... and I'm off into the promo storm for Retromania's UK launch
a reminder of the next week-and-a-bit's events:
June 2 / 6.45 pm / ICA / London
"Over and Over and Over and Over": a panel discussion at the Institute of Contemporary Arts about retro in pop culture and the arts, chaired by Rob Young and featuring Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Caroline Evans,and SR. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 5 / 4 pm / Stoke Newington Literary Festival / London
"Juke Box Fury": panel discussion about music journalism hosted by Richard Boon and featuring Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray, Lucy O'Brien, and SR - panelists play and riff about the song that made them want to be a music journalist in the first place. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 6/ 7 pm / The Faber Social / London
Debut night of new Faber-hosted event series at the Heavenly Social, 5 Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JD. Conversation between David Peace and Richard T. Kelly, plus readings from Peace and Kelly. Conversation about Retromania between SR and Bob Stanley. Musical interludes provided by SR. Admission on the door £5. More information and ticket reservations here
June 7 / 7 pm/ Waterstones Deansgate / Manchester
Discussion about Retromania between John Robb and SR at Waterstones, 91 Deansgate, M3.
^^^^^^^^^
update info about UK events at http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/
and via twitter: www.twitter.com/simonretromania
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
it's been pointed out that i've not done one for ages
bit busy at the mo as you can imagine so substantive comment is beyond me
but these are they that have been tickling the eardrums these past... well, it's several months isn't it... half a year, almost!
FEELING
Emeralds-man McGuire's miscellany on Mego, plus first two releases from other-Emeralds-dude's via-Mego imprint Spectrum Spools. Particularly like the Bee Mask (although a good friend who knows a thing or too about synths sez this kinda analog-whizzjizz can be reeled out by the yard... i take his point, very well --there's a real post-Onehotrix-flood-- but i do think there's enough "compositional" structuration type stuff going on here to withstand a concentrated listen)
"i can hear everything... it's everything time" say Gang Gang Dance via a (sampled?) intermediary at the start of Eye Contact--and yet, not to take away the 5th worldist digi-pertinence, but surely it's been "everything time" in music for a goodly while? definitely since the 90s (transglobal ethnotechno blather a-go-go)... but also since the 80s (when 4th World was coined by Hassell)... but also, really, since the 70s (the period in which Hassell was formed, in a context of fusion, Don Cherry, Miles, "One World" music, Can)... all that's changed, digi-wise, is that is so much easier, it takes less effort and expense to "fill your head with culture". good album though!
(apropros of nothing i was rather surprised to find myself really enjoying M.I.A.'s last album when i finally got around to hearing it, and in particular loving one track, which reminded vaguely of my fave track on Saint Dymphna, "Dust".
i blow hot and cold on 2562, which tends to = "lukewarm", but this one, based entirely on shards taken from a single disco track if i recall right, has really grabbed me
Wiley's had the most bizarre career--how does one go from having a Top 3 hit to being back in the undie-hop zone? 100% Publishing sees him return to the Big Dada fold after what wsa apparently an unhappy stint at Asylum/Warner circa "Rolex" and See Clear Now (which he later "disowned"). The beats are hard and weird ("I Just Woke Up" is the standout, a mad full-tilt percussion only stampede), except when they're wistful and reflective... the lyrics demystify grime's means of production and the problematic cash-flows of DIY music-making in a broadband era... and Wiley is Wiley. Long may he zig-zag.
not only is this all a good lark, and wonderfully well put together presentation-wise, but it's a good listen too. as per Ghost Box et al, it's that haunto-strategy of, if the future is blocked, then call for escape routes by just stepping sideways through the past, into counterfactual zones... create pockets of lebensraum for the imagination through fictional yester-eras.. pasts that should have been, or could have been...
read more about Endless House here and here
(the next project from this lot apparently involves the concept of musical obituaries! can't wait... )
Talking of pseudo-history, the perpetrator of Electronic Music in the Classroom is being a busy-bee in 2011, with two more releases from Cafe Kaput before the mid-year point is even reached:
both good but Carnacki is the stone killer i think, superb musique-concrete/electro-acoustica. Dieter Rams is made entirely from the sounds generated by an alarm clock, which is conceptually pleasing for sure. Buy 'em both here
And more dispatches from the spectral soundzones:
Grant Beran, The Another Ones
made in 2008, hauntology from down under: corroded zones adjacent to Jeck and Kirby but with a tone of their own - hear here
and speak of the devil, the new offering from James Leyland Kirby
Intrigue & Stuff
is excellent. Looking forward to An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
And do these fine fellows fit here? well I rather think they do:
Sort of 'charity shop Coil'... Ruddy excellent is it too. Manifesto here,
edging from haunty to hypnagoggy, my favorite of the recent NNF batch (they're slinging the stuff out at the mo) and among my favourites of the year
Tallinn At Dawn: le mot juste, i do believe, is woozy. Marvellously woozy, even.
