tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87258147224097761182024-03-14T00:43:08.550-04:00bourgeoiseauxbourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.comBlogger144125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-44441056266780306872013-12-29T10:58:00.000-05:002013-12-29T10:58:10.693-05:00ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2013It's been ages since I've posted anything, mainly because of an increasingly busy life, but, as Ian Malcolm said, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkWeMvrNiOM" target="_blank">life finds a way</a>. I don't have time for separate posts, unfortunately, so my list will appear in one long post this time. There are other amazing releases that deserve recognition that aren't on the list--Tim Hecker's <i>Virgins</i>, Anthony Child's <i>The Space Between People and Things</i>, Karen Gwyer's <i>Needs Continuum</i>, Darkstar's <i>News from Nowhere</i>, Forest Swords' <i>Engravings</i>, The Black Dog's <i>Tranklements</i>, E.M.M.A.'s <i>Blue Gardens</i>, Pure X's <i>Crawling up the Stairs</i>, Rocketnumbernine's <i>MeYouWeYou</i>, Laura Veirs' <i>Warp & Weft</i>--and I strongly urge you to check them all out, too. Also, there were a number of albums that I never managed to get a handle on or that were disappointing in various ways that I would have expected to end up on this list: Boards of Canada's <i>Tomorrow's Harvest</i> (at times I think I love it, at others it just leaves me cold), Lee Ranaldo and the Dust's <i>Last Night on Earth </i>(dad rock in the worst possible way that got rid of almost <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/12/albums-of-year-9-lee-ranaldo-between.html" target="_blank">everything I loved</a> about <i><a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/03/review-lee-ranaldo-between-times-and.html" target="_blank">Between the Tides and the Times</a></i>), The Weeknd's <i>Kiss Land</i> (absolutely fascinating because of how unlikable Abel Tesfaye makes himself, but a little lacking in the hooks department), and the Besnard Lakes' <i>Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO</i> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqrayxTy9To" target="_blank">"People of the Sticks"</a> remains phenomenal, but the album as a whole is a little too comfortable and midtempo for its own good). And now, on to the list!<br />
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<b>Albums of the Year 2013</b></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tDCkac4FGBc/UsBB9TNollI/AAAAAAAAAaE/jP-4b4-vWxw/s1600/beautiful+rewind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tDCkac4FGBc/UsBB9TNollI/AAAAAAAAAaE/jP-4b4-vWxw/s320/beautiful+rewind.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> <b>10. <a href="http://fourtet.net/" target="_blank">Four Tet</a>, <i>Beautiful Rewind</i> (<a href="http://www.discogs.com/label/11205-Text-Records" target="_blank">Text</a>)</b><o:p></o:p></span><br />
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The album starts strongly and finishes strongly, but <i>Beautiful Rewind</i> doesn’t quite have the
same brilliance as 2010’s <i>There Is Love
in You</i>. When it’s on--the rushing jungle of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njiv2ZR4TZk" target="_blank">“Gong,”</a> the motorik intensity of
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGTnkrw3Tc0" target="_blank">“Parallel Jalabi,”</a> the disorienting takes on Four Tet’s wall-of-shimmer that
are <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxCdfb8n_R4" target="_blank">“Ba Teaches Yoga,”</a> “Crush” (which should be at least twice as long, cutting
off as soon as it starts to get <i>really</i>
interesting), and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkfJDn8TN7A" target="_blank">“Unicorn,”</a> and the surprisingly poignant <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHUW7IIUJl4" target="_blank">“Your Body Feels”</a>--<i>Beautiful Rewind </i>shows off just how good
Kieran Hebden is at making a palette that is, in theory, limited seem too
expansive to ever run out of new permutations, much like his friend Burial.
Unfortunately, the middle stretch of the album (particularly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbrYJrDKLtc" target="_blank">“Kool FM,”</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDabN2cXDRc" target="_blank">“Buchla,”</a>
and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lqm4FbrD1iQ" target="_blank">“Aerial”</a>) feels underdeveloped, lacking focus and relying on repetition
that feels more grating than driving, taking the ideas from tracks like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pzsN0Vcuek" target="_blank">“Ocoras”</a>
and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtEKyyXuJeI" target="_blank">“128 Harps”</a> from <i><a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/08/review-four-tet-pink.html" target="_blank">Pink</a></i> and failing
to do anything new with them. A flawed effort, then, but one shot through with,
if not greatness, at least very goodness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T781QQ3twiQ/Ur-_JIGw7mI/AAAAAAAAAY4/MIc-Q80f-DU/s1600/vapor+city.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-T781QQ3twiQ/Ur-_JIGw7mI/AAAAAAAAAY4/MIc-Q80f-DU/s320/vapor+city.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;"><b>9. <a href="http://machinedrum.net/" target="_blank">Machinedrum</a>, <i>Vapor City </i>(<a href="http://ninjatune.net/" target="_blank">Ninja Tune</a>)</b></span></div>
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Travis Stewart's last release,<i> Room(s)</i>,
passed me by. After hearing all the hype I checked it out, but it made no sense
to me (I haven’t gone back to try it again, though I probably should). <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7ftDkMQjXQ" target="_blank">“As a Child,”</a> though, my favourite track from Lone’s <i>Galaxy Garden</i>, convinced me that there was something to all this
Machinedrum love. When <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cJLfzTSsTc" target="_blank">“Eyesdontlie”</a> dropped, I was enticed by the descriptions
that people offered--jungle, footwork, Burial--and I understood them this time.
Hearing <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2C4ocYeGto" target="_blank">“Gunshotta”</a> was an entirely different experience. The tools are, at
this point in 2013, painfully overfamiliar, but the execution is flawless. I
can’t disagree with the assessment that the album is frontloaded, but when I
hear the best Boards of Canada song to come out in 2013 (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zp5jpAYeYI4" target="_blank">“Center Your Love”</a>) in
that first half and still have tracks like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBY-DxQF-NE" target="_blank">“Rise and Fall”</a> (which could’ve
stepped off of <i>Black Secret Technology</i>)
or the warped, melting pop of closer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0mjZ4CWaoI" target="_blank">“Baby Its U”</a> (which in my brain splits the
difference between Jai Paul and Jon Hopkins) on top of “Eyesdontlie” to look
forward to, I don’t much care. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--gQHXV21JpQ/Ur-_8kjjeJI/AAAAAAAAAZE/D_V2BS6CTh8/s1600/field+of+reeds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--gQHXV21JpQ/Ur-_8kjjeJI/AAAAAAAAAZE/D_V2BS6CTh8/s320/field+of+reeds.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>8. <a href="http://www.thesenewpuritans.com/" target="_blank">These New Puritans</a>, <i>Field of Reeds</i> (<a href="http://www.infectiousmusicuk.com/" target="_blank">Infectious</a>)</b></div>
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Nick Southall reckons that the <a href="http://sickmouthy.com/2013/12/05/albums-of-2013/" target="_blank">“Talk Talk similarities are over-emphasised in some circles; this is something quantifiably different to that, even if the odd musical moment or the ethos as a whole feels redolent,”</a> and I can sort of get on board with that. If there is
Talk Talk here (and let’s not kid ourselves--there is), it is Talk Talk as
reimagined by Bark Psychosis. Indeed, <i>Hex</i>
(and maybe some of <i>://Codename: Dustsucker</i>,
like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDKt_g2LrhQ" target="_blank">“400 Winters”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrRghnukz8E" target="_blank">“Burning the City”</a>) seems the better comparison all
around than <i>Laughing Stock</i>. Actually,
despite not sounding anything alike, the album that <i>Field of Reeds</i> most reminds me of is Trail of Dead’s <i>Source Tags and Codes</i>. Similarly, Elisa
Rodrigues’ vocals on “Dream” (and elsewhere) call to mind Fovea Hex’s <i>Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent</i> project.
<i>Field of Reeds </i>is more than good
enough to stand on its own merits, though. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYiW2S-es4A" target="_blank">“The Way I Do”</a> earns the cliché of
dreamy--I can’t imagine how it couldn’t haunt your sleep for weeks after you
hear it--and it opens the album with a fairly conventional structure. What <i>Field of Reeds</i> delivers in spades,
though, is dramatic, shifting pieces (like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKXGDcYFg0" target="_blank">“The Light in Your Name,”</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uxGf3FPFxI" target="_blank">“V (Island Song),”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZI5z2mba0Wk" target="_blank">“Field of Reeds”</a>) songs that seem formless until you accept their
internal logic, in which case they become magnificent, three-dimensional spaces
for you to play in. This is difficult, challenging music that never feels trying,
and it amply rewards every minute of attention you give it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FdaFSslNqdI/Ur_A1k2kw_I/AAAAAAAAAZM/2-DaXfLYXlE/s1600/les+revenants.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FdaFSslNqdI/Ur_A1k2kw_I/AAAAAAAAAZM/2-DaXfLYXlE/s320/les+revenants.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>7. <a href="http://mogwai.co.uk/" target="_blank">Mogwai</a>, <i>Les Revenants </i>Soundtrack (<a href="http://www.subpop.com/" target="_blank">Sub Pop</a>)</b></div>
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It’s a cliché to say this, so I’ll get it out of the
way now: this might be the best thing Mogwai’s released since <i>Young Team</i>. Seriously. <i>Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will</i>
was a great Mogwai album, but it also has come to feel like something of a
corner. At this point, Mogwai does Mogwai so well, what’s the point in really
listening to their albums? That this soundtrack recasts their sound as one of
frosty, unnerving beauty (the stretch from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnUtxZFEo1E" target="_blank">“Relative Hysteria”</a> through <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NWgh7bOTN0" target="_blank">“Modern”</a>
might be the best run on anything Mogwai’s ever released) is a subtle but
necessary bit of evolution, and if the oscillations of “Modern” or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10CGn8AigTs" target="_blank">“This Messiah Needs Watching”</a> point the way toward <i>Rave Tapes</i> next year, I’m very excited (that someone tried to
criticise the teaser for that album for sounding like <a href="http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ghost Box</a> with dodgy drum
machines is hilariously misguided, because that sounds awesome). At other
times, mainly in the first half, <i>Les
Revenants</i> offers the sequel to <i>Come
On Die Young</i> that I never knew I needed, and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4R7Y8AOgCc" target="_blank">“What Are They Doing In Heaven Today?” </a>succeeds in all the ways that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oA7MQPALI" target="_blank">“Hound of Winter”</a> fails. Mogwai feels due, after almost twenty years, for the kind of late career renaissance
that a band of their quality deserves. Hopefully this is the start.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iiqxZZtNgeY/UQ6siiFcupI/AAAAAAAAAV8/zap5iJaoIOU/s1600/folder+%25282%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iiqxZZtNgeY/UQ6siiFcupI/AAAAAAAAAV8/zap5iJaoIOU/s320/folder+%25282%2529.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>6. <a href="http://www.mybloodyvalentine.org/default.aspx" target="_blank">My Bloody Valentine</a>, <i>m b v</i> (<a href="http://www.mybloodyvalentine.org/" target="_blank">self-released</a>)</b></div>
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Context be damned, at its best <i>m b v </i>is stunning. Bilinda Butcher’s voice turning into a beam of
light from the heart of a <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Heart_of_M13_Hercules_Globular_Cluster.jpg" target="_blank">globular cluster</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2FQ3ih0MoE" target="_blank">“only tomorrow,”</a> Kevin Shields’ perfect
half-sighed, half-sung vocal for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTnWc1QyBJQ" target="_blank">“who sees you,”</a> the synths and coos of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG4UASy6E9c" target="_blank">“is this and yes”</a> suggesting the sterile beauty of the moon soundtracked by a
particularly austere Stereolab, the heavy-lidded sensuality of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1rTrglSUk4" target="_blank">“if i am,”</a> the
pulsating guitar break of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oXJus1ajIU" target="_blank">“in another way,”</a> and the fire-breathing
rollercoaster ride of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyRfqfEC2s" target="_blank">“wonder 2”</a> are the show stoppers, but there are little
joys and surprises throughout. Even the missteps--the somnambulistic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMJS6AiauHM" target="_blank">“she found now”</a> is both too long and terribly out of place; the 80s-indebted synthpop of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpoOjoiYcWY" target="_blank">“new you”</a> is faceless, even with the help of a voice that has burned into the brain
of a generation of indie rock fans, a soundalike that vanishes from the brain
as soon as it stops playing; the insistent chugging of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl8RZnCy4xY" target="_blank">“nothing is”</a> is
insistent, chugging filler--can’t detract from a surprising triumph: Kevin
Shields released something, it’s not as good as <i>Loveless</i>, and the world (and My Bloody Valentine) didn’t end.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G3aFKhmUzWQ/Ur_BkX1bLrI/AAAAAAAAAZU/cHT1Fv3d85U/s1600/rival+dealer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-G3aFKhmUzWQ/Ur_BkX1bLrI/AAAAAAAAAZU/cHT1Fv3d85U/s320/rival+dealer.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>5. <a href="https://twitter.com/BurialUK" target="_blank">Burial</a>, <i>Rival Dealer </i>EP (<a href="http://www.hyperdub.net/" target="_blank">Hyperdub</a>)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve been listening to this a lot since its release
about two weeks ago and I’ve only just started to make any sense of it. It
feels to me like the conclusion of the Burial 2.0 format started with <i>Kindred</i> and perfected, I’d thought, on
the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27oxG1g8-t0" target="_blank">“Truant”</a>/<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVlUOzJ5BI" target="_blank">“Rough Sleeper”</a> single from the end of last year. Some of the
claims made for this release have been . . . <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2013/12/11/burials-rival-dealer-is-a-christmas-story-about-love-confusion-and-sexuality-and-is-the-best-thing-hes-made-since-untrue/" target="_blank">large</a>, I’ll say (to keep it
polite), but it does offer some interesting points to chew on regarding the
exact nature of its politics (and those who are denying the release any
political substance are flat out wrong). Burial has never been as reliant on
darkness on those championing the “his new turn toward the light” narrative;
his music has been from the very beginning not just nakedly emotional, but
aspirational toward a transcendental grandeur that was more than just the
perfect distillation of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UhMcpZBX5w" target="_blank">end-of-the-night blues</a> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB3z4ibHSbE" target="_blank">“Forgive”</a> samples <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMXaE9NtQgg" target="_blank">“An Ending (Ascent)”</a> for god’s sake!). I’m still not convinced by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY0FLh2EIfs" target="_blank">“Hiders”</a>--not because
those drumbeats are bad, but because I don’t think the song actually needs its
triumphant second half: at half its length, it would have made a glorious call
back to his very earliest work--but <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd3Ch53PxBs" target="_blank">“Rival Dealer”</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1bb2JakOmo" target="_blank">“Come Down To Us”</a> are
majestic in the best sense. The suite format that Burial has been toying with
comes to breathtaking fruition on this EP. The ambient final third of the title
track, the final return and beef up of the melody in “Come Down To Us” prior to
the Lana Wachowski sample, the treatment of that (somewhat contentious) sample
on its own, are all signs of Burial’s absolute command of his sound at this
point. I have no idea what comes next and I can’t wait to hear it.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jdVb-L37tI4/Ur_B5LNki3I/AAAAAAAAAZc/-xeDyZhtVw8/s1600/immunity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jdVb-L37tI4/Ur_B5LNki3I/AAAAAAAAAZc/-xeDyZhtVw8/s320/immunity.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>4. <a href="http://www.jonhopkins.co.uk/" target="_blank">Jon Hopkins</a>, <i>Immunity</i> (<a href="http://www.dominorecordco.com/" target="_blank">Domino</a>)</b><o:p></o:p></div>
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If you played the first half of this album for me as
a kid (or even as a teenager), I’d have told you that it sounded like the
future. The endlessly squelchy beats and the rubber band, oscillating melodies
are only part of that, though. The feel of the first half just is futuristic to
me, somehow. When I hear it, buildings stretch into the sky, lights streak by overhead, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_Way" target="_blank">spacewalks by Saturn's rings</a> are a common vacation (of course, then my imagination turns dark and the future's all about fuel/food shortages, civil unrest, and techno-fascist dictatorships, but this is what I get for growing up on pulp science fiction). I never want it to end (indeed, both <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=va4OyeQHbr8" target="_blank">“Open Eye Signal”</a> and
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeBdrFMKTzM" target="_blank">“Collider”</a> seem like they never do end--somewhere, in the ether, they just
continue on and on to infinity, pulling and stretching themselves into ever finer
strands of beats and melodies). Like Machinedrum’s <i>Vapor City</i>, this is a frontloaded album, with the more ambient
second half certainly pretty (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc1IkYwKCtM" target="_blank">“Abandon Window”</a> makes clear the reasons that
Hopkins was Eno’s protégé by approaching the beatific grandeur of “An Ending (Ascent)”),
but slightly too languid (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ae4BxKC7cQ" target="_blank">“Form by Firelight”</a>) or too featherweight (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acFxRQWiMEQ" target="_blank">“Sun Harmonics”</a>) to make quite the same impact on the listener. Even with its second
half slowdown, though, <i>Immunity</i> is
often breathtaking in a way that feels quietly original, despite all the
comparisons to Actress, Burial, Border Community, Aphex Twin, et al.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kCisaHFUfQ4/Ur_CVjHdgbI/AAAAAAAAAZk/etG9Rx3qMC4/s1600/jai+paul.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kCisaHFUfQ4/Ur_CVjHdgbI/AAAAAAAAAZk/etG9Rx3qMC4/s320/jai+paul.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<b>3. <a href="http://www.xlrecordings.com/jaipaul" target="_blank">Jai Paul</a>, <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me9RtPju_ys" target="_blank">Jai Paul</a></i> (<a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/50334-confusion-surrounds-jai-paul-album-release/" target="_blank">self(?)-released[?]</a>)</b></div>
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<a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/50384-xl-releases-jai-paul-statement-confirms-leak/" target="_blank">An album that may not have been actually released</a>
(perhaps the perfect Internet-age album, in that sense?) that works as such a
vital document of the times because it gives them a past: low bitrate streams,
bad cellphone cam videos, the no-fi blasted at maximum volume as a substitute
for quality, nuance, substance. The songs on this album are constantly dropping
out, melting away, switching abruptly to the next sound on the playlist, the
next video/picture/website you have to see. This is not just
pseudo-experimental pretention, though. From the Bollywood blasts of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhty5uUF-Bc" target="_blank">“Track 2”</a>
to the gleeful information overload/sci-fi fantasy of “Track 10,” from the frenetic
desperation of “Track 5” to the warped softness of “Track 9” (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZd-E6HFTEs" target="_blank">“Jasmine”</a>), Jai
Paul offers up whirling, colourful hooks that go straight to the brain’s
pleasure centres only to disorient them. Ultimately, when someone asks me what
the last five years felt like, when they need some kind of phenomenological
sense of the grain and texture of the world, a glimpse into how it sounded and
therefore how I experienced it, I’ll point them to this. If that’s not the sign
of a future classic, I don’t know what is.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>2. <a href="http://waxahatchee.com/" target="_blank">Waxahatchee</a>, <i>Cerulean Salt</i> (<a href="http://dongiovannirecords.com/" target="_blank">Don Giovanni</a>)</b></div>
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Much like with Neon Indian’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8IsdbYR9g" target="_blank">“Sleep Paralysist”</a> a few
years back, that Waxahatchee’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fBrSbsYt94" target="_blank">“Coast to Coast”</a> was not an inescapable global
mega hit this summer is clinching proof, in my book, that we do not live in the
best of all possible worlds. Beyond that admittedly killer lead single, though <i>Cerulean Salt</i> offers a number of deep
cut gems--from the bass-led slow dance of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nyLqJjCglU" target="_blank">“Brother Bryan,”</a> to the brief, never
repeated ramp up of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PY9bqHD5Csw" target="_blank">“Lively,”</a> and to the gloriously tumbling chorus of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoDhmH66CoI" target="_blank">“Peace and Quiet”</a>--and perhaps the most consistent across-the-board songwriting all
year. Katie Crutchfield’s lyrics are next level good, full of the kind of
details that make a song like the humidly evocative <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTzIwvUMEYw" target="_blank">“Hollow Bedroom”</a> come to
life and the entire album achingly poignant. More importantly, though, her
voice and her arrangements take these songs into harrowing, unexpected
directions: when Crutchfield lets go at full power in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mTTprO2qU" target="_blank">“You’re Damaged”</a> the
moment is arresting in the best possible way.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b>1. <a href="http://www.mountkimbie.com/" target="_blank">Mount Kimbie</a>, <i>Cold Spring Fault Less Youth</i> (<a href="http://warp.net/" target="_blank">Warp</a>)</b></div>
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I fell in love with Mount Kimbie's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmN785spyDE" target="_blank">"Sketch on Glass"</a> when I heard it four years ago. Indeed, along with Joy Orbison's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aa_PDKKc2_A" target="_blank">"Hyph Mngo,"</a> it soundtracked quite a bit of that summer for me. I fell out of love with Mount Kimbie's debut album <i>Crooks and Lovers</i>, though, and we're still trying to patch things up. What a relief, then, to unashamedly fall back in love with them here. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RZaTGYOENk" target="_blank">“Blood and Form,”</a> a serious
candidate for my favourite song of the year (for a long time every bus journey
to campus ended with it), opens like some kind of cosmic bowling ball made out
of black holes: its bass is so impossibly heavy that nothing can escape it. The
spiraling synths that make up its second half cause my brain to see the same
colours as a good game of <i><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-_qlaywKBs" target="_blank">Geometry Wars</a></i>.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SfFInoSotg" target="_blank">“Made to Stray”</a> feels exactly like the sun coming up. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DboLHD4Tzg" target="_blank">“So Many Times, So Many Ways”</a> is the greatest Broken Social Scene song that BSS never wrote. King
Krule’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yi4lBmBoT-k" target="_blank">guest</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HnZ7FgZb8I" target="_blank">appearances</a> have gone from distracting to essential over the
course of the year. All of this and none of this describes the charm of this
album, which is so small and modest, such an obvious product of home and hand
(opening with a song called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbIt7zoq0BE" target="_blank">“Home Recording”</a> might actually be a little too on
the nose), and so utterly bewitching. I listened to this more than anything else in 2013. <o:p></o:p></div>
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bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-52989672988244416222013-03-20T01:44:00.001-04:002013-03-20T01:44:22.973-04:00ODDS AND SODS AND STILL ALIVEI figure it might be a good idea at this point to say that I'm not shutting down this blog. I'm hoping to become a little more active again come May, but we'll just have to see. Now, that being said, that statement seems like the kiss of death for a blog. Before I started blogging, when I was just reading blogs as I discovered them, I found that prolonged periods of inactivity--or severely decreased activity--followed by a post saying "I'm not dead, hope to post more soon, etc." was almost always the last post in the archive. That's not what I have in mind here. I would like to finish my best of 2012 list before 2013 is half over. . . <div>
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Anyway, I haven't actually been keeping up with music as much in the first quarter of the year, but some stuff that's been exciting me in 2013:</div>
