investigating, no sense of catharsis. And the rest of the album leaves me feeling much the same way, as did the first album. It's undeniably very pleasant, very professional, very crafted music - A Rush Of Blood even more so than Parachutes - but really great msuic, like really great art or engineering or literature, needs a sense of inspiration as well as a sense of methodical, workmanlike artisanship. It seems to me almost as if Coldplay went into the studio and said to themselves "well, if we want to write a touching ballad we should have this melody, and a chord change from major to minor, and it should get louder with more cymbals after the second chorus, and the main chorus line should be repeated many times during the crescendo, and the lyrics should be just fresh enough to be touching and just clichéd enough for people to think it's about them, and a key change just here, and we should do this, and this, and this..." in a very logical, methodical way that, while perfectly fine in many cases, and wonderous if united with a spontanaeity and inspiration, without spontanaeity and inspiration makes for very bland (in my opinion) music. Inspiration and logical method are both essential for something that's going to have lasting value and quality, just look into the recording processes for albums like What's Going On? and Spirit Of Eden and In A Silent Way, when people who understood the value of uniting both inspiration and logical method took steps towards achieving that. Equally there are lots of albums that turned out great almost by accident, like The Verve's early work, where inspiration takes free-reign over logical method, and where an outside influence (a producer) can take hold of the rampant inspiration and control it by applying logical method to structure the madness. But Coldplay... They lack, as far as I can conceive, the necessary inspiration. It's a job to them, but it should be a vocation. Fuck it, Robert Pirsig puts it a lot better than I can in Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance, go and read that and have a think about it. I don't hate Coldplay, they're just representative to me of the wrong way of doing things, which, unfortunately (or fortunately if you're Chris Martin), is a very easily accessible way of doing things. Do you ever wonder why Chris spends his interviews fretting about whether his band are any good, over whether he's doing the right thing? Because, maybe subconsciously, he knows he's not doing the right thing, not fulfilling potential, not reaching for something more than normal, not reaching for the extraordinary.

2002-12-10T18:34:00.000-05:00

Small World.

My dad's just got a Christmas card off his old boss, with the usual "how are your kids, ours are fine" type bollocks in it. Only this one says "Christopher's singing in a band and doing very well, you might have heard of them, they're called Coldplay..."

My reply - "Don't tell them I write on a website for God's sake, I gave their LP zero!"

Odd, odd, odd.

2002-12-09T15:36:00.000-05:00

Aye, I was maybe a bit hasty using hip hop as an example. I guess I've just heard that Jenny From The Block song too many times in the last month or so. To suggest that music is 'sullied' or 'ruined' by its popularity / interpolation into the mainstream isn't necessarily true - after all, there are doubtlessly still fucking loads of rock and pop artists producing great music. It's not so much about individual exponents of the artform becoming crap or producing crap, but the entire genre as a whole being sullied by practitioners and peddlers of crap, whoever they are, in whatever genre, and whyever they're doing it, from your pop muppets to your talentless but well-intentioned indieboys, your nu-metal lugheads and soulless hip hop blingers. They're out there in every genre.

2002-12-06T14:44:00.000-05:00

"Look at hip-hop..."

But hip-hop wasn't a culture working on the fringes that was discovered by and integrated into the mainstream and then ceased to exist as it once did, it was a new culture that over the past 25 or so years has gone from nothing to being synonymous with mainstream pop (esp. in the U.S.). I see your lament -- you want hip-hop to be what it once was -- but it hasn't necessarily been sullied or ruined by its popularity. I won't start that argument but underground and mainstream hip-hop cultures both thrive. I'd say its road is less an interpolation than it is a revolution -- it seems more analogous to rock's move from '55 to its dominant, album-format days appx. 10-12 years later.

2002-12-06T05:34:00.000-05:00

Culture Shock.

Every form of marginal culture is eventually interpolated into the mainstream, repackaged and sold back, both to the original members of the individual cultural group and to a much larger, more mainstream audience. This is because marginal cultures are, by their very nature, new, elite, and microcosmic in terms of their relation to general culture. Why are they always interpolated and sold back? Because culture-at-large, ie contemporary capitalist culture, is a ravenous and expanding entity which needs to feed itself with new products (cultures) and new markets (audiences). And who are the most marginal cultures? Racial / class sub-groups. Blacks, gays, the educated working class, etcetera. Look at hip-hop, originally an exclusive, reactionary, politically motivated and marginal musical form, now a huge (well, 26% less huge in the first quarter of 2002 according to sales stats) and, frankly, often grotesque caricature of itself. VW bagdes have been replaced with platinum chains, 911 Is A Joke has been replaced with Jenny From The Block. Hip hop artists no longer get roles in movies - movie stars get hip hop careers; hip hop has been interpolated in massive fashion, and is now part of the huge and disgusting capitalist culture industry. But I digress (as usual).