"A Little Lonely" starts slinky and frisky then gets eerie and vacant ... and reminds me of "Find Yourself" that FloraPurim-laced Enforcers gem by Jamie Myerson -- compare the two for yourself... there's another track on this Noble Savage EP that is more abstract still and excellent--"Hagasuxxzzavol"
The 100% Silk stuff is an odd propostion because it's a bunch of underground post-indie types most of whom--as far as i can see--have minimal background in clubbing or raving, and ho've fallen on this zone of the past much as they might do with new age or yacht rock or kosmiche analog synth epics or _____, i.e. bygone stuff to play with. So they've made "dance tracks" that wouldn't really cut it on any contemporary dancefloor. Like maybe, some of the Ital tunes would cut it on a 91 bleep dancefloor... listening the first time I found myself wondering how FACT magazine would assess this stuff-- like,they are all up on this area (Olde English Spelling Bee as Label of 2010, love for Hype Williams, Ariel P, et al) yet they are plugged into various contemporary dancefloors. 100% Silk stuff is fine by one particular metric (an Altered Zones-y one) but falls short by another metric. (In the same way that Ariel Pink, much as we'd like to imagine it jostling next to Hall & Oates and Asia and Alan Parsons Project, wouldn't have fit into the 80s AOR mainstream, because it's a wilfully defective version)
never quite got with Amon Tobin's stuff, seemed to be of the same milieu-mindset/era as FSOL and the later Coldcut, plus various IDM-ers who picked up on aspects of e.g. Parallel Universe while losing the thing that kept it, in essence, jungle still. So there's rather a lot of that scrofulous-with-invention keyhole-surgery-style digi-programming on ISAM /Control Over Nature (a deluxe package, the CD encased in a booklet of photos of insect-and-plants dioramas created by installation artist by Tessa Farmer) but there's also remarkable pieces like "Night Swim", a musique concrete-y mood-scape as exquisite and deadly as a venus flytrap
I once described Oliver Chesler as my favourite American singer/songwriter, and while i meant it it was also a jibe--i've completely forgotten what crit-beloved hairy-faced alternative nation James Taylor was its target in 1999 or 2000 (which is as it should be)--but in the age of Bon Iver and Gillette-averse navel-gazers the jibe has renewed salience, and hey right on cue here's the Horrorist with a new and excellent album, as sick and heavy as his best stuff
OLDSTUFF-FEELING
Creel Pone slyly reactivates (I thought - I'd been more or less told -- that #99 was where the series ends - but no, apparently). A mixed batch actually, but, you know, all nice to have: Bernard Parmegiani / Joseph-Maria Mestres-Quadreny “espaces sonores nº1” is for Parmegiani completists but cool; gilbert trythall's luxikon/echospace is an entertaining 80s curio; paul boisselet’s 1965 “le robot” is charming retrofuturism and does indeed, as the website sez, have the best record cover of all time... but it's the double-CD set of Danish composer Knud Viktor's private press from 1972 images / ambiances that ranks with the creme of Creel 01>>>99
Annette Peacock's I'm the One was quietly released some months ago -- there should have been a lot more noise about this ... get it here
heard tracks from this on KCRW repeatedly and each time they blew me away -- but when I thought about it, realised there was something odd about it: in so far as this another example of the trend of reissue labels moving into the pasts of foreign countries and finding there a kind of narcissistic mirror image of Western pop and rock, a mirror-image that's slightly askew. but only very slightly. so Those Shocking, Shaking Days is really hot, fiercely played early 70s hard 'n' heavy rock with a bluesy groove funk energy (the kind of stuff Woebot might dice into chunklets for recycling) but betrays zero traces of gamelan or much else Indonesian... so it's like we're going abroad but all we're discovering is another facet of ourselves, our own cultural hegemony... the sleevenotes are interesting in a Carmody-esque light in so far as they reveal that all this longhaired Western-style Indonesian rock was promoted by the capitalist-friendly, Westward-looking and Western-investment-seeking government led by General Suharto that in 1968 took over from Sukarno's more socialistic/nationalistic government, which had supported indigenous traditional musics and viewed Western pop as a corrupting and decadent influence.
first one reviewed here
MORE GOOD STUFF I'M FEELING
Hype Williams, One Nation
opaquer-than-thou, with more than a faint whiff of the emperors-new-clothes about them... sensibility so diffuse and centreless it's virtually impossible to pinpoint (i've yet to even see anybody really try, let alone succeed)... a music, seductive in its vaporousness, that seems to be a place where signifiers go to die, become insubstantialized. Their best yet!
tUnE-YarDs, w h o k i l l
the antithesis to Hype Williams... engaged, passionate, lively, open-hearted... an American Micachu, in so many ways... like it a lot, even when it reminds me of... Sublime (who i've actually grown to really like through LA radio exposure... it's a sound that just fits the climate here)
Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise
premium dollop of what Woebot calls "audio trickle", ie microfinessed quasidance made on and for computers
Blow Your Head Vol 1: Dave Nada presents Moombahton (Mad Decent)
perfect antidote to the former, a megadose of MACROHAUS, banging and pumping like nobody's business
The Deeep, Life Light (Not Not Fun)
Tri Angle's new bits: Holy Other's With U EP and Clams Casino Rainforest EP
bit busy at the mo as you can imagine so substantive comment is beyond me
but these are they that have been tickling the eardrums these past... well, it's several months isn't it... half a year, almost!
FEELING
Emeralds-man McGuire's miscellany on Mego, plus first two releases from other-Emeralds-dude's via-Mego imprint Spectrum Spools. Particularly like the Bee Mask (although a good friend who knows a thing or too about synths sez this kinda analog-whizzjizz can be reeled out by the yard... i take his point, very well --there's a real post-Onehotrix-flood-- but i do think there's enough "compositional" structuration type stuff going on here to withstand a concentrated listen)
"i can hear everything... it's everything time" say Gang Gang Dance via a (sampled?) intermediary at the start of Eye Contact--and yet, not to take away the 5th worldist digi-pertinence, but surely it's been "everything time" in music for a goodly while? definitely since the 90s (transglobal ethnotechno blather a-go-go)... but also since the 80s (when 4th World was coined by Hassell)... but also, really, since the 70s (the period in which Hassell was formed, in a context of fusion, Don Cherry, Miles, "One World" music, Can)... all that's changed, digi-wise, is that is so much easier, it takes less effort and expense to "fill your head with culture". good album though!
