Six Stars

A List of Bad Asses & Hot Lips

2011-01-17T16:03:00.001-08:00

NUMBER, the First

In a very particular order by which they enter my brain-hole, I begin: Étoile de Dakar is the greatest band I've run into in a long time. They are unknown. Except in West Africa, so I hear, but there's really no way of telling beyond what Westerners tell me on the inner tubes. I hear they were huge. They invented the mbalax genre, or rather so Youssou N'Dour named it when people outside Étoile's home of Senegal began asking him what "his" music was called.

I do not take it lightly to call a band the X-est of anything, let alone with the particular X above, or given the music, its close second "intense." Nor consequently will I lightly or at all attempt to describe it, besides pointing out that it's as rhythmically complex as anything I can recall, as if every band member is playing in their own time signature and tempo. You should hear it. Everyone should hear it. They started an entire genre and revolutionized a country's music scene! That's like someone not knowing about Germany & Kraftwerk, England & the Beatles, Zaïre & soukous, America & James Brown.

Gander: Afro-Cuban influences ran rampant across, to the best of my knowledge, much of sub-Saharan Africa. It was huge in Senegal, before & after its 1960 independence. It was huge in Dakar, the capital and main center for clubs and music. And so to celebrate this independence, some totalitarian asshole with a lovely taste in music began a band called the Star Band of Dakar, which, inundated with firings of various degrees of appropriateness, ended up splintering and giving birth to a group called the Étoile de Dakar, "étoile" being the French for "star," French being the bastard language of Senegal, then and now. And so master-mind guitarist Badou "I took the rhythms of the drums and put them to the guitar" N'Diaye, gorgeous vocalists Youssou "so world famous you've heard of him even if you haven't" N'Dour & El Hadji "ended up right back into the poverty he began his musical career in" Faye & Eric M'Backe "the Latin singer" N'Doye, the most erratically careful and jumpy bassist Kabou Gueye, and crucial Tama talking-drum player Assane Thiam, plus others, obviously, started playing the music that took Dakar then the nation then West Africa by storm. And for two years between 1979 and 1981, the year the rivalries Youssou's unnatural fame brought about splintered the group once more, this band reigned supreme. Shit, they still do.

Get their greatest hits. Buy the albums so you get the liner notes and support them. Don't be fooled by titles like "The Rough Guide to Youssou N'Dour & Étoile de Dakar," cuz this was as much everyone's band as it was Youssou's, gorgeous though his voice may be (and gorgeous it is). The tama playing, the bass playing, the rhythm guitar playing, the singing, it's all superb.

I don't even know where to begin with their songs. Here's one. Here's another. Here's an exciting one. Here's a moving one. It goes on, but w/better sound quality if you buy the CD's. On headphones for all the dynamics or on a tape deck as it was first & loudly disseminated, it's all good.

ITEM, the Second

Speaking of Afro-Cubanism & revolutionizing genres, have you heard of Zaïre, currently known by some long official title concluding with the word Congo? (there's another Congo bordering it) It's the really large country in the dead center of Africa, coincidentally also a French colony, and perhaps also coincidentally another heavily-Afro-Cuban-influenced country. And while mbalax is very intense, soukous is the diametric opposite, a complex "easy-listening" that might soothe a weary soul, keep a studious book-worm studying, or leave millions of potheads sinking in their seats if not melting into someone else's body. Or at least that's the soukous of Tabu Ley Rochereau, business-conscious professional and band leader with a voice lighter than the music. And while mbalax most definitely took over at least West Africa, soukous took over the entire continent. And no one's the worse for it!, except Tabu Ley's musical contemporaries, Franco excluded.

There's a (fairly comprehensive?) greatest hits called The Voice of Lightness, spanning almost two decades from 1961-1977, featuring songs, jams, more songs, more jams, and something totally different.

SOME THING, the Third

It's interesting how one culture's experimental music is another's tradition. There are some 5 million Tuaregs living across the Sahara, Arabized in religion only, still speaking Berber tongues. The information about them is thin. Very thin. But there's something about living in the desert that really, really teaches one how to trance. These are apparently love songs sung by young men & women. This is Fadimoutou Inamoud:

The Waitresses

2010-10-03T15:53:00.000-07:00

I was watching that Simpsons episode where Lisa cross-dresses so she can get into the boys' math class (good episode), and someone, probably a super-hip chick or a feminist dude, decided it'd be a good idea to play a song clearly entitled "I Know What Boys Like" while Lisa outwardly becomes a boy. (it definitely was a good idea)

So naturally I find the song and see that it's from a 1982 album called "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" by a band called The Waitresses, brainchild of Chris Butler, with Patty Donahue, a waitress/pro-am vocalist on the pro side here, as frontwoman:

Every critic and reviewer laments likewise: "They're so much more than their singles; why the obscurity??"

There is a reason for this. There are a few misses here and there, but there is no weak track, and no clear winner (although there is a clear single). Much like buying London Calling for the apocalyptic title track and realizing a collection of gorgeous, lively-if-lyrically-striking pop gems makes for a much better album, here you find the single (youtube), with its ennui & snarl, is much unlike the rest of the bouncy, supremely catchy, feminist tracks.

Buy it and shove its greatness in every friend & acquaintance's face.

Secret Pleasures

2010-10-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

This little album's been with me since high school. Instead of becoming interesting and knowledgable, not to mention cool, through listening to Broken Social Scene or Conor Oberst or somesuch others, I alienated myself entirely by getting into heavy metal, a subgenre of rock so militant its press and the rest of the world's do not at all meet, except for the latter to poke fun at the former. Emperor, Mayhem, Burzum--these motherfuckers burn churches & slit their wrists & aren't even that gifted (but they sure as hell are principled).

But Electric Wizard, well, these dudes just rock. At the time of Dopethrone, the fine album I'm pitching today, it was three late-20-somethings, apparently super-stoners, using a detuned, fuzzy bass, a detuned, almost superfluous guitar, and a most-likely-detuned drumset to make very heavy, very slow rock. The lyrics are best explained by the album cover:

Ah yes.

Anyways I don't expect people to like this album, or even be interested by it. Nor am I claiming that Jus Onborn, the sole songwriter/singer/guitarist, has all that much in terms of musical talent or even ideas, at least no more than, say, a rabid lover of Black Sabbath muck might gain by taking said sound to its natural limits. So as an experiment in heavy rock haze, this is the fucking cat's pajamas. Get it now and listen to it at once.

Check out these track lengths:

There's a 3' opener which feels like pop in comparison to the rest. The second track is nine minutes long and it's worth the entire wait just to hear the same riff get faster & faster & heavier & heavier. The third is 15', split up conveniently into a 5 minute song, a 5 minute riff, and 5 minutes worth of feedback fuzz named 'Altar of Melektaus' (I suggest splitting up the song in GarageBand, these latter two really press the patience).

Then there's a 6'30" standard fare riff-rocker, an 11' snoozer, a 0:47 bass riff w/guitar-accompaniment that is the very highlight of this entire genre & mood, another 5' standard riffer, and finally a 10' closer featuring the title (and heaviest) riff, followed by another 10 minutes of silence before a hilarious radio encounter in hushed Satanic tones. I transcribed it a while ago cuz I felt like it:

- That's terrifying, and that's.. no, look, if this happens to your kids, or if you look at this and you have children and you say, 'Could this happen to my child, out of some kind of rebellion?' how would a parent be aware?

- Many youngsters are into it, uh, teenagers and younger, and the..the..the clues are there, the satanic symbols, 6-6-6, if you see that written on your child's notebook, if they're into heavy metal music, if they're associating with strange characters or drifting off to ceremonies and not explaining where they're at, it's well worth it for parents to look deeper and ask, 'What exactly are you up to?'

- And with whom!

- Because this is serious...

- It could be harmless. It could just be a diversion. But it could also be DEADLY serious.

The phrase "drifting off to ceremonies" never fails to crack me up.

Cripple Creek Ferry

2010-09-20T18:29:00.001-07:00

A while back I kinda really liked Neil Young's second (or third?) album, After the Gold Rush..

It's a real peculiar album, even peculiar in why it's peculiar, cuz it is, after all, kinda conventional (I guess?) It's a strange sort of somber. It's slow, but not in that complacent way, rather slow but still going strong. It's mighty pretty, but it doesn't connect like it is, cold-like.

Now I'm not saying all this as if it's a bad thing, I'm saying it like it's an interesting thing. But there is one song which continually hits me, viscerally, the "you feel no pain" kind of hit Marley's talking about, Cripple Creek Ferry. I think the only way I can accurately describe it is, it's like the Beatles wrote it. You know how the Beatles basically do no wrong and you don't even question it at some point? Where just about every album they did is among your all-time favorites but you don't even need to include them cuz it goes without saying?

Yeah, I feel like the Beatles wrote Cripple Creek Ferry. It does no wrong you see--I can always sing along. It grooves. Slowly, but it grooves. I've munched it up 22 times over a couple of weeks, in 5-6 song bursts I think. You should partake instantly.

The Replacements - Let It Be

2010-08-22T21:51:00.000-07:00

It started with Androgynous—piano and voice with spacy production and a sound so pained you’d think Westerberg was talking about himself. Of all the way-acclaimed albums the ‘Mats had (as it goes, the critics love them all), only “Let It Be” remained, due to this one song.

A year of that, and I guess “Sixteen Blue” must’ve come on shuffle one day, cuz there’s no reason I would’ve been tinkering around with this album otherwise. A gorgeous mess of notes, that song, and a dozen or so listens afterwards, I put the whole album on and noticed its entirety is a gorgeous mess of notes.

On the second run-through, I was finally hooked for good with the end of “Seen Your Video.” I guess albums don’t usually have climaxes, but this one’s is marvelous. “We don’t wanna know, We don’t wanna know, We don’t wanna know”—it’s about music videos but basically he’s shouting “We don’t give a shit,” in context (and out). There is no punk out there more pissed off, defiant, and somehow at the same time so anthemic.

And so give or take 30 plays into the album, I’m still not tired of it. I hope it’s got the longevity of others that have taken me so by storm, or maybe it’s just a raucous mood I’m in (key point: these drunks fucked up their chance at success because, well, they got drunk too often). If no song is like another; if the notes are so interesting they belie the simple chords changes; if the playing is so loose-perfect you wonder what side of the pro-am fence these dudes are on; how can I get tired of the sound?