House music, particularly in evidence in Britain, was the most voraciously interpolated msuical culture we've ever seen, sucked out of the margins, the warehouses, and pumped into every nightclub in every town at every weekend for every silver-buckled-shoe-wearing Thomas to take drugs and have a seizure to. It's not a church for these people, is it? And if it is, do they understand the ontology of the ritual? But I'm getting all Betjamin here. Every form of popular music, blues, house, hip hop, punk, rock, started out as a marginal culture, and every form has been interpolated eventually. There is no escape for the individual or for the individual's sanctuary. This is the basis of Marxist cultural theory as expressed by Louis Althusser. Our chruches all become supermarkets in the end.

2002-12-05T20:35:00.000-05:00

Marginalization

I guess in the end what's most interesting to me about these ideas we're throwing around here is that the music seems to be always very much a huge part of a very fervent crowd's lives. Tying it into Nick's post a bit, music that is marginalized by the majority of the population can and does thrive very strongly among individuals and groups and I guess what I'm trying to uncover is some of these marginalized movements and discover the how and why they were so tightly hung onto by the people involved.

Beyond what my original post posited- what happens when the majority wants in? As dance music became more and more popular did African American gay people turn people away or become inclusive? This was their sacred space, wasn't it? I'm guessing a culture based on PLUR wouldn't be so exclusive- especially one that was already being exluded themselves? As Scott hints, the Studio54 exlcusion perhaps signaled the end for the Disco mainstream acceptance, but what happened when large groups want back in now? Or is it happening right now with teens, etc. going to raves instead of rock concerts?

As I said, I think Reynolds gets a very good handle on class issues in GE, but I don't think that race issues were necessarily, especially since, in my opinion race takes the place of class as the major issue of discrimination in America. But yeah, I'm just thinking aloud here. What do you guys think?

2002-12-05T11:47:00.000-05:00

Re: The sacred dancefloor

Todd's post immediately called to mind pre-Emancipation spirituals and shouts in slave communities. What follows is a rough rundown of the history of spiritual music in the black religious experience.

Christianity took hold in slave communities, often in spite of efforts of slave holders (who were afraid that Christianizing slaves would acknowledge that Africans had a soul, and that this acknowledgement would require them to set the Africans free). Its main appeal was that Christianity had power over both slaves and slave holders, unlike the conjuring tradition (a derivation of animism) which only held power over believers. Masters and slaves were subject to the same moral codes. Also compelling to slaves was the tale of Moses and the emancipation of the Israelite slaves in Egypt.

Thus Christian mythology merged with the spiritual traditions of Africa, which relied heavily on ritual, dance, and song (song became especially important as a means of transmission across diffuse and illiterate populations). In the future Continental United States, this manifested in the "ring shout." Call-and-response spirituals about Biblical tales (Moses being the most popular) were performed in a circle of shuffling dancing. Clapping, stomping, and banging sticks on the floor made for a rudimentary rhythm section. Lead singing would proceed counterclockwise, always with the call-and-response structure, which was supposed to induce a trance. While in the trance, worshippers would shout as a spontaneous response to being spiritually moved by the songs.

After the Great Awakening, the Christianizing of slaves became a more accepted practice. However, slaveowners feared letting slaves organize under any pretense (the aforementioned rituals were strictly clandestine). They also balked at sharing churches with slaves. The solution was to have whites minister to slave congregations. This proved unpopular with slaves, who resented the often-manipulative and cloying sermons from members of the master class. Slaves therefore developed their own system of worship in "hush harbors," which attempted to recreate evangelical services (heavily reliant on explosive proselytizing) while combining them with music, dance, and drama. This structure persisted through Emancipation. Changes began to sweep the black church after the war, as leaders began to discourage the shout as "too primitive." The spiritual chants and percussive effects were abandoned. Some congregations replaced the spirituals with European hymns.

The Pentecostal movement, a response to a desire for a more emotionally involved religious experience, revived many of the old shout traditions. Ecstatic preaching, driving music, and furious dance supposedly induced possession by the Holy Spirit. The nature of the music was repetitive, both lyrically and rhythmically, in order to encourage trance. Modern instrumentation -- piano, drums, tamborine -- were incorporated into what was called "sanctified music."