(apropros of nothing i was rather surprised to find myself really enjoying M.I.A.'s last album when i finally got around to hearing it, and in particular loving one track, which reminded vaguely of my fave track on Saint Dymphna, "Dust".
i blow hot and cold on 2562, which tends to = "lukewarm", but this one, based entirely on shards taken from a single disco track if i recall right, has really grabbed me
Wiley's had the most bizarre career--how does one go from having a Top 3 hit to being back in the undie-hop zone? 100% Publishing sees him return to the Big Dada fold after what wsa apparently an unhappy stint at Asylum/Warner circa "Rolex" and See Clear Now (which he later "disowned"). The beats are hard and weird ("I Just Woke Up" is the standout, a mad full-tilt percussion only stampede), except when they're wistful and reflective... the lyrics demystify grime's means of production and the problematic cash-flows of DIY music-making in a broadband era... and Wiley is Wiley. Long may he zig-zag.
not only is this all a good lark, and wonderfully well put together presentation-wise, but it's a good listen too. as per Ghost Box et al, it's that haunto-strategy of, if the future is blocked, then call for escape routes by just stepping sideways through the past, into counterfactual zones... create pockets of lebensraum for the imagination through fictional yester-eras.. pasts that should have been, or could have been...
read more about Endless House here and here
(the next project from this lot apparently involves the concept of musical obituaries! can't wait... )
Talking of pseudo-history, the perpetrator of Electronic Music in the Classroom is being a busy-bee in 2011, with two more releases from Cafe Kaput before the mid-year point is even reached:
both good but Carnacki is the stone killer i think, superb musique-concrete/electro-acoustica. Dieter Rams is made entirely from the sounds generated by an alarm clock, which is conceptually pleasing for sure. Buy 'em both here
And more dispatches from the spectral soundzones:
Grant Beran, The Another Ones
made in 2008, hauntology from down under: corroded zones adjacent to Jeck and Kirby but with a tone of their own - hear here
and speak of the devil, the new offering from James Leyland Kirby
Intrigue & Stuff
is excellent. Looking forward to An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
And do these fine fellows fit here? well I rather think they do:
Sort of 'charity shop Coil'... Ruddy excellent is it too. Manifesto here,
edging from haunty to hypnagoggy, my favorite of the recent NNF batch (they're slinging the stuff out at the mo) and among my favourites of the year
Tallinn At Dawn: le mot juste, i do believe, is woozy. Marvellously woozy, even.
"A Little Lonely" starts slinky and frisky then gets eerie and vacant ... and reminds me of "Find Yourself" that FloraPurim-laced Enforcers gem by Jamie Myerson -- compare the two for yourself... there's another track on this Noble Savage EP that is more abstract still and excellent--"Hagasuxxzzavol"
The 100% Silk stuff is an odd propostion because it's a bunch of underground post-indie types most of whom--as far as i can see--have minimal background in clubbing or raving, and ho've fallen on this zone of the past much as they might do with new age or yacht rock or kosmiche analog synth epics or _____, i.e. bygone stuff to play with. So they've made "dance tracks" that wouldn't really cut it on any contemporary dancefloor. Like maybe, some of the Ital tunes would cut it on a 91 bleep dancefloor... listening the first time I found myself wondering how FACT magazine would assess this stuff-- like,they are all up on this area (Olde English Spelling Bee as Label of 2010, love for Hype Williams, Ariel P, et al) yet they are plugged into various contemporary dancefloors. 100% Silk stuff is fine by one particular metric (an Altered Zones-y one) but falls short by another metric. (In the same way that Ariel Pink, much as we'd like to imagine it jostling next to Hall & Oates and Asia and Alan Parsons Project, wouldn't have fit into the 80s AOR mainstream, because it's a wilfully defective version)
never quite got with Amon Tobin's stuff, seemed to be of the same milieu-mindset/era as FSOL and the later Coldcut, plus various IDM-ers who picked up on aspects of e.g. Parallel Universe while losing the thing that kept it, in essence, jungle still. So there's rather a lot of that scrofulous-with-invention keyhole-surgery-style digi-programming on ISAM /Control Over Nature (a deluxe package, the CD encased in a booklet of photos of insect-and-plants dioramas created by installation artist by Tessa Farmer) but there's also remarkable pieces like "Night Swim", a musique concrete-y mood-scape as exquisite and deadly as a venus flytrap
I once described Oliver Chesler as my favourite American singer/songwriter, and while i meant it it was also a jibe--i've completely forgotten what crit-beloved hairy-faced alternative nation James Taylor was its target in 1999 or 2000 (which is as it should be)--but in the age of Bon Iver and Gillette-averse navel-gazers the jibe has renewed salience, and hey right on cue here's the Horrorist with a new and excellent album, as sick and heavy as his best stuff
OLDSTUFF-FEELING
Creel Pone slyly reactivates (I thought - I'd been more or less told -- that #99 was where the series ends - but no, apparently). A mixed batch actually, but, you know, all nice to have: Bernard Parmegiani / Joseph-Maria Mestres-Quadreny “espaces sonores nº1” is for Parmegiani completists but cool; gilbert trythall's luxikon/echospace is an entertaining 80s curio; paul boisselet’s 1965 “le robot” is charming retrofuturism and does indeed, as the website sez, have the best record cover of all time... but it's the double-CD set of Danish composer Knud Viktor's private press from 1972 images / ambiances that ranks with the creme of Creel 01>>>99
Annette Peacock's I'm the One was quietly released some months ago -- there should have been a lot more noise about this ... get it here
heard tracks from this on KCRW repeatedly and each time they blew me away -- but when I thought about it, realised there was something odd about it: in so far as this another example of the trend of reissue labels moving into the pasts of foreign countries and finding there a kind of narcissistic mirror image of Western pop and rock, a mirror-image that's slightly askew. but only very slightly. so Those Shocking, Shaking Days is really hot, fiercely played early 70s hard 'n' heavy rock with a bluesy groove funk energy (the kind of stuff Woebot might dice into chunklets for recycling) but betrays zero traces of gamelan or much else Indonesian... so it's like we're going abroad but all we're discovering is another facet of ourselves, our own cultural hegemony... the sleevenotes are interesting in a Carmody-esque light in so far as they reveal that all this longhaired Western-style Indonesian rock was promoted by the capitalist-friendly, Westward-looking and Western-investment-seeking government led by General Suharto that in 1968 took over from Sukarno's more socialistic/nationalistic government, which had supported indigenous traditional musics and viewed Western pop as a corrupting and decadent influence.