I can’t encompass something this good. I can only hope someone else feels it the way I do. And so to help with that, let me just say, “Gary’s Got a Boner” works best in sequence, between the climax and the sweetest song on the album; don’t forget “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” has more mock-snarl attitude than anything else on the album; and a Kiss cover remains a Kiss song, no matter who performs it.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right - Bob Dylan (1963)

2010-07-30T18:54:00.000-07:00

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don’t matter, anyhow
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don’t know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I’ll be gone
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on
Don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
That light I never knowed
An’ it ain’t no use in turnin’ on your light, babe
I’m on the dark side of the road
Still I wish there was somethin’ you would do or say
To try and make me change my mind and stay
We never did too much talkin’ anyway
So don’t think twice, it’s all right

It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
Like you never did before
It ain’t no use in callin’ out my name, gal
I can’t hear you anymore
I’m a-thinkin’ and a-wond’rin’ all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

I’m walkin’ down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
But goodbye’s too good a word, gal
So I’ll just say fare thee well
I ain’t sayin’ you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all right

LCD Soundsystem - LCD Soundsystem (2005)

2010-07-21T15:32:00.000-07:00

the first track on each of the album's two discs references Daft Punk. of course this is a great album.

this is one of the few albums (up there with the White Album, Drukqs, etc.) that i think truly deserves to be two discs long. like the Beatles and Aphex Twin, James Murphy (he basically is LCD Soundsystem) just had too many things to do. the Beatles wanted to do surf rock, punk rock, folk rock, and even weird sound experiments. Richard D. James wanted drum & bass, eerie minimal piano pieces, ambient techno, and even a 30-second sample of his parents wishing him a happy birthday.

what does Murphy want? he wants to make you dance. there's slow stuff, fast stuff, soft stuff, hard stuff. something for everyone, as long as everyone likes to dance. an acid disco garage house pop psychedelic punk rock medley, LCD Soundsystem's debut/self-titled album is an electronic dance music masterpiece, still the best LCD five years later.

i'm not going to say anything about the music though. i'm not really going to say much anything actually. i just want to share some of this album's amazing lyrics, usually the least important factor of any music to me.

i'm really easy to please lyrics-wise. you can repeat "ooh baby the music sounds better with you, love might bring us back together" for seven minutes and i'll be in ecstasy. this doesn't mean i can't tell the difference between that kind of trite (though strangely elegant) couplet and, say, the poetry of Bob Dylan.

Murphy's lyrics fall everywhere between the two extremes. the lyrics for the song "Yeah" are pretty much just "yeah yeah yeah yeahyeahyeahyeah yeah. yeah hey hey hey hey" and "everybody keeps on talking about, no one's getting it done" (what the fuck is it?). the first track gets a little more complex. here's the first verse:

well Daft Punk is playing at my house, at my house
i'll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes
i got a bus and a trailer at my house, at my house
i'll show you the ropes, kid, show you the ropes

it's a song about Daft Punk playing at his house. what more would you expect? you gotta PA the house, Sarah's girlfriend is working the door, the robots descend from the bus, etc. etc. oh yeah Murphy loves singing about music, though he usually takes it a step further:

beats on repeat, beating on me
from every car in the street
there's constant repeat on repeat
of your paranoid, heartbreaking beats
on repeat

it's a five song repeat, beating on me
your favorite band helps you sleep
and here comes the new stylish creep
from every car in the street
on repeat
on repeat

.
.
.

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would line the streets,
come to every show,
no one wants that

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would flee the schools,
come to every show,
drugged and unwashed

i wish i could complain more about the rich but then
all their children would line the streets,
come to every show,
unwashed and drugged and
beats on repeat, beating on me
on the radio
on your radio
on your radio

music about music! "Daft Punk is Playing at My House," "On Repeat," "Disco Infiltrator," "Beat Connection," LCD Soundsystem is all about dancing yourself clean and being hyperaware of it.

the best example of Murphy's clever lyrics and super self-conscious irony comes on the first track of the second disc, "Losing My Edge." the song starts with a miminal thumping bass line backed by a couple snares and hi-hats. then comes Murphy's nasally singing. then come more hi-hats and a little flickering guitar. the vocals start whacking out, echoing like there are two James Murphys in the room. the guitar starts creaking like an electronic insect, still minimal. when we hit around 2.5 minutes, cymbals crash announcing a less restrained, more potent bassline, still playing the same old minimal phrase though. it won't stop until the song ends. the drums pick up a little more. the guitar gets a little whackier. slowly, always slowly building to a paranoid, anxiety-ridden, frustrated cry for help at the end: "look at all the good music i know!" here are the lyrics, in full:

yeah, i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge.
the kids are coming up from behind.
i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge to the kids from France and from London.
but i was there.

i was there in 1968.
i was there at the first Can show in Cologne.
i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge to the kids whose footsteps i hear when they get on the decks.
i'm losing my edge to the Internet seekers who can tell me every member of every good group from 1962 to 1978.
i'm losing my edge.

to all the kids in Tokyo and Berlin.
i'm losing my edge to the art-school Brooklynites in little jackets and borrowed nostalgia for the unremembered eighties.

but i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge, but i was there.
i was there.
but i was there.

i'm losing my edge.
i'm losing my edge.
i can hear the footsteps every night on the decks.
but i was there.
i was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City.
i was working on the organ sounds with much patience.
i was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band.
i told him, "don't do it that way. you'll never make a dime."
i was there.
i was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.
i played it at CBGB's.
everybody thought i was crazy.
we all know.
i was there.
i was there.
i've never been wrong.

i used to work in the record store.
i had everything before anyone.
i was there in the Paradise Garage DJ booth with Larry Levan.
i was there in Jamaica during the great sound clashes.
i woke up naked on the beach in Ibiza in 1988.

but i'm losing my edge to better-looking people with better ideas and more talent.
and they're actually really, really nice.

i'm losing my edge.

i heard you have a compilation of every good song ever done by anybody.
every great song by the Beach Boys.
all the underground hits.
all the Modern Lovers tracks.
i heard you have a vinyl of every Niagra record on German import.
i heard that you have a white label of every seminal Detroit techno hit - 1985, '86, '87.
i heard that you have a CD compilation of every good '60s cut and another box set from the '70s.
i hear you're buying a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and are throwing your computer out the window because you want to make something real.
you want to make a Yaz record.
i hear that you and your band have sold your guitars and bought turntables.
i hear that you and your band have sold your turntables and bought guitars.
i hear everybody that you know is more relevant than everybody that i know.

But have you seen my records? This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra, Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra, Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc, Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!), Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil! Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines, the Swans, the Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics.

you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.
you don't know what you really want.

i know i want to listen to every one of those artists now.

Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust (1998)

2010-07-11T23:02:00.000-07:00

i found this classic at a tiny record store in San Francisco today.

it's one-sided. one 6:50 track of French disco house dance perfection. etched into the opposite side are the song's main lyrics:

MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH YOU
LOVE MIGHT BRING US BACK TOGETHER

i don't even know what to say about the actual song.

four on the floor with a thump of a bass we now expect from Daft Punk.
delicious guitar/synth sample from a 1981 Chaka Khan hit.
liquid lyrics, straight to the point.
a decade later, on Alive 2007, it still killed.

dance /download/listen .

Zombie - Fela Kuti (1977)

2010-07-02T18:48:00.000-07:00

everything Fela Anikulapo Kuti touches turns to gold. such is my analysis after listening to seven of his albums from the 70s. but there's one album in particular that flows, breaks, and crashes with the unmatchable fury of an unfathomable diamond ocean.

Fela Kuti's twenty-somethingth album, Zombie (1977), as far as i know, is afrobeat perfection. what is afrobeat? well, according to the infinite wisdom of Wikipedia, "Afrobeat is a combination of traditional Yoruba music, jazz, highlife, funk and chanted vocals, fused with percussion and vocal styles, popularized in Africa in the 1970s. Its main creator was the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who used it to revolutionise musical structure as well as the political context in his native Nigeria. It was Kuti who coined the term 'afrobeat,' which features chants, call-and-response vocals, and complex, interacting rhythms."

holy shit. you know how James Brown essentially invented funk? well, the JBs were famously floored when they took a little trip down to Nigeria in the 1970s. recalls bassist William 'Bootsy' Collins, "[Fela] had a club in Lagos, and we came to the club and they were treating us like kings. We were telling them they're the funkiest cats we ever heard in our life. I mean, this is the James Brown band, but we were totally wiped out! That was one trip I wouldn't trade for anything in the world."

we all have weaknesses. for some, it might be genre invention. here's mine:

1. Zombie (12:26)
2. Mister Folllow Follow (12:58)
3. Observation Is No Crime (13:26)
4. Mistake [Live] (14:47)

this album is four tracks long and none of them fall under the ten minute mark. holy shit x2. and don't think this is Fela's exception. i performed a little calculation with my seven Kuti albums from the 70s and it turns out the average song length is 14 minutes. the longest is 25 minutes (Confusion) and the shortest is 8:08 (Igbe (Na Shit) from Gentleman).

long songs rule. the vocals on the title track start at about 5:30. the vocals on the second track start at about 7:30. that's usually how it goes with Fela. epic, epic jazz jams that slowly, surely, so surely build up to Fela's scathing lyrics of political protest and ideological expression.

oh yeah, that's the other thing. this music might be relaxing, brilliantly composed, amazing to dance to, and joyous to jam to, but Fela ain't fucking around. if you want to hear a real story about polygamy, revolution, and the power of music, check out this Guardian article. here's an excerpt:

You could make a case for 1976's most revolutionary record being not 'Anarchy In The UK' but ['Zombie'], perfectly conceived slice of pop subversion, with its killer groove sounding like no one else, thunderous brass with wonderful trumpet from Lester Bowie and lyrics in pidgin English attacking the mindlessness of the Nigerian military ('Zombie no go turn unless you tell am to turn/Zombie no go think unless you tell to think...').
Fela's robotic stage moves had been copied by protesters in riots against the government he was banned from Ghana for being 'liable to cause a breach of the peace' and this song provoked an attack on his new commune, named by Fela the Kalakuta ('Rascal') Republic. Indeed, Fela had declared independence from the repressive Nigerian state. On 18 February 1977, more than 1,000 armed soldiers surrounded the compound, set fire to the generator, and brutalised the occupants. Fela alleged he was dragged by his genitals from the main house, beaten, and only escaped death following the intervention of a commanding officer. Many women were raped and the 78-year-old Funmilayo [Fela's mother, a political activist, and a feminist] was thrown through a window. She subsequently died.

the Nigerian government killed Fela's mother because his music was just too damn good. you're basically the enemy if you don't like this album.

download .

Why - Carly Simon (1982)

2010-06-26T19:24:00.000-07:00

maybe it's just lust, but whatever. this blog needs an update.

listen.