Now we come to the evolution of blues. Blues was originally dance music, influenced by the original ring shouts, where listeners "stomped out" as a form of catharsis. The songs were also a form of coping, of making personal problems communal, and therefore depersonalizing them. Blues is the first black musical form with the solo "I," emblematic of the newfound identity for freed slaves (blues originated in the late 19th Century). For a variety of reasons, blues found itself at odds with the black church. Typically, blues performances took place in jook joints, rural clubs full of drinking, gambling, and occasional violence. Blues songs often had risque themes. But perhaps most antagonistic towards the church was blues' emphasis on tough-minded resignation as a means of coping with problems. The Church stressed faith in God, rather than a reliance on self.

Modern gospel emerged as a way of bringing sanctified music into the mainstream black chuches. Thomas Dorsey organized the first gospel choir in the 1930s and composed over 400 gospel songs. He trained several female singers -- Willie Mae Ford, Sally Martin, Mahalia Jackson -- in his style. Gospel was controversial at first -- church leaders accused Dorsey, a former blues writer and pianist, of trying to bring the blues into the church, a valid point as his music showed a considerable blues influence. More threatening perhaps was the fact that Dorsey's missionaries were female at a time when female preaching was strictly forbidden.

Gospel proved irresistable however, as it drew from the basis of black spirituality in America. By the end of the 1930s, gospel was accepted as legitimate in the eyes of the church. Gospel choirs are ubiquitous in black churhces throughout the country, and many aspects of the original shout -- clapping, rhythmic dancing, call-and-response -- continue today in both choirs and congregations. Even the shout itself -- the spontaneous exclamation of overwhelming spiritual feeling -- exists in a modified form, as congregations are encouraged to stand, shout praises, weep, and dance.

2002-12-05T05:18:00.000-05:00

"Look at it this way; religion and pop music were both always trying to achieve the same thing, namely synaesthesia, sublimation, the overwhelming of the senses and the subsequent loss of the ego leading to communal euphoria, release, joyous catharsis. Whether you get it in a church, in a sweaty moshpit, in the rush of heroin down your spine, standing on a mountain top, at the moment of orgasm; that sense of divine release, of no longer clutching hang-ups and neuroses to your chest as if they were you rather than just your problems, the loss of identity in a rush of something greater than yourself… That sense of the sublime is the thing that we’re all, maybe, secretly looking for..."

All human cultures (which is a slightly sweeping statement but there is plenty of research and theory to suggest this is true [anthropological, theological, philosophical, cultural, even {consider Dawkins} biological]) are looking for this sense of "[many] personalities becoming one personality," the whole concept of religion is based around this sublimation of individual humanity into something greater than itself (ie; the godhead). Cultural religions and cultural products are in this way analogous; think of going to a cinema, a stage play, a sporting event - not just nightclubs, not just live gigs, not just music (though music, perhaps, is [for us and people like] the cultural medium that most fully realises this phenomenon). Everytime you become part of an audience, part of a crowd, you engage in the activity of sublimation of yourself, consciously or, more likely, subconsciously, only the godhead of the activity is altered - no longer are we sublimating ourselves to a God or deity but to a godhead be it a film, a song, an entire event. Authorship in this context becomes almost irrelevant because it could equally be Mozart or Ronaldo or Luc Besson who takes us out of ourselves but it is the THING, the event, not the performer or creator or executor of the event itself, that has importance. In a church it is not god who causes euphoria, it is the event of worship, the singing, the prayer, the forgetting-of-your-'self'. I'm drawn to the last time I saw The Flaming Lips, and Wayne Coyne's exhortation of the audience to scream louder and louder for the last song because it is not the songs or the band or whatever that excites us, it is the people and the event - "science has shown that the most exciting sound a human being can hear is other human beings being excited" - because that is the point of sublimation. Theatre, pantomime, carnival, sport, live music, even, on a microcosmic level, sex. Listening to music alone, is, again microcosmically, the same thing, immersion of your-'self' within something else. It's the reason we watch films, read books, play sport. Maybe it's the only path to joy (which is why right-wing economics is inhumane!). Depression is a very insular thing because it is the opposite of sublimation of the self, like Sartre's existentialism (but not Heidegger's) it is the over-emphasis of the self to the level of exclusion of the external (Heidegger's concepts of authenticity and dasein suggest, to me at least, something akin, in a skewed, western way, to Tao, or Buddha [the realisation of the Godless godhead of any culture]). To deny ourselves that sublimation is to deny something of what it means to be human, maybe. You read John Betjeman's 'Slough' and see his criticism of the mindless, thoughtless society around him, and yes, he's right that drunkards and fools in provincial nightclubs (the US equivalent, maybe, of the midwest [the piece of America that most non-Americans are unaware of in terms of our Platonic understanding of the essence of America, but which, ironically, most Americans actually consider to be the heartland whether that is a good or bad thing]) looking for sex and beer (and sublimation, subconsciously?) are inhumane on one level, animalistic in their quest to lose themselves, to forget about the world and their worries, to "dance and drink and screw" as Jarvis Cocker put it, but then you see some of Betjeman's last words, sitting atop a hill in his wheelchair, asked if he regretted anything about his life and he says "yes, I wish I'd had more sex," the classic intellectual's tacit, perhaps unknowing, admission that he wished he had sublimated more, he wished he had sought more joy, he wished he had been able to bridge that gap between himself, the observer and chronicolor of life, and the ugly, base people of 'Slough', those who are life, or, more pertinantly, Robert Pirsig's romantic/classic split and quest to unite that split by finding quality, the godhead, the buddha, the tao (in Heidegger's case dasein, in Nietzsche's the superman, in Christ's case the father [which is where Christianity went wrong, naming itself after one man, because the trinity is then forgotten and the most important piece of it is lost, the holy spirit, which is quality, or tao, or dasein, and is not external to us or the world but is the moment at which we are in the world, is the interface if we can find it and not define it or conquor it or even understand it but just realise it, and it is in every religion I know of and every non-religion too and simply has different names and faces given unto the same essence]), the secret of our selves and our existence, which is the quest that all of us are on. Only we spend our time looking for one individual special answer that is exact and precise and unique, and it is not that at all, it is something much much bigger than that, it is everything.