first one reviewed here
MORE GOOD STUFF I'M FEELING
Hype Williams, One Nation
opaquer-than-thou, with more than a faint whiff of the emperors-new-clothes about them... sensibility so diffuse and centreless it's virtually impossible to pinpoint (i've yet to even see anybody really try, let alone succeed)... a music, seductive in its vaporousness, that seems to be a place where signifiers go to die, become insubstantialized. Their best yet!
tUnE-YarDs, w h o k i l l
the antithesis to Hype Williams... engaged, passionate, lively, open-hearted... an American Micachu, in so many ways... like it a lot, even when it reminds me of... Sublime (who i've actually grown to really like through LA radio exposure... it's a sound that just fits the climate here)
Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise
premium dollop of what Woebot calls "audio trickle", ie microfinessed quasidance made on and for computers
Blow Your Head Vol 1: Dave Nada presents Moombahton (Mad Decent)
perfect antidote to the former, a megadose of MACROHAUS, banging and pumping like nobody's business
The Deeep, Life Light (Not Not Fun)
Tri Angle's new bits: Holy Other's With U EP and Clams Casino Rainforest EP
a list of the 100 Least Influential Bands of All Time
(via douglas keeley)
there's probably two main ways to be uninfluential as a band
i/ be so incredibly derivative -- so heavily influenced, in fact -- that there's nothing for a later band to derive further nourishment from
ii/ in pursuit of complete originality, utter unprecedented-ness and sui generis-hood -- an immaculately conceived sovereign state of having no influences, in fact -- develop a sound that is so wilfully quirky/outre/grotesque that no one in their right mind would ever want to be influenced by it
^^^^^^^^
i once did a list for Spin of Great Bands Who Were Terrible Influences, I should dig it up
(via douglas keeley)
there's probably two main ways to be uninfluential as a band
i/ be so incredibly derivative -- so heavily influenced, in fact -- that there's nothing for a later band to derive further nourishment from
ii/ in pursuit of complete originality, utter unprecedented-ness and sui generis-hood -- an immaculately conceived sovereign state of having no influences, in fact -- develop a sound that is so wilfully quirky/outre/grotesque that no one in their right mind would ever want to be influenced by it
^^^^^^^^
i once did a list for Spin of Great Bands Who Were Terrible Influences, I should dig it up
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
RETROMANIA: UK EVENTS
June 2 / 6.45 pm / ICA / London
"Over and Over and Over and Over": a panel discussion at the Institute of Contemporary Arts about retro in pop culture and the arts, moderated by Rob Young and featuring Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Caroline Evans, and SR. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 5 / 4 pm / Stoke Newington Literary Festival / London
"Juke Box Fury": panel discussion about music journalism hosted by Richard Boon and featuring Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray, Lucy O'Brien, and SR - panelists play and riff about the song that made them want to be a music journalist in the first place. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 6/ 7 pm / The Faber Social / London
Debut night of new Faber-hosted event series at the Heavenly Social, 5 Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JD. Conversation between David Peace and Richard T. Kelly, plus readings from Peace and Kelly. Conversation about Retromania between SR and Bob Stanley. Musical interludes provided by SR. Admission on the door £5. More information and ticket reservations here
June 7 / 7 pm/ Waterstones Deansgate / Manchester
Discussion about Retromania between John Robb and SR at Waterstones, 91 Deansgate, M3.
^^^^^^^^^
update info about UK events at http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/
and via twitter: www.twitter.com/simonretromania
June 2 / 6.45 pm / ICA / London
"Over and Over and Over and Over": a panel discussion at the Institute of Contemporary Arts about retro in pop culture and the arts, moderated by Rob Young and featuring Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Caroline Evans, and SR. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 5 / 4 pm / Stoke Newington Literary Festival / London
"Juke Box Fury": panel discussion about music journalism hosted by Richard Boon and featuring Paul Morley, Charles Shaar Murray, Lucy O'Brien, and SR - panelists play and riff about the song that made them want to be a music journalist in the first place. More info about tickets, location and the panelists here
June 6/ 7 pm / The Faber Social / London
Debut night of new Faber-hosted event series at the Heavenly Social, 5 Little Portland Street, London W1W 7JD. Conversation between David Peace and Richard T. Kelly, plus readings from Peace and Kelly. Conversation about Retromania between SR and Bob Stanley. Musical interludes provided by SR. Admission on the door £5. More information and ticket reservations here
June 7 / 7 pm/ Waterstones Deansgate / Manchester
Discussion about Retromania between John Robb and SR at Waterstones, 91 Deansgate, M3.