Thee Oh Sees: Live

2010-03-27T13:33:00.000-07:00

they certainly have some sick albums, eps, singles, etc, but make no mistake: Thee Oh Sees is a band best served live.

i spent my last two nights seeing them: the first, at a dirty garage show in Los Angeles, and the second, at a tiny classroom trailer on UC Irvine's campus.

jumping, headbanging, sweat, pushing, pulling, falling, rising, spinning, turning, punching, being, being, being, being: it's better than ice cream and liquor.

every time i've seen them, they open the set with Enemy Destruct, the first track off of Help. of course, it's considerably sped up and, like a firecracker, the previously still pond of people leaps into a torrent of raging rock & roll-induced madness.

their songs, though bursts, just explosions of energy that don't last very long, make up for their shortness in sheer intensity. when you're gasping for air and limb a minute in, you're happy to be able to breathe when they finish at minute two. that said, i have yet to see them live without experiencing one of their songs drawn out to its extremities, stretched minutes upon minutes into infinity, a brutal chant of rhythm and melody that possesses your feet, makes you think it's punk rock disco night across the universe.

the rest of the band fucking rocks, but it's clear that the lead guitarist, John Dwyer, is the general in this war. like a sun, all our energy we owe to him. and, like a good military superior, he's always dicking around. whether eating his microphone like in the above photo, forcing the head of his guitar into the ground, or hopping like an lsd leprechaun, Dwyer attracts all eyes in the room. (that is, if you don't have hair or fists in your face already.) at one point last night, he shoved his microphone against the head of one of the drummer's toms and started guitar-humping the amp to draw as much fucked up feedback from it as possible. keep in mind, this is halfway through a 10-minute epic of a jam whose only recognizable lyric (to me) is "all you need is the summertime oh oh," repeated over and over. eventually Dwyer gave up (or was fulfilled) and the drummer somehow mustered up the energy to bust out some cracked out drum solo that had one kid in front of me convulsing until he collapsed on the floor, where he continued to shake his arms, legs, and head anyway.

this band is why i have long hair.

Sonic Youth

2010-03-14T14:35:00.001-07:00

I need to say something about Sonic Youth, anything. It's hard to be at all concise about a band this great, but let me try.

First, they are the greatest band in the universe. They join The Beatles, who've mastered pop, Pavement, who've mastered their own style of suburban pop, the Stones, who've mastered rock (and its ego), and certainly others you can come up with, bands which never disappoint, which always do something new but discernible.

Second, in a 30 year existence, there is no weak album. Some I admit I haven't fully "gotten" yet, but it's obvious the potential is there. I've heard the usual love-of-dichotomy "SY is split on a continuum between artsy noise and hard-rock songs," but there is so much more than that. There is always ambience, and there is always some kind of melody. The rhythms are pronounced (sometimes the rhythms are the melodies), and there's almost always some kind of "noise," an all-encompassing term if ever there was one.

Mostly what I would like is for others to notice how fucking amazing this band can be, a hard task, admittedly. Their discography is huge, and ambient noise isn't always the easiest thing to notice, even if sometimes the songs are clearly in the pop form or the melodies are highly pronounced (Teenage Riot, anyone?) And while every album is indeed unique, at distant listens they all sound the same. And consider that every critic and fan out there has their own opinions about which is the best album. How diverse is their discography?

2000's NYC Ghosts & Flowers is pure ambient, while 1992's Dirty is a Butch Vig-produced noise/grunge fest (they're both wonderful). Their first 1982 album is no-wave. Their second, 1983, is ambient noise rock (check out the Stooges cover and the lyrics to Confusion is Next). 1988's Daydream Nation is about as catchy as they can get, while 1998's A Thousand Leaves is about as laid-back as they can get. I could go on. I used to think Thousand Leaves was my favorite, but really it's just my first vinyl fetish and the first SY that I truly got into, opening up this wonderful world. I could always go for parts of Washing Machine, Confusion is Next, Dirty, and of course, shuffling through the entire discography.

And so to close, if there is any doubt about the ever-constant strength of this band, listen to a song from each album:

1982 S/T: I Dreamed I Dream
1983 Confusion is Next: Freezer Burn/I Wanna Be Your Dog
1985 Bad Moon Rising: Death Valley '69
1986 EVOL: Shadow of a Doubt
1987 Sister: Schizophrenia
1988 Daydream Nation: Teenage Riot
1990 Goo: Kool Thing
1992 Dirty: JC
1994 Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star: Sweet Shine
1995 Washing Machine: Little Trouble Girl (or Unwind...)
1998 A Thousand Leaves: Snare, Girl
2000 NYC Ghosts & Flowers: Nevermind (What Was It Anyway)
2002 Murray Street: Sympathy for Strawberry
2004 Sonic Nurse: I Love You Golden Blue
2006 Rather Ripped: Jams Run Free
2009 The Eternal: Massage the History

Etude No. 1 in C major - Chopin (1830)

2010-03-02T16:14:00.001-08:00

Chopin was born two hundred years and one day ago and this is the first classical music post on 6stars? for shame.

if scales make you see stars, please listen to this sublime piece that could last from now until the end of time, but instead stops at just under two minutes.

I Feel Love - Donna Summer (1977)

2010-02-24T12:00:00.001-08:00

ooh... it's so good
it's so good
it's so good
it's so good
it's so good

ooh... i'm in love
i'm in love
i'm in love
i'm in love
i'm in love

i feel loooo
ooooooooo
ooooooooo
ooooooove

i feel loooo
ooooooooo
ooooooooo
ooooooove

listen.

We Tigers - Animal Collective (2004)

2010-01-24T16:11:00.000-08:00

my favorite song off of Sung Tongs and one of the most memorable Animal Collective songs ever!

prepare to dance!
prepare to jump!
prepare to scream!
prepare to sing!

prepare to dance!

listen.

We Share Our Mother's Health - The Knife (2006)

2010-01-22T21:49:00.000-08:00

please excuse the awful resolution of this awesome album art.

stereo makes anything possible!

have you ever felt like a song sucked you in? not grabbed your attention, but actually grabbed you and threw you into its purply blue world?

this is pop music, i feel it in my bones, it feels electric, but this is pop music. the vocals don't begin until the song is already a fourth over, but no matter.

it's this enchantress. wizard? daemon. amoeba. its voice, chameleon, morphs and blends from highs to lows, chickenscratch frequencies unleashed.

duets. we've heard robot duets before. robot trios. robot quartets. robot symphony!

am i supposed to dance? am i supposed to think? am i supposed to listen?
do i dance? do i think? do i listen?

fuzzy me lean spleen a bottle of air and a wisp just like that.

listen.

Alive 2007 - Daft Punk (2007)

2010-01-22T12:22:00.000-08:00

i can honestly say that i love Homework, Discovery, Alive 1997, Human After All, and Alive 2007 equally (yes, expect at least five more posts in the coming eternity). so when Daft Punk releases an album that seamlessly, expertly, brilliantly, sublimely, mixes everything they've ever touched into a 1.3 hour epic medley of a concert, i find myself tempted to claim that it represents the epitome of the artist's music.

but it doesn't. it lacks one key feature of Daft Punk music: mind-numbing repetition.

where everything from "Around the World" to "One More Time" to "Human After All" recycles the same four bar argument for their entire existence, Alive 2007 evolves, morphs, trips, skips, falls, flies, destabilizes, stabilizes, hovers, sinks, and rises. and in under a minute? this is not normal Daft Punk.

on more than one occasion, i've played this album for friends who previously had no interest in Daft Punk... but they found something here.

i'm starting to think that to appreciate Daft Punk studio albums, you have to have a particular kind of insanity. you either have to a) love dancing, or b) love being, though the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. you either get up and just move, because that's all that four-on-the-floor is commanding you to do, or you stare off into space and let the waves of existence wash over you in a stormy confusion of awe. the repetition lends itself to this experience. why do Christians repeat the Hail Mary?

but for the non-believers, Daft Punk have created something new altogether, something still danceable and full of life: Alive 2007. Bangalter and that other French dude deconstruct, reconstruct, sack and pillage their old pieces to create a masterful compilation of their own forays into house, techno, acid, funk, disco, and synth pop, jumping from 1997 to 2001 to 2005 to 1997 to 2005 to 2001 to 1997 like it's nothing at all. this is not just an epic artist retrospective, but a world-class dance party, the best there ever was, the only kind there has ever been, the party that is life.

the encore isn't even fair. besides mixing the title track of Human After All with "Together," our beloved robot djs decide it timely to combine "One More Time" with "Music Sounds Better With You," probably the two greatest dance songs from the 90s and two of the greatest dance songs of all time. i don't understand how the law of physics allow them to coexist in one space of time without our legs stretching into dancing black holes that worm their way across the universe.

Wikipedia fun time!

audio:

The Alive 2007 set used Ableton Live software on "custom made super-computers" for the show. Daft Punk accessed the hardware remotely with Behringer BCR2000 MIDI controllers and JazzMutant Lemur touchscreen pads within the central pyramid. Minimoog Voyager RME units were also implemented for the live performances. The four Voyager units and two Behringer mixers allowed Daft Punk to "mix, shuffle, trigger loops, filter, distort samples, EQ in and out, transpose or destroy and deconstruct synth lines."

video:

The visuals of the 2006 and Alive 2007 tour were set up by XL Video. The company provided eight-core Mac Pro units running Catalyst v4 and Final Cut Pro. Daft Punk approached the company with their visual concept for the shows. "They came to us with a pretty fixed idea of what they wanted," said head of XL Video, Richard Burford. "They wanted to mix live video with effects. Using the eight-core Mac Pros, we were able to take in eight digital sources and treat them as video streams. Then they could use Catalyst to coordinate the video with lighting effects and add their own effects in on the fly. The final digital video streams ran to LED screens."

wow. i always find technical stuff enjoyable to read, even if i don't understand half of it.

I DIDN'T EVEN MENTION THE VISUALS!

ok it's not going to matter to listeners of the album alone, unless you're a lucky bastard and attended one of the shows and have all the spinning flashes and pyramidal shine ingrained in your neural passageways, but the visuals from this tour we're otherworldly. check it out sometime.

i really can't believe this is my first Daft Punk post.

download. purchase.

The Message - Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five (1982)

2010-01-15T16:00:00.000-08:00

the person that first played this track for me introduced it by saying something along the lines of "hey guys, hip hop and rap isn't all about 40s and blunts."

now, i'm not one to talk down 40s and blunts, but let me just say that the era of rapping solely about 40s and blunts wouldn't even come until the early 90s, a decade after Grandmaster Flash got his message out.

while most rap tracks rarely exceed 5min in length (notably, 2Pac's "California Love" goes for 6.5 min), "The Message" hits seven minutes and twelve seconds, an epic for the genre.

but the length is necessary.

the beat is so tight that everyone wants to rap over it: Ice Cube, Puff Daddy...
the lyrics are so fucking brutal that everyone wants to repeat them: Andre Nickatina, Snoop Dogg, Immortal Technique...

and the message?

the message is the Message: it's about how fucked up life is in the ghetto, it's about frustration, and you feel it:

don't
push
me
cause
i'm
close
to
the
edge

i'm
try
ing
not
to
lose
my
head

it's like a jungle sometimes. it makes me wonder how i keep from going under.

such a fucking badass.

Funky Drummer - James Brown (1970)

2009-12-13T22:04:00.000-08:00

1... 2... 3... 4...

listen.