I've gone off-topic slightly.

2002-12-04T00:51:00.000-05:00

The Church of We

Todd: Yes, you're right, dance has of course been used in rituals and religions for centuries, but w/in modern dance culture -- from Northern Soul to the early days of disco to rave -- it has often been considered communal and spiritual. And, yes, you are correct that has been most often in house, which is what I assume is being referenced in the quote you provide. (Disco is more characterized with post-Stonewall gay liberation, but it wasn't limited to the "African-American Gay Community" -- New York was much more permissive of homosexuality than the rest of the country, although obviously these were the first steps of the pride movement, and disco itself was very inclusionary and even utopian, in a way. In its earliest days places such as David Mancuso's The Loft were built on ideals of love and community and the like. Mancuso's unofficial theme was "The Message of Love" by MFSB. All the more sadly ironic then that, despite its massive popular appeal, disco eventually became so exclusionist at the top, with the velvet-rope decadence of Studio 54 as its defining image to most and anti-hedonism as much of a catalyst for Steve Dahl's Disco Demolition night as anti-authenticity and the unspoken but very real racism and homophobia.)

I'd mention, too, that another one of New York's major early discos was an old church called The Sanctuary, but Dahl's stunt -- which took place in Chicago's Comiskey Park -- neatly (finally!) leads to my point: Chicago House. The anti-disco sentiment that boiled over to Disco Demolition was the attitude in which Midwestern Gay Blacks would have lived, even as disco was the nation's most popular music. So when DJs such as Ron Hardy and Frankie Kunckles (a childhood friend of Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, Knuckles moved to Chicago from NYC where he had seen disco's early days -- I think to fill in for Hardy's DJ spot) began to spin in Chicago, it was something thrilling and new.

Actually, the section of house music in the excellent Last Night a DJ Saved My Life begins with Knuckles comparing the experience to church:

" 'For me it's definately like church," [Knuckles] explained. "Because, when you've got 3,000 people in front of you, that's 3,000 different personalities. And when those 3,000 personalities become one personality, it's the most amazing thing. It's like that in church. By the time the preacher gets everything going, or that choir gets everything going, at one particular point, when things start peaking, that whole room becomes one, and that's the most amazing thing about it.'

In Chicago, as the seventies became the eighties, if you were black and gay your church may well have been Frankie Kunckles's Warehouse, a three-story factory building in the city's desolate west side industrial zone. Offering hope and salvation to those who had few other places to go, here you could forget your earthly troubles and escape to a better place. Like church, it promised freedom, and not even in the next life. In this club Frankie Knuckles took his congregation on journeys of redemption and discovery."

The church parallels are also helped because it was, at its start, a weekly event: Knuckles would spin from Saturday night until Sunday mid-day and at the start, the same crowd -- or congregation, if you like -- ("as many as 2,000 people -- mostly gay, nearly all black") would generally attend.

2002-12-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

Dance Music

I was reading some articles for my History of Same-Sex Sexuality class last evening and a most interesting one caught my eye and made me do some thinking. Since the blog can be used for failed ideas and theories let me recount where I went with it.