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Mogwai - <i>Les Revenants</i>: This might actually be, for the first time, the best thing they've released since <i>Young Team</i>. At times it feels like a return to the <i>Come On Die Young</i> era, but the relative lack of guitars throughout shifts things from slow burn to post burn. When this is bleak, it's awfully bleak, but the stretch of music from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2sAkRnwbAw" target="_blank">"Relative Hysteria"</a> to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NWgh7bOTN0" target="_blank">"Modern"</a> is as good as Mogwai has ever been, with the former (whisper it) besting <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8J98ZeS-ME" target="_blank">"Stanley Kubrick."</a> The cover of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t75b8kv_938" target="_blank">"What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?"</a> is a little more successful than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oA7MQPALI" target="_blank">"Hounds of Winter"</a> from the <i>Earth Divisions</i> EP--I don't want Mogwai to go all Palace Brothers on me, but I'm kind of happy with this as a minor direction for the band (as opposed to something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUaCxx5npko" target="_blank">"The Sun Smells Too Loud,"</a> which remains the nadir of their recorded output as far as I'm concerned). Also, parts of this soundtrack remind me of the soundtrack for <i>Star Ocean 2 </i>(mainly <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IexIQkHq-DE" target="_blank">this</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0d3a75cUXE" target="_blank">this</a>), which I'm surprisingly okay with.</div>
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Cyclopean - <i>Cyclopean </i>EP: This comes on like a Martian <i>Ege Bamyasi</i> and might the closest thing to a prime period CAN release since <i>Soon Over Babaluma</i>. It's nervous and edgy in a way that the Malcolm Mooney period emphasised more than the Damo Suzuki period, but also shows off the kind of telepathic interplay that I wish people took away from krautrock, rather than playing another goddamn <i>motorik</i> drumbeat to put me to sleep. In a lot of ways, this EP feels like a more active version of Lokai's <i>Transition</i> (an underrated album if ever there was one). It sounds better in the room than it does through headphones, surprisingly, so I don't listen to it much on my commutes.</div>
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Karen Gwyer - <i>Needs Continuum</i>: Gorgeous, entrancing music. I put this on and disappear into another world. Enveloping in the best possible sense of the word. I get the Oneohtrix Point Never comparisons people keep throwing around, but whereas I find Lopatin's stuff leaves me cold for the most part, Gwyer's album is both warmly engaging and productively empty (that is, it works in the background to shape the space I'm in, but also invites me into its depths). It reminds me in a way of Fovea Hex's EPs from 2006; not so much in sound, but in attitude, the way it is aggressively its own thing without allowing that insularity to remove it entirely from the world. Thinking and living music, I'd say.</div>
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Waxahatchee - <i>Cerulean Salt</i>: I only really like about half of this album, but that half sounds great. The best moments are the shorter fragments of songs--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTzIwvUMEYw" target="_blank">"Hollow Bedroom,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fBrSbsYt94" target="_blank">"Coast to Coast,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg0yfie121E" target="_blank">"Misery Over Dispute,"</a> and "Waiting" (the former two being the highlights of the album)--when it feels like the album is a half-remembered patchwork of songs I might've heard on the radio once or twice as a kid by bands like the Breeders and Veruca Salt. The lyrics are often startlingly good, but it's the confidence in negative space the elevates the best moments above the glut of similar sounding stuff released over the past half decade.</div>
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I've also been digging Darkstar's <i>News From Nowhere</i> (what I wish Animal Collective sounded like), Four Tet's <i>0181</i> (Four Tet by numbers in a lot of ways, but really pretty nonetheless), and, obviously, <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2013/02/review-my-bloody-valentine-m-b-v.html" target="_blank">the new My Bloody Valentine</a>.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-8030815522756334282013-02-03T14:06:00.000-05:002013-02-03T14:13:01.262-05:00REVIEW: MY BLOODY VALENTINE - m b v<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://mybloodyvalentine.org/" target="_blank">My Bloody Valentine</a> - <i>m b v</i><br />
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I'm not dead--I've just been busy, then sick, then busy once again. I will finish my countdown of favourite albums from 2012 soon (when I discover how to add hours to the day, of course), but I figured a special event called for a special post.<br />
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Last night, My Bloody Valentine released the followup to 1991's <i>Loveless</i>, simply titled <i>m b v</i>. I'm not going to rehash the backstory here. More able commentators than I will do so, and they will have had the benefit of being there. I first heard <i>Loveless</i> in 2002, when I was in high school. I'd heard of it for several years before that, but for some reason had never investigated My Bloody Valentine. One day, I went to the music store and bought <i>Loveless</i>. I'd never listened to single track before buying it. I put it on and it didn't do anything that I expected. It was . . . amazing? I'm not sure I can really remember anymore what I first thought. I grew to love it, though, like so many others. I can remember sitting on the bus with a friend, coming home from school and listening to the end of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVj-fc1M_D0" target="_blank">"I Only Said"</a> over and over again, trying to figure out how you make a guitar sound like that. I can remember sitting in my basement, trying to make my guitar do those things. I can remember the first flushes of young love and young heartbreak and how <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0DLCyWrxDo" target="_blank">"Come in Alone"</a> was perfect for both of them. I can remember deciding that the guitar break in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztnutktJP7M" target="_blank">"Loomer"</a> was what the voice of a god would sound like. I can remember my parents' patience in putting up with me playing <i>Loveless </i>in the<i> </i>car endlessly (sorry, mom and dad!). I have a surprisingly large number of memories that are attached to listening to <i>Loveless</i>.<br />
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I'm on my eighth listen to <i>m b v</i> (plus more for a few individual songs) at this point. I've got a handle on what I'm thinking about the songs (I think), so I figured I'd put down some initial thoughts. These will change, and come December, when I make my next albums of the year list, I'm sure I'll look back on what I wrote and laugh at how I tried to process this album the day after it appeared in the world. I'll find it strange that the songs that will become my favourites are the ones that I was less sold on initially (as if it could be any other way). I'll laugh at things I didn't know that have since come to light and shaped my understanding of the album. It's inevitable. Oh, well. Here goes nothing.</div>
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<i>m b v </i>is an album of two parts. There's a very clear break at some point between "the followup to <i>Loveless</i>" and "a new group of songs by My Bloody Valentine" that, I think, will become this album's identity. In some ways, <i>m b v </i>is impossible to listen to non-ideologically. It is, in Zizek's famous phrase, "pure ideology." There is the symbolic fiction of the tortured genius, slaving away to top his own masterpiece, cracking under the pressure, and redeeming himself by finally releasing something, anything, and finding that he still has a voice after all. There is the fantasmatic spectre of the twenty two year wait--the reality that the world (and music) have moved on, that no release can mean the same thing that an album did in 1991, that whole futures that <i>Loveless</i>' successor could've belonged to (most tantalisingly, jungle) have been and gone--and the even more traumatic spectres of all the music that's come since <i>Loveless</i>: the remixes, the contributions to other bands (hello, Primal Scream!), the one offs and live performances. There's the pre-ideological kernel, the assumption that bands have next albums, that requires the symbolic fiction be set in motion to disavow those traumatic spectres (Kevin Shields himself has done a very good job of separating My Bloody Valentine from those spectres and insisting most fervently on the symbolic fiction, as in <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/08745-kevin-shields-interview-mbv-my-bloody-valentine" target="_blank">his interview with <i>The Quietus</i></a> last year). My god, you think when you press play, pure ideology. This is what it sounds like.* </div>
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There's also the spectre of that other thing, hauntology. You want to talk about futures that have never been? The first three tracks on <i>m b v</i> are a pretty convincing example of what that never recorded sequel to <i>Loveless</i> from 1994 would've sounded like. That jungle/drum'n'bass direction that consumed 1994-1997 and never amounted to anything? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyRfqfEC2s" target="_blank">"wonder 2"</a> is an, ahem, wonderful look into that lost world. A My Bloody Valentine who decided to take a look at what Tortoise and Stereolab were cooking up and realised that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sRiMe9EmWQ" target="_blank">"No More Sorry"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtrROOxqnFE" target="_blank">"Touched"</a> got them halfway there? <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gH6UOatmAM" target="_blank">"is this and yes"</a> is as dreamy and as beautiful, but more alien. This is, then, an album out of time. An album missing its time. An album that could never belong to a time. It's belated in the Eliotic sense of the term, a Rip Van Winkle of an album that grew more famous for being asleep (and thus lost its voice--became incapable of saying anything, of being heard as anything, of <i>being</i>, plain and simple, in the world--because it got cut out of the symbolic order) and woke to a world where <i>Loveless</i> had become <i>Loveless</i>, instead of simply being an album that came before this one, and Kevin Shields couldn't touch a guitar without having already reinvented it and rendered it pointless.</div>
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So, in all of that, where's the music? Perhaps more importantly, what's the music? That's not an easy answer. It's beautiful, that's for sure, but it's strange, and wrong, and boring, and a half dozen other adjectives to boot. The album starts off on its weakest foot--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBKjhgHGVZs" target="_blank">"she found now"</a> is a pretty timid way of saying "We're back!," all muted vocals and subdued, subterranean howls of guitar, a far less interesting <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iT5EuTlHOM" target="_blank">"Sometimes"</a>--but it gains confidence quickly. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2FQ3ih0MoE" target="_blank">"only tomorrow"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUc5y1NljXI" target="_blank">"who sees you"</a> (the latter bearing a distinct resemblance at times to my beloved "Come in Alone") are a reminder that My Bloody Valentine is a guitar pop band, but these songs are too strange to be <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9-NOIalUYU" target="_blank">"When You Sleep"</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVuARAzNnKw" target="_blank">"Blown a Wish"</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azXLPL-iuSI" target="_blank">"What You Want."</a> Both ride long guitar outros, with "only tomorrow" turning into a fanfare of guitars-as-horns, sunny as a High Llamas tune, and "who sees you" stealing that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf8j1bUgwJ8" target="_blank">"Only Shallow"</a> drum trick before tumbling into hook after unexpected hook, the chord changes always a surprise (even if it does kind of sound like Chewbacca's blues in places...). Both songs are a little too long, but why wouldn't you want to luxuriate in something like this? My Bloody Valentine's music has always been about sleep and dreams, and they seem to be soundtracking the weekend sleep-in with these two tracks. If nothing else, that Shields wasn't producing bands throughout his years in the desert is a crime that he must be held accountable for. So many bad guitar tones that never had to be: <i>m b v</i>'s guitars are a thing of rare beauty.</div>
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The few seconds of silence between "who sees you" and "is this and yes" herald a change. A twinkling, weightless ballad, this could never have come before, even as it is so clearly coming from those earlier albums. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8uIfLIWflI" target="_blank">When you wake, you're still in a dream</a>, the band said once before, but they've never really sounded as much like a dream as it fades away as they do right here. Bilinda Butcher's voice might not even be real. It feels more like the stuff around it (guitars? synths? hours and hours of sampled and manipulated feedback?) than the expression of a human being. Suddenly, <i>m b v</i>'s stakes are much higher. They could, you start to feel, be on to something here. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ0axgeNbWU" target="_blank">"if i am"</a> might be the last gasp of <i>old </i>My Bloody Valentine on the album, but even here it feels disoriented, falling apart and fading away, the moans and gasps of guitar in the background forlornly seeing their own end, mourning all the songs that never came to be. Something else is around the corner, the album seems to be saying, something that keeps interrupting the old ways.</div>
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As a first step into the new, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpoOjoiYcWY" target="_blank">"new you"</a> is aptly titled, and given its live debut ahead of the album, one has to think that the band sees it as a marker of some kind. Certainly the prominent synths are a bit of a shock, but the fuzzy, funky bass and the drums feel like siblings to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdF4lfdd2NM" target="_blank">"Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside),"</a> and it ends up feeling as much of a false step as "she found now." It's pretty, but like "What You Want" on <i>Loveless</i>, I can only imagine waiting through it to get to what's to come. In this case, it's <i>m b v</i>'s strongest, weirdest third. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oXJus1ajIU" target="_blank">"in another way"</a> is easily the album highlight, the first song that, on my initial run through of the album, made my eyes go funny and my brain say "what the hell was that?!" Vicious sheets of guitar, frantic drumming, a beguilingly ambiguous vocal from Bilinda, everything's here, but it's the break that first appears 1:25 into the song that makes you sit up and take notice. Those pulsating guitars that suddenly seem everywhere and take you away are breathtaking. That the second half of the track consists of nothing but suggests that Shields knew exactly what he was doing when he decided there was something to these songs, after all. The bizarrely dance-y <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHlVpADx_jk" target="_blank">"nothing is"</a> follows, three and a half minutes of steadily ascending guitar grind and repetitive, train-a-coming drums that ratchets the tension ever higher until cutting out into echoes of itself as heard from the next building over. </div>
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As an end to <i>m b v</i> (to My Bloody Valentine, even, should it prove to be), "wonder 2" is fittingly apocalyptic. Jungle rhythms, air raid siren guitar, barely barely-there vocals, a future rush like it's 1995 all over again, the songs feels constantly on the verge of blowing away and imploding simultaneously. Whenever it feels like there's nowhere left to go other than destruction, the vocals return, and the song gets a chance to do it all over again. Then it's gone, replaced by silence. No fade out, just a quick, flanged swirl before the end. As if nothing follows this, or could follow this. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseSx_hPJyQ" target="_blank">"Soon"</a> felt like an arrow pointing to all the things that My Bloody Valentine could be (and would be) just over the horizon. There's no horizon here. If Kevin Shields, if My Bloody Valentine, is to do anything else, it won't be the followup to <i>m b v</i> in anything other than a chronological sense. This is an album that will have no children. I have to think, to buy into that symbolic fiction, that somewhere <a href="http://mybloodyvalentine.org/gigs.aspx" target="_blank">(between South Korea and Japan, I'd imagine)</a>, Kevin Shields is happy about that.</div>
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When <i>m b v</i> dropped--and after the website broke, and then went back up, and then broke again, etc., etc.--I wasn't so much wondering about whether it would live up to <i>Loveless</i>. I wanted to know how I'd live with it. Waiting for a website to come online, bitching on twitter about that website crashing, rapturously tweeting when I finally started listening, these are all signs of how different my life is a decade on from hearing <i>Loveless </i>(which I listened to in my bedroom in my parents' house on a stereo, not on a laptop in my own apartment). In a lot of ways, I'm relieved just to have another My Bloody Valentine to live with until the next one (if there is one) comes out (if it ever does). There are thousands of arguments to be made about the death of one thing, or the start of another, or the end of something, or the beginning of something else with this album. I've made a half dozen in the above review. More than anything, though, what I want to do is listen to this album and, more importantly, forget this album. To forget how a song goes when I haven't listened to it in awhile. To be surprised (again) when there's a chord change or by a particularly noteworthy sound. I want to listen to this album in a thousand different ways, and I don't want to think about it as an event, as part of a failed website launch, as a blogpost, a think piece, or a Pitchfork score. I want <i>m b v</i> to be an album. I want to have space for <i>m b v </i>to mean something to me, so when the next one comes around (surely Kevin can't take another twenty two years, right?) I'll think about <i>m b v </i>and I'll smile at the music, sure, but at so many other things, too. For right now, writing about it ends here for me. I'm going to go do some dishes and have it on the background. Or stare out the window at the snow that's falling. It doesn't matter. I'm going to go listen. You should, too. It's a pretty great album.</div>
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*I recognise I'm taking a hell of a lot of liberties with Zizek and his discussion of ideology here. Permit me my fun.</div>
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bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-6246424573351223512012-12-21T10:08:00.003-05:002012-12-21T19:17:15.083-05:00ALBUMS OF THE YEAR: #9 LEE RANALDO - BETWEEN THE TIMES AND THE TIDES<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mjlaHXP8E2U/T15bXbL6arI/AAAAAAAAAOw/lgSf3DYlwOE/s1600/between+the+times.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mjlaHXP8E2U/T15bXbL6arI/AAAAAAAAAOw/lgSf3DYlwOE/s320/between+the+times.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/03/review-lee-ranaldo-between-times-and.html" target="_blank">Lee Ranaldo - <i>Between the Times and the Tides</i></a></td></tr>
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Way back in 2001, in his <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7343-murray-street" target="_blank">review of <i>Murray Street</i></a>, Rob Mitchum introduced two hypothetical examples of Sonic Youth fans:<br />
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Meet Jeremy. Jeremy likes Sonic Youth. His favorite album by the Youth is <i>Goodbye 20th Century</i>, their self-released cover album of avant-garde works by various modern clasical composers. The CDs currently in his five-disc changer are Shalabi's <i>St-Orange</i>, Xiu Xiu, Merzbow, the Boredoms, and Fennesz. </blockquote>
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Meet Erica. Erica likes Sonic Youth. Her favourite album by the Youth is <i>Dirty</i>, the band's most direct flirtation with mainstream rock. The CDs currently in Erica's five disc-changer are the Breeders, Blonde Redhead, Wilco, Neutral Milk Hole, and Sleater-Kinney.</blockquote>
I would say I'm more like Jeremy than Erica in my relationship with Sonic Youth (my favourite SY album is <i>A Thousand Leaves</i>, for the record), but I can appreciate the straighter moments of the band's discography with greater ease than Jeremy, probably. If you assume that the audience for a Lee Ranaldo solo album is going to be, first and foremost, Sonic Youth fans, then it's natural to try and figure out if <i>Between the Times and the Tides</i> will appeal to the Jeremys or the Ericas out there. I would bet the latter are going to find more to enjoy and return to on this than the former, but it would be a shame to limit this album's appeal to a certain cadre of Sonic Youth fans. What this album is, as far as I can tell, is the year's best straight-up rock album filtered through one of the more distinctive songwriting voices in indie rock over the last three decades, something like what Wilco have been trying to do on their last few albums without entirely achieving it.<br />
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If we play a game similar to Mitchum's and ask which Lee made this album, it's the Lee who loves the Greatful Dead and Neil Young much more often than it is the Lee who played with Glenn Branca and performs improvised film scores in Text of Light. That's not to say there's no overlap between sonic identities throughout; the album is wonderful in part because of how natural the moments of overlap are. This means that the album feels curiously out of time: nothing about it fits in exactly with the current indie rock landscape, but it's all so intrinsically a part of that landscape (this is the product of a guy who helped make indie rock a thing, after all) that everything here could have always existed. If there's a certain early-to-mid 90s aspect to these songs--the album could have come from some indie band out of Chapel Hill or Athens or any other college town suddenly making its major label debut in the wake of post-<i>Nevermind </i>dollar chasing--it's not in the name of some retro impulse, but rather the result of so many of those bands speaking the same language, musically, as the one that Ranaldo helped to invent while in Sonic Youth.<br />
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Beyond contextualising, beyond theorising, this is an album that shows off what any Sonic Youth fan has known for decades: Lee Ranaldo can write a hook. Part of what kept so many people (like myself) waiting for this album for so long was the promise of what Lee could do with an entire album to write majestic, transcendent guitar songs like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15a2vigdPJE" target="_blank">"Karen Revisited"</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_mN6_PRC1M" target="_blank">"Hoarfrost"</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEUYK9elJ-s" target="_blank">"Hey Joni."</a> If anything, though, this album does more to reinforce the idea of Sonic Youth as a band rather than a collection of individuals--and Lee Ranaldo as a discrete component within that band--than anything they've released collectively lately. These are obviously and distinctively Lee Ranaldo songs, but they're quite different from what has previously defined that term on Sonic Youth albums. He's never been as nakedly romantic as he is on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8XUyXikZTE" target="_blank">"Stranded,"</a> nor as breezy as he is on "Fire Island (Phases)," and if the acoustic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJXohmhArI8" target="_blank">"Hammer Blows"</a> sounds like it might have fit into the rural first side of <i>Murray Street</i> with a little bit of tweaking, it's better for not having done so. He even provides an epic the equal of anything he's produced with Sonic Youth in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qhvo2HMDA4" target="_blank">"Xtina as I Knew Her,"</a> a career highlight with a sense of drama that he's never quite demonstrated before.<br />
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I never really believed I'd hear this album--not <i>Between the Times and the Tides </i>specifically, but a Lee Ranaldo solo album full of songs--and then it showed up. I wrote a review that became the most popular post in this blog's history after getting linked to on the Sonic Youth message board and Lee Ranaldo's Facebook page. It's funny how life works. Ultimately, the best thing I can say about this album is that despite years of waiting and wishing for it, the actual manifestation doesn't disappoint. I'm happier for having it in my life. To return to our hypothetical Sonic Youth fans, I'd bet that Erica is happy this exists, and--even if it's not going to replace <i>East Jesus</i> or <i>Amarillo Ramp</i> as his go-to Lee Ranaldo solo release--I suspect Jeremy is, too. At the very least, freed from the limitations of five-CD changers, they could both find room for it on their iPods.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-27679455239852057922012-12-20T00:59:00.002-05:002012-12-20T00:59:38.571-05:00ALBUMS OF THE YEAR: #10 EARTH - ANGELS OF DARKNESS, DEMONS OF LIGHT II<div style="text-align: center;">
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<tr><td><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-655cThQlP38/Tzaz12ECEcI/AAAAAAAAANU/g_aG-h0iyYo/s1600/demons+of+light+ii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-655cThQlP38/Tzaz12ECEcI/AAAAAAAAANU/g_aG-h0iyYo/s320/demons+of+light+ii.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption"><a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/02/review-earth-angels-of-darkness-demons.html" target="_blank">Earth - <i>Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II</i></a></td></tr>
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Last year, I overlooked the first part of this when compiling my end of year lists because I forgot that it came out in 2011. This is only partly an attempt to correct that oversight. Since reemerging with 2005's <i>Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method</i>, Earth have been one of the more interesting bands going. Channeling his proclivity for feedback, drones, and bass into new musical avenues--country, blues, psychedelic rock, free jazz--Dylan Carlson has come a long way from <i>Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars</i>. The culmination of the wandering, patient experimentation that's defined the band's past decade of work, <i>Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light II</i> deepens the slower-than-slow improvising of the previous installment by lightening up: this is probably the brightest music Carlson's been associated with (though the droning cello throughout keeps anything from threatening to get too major key). Carlson's guitar is mixed way up front, and his playing deserves careful study--if a generation of metalheads could get hip to this rather than generic shredding, the genre would certainly be headed in an interesting direction. For all of Carlson's contemplative playing, an approach that leaves no melodic permutation untested, no variation on a chord unplayed, Adrienne Davies and her drums are a subtly powerful force, providing crucial momentum to music that threatens to stop entirely at any moment, while Lori Goldston and Karl Blau tangle their cello and bass, respectively, around the shapes Carlson's guitar lines make.<br />