Person Pitch - Panda Bear (2007)

2009-12-11T00:02:00.001-08:00

the album starts with the sound of a goddamn rollercoaster.

a rollercoaster! the machine which gave you the greatest highs you could ever imagine when you were 10, 15, 30 years old! you ascend into the clouds where a pulsing chant embraces you, and a singer steps out of the chorus to tell you to "always have a good time." and you listen! you tap along, stomp along, sing along, whistle along, walk along, and dance along until jet after jet after jet zooms by until suddenly the darkness engulfs you, and you wonder.

i don't want to write about this album.

there are just some things that can't be converted into words. when you try, your mind turns to sludge, your typing goes all wrong, and the words on the screen reflect that. you start typing things like "it sounds like running through a meadow towards a scarecrow except the meadow is made of brain tissue and the scarecrow is a rainbow unicorn" or "it sounds like if birds had teeth and lizards had wings" or "it sounds like if all the strongest people in the world started living in trees, only coming out to eat squirrels" or "it sounds like purple dipped in cream dipped in fur dipped in girl dipped in music dipped in mind."

the alternative?

i don't know, get stoned? buy a good pair of headphones? when you wake up in the morning, listen to your alarm? hear the rain? listen to the difference between a plate and a bowl? listen to the people talking to you? (just don't listen too closely, or you might not understand what they're saying.)

"hey man what's your problem don't you know that i don't belong to you"

no, you don't. you don't belong to anybody. you're a 12-and-a-half minute composition that escapes on the wings of an owl, you've got the turnpike on your side, trucks zoom past but you laugh because you don't need a ride, you're crying because you're leaving but you know it's the right decision.

what does it mean to not be able to hear a common phrase, such as "i'm not," without singing?

"ready?"

"what?"

"nevermind."

i once read a review that said this song sounded like an Amazonian tribe perform their chants while under the influence of LSD. how stupid. it's just Noah Lennox clicking buttons on a computer. the fucking magic! in his own words, he gave the computer a soul! us humans are all about soul but i don't know what we'll do once computers have them. in other words, i'm not ready.

all of a sudden i'm supposed to enjoy a fast tempo? well, okay. chant me into submission. submit me into chanting. you're getting water everywhere. i may be marine but i might not be me, and it turns out that "/" means i'm not.

"it's not a ticket for you to pick at other people who don't know what's up like you're so sure you do"

ouch.

eventually the ice cream will come around; you can heal your wound and eat neapolitan simultaneously. what's the difference?

tigers, gorillas, seals, koalas, panda bears, and little kids. the artist knows the music.

when my soul starts growing
when my soul starts growing
when my soul starts growing

a
aa
and

i wish
i wish
i know

stop
stop
stop

and here you were, expecting something epic.

it's funny reading reviews of this album because each one of them rings so true while at the same time only capturing one facet of the whole:

"Starting an album with a clattering of industrial rhythms sliding into a huge clap-and-stompalong with angelic vocals and what sounds like the Brotherhood of Man on a vocal loop tip not far removed from Suicide or Laurie Anderson is one way to make a mark." -- allmusic

"Sometimes ominous, sometimes celebratory, always compelling, Person Pitch is as clattering and tactile as a beaded curtain." -- The Onion

"Person Pitch as a whole-- and "Bros" in particular-- evokes the sunshine of Lennox's adopted Lisbon, Portugal home. But it's the kind of light best experienced with eyes closed-- with the rays filtered through eyelids, turning the world into various shades of red and orange." -- Pitchfork

"For an album constructed from so many constituent parts, Person Pitch is amazingly warm and inviting at times, wrapping around the ears, nestling the head, and squeezing like a nice familial bear hug after years of no contact." -- Tiny Mix Tapes

"Person Pitch sounds like everything. To some, the upstroked guitars and vocal stacking in “Take Pills” make it a consummate summer record. To others, the city clacks and tracks, the sampled noise and confusion make it a winter record, the kind of thing you curl up with in front of a frosty window in order to be reminded that something exists beneath the snow." -- Aquarium Drunkard

"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."

download or buy.

Donuts - J Dilla (2006)

2009-12-10T21:49:00.000-08:00

this is one of those albums designed to loop infinitely, and not just because the last song ends in sync with the beginning of the first song.

released on February 7, 2006, three days after its creator passed on, "Donuts" is a 31-track instrumental hip hop masterpiece, a journey through the dustiest yet most delicious funk, rap, jazz, and R&B vinyl sounds imaginable.

the longest track is 2:57, the shortest is 0:13, and most of the other pieces fall somewhere around 1-2min. they're more like doughnut holes than donuts, but then, holes are donuts too and, breaking apart the metaphor, these are all songs, not just brief, unprepared, hashed together thought experiments. they are J Dilla's babies, each one a little more than a peek into the man's record collection, each one a mini-factory of sound outputting clear visions of samples that J had clearly synthesized in his head for many, many years.

the most lengthy track on the record and song #2, "Workinonit," gets things started the right way. blasting off with J Dilla's signature siren call, we are launched into a bouncy room of stringed reverberation with slick drum beats pulling us through. suddenly ascending guitar solos make us forget that we're listening to a hip hop record, while a hermaphroditic voice pulls us in:

play me
play me
buy me
workinonit
workinonit
workinonit
workinonit

girls moan, the guitar solos keep recurring, then breakdown: the guitar sings heavenly, bells twinkle, and we are summoned into the next donut.

listen to "Time: The Donut of the Heart." maybe he's just playing back a Jackson 5 b-side, but i don't care. he's playing it for me and it's divine. he lets it slow down a little bit, just to make you realize how dependent you had become on that sweet melody, and then he lets it do its work at normal speed again.

try "Lightworks:" boop boop beep boop. "This is Bendix: The Tomorrow People." it sounds like he sampled and panned the hell out a commercial from the 50s or something. layering boops and beeps like something out of Kraftwerk,

who the hell is this J Dilla? James Dewitt Yancey founded Slum Village in the mid-90s, but he is most remembered today for his production skills, which, if you've ever listened to Common, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, or The Pharcyde, you've already experienced. he released some solo albums in the early 00s under the moniker Jay Dee and you'll find some great stuff there. in 2003, Jay collaborated with Madlib on an album called "Champion Sound," released under Jaylib. then in 2006, J Dilla gave us "Donuts," which would be so incredibly crafted out of perfectly chosen samples that it would make music lovers around the world pause and wonder, "who the hell is this J Dilla?"

some posthumous albums have made it out since the release of "Donuts," but (and i am by no means a Dilla expert) check this monster out first. if it does the same thing to you as it did to me , you'll think it nothing special until you realize you've just listened to it 15x in a row.

download or buy.

1967

2009-10-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

January 4

February 1

March 12

May 12

June 1

August 5

November 27

December 1

Banshee Beat - Animal Collective (2005)

2009-09-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

i don't know what it is. that's probably a good starting point.

if there are such things as favorites, this is my favorite Animal Collective song. if you know what the sublime is, this song is it.

and no, it's not just because it's one of the band's longest songs. it has to do with how this song FEELS.

i'm trying to be eloquent about this, but it's coming out terse.

how fitting, i continue, that it comes to how this song FEELS, because that's the name of the album you find it on. this whole song just FEELS good. it FEELS like head nodding. it FEELS like dancing, swimming, climbing, loving. it makes me want to stretch my arms out, kiss the Earth, hug the solar system, and inhale the whole universe like a delicious sea breeze. you couldn't take enough bong rips to FEEL the way this song makes you FEEL. i want to mail a letter to the President asking him to listen to this song. i want to ask you to listen to this song because i want you to tell me if it's even remotely possible to experience happiness without sadness. i want you to tell me if it's possible to love without feeling a chill run down your spine. can you hug the solar system without burning your belly button?

'Banshee Beat' FEELS like life. 'Banshee Beat' is life. it's sublime.

it doesn't start with a wailing, panning guitar or tribal drumming or a wave of distortion or dazzling, psychedelic strings... no, no, no, it starts with a whisper of a strum. reverberating whispers of strums. crackling.

a man's voice. also reverberated. a hint at a piano. reverberated.

guitars coming from all sides now. whispering. walking past us talking about something. piano tones growing and dying. crackling. crickets. chirping. crackling

the man's voice stops and something starts happening. the crackling, chirping, strumming, ripping, tapping, all that noise grows in intensity. it gets braver. it approaches you, face to face.

the guitars sidle this way and that. and the voice comes back.

a booming bass drum.

every line he sings = every chill i feel.

So I duck out, go down to find the SWIMMING POOL
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool
Cause when I'm snuffed out I doubt I'll find a SWIMMING POOL
Hop a fence, leave the street and wet your feet to find the swimming pool

every line he sings = every chill i feel.

the rhythms by now are at full speed, the guitar is strumming along lazily down its own reverberated river, ah ah ah ah.

every line he sings = every chill i feel.

So I duck out, go down to find the SWIMMING POOL
Hop a fence, leave the street, and wet your feet to find the swimming pool
'Cause when I'm snuffed out I doubt I'll find a SWIMMING POOL
Hop a fence, leave the street, and wet your feet to find the swimming pool

every line he sings = every chill i feel.

cue monkey sounds.

listen. download. buy.

Dayvan Cowboy - Boards of Canada (2005)

2009-09-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Tranquility in things larger than ourselves.

Dayvan Cowboy (video, Warp Records)

for reference:
Wikipedia: Dayvan Cowboy
Wikipedia: Project Excelsior
Wikipedia: Le Grand Saut

Nine Inch Nails: Live

2009-09-10T15:12:00.001-07:00

this is how i got into Nine Inch Nails:

it has always been about the live experience with this band. before i fell into The Downward Spiral, before i touched The Fragile or Pretty Hate Machine, there was And All That Could Have Been and nothing else.

i've come to realize that my main criterion for judging music is sincerity. i don't care if you sound like death metal or like a guy dragging a tipped over ice cream truck or something in between: as long as what you're doing is making you happy, as long as you are making music that you love, then i love it too. and what better test is there for sincerity than a live demonstration?

if you watch that video, you'll see NIN performing the usual two first songs of their Fragility Tour shows, "Terrible Lie" and "Sin." and, in less than ten minutes, you'll see the energy, the love, the destruction, the emotion, the absolute fucking sincerity of Trent Reznor performing his music.

sure, he's wearing a mask of cornstarch and makeup and, whatever, the videos are not actually complete performances, instead composed of patched up clips from ten different shows, but these things don't make Trent seem any less sincere. what's really important is how much detail goes into each performance. notice every flash of lighting, perfectly matched up with a synth or drum break. notice the structure of the bandmembers on stage, like a pentagon: bassist, front left. keyboardist, back left. guitarist, front right. drummer, back right. Reznor, center stage. five musicians with the main man at the front leading the charge. beyond that, there's the obvious stuff. the whole band headbanging like they fucking mean it (take a look at 4:30-4:50, in particular... those 20 seconds practically taught me how to headbang). you don't headbang the whole song, goddamnit, you wait until that shit breaks, and you follow the dynamics closely. this is a science. then at 5:10, there's that fucking lighting again. a guy playing a theremin. strobe lights. the usual, the weird, the greatness.

but i'm not posting this just to talk about And All That Could Have Been, although that album and all of its distinct parts (CD/DVD/Still) certainly deserve their own posts. this is the Nine Inch Nails live experience. and though they are all created equal in awesomeness, they are not all the same.