Some background: the article was entitled "Feeling the Spirit in the Dark: Expanding Notions of the Sacred in the African American Gay Community" by E. Patrick Johnson and it detailed a club, which ostensibly was like many others, during what I gathered to be the apex of the DJ set the DJ interrupted a house track with his own preaching- talking about remembering brothers and sisters who aren't with us anymore, and he said "Thank Him! He kept you safe over the dangerous highways and byways. Thank Him!...Grace woke you up this morning! Grace started you on your way! Grace put you your food on your table!" and this goes on ending in climax to an old folk church song "Ninety-nine and a Half Won't Do". The main thing about this theological dance floor was that it was inclusive to gay African Americans when the traditionally black churches were definitely not (or so Johnson claims). A discussion in the class today revealed that don't seem to be ostracized publicly as much as Johnson seems to relate in his article.

Anyway, my question/theory to all on this blog and other people reading this thing is have other people written and talked about the sacredness of the dance floor/dance floor as religious space? I believe in Generation Ecstasy that Reynolds talks a little more about class issues than sexuality in relation to dance music- but I haven't read it in a while, so I may be forgetting some of the early chapters in there. It seems like there was a definite taking back of house and disco to gay clubs in the early 80s after disco was pushe to the fringe of society (especially the Midwest), so I'm thinking that what a club became is a sanctuary for both the music and the gay African American to thrive where they could not.

I have to believe this has been written about elsewhere, though. Can someone point me there, please?

2002-11-29T19:29:00.000-05:00

Restate My Assumptions

A hugely entertaining, insightful blog that I notice is not in our links. I'm sure I stumbled upon this searching for something on Marcello Carlin's almost peerless blog, The Church of Me which, sad to see, does not have its archive up at the moment. (Sad, in particular, because this holiday weekend I finally have time to give it the attention it deserves.) Anyway, Dan Emerson is the name of the fellow who runs this post's titular blog and he has a fresh, honest writing style -- and loves Dexy's Midnight Runners, to boot -- so you guys should check him out.

2002-11-27T19:24:00.000-05:00

Random thought (and my first blog entry)

Did you ever completely change your opinion of a band after seeing them live? I've been listening to Explosions in the Sky a lot lately, and it occurs to me that before I saw them in concert, I had completely dismissed them as somewhat bland GYBE!/Mogwai rip-offs who brought nothing original to the table. And well, in a way I guess they sort of are like that. But I've been enjoying their album a lot anyway, and I'm wondering if it's maybe just because of the incredibly intense and passionate show they put on, or if I've just given it a chance to sink in.

Either way, the rumors are true: they're fantastic live, and they ain't bad on record either.

2002-11-25T20:47:00.000-05:00

Follow-Up

A few months ago (well, maybe many months ago), I posted a little thought on Obie Trice, Eminem's new protege (after Royce da 5'9" and D-12 -- man, he really wants his true hip-hop credibility from Black America, doesn't he?)... and I just wanted to mention how his new song is totally and amazingly bitching. It features the small little sample from "Without Me"... and I wanted to recommend it to you guys. The 8 Mile soundtrack itself isn't bad, and I hear good things about the movie, too....

Well, off to go listen to Black Moon. Oh yeah. Black Moon.

2002-11-25T14:19:00.000-05:00

"The Tide Is High"

Attn: Nick and Todd. The Blondie version is also a cover. (maybe that's not news to Nick.) Original was by rocksteady group the Paragons. Two of them are ace and one is not. No points for guessing which is the odd one out!

Thx, Todd, for reminding me that I need to do my own FT Focus Group Ballot.

2002-11-25T10:38:00.000-05:00

RE: OKGo....I love it when reviewers disagree!
Makes for such juicy discussion!

Because, I happen to fully and greatly approve of the Quirky Jerky Boys from Chicago!

The anthemic and MTV-ready "Get Over It" ingeniously plays up on the popular big arena sound, mixed with the high energy delivery of currently hot bands like the Hives, Strokes, etc....but, deeper within the disc, OKGo goes for camp and fun..and a little bit of something not so ordinary...On Purpose.What's wrong with that?

I've seen a couple of their live shows and the audience completely gets it.Kulash is a madman on stage, flailing about singing beyond his range, and having a hell of a time giving the people what they want. He sings with a sincere, tongue-in-cheek modality that keeps you guessing...
does he mean what he says?
does he say what he means?
Who knows? Who cares?

I've seen the guys use a cowbell and switch instruments with comical results..hell, it's only rock n roll..why not have fun with it?

Also, I've had the awesome opportunity to interview Kulash recently. In person, he is the most sincere, open, and upfront person you'd ever meet.Yeah, the man is a bit too smart for his own good and turns even the simplest question into a full-fledged philosophical debate--with himself, no less!