^^^^^^^^^
update info about UK events at http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.com/
and via twitter: www.twitter.com/simonretromania
Monday, May 23, 2011
"This time machine has been built for us by 2 Bad Mice, the original nutters"
FACTmix by the mighty 2BM
little celebration of 2BM i wrote last year
2BM's ardkival trove of a website
FACTmix by the mighty 2BM
little celebration of 2BM i wrote last year
2BM's ardkival trove of a website
Sunday, May 22, 2011
in the Wire essay I talk about "the hydraulics of culture" going awry: DIY X digitech = a swamp of overproduction
here's an incisive piece looking specifically at how digitech has affected the cultural economics of electronic dance music
"...The old channels are jammed. Whoever tries to break through them following 'proven' old ways... is wasting time and energy. We can’t learn much from studying the careers of Carl Craig or Ricardo Villalobos anymore because the conditions that enabled them don’t exist any more."
Not entirely convinced though, about Mr Goldmann's "but on the bright side" recipe for success in the excess-of-access era:
"Now there’s that third dimension of having to create a wide gap between you and the competition, even if that’s just within one genre. If you can implement this idea in your work, the flood is not threatening at all anymore since it works against itself. 'Unique' is the most valuable word in a crowded environment of generic ideas and overwhelming redundancy... I’ve only been covered because of totally odd projects"
Sounds like a recipe for willful wonkiness...
Lots of Analogue System nostalgia in the comments section, e.g.
"My point is that while I appreciate what digital technology has done for us, sometimes I wish I could go back to 1995 and remember what it was like to truly Value something. Read about and excitedly wait for that new record or video game, without knowing who did what, in detail, and then once you get it, you play the shit out of it for weeks, months-–years"
here's an incisive piece looking specifically at how digitech has affected the cultural economics of electronic dance music
"...The old channels are jammed. Whoever tries to break through them following 'proven' old ways... is wasting time and energy. We can’t learn much from studying the careers of Carl Craig or Ricardo Villalobos anymore because the conditions that enabled them don’t exist any more."
Not entirely convinced though, about Mr Goldmann's "but on the bright side" recipe for success in the excess-of-access era:
"Now there’s that third dimension of having to create a wide gap between you and the competition, even if that’s just within one genre. If you can implement this idea in your work, the flood is not threatening at all anymore since it works against itself. 'Unique' is the most valuable word in a crowded environment of generic ideas and overwhelming redundancy... I’ve only been covered because of totally odd projects"
Sounds like a recipe for willful wonkiness...
Lots of Analogue System nostalgia in the comments section, e.g.
"My point is that while I appreciate what digital technology has done for us, sometimes I wish I could go back to 1995 and remember what it was like to truly Value something. Read about and excitedly wait for that new record or video game, without knowing who did what, in detail, and then once you get it, you play the shit out of it for weeks, months-–years"
Friday, May 20, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
In the new issue of The Wire, I have a Retromania essay--not an extract but a sort of a parallel text, titled "Excess All Areas", that picks up on some of the book's themes and extends them, while also grappling with a bunch of fresh preoccupations. Basically it's about the wrenching,traumatic transition from the Analogue System to the Digital System: a process that's now almost complete, which makes it a good point to poke through the wreckage and assess what's been lost as well as what may be gained in terms of emerging possibilities.
The working title was "The Catastrophe... And What Comes After".
In the essay, I have a quote from Lil B: "I'm on computers profusely". I got that from a piece about him and didn't realise until after the Wire essay went to press that it's from a song called... "The Age of Information". An amazing song that in some ways and in its own way says much of what I'm arguing in "Excess All Areas". Now I'm actually not a digiphobe, not really: I've embraced most of the aspects of digiculture, indeed was an early adopter in some areas. My present doubts and misgivings have come through fairly deep immersion. So naturally I was pretty stunned to hear Lil B, who must be half my age and has probably been digi-immersed as long as he can remember, voicing sentiments such as: "The age of information is hell" and "now I feel the Internet has ruined the human race". It does strike me sometimes that digiculture has not increased the sum of human happiness or fulfilment: all it is is a new arena, a different architecture of culture-space, across which we distribute and enact the same old same old: vanity, boredom, isolation, emptiness... Leavened, now and then, by generosity, kindness, empathy, wisdom...
In the piece there's a passing reference to Borges, someone who I never quite managed to work into Retromania, which is a shame as Jorge Luis said it all, or a lot of it anyway, way in advance. Case in point, the 1949 story "The Aleph", which contains:
i/ a sort-of-prophecy of the Internet, of total and constant Connection:
"'I picture him,' he said with an animation that was rather unaccountable, 'in his study, as though in the watchtower of a great city, surrounded by telephones, telegraphs, phonographs, the latest in radio-telephone and motion-picture and magic-lantern equipment, and glossaries and calendars and timetables and bulletins…' He observed that for a man so equipped, the act of travelling was supererogatory; this twentieth century of ours had upended the fable of Muhammad and the mountain--mountains nowadays did in fact come to the modern Muhammad."
ii/ a precocious vision of the datapanik rush, the ecstasy/agony of communication
"one of the points in space that contain all points… the place where, without admixture or confusion, all the places of the world, seen from every angle, coexist... a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brightness... at first I thought it was spinning; then I realized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it…. In that unbounded moment, I saw millions of delightful and horrible acts; none amazed me so much as the fact that all occupied the same point, without superimposition and without transparency... universal space was contained inside it..."
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
for Carl, newborn junglist!
this is one of Tasmin's fave tunes at the moment *
but lest you think she's this little programmed junglette-robot mini-me
her other top tunes of the mo are
and
Bieber's all right isn't he? I have "no issue with his existence" either!
The verses on "Blow" remind me, quite pleasantly, of Pink's "I'm Coming Up".
Why are there all these songs at the moment/last year or so that are all about clubs igniting and people getting lit? (Did it really all start with "Dynamite"?). Are people all of sudden partying harder, in much greater numbers?