it used to be a lot messier. NIN's Woodstock 1994 performances are famous because, just minutes before going on stage, the band got into a fun little mud fight backstage, making for quite the picture-perfect look onstage:

there are legends that tell of performances on the Spiral tours in 94-95, in which, sick of sitting in bloody fucking SEATS at a Nine Inch Nails show, rabid fans tore apart whole rows and sections of seats, ripping them straight out of the ground. whether those stories are true or not, there's plenty of evidence on Closure, the documentary of that tour, that the band caused enough destruction themselves to not even warrant the extra legends. check out the trailer for Closure for a peak into the madness:

a few years later, things got toned down a little bit on the Fragility tour, which i've already talked a little bit about above. Trent was still doing a shit ton of drugs, but he was destroying himself more than hotel rooms (oh, fragile Trent) and focusing his madness more on the visual experience than on anything else.

and that ended the era that i would never get to see because i was too young.

when i finally got into the band, Nine Inch Nails didn't really exist. it was 2003 or so, And All That Could Have Been was three years in the past and the last thing Trent had said was inscribed as a little message in that DVD's packaging:

just a glimpse

just a little reminder

of a time and place we

used to live in

this dvd attempts to

document the

experience of

nine inch nails live,

as we were in the

summer of 2000

we filmed and recorded

most of the dates of

the north american

fragility 2.0 tour

with home video cameras

then assembled

mixed and edited this

ourselves with our

home computers

in my eyes

fragility 2.0

was a summation of

what we had

accomplished up to

that time so this dvd

serves as a reminder

of achievement

as well as

a departure point

this is almost what

it felt like being there

trent reznor

i read this little message often, perhaps too often, and almost cried every time i read that last line, because i was certain that the DVD would be all i could ever have. i would only ever have "almost what it felt like."

with 2005 came new hope (sort of), when NINdom found out that Trent barely made it alive through a hefty battle with alcohol, cocaine, and heroin addiction. next came news of a new album. i said "new hope (sort of)" because when i heard the first new NIN song in 6 years--"The Hand That Feeds"--i instantly knew that the Reznor who had composed songs like "Terrible Lie," "Mr. Self Destruct," and "Somewhat Damaged" was a changed man now.

he would be clean, sharp, and productive as shit.

it took stoned Trent ten years to release 3 studio albums and 1 ep. it took sober Trent three years to release 4 studio albums. ridiculous. and though i'll agree that the quality of the music decreased, i can't say the same about the live experience. though i never truly experienced a pre-With Teeth show, i think i landed on the same heavenly cloud of musically energetic paradise that existed in those early years. though he may not be able to make music like he could back then, he can still play it like he used to.

i still remember the exact date the first time i saw NIN the first time: March 25, 2005. it was that time of year where my allergies start picking up, and when they pick up, so does my asthma. but fuck it. i was seeing motherfucking NIN in a tiny auditorium on the uc davis campus. i had moaned for this for too long. he opened with The Frail --> The Wretched. it was a dream come true. i screamed the whole night and nearly rushed the barricade when he started singing Piggy. i killed myself at that show.

the next day i was sick as shit, but it didn't matter. i could fucking die for all i cared because i had finally seen Nine Inch Nails live. i didn't die. i went to my computer and downloaded a bootleg of the show and listened to it nonstop for days, sick in bed. the song "With Teeth," in particular, with its soft, soothing, brutal refusal to let go of life, struck me so hard.

i was in love.

i proceeded to see NIN four more times that year: twice in the next month (two days in a row in San Francisco at a small venue called the Warfield, once with a bunch of friends and once by myself because none of my friends were as psycho as I was), once in November at the huge Oakland Arena, and once in December at a smaller venue in Santa Cruz.

the Oakland show was the one.

the show had originally been planned for an earlier date, about a month earlier, but the drummer at the time, Jerome Dillon, had repeatedly called in sick. Trent got pissed, got a new drummer, made a new date, and made it up to us more than we could have possibly imagined. Adam and i got to the venue before noon and we were still about 50 people back. we waited all day, hearing about how at other shows Trent had let NIN fan club members in for meet & greets and/or soundchecks. we got the latter. everyone casually walked into the venue as NIN was right there on stage, in broad daylight, like any other band, rocking out to Into the Void. and even when they were just playing for sound levels, they were having a good time. sincerity.

the actual show destroyed me and actually destroyed Adam. he hadn't eaten enough during the day and hardly enjoyed the show because he was dying. i didn't need food that night. firmly planted on the barricade, my arms, firmly planted on the band, my eyes, dazzled, firmly planted on the music, my mind. the light show, unlike any other NIN show (nay, any other show, by anyone) that i had every seen, was phenomenal. and they weren't just rehashing the same old shit over and over. i think Trent got sick of playing same old Closer, so he remixed it with a song from Pretty Hate Machine, "The Only Time." and it worked beautifully. check out the switch around 2:50.

i even got to experience that shit i saw on And All That Could Have Been, where in the middle of "Piggy," Trent hands the mic to a bunch of fans in front so they could sing. a few people around me and i caught a thrown microphone from Trent in the middle of "Suck" and belted out the lyrics like it was the last song in the universe. the light show was stellar, the whole band was feeling it, movement, movement, motion, motion, madness, madness, music music music music music music. i wanted to die (again).

and so it went.

in the summer of 2006, i saw NIN at Mountain View with my dad. another great show, and the second time a parent of mine attended a NIN show with me. (the first was in Oakland, but my mom and little brother were in the seats while i was at the barricade with Adam... not everyone likes getting to shows nine hours early.)

a year ago was the first time i took a girlfriend to a Nine Inch Nails show. i thought it would suck. for years, i had witnessed boyfriends have miserable times trying to defend their little girlfriends, half the time fighting with everyone around them instead of making love to Trent. thank god, Meryl and i got to the show ballsass early, like Adam and i in 2005, and we got barricade, once again. protecting the girl was hardly a problem.

the show itself, of course, was amazing. it got interactive again, too. to go along with the Year Zero theme, security-style cams displayed everyone at the barricade in our section on giant screens in the arena during "Survivalism." so silly, but so fun.

my favorite part of this show was the Ghosts breakdown. of all of NIN's new releases, Ghosts is the best. it's experimental and instrumental and glorious sound manipulation, which is all music is. oh, and it feels sincere. at the show, the band replicated a few songs off the album with upright bass and xylophones and all sorts of strange instruments i don't know the names of. oh yeah, and the lighting ruled, of course.

i saw Nine Inch Nails for the eighth and (supposedly) last time two nights ago. and i've concluded a few things: Trent loves music, NIN still rocks, and Trent loves music. over the course of the night he had a bunch of his friends, influences, and more come on stage to play music with him over the course of the 31-song and 2.5 hour set. they included Gary Numan, Eric Avery of Jane's Addiction, Greg Puciato from Dillinger Escape Plan, and Danny Lohner, the bassist from the Fragility tour. in the following video, Mike Garson, who was David Bowie's keyboardist back in the day and played those insane arpeggios on The Fragile for "Just Like You Imagined," made an appearance to add some piano mischief to the standard NIN repertoire.

i was stunned. and almost died (once again).

also, i'd be stunned if you actually read this whole thing. i just wanted to express how important the Nine Inch Nails live experience has been to me over the years and how, i'm sure, it will continue to be important to me for the rest of my life.

probably for a very long time, i will continue to say that a mass of people ebbing to Nine Inch Nails performing "Terrible Lie" live is probably the best possible thing that anybody can ever experience. i will compare all light shows to NIN's light shows. i will compare all bands' endurances to the endurance of a band that can rock and rock hard for well over 2 hours. every night. i will compare the dedication of other musicians' fans to the dedication of NIN fans who line up before the sun starts rising just for a barricade spot. at every show. i will compare the recording policies of other bands to NIN's policies, which strictly demand that everyone bring an HD camera and sturdy tripod to the show for the best quality possible. and, more than anything, i will compare your favorite musician's sincerity to the sincerity of Trent Reznor, who bleeds the stuff from his fucking eyes and throat.

sincerity.

The Beatles

2009-09-09T09:09:00.000-07:00

today Apple and EMI are releasing two box sets: The Beatles Stereo Box Set and The Beatles in Mono, two epic compilations of remastered stereo and mono recordings of the complete Beatles studio catalog. beautiful. to mark my renewed obsession (sparked by both the box sets and also by seeing the Cirque du Soleil show LOVE in Las Vegas with Adam), i'm making this little post, which falls back on a classic six stars strategy: speechlessness at sheer musical genius.

Joni Mitchell

2009-08-25T19:10:00.000-07:00

Yes. End of story.

I recently re-discovered Blue (1971), her fourth album, after admittingly not understanding it in high school. Its forte is a classically-grounded melodic and harmonic know-how to put poetry to music. It's even bouncy at times!

So, excited about Joni as I was, I got Court and Spark (1974), her sixth album, and listened to it today. It's too interesting not to mention. Of course I can't make any sort of real judgment after just one listen (especially given an artist of her depth), but I can say for certain that it's a weird kind of musics that sounds smooth, efficient, and meaningful. "Jazz folk-rock," Wikipedia calls it.

I hear she's got other great albums. I'm not surprised. GO BUY SOME. Or pirate them, I don't give a shit. Click on her lovely face to get a list of all her releases (in a new window, or in a new tab if your browser has them).

It Was a Good Day - Ice Cube (1992)

2009-08-23T23:06:00.000-07:00

last night, after watching an epic triple feature with Mark (Kill Bill, Vol. 1 -- The Holy Mountain -- Kill Bill, Vol. 2), i was driving home exceedingly high around 5am. earlier in the day, i had taken my ipod out of the car because it was dead and had also somehow managed to remove all the music from my iphone. so i was left to choose between Adam's 2008 summer mix and the radio. i had been listening to the mix earlier in the day, so i switched over to the radio, trying to pick up whatever i could. what could i pick up?

that's right. WILD NINETY FOUR NINE, THE BAY AREA'S PARTY STATION. anyway, whatever they were playing pleased me enough for the short car ride home, so i left it. when that song ended, though, "It Was a Good Day" came on. and it kicked my ass to the curb. i know i've heard this song a couple times back in the day, but it must've floated out of my memory at some point. well, it came back and it came back so good.

rapping over a 1977 slow jam called "Footsteps in the Dark" by The Isley Brothers, Ice Cube only needs 4 minutes and 20 seconds to make you feel as good as he does. except he doesn't make the same mistake of interrupting the jam to coo high-pitched love lines... he just lets it play right on through until the end of the song.

and by the end of the song, your ears will be begging for the beat to be brought back.

in the meantime, Ice Cube lets you know how he feels: pretty goddamn good. for solid reasons too: mama made a good breakfast, cops didn't give a shit that he ran a red light, he fucked a girl he's had an eye on since high school, he's stoned, he's drunk (didn't puke though), and, to top it all off:

"today i didn't even have to use my AK.
i gotta say it was a good day."

who the fuck rhymes "AK" with "good day?" a man who feels good, that's who. take me there, man.

watch.