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As a guitar player (and one who grew up reading the kinds of guitar magazines that put people like Kirk Hammett on the cover), I've found Carlson's growth and development as a player over the last decade or so incredibly interesting, and I have to bring my appreciation of this album back to his work on it. Mostly, it's because I haven't found much guitar playing that excites me over the past few years. Earth, though, is one of the few bands that continues to produce music that interests me in the guitar and its possibilities as an instrument. Carlson's playing is wonderfully business casual throughout: sharp enough to hit a million subtle accents when called for, but otherwise in no rush to be in any particular place or to do any particular thing beyond taking chords and melodies apart and stretching them a mile wide. The <i>Angels of Darkness</i> releases have been particularly impressive because I tend to think of improvised music as challenging (even alienating) in its foregrounding of abrasion and dissonance. Thus, something like Fenn O'Berg or Charalambides can be immensely rewarding, but the music demands concentration; whatever enjoyment you are getting out of the music, you've invested a certain amount of patience and attention to find it. Earth's music on these two albums, and particularly <i>Angels of Darkness II</i>, is not like that. Challenging, yes--and often more so than its near static surface would suggest--but rarely abrasive. This is warm, inviting music, and if it asks for patience, it rewards that patience with slow-motion crescendos that are undeniable and hypnotically enchanting melodies. If you thought the world was ending Friday, you could do worse for a soundtrack.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-5029000637257699482012-12-19T00:14:00.003-05:002012-12-20T01:14:59.856-05:00YEAR IN REVIEW: SONGS OF THE YEAR**...not featured on my albums of the year. I stole this concept from <a href="http://sickmouthy.com/" target="_blank">Nick Southall</a>, and as it seems a nice way to give a tip of a cap to some excellent artists whose albums I didn't like quite as much as some others, I decided to do it again. These are roughly arranged in descending order, but they're all equally worthy of your attention (although some, like Evian Christ, are worthier than others). Enjoy!<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.dummymag.com/mixes/2012/07/19/dummy-mix-130-evian-christ/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Evian Christ - "Duga-Three"</span></a></b><br />
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I've said quite a bit about this track <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-evian-christ-duga-three.html" target="_blank">already</a>, but Evian Christ's concept mix is, quite simply, stunning. You should download it right now if you haven't already. Like Tim Hecker's set for Moogfest last year, I'm astonished that such high quality music is available for free. Droning, unnerving, unsettling, "Duga-Three" is also never anything other than interesting. This is the kind of music that you inhabit (and, in turn, that inhabits you), and I've spent more time living in this than almost anything else this year.<br />
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<b><a href="https://soundcloud.com/teengirlfantasy/efx-ft-kelela" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Teengirl Fantasy feat. Kelela - "EFX"</span></a></b><br />
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Romanthony's turn on "Do It" might have received most of the plaudits, and Lauren Halo and Panda Bear might have received more attention for their appearances, but for my money Kelela turns in possibly the vocal performance of the year on this track. The stop-start rhythms of the verse give way to a chorus that the word soaring was invented to describe and Kelela moves from tough to breathy to blissful on a dime. Capturing the kind of in-the-moment lust that someone like Ke$ha wishes she could reflect, "EFX" makes me wish all pop music could sound this glorious.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag81QbPM-WU" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Cooly G - "What This World Needs Now"</span></a></b><br />
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The synths here are at once slinky and disorienting, a kind of late night delirium that suggests a fever dream of a club more than an actual one. Cooly G's vocals go one step further than the muted backing, though, being at once nape-of-the-neck intimate and fleetingly vague, always disappearing back into the reverb and synths, a ghost of desire more than desire itself. As an album, <i>Playin Me</i>'s excellence came from its mastery of restraint, its post-coital drowsiness even as it seduces you, turning its R&B and club music template into something more intimate and more vulnerable.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xL4dMpqIc0" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">The Weeknd - "Enemy"</span></a></b><br />
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9U8vAZyemSk/UNKrQ3WQhHI/AAAAAAAAAUo/UfoB72gj0s0/s1600/enemy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-9U8vAZyemSk/UNKrQ3WQhHI/AAAAAAAAAUo/UfoB72gj0s0/s320/enemy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Speaking of vulnerable, Abel Tesfaye's first post-<i>Trilogy</i> release continues his turn to overtly pop forms from <i>Echoes of Silence</i> without sacrificing any of the pyschodrama that made his three mixtapes last year <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-1-weeknd-house-of.html" target="_blank">such compelling listens</a>. A plaintive, piano-driven ballad, "Enemy" revisits his concerns about fame, identity, and sex, Tesfaye's conflicting demands to the female he addresses as always revealing more of his own insecurities than any kind of bravado. The sample in the chorus--a brilliant reframing of Morrissey's yearning chorus to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQbzLrvwlE" target="_blank">"Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want"</a> as the kind of demonic voice that seems to drive Tesfaye's narratives--continues The Weeknd's razor-sharp production choices and suggests that there won't be any letdown in the quality of the music, PBR&B or not.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.kompakt.fm/releases/tipped_bowls_lp_cd" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Taragana Pyjarama feat. Chllngr - "Four Legged"</span></a></b><br />
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The audio equivalent of a bubble bath, the opening tracking of <i>Tipped Bowls</i> sets the tone for the rest of the album: pillow soft, gauzily pretty, and gently twinkling. The sound isn't a million miles from early Four Tet (c. <i>Rounds</i>, say), which isn't a bad thing, though without the manic jazziness of Kieren Hebden's beats the track is much more patient, slowly lifting off over the course of its five minutes. Nothing's really breaking a sweat here, and that's just fine, as its chilled out vibes carry off its sort of dazed wonder quite effectively.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8Q9vV8iiQU" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Dusk+Blackdown feat. Farrah - "Lonely Moon (Android Heartbreak)"</span></a></b><br />
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I have to say that this track, the opening to the duo's album <i>Dasaflex</i>, reminds me more than a bit of Leila's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZDy1aaZUDQ" target="_blank">"Lush Dolphins."</a> This isn't a strike against, though, as where that track uses its tremulous synths and vaguely trip-hop drums to build up a heartbreakingly starry-eyed melody, "Lonely Moon" manages just as much (if not more) in the way of emotional payoff with much, much less. Like Cooly G, the keyword here is restraint, as Farrah's beautiful vocals are pitched and twisted every which way to give voice to the titular emotion, supported by a few blips and scrapes, a clap, and not much else. The soundtrack to dreams of the future and eerie as hell in the best possible way, I wish the rest of the album had followed its lead.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FS35SshVxQ" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Flying Lotus feat. Captain Murphy and Earl Sweatshirt - "Between Friends"</span></a></b><br />
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Steven Ellison does double duty on this one, producing under his Flying Lotus moniker and rapping as his alter ego, Captain Murphy, with an assist from Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt. The dusty loop that the track opens with and the gently loping beat underneath it all are vintage FlyLo c.<i>Los Angeles</i>. The distortion- and echo-drenched vocals are a little hard to parse, but the atmospheric smearing of syllables and words helps the occasional line that catches the ear hit harder, and also contributes to the lost-song-found-in-an-attic feel. The brief instrumental coda tagged onto the song doesn't hurt, either.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UpgisMDAoU" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Purity Ring - "Ungirthed"</span></a></b><br />
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<i>Shrines</i> is a little homogenous as an album. Each song basically does the same thing, and you're either going to like it or not, so picking any one track to highlight is a little difficult. With an aesthetic as hyper-focused as the one that Purity Ring work within, the subtleties become crucial. Without them, the album becomes an undifferentiated mass of sounds and little girl vocals. "Ungirthed" is my pick for song of the album for its "Ears ring and teeth click" chorus, during which the processing on Megan James' vocals is both unnerving and weirdly beautiful, an uncanny balance that the duo tries but can't quite maintain throughout the whole album. Here, though, the balance is just right, and the results are stunning.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5xIpbIjRQA" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Melody's Echo Chamber - "Crystallized"</span></a></b><br />
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Wonderfully blown out, "Crystallized" is psych-rock as effortless as summer sun. Melody Prochet's vocals are just submerged enough to gain some much needed mystery to go along with their breathiness, and the vaguely kraut-y trance rock of the first half gives way to some sandpaper-y fuzz in the back half that's a perfect contrast to the sweetness and light of Prochet. Kevin Parker's production is perfect here, allowing just the right amount of heat to float up out of the track to the listener.<br />
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<b><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bh-UCbmHIg" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Frankie Rose - "Interstellar"</span></a></b><br />
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Suitably cosmic in introduction, the title track to Rose's first solo album is a glittering piece of zero-g pop music with an unabashedly huge chorus of wordless vocals. The drums are the real star here, though, driving the verses forward and keeping the momentum up during the mid-song instrumental. Its three and a half minutes feel cruelly short, like the sudden comedown from a sugar high. </div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-74976527208333631092012-12-17T11:18:00.000-05:002012-12-20T01:18:22.535-05:00YEAR IN REVIEW: TOP FIVE EPs OF 2012The EP is a sorely
underappreciated format for the most part. While it gets praise in isolated
instances--for example, the near universal acclamation for Disco Inferno’s
series of EPs leading up to their second album, 1994’s sampledelic post-rock
high water mark <i>D.I. Go Pop--</i>critics
in end of the year lists or roundups of the “Greatest [x] of [y]” tend to go
for the flashy single or the totemic album (indeed, good old <a href="http://sickmouthy.com/" target="_blank">Nick Southall</a>’s <a href="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/staff_top_10/top-ten-eps.htm" target="_blank">“Top Ten EPs”</a> feature for <i><a href="http://www.stylusmagazine.com/" target="_blank">Stylus</a></i> back in 2005 is the only such list I can recall off
the top of my head--I agree with only one choice out of those ten, but that’s a
story for another day). The EP deserves more love, and not just because there
has been an exceptionally bumper crop of EPs released this year. With more room
than a single but less pressure to make a statement than with an album, the EP
is truly the perfect form for experimentation. Transitioning between styles?
Experimenting with new members, elements, or directions? Refining an earlier
breakthrough? Entering (or re-entering) the game with a new band or as a solo
artist? The EP has your back in all of these situations. Thus, in honour of
this plucky format--and, full disclosure, to make my own life somewhat easier
as I compile my end of the year lists--here’re my top five Extended Plays of
the year (to qualify, a release must loosely conform to what I've understood to be the traditional definition of the format: twenty five minutes or less of music or four tracks). Long may they reign!<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">5. <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/02/review-gonjasufi-muzzle.html" target="_blank">Gonjasufi - <i>MU.ZZ.LE</i></a></span></b></div>
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Gonjasufi himself billed
this as a “mini-album,” but at just twenty four minutes it can be snuck onto
this list even with ten tracks. Not really a reinvention of anything that he
did on <i>A Sufi and a Killer--</i>opener <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlMVb3FrNXU" target="_blank">“White Picket Fence”</a> makes it clear that we’re staying in the same ballpark--<i>MU.ZZ.LE</i> manages to condense and focus
what was a fairly sprawling album. Gone are the sub-Tom Waits numbers,
thankfully, and in their place are the most concentrated blasts of weed-fueled
paranoia since Tricky’s <i>Pre-Millennium
Tension</i>. The EP resembles the soundtrack to a spy on a bad trip mid-cover
blown freakout. While its production values verge on the non-existent, the
distortion, hiss, and murk throughout fit the cracked and broken vocals like a
glove, highlighting the tenderness and fragility in Gonjasufi’s voice even at
his most righteously pissed off. All of that, and the sensuous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1q6xstndmY" target="_blank">“Feedin’ Birds,”</a>
a career highlight given some erotic sweetening via backing vocals from
Gonjasufi’s wife.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">4. <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/02/review-shlohmo-vacation-ep.html" target="_blank">Shlohmo - <i>Vacation</i></a></span></b></div>
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Despite the somewhat dour colour scheme of its cover art, Shlohmo's <i>Vacation</i> EP is anything but dark or depressing. Instead, the EP takes the humidity of <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-honourable-mentions.html" target="_blank">last year's <i>Bad Vibes</i></a> and infuses it with tropical colours, creating an astonishingly alien soundworld that feels a little less ponderous, less heavy of limb, and more free-flowing than his earlier work. Despite all of its potentially played out trappings--particularly its treated vocals--something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLNQQpAoHXU" target="_blank">"The Way U Do"</a> with its alternatively pitched-up and heavily distorted keening winds up strangely singular, somewhere between post-dubstep bass music's vocal refractions, tri-Angle style witch-house/drag demon moans, and classic rave diva melismas. The real gem here, though, is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3yDmB6dKYk" target="_blank">"Rained the Whole Time,"</a> during which you can practically see the steam and mist curdling and the water dripping as a forest springs up in your room, the whole thing resembling something like early Four Tet after it has degraded in the soil for a few centuries. </div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">3. <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/02/review-burial-kindred.html" target="_blank">Burial - <i>Kindred</i></a></span></b></div>
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Burial's had a busy year, by his standards: two releases of his own (<i>Kindred </i>and the interesting <i>Truant</i> single that just came out on Hyperdub), an old track resurrected and worked by Dusk+Blackdown, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDB712_EWfw" target="_blank">"High Road,"</a> on the duo's <i>Dasaflex</i>, and a track with friend and schoolmate Four Tet, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufGAn6ddT20" target="_blank">"Nova."</a> All of this and hints of an album in 2013? Someone's feeling mighty productive lately. Trying--unsuccessfully, I'm sure--to put the baggage of "Burial the groundbreaking artist" aside for a minute, what makes <i>Kindred</i> interesting on the level of "Burial the musician" is its sudden push forward into a new method of organisation for Will Bevan. Where something like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOMBzI66LJU" target="_blank">"Night Bus,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOh6WEmTryU" target="_blank">"Forgive,"</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06FiSFtX6G0" target="_blank">"In McDonalds"</a> had its own status as a separate track, little sonic sketches that fleshed out the context for the vocal-driven big numbers but that remained independent of them, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC16FJTI6XM" target="_blank">"Kindred,"</a> <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNFvw4ciz4w" target="_blank">"Loner,"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=555XMqqDYtU" target="_blank">"Ashtray Wasp"</a> favour a collage approach that splices between the two types of track at a moment's notice. Covered over with the omnipresent hiss that defines Burial's productions almost as much as those androgynous ghosts floating through them and stitched together with ridiculously deep bass, these tracks aren't a break with what's come so much as a redefining of the template's parameters. More than ever, Burial's music feels like a journey, but not just through lost pasts and never-to-come futures: these are journeys you can take in the present, that are repeated night after night. If it's a little short of last year's <i>Street Halo</i> EP (his career peak to date, in my opinion), <i>Kindred</i>'s still a welcome addition both the the Burial canon and the Burial mythology.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">2. <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/11/review-spaceape-xorcism-ep.html" target="_blank">The Spaceape - <i>Xorcism</i></a></span></b></div>
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The surprise of the year, for me, this EP introduced the Spaceape as a solo artist, and it turns out that he doesn't need Kode 9, Burial, Marytn, or anyone else to make gripping music. It might feel like a long way from the flash-forward Afro-futurism of 2006's <i>Memories of the Future</i>, but there are genetic links that make it feel like the inevitable destination for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTsEsOzStSg" target="_blank">"Sine of the Dub."</a> Unflinching and brave, <i>Xorcism</i> details the Spaceape's struggles with cancer, expanding on the science fiction biopolitics of <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-7-kode9-spaceape.html" target="_blank">last year's collaboration with Kode 9, <i>Black Sun</i></a>, in astonishingly personal terms. Over a bed of percussive Haitian voodoo music, <i>Xorcism</i> is a conjure tale, a communion with and a dispelling of the ghosts within, Stephen Samuel Gordon becoming ever more shamanic and prophetic throughout. Painfully brief, this is a flash in the darkness, a stealth attack and swift retreat, an apparition, here for a minute and gone even before the next arrives, elusive as smoke even in its corporeal focus. There's nothing else like it out there, and it's surely one of 2012's most vital releases.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">1. <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2012/05/review-cfcf-exercises-ep.html" target="_blank">CFCF - <i>Exercises</i></a></span></b></div>
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Quietly elegant and moving, CFCF's <i>Exercises </i>EP dazzled me in the summer months when its chilly sound felt like a breath of fresh air amid all the heat and sun. With the change into Fall, though (and soon into Winter), the icy elegance of the EP's tracks has become an even more appropriate soundtrack to the day. Neither as studied nor as academic as its title would suggest, the miniatures on the album engage with 20th-century minimalism and avant-pop as much as they do contemporary trends in electronic music. The results are stunning, with the flowing, repetitive lines of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETT2MyFRkvo" target="_blank">"Exercise 3 (Buildings)"</a> as hypnotically holographic as the best Philip Glass, and the gently wistful <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WX8-T6SYOk" target="_blank">"Exercise 5 (September)"</a> a slice of exquisite, autumnal pop beauty, offering a patient expansion on David Sylvian's original. On the more beat-driven pieces, like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oLCKHtcfi4" target="_blank">"Exercise 2 (School)"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChQ44HrIaQ" target="_blank">"Exercise 8 (Change),"</a> it's easy to imagine this as chillwave in the process of growing up, shedding some of its hedonistic nihilism in favour of something a little darker and stranger, yes, but also more human, more emotionally complex and compelling. What keeps me coming back to the EP, though, and what makes everything here succeed is Mike Silver's way with melody and his ear as a composer for the right sound as much as the right note, a crucial attribute in music this carefully designed. As a statement, <i>Exercises</i> content and format leaves it a little self-contained, so it will be exciting to see where Silver takes his CFCF project next with a wider field to play on.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-35077905145348284642012-12-02T12:48:00.001-05:002012-12-02T12:48:08.680-05:00REVIEW: MOGWAI - A WRENCHED VIRILE LORE<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mogwai - <i><a href="http://www.spin.com/articles/mogwai-remix-album-a-wrenched-virile-lore-stream" target="_blank">A Wrenched Virile Lore</a></i><br />
<a href="http://www.rock-action.co.uk/" target="_blank">Rock Action</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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It is, of course, <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2011/08/2-rights-make-1-wrong-or-mogwai.html" target="_blank">no secret</a> that <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-8-mogwai-hardcore.html" target="_blank">I love Mogwai</a>, but I have to admit that I was somewhat sceptical about the prospect of this remix album being any good. I don't love <i>Kicking A Dead Pig</i> (in fact, I can't really remember ever having the urge to actually listen to the thing, not even the Kevin Shields rework of "Mogwai Fear Satan"), and the list of contributors--Justin K. Broadrick and Tim Hecker aside, obviously--seemed pretty underwhelming. Nevertheless, as a fan of the band, I felt an obligation to at least give it a listen. After all, no remixer was foolhardy enough to tackle the best song on <i>Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will</i> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lm8JNh2Da6A" target="_blank">"You're Lionel Richie"</a>), nor was anyone tackling the worst (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=typIFjuE7r4" target="_blank">"Death Rays"</a>)--at least not exclusively: "Death Rays" is a part of Robert Hampson's "La Mort Blanche" remix, but more on that later. Unfortunately, I have to say that, by and large, my initial impression--this will be underwhelming--was confirmed. All told, there are two absolutely essential remixes/recreations here, with the rest of the album's tracks slotting in anywhere from functional to boring to irritating.<br />
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Starting with the latter, the album's only serious misstep is the Klad Hest "Mogwai Is My Dick" remix of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsGYzkXbPY" target="_blank">"Rano Pano."</a> Refashioned into some kind of cartoon-jungle hybrid, the track winds up as seven interminable minutes of hyperactivity, an annoying child of a song that just won't seem to go away. If the track is meant as a joke, it's punchline is made clear early on without any kind of set up and it never manages to raise as much as a grin. Cylob's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W06VINGQVqw" target="_blank">"EVP Mix"</a> of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmV4LlXIva0" target="_blank">"White Noise"</a> is the closest to Klad Hest's in terms of missing the point, but nothing about it winds up as actively annoying. The vocodored vocals inserted over the top of the track are a curious choice, and with some worthwhile lyrics (and maybe a deviation or two from the main melody line) might have been interesting. The sort of surfeit of prettiness Cylob seems to be going for is ultimately delivered by Umberto's slightly too long remix of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhL8OMursQM" target="_blank">"Too Raging to Cheers"</a> as a kind of mystical, cosmic disco track. As it is, Cylob's track just seems kind of pointless.<br />
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I hate to damn the contributions of (arguably) the main draws here pointless, but there's not much to be said about either Tim Hecker's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faB6js3t6jc" target="_blank">reworking of "Rano Pano"</a> or Justin K. Broadrick's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ormGMalnegA" target="_blank">"reshape"</a> of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbp3k3rYMs4" target="_blank">"George Square Thatcher Death Party."</a> The former is little more than the original track with some static over top and run through a tremolo and the occasional bit of detuning. In some ways, it feels like Hecker is trying to turn the track into something like his own brilliant "The Piano Drop," but no such luck. Compared to this year's brilliant <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/04/review-tim-hecker-suffocation-raga-for.html" target="_blank">"Suffocation Raga for John Cale,"</a> Hecker's version of "Rano Pano" just feels half-assed. Indeed, the Soft Moon's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR_N81BImmA" target="_blank">take</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVNYm9Qncyc" target="_blank">"San Pedro"</a> actually does a better job of "Hecker-ising" its source track, coating the track truly thick and viscous fuzz. As for Broadrick, it's probably best to think of his reshape as a kind of alternative take on the song, one where the original's bouncing pop is replaced by a gothic, arid dream pop, a little like what appeared on Jesu's <i>Silver</i> EP minus the warmth. It's certainly worth a listen just to hear what else "George Square Thatcher Death Party" could be, but I can't see myself returning to it with any frequency, or ever really preferring it to the album version.<br />