(There was a slightly PC talk at EMP this year about Ke$ha's [mis]appropriation of Native American imagery. Apparently the tribes aren't upset about inappropriate deployment of symbols outside their proper ritual context, so much as a lack of "consultation". I kept waiting for Adam Ant's name to come up. Or Animal Collective's.)
Going back to Ibiza-pop, this one actually mentions Ibiza and Las Vegas
The little wistful accordion-ish melody-riff refrain is pure Euro-schmaltz, tekno-schlager
Funny how all rappers now have been reduced to the role of that dude with the specs in CC & Music Factory
^^^^^^^^^^^^
* rediscovered L Double's "Retreat" off of this comp which was actually in a box of stuff to get rid of (how crazy is that!)
grrrreat selection by the mighty Rider (see how many ticks!) although annoyingly a lot of the tunes are faded out early (something that mars that other 94 classic comp Breakdown's Drum & Bass Selection 1)
this is one of Tasmin's fave tunes at the moment *
but lest you think she's this little programmed junglette-robot mini-me
her other top tunes of the mo are
and
Bieber's all right isn't he? I have "no issue with his existence" either!
The verses on "Blow" remind me, quite pleasantly, of Pink's "I'm Coming Up".
Why are there all these songs at the moment/last year or so that are all about clubs igniting and people getting lit? (Did it really all start with "Dynamite"?). Are people all of sudden partying harder, in much greater numbers?
(There was a slightly PC talk at EMP this year about Ke$ha's [mis]appropriation of Native American imagery. Apparently the tribes aren't upset about inappropriate deployment of symbols outside their proper ritual context, so much as a lack of "consultation". I kept waiting for Adam Ant's name to come up. Or Animal Collective's.)
Going back to Ibiza-pop, this one actually mentions Ibiza and Las Vegas
The little wistful accordion-ish melody-riff refrain is pure Euro-schmaltz, tekno-schlager
Funny how all rappers now have been reduced to the role of that dude with the specs in CC & Music Factory
^^^^^^^^^^^^
* rediscovered L Double's "Retreat" off of this comp which was actually in a box of stuff to get rid of (how crazy is that!)
grrrreat selection by the mighty Rider (see how many ticks!) although annoyingly a lot of the tunes are faded out early (something that mars that other 94 classic comp Breakdown's Drum & Bass Selection 1)
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
tasty new(ish) old skool blog Drumtrip -"where it's 1994 everyday"
very good year and very good choice of name
indeed could only be improved by the addition of II after it
very good year and very good choice of name
indeed could only be improved by the addition of II after it
@ Frieze, Geeta Dayal's interview with the late great Max Mathews -- conducted only weeks before his passing
"What's with the Fisher Price speakers?"
had almost exactly the same experience as Michael Chabon in this touching mini-memoir of audio love... year upon year, listening to music nonstop during the course of a seven to eight hour working day,but almost exclusively through a pair of speakers that came with the computer.... abruptly realising a few years ago "this is idiotic"... buying what looks like from Chabon's description the exact same much superior set (two translucent glass sticks and a blue-glowing glass jellyfish of a subwoofer to go on on the floor -- you see them in a lot of people's studies and homes), and kicking myself for all those years of degraded listening... i mean i'm sure these are lightweight business compared to serious audiophile gear but trust me the new set up is about 20 times better than what i subjected myself to for about 8 years
where we live now my work space is much nearer where the proper stereo and turntable are which means i can actually listen during "office hours" to A/ vinyl / tapes B/ to CDs how they really should be heard (not that it's an audiophile job either but miles better than a computer)... but of course i still do a lot of the listening via computer on account of so much music now arriving as immaterial data: podcasts, djmixes, zipped + passworded advances from record labels, eMusic, YouTube, streams, not forgetting the naughty naughties... so it's good to have something that can deliver a measure of depth, detail, body, presence, and BASS...
now i have to work on getting a better thing inside the computer to run music on than what i have.... any recommendations?
had almost exactly the same experience as Michael Chabon in this touching mini-memoir of audio love... year upon year, listening to music nonstop during the course of a seven to eight hour working day,but almost exclusively through a pair of speakers that came with the computer.... abruptly realising a few years ago "this is idiotic"... buying what looks like from Chabon's description the exact same much superior set (two translucent glass sticks and a blue-glowing glass jellyfish of a subwoofer to go on on the floor -- you see them in a lot of people's studies and homes), and kicking myself for all those years of degraded listening... i mean i'm sure these are lightweight business compared to serious audiophile gear but trust me the new set up is about 20 times better than what i subjected myself to for about 8 years
where we live now my work space is much nearer where the proper stereo and turntable are which means i can actually listen during "office hours" to A/ vinyl / tapes B/ to CDs how they really should be heard (not that it's an audiophile job either but miles better than a computer)... but of course i still do a lot of the listening via computer on account of so much music now arriving as immaterial data: podcasts, djmixes, zipped + passworded advances from record labels, eMusic, YouTube, streams, not forgetting the naughty naughties... so it's good to have something that can deliver a measure of depth, detail, body, presence, and BASS...
now i have to work on getting a better thing inside the computer to run music on than what i have.... any recommendations?
c/o FACT, Felix K's cool mix of moody atmospheric yet groovy yet also unrelenting .... drum & bass!