This Magic Moment - The Drifters (1960)

2009-08-22T18:57:00.000-07:00

"this magic moment."

when Ben E. King rips out that first line of the song, i can't tell if he's talking about love or music. i guess it doesn't really matter.

this entirety of this song i get chills, as the Drifters belt out beautiful lyrics over swirling strings in the background, supported by a basic rhythm from the kit. i say i can't tell whether King is singing about love or the very music he's making, because i feel towards this song the way somebody might feel towards a loved one.

it's so different, so new. sounds i've never heard before, and they're hitting my ears right now. every instrument, pouring wine so sweet, intoxicating me, embracing me in a warm insulation that i feel can never end, forever until the end of time...

and, of course, like any beautiful song, its perfection is unexplainable. it's all magic.

here are the lyrics in full:

this magic moment
so different and so new
was like any other
until i kissed you

and then it happened
it took me by surprise
i knew that you felt it too
by the look in your eyes

sweeter than wine
softer than the summer night
everything i want i have
whenever i hold you tight

this magic moment
while your lips are close to mine
will last forever
forever til the end of time

magic magic magic magic

i music love.

listen.

Four Organs - Steve Reich (1970)

2009-08-21T16:04:00.000-07:00

it starts with an innocent maracas player, alone in his robotic, unaccented shaking for almost four seconds. but, even though the shaking continues nonstop and steady for the rest of the fifteen minute song, the shaking is never left alone again for longer than a moment.

that's because at 0:04, the organs come in. four organs, to be exact. and when they do, you know it's Steve Reich minimalism at its finest.

i don't know anything about music, so i'll let Wikipedia describe exactly what happens in this song from start to finish: "the four organs, harmonically expound a dominant eleventh chord (D-E-F#-G#-A-B with an E in the bass), dissecting the chord by playing parts of it sequentially while the chord slowly increases in duration from a single 1/8 note at the beginning to 200 beats at the end."

now, to make this a little more visual, Reich's vision for the piece (as given at the premiere): "I had the idea that if a group of tones were all pulsing together in a repeating chord...one tone at a time could gradually get longer and longer.... The tones would simply begin in unison...and then gradually extend out like a sort of horizontal bar graph."

playing on organs popular in rock & roll at the time (think The Doors), the organists play longer and longer, more and more sustained tones, building on top of each other the entirety of the song. one chord. one chord the whole time. one chord over and over and over again. one chord, in the beginning, just an eighth note. then a quarter note, half note, whole note. one chord played for minutes at a time, by the end of the piece. with the omnipresent shaking as a foundation, they construct an upside down pyramid, working their way to textures so thickly layered that at one of the early performances, they nearly drove a poor old lady to insanity.

allmusic describes the first couple performances of the piece in 1971, when "Imagine," "My Sweet Lord," "Maggie May," and "Brown Sugar" were the world's biggest hit singles:

In 1970, Reich received a phone call from the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas asking for some new orchestral repertory, and he jokingly responded, 'Of course, my new piece Four Organs." To his great surprise, Tilson Thomas agreed to Reich's suggestion. While it was anything but symphonic, Four Organs was performed by the Boston Symphony in Boston's Symphony Hall in October, 1971, along with works by Mozart, Liszt and Bartok. The stoic New England audience took the work in stride, but a more volatile New York audience was less approving when it came to Carnegie Hall in 1973. Shouts, boos, cheers, threats and counter-threats by patrons broke out during the performance, and one elderly lady even banged her shoe on the edge of the stage in an attempt to stop the music. The New York Times critic Harold Schonberg reported that "the audience behaved as though red-hot needles were being inserted under fingernails." Nevertheless, Reich soon became a hot commodity and his reputation took off soon after the notorious concert.

as Meryl expressed last night, by comparing this reaction to that of Edouard Manet's Olympia, which also sparked controversy when it was shown in 1863, it seems that there's something to pieces of art that make people want to tear it to shreds. she said, "if your art upset a lot of people, you're probably doing something right." i think that's exactly what happened here.

one chord, two words, three syllables, four organs, five musicians, six stars.

listen.

Blue Monday - New Order (1983)

2009-08-19T03:49:00.000-07:00

Xanthe and i were shocked today when we found out that our friend Donni didn't know what a subwoofer was. i tried punching her (on beat) to explain. when that didn't work, i played this song.

the biggest selling 12" single of all time, "Blue Monday" is the best New Order song and it's one of my favorite dance songs ever.

when i listen to it on headphones, as i am right now, it's a comfortable living room experience. i'm just sitting here, turning up the volume an increment or two every half minute, bobbing my head with that standard house beat (with the occasional machine gun twitter), letting the guitar sidewind down my face, hearing monks proclaim their love for divinity and listening to divinity (in the form of synthesized strings) puke its love for monks.

then the vocals come on. then its 5 more minutes of dance rock power pop new waves. wonderful.

then there are the times the song is blasting out of speakers. maybe i'll just play extremely loudly in my own room, like i did for Xanthe and Donni this morning, or a dj will throw it on at a club. this happened pretty much every night i went out in Athens, and pretty much every time it happened, i let go of everything to get up and dance. and if i was already "dancing," i dropped the act and actually started dancing (because you're only dancing when you ignore yourself and submit yourself to the air swirling air around you.)

everything is perfect in this song.
the bass drum is perfect.
the synths are perfect.
the bass is perfect.
the hi-hat is perfect.
the snare is perfect.
the guitar is perfect.
the synthesized string section is perfect.
the singing is perfect
the synthesized horn section is perfect.
EVERYTHING IS PERFECT.

listen.

Patty Waters

2009-08-18T19:25:00.000-07:00

Patty Waters is a mysterious jazz singer who made two recordings in 1966 for the obscure free-jazz label ESP-Disk. One of these albums was called Sings. The cover:

The first half is fourteen minutes worth of seven songs, for solo meandering/wandering piano and searching/lost female voice, with titles like "Moon, Don't Come Up Tonight" (because her man isn't coming), "Why Can't I Come to You?" (because he doesn't want her), and "I Can't Forget You" (with key lyrics, 'Since you don't want me / It makes me want you all the more'). Blunt.

The second half is fourteen minutes worth of a freaky horror-jazz take on the traditional folk song "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," in which the word "black" is repeated almost ad nauseam in every vocal style known to Ms. Waters, from manly growl to high-frequency shrill to Damo Suzuki/Eye/Yoko Ono-begetting noise-making.

For reference, here is the cover of her other album, College Tour:

I bought this and now I'm sharing it! So you have no excuse not listen to it: the musics

Lily Allen

2009-08-08T21:55:00.001-07:00

Lily Allen is serious paprazzi material (in the UK). She's popular because she's young, hot, and she sings about daily things such as boyfriends, fucking, and drugs, and because the music is slick pop with big electro beats. She made it big in 2006 thanks to MySpace, released an album and some singles, one of which, Smile, I think even US kids know, and in 2008 recorded her second album, It's Not Me, It's You, released just this February, 2009.

Anyways, I have this album, and here is what I think:

4.5 stars: 50 years from now, 4.0, but for its daring approach to pop and ridiculous popularity, a strong 4.5, resting largely on her voice and on her lyrics, the former so silky you think she was born singing like this, the latter direct and natural, a good quality in music this poppy. Play it very loudly so you hear all the nuances.

Lily Allen: smarter and more talented beyond either her popularity or her typical fans.

How I Fell in Love (with Belle & Sebastian)

2009-08-01T17:00:00.001-07:00

Let me qualify: this is actually how I fell in love with Dear Catastrophe Waitress. And let me be blunt: I was stoned.

Now let me clarify my bluntness: this album, along with If You're Feeling Sinister, had sat in my library for ages, largely un-listened. Pot was the impetus necessary to lose any pre-conceptions about bands and albums and what I have or haven't listened to yet, so that I could, among other things, put on some headphones and get lost in a maze of shuffled music. And it doesn't surprise me at all in retrospect, that as with any relaxed, bias-free and intimate listen, I discovered truths previously invisible. And thus, my entry into the world of these lovely Scots.

The sound is gentle. It's the soundtrack to the lives of lonely high school boys and girls who, instead of becoming angsty, rebellious, or destructive, continue to believe that life can be beautiful, lovely, and maybe even lively. Where both groups embrace the all-too-important fact that life's (often) a bitch, one throws a finger in everyone's face and the other hangs on to who-the-fuck-knows-what. Hope, probably.

The music's romanticism is sharp, and so, as Chopin's was grounded in "harmony, counterpoint, and fugue," so is Belle & Sebastian's grounded in reality and in the honest belief that life can be beautiful. As such, the album becomes wistful, blurring the line between being pensive and being content. Its joie de vivre means when it's happy, it's exuberant. Its romanticism means when it's sad, it's either nostalgic or just selflessly hopeful, roaming along in a haze of comfortable familiarity (which is always changing).

Rarely does music, lyrics, and statement (otherwise known as swagger in bands like Bad Company) come together so well on an album as they do on this one. And I ask you, how can anyone so me-against-the-world love the world so much? Key theme: books.

By the way, the musicianship is astounding; tight, lyrical, and professional. Thus, a song like Asleep on a Sunbeam still wins, and when those horns drop in you'd think the album had peaked.

Album Art (One Dominant Color)

2009-08-01T13:55:00.000-07:00

Carmina Burana - Carl Orff (1937)

2009-07-30T17:18:00.000-07:00

if you think the obsession in music with "fucking bitches" started with gangsta rap, then please take a seat.

that's a page from a 12th century text called Carmina Burana, or "Songs from Benediktbeurn," written entirely in Medieval Latin. created by a couple clergy students, the manuscripts concerns itself with themes of the fickleness of fortune and wealth, the ephemeral nature of life, the joy of the return of Spring, and the pleasures and perils of drinking, gluttony, gambling, and, of course, lust. if the drawing above doesn't demonstrate how loopy in love with decadence and sex were the minds of these kids, then give me a moment.

give me 800 years.

in 1937 Germany, the Frankfurt Opera premiered a piece composed by Carl Orff called Carmina Burana, a "scenic cantata" that used various parts of the original medieval text as its libretto. Orff's full Latin title was Carmina Burana: Cantiones profanae cantoribus et choris cantandae comitantibus instrumentis atque imaginibus magicis, or "Songs of Beurn: Secular songs for singers and choruses to be sung together with instruments and magic images."

i don't know about the premiere, but the first time time i saw a performance of Carmina Burana, all the magic images were in my head. the melodies are so catchy, it hurts. the instrumentation is glittery, the rhythms are like running through a meadow. angels and demons fly out of the soloists' throats. most importantly, this is without a doubt one of the most epic collections of music ever created. and it's raunchy, too.

the best example i'll give are the lyrics from the "Tempus est iocundum." i won't say it explicitly, but the chorus appears to be quite the ejection of excitement...