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There are a few takes that, if not superior to the album versions, do offer an interesting cases for how to hear those album tracks as part of larger themes and sounds that would otherwise escape detection. While <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Jv64uhCIrU" target="_blank">"Mexican Grand Prix"</a> was perhaps the most obviously krautrock indebted track on <i>Hardcore Will Never Die</i>, its Neu!-isms are revealed to be in good company by Zombi's reworking of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iIhtPi_q-4" target="_blank">"Letters to the Metro"</a> as an elegantly Kraftwerkian epic, one that in its icy snynths, rigidly sequenced lines, and stately, measured melody line deliberately evokes <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-I6_xjMZ5E" target="_blank">"Trans-Europe Express"</a> (the better choice would've been that record's real highlight, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDKiPtBbBQY" target="_blank">"Europe Endless,"</a> but that's an argument for another time). I only wish that Zombi could've found a way to get some <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lDCYjb8RHk" target="_blank">"Planet Rock"</a>-style vocals into the mix. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ8MioROUPA" target="_blank">Xander Harris' take</a> on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKZX7CZwgeM" target="_blank">"How To Be a Werewolf"</a> is equally enamoured of early German electronics, but uses its gentle motorik pulse to simply draw attention to the original track's euphoric build and climax. Indeed, it winds up feeling more like a kin to <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAXYMOgHQI4" target="_blank">"Hallogallo"</a> than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxZr6u9fT1I" target="_blank">"Yes! I Am a Long Way From Home"</a> by the end. Nothing flashy, nothing fancy, then, but both tracks manage to make "Mexican Grand Prix" seem less like an anomaly than it initially appeared on the album.<br />
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"Mexican Grand Prix" itself is the subject of one of two tracks that make the entire album worthwhile. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-d4Erj5MIxQ" target="_blank">RM Hubbert transforms</a> the song from driving krautrock into a hushed, moonlit bit of menace. Amping up the air of frustrated lust that ran through the original, Hubbert's acoustic guitar plays off the electronic voices retained from the original to brilliant effect. It's so good that I can only hope Mogwai themselves are taking notes. Hubbert's reworking is dwarfed (literally and figuratively) by Robert Hampson's mammoth closer "La Mort Blanche." Working through both "White Noise" and "Death Rays," the track is a full-immersion bath of bliss that, like Floating Points' remix of Four Tet's "Sing," radically expands the scope of the original source material in order to push into ever higher levels of light and colour. Hampson takes full advantage of his fourteen minutes, not rushing a single note and allowing a softly burbling ambient wash (it sounds a bit like an email alert heard through a running faucet, and I mean that in a good way) connect his take on "White Noise" to "Death Rays." The latter half of the track is even more impressive to me than the former, turning what I thought was Mogwai's most by-the-numbers track into a subtly life-affirming hymn, all soft-focus spangle without a sharp edge in sight before the original's furious climax appears in the guise of a gentle flame out.<br />
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Ultimately, I can't say that <i>A Wrenched Virile Lore</i> is going to get much play on my stereo. Outside of the RM Hubbert and Robert Hampson, there's not enough to really recommend it over its source material. I'm not sure that there ever has been with a remix album (I can't even say that I would take <i>No Protection</i> over <i>Protection</i>, to be honest). Without ten transcendent talents who are all firing on the day, the remix album seems destined to be a grab bag. Thinking of these as sort of b- (or c- or d-) sides that never were, though, makes a little more sense, though not in 2012. Instead, I'll treat <i>A Wrenched Virile Lore</i> as a postcard from an alternative 1998. In the meantime, though, I'll wait for Mogwai's <a href="http://www.rock-action.co.uk/index.php?id=288" target="_blank">soundtrack to <i>Les Revenants</i></a>.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-75618621913092472222012-11-26T00:52:00.004-05:002012-11-26T00:52:57.924-05:00BECK AND RETROMANIAI was listening to <i>Pink Moon</i> the other day--a late discovery for me, something I'd heard of but never really listened to until I got to grad school, and even then didn't really take to until the second year of my M.A.--and thought that for as good an album as it is (great songs, interesting arrangements, possibly the most perfect overdub in history [the piano line in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXnfhnCoOyo" target="_blank">"Pink Moon"</a>]), it's an even better <i>guitar</i> album. Besides the fact that John Wood's production is a textbook example of how to record an acoustic guitar (it really is a joy just to hear that tone), Nick Drake is in brilliant form as a guitarist: not quite as freewheeling as some of his earlier work (like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAZA8Su6vpc" target="_blank">"Man in a Shed,"</a> for example, or much of <i>Bryter Layter</i>), but in full command of his talents, liquid runs mixed in with great chord work and lines that split the difference between chiming and droning (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIDZR-zv4UU" target="_blank">"Road,"</a> one of my favourite pieces of guitar music, being the best example of that). In fact, for all its simplicity--a guitar and an equally resonant male voice--<i>Pink Moon</i> achieves much of its singular power because of the inventive guitar playing. The circular chord progression underneath <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABAi5jWvxbU" target="_blank">"Parasite"</a> is an absolute necessity for its emotional content to hit at the right level and in the right places, a point that's often overlooked in attempts to ape Drake's sound and aesthetic.<div>
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Of course, there have been some successful copies of his work. I say copy rather than extension or development, because the song I have in mind--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmeag1rwQgo" target="_blank">"Round the Bend"</a> by Beck--is essentially a photocopy of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sftEYVYEoew" target="_blank">"River Man,"</a> probably Drake's signature tune (interestingly, that's not Beck's only "borrowing" on the album: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvFVLqJXXhM" target="_blank">"Already Dead's"</a> verses indulge in a bit of plagiarism at the expense of the Foo Fighter's superior--and wonderfully shouty--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_rTTsZZ9KE" target="_blank">"I'll Stick Around"</a>). The deliberate evocation of Drake's most recognisable song (prior to Volkswagen introducing a whole generation, myself very much included, to "Pink Moon") is a key part of the retromania-fest that is <i>Sea Change</i>. As an album, it feels mannered to the point of suffocation: a "serious," "mature," "artistic" work, <i>Sea Change</i> is very conservative in its template of sad man plus slow acoustic guitar songs. The best tracks are the ones that steer furthest away from this--"Round the Bend," obviously, but also <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VoJMUpzAyI" target="_blank">"Paper Tiger"</a> (the only track with a real semblance of life), <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHIUXZp6WGM" target="_blank">"End of the Day"</a> (with its gestures to some kind of casiotone country), and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0KjMK0F6b8" target="_blank">"Sunday Sun"</a> (in its distorted climax)--but even they are indebted to specific strains of the past. That's not a problem in an of itself, but when that debt is figured as some kind of guarantor of authenticity--either in the sense that the music of the past was somehow "real" music in a way that today's music falls short of (e.g. rockism and calls for the return of rock), or that the emotions that the artist wishes to convey can be presented in their "realest" form in a style of the past (e.g. yearning and 1950s ballads)--the retromaniacal impulse becomes one of tail-chasing stagnation, curatorial consumption rather than creation. </div>
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I've not followed Beck's career all that closely since <i>Sea Change--</i>in fact, I gave the album to an ex-girlfriend and never bothered to get it back--but what has popped up on my radar has fallen into this same kind of retromania. His record club project, while great fun for its participants I'm sure, (the recording sessions certainly seem like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSja3k1j9jo" target="_blank">they were a blast</a>) is perhaps the most damning example of this: track for track covers of "classic" albums (something that the Flaming Lips have also gotten into as they've settled down into increasingly less interesting work), without even the wink and nudge of the Moog Cookbook or Camper Van Beethoven's version of <i>Tusk</i>. Was this retromaniacal turn an inevitability for Beck? Hidden in his gleeful appropriation of junk culture and slacker attitude, was it a time bomb waiting to appear?</div>
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Certainly, by <i>Mutations</i> (named after Os Mutantes), Beck's urge to cite, to curate and to copy, had already begun to overwhelm him, parody clearly slipping into pastiche (a transformation completed <i>in toto</i> on <i>Midnight Vultures</i>). <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9-Xatk0ajM" target="_blank">"Nobody's Fault But My Own"</a> is the best of Beck's sad sack mopey ballads, but its sitars and Orientalisms are already as caught up in some period piece vision of the late 1960s as anything Oasis ever did. The real turn on <i>Mutations</i> is one toward "craft," and specifically songcraft as understood to mean very conventional and traditional notions of guitar driven music. <i>Odelay</i>'s collage may have been a dead end, but it was also a force that managed to counterbalance the guitars and the reliance on folk, blues, and country throughout. For all its craft, <i>Odelay</i> is a different kind of self-conscious from <i>Mutations</i>, one that is equally exhausting and stifling in the end, but that also feels comfortably of its time (even if that means it sounds surprisingly dated in some ways today) in a way that its follow up abandons. Or rather, doesn't abandon, but rather reveals to be irrelevant: <i>Mutations</i>' influences--tropicalia, bossa nova, 1970s singer-songwriter music--is as up to the moment current for 1998 as are <i>Odelay</i>'s influences for 1996. The difference is that <i>Mutations</i> is about its influences. Not doing anything with them, not transmuting them, but instead making them very apparent. They are the surface and the content, the purpose of these songs. <i>Mutations</i>, despite its title, changes nothing. It has the good taste to cite accurately and completely.</div>
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Looking back at his career arc, the later Beck's subsumption in overt retromania seems inevitable. <i>One Foot in the Grave</i>, his lo-fi folk album from 1994 (the phase of his career most obviously referenced by <i>Sea Change</i>), is designed to separate out a certain strain of his music and present it in its "authentic" form, "<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/one-foot-in-the-grave-mw0000114210" target="_blank">bolster[ing] his neo-folkie credibility the way the nearly simultaneously released <i>Stereopathic Soul Manure</i> accentuated his underground noise prankster credentials</a>," as Stephen Thomas Erlewine puts it. As a poster child for a certain form of indie rock's postmodern 1990s, an artist who was considered both cutting edge/hip and commercially viable, Beck seems like a useful signpost for investigating what happened to so forcefully propagate retromaniacal culture in the 2000s. The various phases of his career, for example, are an obviously different kind to that of Madonna (another postmodern artist who straddled the cutting edge/hip and commercially viable realms) or David Bowie (certainly a modernist [at most, a "limit-modernist," to use Brian McHale's term], whose "characters" explore an idea of persona that no early twentieth-century modernist would be uncomfortable with). It seems to me that a more careful and patient reading of Beck's oeuvre might reveal some points toward the definition of a retromaniacal artistic temperament, which might be a useful tool for analysis and criticism going forward.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-81758612232885877682012-11-21T23:30:00.003-05:002012-11-21T23:30:51.363-05:00REVIEW: MOUSE ON MARS - WOW<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rydkhOoTApI/UK2UkxQdHRI/AAAAAAAAATk/tB9sgsNr46Y/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rydkhOoTApI/UK2UkxQdHRI/AAAAAAAAATk/tB9sgsNr46Y/s320/cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.mouseonmars.com/" target="_blank">Mouse on Mars</a> - <i>WOW</i><br /><a href="http://www.monkeytownrecords.com/" target="_blank">Monkeytown</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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Now this is more like it! I will admit to being underwhelmed by Mouse on Mars' first release of 2012, <i>Parastrophics</i>. What their record label <a href="http://www.monkeytownrecords.com/releases/view/51/mouse-on-mars/monkeytown022-parastrophics" target="_blank">describes as</a> "a life-affirming and constantly surprising album which is crammed with ideas, exuberance and sheer kinetic energy," I found to be kind of a slog. For all the talk of songs in "compulsive new shapes, full of glitter, intrigue and addictive detail"--not to mention "an elegance . . . which speaks, whisper it, of maturity" while being "as playful as ever"--<i>Parastrophics</i> just isn't a fun listen for me. And if I can't have fun by (and while) listening to Mouse on Mars, what's the point of putting on music in the first place? Thankfully, <i>WOW</i> delivers the goods in spades (if nothing else, and there is much else, the cover of <i>WOW</i> is gorgeous compared to that of <i>Parastrophics</i>). Indeed, I sincerely doubt that I've had more fun with an album this year. Certainly this is the only album that has compelled me to laugh out loud in public while listening. It's frantic and ridiculous and conjures up images of hilarious machines run amok. Misters St. Werner and Toma even seem to realise some counterbalance was needed to <i>Parastrophics</i>, as the <a href="http://www.monkeytownrecords.com/releases/view/74/mouse-on-mars/monkeytown030-wow" target="_blank">press release</a> that accompanies the album notes "You can almost feel the tension being released" and positions <i>WOW</i> as a burst of creativity, "a spontaneous reaction to all those hours of studio labour" involved in the five year gestation for the followup to 2006's <i>Varcharz</i>.</div>
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Ostensibly a club record--and, to a greater or lesser degree depending on the track, an engagement with bass music's developments since 2006--<i>WOW</i> really is sheer kinetic energy, a blast of primary-coloured rubber band textures and the wobbliest, squelchiest bass possible that twitches and stumbles over itself in its headlong rush only to turn a somersault and suddenly reappear, smiling and heading in the opposite direction. That might not be enough for the kids looking for a drop, but it's awfully hard not to find the movement grin-inducing, the sense of spontaneity liberating, and the good-times vibes of it all infectious. Thus, the moments of off-kilter bump and grind on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnF66E7G7xo" target="_blank">"APE"</a> feel less out of place than joyous reminders that you have hips and should be using them, and the push-pull, stop-start groove of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GgyVo8MNSU" target="_blank">"VAX"</a> proves as hypnotic a headknocker as anything coming out of the Brainfeeder camp while also sounding like half a dozen arcade machines and a full cast of cartoon characters got together for a night on the town. Indeed, the songs start to resemble a Scooby Doo-esque haunted house after awhile, with disembodied voices and cheesy sound effects coming from every direction, and the album's better for it. </div>
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If <i>WOW</i> is in any way a response to bass music (or, and I do hate the phrase, Mouse on Mars' "bass music album," which sounds much too genre tourist-y), it is so only obliquely, more a reminder that the elements that in the last few years have been bolted onto dubstep's frame or smuggled into DJ sets via house or funky or what have you have always been a part of Mouse on Mars' sound. The pounding, repetitious ecstacy of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtfJUfKTWKo" target="_blank">"HYM,"</a> for example, is one of the better re-applications of house music I've heard, and, balanced by its aquatic wobbles, feels like a cheeky literalisation of the intersections between dubstep and house over the past few years, until the two elements combine with a loping downtempo melody line that becomes an album highlight. The mile-long and taffy-thick vocals on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OplIPEkI-3U" target="_blank">"CAN"</a> might call to mind Burial's patented vocal manipulations, but he's never been this demented, never sent his listeners off into a funhouse full of helium while strobes flash the colours of the rainbow. With its glamourous surfaces, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpmRHBT2nfk" target="_blank">"PUN"</a> suggests <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-3-bnjmn-black.html" target="_blank">BNJMN's <i>Black Square</i></a> or <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-4-sbtrkt-sbtrkt.html" target="_blank">SBTRKT's self-titled album</a>, but everything is just a little too busy, too frantic, too willing to spiral out of control to be anyone other than Mouse on Mars. Similarly, if the video game bleeps and bloops of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZAGiV1pMIA" target="_blank">"DOG"</a> recall something that Zomby or Joker might have released a few years ago, they're equally indebted to classic Mouse of Mars from 1995's <i>Iaora Tahiti</i> or 1997's <i>Autoditacker</i>. At this point, it's almost tempting to see Mouse on Mars as their own continuum, quite separate from <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/the-wire-300_simon-reynolds-on-the-hardcore-continuum_introduction" target="_blank">the hardcore continuum</a> (see also <a href="http://energyflashbysimonreynolds.blogspot.ca/2009/02/hardcore-continuum-or-theory-and-its.html" target="_blank">this</a>), but equally likely to loop back around in new permutations and configurations.</div>
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Not everything on the album works, though. Five of its thirteen tracks are interstitial moments that link, preface, or conclude the more substantial songs. Outside of the glitchy, pretty <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpV8DPgCRZg" target="_blank">"ESO,"</a> I find them to be mostly disposable. They do keep the momentum up, allowing the album to flow more like a mix than the collection of wildly disparate tracks that it is, but in the case of opener <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-Oeo9OAkFI" target="_blank">"SOS"</a> and "BSD," the mood is marred by Dao Anh Khanh, a Vietnamese vocalist here singing (in much the same way that Damo Suzuki--a one time Mouse on Mars collaborator--sings during his most out there moments) in an invented language. Similarly, the closing two tracks, "WOC" and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tx6wemB9VgA" target="_blank">"CAT,"</a> are largely pointless, a letdown from the true closer, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGo8O0cexUA" target="_blank">"SUN,"</a> which rides a hiccoughing (literally!) beat to a pretty--if twisted and disoriented--conclusion behind swooning and swooping chords and phone pad arpeggios. In the spirit of fun, though, you can't really begrudge the band a few missteps that sound like a band having a blast and letting ideas run wild.</div>
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In light of the six weeks the band spent on it and its much more obvious, lightweight content, it's tempting to view <i>WOW</i> as a less worthy album than <i>Parastrophics</i>, an album that doesn't mean as much, that doesn't really contribute to the conversation surrounding electronic music in 2012 in a significant way. This would be, in my opinion, a serious error. With its manic (and maniacal) energy, <i>WOW</i> feels like a catalyst to creativity, a reminder that two guys making weird, goofy techno music have managed to carve out a pretty distinctive niche for themselves over the last nineteen years. Indeed, <i>WOW</i> manages to contribute to the conversation precisely because of its charm--any engagement or response here feels lowkey, the result of the band hearing something they like and tweaking it to fit into what they already do, rather than grasping at relevance by making themselves over as an example of whatever style is hot (I shudder as I consider Mouse on Mars goes footwork). Without feeling the need to nudge things forward by self-consciously demonstrating their up-to-two-minutes-into-the-future cred, Mouse on Mars have managed to point out that most of the electronic music world hasn't really caught up to what they've been doing their whole career. As <i>WOW </i>ably demonstrates, they're waiting over here with a readymade party whenever anyone feels like joining them. </div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-4276776494442529252012-11-20T01:37:00.001-05:002012-12-12T01:10:35.737-05:00REVIEW: THE SPACEAPE - XORCISM EP<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3L94DpFG5R8/UKsHz90TbdI/AAAAAAAAATU/dlQDPXC7ug4/s1600/XORCISM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3L94DpFG5R8/UKsHz90TbdI/AAAAAAAAATU/dlQDPXC7ug4/s320/XORCISM.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.thespaceape.co.uk/home/" target="_blank">The Spaceape</a> - <i>Xorcism</i> EP<br />
<a href="http://www.hyperdub.net/" target="_blank">Hyperdub</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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Twelve minutes and fifty two seconds. That's the sum total of <i>Xorcism</i>, the Spaceape's first solo release (<a href="http://www.thespaceape.co.uk/home/xorcizm/" target="_blank">available for free at his website</a>), according to its run time. It would seem scant prior to listening, but, as the press release accompanying the EP notes, "Everything that needs to be there is here and nothing more." The backstory: the Spaceape, n<span style="font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 10pt;">é </span>Stephen Samuel Gordon, a vocalist whose powerful, resonant vocals have injected post-millennial tension into Kode 9's productions on two excellent albums (2006's <i>Memories of the Future</i> and <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.ca/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-7-kode9-spaceape.html" target="_blank">last year's <i>Black Sun</i></a>) in addition to guest spots on Burial's first album, Martyn's <i>Ghost People</i>, and Redshape's <i>Square </i>among others, has for the last three years dealt with a rare form of cancer. <i>Xorcism </i>details this struggle across seven tracks, channeling the percussive, unsettling, ghostly presence of Haitian music in order to tell of his experiences. Harrowing enough on its own, then, but even more engrossing (and, somehow, braver) in the context of what's come before: <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2012/11/15/download-xorcism-the-debut-ep-from-hyperdubs-resident-toaster-the-spaceape/" target="_blank">label Hyperdub explains that</a><br />
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[t]his intense experience was behind the sonic fictions of bodily malfunction and radiation that surrounded The Spaceape's collaboration with Kode9 on 2011's <i>Black Sun</i> album. Relisten to the lyrics such as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcqvugOzPcw" target="_blank">'Black Smoke'</a>, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09Zph4b89GQ" target="_blank">'Neon Red Sign'</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8376Uxid1pw" target="_blank">'The Cure'</a> and you'll understand the context to this new batch of The Spaceape's solo material. </blockquote>
The cover art--itself a still from the brilliant video for <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNiP6safPIE" target="_blank">"On the Run"</a>--perfectly captures the mood, suggesting the otherworldliness common to the Spaceape's words and voice and the darkness, pain, and terror suggested by the release's title.<br />
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Of course, high concepts and compelling personal stories don't guarantee good art. <i>Xorcism </i>could have been nothing more than a curio--that guy from the dubstep tracks with the deep voice made a solo album--but the tracks here arguably work even better with the Spaceape's approach than his Kode9 collaborations. On those two albums, and the singles and one-offs he's featured on, the Spaceape proved himself to be a master of dread. What kept him from self-parody--which, for a man with as distinctive a voice as he possesses, would seem both all too easy and too quick to slip into--was his ability to reveal that dread is a layered emotion, a whole space or affect that enfolds and discloses a reality. The solemnity with which he enunciated his words, though, could be suffocating over the course of a whole album, the timbre of his vocals becoming a black hole, swallowing all light and air. <i>Xorcism</i> sidesteps this problem both through its brevity--the EP is ruthlessly efficient, pared to the bone--and its tempo, the full sprint suggested by "On the Run" the rule rather than the exception, allowing his vocals to stretch their limbs in a way that the pitch-black dubstep of <i>Memories of the Future</i> or the science fiction miniatures of <i>Black Sun</i> often denied.<br />