He talks too much (self admitted) and thinks too much..so, I'm guessing, this goes a long way towards explaining why the music of OKGo is filled with paradoxes.
Because, Kulash will be the first one to admit that even he doesn't know what it all means...it's all good fun.

From a purely musical standpoint, the band is well aware of their 'sound'. They 'intend' to sound like Queen, and Adam Ant and Cheap Trick. A band that covers Toto's "Hold The Line" and 'means it' understands full well that they are going to be labeled quirky and irreverent. It's all fun.It's all good.

The first version of their debut came off as too artsy..too smart, so the band intentionally dumbed it down..so the story goes. Good choice, bad choice?...Hard to say.
But, OKGo has talent to burn and once they're ready and secure enough to show it, they will.

For now, they're having a helluva blast just playing around.

2002-11-23T13:57:00.000-05:00

With the recent wave of "indie retro" bands slowly losing fuel (The Strokes, Hives, et al.), I find myself harkening back to the days of yore in 2000. One certain retro-styled group, Air, caught my attention with the Virgin Suicides score. What a fantastic album. Sly, understated, and often creepy, this Bacharach-lite music brings an element to pop music that seems to be MIA. It expands on his obvious symphonic and piano elements, but adds distinct minor key organ tones, trippy spaced-out drums, and at times, some wailin' guitar solos. It's more than background music, more than makeout music, it's introspective, plaintative, and the, well "airy" feel makes for a satisfying listening experience. And besides, that totally bitchin' video for "Playground Love" has a singing piece of gum - perfect for the swank mood. I know everyone loves Moon Safari (rightfully so), but what does everyone think of this almost completely instrumental album?

2002-11-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

Us Against Them

Going through links today and I noticed that this site is back in order. Cool. Also added some random stuff, the most exciting thing obviously being Simon Reynold's blog entitled Blissblog.

2002-11-20T08:48:00.000-05:00

I don't know if the news has reached America yet, but last night in germany Michael Jackson waved a baby out of a hotel window by it's neck in front of thousands of fans. Uri Geller reckons Jacko is a good parent because he wants to "bring his kids to Exeter." The rest of the world thinks Jacko is a loon 'cos he waved a baby (his baby?!) out of a window over a balcony. By its NECK.

The world is so mad it hurts.

2002-11-20T03:56:00.000-05:00

The Streets...

From the point of view of an English person who is the same age as Mr Skinner and who has lived (albeit for only three years) in the post-industrial pre-culture that is the English midlands (Mr Skinner being, I believe, from Birmingham), I can safely say that I have been in those pubs and clubs and kebab shops that he talks of. Maybe not the same precise ones, but wherever you are geographically in this spiritually-impotent youth-culture, you have those experiences, great nights that are unplanned and involve just a few mates mates round a table with some beer, big nights out that end in bathos and near-disaster, situations where you feel threatened, situations where you feel threatening, days on end when you don't wanna do anything, caught in relationships you don't know if you wanna be in, but you don't wanna be out of either. Skinner's gift is taking those moments and capturing them near-perfectly in terms of his lyrics, and his unsentimental and un-whining delivery add a sense of regret and poignancy that, say, Coldplay, are striving for really fucking hard, but don't get because they're too busy being 'sensitive' and so on, while Skinner knows full well that sometimes he doesn't want to 'love' a woman or be good to her, sometimes he just wants to fuck her and leave, and he knows full well that he's fallible and male and weak and shitty and his head will turn when a pretty girl goes by even if he's desperately in love with someone at that very moment. Plus he's done it all with great arrangements and tunes which are, and this is THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT, very enjoyable.

So there.

2002-11-20T02:04:00.000-05:00

The Streets

Roxanne, I probably won't be reviewing it, as Scott has already done so for the site.

Here's the link for his take on it. After you've read that, I have this to add (because I agree a lot with what Scott says about the album:

For lack of a better analogy right now, I'd have to compare Mr. Skinner to a young Bob Dylan. This is a guy taking the constraints of a certain genre, tilting them on their head and beginnning to craft into this own image. I'd have to say that being American it may have taken me longer to get into this album because of the inherent references to all things English here. But when it hit- it hit. Skinner talks about being bored and lazy and playing Playstation and then he talks about missing his girlfriend because he couldn't be arsed to remember when they were going to meet or arsed to get up and go. This is the type of stuff that, at 20 years old, I'm sure any kid can relate to (I'm so bored/I have so much to do duality of adolescence). What's obviously great besides the authentic lyrics is that here is a truly British MC- not one aping off stylistically or subject wise from Americans, which has been the big problem with English hip hop, supposedly. I'm guessing a lot of critics feel that this album is going to be a door opener for a whole lot of British MC's to throw their hat in the game and establish a cultural and national identity- just like the American New York rappers did back in the day when their rhymes were very much involved with the politics and racism of the time.