Tempus es iocundum,	This is the joyful time,
o virgines,	O maidens,
modo congaudete	rejoice with them,
vos iuvenes.	young men!
(Baritone)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Women)
Mea me confortat	I am heartened
promissio,	by my promise,
mea me deportat	I am downcast by my refusal
(Soprano and boys)
Oh, oh, oh	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Men)
Tempore brumali	In the winter
vir patiens,	man is patient,
animo vernali	the breath of spring
lasciviens.	makes him lust.
(Baritone)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Women)
Mea mecum ludit	My virginity
virginitas,	makes me frisky,
mea me detrudit	my simplicity
simplicitas.	holds me back.
(Soprano and Boys)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!
(Chorus)
Veni, domicella,	Come, my mistress,
cum gaudio,	with joy,
veni, veni, pulchra,	come, come, my pretty,
iam pereo.	I am dying!
(Baritone, Boys and Chorus)
Oh, oh, oh,	Oh! Oh! Oh!
totus floreo,	I am bursting out all over!
iam amore virginali	I am burning all over with first love!
totus ardeo, novus, novus amor est, quo pereo.	New, new love is what I am dying of!

then the next song, "Dulcissime," which consists of two lines of lyrics:

Dulcissime,	Sweetest one! Ah!
totam tibi subdo me!	I give myself to you totally!

wow. absolute orgasm. and it's not just the words. from the rapid, haphazard choral excitement of the piece right before, this is just one female vocalist moaning for 34 seconds.

you already know the most famous piece from this work, "O Fortuna." it's that incredibly epic song reminiscent of horses charging, planets crashing, slow-motion, and unstoppable glory in all its forms. check out these lyrics though:

O Fortuna	O Fortune,
velut luna	like the moon
statu variabilis,	you are changeable,
semper crescis	ever waxing
aut decrescis;	and waning;
vita detestabilis	hateful life
nunc obdurat	first oppresses
et tunc curat	and then soothes
ludo mentis aciem,	as fancy takes it;
egestatem,	poverty
potestatem	and power
dissolvit ut glaciem.	it melts them like ice.
Sors immanis	Fate - monstrous
et inanis,	and empty,
rota tu volubilis,	you whirling wheel,
status malus,	you are malevolent,
vana salus	well-being is vain
semper dissolubilis,	and always fades to nothing,
obumbrata	shadowed
et velata	and veiled
michi quoque niteris;	you plague me too;
nunc per ludum	now through the game
dorsum nudum	I bring my bare back
fero tui sceleris.	to your villainy.
Sors salutis	Fate is against me
et virtutis	in health
michi nunc contraria,	and virtue,
est affectus	driven on
et defectus	and weighted down,
semper in angaria.	always enslaved.
Hac in hora	So at this hour
sine mora	without delay
corde pulsum tangite;	pluck the vibrating strings;
quod per sortem	since Fate
sternit fortem,	strikes down the strong man,
mecum omnes plangite!	everyone weep with me!

these are the words that Orff's masterpiece starts AND ends with. essentially, even though much of the cantata has lyrics about love and drinking and growing and youthfulness and growing old and everything else you can think of, the composer realizes and makes you realize that all that is simply life. and it can be summed up with a fearful, epic, monolithic, tumbling, black, monstrous ode to Fortune and her fateful wheel that spins us around. and so, in an effort to replicate life, Orff ends Carmina Burana the way it starts.

birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death birth youth bloom love sex death.

"Life ain't nothin' but bitches and money." -- Ice Cube, from "Gangsta Gangsta" on N.W.A's Straight Outta Compton.

download or watch.

Spacemen 3 - Taking Drugs to Make Music To Take Drugs To (original release: 1990)

2009-07-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

This album makes me feel good.

Enough rock.

Enough feedback.

Hard enough.

Soft enough.

Slow enough.

Long enough.

Monolithic drums.

Dry feedback from the same riff over and over.

Spaced out, drowning vocals.

And textures.

I constantly find myself turning to this album especially when I can't listen to anything else.

In a way, I guess you can call this one of my comfort albums; an album you can turn to any time and feel fine.

Shania Twain- You're Still the One (live circa 2002)

2009-07-21T20:02:00.000-07:00

I think this song speaks for itself.

Help - Thee Oh Sees (2009)

2009-07-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

okay. i admit it. i'm obsessed with this album, not just the album art:

originally, i simply wrote, "another quick, short post. what i imagine when i think about good and fun psychedelic rock: a purple smiling bat that can magically make rainbow arcs squiggle."

i tried to reduce my love for this album to its album art. let me try again: in less than a month, this has become one of my favorite albums of the year.

it's grungy. it's one of the dirtiest albums i've listened to in a long time. the drums are simple, but they provide a perfect backbone to the swampy, distorted humming of the guitar. i can't tell if the vocals have tons of effects put on them, or this guy just sings like a maniac, but i'm at last sure the reverb is out of control. it's like he's singing for a football stadium inside a garage. which brings me to my next point.

it's psychedelic. this guy sings like a retarded angel shaman, or something. i don't know how else to describe it. his voice is high-pitched and harmonious and wonderful, but it's also kind of whiny and just plain weird. beyond the vocals, this will FEEL just like good old rock & roll, nothing psychedelic at all. and yet, there is something in the sound that i think you will find makes it teem with rainbow sparkles and talking purple bats coming out of walls.

it's fun. all i want to do when i listen to this record is get off my goddamn chair and jump around. it's not particularly danceable, it's not what you'd call headbanging music, but i can't stop myself from dancing and headbanging to it.

ambiguous descriptions of a few tracks (which can all be listened to fully and freely here):

electric guitar and bass guitar wind, wind, wind, wind in the first three seconds and then, suddenly, the album blasts off with "Enemy Destruct." drums splashing, maybe some tambourine, and the singing comes in, trippy, like we just got dropped off on the peak of an acid trip.

the second song, "Ruby Go Home," is my favorite on the album, but i don't know why. it starts off relatively simply, with some basic guitar riff, basic drum thrashing, etc etc. the verse involves all sorts of nonsense and the phrase "ruby go home!" the chorus involves a bunch of oh!s and "ruby go home!" the bridge involves repetition of "ruby go home!" there's nothing inherently special about this song. but the band sinks into this moment, this glowing red moment, and they just feel it. they sit there and rock and rock and rock. the moment doesn't end. the guitarist starts fucking around a little bit, nothing fancy, nothing to suck us out of the moment, nothing extraordinary, just more rocking out. and it's catchy, too.

what the hell is that sound at the beginning of "Meat Step Lively?" i have no fucking clue, but it sounds like a baby guitar crying. more rocking out, more living in the moment. except halfway through this one, a wind instrument comes out of nowhere. somebody's blowing on a flute or something, transforming what just sounded like acid-tripped-out Kinks into the pop version of King Crimson or something.

the sixth track, "Can You See," definitely reminds me of something i've heard before. the way it swings back and forth like a pendulum. no, more like a crowd at a show. it's like swaying, not swinging. the bass does it. do do do.......do...do do do......do... and so on.

unfortunately, (for me) the album sort of tapers off towards the middle after an explosive first half, barring one song:

"Destroyed Fortress Reappears" is my second favorite song on the album. this is where the vocal reverbs go nuts. for five minutes he just chants like a high priest over this snare drum march and simple bass/guitar strumming, highlighted with this awfully catchy hook every so often.

i'll admit. the first time i listened to this record i was baked out of mind. i was sitting on a couch in my friend's apartment in the mission, facing one of two tower speakers bellowing out the cool tunes. i really couldn't speak, but i periodically checked with other people to make sure they thought the music we were listening to was as good as i kept thinking. i think i downloaded it the next day.

then a few weeks later, a couple days ago, i went to a bar to see them live for $7. seven bucks! well, not counting beers. but the show was outstanding. short, maybe. but they've only got two albums and each one is full of 1-3min tracks. i expected people to enjoy the show but not rock the fuck out like they did. we were practically moshing. they played "Ruby Go Home" thank god. and i'm pretty damn sure they played it twice as long, illustrating my point that the band has found an inescapably savory moment in that song.

this is good fucking rock & roll, plain and simple.

listen to whole thing here.

Fishmans-Long Season

2009-07-18T06:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, i went to a farwell party put on for me, by my music club I am a part of over here in Japan. My good friend who is in the club who speaks very decent english, gave me this cd as a thank you/goodbye present. As she gave it to me, she mentioned that the members of the band used to go to our college, and were a part of the same circle we were all in. I also recieved another cd by a more current group that had recently graduated.

Anyways, this cd is excellent from the first listen. even though I hate it I will go for it: if Can made a band Air, had a japanese girl singer at times, and were super mellow and driving. Its a stretch I know, and rather pointless, but go for that idea, maybe. This mini-lp, as its called, is one 35.2 minute track split up into five parts, but never truly stops. Its got great mellow but moving basslines, upbeat up simple drumming, athmospheric singing at times, sweepingly simple accordians, and tactfull guitars. There are also some bells and pianos in there. and some quiet spoken words. The layers pile up at times, but its great. A guitar part that is minmally used in part one is brought to the front more, in part 5, and a little in almost every part actually. besides that, its a fun ride. long delays on the vocals, and lost of echo on everything. this album will fill the entire room. its got that warm feeling to it.

i'd recommend listening to it at night in the car. or on the cpu while working or surfing the inetrnet. but then again, thats how I listen to all of my music, so who knows when you will like it best. I feel as if the album could be twice as long and just as interesting, but thats just me. I love the cover of the album, and that they dont look so serious, and that they are in the woods.

music love from a friend in japan. please enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wdj30mynemw

Gangsta Gangsta - N.W.A. (1988)

2009-07-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

"We don't Just Say No, we too busy saying YEAH." -- Ice Cube

If Ice Cube's not a role model, I don't know who the hell is.

Belle and Sebastian

2009-07-12T08:16:00.001-07:00

its summertime here in japan. the rain has for the most part stopped. the humidity is.... well slightly less than its soup-iness of months past. and its time to listen to belle and sebastian again.

i have a love hate relationship with this band. I am sorry to admit that, but i can only listen to this band when i really feel like being a bright sun-shinny individual. other times, i just find the stuart's voice annoying and it silly pop music. i know this is truly telling you more about me than the music, but I cannot describe how good it feels to walk to school, in the warm sun, and to hear this band in my ears. I just randomly started thinking about this band on the way to school. some song of 'the life pursuit' and i hadn't listened to it in about 7 months. and it felt so fresh and new and warm and happy and oh my goodness it felt so good.

me: "i really feel like listening to the life pursuit today"
tori (smirking and with great half serious disdain):" its ALWAYS the life pursuit in my car..."

what else needs to be said. its making me dream of love and beautiful girls. for some reason this music and them are one in the same in my mind. thank you summer. thank you stuart.

Stayin' Alive - Bee Gees (1977)

2009-07-07T21:47:00.000-07:00

i know it's all about Michael Jackson right now, but here's a dance song i guarantee you haven't forgotten:

before The Field, before Daft Punk, before Michael Jackson, these guys mastered the art of repetition.

lay down a bass drum, thump it, 1. 2. 3. 4. add some hi-hat to the mix for some extra clicks. next, slurp out an irresistible bassline, sidewinding around the four-on-the-floor kicks. it's getting real dancey. then you hit the synths, caressing the keys, remembering this isn't about dominating the song, just keeping it rolling, keeping it fresh. maybe some strings here and there. finally, lay down the vocal track, smooth, funky, rocking, spiraling, spinning, dizzy, and real cool. nothing wild, just simple, to the point, sweet, and beautiful.

then the genius.

repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat. repeat.

anybody who writes a good dance song knows that the key is simplicity and repetition. listen to "Thriller." listen to "One More Time." listen to "Stayin' Alive." ah, you've heard 'em all before...

download or buy

Merriweather Post Pavilion Art

2009-07-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

I am in love with color, and lots of it, solely because of Animal collective and their recent album, Merriweather Post Pavilion.

first there is the eye tantalizing cover

then their is their first video for 'My Girls'

and then there is the first single for 'Summertime Clothes'. I could stare at this for hours.

and then there is the video for 'Summertime Clothes' with many dancers, balls of light, excellent textiles, and of course colorful light!