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For all the temptation to view this solely through the Spaceape's words and vocal performances, though (cf. <a href="http://dummymag.com/reviews/2012/11/16/the-spaceape-he-gave-his-body-over-to-science/" target="_blank">Robert Darnell's excellent look</a> at "He Gave His Body Over to Science" for <i><a href="http://dummymag.com/" target="_blank">Dummy</a> </i>for a nice write-up that avoids this), it's the music behind and around them that makes this release feel so striking and new. The weird, undulating vocals behind "Spirit of Change," for example, are as haunting as anything that <a href="http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ghost Box</a> has released, and the urgent, insistent horn parts that cycle through "On the Run" and "The Sound" ratchet the tension up to almost unbearable levels. "Up in Flames" prominently features a violin part that sounds almost Acadian along with its drums and bells, and as a literalisation of the Black Atlantic subtext to the release, it's a striking moment. Ultimately, though, the masses of drums throughout are what really drive these songs. Pulsing with rhythmic force, though infinitely more pliable than four-to-the-floor kicks or dubstep's half-step lurch, the drums shift and swirl and blur, all motion, energy, and heat. Where the Spaceape plays with his vocals are also thrilling moments--from the pitched-up and modulated backing vocals on "Your Angel Has Come" to the female (?) backing vocals on "On the Run," the juxtaposition of calmness and anger on the multitracked "He Gave His Body Over to Science" to the chorus of vocals that close out the EP on "Up in Flames"--highlighting his command, but also his versatility.<br />
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As a spoken word artist's EP, though, eventually it comes back to the words, and the ones intoned by the Spaceape throughout <i>Xorcism</i> are evocative and arresting. The opening stanza to "Spirit of Change" burns with apocalyptic fervour as it sets the scene of "a man / Looking up at a weeping sky / Rain splinters down / His burnt charcoal skin." The depiction of radiation therapy in "He Gave His Body Over to Science" is almost too stark to bear, full of invasive technology that attacks (and constitutes) a soul in a person, its chorus ("He gave his body over to science / He said from now 'I'll be compliant' / No change of heart or acts of defiance / He gave his body over to science") and the assurance that "It won't be long before he's a believer" offering a kind of Foucaultian terror. Ultimately, it might be the mantra-like lines of "Up in Flames" that stay with me most: a song that "rallies against man's complacency in a world we inhabit so briefly" according to the notes that accompany the release, the repetitive structure of the lines give its exhortations an uncanny power. Pick a song on the release and you're bound to find a line that grabs you, though, that shakes you and that makes the demons exorcised in these songs dance into life in the corners of your eyes.<br />
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Twelve minutes and fifty two seconds. It goes by in a heartbeat, except when it doesn't. <i>Xorcism</i> has the curious power to dilate time. In the moment with these songs, the intensity is almost too much, the words, the sounds, the details accruing too quickly and proving quietly devastating. No song seems like it will ever end--the spell is too powerful, too hypnotic for you to be released from its grasp. Then, as soon as it's begun, the song is over, the EP sprints on to its next tale, anxieties brought to light and hanging heavy in the air from track to track. In its singular world, <i>Xorcism</i> reminds me most of Gonjasufi's work. Perhaps too easy a comparison--intensely focused and meditative words paired with immediately recognisable voices--but one that I keep being drawn back to. I've often tried to describe the Spaceape (and sell him to friends) as a force of nature: his voice is something big, his presence is something that takes you over, that demands your attention and your vision, like a massive storm. That's doubly true here. The ghosts in these stories will hound you and chase you through your unconscious, equal parts frightening and carnivalesque. Nothing about <i>Xorcism</i> makes for an easy listen, but it's a rewarding one, the sound of an artist boldly asserting his identity by giving voice to his deepest doubts and fears in order to find some measure of spiritual reassurance. In so doing, the Spaceape offers up one of the most compulsively listenable releases of the year even as it challenges you anew with every play.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-85852765728712509952012-10-26T10:09:00.002-04:002012-10-26T10:09:54.710-04:00REVIEW: THE WEEKND - "ENEMY"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've made my feelings on <a href="http://the-weeknd.com/" target="_blank">the Weeknd's</a> music <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-1-weeknd-house-of.html" target="_blank">fairly clear</a>: I loved the trilogy of albums released last year because of the stylish production, but I keep returning to them because of the bizarre psychological terrain that the albums cover. Ahead of the release of <i>Trilogy</i>--the major label backed, newly mixed and mastered versions of <i>House of Balloons</i>, <i>Thursday</i>, and <i>Echoes of Silence</i>--Abel Tesfaye and co. have released a new song, "Enemy." As <i>Fact</i> <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2012/10/26/the-weeknd-samples-the-smiths-on-brand-new-track-enemy/" target="_blank">point out</a>, the song sounds like it features a warped sample of the Smiths' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMQbzLrvwlE" target="_blank">"Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want,"</a> which should do nothing to fend off the charges of the Weeknd's music being "PBR'n'b," but is another inspired production choice. <div>
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"Enemy" itself is a wonderful track, taking the lush, sensuous pop of tracks like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV1r4m8c9SI" target="_blank">"Montreal"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umvomiY7804" target="_blank">"Outside"</a> from <i>Echoes of Silence </i>and fusing it with the fragility of that album's closing title track to produce a coldly sensuous burner. The minimal piano backing feels like it exists in an ocean of space, while the hints of 80s guitar and the fairly minimal beat provide an accent and a foundation, respectively, for Tesfaye to do what he does best: unfurl a tale of depravity and seduction shot through with desperation, isolation, and manipulation. It's old ground for him in some ways, but few people are masters of an aesthetic the way Tesfaye is, and that aesthetic evolved a great deal more over the course of three albums last year than people gave him credit for. "Enemy" doesn't move that aesthetic into any radically new territory, but it does suggest that there doesn't seem to be a drop in quality on the horizon.</div>
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The best songs on his <i>Trilogy</i> were the ones that balanced this tension between the wild indulgences and psychological emptiness that seems to define his character--<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWIhwplfx4Q" target="_blank">"The Zone's"</a> admission of not being able to see or feel even as he has the sex he can't help but pursue being the archetypal example--but there was another strand to this, the one in which Tesfaye considers his own status and abilities as singer, celebrity, seducer and denounces all three as inevitably fleeting and ephemeral (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCPkgAIANys" target="_blank">"Rolling Stone"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iW1-BuJ_Hc" target="_blank">"Next"</a> come to mind). "Enemy" seems to balance somewhere between the two narrative threads, at once begging and yearning like Morrissey but in the same breath noting that "I'd rather be your enemy / than any friend you think I'd be" and admitting that he "forgot how it feels to regret my sins / I need the old thing back." Unlike "Rolling Stone" or "Next," though, in which Tesfaye worries that once he's told his story the females he surrounds himself with will leave him as old news, no longer mysterious and therefore no longer attractive, he flips the tables and explains to the female he addresses in "Enemy" that:</div>
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You remind me of a feeling that I used to have<br />So I don't know what to expect from you tonight<br />But I'm not trying to waste nobody's time<br />I'm just trying to find material, some inspiration<br />We can put it in a song, if you want.</blockquote>
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It's another seductive dangling of the fame and fortune he promises on <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdH1kXzquQo" target="_blank">"Lonely Star,"</a> one predicated on his voice, though one in an interesting tension with the choruses desire to seduce her without a word, as if he doesn't want to have to resort to his status anymore. Tellingly, the old ambiguity returns in his desire to make her "numb without a word" and "leave without a word," the two things that Tesfaye himself seems to reveal about himself over and over again: he's always numb, and he's always leaving and being left.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-89474684641804040662012-10-15T21:34:00.000-04:002012-10-15T21:34:43.767-04:00REVIEW: ULTRAISTA - ULTRAISTA<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YjEh0VohnXA/UHyjfuANt4I/AAAAAAAAATA/axplaHQFU0c/s1600/ultraista.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YjEh0VohnXA/UHyjfuANt4I/AAAAAAAAATA/axplaHQFU0c/s320/ultraista.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.ultraista.co.uk/Ultraista/Home.html" target="_blank">Ultraista</a> - <i>Ultraista</i><br /><a href="http://temporaryresidence.com/" target="_blank">Temporary Residence</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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I've written about good taste and records <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-four-tet-pink.html" target="_blank">before</a>. Generally, I'm of the opinion that good taste is <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-nathan-fake-steam-days.html" target="_blank">largely a curse</a>; the bands and artists whose work deliberately appeals to good taste are rarely satisfying listens. While albums and bands can, in hindsight, seem to devolve into good taste (Bark Psychosis being a prime example with <i>Hex</i>, an album so perfectly in line with what's now "good taste" its wonder must surely be imperiled for the first time listener), there's a certain something--Fredric Jameson might call it an old-fashioned, modernist, "unique" style--that elevates such music above its influences, confluences, references, and progeny. Ultraista's self-titled debut album comes carefully packaged in not just good, but excellent taste. The <a href="http://shop.temporaryresidence.com/trr215" target="_blank">press blurb</a> on Temporary Residence's website notes the band's fondness for "Afrobeat, electronic an dance music, visual art, and tequila," a set of influences that lead them to produce their album "of highly infectious, exquisitely crafted electronic kraut-pop." To make it even more appealing, of course, the album is available (for a limited time only! Act fast!) on coloured vinyl. Oh, and it's Nigel Godrich's (he of Radiohead-producing fame) band, along with session musician Joey Waronker (famous to me for his drum work on R.E.M.'s <i>Up</i>) and Laura Bettinson, so you know the kids will love it.<br />
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To put it bluntly: Ultraista are not capable of transcending their good taste. Indeed, their good taste is so conspicuous, so all-encompassing, that the album becomes kind of interesting despite itself. Good taste in music like this often registers as pleasant anonymity--it sounds good because I know it sounds good, so it doesn't actually have to sound like anything--and Ultraista's debut is no exception. The concern to appear hip turns the album into a rigidly controlled screen, a surface that's impossible to get beyond. Studiously mixing the same three or four elements (essentially: metronomic, Teutonic funk drums; buzzing, swirling synths; icily detached vocals), the band's sound presents itself as a blank, a cipher. You can hear anything in this music: it's contemporary (parts of sound more like <i>The King of Limbs</i> than <i>The King of Limbs</i> did, others are vaguely in line with chillwave), it's retro (crucially, though, it draws from the 1990s rather than the 1980s, all mid-period Stereolab and early Broadcast), it's indie that has a shelf of European techno on vinyl to impress visitors with. For the most part, it's not even possible to distinguish the songs on the album by saying "that's the one with the . . ." or "it's the one that goes . . .," because its compositions are more of a piece than <i>Music for Airports</i>. In short, it's aggressively bland in its good taste, its pleasant anonymity.<br />
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This is where it gets interesting, though, because nothing can be so bland and anonymous without transforming into something else. One of the most overworked remarks on a piece of music is Brian Eno's description of My Bloody Valentine's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LseSx_hPJyQ" target="_blank">"Soon"</a> as the "vaguest music ever to have been a hit," but I honestly do feel that something similar is at play with this album. Just when it's on the point of dissolving, when it has reached a point of maximum blankness, it becomes bizarrely appealing. Temporary Residence credits the musicians with "masterful control over the pure anatomy of a pop song," and the description is not wrong, though for different reasons than the label would suspect, I think. This is pop music transformed into <i>observed</i> pop music--it knows very well how pop songs work, and it's able to demonstrate how they work to the listener without ever doing the things pop music does. This isn't music that inspires an emotional response in the way that a Top 40 hit will, but it offers a clinical deconstruction of how the Top 40 hit does this by turning the pop song into the unreachable world behind the screen of Ultraista's music.<br />
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Take opener <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v45ZHPeANoE" target="_blank">"Bad Insect,"</a> which rewrites Radiohead's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g6R89fCUBE" target="_blank">"Bloom"</a> and suggests how pop music can be exhilarating without actually ever raising your pulse. Emotionally, this music is flat, devoid of affect, and more interesting for it. The minimalism in terms of sound design works to the song's advantage in focusing attention on the surface. This is taken to even greater extremes in the middle of the album, with "Our Song" and "Easier" anonymous enough to become almost offensive, to retain a certain grain of reality, a kind of productive irritation that suggests the songs are as much theorizing about the music they sound like as functioning as actual songs. Indeed, the album falters at its busiest, when the spell of its good taste, its vagueness, is broken. The songs that fall victim to this (hyper)activity become genuinely irritating, as on the grating <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vRtx8cICvs" target="_blank">"Smalltalk"</a> or the chirpy <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Qor0R-B00" target="_blank">"Static Light."</a><br />
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Perhaps the oddest song here is "Gold Dayzz," which ends up with a kind of sub-Trish Keenan vocal that sounds lazy in the wrong ways, a curse that also plagued the Godrich-helmed <i>King of Limbs</i>. Bettinson's detached vocals are put to quite good effect elsewhere, though, as on "Strange Formula"--which is practically sub-zero in its icy loops of voice and synth--or the brilliant closing troika of "Party Line" (the album highlight), "Wash It Over," and "You're Out." What makes "Party Line" immediately noticeable is its deviation from the rest of the album's tonal palette. Foregrounding a piano line that feels snatched out of an adult alternative song designed to soundtrack graduations, the song supports itself with buzzing synths and a gently insistent bass that work brilliantly to catch the ear. The final two tracks are content to drift along aimlessly, threatening to lose all semblance of form at any moment, to lose sight of the pop structures they so carefully work to ape and to dissolve into pure sound, and the better for it.<br />
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<i>Ultraista</i> is, ultimately, an odd release. It seems too studied and mannered to have had its most appealing qualities (vague formlessness, anonymity) in mind. Nevertheless, the songs here tend to work as a kind of new twenty-first century ambient art-pop, plundering the cool bits of the past and reassembling them into the precise shapes that are now able to be only just heard and distinguished from the general background noise of life--a YouTube video playing in the background of your cubicle while you do work, the sound turned down so as not to disturb coworkers. Ten years ago it would have been a hit, and ten years from now it might be again (or it might sound like nothing at all, its good taste silencing it), but at this moment Ultraista's debut is weirdly adrift. As I listen to it, I think about Neil Kulkarni's <a href="http://thequietus.com/features/a-new-nineties" target="_blank">"A New Nineties"</a> series at <i><a href="http://thequietus.com/" target="_blank">The Quietus</a></i>. Whereas his columns reclaim an alternative decade to the Alternative decade, Ultraista are like a band of Rip Van Winkles who fell asleep when bands like Eleven were making albums like <i>avantgardedog</i> and that dog. were making <i>Retreat from the Sun </i>and awoke in 2012. Whether there is any place for them (or any point to them) remains the question, though; where Rip eventually settles into a blissful senescence, free to be the idle raconteur he always wished to be, I think Ultraista will never quite find another time they fit into.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-43457139348992242492012-10-08T17:56:00.001-04:002012-10-08T18:17:12.315-04:00REVIEW: GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR - ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND!<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--0OZtm3O3UI/UHNLOkaBFII/AAAAAAAAASw/g4yspTIZJfk/s1600/ALLELUJAH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--0OZtm3O3UI/UHNLOkaBFII/AAAAAAAAASw/g4yspTIZJfk/s320/ALLELUJAH.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.brainwashed.com/godspeed/" target="_blank">Godspeed You! Black Emperor</a> - <i>ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND!</i><br />
<a href="http://cstrecords.com/" target="_blank">Constellation</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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In one sentence: <i>ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! </i>is both exactly what you think a new Godspeed You! Black Emperor album should sound like (particularly given that it's made up of "definitive" versions of two songs that were being performed before the group's hiatus) and a reminder of their music's ability to transcend expectations. Surprises: it's heavy as fuck, all squealing guitars and full band detonations. Reassurances: occasionally that exquisite brand of melancholy that is distinctly Godspeed will be teased, but the band never gives in to the temptation to rehash past glories--this is nervous, edgy music for a nervous, edgy time. Ultimately: if this is the end, it's on a higher note than <i>Yanqui U.X.O.</i>, trimming some of that record's fat in its longer pieces and including some of the atmospheric dronescapes that made <i>Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada</i> and <i>Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven</i> such engrossing listens. Fuck yeah, I'm pumped, basically. I'll write a real review when I've stopped smiling. For now, listen <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/48130-stream-godspeed-you-black-emperors-new-album/" target="_blank">here</a>.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-64647276277585148132012-09-24T14:12:00.001-04:002012-09-24T14:12:13.068-04:00REVIEW: MARK HOLLIS - "ARB SECTION 1"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/-dQKxVeLUco?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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Via <i><a href="http://www.factmag.com/2012/09/24/hear-the-first-music-from-talk-talks-mark-hollis-in-14-years/" target="_blank">Fact</a></i>, here's new music from Mark Hollis (formerly of Talk Talk). As their story points out, it's the first piece of music he's released since his 1998 self-titled solo album. Hollis casts a long shadow over the world of post-rock given his involvement with Talk Talk, obviously, and like Scott Walker (he of the forthcoming <i>Bish Bosch</i>), Kate Bush, and Michael Gira from Swans (apparently--I have to admit being deficient in my knowledge of that group), he's something of an avatar of the modernist <i>auteur</i>. <div>
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After <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/47680-talk-talks-mark-hollis-resurfaces-with-new-music-for-the-kelsey-grammer-tv-show-boss" target="_blank">the announcement</a> that the first chance one would have to hear Hollis' new work would be through the incidental music of a pay channel drama starring Kelsey Grammer, I admit that I didn't have high hopes. "ARB Section 1" does nothing to particularly raise my hopes, but it's at least a curiosity; it might even present a problem to be solved. After working through the strangeness of its first few seconds, the mix of weirdly tropical, <i>Fantasia</i>-esque strings and what sounds like the "voice" preset on a low quality keyboard (recalling the soundtrack to any number of JRPGs from the late 90s and early 00s) proves itself quite beguiling. There's a certain lushness to it that fits music from one of the primary architects of <i>Spirit of Eden</i> and <i>Laughing Stock</i>, but whereas those albums seem crystalline and unreal, emanations from a Platonic realm somehow beamed to a fallen world, "ARB Section 1" feels weirdly real. Its humid mystery (appropriate, given that the music was originally conceived of as the score for a 2010 film <i>The Peacock</i>) actually makes it feel of a piece with artists like Shlohmo, Lone, and Slugabed, which, considering how far off the beaten path Talk Talk's later releases seemed at the time, is promising. </div>
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Despite all this, the piece feels neutered without context, and I have to believe that subsequent sections of "ARB"--should they exist and be released--or at least more music to surround this piece would improve "ARB Section 1" Certainly, this feels like only half a return without Hollis' heavenly voice, which acted a beacon of light during Talk Talk and his solo work's bleakest moments, a familiar hand to guide the listener through the strangest passages. The problem that I see this track posing is one of the author function: Hollis' solo album seemed so of a piece with the final Talk Talk releases, and the long silence following it has offered a certain closure. I hear--and I'm sure I'm not the only one--that album "finishing" Talk Talk's project. If the appearance of "ARB Section 1" heralds the release of new music from Hollis, then, is it taking up that project again, suggesting that it wasn't finished in the first place, or is this a new moment, with a new project? How will the linearity of Talk Talk and Hollis' progression as an artist--one that is so perfect that it seems scripted--be understood in the face of new music? Will an equally long silence follow? In a way, "ARB Section 1" (and what follows, if anything) might cause a change in how Hollis is understood as an artist, or it might reaffirm how he is understood now by denying his new music a place in his <i>oeuvre</i>. Either way, it should be fascinating to watch the debates should more new music by Hollis surface.</div>
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bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-36138228440456433972012-08-31T17:14:00.001-04:002012-11-22T11:46:24.593-05:00REVIEW: FOUR TET - PINK<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-42GFvV2SXbo/UEAs4U01eKI/AAAAAAAAASc/IX_rE7x_mok/s1600/pink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-42GFvV2SXbo/UEAs4U01eKI/AAAAAAAAASc/IX_rE7x_mok/s320/pink.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.fourtet.net/" target="_blank">Four Tet</a> - <i>Pink</i><br />
Text, 2012</td></tr>
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I figured I might as well join in the outpouring of love for Four Tet's new album, <i>Pink </i>(for examples, see the reviews <a href="http://thequietus.com/articles/09851-four-tet-pink-review" target="_blank">here</a>, <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/17093-pink/" target="_blank">here</a>, and <a href="http://boomkat.com/downloads/551972-four-tet-pink" target="_blank">here</a>, and the comments <a href="http://www.residentadvisor.net/review-view.aspx?id=11529" target="_blank">here</a>). I don't know if I can call myself a long-time fan of Four Tet, but I've been pretty solidly on board since I first heard 2008's <i>Ringer </i>EP. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKkwA-H5k2M" target="_blank">"Ribbons"</a> caught me in its spell--mysterious and alluring and weirdly beautiful; retrofuturistic in a strange way, like dusty chrome furniture in a space station. From there, I went backwards and caught up on what I'd missed. By the time 2010's <i>There Is Love In You</i> rolled around, it was fair to say that I was a fan. Over the past year and a half or so, it's been a pleasant surprise to have a steady trickle of music from Kieran Hebden, from <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/03/review-burial-four-tet-nova.html" target="_blank">collaborations with Burial</a> to one-offs and pairs of tracks of new Four Tet songs. Those Four Tet songs are collected here, and it's a credit to the strength of Hebden's voice as a producer that <i>Pink</i> is a fairly unified set, exploring an area that, if not rigidly defined, at least has some pretty solid borders. If <i>Pink</i> doesn't quite match the heights of <i>There Is Love In You</i>, it's not for a lack of stunning moments, as throughout Hebden continues to demonstrate his ability to take what might seem affected in others' hands and turn out effortless, weightless music. The more overt turn for the dancefloor signaled by <i>Ringer </i>and followed through on his last album is front and centre, but there's also a nod towards his earlier work, with the sinuous, ever-shifting rhythms and cosmic outlook of free jazz, the gently psychedelic strains of 1960s folk and early 1970s singer-songwriter music, and the loose-limbed bop-and-knock of hip-hop shot through the floor-filling potential of the material here. Six albums into his career as Four Tet, Hebden's managed with <i>Pink</i> to sum up where he's been and hint at where else he might go. That both parts of that equation are thrilling suggests what a special talent Hebden is.<br />