^^^^
also in d&b news, a recent and engaging conversation with Photek at Daily Swarm
my first thought on the sub-headline's description of RP as "Bass Culture's Shapeshifting Samurai" was something like "yeah, 'shapeshifting', that's one word for it"
on reflection, i decided that this (as earlier expressed here) was unnecessarily cynical, why wouldn't a musician want to keep moving on, it's not unknown for music genres to reach impasses and dead ends...
after all, when critics keep moving or have diverse taste-portfolios, it's considered a virtue
besides Photek's account of when he decided to jump D&B's ship--end of 1997--is so spot on it's almost righteous in its punctuality:
"Drum and bass became something I didn’t recognize; I didn’t want to compete in that arena. For me, the creative period for d&b was between 1993 and 1997 – then the whole era of “horror” d&b began"
Also enjoyed interviewer Matt Diehl's description of the Photek production style in terms of "uncomfortable tidiness"
that's why the name Technical Itch seemed so perfect for that era of neurotically needlepoint d&B
^^^^
also in d&b news, a recent and engaging conversation with Photek at Daily Swarm
my first thought on the sub-headline's description of RP as "Bass Culture's Shapeshifting Samurai" was something like "yeah, 'shapeshifting', that's one word for it"
on reflection, i decided that this (as earlier expressed here) was unnecessarily cynical, why wouldn't a musician want to keep moving on, it's not unknown for music genres to reach impasses and dead ends...
after all, when critics keep moving or have diverse taste-portfolios, it's considered a virtue
besides Photek's account of when he decided to jump D&B's ship--end of 1997--is so spot on it's almost righteous in its punctuality:
"Drum and bass became something I didn’t recognize; I didn’t want to compete in that arena. For me, the creative period for d&b was between 1993 and 1997 – then the whole era of “horror” d&b began"
Also enjoyed interviewer Matt Diehl's description of the Photek production style in terms of "uncomfortable tidiness"
that's why the name Technical Itch seemed so perfect for that era of neurotically needlepoint d&B
Saturday, May 07, 2011
country with a boogie beat pt 2
actually more like a lyrical/titular reference to boogie but still...
John Hartford's "Up On The Hill Where They Do The Boogie" -- from a marvellous comp of country-rock / rock-ish country Woebot made
actually more like a lyrical/titular reference to boogie but still...
John Hartford's "Up On The Hill Where They Do The Boogie" -- from a marvellous comp of country-rock / rock-ish country Woebot made
Friday, May 06, 2011
the concluding instalment of Neil Kulkarni's astonishing ghosts-of-my-Asian-British-life series An Eastern Spring at the Quietus.
you really should read (and listen: there's a lot of audio) to them in the right sequence, all the way through
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
words of blood and fire
you really should read (and listen: there's a lot of audio) to them in the right sequence, all the way through
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
part six
words of blood and fire
don't know if this would nowadays get classed as boogie (80s model) but twas one of my faves backintheday
this too
(actually met and interviewed Gwen in the late 80s for MM, but can't remember why exactly, or whether i wrote it up)
them two Gwens McCraes and this next tune were taped off of David Stubbs for a long series of cassettes comps i did called Dance Mix (until they were titled Meltdown Mix after Stubbs's club night)
this also
but this one i actually bought
and a bit later this one too (quite unawares of who Larry Levan was)
as I've noted before, that there is the first record I bought on account of the hi-hat pattern
this too
(actually met and interviewed Gwen in the late 80s for MM, but can't remember why exactly, or whether i wrote it up)
them two Gwens McCraes and this next tune were taped off of David Stubbs for a long series of cassettes comps i did called Dance Mix (until they were titled Meltdown Mix after Stubbs's club night)
this also
but this one i actually bought
and a bit later this one too (quite unawares of who Larry Levan was)
as I've noted before, that there is the first record I bought on account of the hi-hat pattern
Thursday, May 05, 2011
"if you like country with a boogie beat"
not exactly sure when i first saw this--think they must have been repeating Old Grey Whistle Tests in the early 90s, or perhaps it was very end of the 80s?--but i have never really recovered from the disappointment that all of Little Feat's music doesn't sound exactly like this
"a pHD in swing"!
course your Feat-heads don't even rate this song much, right? it's too commercial. what they really rate is the plodding Lowell ballads...
not exactly sure when i first saw this--think they must have been repeating Old Grey Whistle Tests in the early 90s, or perhaps it was very end of the 80s?--but i have never really recovered from the disappointment that all of Little Feat's music doesn't sound exactly like this
"a pHD in swing"!
course your Feat-heads don't even rate this song much, right? it's too commercial. what they really rate is the plodding Lowell ballads...
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
boogie on (and on)
more from DJ pal Paul Kennedy (who is also, now it can be revealed, the "musician friend" mentioned earlier in the piece)
"one thing I forgot to mention before is a theory I've heard that boogie as a term for early 80's r&b may have originated with roller boogie, the disco played in roller-skating rinks. apparently, that type of mid-tempo disco funk which reverted to the bass snare bass snare (or clap for snare) pattern was ideal for 'pushing-off' with alternating feet. also, think of "Good Times" as an ideal roller-disco anthem with the lyrics "clams on the half-shell and rollerskates, rollerskates!" then in its versioning as "Rapper's Delight": "rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat"...
"...then how bout the Boogie-Down Bronx and Boogie Down Productions? Timbaland's re-use/reference of "Up Jumps Da Boogie"."