I must admit, that the sounds and colors of this album are so complementing. a full frontal on your ears and eyes. if only I could get to one of their shows these days :(

"New Animals From The Air"-Eluvium

2009-07-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

what can I say, inspiration always comes when I am at a computer lab trying to get homework done with my mp3 player on.

The opening track to his album is like the gong they hit at the begining of mediation sessions for me. It takes me in, it sits me down, it makes me close my eyes, it makes me take deep breaths, it makes me relax. Its a slow yet decisive song that is soft on the ears, heavy on the loops and layers, yet is as warm as a blanket for me. I often go to sleep to this song. I often put this song on before I start a paper. I put this song on when I need to relax. I put this song on a lot.

To be honest, it might seem like this song is one long loop, repeated for almost 11 minutes. And I know its pretty close to that. But I think that this song is not about trying to make a catchy loop, a good chorus, or even to be ground breaking. This song for me, is trying to get at your emotions. Its trying to still you, its trying to move you, its trying to change you. Its beckoning you to dive into this beautiful, foggy album. I think the record jacket speaks for itself, and this song.

Now I must admit, that this might be a hard one to grasp during the summer, when the sun is out, and people are showing off their skin. This is the kind of song that I listen to when I need to get something done. This is teh type of song you listen to when, like the record jacket, you are wandering throught he fog. When I need to relax, when I need to work, when I need to sleep. If you find yourself, awake at 3 am, and you need to sleep, try it. Its a lullabye. When you need to work, and you need to focus, this is your adderall.

mp3 download from record label: http://temporaryresidence.com/mp3s/eluvium_newanimals.mp3

Wuthering Heights - Kate Bush (1978)

2009-07-01T12:16:00.001-07:00

When Kate Bush was 18 years old, she caught the last 10 minutes of the 1970 film version of Wuthering Heights, and immediately afterwords read the entire book. Then, in a fit of creative passion, wrote this song in just a few hours one night, while watching moonlight stream in through her open bedroom window.

There's something so endearingly girlish about this, that, combined with the infectiously catchy melody and Kate Bush's particularly distinctive high voice, makes this song so delicious.

Apparently, Kate was really adamant about this song being the first single off her first album, The Kick Inside, despite the fact that her record label (who signed her because David Gilmour thought she ruled) wanted to use a different song. She held her ground and, of course, she was right and "Wuthering Heights" was huge.

The way the melody lilts and soars and dips and twirls and the silly bookish drama of the lyrics just... sounds like the way it feels to be a girl caught up in the romantic fancy of a sweeping love story.

I've never read Wuthering Heights, but now I kind of want to.

Animal Collective- Winters Love (live circa 2009)

2009-07-01T05:23:00.000-07:00

quick personal animal collective recap: I first started to hear about this band after freshman year of college. It truly was from my friend Mark Quines, contributor to this blog, who had an advance copy of Strawberry Jam (2007). I return to santa cruz at at the first time I see my good friend Josh at his then new house, RIP 504 Palm Street, and he was discussing how his whole house had taken a field trip to see them just a week or two before. Josh was so down, and I was curious cause I just kept hearing about them, yet I had heard noithing. Next week, he slams me a CDR with Sung Tongs, Feels, and Strawberry Jam. Im short, it wasnt love at first listen at all, but i quickly grew attached to Banshee Beat, Leaf House, and Fireworks. Fast forward to my interesting psycaledic trip, and it was the NPR live bootleg that helped calm my soul. I cant tell you how important this band is to listen to on a bootleg. I oftentimes find myself listening not to the albums, but to the bootlegs, so they truly have a special place in my heart.

Live Situation: So i had tickets to see this band in LA, and then one of the guys got sick, so after driving down on a friday, the show was later postoponed, I couldnt make the postponded show, and I requested a refund 3 minutes to late for ticketmaster. In short, I still want to see them live, and the live shows are important, if not crucial I think, to listening to this band. In the past two years, with the band's main guitarist taking a break, the band has been trying to fill in the Gap with whatever they feel like, welcome Merriweather Post Pavillion. So, for old songs, they have been remaking and reinventing them to play live.

Winters Love: This song is originally from Sung Tongs, yet has been recreated, reworked for the 2009 tour. The bootleg I have is from the Bowery Ballrom performance on 2009/01/21. The only similarity between the original and this one is the 10 second smaple they put from the original. It might be in teh same Key, yet it is sung almost entiretly without lyrics, and with Noah just, seemingly, improvising and letting sweet, beautiful noise emit from his mouth. Its slow, its atmospheric, its relaxing, its chill, it was perfect for my walk up to campus in 60% humidity with a bottle of cold green tea. This song fits best within the encorce, following the encorce break after brothersport, and before Comfy in Nautica. I'd recommend listening to the whole bootleg of course, but at least from brothersport to the end. Noah's vocals drift into the opening, calling, voices of Comfy. For me, Its pretty beautiful.

bootleg: http://www.archive.org/details/acollective2009-01-21.nyctaper.Neumann_KM150.16bit

Codeine - Castle (1990)

2009-06-30T22:30:00.000-07:00

I apologize for the youtube video. This is all I could find.

Yesterday night, for some reason I decided to youtube "Codeine". The only song that attracted my attention was a song that I knew about a few months ago which they wrote for a 6 x 7" box compilation set called "Endangered Species".

I'm pretty sure this is hard to find, which is why it took me so long to realize this song even existed.

As all Codeine songs, they're hard, but soft yet somewhat noisy and slow hence the genre I feel they pioneered, "slowcore".

It starts off with a couple of riffs that makes you think you're about to listen to a badass upbeat rockin' song, but all of a sudden the crashing drums with a dragging bass and feedback from the guitar comes in and it transforms into a sluggish song. The nasally voice of Stephen Immerwhr comes in with the lyrics.

Lyrics (excerpt):

There's a castle in her heart
The walls go up for miles

There's a tower
You can see everything
But she shows you nothing

Every time I hear this song I think of Beni Bischof's Castle series.

Particularly this picture:

If you listen to the lyrics and look at the photo; it fits perfectly.

So simple.

This castle. No bridges. No windows. No light inside. Just a massive brick building in the middle of nowhere.

It leaves you empty.

"But she shows you nothing".

Expressway to Yr. Skull - Sonic Youth (1986)

2009-06-30T11:47:00.000-07:00

the other night i was hanging out at a friend's apartment on mission doing one of my favorite things to do past midnight: getting stoned and listening to rock & roll. most of the guys there listen to really solid stuff and, considering how baked i was, most records they'd throw on on any given day would make me lean back, close my eyes, and cry rainbows of happiness in my mind at the bliss pounding my face from tower speakers.

this particular night, we were listening to Sonic Youth's third studio album, Evol, while a couple guys played some awesome zombie-killing video game on the tv. i was definitely feeling the album as a whole (and definitely downloaded it right after i went home), but it wasn't until the last track that i melted.

right as "Expressway to Yr. Skull" began, i reached down next to the speaker and picked up the record to check out the album art. then i pulled out a sleeve, looking for the lyrics for the particular song we were on.

sorry i couldn't find a better-quality version, but this will suffice. the song is listed here at the bottom under the alternate name "The Crucifixion of Sean Penn." actually i don't know what the official name is. whatever, it doesn't matter.

like i said, i was searching across the sleeves for the lyrics of the current song. "we're gonna kill the california girls." what the hell? "we're gonna find the meaning of feeling good and we're gonna stay there as long as we think we should." hell yes! i found it!

and right at that moment of Eureka! Thurston Moore cries out "Mystery Train....." at the same moment a sliding guitar sound flies overhead. then comes "Three way Plane....." with the same guitar swooping over me. before i could even gather my thoughts, the last line comes, "Expresswayyyyyyyyyyyy ... to yr. skull!"

i found the meaning of feeling good in three short lines.

Mystery Train
Three-way Plane
Expressway to yr. skull

before you even have the time to settle into that "chorus," though, the band slams into high-gear as if they are entering a long drawn-out jam. you soon doubt this expectation, as the guitars wail solemnly in the background begging for some space to breathe, the drums come crashing down, and the song calms down. you wait for some words. you beg for the mystery train to come pick you up.

but it never comes. the song spends half of its seven building up, only to spend the second half winding down, into a pristine tapering off of noise rock that's anything but noisy.

listen (last.fm has a live version available)

Yesterday and Today - The Field (2009)

2009-06-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

already halfway through 2009, i figured i would begin this blog with a post about my favorite album of the year (so far).

as the album art maybe reveals, this album's all about minimalism. with his ear moving closer to Steve Reich (famous for the essential minimalist work Music for 18 Musicians), Axel Willner has completed his second ambient house masterpiece under the Field moniker. moving away from the shorter, more immediately satisfying tracks he created on his 2007 debut, From Here We Go Sublime, The Field moves closer to Reich's territory by staying in the moment of a sound longer, looping seemingly infinitely on a closed circuit track of electronic bliss.

the shortest track here is barely under seven minutes, and it's the first Field track (that i know of) to feature vocals as actual singing, instead of just the instrumental blips The Field is known for. the rest of the tracks here dabble in or around the ten-minute mark. the key track for me is number 3, "Leave It," a long piece that spins and spins and spins, morphing slowly and steadily over the loop that repeats for twelve minutes.

but i continue to have trouble describing what makes this album click for me. i think to understand it, it takes a couple loud listens on headphones. when you listen to this normally, in your room or in the car, you hear a mediocre loop repeating for far too long. in your head though, forced to listen between a pair of good headphones, you hear the nuances that help the track evolve, like a virus changing its shape over geological time. little sparkly clangs that usher in transitions, bass lines that crawl out of the water like a fish growing legs, samples of female breath that exhale perfectly on time with crisp snares.

i had the very pleasant opportunity to see The Field perform at the Mezzanine in San Francisco just a couple weeks ago, and i am so happy i attended. as the photo shows, Willner is joined on stage by a couple other musicians for this tour, who took some load off Willner's job by covering some of the bases. awesomely, one of the other bandmembers actually played bass in a couple of the songs, bringing a wonderful organic vibration to the electronic thump.

if you are wondering what the title of the first track means, you are not alone. i asked Willner after the show what it meant and all he did was chuckle, saying, "it's a joke between me and my girlfriend." don't forget that humans make electronic music and human music rarely comes up with new topics.

1. I Have the Moon, You Have the Internet (8:02)
2. Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime (6:51)
3. Leave It (11:37)
4. Yesterday and Today (10:08)
5. The More That I Do (8:36)
6. Sequenced (15:42)

download or buy