If you're still unconvinced, maybe this message board thread will help. It's pretty obvious judging by the responses that you're not alone. I think it may be a case of critically acclaimed, publicly ignored, especially in the United States where there would seem to be little to no market for an authentic British rapper.

Side note: I helped push Original Pirate Material to number one at my college radio station two weeks running. Hooray (?)

2002-11-19T10:39:00.000-05:00

Todd...You're listening to The Streets...Original Pirate Material....
will you be reviewing it, or can you just blog us
and let us know what you REALLY think?
I've been hearing reactions that range from
'this is really great stuff',
to 'this crap is redundant and uninspired'...
I'm really really interested to know YOUR take.
Personally, I listened to it a few times
and I'm not much impressed.
I dig the house/underground garage beats,...
some of the phrasing
and rap cadence smacks with moments of nuance
(the dude's british, afterall!),
but on the whole, it ain't the greatest....
Maybe I'm missing the point....?

2002-11-18T06:48:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Chris' Diary article, I've decided to post this extract from a short story I wrote a couple of years ago while addled with drink and drugs at university. It's about a bloke who can fly, but this particular piece deals with working in a record shop and being a miserable misanthropic romantic fool.

For more self-indulgent toss, see www.lushalcoholsaint.co.uk

I thank you...

--------I used to harbour vague ambitions of one day being a singer songwriter, someone in that sensitive, intriguing tradition, Nick Drake, Neil Young, even Bowie, I suppose, through to more modern artists like Jeff Buckley. However, not being blessed with any discernible vocal talent beyond a deep and rather erratic rumble of a voice (to be sensitive you need to be able to do falsetto, definitely), and despite various attempts to play guitar, I'd never even been able to pick up even the rudiments of playing a tune, so I guess that dream's gone west. I am good at listening to music, though. Very good. And I am, very literally, selling records now. They're just not mine.
--------But music doesn't really mean as much to me now as it used to. I thought I'd never, ever say that. I'm quite hurt that I've admitted it, actually, because for a long time music was what made me feel better about things. But I can't sit around waiting for people to release records just so that I can carry on being alive. I'm not going to find revelation in a record anymore, and I'm not sure that I ever did when I was a teenager, because what I think of as revelation these days is far different to what I used to think it was.
--------People hand me a CD, and it's always CDs, noone buys vinyl these days except DJs and tapes have all but died out, and I scan the barcode. I swipe the electronic tag to neutralise it, I say £15.99 please, I take their money, I give them change, I send them on their way, knowing that they're convinced that what they've just shelled out on is going to change their world. And also knowing that it probably won't, certainly not in the long term.
--------I'm tempted, quite often, to tell people what I think of what they're buying, but something (decency, maybe?) always, without fucking fail, stops me from opening my mouth. Even though, it really is against my better judgement.

--------This band is talentless, their tunes are awful.
--------This record's badly produced and it sounds like shit.
--------These pretty chancers are just recycling Swedish pop from before you were born, little girl, and by getting to Number One they're debasing and devaluing our culture.
--------Pete fucking Waterman wants you to buy this record and he's a git so don't.
--------And it's crap too.
--------The lyricist here doesn't ever deal with real human emotions, so the chances are that by listening to his pseudo-intellectual statements, you'll start to become very uncomfortable with your own feelings and push them away from yourself, until you end up a hollow wreck of a human and unable to communicate meaningfully.
--------Jazz should be listened to live, for fuck's sake.
--------He's an actor, and not a very good one at that. What makes you think he can sing?
--------Their first album was ace, but by buying their fourth you're just funding the singer's ridiculous cocaine habit and delicate ego.
--------You think this record will change your life, but it won't, you'll just take drugs while listening to it and convince yourself that you'll achieve something tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes, you lazy piece of indulgent shit.
--------These people like to make you think they're sincere and revolutionary, but their bosses at Sony sell guns to children in Ghana and therefore this band are responsible for people dying, and you're buying their fucking record off me, so that makes us responsible too, how dare you put me in this situation, you black-nail-varnish wearing freak? You know nothing.