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<i>Pink</i> is a lengthy album--it clocks in at just over an hour--but its length is put to good use: aside from a mid-album stretch of shorter tracks, extended run times provide Hebden with the room both to continually mutate the shape of tracks and to spotlight a track's parts. Thus, opener <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwo5RurMxhg" target="_blank">"Locked"</a> allows its swinging percussion almost two full minutes to do all the lifting before it turns into infinitely refracted psychedelia, all shards of hallucinatory melody that subtly disorient even as they enchant. Similarly, closer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tKZzPkAikk" target="_blank">"Pinnacles"</a> pushes and pulls on its underwater, Caribou-esque techno centre, letting jauntily dissonant piano crash through the mix again and again, not to disrupt the groove but to highlight how swinging it is. Hebden is still able to pull back and isolate elements on the shorter tracks, though, as the drop into near-silence during the weirdly percolating break of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hfjVOLClso" target="_blank">"Jupiters"</a> bridges its pretty overture with the jazzy and relentless groove that dominates its second half. Indeed, if there's a common denominator to the album, it's the importance of the drums to these tracks. Thrillingly alive--even when they clearly aren't live--they make the best argument for the evolution of Four Tet over the past decade, turning what's been an eclectic discography into a surprisingly linear trajectory. It's as if the collaborations with Steve Reid, the folktronica, the detours through house and techno had all been planned by Hebden, rather than happy accidents along the way as he developed. Regardless, it's all there in the drums, which, aside from the beatless epic <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbXxPe278xQ" target="_blank">"Peace For Earth"</a> (probably the closest thing here to the material on <i>There Is Love In You</i>), cover the album like a web in much the same way those shimmering, Reich-ian <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6OzjAzvcA" target="_blank">pings</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFSG3YYAoas" target="_blank">chimes</a> covered the last album.<br />
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If the drums make the album, though, the stunning moments that I mentioned earlier come courtesy of the textures that interact with those drums. The chunky synths that close out "Locked" like a sunset. The kalimba/mbira that wends its way through the final three minutes of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdTNcc0NZ-g" target="_blank">"Lion"</a> and pushes the track's funkiness through the roof. The repetitive, old-school vocal sample that drives <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5zLssV2344" target="_blank">"128 Harps,"</a> and the heart-stopping pauses throughout the track, that inject some tension into what could otherwise be a bit of pretty filler. The chasing-its-tail vocal in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb3Q1glcthE" target="_blank">"Pyramid"</a> that allows the track to do <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_nMSEKOdbk" target="_blank">"Love Cry"</a> in reverse and offer the hardest, purest dance track of Hebden's career. These and other moments provide sumptuous highlights that move the body and fire the senses, suggesting that the music on <i>Pink</i> might best be called "gourmet techno." I've damned <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-nathan-fake-steam-days.html" target="_blank">other albums</a> for suffering from the dulling effects of great taste, but this is an example of undeniably great taste used to help the music rather than render it tame and predictable.<br />
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Despite the superlatives littering this and other reviews, it seems like it would be relatively easy to underrate <i>Pink</i>. Hebden's been so good for so long at this point that a new Four Tet album that does everything he's always done well and expands (or at least deepens) the project's aesthetic doesn't feel like a revelation. I doubt this album is going to be the starting point of any kind of revolution, and it's unlikely that <i>Pink</i> will be spoken of in the same hushed, reverential tones as his pal Burial's <i>Untrue</i>, say. What that doesn't and can't cover, though, is that this is well-written, well-produced music that hits all its targets in a relaxed, assured manner. Sometimes it pays to have a steady hand at the wheel, and it's difficult to imagine a steadier hand than Hebden's here.<br />
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On a deeper level there is one thing that <i>Pink</i> has going for it that suggests if it's not an "important" album, it's at least an interesting one: the tracks that make up <i>Pink </i>offer a model of how omnivorous music can avoid the over-caffeinated maximalism that tends to plague "post-everything" music, like Rustie's <i>Glass Swords</i>. At this point, Four Tet denotes an aesthetic sensibility that really does seem comfortable grabbing from just about anywhere, even if it mostly remains within certain genres and idioms. The pastoralism that first brought Four Tet notice is still present--if in limited supply on <i>Pink</i>; one of its wonders is how urban it feels--and the various elements at work in his sound are so integrated, so naturalised, that it's difficult to call anything he does a dalliance anymore. In this sense, <i>Pink</i> feels very timely: you could spend hours following its sounds and strands through YouTube, though that wouldn't necessarily make your experience of the album any richer. Knowledge of UK garage, 2-step, dubstep, house, and techno aren't required for entry--beauty and meaning are communicated on the surface as well as in the depths. In his study of literary modernism <i><a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Pound_Era.html?id=AFPWShhB7mkC" target="_blank">The Pound Era</a></i>, Hugh Kenner compares the densely allusive poetry of Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot before concluding:<br />
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[N]o knowledge about Coriolanus will lock Eliot's lines neatly together as the information that Paquin was a Paris dressmaker will lock Pound's. Pound omits, omits, but knows what he is omitting and can restore on demand; but behind Eliot's resonance there is frequently nothing to restore (how centrifugal are the Notes to <i>The Waste Land</i>!). (133)</blockquote>
In place of omitting, we might say that Hebden synthesizes or integrates, but, like Pound, he can restore what he's integrated, allowing worlds to continually bloom behind his music. Here an allusion, a citation, and the (seemingly) infinite archive of the internet that supports and supplements the experience of listening to Four Tet offers a connection to a broader cultural matrix without ever feeling like it threatens to overwhelm the music in the present moment. That might not seem like it's much, but I'm finding that an increasingly scarce experience when listening to music these days. If musicians can learn any trick from Four Tet's <i>Pink</i>, I hope it's to do the same.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-18484658132198847112012-08-21T22:12:00.003-04:002012-08-22T17:20:55.237-04:00REVIEW: NATHAN FAKE - STEAM DAYS<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BYYoq0S5Xxc/UDQ8uVEce_I/AAAAAAAAASM/vKUSpBZX9nc/s1600/steam+days.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BYYoq0S5Xxc/UDQ8uVEce_I/AAAAAAAAASM/vKUSpBZX9nc/s320/steam+days.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.nathanfake.co.uk/content/" target="_blank">Nathan Fake</a> - <i>Steam Days</i><br />
<a href="http://www.bordercommunity.com/" target="_blank">Border Community</a>, 2012</td></tr>
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As <a href="http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/" target="_blank">"The People's List"</a> is unveiled over the next three days, there are a number of albums I'll be looking to see where they place because they seem to function as barometers or signifiers of certain strains of indie-dom. Of those albums, <i>Kid A</i> is the one that I'm most interested to find out about, and not just because it's one of my favourite albums--along with <i>Kid A</i>, there's a whole constellation of albums and artists that defined a certain aesthetic, a certain sensibility, a certain sound that was, for awhile, the sound of the present and the future. <a href="http://warp.net/" target="_blank">Warp Records</a> and 1990s IDM played a big role in shaping that sound. When it came out, discussions of <i>Kid A</i> seemed almost inevitably to be discussions of influence, as if the only important thing was determining from where Radiohead drew those sounds. Once the genealogy was straight, these discussions suggested, everything else would slot itself into place. That the process of tracing this genealogy in reviews and promos for the album let in a whole new spectrum of sounds and ideas about music than were normally covered by reviewers dedicated to slackers with guitars and math-rock bands was a happy accident. So, <i>Kid A--</i>via the fact that it led people who didn't normally (read: ever) talk about these things to mention electronic music, to list Aphex Twin, Autechre, Squarepusher, and others, and to open a whole new world to listeners of a certain age and background--is and was momentous.<br />
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As recently as 2009, <i>Pitchfork</i> officially held <i>Kid A </i>to be <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/staff-lists/7710-the-top-200-albums-of-the-2000s-20-1/2/" target="_blank">the best album of the 2000s</a>. This list makes for interesting reading still, as it at once confirms a pretty conservative bent (all of the albums one would expect to make that list are accounted for, most in exactly the places one would expect) and offers a glimpse at some bands whose stock doesn't seem to be riding quite as high today (Sigur Ros, the Strokes, and Modest Mouse all in the top ten seems like a stretch for "The People's List," but I could be wrong). I believe there's a good chance that "The People's List" will be the final enshrinement of a certain canon of indie music, an entrenchment of an orthodoxy that just might be one of the last stabs at importance as a criterion for evaluation. What I'm not sure of is to what degree the orthodoxy that sprung up around <i>Kid A</i> (and there were certainly people into the things influencing Radiohead long before <i>Kid A</i> was released, but I do think that a band of Radiohead's size and of its position in the indie rock landscape so publicly displaying these musicians' influence on them had a crystallizing effect) will remain <i>the</i> orthodoxy. Back in 2005, <a href="http://agrammar.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Nitsuh Abebe</a> wrote of a world in which <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/6088-the-lost-generation" target="_blank">"indie kids no longer bulk up their mix-tape credibility with some Autechre or Squarepusher on side two, and the new daydream alternative to rock attitude comes mostly from German electronics."</a> That last clause now seems almost painfully of its time--I can't remember how long it's been since German electronics seemed the choice of indie kids, and given the post-everything maximalism and omnivorous listening habits of today's <i>milieu</i>, it might not even be possible to name any one thing that could be that choice today.</div>
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Nathan Fake's <i>Steam Days</i> is a pretty fascinating album to listen to in light of all this, as it seems to speak to a time when there was a specific choice for indie kids, a time that has largely passed. I first became interested in Fake's music when Jess Harvell described his work as "plastic techno My Bloody Valentine homages" <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/9993-quique-redux-edition" target="_blank">in a review of the deluxe reissue of Seefeel's <i>Quique</i></a>. I've checked out a few of his releases since then, though nothing has really caught my ear in the way that that description caught my imagination. I'd be lying if I said that <i>Steam Days</i> was really much different: for all that<i> <a href="http://factmag.com/" target="_blank">Fact</a></i> might describe the album as his <a href="http://www.factmag.com/2012/08/16/nathan-fake-steam-days/" target="_blank">"most dynamic album-length work to date,"</a> much of it feels same-y and undistinguished as the songs mostly do the same thing over and over again. What hurts most is the fact that Fake's music seems to be mining territory that others have already covered to such dazzling ends. Opener "Paean," for example, feels straight off the <i>Richard D. James Album</i>, its melody and structure somewhere between <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs2OkpNRcDk" target="_blank">"Cornish Acid"</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGEQ9Hjr4c0" target="_blank">"Cornmouth."</a> Unfortunately, while it's accomplished enough, the melody lacks staying power and the combination of playfulness and slight surreality that lifts James' best work. Regrettably, this same problem crops up over and over again; Fake is a gifted producer--nothing here sounds out of place--but nothing feels particularly necessary, either. By the time <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VklgdPKl9zA" target="_blank">"Neketona"</a> arrives, it's hard not to start wondering how many times you've already heard this track.</div>
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The limited palette on display in the first half doesn't help matters. The vinegar-y backing to <a href="http://soundcloud.com/border-community/icenistrings" target="_blank">"Iceni Strings"</a> feels like it might be intriguing at first, but it's not abrasive enough to really set off the track's melody (nor is it really that different from what's appeared on the first two tracks). The titular strings are nicely soaring, though I wish they had more to do besides repeat a pretty but otherwise nondescript part. Similarly, the hollow, brittle drums that underpin most of the album's songs feel stuck in some turn-of-the-millennium hinterland in which they're doomed to perpetual good taste: nothing really rages, and even syncopations are relaxed and obvious. It's disturbingly close to coffee shop soundtrack territory, in this regard. What urgency is present on the album is often the result of straight 4/4 hi-hats or snares that become tiresome long before they have the chance to become transcendent, as on "Harnser." </div>
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In contrast, "Old Light" is one of the best things here, as a beat with a slyly funk hitch in its step is accompanied by a distant melody that strikes the right balance between melancholy and mawkish and in so doing manages to be evocative without being sentimental. There's a deftness in its construction that just underlines how much more I wish some of these songs did. The second half of the album seems to pick up on these qualities and is altogether more promising. "World of Spectrum" is intriguingly aggressive, not a million miles removed from the sounds and textures on display on <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-squarepusher-ufabulum.html" target="_blank">Squarepusher's <i>Ufabulum</i></a>. Especially against the too-polite backdrop of the majority of the album, its slightly harsher approach is a welcome intrusion and a chance to get the blood pumping. "Rue" is another highlight: its droning chords are genuinely affecting as it pulls off a similar trick to <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/05/review-cfcf-exercises-ep.html" target="_blank">CFCF's "Exercise 4 (Spirit)"</a> or the backing to Radiohead's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ju8xO_Zvfo" target="_blank">"Motion Picture Soundtrack."</a> The primary-colour melody of "Sad Vember" isn't quite as striking as that of "Old Light," though it is quite nice, but its final minute of hissy, tuneless, pitch-damaged synths feels indulgent and unearned.</div>
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The album closes with its two longest tracks: "Glow Hole" and "Warble Epics." The former clocks in at just a shade under eight minutes and moves from ring modulated textures to more mid- to late-90s Warp nods before returning to those ring modulated sounds in its bridge. The melody creeps back in and the drums get a little heavier, but as a whole, the track isn't really dynamic enough to make use of its slightly lengthier run time--its valleys don't feel like valleys and its peaks are too choreographed and inevitable to be genuinely exciting. "Warble Epics" opens with some nicely mock-portentous synths in a much appreciated moment of levity before rigidly 4/4 hi-hats take over. The drums are very upfront and dominate the mix a little, which is a shame because they're not as interesting as some of Fake's other bits of programming. The melody has some intriguing twists to it, and when it finally comes more to the fore a little under halfway through the track it's a welcome development. There's nothing radically different or unique about "Warble Epics"--it sums up what <i>Steam Days</i> is about fairly well, and is one of the more solid tracks on the album. The coda to the track might be the best part, though, a bit of nicely suggestive music that hovers in the distance like heat over a hump in the road. </div>
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I can imagine being impressed by this album if I'd discovered it at 14 when I was reading all about <i>Kid A</i> and its influences. What I can't imagine, though, is being captivated by it in a way that the classics of those Warp Superstars of old captivated me when I heard them for the first time. It's not that Fake is doing anything wrong--largely, he's doing everything right. The problem is that he's doing the right things because they're the obvious, established things to do. The album desperately needs a challenge, an angle to work that would elevate these tracks from filler to attention grabbers. As it is, too much of the album goes by without making an impression or offering a way to differentiate one track from another. What's most disappointing about the album, ultimately, is that its building blocks have already been cannibalised and assimilated by other other genres to fresher, more interesting ends. It feels timeless in the wrong sense: <i>Steam Days</i> doesn't transcend its moment and stand as an immortal work, but rather feels equally unmoored from the present and the past that inspires it, without a place to exist and in which one could interact with it.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-20510077129378721422012-08-19T00:11:00.002-04:002012-08-19T00:11:27.829-04:00REVISITING THE FOR CARNATIONI'm really looking forward to seeing the results of <i><a href="http://pitchfork.com/" target="_blank">Pitchfork</a></i>'s <a href="http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/" target="_blank">"The People's List"</a> when they start appearing on Wednesday. It'll be interesting to see what the balance is between "we know these are the important albums/great albums" (<i>not</i> the same thing, obviously, though often grouped together and even more often used as the guiding criteria for these kinds of lists) and genuine surprises, revelations, re-evaluations, etc. There's been a certain canon of indie that's crept up around Pitchfork over the fifteen years it's been around, and though that canon and the breadth of genres that contribute to it have expanded (in both good and bad ways), this seems like a moment of confirmation for that canon. In one sense, this list might actually rekindle a certain sense of "importance" that people feel is a diminishing aspect of music criticism and music writing. <div>
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I won't start guessing at trends or trying to figure what those important albums might be, but one pleasant sign I've noticed from the lists I've seen so far is widespread love for the Dismemberment Plan's <i>Emergency & I</i> and one surprise has been the love for <i>Sonic Nurse</i> and <i>Rather Ripped</i> as the albums representative of Sonic Youth's second wind in the '00s. I went back and forth on whether to go with <i>Sonic Nurse</i> or <i>Murray Street </i>on <a href="http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/0d3a30ad/" target="_blank">my list</a>, but "Karen Revisited/Karenology" carried the day. I was definitely not expecting to see <i>Rather Ripped</i> on as many lists as I have, nor was I expecting the total absence of <i>The Eternal</i>. One Sonic Youth related turn of events that I'd half-hoped would come to pass because of its potential for humour was a massive show of support for <i>NYC Ghosts & Flowers</i> that would see the recipient of <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/7342-nyc-ghosts-flowers/" target="_blank">one of the more damning reviews in <i>Pitchfork</i>'s history</a> suddenly held up as one of its readers' favourites. A missed opportunity, universe, but oh well (that was probably a little too far-fetched to hope for on my end, because aside from <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rlf0_OLZaEE" target="_blank">"Free City Rhymes"</a> and the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIgbaRla_RU" target="_blank">title track</a>, nothing on that album is particularly great).</div>
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One album that compiling my list has made me go back and revisit--and which I'd been meaning to re-listen to anyway because bits of it have kept popping into my head recently--is the For Carnation's self-titled album from 2000. A pretty underrated and underacknowledged bit of American post-rock, it really is a gem, working the ground between folk, jazz, and rock largely by playing on the ideas about space and silence found in each genre. The songs often swing (not surprising given the help from Tortoise alumni), but gently, and for an album that relies as heavily on repetition as it does, it leans on the nagging rather than insistent side. It's also seriously quiet, to the point of almost non-existence at times--this is an album of dramatic pauses and calm-before-the-storm hushes that end up revealing themselves to be the storm. Most reviews talk quite rightly about the strong sense of dread and air of tension that permeates the release--and given the connections to Slint, that makes sense--but there's much more in common here with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn70_mi4H_c" target="_blank">"For Dinner. . ."</a> than <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoH5MPIgM7c" target="_blank">"Good Morning, Captain."</a> The album's not gothic in the way that <i>Spiderland</i> is, though it's very much a nighttime album--that the closer is called <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26wqnnsBPjY" target="_blank">"Moonbeams"</a> makes perfect sense, as do the intimate vocals. Most of this different sense of tension and dread comes from that focus on space and silence; where <i>Spiderland</i> is full of guitars, <i>the For Carnation</i> relies on the drums to carry the lead (quite literally on "Being Held") and various electronics to provide what colour there is. </div>
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"Being Held"</div>
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For all that the album follows its own path, it's remarkably listenable: never slow despite the patience involved in the construction of the songs, and quite easy to fall under the spell of--there's mystery and suspense, which makes the whole thing seductive. In many ways, it's like Bark Psychosis' <i>Hex</i> in that you never really notice how strange or experimental the album as a whole might be because entering into its logic is so natural. On its own, "Being Held" is bizarre: a weird bell/siren, some dissonant keyboard washes, and a drum solo; taken in the context of the album, though, it feels every bit as natural and as songlike as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D2XSJ8EZ0M" target="_blank">"A Tribute To"</a> and "Snoother," though both are more obviously "songs" in the traditional (which in this case, I guess, is taken to mean rockist) view. Indeed, "Snoother" is one of the highlights of the album, at once the most overtly jazzy and poppy song, a delicate waltz with some fantastic backing vocals by Rachel Haden shadowing Brian McMahon; when the pair sing "We are no less removed / than for that which she is known," my heart melts. The emptiness of its verses coupled with the sparseness of its instrumental section makes for one of the few moments during which the tension relaxes over the course of the album, but the droning organ (?) in the background throughout carries the dreaminess of the song into appropriately haunting and haunted territory.</div>
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"Snoother"</div>
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"Snoother" is followed by "Tales (Live From the Crypt)," the album's other highlight. Where "Snoother" was sparse, "Tales" is full, the busiest mix on the album, a weird amalgam of a pounding, almost post-punk intensity with science fiction synths (at times sounding right out of the <i>Dr. Who</i> theme) and a vocal performance that manages in its deadpan manner to go beyond <i>Spiderland</i>'s darkest moments. Kim Deal's ghostly introduction to the song is a nice scene setter, especially with the way that the bassline seems to launch the song into the abyss after her final word. Everything that was bubbling under the surface of the album's first half comes to light here, though the dynamics feel very different from the standard rock explosion of tension. After this, "Moonbeams" is an aftermath, a ruin, and though the music threatens to become redemptive at times, the album trails off into sullen silence, anxiety looming large over everything.</div>
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"Tales (Live From the Crypt)"</div>
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I'm not expecting <i>the For Carnation</i> to place highly on "The People's List." I would actually be surprised if it placed at all, though I hope it does. I found out about Slint when I was starting high school, and, for whatever reason, the first thing I checked out after <i>Spiderland</i> and <i>Tweez</i> was the then newly released self-titled album by the For Carnation. Where my passion for <i>Spiderland</i> has faded a little over time (and my <i>Spiderland</i> t-shirt was stolen by an ex-girlfriend), I've remained consistently enchanted by the For Carnation. I doubt I could make a case for its importance or greatness if measured by influence--I've never heard anything else that sounds like it, nor have I heard or seen a band mention the For Carnation in an interview. What I can say is that the album means a great deal to me and that certain parts--the harmonies in "Snoother," the strings in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmQdO7aQTg0" target="_blank">"Emp. Man's Blues,"</a> the opening of "Tales (Live From the Crypt)"--are burned into my brain, coming forth from time to time to serenade me. If nothing else, it remains an intriguing, quiet road that few bands seem interested in traveling down. I'm waiting, but I doubt that anything will ever top it at what it does.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-52583459070108356412012-08-16T10:37:00.000-04:002012-08-19T00:11:48.198-04:00MY LIST FOR PITCHFORK'S "THE PEOPLE'S LIST"<a href="http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/list/0d3a30ad/" target="_blank">Here</a> is my list for Pitchfork's <a href="http://peopleslist.pitchfork.com/" target="_blank">"The People's List."</a> Having to put my choices in order was incredibly difficult (I'm still not sure I got it right, though I feel pretty comfortable with #1); I would've preferred to just list them alphabetically by artist. Also, to avoid having ridiculous numbers of entries by the same artist(s), I limited my selections to one album per band/artist.<br />