Paul also points out that "Get It On by T.Rex is actually not boogie in the strict sense but "features the more 16th note 'square' rockin' groove as opposed to the 12th notes 'three'd' feel. I suspect that both kinds of rhythms were options for the basic rock n roll groove, but that the 'squared feel' comes more from barrellhouse/boogie (see Chuck Berry pianist Johnnie Johnson?) and the three'd feel is more from folk/electric blues."
here's a couple of other boogie-woogie related offshoots (there are dozens of them in American popular music of the 20th Century and regional rootsy sounds)
Boogalu
and
Pacucho Boogie
Now in some of the early Chicago piano driven house of mid-80s I sometimes imagine I can hear a trace of boogie-woogie in the piano
also, i wonder if this is the connection between boogie-woogie and discofunk
"Wayne Schmidt remarks that with boogie-woogie songs, the "bass line isn't just a time keeper or 'fill' for the right hand"; instead, the bassline has equal importance to the right hand's melodic line. He argues that many boogie-woogie basslines use a "rising/falling sequence of notes" called walking bass line."
so when in 'Rock With You' MJ says "and we can ride the boogie" he's saying we can ride the bassline?
more from DJ pal Paul Kennedy (who is also, now it can be revealed, the "musician friend" mentioned earlier in the piece)
"one thing I forgot to mention before is a theory I've heard that boogie as a term for early 80's r&b may have originated with roller boogie, the disco played in roller-skating rinks. apparently, that type of mid-tempo disco funk which reverted to the bass snare bass snare (or clap for snare) pattern was ideal for 'pushing-off' with alternating feet. also, think of "Good Times" as an ideal roller-disco anthem with the lyrics "clams on the half-shell and rollerskates, rollerskates!" then in its versioning as "Rapper's Delight": "rock it to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat"...
"...then how bout the Boogie-Down Bronx and Boogie Down Productions? Timbaland's re-use/reference of "Up Jumps Da Boogie"."
Paul also points out that "Get It On by T.Rex is actually not boogie in the strict sense but "features the more 16th note 'square' rockin' groove as opposed to the 12th notes 'three'd' feel. I suspect that both kinds of rhythms were options for the basic rock n roll groove, but that the 'squared feel' comes more from barrellhouse/boogie (see Chuck Berry pianist Johnnie Johnson?) and the three'd feel is more from folk/electric blues."
here's a couple of other boogie-woogie related offshoots (there are dozens of them in American popular music of the 20th Century and regional rootsy sounds)
Boogalu
and
Pacucho Boogie
Now in some of the early Chicago piano driven house of mid-80s I sometimes imagine I can hear a trace of boogie-woogie in the piano
also, i wonder if this is the connection between boogie-woogie and discofunk
"Wayne Schmidt remarks that with boogie-woogie songs, the "bass line isn't just a time keeper or 'fill' for the right hand"; instead, the bassline has equal importance to the right hand's melodic line. He argues that many boogie-woogie basslines use a "rising/falling sequence of notes" called walking bass line."
so when in 'Rock With You' MJ says "and we can ride the boogie" he's saying we can ride the bassline?
talking about boogie
compare and contrast
same boogie-Berry chug, same pallid slightly-cissy vocals
the Quo do for, well, down-to-earthness what the Wind do for traversing the space-time continuum
one thing i dig about 70s hard rock is the proximity--the lack really of much significant distance between Groundhogs, Budgie, Free, Sweet, Mott the Hoople, Thin Lizzy Eddie & The Hot Rods, Tom Robinson Band et al
some are a little bit more bluesy, some are little bit more playerly, some go for a bit more structural convolution, others just do heads down no nonsense mindless boogie
at the time the differences would have been much more significant
it is all, in the grand scheme of things, looking back, much of a glorious muchness
the differences are mostly cosmetic, to do with lyrics or scene solidarities or some kink in presentation
this is the Carduccian view really
with punk as the decisive break, where the rhythm flattens into a unswinging bludgeon
(but then again: X Ray Spex, the Ruts - the music does swing, it's great hard rock, plus with both those bands, Poly RIP and Malcolm RIP, they'd been hippies before punk. iirc, Malcolm and other main Ruts dude were bumming around in a Welsh commune or something like during '76's Summer of Punk!)
the only thing I would add to the Carduccian view is that there is also less distance from black music at that point, which was small-band music too
especially so in America where the distance between James Gang "Funk #49" (1970) and the Meters's "Stay Away" (1972) is teensy
compare and contrast
same boogie-Berry chug, same pallid slightly-cissy vocals
the Quo do for, well, down-to-earthness what the Wind do for traversing the space-time continuum
one thing i dig about 70s hard rock is the proximity--the lack really of much significant distance between Groundhogs, Budgie, Free, Sweet, Mott the Hoople, Thin Lizzy Eddie & The Hot Rods, Tom Robinson Band et al
some are a little bit more bluesy, some are little bit more playerly, some go for a bit more structural convolution, others just do heads down no nonsense mindless boogie
at the time the differences would have been much more significant
it is all, in the grand scheme of things, looking back, much of a glorious muchness
the differences are mostly cosmetic, to do with lyrics or scene solidarities or some kink in presentation
this is the Carduccian view really
with punk as the decisive break, where the rhythm flattens into a unswinging bludgeon
(but then again: X Ray Spex, the Ruts - the music does swing, it's great hard rock, plus with both those bands, Poly RIP and Malcolm RIP, they'd been hippies before punk. iirc, Malcolm and other main Ruts dude were bumming around in a Welsh commune or something like during '76's Summer of Punk!)
the only thing I would add to the Carduccian view is that there is also less distance from black music at that point, which was small-band music too
especially so in America where the distance between James Gang "Funk #49" (1970) and the Meters's "Stay Away" (1972) is teensy
Find more The Meters songs at Myspace Music
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
New Yorkers! Don't miss Mark Fisher aka K-punk's two talks this week, tomorrow and Thursday, on hauntology and capitalist realism respectively! Both take place at Room 471, 20 Cooper Square (East 5th and Bowery), at 6.30PM, and are free and open to the public!
more details here!
more details here!
Name It On the Boogie--Guardian piece by me on the changing meanings of "boogie", from swampy Southern Rock to slick Eighties postdisco
cueing off this (excellent, yet flawed) comp
and touching on the retroactive invention of semi-nonexistent genres
via
cueing off this (excellent, yet flawed) comp
and touching on the retroactive invention of semi-nonexistent genres
via