--------Those last two I really, really have to stop myself from saying to people almost every day. Why? Because the people I want to say it too think they know better. They think they're somehow not a part of all the nasty shit that goes on in the world, but if they knew that they were funding it… Well, they'd wish they could fly away, I suppose. One day I'll tell one of them the truth. Well, what I think is the truth, anyway. In the meantime…
--------I'd like to say, It dawns on me, but dawn is a hopeful, new beginning and what I'm realising right now isn't hopeful, new, or positive in any way. But it's still there, I'm still realising it.
--------I am partially responsible for the perpetuation of evil and exploitation and ignorance and hatred in the world.
--------And I'm only getting paid £5 a fucking hour to live with this knowledge.
--------Something's wrong somewhere down the line.
--------Is it any wonder that I don't listen to music much anymore?
--------But I still think and feel, somewhere deep in the back of my head and the bottom of my heart, that if I could only conquer the guitar and the keyboard (beyond my childhood excellence at chopsticks) and somehow stretch my larynx, that I could find the magic chord, the words that reveal the truth, and I could change the world into a better place with just one song.
--------Never gonna happen.
--------But, although I'm never gonna change the world with music, I can still fly, and that's a pretty fucking big achievement, really. If I could teach the world to fly, rather than sing, would that make it a better place?
--------After all, if I can fly, why the hell shouldn't other people to be able to? Why aren't other people flying already?
--------That thought's never crossed my mind before. Strange. I've never, ever considered that anyone else on this planet might be able to flap his or her arms and float away, swooping on the breeze. Maybe some people do it all the time, but just keep hush about it because of what might happen if non-flyers found out? What if everyone else in the world can fly, and they've tried to keep it a secret from me because they don't think I deserve to fly, and I just discovered it by fluke? Or, even worse, what if I was right to think that noone else can fly at all, and I'm the only one, and what if one day they do find out and try to stop me?
--------What if I really am all alone in this thing, not just through my own choice by flying well away from people and towns, but because noone else can or will ever be able to fly?
--------What if I'm just dreaming the whole damn thing?

--------I scan another CD single by some boy-band who look like they've been genetically spliced from Take That's faeces, and I hand it back to the young girl, who desperately wants to be much older than she is, in a plastic bag that won't decompose until her great-great-grandchildren are dying of atmospherically induced asthma and cancers caused by genetically modified foods as they reach 200 years of age. Buying this record won't make these computer-enhanced monkeys love you or give you babies so you can get a council flat, I think. They don't even know you exist, and they don't care. Just feed their bosses your pocket money.
-------- "It won't make you happy," I say, but she's gone before she can be infected by my cynicism. My head hurts and I want to go home.

2002-11-15T15:39:00.000-05:00

Tatu- Not Gonna Get Us

Absolutely incredible. This song races through and reminds me a lot of the Run Lola Run songs featuring Franka Potente. The best part about this song is the chorus when the song's production gets too thick and gooey.

The lead singer reverts back to her mother tongue, undoubtedly UNABLE to find the words in English for her passion for her lover.

Reminds me vaguely of a bad sitcom where the girl can't remember the name of the guy she is currently dating, so i the throes of abandon she reverts back to her old lover's name.

Obviously one of the top ten singles of the year for me. I'm still not going to forget "Dirrty" though!

2002-11-14T20:33:00.000-05:00

Whoa. Looks like someone has been reading their Lester Bangs books. ;)

In any case, Sam insisted I listen to the aforementioned track and, yes, indeed, it's fantastic.

Welcome to the staff, Sam.

2002-11-14T19:50:00.000-05:00

Ah, my very first "blog" as a member of the Stylus crew. Better make this bad-ass and simultaneously indierific.

Dudes, you want to know something awesome? The Essex Four... or actually, Three... are back, and they've got a new anonymous 7" passed to XFM and BBC1. Blur are back from the brink, without Graham Coxon, and in this new Big Willie Orbit-produced track (that may or may not be on the new album), have reentered another stage of bold reinvention - it's a long way from "End of a Century" my friends.

Wanna know where to hear this? This should be the place to go, and at 19:09:00, Steve Lamacq introduces something to blow your mind.

You want minimalist techno? You want throbbing drum beats, a waning synth drone, guitar gurgles and an understated Albarn vocal? half-assed politics? You want a sound unlike anything ever from Blur? Motherfuckers, you're at the right place. After the harsh verse, Albarn comes in with a sweeping vocal - "Don't Bomb When You're The Bomb" is the title of this record, and when he repeats this over a thumpin' Alex James bass and a trippy Rowntree drumbeat, you've got a renewed sense of hope for this band.

Here's to hoping the "Fatboy Sessions" are half as good as this bugger from Orbit (the producer of the last album, 13) - and that Blur continues along this challenging and exciting road on the upcoming record. And that they tour America. Please tour America, buds.