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<ol>
<li>Bark Psychosis - <i>://Codename: Dustsucker </i>(2004)</li>
<li>Radiohead - <i>Kid A</i> (2000)</li>
<li>Portishead - <i>Third</i> (2008)</li>
<li>The Dismemberment Plan - <i>Emergency & I</i> (1999)</li>
<li>Stereolab - <i>Sound-Dust</i> (2001)</li>
<li>Tim Hecker - <i>Harmony in Ultraviolet</i> (2006)</li>
<li>Built to Spill - <i>Perfect From Now On</i> (1997)</li>
<li>The Weeknd - <i>Thursday</i> (2011)</li>
<li>Four Tet - <i>There Is Love in You </i>(2010)</li>
<li>The For Carnation - <i>The For Carnation </i>(2000)</li>
<li>Godspeed You Black Emperor! - <i>Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven</i> (2000)</li>
<li>Mogwai - <i>Young Team</i> (1997)</li>
<li>Burial - <i>Street Halo </i>EP (2011)</li>
<li>Flying Lotus - <i>Cosmogramma </i>(2010)</li>
<li>Fever Ray - <i>Fever Ray </i>(2009)</li>
<li>Boards of Canada - <i>In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country</i> EP (2000)</li>
<li>...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - <i>Source Tags and Codes </i>(2001)</li>
<li>SBTRKT - <i>SBTRKT </i>(2011)</li>
<li>Deerhunter - <i>Fluorescent Grey </i>EP (2007)</li>
<li>Neon Indian - <i>Psychic Chasms</i> (2009)</li>
<li>Bjork - <i>Homogenic</i> (1997)</li>
<li>Aphex Twin - <i>The Richard D. James Album</i> (1996)</li>
<li>Fennesz - <i>Black Sea</i> (2008)</li>
<li>Sonic Youth - <i>Murray Street</i> (2001)</li>
<li>Lokai - <i>Transition</i> (2009)</li>
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I wanted to keep it to twenty five choices because that seemed like a good number. Any more and I feel it starts to become a little harder to justify that each album really meant something to me on a personal level. I tried really hard to avoid putting any albums on my list just because they're supposed to be "important." My rationale for selection was basically "what are twenty five albums released between 1996-2011 that I really love listening to?"</div>
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Actually, to be perfectly honest, it wasn't that hard to stop at twenty five. It would've been more difficult to keep going--I doubt I could get to fifty with the one album per artist rule and all of the other rules I tried to set for myself. Based on my scribblings on a sheet of paper, though, the next fifteen would look something like this:</div>
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<li>POLARBEAR - <i>Why Something Instead of Nothing?</i> (1999)</li>
<li>Massive Attack - <i>Mezzanine</i> (1998)</li>
<li>Darkstar - <i>North</i> (2010)</li>
<li>Tricky - <i>Pre-Millennium Tension</i> (1996)</li>
<li>Blue Daisy - <i>The Sunday Gift</i> (2011)</li>
<li>Real Estate - <i>Days</i> (2011)</li>
<li>Girls - <i>Album</i> (2009)</li>
<li>The Besnard Lakes - <i>Are the Roaring Night</i> (2010)</li>
<li>Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - <i>B.R.M.C.</i> (2000)</li>
<li>Chavez - <i>Ride the Fader</i> (1996)</li>
<li>Bardo Pond - <i>On the Ellipse </i>(2001)</li>
<li>Gonjasufi - <i>A Sufi and a Killer</i> (2010)</li>
<li>Broadcast - <i>The Noise Made By People</i> (2000)</li>
<li>The Caretaker - <i>An Empty Bliss Beyond This World </i>(2011)</li>
<li>Menomena - <i>Under an Hour</i> (2006)</li>
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One thing I find interesting about all of this is that you can see the pattern of my listening, in some ways. Most entries are either ten+ years old or from the past five. That space in between was spent largely listening to older stuff--digging into back catalogues or doing my homework on various genres. Obviously some artists on the list continued to release stuff throughout the decade that I listened to, but in a broad sense it's really only in the past four or five years that I've started to focus on the here and now again. Also, it's interesting the way that the slightly different criteria I used shifted the ordering from end of year lists I've made in the past (like with Four Tet and Flying Lotus, or <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-4-sbtrkt-sbtrkt.html" target="_blank">SBTRKT</a> and <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2011/12/albums-of-year-2011-2-blue-daisy-sunday.html" target="_blank">Blue Daisy</a>).</div>
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bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-50310094638773073572012-08-15T22:04:00.003-04:002012-08-15T22:04:27.262-04:00AND YET MORE THOUGHTS ON POST-DIGITAL ABSTRACTION IN MUSICOne more addendum to the idea of post-digital abstraction I was thinking about <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/some-more-thoughts-on-evian-christ-pre.html" target="_blank">last night</a>: <a href="http://zonestyxtravelcard.blogspot.com/2012/08/ship-canal-interview.html" target="_blank">this excellent interview</a> with <a href="http://handloomlament.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Ship Canal</a> over at <a href="http://zonestyxtravelcard.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Zone Styx Travelcard</a>. The description of Ship Canal's music is exactly what I had in mind:<br />
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the sound of youtube's algorithm getting rewritten, or overwritten, or getting into a fight with, the neural pathways of the human brain: strange splashes of found tonal colour, edges left frayed, collaged and accelerated into a blur, until the colours run and meld into a kind of deep, stewed (mushroom) tea brown.</blockquote>
These kinds of musical signifiers--and I guess since I've been using it, I'm stuck calling them post-digital abstraction--are related to, but distinct from, the kind of <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/8721-maximal-nation" target="_blank">maximalist music</a> that someone like Rustie or Justice trades in, I think. Whereas digital maximalism is "flat/bright/busy" and "has no interest in 'atmosphere'--it's about dazzle so fierce it chases away all the shadows . . . preposterously euphoric but genuinely awesome: not so much striking a balance between sublime and ridiculous as merging them until they're indistinguishable," post-digital abstraction works similar territory, exploring the atmosphere that both produces flat/bright/busy and that allows it to flourish as an aesthetic, but doesn't have to do so as a way to a kind of sugar and caffeine rush of sound. The same signifiers might be deployed in digital maximalism, but they are not, in and of themselves, inherently maximalist in the vein that Rustie and others are.<br />
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In his article on digital maximalism, <a href="http://blissout.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Simon Reynolds</a> traces the term's slightly different provenance outside of music, in William Powers' take on modern life's emphasis on maximum connectivity as a lifestyle that "max[es] out your nervous system, leaving you in a brittle state of hectic numbness, overwhelmed by options, increasingly incapable of focused concentration or fully-immersed enjoyment." Digital maximalism takes those moments of partially-immersed enjoyment and microsecond-length, fragmented bursts of concentration as building blocks, as tools rather than problems--if I can't focus on just one thing, why not focus on everything all at once?--and uses them to craft hymns to a digitally maximalized body and mind via a sound that is delirious and fevered, not worried about cohering because its chaotic and scattered nature is its essence. Post-digital abstraction, I think, is the sound of those microseconds of concentration before they get processed into the roil and jumble of digital maximalism--it remembers historicity, even if it no longer finds it feasible to operate within that framework. There's a scene in Michael Crichton's <i>The Terminal Man</i> in which the titular character, while suffering from one of the violent blackouts for which he's undergone surgery, opens his mouth and makes a noise like static. A computer programmer, he's obsessed with the idea that computers are taking over society. Post-digital abstraction seems to me to be related to the noise coming out of his mouth.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-8086971174651460132012-08-14T20:56:00.000-04:002012-08-14T21:35:01.960-04:00SOME MORE THOUGHTS ON EVIAN CHRIST, PRE- AND POST-DIGITAL ABSTRACTION, ETC.A few idle thoughts that spilled over from <a href="http://bourgeoiseaux.blogspot.com/2012/08/review-evian-christ-duga-three.html" target="_blank">my review</a> of Evian Christ's <a href="http://dummymag.com/mixes/2012/07/19/dummy-mix-130-evian-christ/" target="_blank">"Duga-Three"</a> as I listened to that track again this morning. This is just me thinking out loud, but I'd be interested in seeing if anyone thinks this stuff has traction.<br />
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1) Part of what seems quaint/dated about it are its "abstract qualities"--the delayed and overlapping voices sourced from television and radio broadcasts, while a perfectly standard tool in this kind of music, feel like a sound from another era. Radio and television are obviously still a thing in today's world, but it doesn't seem like the kind of polyphonic/chaotic stream of voices and languages pouring into our consciousness primarily comes from television (and not at all from radio). From the graininess of the voices to the very conceit, the piece feels profoundly <i>pre-digital</i> in a way. The echoes of Boards of Canada's aesthetic in the first section are another example--that sound was meant to recall a specific material reality of the pre-digital world, the warping of tape and video by time.</blockquote>
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2) The ascent of Glitch in the early parts of last decade (via compilations like the Clicks and Cuts series on Milles Plateaux) seems like a moment of transition into some new conception of abstraction in a digital age, one that has perhaps blossomed fully in the last few years via things like Oneohtrix Point Never's music and the <a href="http://new-aesthetic.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">New Aesthetic</a> (and that had already started to come into existence several years before the millennium via time-stretching in jungle and drum'n'bass). </blockquote>
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3) Another sign of this transition might be Brian Eno's albums for Warp, <i>Small Craft on a Milk Sea</i> and <i>Drums Between the Bells</i>, which work in much the same way as his work in a certain kind of pre-digital abstraction (<i>Discreet Music</i>, the albums with Fripp, Bowie, and Cluster, the Ambient Series, <i>Apollo</i>, the Windows 95 theme, etc., etc.), but do so in a showy and frustratingly obvious <i>digital</i> way--each glitch feels designed to call attention to itself as a glitch, as if just to show that Eno has in fact listened to electronic music produced in the past two decades (needless to say, I'm not a huge fan of either of those albums). This also plagued his most recent album with Fripp, though not quite to the same extent (and at times actually wasn't a plague, but made for some quite lovely music).</blockquote>
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4) Perhaps another example: the difference between the lines drawn in <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/7765-resonant-frequency-67/" target="_blank">this list by Mark Richardson</a> and <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7886-new-vocabulary/" target="_blank">this list by David Bevan</a> about the manipulation of the human voice in music. That Burial and Four Tet are the common denominators seems possibly interesting (a sign of the <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-year-of-no-important-albums-and-many-good-reco,66818/" target="_blank">apparently</a> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/dec/07/musically-fragmented-decade" target="_blank">diminishing-in-value</a> quality of "importance" in their respective musics?).</blockquote>
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5) As a related thought on abstract qualities/pre- and (post-)digital abstractions/etc., <a href="http://ghostoutfit.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">Ghost Outfit</a> wrote recently, in a piece on Richard Taruskin's <i>The Danger of Music</i> and the necessity of music having an explicit connection to human issues in order to avoid "formalist sterility:"</blockquote>
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<a href="http://ghostoutfit.tumblr.com/post/28871883303" target="_blank">I still think [Tim] Hecker's music is great but its beauty exists entirely for and of itself. It isn't concerned with the human and, despite all its shimmering construction, suffers from an emotional blankness--a tabula rasa whose sound is gorgeous and unearthly but doesn't relate with the world outside it.</a></blockquote>
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To an extent, I understand where such a reading of Hecker's music is coming from--its emotional content is often ambiguous at best and his catalogue's studied abstraction coupled with this seemingly emotionally distant/reserved nature has led some to call his music academic (read: formalist and sterile)--but I disagree. While I doubt anyone is finding his or her tales of personal tragedy/redemption echoed in Hecker's music the way that he/she might in the music of Xiu Xiu, Momus, or Wild Beasts (to pick the artists Ghost Outfit contrasts with Hecker), I think Hecker's own comments about his music suggest an equally real connection that his music has to the human, to the world outside of itself. His repeated invocations of secular church music is perhaps the big clue to how he conceives of this interaction, but I think his music also connects in its digital/(post-)digital abstract nature. Hecker's music in some ways reflects and in some ways reshapes a digital consciousness--this is attention as snow and static, lost and damaged transmission, corrupted files, bad data (it makes sense he would be obsessed with what he calls <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/take-cover/8635-take-cover-tim-hecker-iravedeath-1972i/" target="_blank">"digital garbage"</a>). It's the beauty of those aspects, the way that their drone and thrum form not just a background of our lives, but a significant aesthetic component of them that can be equal parts beautiful and terrifying. </blockquote>
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6) Like <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/34824655/14/Progress-versus-Utopia-or-Can-We-Imagine-the-Future" target="_blank">the Jameson essay</a> I referenced in my review of Evian Christ points out, though, the present, this (post-)digital realm, is unavailable to us. We cannot experience it directly. What makes "Duga-Three" so affecting, then, is not just the emotional pull of its elegiac tone, but the way that its reminder of another kind of consciousness, another form of abstraction (and I think the formal elements are key here), also allows the present to be set off in relief and experienced. Similarly, in his rendering of those elements that make up the backdrop of the digital world/consciousness into reflections on the very process that turns them into works of often profound power, Hecker's music also makes the present available to us. I understand the moment in which I am situated--and the way sounds function in the spaces of that moment--better because of Hecker's music. I find it "vital, confounding, and powerful" (to use Ghost Outfit's criteria) in equal measure to almost anything I can think of with lyrics.</blockquote>
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7) All of the above points in 5) and 6) about why I find Hecker's music and "Duga-Three" so powerful seem related to the shifting sense and experience of time enforced by late capitalism, as outlined by Mark Fisher <a href="http://www.gonzocircus.com/xtrpgs/incubate-special-exclusive-essay-time-wars-by-mark-fisher/" target="_blank">here</a>.</blockquote>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-5743936787456219172012-08-11T13:09:00.002-04:002012-08-14T20:58:26.576-04:00REVIEW: EVIAN CHRIST - "DUGA-THREE"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jRzoARXCcXI/UCaBJ11D50I/AAAAAAAAAR8/p9Z6HnPcgD4/s1600/slow+riot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jRzoARXCcXI/UCaBJ11D50I/AAAAAAAAAR8/p9Z6HnPcgD4/s320/slow+riot.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>"Do you think things are going to get better before they get worse?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"No way. Things are going to get worse and keep on getting worse. . ."</i></blockquote>
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<i>"What do you think this country's going to look like in 2003?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"You know, I'll tell you the truth. Nothing against you guys, but I don't want to answer that question because I haven't even got a mind that's that inhumane."</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Are you ready for what's coming?"</i> </blockquote>
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<i>"Ready as I'll ever be."</i></blockquote>
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I've only purchased one piece of vinyl in my life, Godspeed You Black Emperor!'s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c9TyeKnGGk" target="_blank"><i>Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada</i> EP</a>, which remains--even thirteen years on (and ten years on since I picked it up)--a stunning release. It was an exciting thing to have, despite the inconvenience of not having my own record player and pretty much only getting to listen to it when I could convince my dad to put it on his record player (given that he favours mostly rock and roll from the 1950s and 1960s, this was never an easy proposition).* What made it a doubly exciting thing to have, though, was not just the sense of danger and strangeness--there was plenty of that, to be sure, given that its back artwork features <a href="http://musicwithoutborders.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/godspeed-you-black-emperor-slow-riot-for-new-zero-kanada-ep-back.jpg" target="_blank">a diagram of how to make a molotov cocktail</a>, and its cover (see above) is a series of Hebrew letters from the Book of Jeremiah that seem ancient, terrible, and unknowable--but also the catalogue that came with it of recent and upcoming releases on <a href="http://cstrecords.com/" target="_blank">Constellation Records</a>, things like Fly Pan Am, Exhaust, A Silver Mt. Zion (before they became A Silver Mt. Zion etc. etc.), Hangedup, Re:, 1-Speed Bike that came with descriptions that made them sound like the music of dreams and the music of nightmares in equal proportion.** </div>
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Those capsule descriptions were alluring because they both matched what I was hearing on <i>Slow Riot</i>--the simultaneously bleak and chiming music behind <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDRjUmcxxQE" target="_blank">"Blaise Bailey Finnegan III"</a> seemed to be, without having heard any of these other artists, what the writer meant by "electro-acoustic"--and hinted at worlds beyond that were darker, denser, more challenging, more violent. I remained (and to an extent remain) fascinated by the feel of this stuff as much as by the sound, the weird accruals of emotion that show up in the collision of drones, field recordings, noise, strings, and electronics that Constellation, <a href="http://www.kranky.net/" target="_blank">Kranky</a>, <a href="http://www.alien8recordings.com/" target="_blank">Alien8</a>, and a bunch of other labels peddled in the mid-to-late 1990s and into the early 2000s. </div>
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While it's easy to see now how the space for such music is limited and how it could easily become over-saturated with bands, projects, and solo musicians all working off the same template, that didn't always seem the case. Nevertheless, the whole "Montreal scene" around Godspeed felt exhausting to consider long before Red Sparrowes started releasing stuff that seemed like a parody of Set Fire to Flames (who might have benefited from being parodied, to be honest) or Valley of the Giants put out a concept album about <i>Westworld</i> (though that album is frequently <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YOcoMCv4YE" target="_blank">quite beautiful</a>). I've remained fascinated by this style of music--one of the innumerable branches of post-rock--partly because it never quite felt exhausted so much as stagnant, full of good ideas that no one quite knew how to marshal into the next step forward. Those interstitial moments on <i>Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven</i>--like the infamous <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OObFsGqi89k#time:17:35" target="_blank">"Welcome to Arco AM/PM Mini-Market"</a> recording (one of the great joys of my life while I was living in Oregon was to finally go to an Arco AM/PM, though I never got to hear any PA broadcasts while I was there, unfortunately)--were so good at carrying emotion and conceptual meaning, at making the connections between the politics of the band and the album's liner notes, the grainy films behind the band's performances, and the music, but nothing ever really got beyond them (and by <i>Yanqui UXO</i> the band had abandoned them). </div>
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This strand of post-rock was already (perhaps always already), in a certain sense, a pretty hauntological genre, but I've often thought that it would be thrilling to hear a band or musician revisit those generic elements and to take that next step with them. In his essay <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/34824655/14/Progress-versus-Utopia-or-Can-We-Imagine-the-Future" target="_blank">"Progress versus Utopia, or, Can We Imagine the Future?,"</a>*** Fredric Jameson discusses the function of science fiction as a genre via its narrative structures and their complex temporal work. Under late capitalism, Jameson claims that the problem facing "historical fictions" is not only that the genre is dated, but also:<br />
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It is the relationship to the past which is at issue, and the feeling that any other moment of the past [than that depicted in the particular work] would have done just as well. The sense that this determinate moment of history is, of organic necessity, precursor to the present has vanished into the pluralism of the Imaginary Museum, the wealth and endless variety of culturally or temporally distinct forms, all of which are now rigorously equivalent. . . . In its (post-) contemporary form, this replacement of the historical by the nostalgic, this volatilization of what was once a <i>national</i> past, in the moment of emergence of the nation-states and of nationalism itself is of course at one with the disappearance of historicity from consumer society today, with its rapid media exhaustion of yesterday's events and of the day-before-yesterday's star players (who was Hitler anyway? who was Kennedy? who, finally, was Nixon?).</blockquote>
In contrast to historical fictions, then, Jameson argues that SF works according to a different temporal relationship that restores historicity to a certain extent. As a genre it does not, he suggests, relate to the future(s) it depicts in the sense of acclimating its readers (and society at large) to potential "future shocks" as its:<br />
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visions are themselves now historical and dated--streamlined cities of the future on peeling murals--while our lived experience of our greatest metropolises is one of urban decay and blight. That particular Utopian future has in other words turned out to have been merely the future of one moment of what is now our own past.</blockquote>
Given the distance between these dated visions of the future (often now set in our present) and our own lives, and given the impossibility of living to see the realisation of the distant futures predicted, Jameson locates the function of SF not in "images of the future," but in an experience of the present. These narratives "defamiliarize and restructure our experience of our own <i>present</i>, and . . . do so in specific ways distinct from all other forms of defamiliarization." This is a valuable function, and works to restore an experience of historicity to daily life, because:<br />
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the present--in this society, and in the physical and psychic dissociation of the human subjects who inhabit it--is inaccessible directly, is numb, habituated, empty of affect. Elaborate strategies of indirection are therefore necessary if we are somehow to break through our monadic insulation and to "experience," for some first and real time, this "present," which is after all all we have.</blockquote>
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For me, post-rock served a similar function (and given the steady diet of SF I consumed growing up, maybe the two were cross-pollinating), its "shock of the new" shocking precisely because it seemed so richly and intensely of the present moment. I do not think it is (or that it is not only), then, a retromaniacal impulse that leads me to dream and wish for a resurgence of this music that seems like it could so precisely and effectively locate me and society in our present.<br />
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As a politicized aesthetic statement, the possibilities seem vast, especially the way it might enable a reimagining of the elements of daily life under late capitalism, a transformation of the sonic detritus that surrounds us, into critique, into vision, into a different world. In terms of lost or misplaced futures, the one in which post-rock didn't exhaust itself and its listeners by hardening into a set of rigid dynamics and instrumental tics is the one I feel the absence of most personally. I wasn't old enough, nor was I born in the right country, to experience rave and jungle, to enjoy that shock of the new with its cultural and political vibrancy. For me, post-rock was my avant-garde, "I've never heard anything like this" moment growing up. I'd caught it past its peak, to an extent, and within a few years of discovering it, it was gone (or at least its key players were either on hiatus or lacking in vitality), but post-rock, even in its much derided genre name, seemed to point to something, to a future that was beyond the limits of the present (and at the same time, to highlight and outline just what the limits of that present were). It may not have been as apocalyptic as the vision quoted above, but there was a sense of something coming, some fundamental change driven by monumental forces. Pre-millennial tension and post-millennial anxiety and good, old-fashioned conspiracy theories and complaints about the government combining in various forms of despair, discontent, outrage, and, underneath it all, hope. That future, the one post-rock offered, never came, obviously, and I'm left with old Constellation catalogues and under-listened to pieces of vinyl (now I have mp3s of <i>Slow Riot</i> I can listen to whenever I please) and my memories of what I thought could be.
