if eyes could puke

WHEN MATES MAKE BOOKS/RECORDS (slight return)



Stubbs got a new book out

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interview with recording artist Woebot by recording artist Connect_icut

"As soon as I turn off the tape, he literally runs away"

my 1993 interview with the Aphex Twin (a Quietus/Rock's Back Pages co-production)

i was toying a while back with doing the 51 to 100 Albums of the 2000s as a follow up to this and one thing that occurred to me was how nobody anywhere even mentioned the Analord series--granted, a sprawling mass of material that few beyond diehards would have heard every last bit of, but still - at least in part, a splendid return to form.... and as per comments in this vintage interview, a lot of it uncommonly emotional electronica, pensive and introspective

Mr T, the Dreckmeister

niiiiiice mix by oneohtrix point never

used to love this song as a boy, seem to recall it as one of the first singles i really followed on the radio

hearing it again here impelled me to download half a dozen of E.L.O.'s Seventies LPs, but about half way through Out of the Blue i started to feel like i had eaten a whole plate of meringues

this one though is pretty Rainbow Dome Musick-y in places



reminded me that there's a couple of surprisingly plastique-fantastique electronic music bits in the otherwise atrocious Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band movie -- don't think any of them make into the trailer below, which otherwise gives you a flavour of what's in store should you ever chance upon on this folly on cable like i did a few months ago



ah perhaps this is the bit i'm thinking of, or one of them



this is what dEbruit and that nu-fonk lot wish they were like

5th World Music from Oneohtrix Point Never's imminent Returnal

Oneohtrix Point Never "‡PREYOUANDI∆" from Megazord on Vimeo.

tasty sampler of sounds from Ekoplekz (that's Nick Gutterbreakz) at Pontone

ace jungle 94-96 mix from kode9

only goes to affirm

the

absolute

irrelevance

of the

hardcore continuum

to present day

musical

concerns



innit!



as does this



(ruffage alert courtesy Matos ) (grrrrrrrreat use of diva-vocal samplidge in that tune)

>>>>>>>>>>blissblog exclusive<<<<<<<<<<

preview of artwork for the new Fleet Foxes album!

Here's my profile of Ariel Pink for Los Angeles Times

And as it happens, Blissblog will be moving offices to Los Angeles at the end of this month.

It's a daunting undertaking, moving a staff of four and all their equipment to the other side of the country. But it's an exciting development. Sad as we'll be to leave New York and our local associates, it's been almost sixteen years now that the organisation has been based here. Change brings new opportunities and new challenges*. Both are to be embraced.








* Such as... learning to drive

bonus mix, courtesy of Carl

Daniel at Devil Can You Hear Me with twin post on Journey and Politically-Conscious Kitsch

There must be tons of the latter, with yes, metal particularly rich and ripe.

But--I have feeling this one beats all comers.







the children-as-skeletons! Helen the Urethra Franklin-wannabe backing singer caterwauling!

play all three versions simultaneous, i dare you, and try to hold down your lunch

spoilt for choice, there's a load of mimed PAs from European TV shows in 1985, different costumes/backdrops, each more putrid to look at than the last, and then a subgenre of fan re-edits with Iraq War imagery

Scott P from Pitchfork joins in the Journey discussion

Zone Styx says "I thought it was in the uk charts & collective mental jukebox largely
because it featured prominently on latest X Factor, as the calling card of the kid who ended up winning it.... but it looks like that came after Glee used it, so probably Glee gets all the credit... altho - also true that the X factor winner said he chose it because it was a local anthem when he was growing up in Newcastle...my theory is it's always been very cheap/easy to license, so it's
ended up on every bargain best-of-the-80s, service station Drivetime
Classics comps"

i don't remember ever hearing it ever until I moved to America, and even then it was quite a while after i got here. Before Journey, the Massive Uplifting Rock Anthem Everybody Secretly Likes spot was filled by Aerosmith's "Dream On", which now seems to faded away.



Maybe it's the irredeemable kitsch of things like the below, which i saw on VH1 Classic the other day, that knocked Aerosmith off the Stadium Rock It's Okay To Like Pedestal



more suggestions for Political Consciousness Kitsch and Protest Schlock please!

maybe i'm just thick

but i cannot tell the difference between

["doctored" version]

“I wasn’t trying to be like Bono. He’s not from Africa — I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’ The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did.”

versus

["journalistically ethical" rendering]

"The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did…". M.I.A. added at a later point in our conversation. "I wasn’t trying to be like Bono. He’s not from Africa — I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’"

Can someone who is good with language tell me what I am missing here?

ooh look



cue 1000 word blog-thesis from It's Her Factory

Janelle Monae must be pissed though...





(Funny thing about Monae though is she has all the science fiction lyrics, but the actual music is neo-soul, R(etro) & B, 1960s biznizzzz)

Journey were a band that never meant shit in the UK, so I was really taken aback to see "Don't Stop Believin'" in the charts there a few months ago, and just generally puzzled by the emergence of that song to universal anthem status so long after the fact (the prominent featuring of it in Glee is a response to that re-emergence, which has been building for years, at least in America). Matos has a theory as to why and how.

"A Jackson Scrimmage Event"

there's this funny little reggae/dancehall show on late night cable in the New York area, commercials for hair parlors in Bushwick with the production qualities of a cinema ad circa 1978, bling-wannabe videos with a clothes change every 15 seconds except the clothes are kinda dowdy... And the other week they played this:



Must have got the idea from "Paper Planes" presumably, but this uses a much bigger slice of "Straight to Hell". Indeed on the Myspace the song has "Prod. by The Clash" after it. (Another song is "Prod. by Sigur Ros"!!).

Shame about the sanctimonious video narrative though.

another fab Pontone mix in their Spectral Cassettes seris

"It's kind of clear from reading her interviews and listening to her music that she is much more about turning tragedy into fashion than she is about educating people on the nuances of foreign policy"-- that's the words on a MIA supporter on ILM.

Incredibly tenacious aren't they, MIA fans? Yet also evasive, endlessly conceding ground.

They remind me of Palinistas.

Just will not be budged from this initial cathexis they made. Won't hear a bad word, or rather, work hard at making excuses for the bad words said. Such agile apologetics and virtuoso-level casuistry* has rarely been seen.

The line now under development is "of course pop stars talk drivel about politics, of course they're all about empty gestures and sensationalism and pointless provocation. That's what makes it pop, what makes it good pop actually. It's pop music, what did you expect?"

One more time...

"It's kind of clear from reading her interviews and listening to her music that she is much more about turning tragedy into fashion than she is about educating people on the nuances of foreign policy"

That's actually harsher than my original 2005 take. And that's where the fans's, the supporters's, heads are at now.

The music and the video to "Born Free" made me realise she's a sort of Noam Chomsky version of Sigue Sigue Sputnik, riding the ghost of Suicide even more blatantly than Tony James & Co did.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

* casuistry expertly dissected here by Seb