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***</div>
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In the past month and a half, the release that I've listened to most frequently is probably <a href="http://tri-anglerecords.com/?page_id=22&artist=25" target="_blank">Evian Christ</a>'s mix for <i>Dummy</i>, <a href="http://dummymag.com/mixes/2012/07/19/dummy-mix-130-evian-christ/" target="_blank">"Duga-Three."</a>**** While he's coming from a different place than those post-rock musicians I loved growing up, in sound and execution, to say nothing of inspiration, "Duga-Three" feels like it should have come out on Constellation or Kranky in about 1999. The drones, the field recordings, the disembodied voices from television and radio broadcasts, it's all there. Joshua Leary (who produces music under his <i>nom de plume</i> [<i>nom d'ordinateur</i>?], Evian Christ) mentions early Tim Hecker as an influence--and that influence is pretty obvious here, especially in the way the melody works in the first section--but the extreme pitch-damaged tones, and the air of half-remembered dreams also calls to mind Boards of Canada, <a href="http://www.ghostbox.co.uk/" target="_blank">Ghost Box Records</a>, and all the hauntological all-stars of the past decade.***** Given those sounds, it's fitting that Leary offers the following inspiration for the release:</div>
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Duga-three is a four-part piece of music I wrote after reading about a Soviet signal transmitter of the same name. It was characterised by the repetitive tapping sound it broadcast, which was sufficiently powerful enough to intercept transitions [sic--I think he means "transmissions"] across the world. After 28 years of transmission, the Duga-3 array was abandoned as mysteriously and unexpectedly as it had appeared. </blockquote>
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*** </div>
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I have weird little pockets of mainly useless knowledge about random things and for a little while I was reading about over-the-horizon radar systems, which were used by governments in the mid-late 20th century to detect targets at really long ranges. Because the Duga-3 array was unclaimed during its period of use there was a lot of speculation about what it was actually there to do, and together with the sheer scale of the construction...I dunno I can imagine it really intimidating and I guess I just found that interesting. Visually it is just incredible, there are some amazing photographs of it on the internet. Just kind of gets your imagination going a bit.</blockquote>
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Based on the above, you'd be forgiven for assuming this is just another exercise in <i>ostalgie</i>, nothing but Cold War daydreams and Soviet kitsch. It's really quite a remarkable listen, though, and if it doesn't quite do what I hoped some post-rock band would do in 2003, it doesn't feel a million miles away from that. Over the nineteen and a half minutes of "Duga-Three" you are transported: it creates an atmosphere, a coldness and a ghostliness, a haunt(ing), and takes over the space in which you listen to it. I find it endlessly entrancing and fascinating, especially the tapping (it almost sounds like a motor softly turning over) that runs throughout the second half, the most overt nod to Duga-3. </div>
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I also find "Duga-Three" curiously dated and quaint--not just as a result of its inspiration and subject matter--but in the way that it really does feel out of time, like a lost release from another era. This isn't exactly the kind of thing you hear so much of these days--for whatever reason--though ten or fifteen years ago I imagine people would be all about it, as it taps into the same kind of emotional space and resonance as something like William Basinski's <i>The Disintegration Loops</i> or <i>The Conet Project</i>. I was happy to read Leary's answer to the question of how he sees this release fitting into his more rap/bass music oriented work; for Leary the only distinction is the lack of drums. Maybe there's a spark of what caught my eye and fired my imagination (long before it ever caught my ear) about post-rock rumbling in the increasingly polyglot world of bass music, ready to re-emerge and transform itself. If not, though, there's still "Duga-Three," a perfectly elegiac reminder of one of the lost futures of my youth and all its promises.</div>
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________________________</div>
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*I will always be thankful for my parents letting me put things like <i>Loveless</i> and <i>Spiderland</i> and <i>Ege Bamyasi</i> and all sorts of stuff that I was finding out about from the internet on during car rides (mostly) without complaint.</div>
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**Thinking about my own relationship with my copy of <i>Slow Riot</i>, I understand the cult of vinyl that exists (and I certainly loved the physical object of the CD--artwork and liner notes at once a great fixation and a source of disappointment by never revealing enough and, at the same time, never deepening the mystery enough). Perhaps if I had more time, money, and space, I would become a collector of vinyl (there's a pretty big second-hand record shop down the street from where I live), have a high-fi, and throw record listening parties.<br />
***A shockingly prescient essay, given that it appeared in 1982.</div>
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****That Evian Christ releases music on Tri-Angle makes a lot of sense--while I don't love everything the label puts out, I definitely find their catalogue and aesthetic intriguing, just as I did with Constellation et al. when I was younger.</div>
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*****One artist he doesn't mention as an influence but whose work I've found pairs quite well with "Duga-Three" is Fever Ray, whose album remains one of my favourite releases of the past five years.</div>
bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-63673166231967211852012-08-09T13:48:00.000-04:002012-08-09T13:48:39.052-04:00WRITING I'VE ENJOYED RECENTLYRecently, in addition to <a href="http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/011918.html" target="_blank">the brief return to life of K-Punk</a> (!!), I've enjoyed two posts by <a href="http://markrichardson.org/" target="_blank">Mark Richardson</a> on his relationship to the work of David Lynch. <a href="http://www.markrichardson.org/post/28887327622/a-couple-of-thoughts-about-david-lynch" target="_blank">The first</a> is on <i>Lynch on Lynch</i>, the inspiration for <i>Eraserhead</i>, and the dread of responsibility, while <a href="http://www.markrichardson.org/post/29031725419/im-going-to-say-i-was-9-years-old-my-family-was" target="_blank">the second</a> is on <i>The Elephant Man</i> and its intersection with Richardson's family and life. I'm not a huge Lynch fan--I've seen <i>Blue Velvet</i> and I think it's a good movie, and what I've seen of <i>Twin Peaks </i>has been pretty great--so the draw is mostly the writing itself in the pieces. Both of them aren't exactly new ground for him--in fact, they're variations on a theme that he's pretty much made his own at this point through his <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/" target="_blank">"Resonant Frequency"</a> column at <i><a href="http://pitchfork.com/" target="_blank">Pitchfork</a></i>--but they are perfect illustrations of what I love about his writing. I guess it's actually just a feature common to all good writing, in a way, the ability to start from a small moment and, through a gradual accumulation of details, to arrive not at a big revelation or a capital-t Truth, but an understanding of the way those various small moments and experiences come to bear the weight of our everyday lives. For whatever reason--there are probably several--I find that what he writes often feels right to me. And, in a way that I'm not sure I could articulate very well, his writing feels very contemporary to me beyond the level of strict content, which very often is of-the-minute music. It engages with those bits of culture in a way that I recognise as a common way of engaging with culture at this moment, I guess.<br />
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In <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8811-follow-people-if-you-like-their-music/" target="_blank">a "Resonant Frequency" column</a> that feels like a companion piece to the one I've cited a bunch on here about <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8713-this-is-me-music-making-as-re-blog/" target="_blank">music-making-as-reblogging</a>, Richardson outlines his goal or process with writing, and the conundrum which proved its impetus: <br />
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I've always felt a bit off in my own world, which sometimes is a point of pride and other times feels like a kind of social failure. These days, for me, the greatest tension when writing about music is trying to bridge the gap between music as a private or a public experience. So part of me envied those who could join the conversation about Nicki Minaj and connect her music to the broader culture, because so much of the music I love and have interesting ideas about means almost nothing to the world as a whole. . . . And in the larger scheme of things, Alog [a band Richardson has had difficulty connecting with other people about] don't matter. At all. Unlike Nicki Minaj, if their music didn't exist, the world would be virtually no different. So when writing about Alog, I have no choice but to write about how this music might work for a single person (me), and how these abstract sounds might enrich a single life (mine). That's where the meaning is found.</blockquote>
While those final sentences might suggest a certain of solipsism, and while the opening could be misread as a kind of too-hip pretension, it's in establishing the connection between 1) the single listener/viewer/experiencer, 2) the moment in which he/she encounters the music/video/experience under discussion, and 3) the response to that music/video/experience as pre-conditioned by 1 and 2 that Richardson's writing (mostly) escapes those traps.<br />
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In the first piece on Lynch I linked to, for example, the moment in question, what you might call the point, is his experience of being in Yellowstone with his wife and:<br />
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laying in the tent. I felt like I could hear so much going on outside. Things rustling, sticks breaking. It was pitch black out and you couldn't see a thing. And I had a strong sensation of fear and dread. And I think it was partly because I was afraid of the responsibility that came with being in a relationship. If something happened and we were confronted by something dangerous, I was going to be the one to deal with it, primarily.</blockquote>
Of course, Richardson doesn't leave it at this point. There's been a perfectly good set-up for this moment already given--a series of killings in the park, an encounter with another hiker giving off strange vibes--but Richardson goes back to why at that moment he might be feeling fear and dread, why this responsibility suddenly and in that moment feels like such a terrible burden. And it's in that tracing back that he works in how <i>Lynch on Lynch</i> and <i>Eraserhead</i> fit into this psychic moment, how those works come to both explain and bear some of these emotions. I think it's an elegant move, as it doesn't impute an overly simplistic causal relationship between object and viewer/listener. That is, it doesn't limit the object to simply an explanation of the viewer/listener's experience of the object, but it does illuminate how certain aspects of the viewer/listener's experience activate (for lack of a better verb) parts of/meanings in the object. At the same time, the object retains a separate existence and can effect the viewer/listener because it is distinct from him/her. It's a tough balancing act. Going too far either way usually means bad writing.<br />
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The second piece, the one about <i>The Elephant Man</i>, does a good job of illustrating the separateness of the object from the viewer/listener. All of the significant details in the story are about Richardson, about the personal context of elephantiasis and John Merrick for him. Lynch's film is a spectre, a force that crystallizes all of those moments in Richardson without ever really being there. In fact, the closing paragraph which addresses the film most directly--though it is quite interesting and nicely pensive and wistful without being grasping--isn't even necessary for the piece to work. The way that bits of culture become ambient objects that structure and reflect our inner worlds has already been illustrated by the image of a ten-year-old boy listening to radio because he's too scared to turn on the TV, the device that brought something he'd already been afraid of to a fever pitch.bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-81253070774718875682012-07-23T11:50:00.003-04:002012-07-26T00:25:59.937-04:00REVIEW: ERIKA SPRING - ERIKA SPRING EP<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HL9g_uO5S64/UAxoVfnw3OI/AAAAAAAAARk/qeeY0KWGNu4/s1600/erika+spring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HL9g_uO5S64/UAxoVfnw3OI/AAAAAAAAARk/qeeY0KWGNu4/s320/erika+spring.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/Erika-Spring/212061368807996" target="_blank">Erika Spring</a> - <a href="http://soundcloud.com/cascine/sets/erika-spring-ep-1" target="_blank"><i>Erika Spring</i> EP</a><br />
<a href="http://cascine.us/" target="_blank">Cascine</a>, 2012</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Let's talk about fashion for minute: as an awkward, bookish, young white male, my understanding and conception of fashion is, to be far too generous, limited. Nonetheless, I do understand--or at least I am able to project--a certain sense of the signifiers of fashion, like glamour. Glamour seems to me to reside somewhere in the 1980s, to be most at home in the postmodern metropolis of global capitalism. The hollowed out subject that exists within this evocation of wealth and leisure (perhaps best exemplified by Christian Bale's performance of the cypher Patrick Bateman in <i>American Psycho</i>--and isn't it Bateman more than any other of his roles that suggests the origins of Bruce Wayne/Batman in his current cinematic form?) looks out from the screens and mirrors of capitalism into yet more screens, reflections reflecting back to (and on) themselves, and glides through the cities whose buildings are a perfect match for their subjects. Thus, glamour becomes a way for consumer capital both to s(t)imulate desire and to enjoin enjoyment. Given this (a big if: as I said, my knowledge and understanding of fashion is beyond limited; this is seen through a glass very darkly, if at all), the endless return to the aesthetics of the 1980s in the current moment makes a great deal of sense: what is the iPhone and its attached oediPodal (to borrow a word from Mark Fisher) operator if not a kind of perfection of this sense of glamour?<br />
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Erika Spring's solo debut is nothing if not indebted to the aesthetics of the 1980s, with the drums of its slick pop (she namechecks Bateman-favourite Phil Collins twice <a href="http://www.thefader.com/2012/07/11/interview-erika-spring/" target="_blank">in a recent interview</a>), synths that split the difference between banging electro and gauzier, 4AD-style dream pop, and--especially on "Like a Fire" and the Eurythmics cover "When Tomorrow Comes"--some particularly retro touches with the basslines and vocals. All of that doesn't necessarily sink the EP, as Spring is undeniably talented at these kinds of breathy, dreamy songs, but the most overtly retro moments are the weakest. "When Tomorrow Comes" is a well-written pop song, but it's not particularly subtle, and its inclusion here pushes the wrong buttons in terms of authenticity. It might not be intended to act as citation--indeed, in her interview with <i>The Fader</i>, Spring claims that "when I heard 'When Tomorrow Comes' the words just got me. . . . and I just wanted to say them--I just wanted to say the words"--but it feels like it, causing the spectre of pastiche to loom around the edges of the project.<br />
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Of course, others have noticed this and see nothing wrong with it. In her review for <i>Pitchfork</i>, <a href="http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/16826-erika-spring-ep/" target="_blank">Lindsay Zolandz writes that</a>:<br />
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Spring gets points for reappropriating 80s synth pop and <i>Kaputt</i>-style soft rock in a context that's utterly devoid of ironic scare quotes . . . [She] displays a genuine interest in replicating the texture and aesthetic of the music she grew up with. The elements of pastiche are woven smoothly into her sound, which dances gracefully on the edges of past and present, of waking life and dreams.</blockquote>
There is, Zolandz seems to be saying, an inherent value to non-ironic replication, and while this isn't incorrect, it feels like a pretty hollow victory (though postmodern irony is certainly beyond tiring at this point). The reference to the critically acclaimed Destroyer's recent album <i>Kaputt </i>is important here--rather than reappropriating sounds and tropes of 80s soft rock, Spring's music reappropriates a reappropriation of those sounds; in <a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jean-baudrillard/articles/simulacra-and-simulations-i-the-precession-of-simulacra/" target="_blank">the procession of simulacra</a>, we're pretty far down the line at this point.* It's also calculated, though, and speaks to a cultural phenomenon that <a href="http://www.markrichardson.org/" target="_blank">Mark Richardson</a> discusses in one of <a href="http://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/8713-this-is-me-music-making-as-re-blog/" target="_blank">the best pieces of music writing</a> I've read in the past year, "the subtle Tumblr-ization of indie; music-making as re-blog." Richardson summarises the appeal of Tumblr as a further step in the purposing of pop culture in the construction of identity, an "intesif[ication]" of the same impulse that lead former generations to draw on binder covers, but now:<br />
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allowing us to re-purpose richer media. Not to mention making the whole process so much easier. So instead of scrawling a constellation of bands onto a blank notebook, you can instead host the band's music, post their videos, and present their most compelling photos. You can actually become a <i>broadcaster</i> of the media, rather than just commenting on it, and you can do it all with just a couple clicks of a mouse. The person posting can say, "This is me" with a click or two, and the <i>media itself</i> becomes part of the person's identity, not just the association with it.</blockquote>
This is why the reference to <i>Kaputt</i> rather than to the actual (or original) sources of those soft rock sounds--even if those earlier sources are the intended references by Spring--makes so much sense. Like <a href="http://freshprinceofbelairgifs.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">a .gif of <i>The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air</i></a> that is reblogged, the transaction that Richardson characterises as "Remember David Lynch? I do, too," the cultural analogue in which Spring's statement of musical identity makes sense is <i>Kaputt</i> and its rhetorical "Remember the 1980s? I do, too."**<br />
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That late capitalism no longer sells products but lifestyles (in a Tumblr'd and Pinterest'd age, it might be more effective and appropriate to say images) is not a new proposition, but the consumption of these images and the cultivation and purposing of media in the construction of an image via social networking seems part and parcel with the sense of glamour I tried to describe above. The continual "re-blogging" of 80s aesthetics across cultural formats feels like an obvious fit in this context. In his opening monologue in <i>American Psycho</i>, Bale's Bateman details his rigorous, fascistic regimen to control his image, and his constant readings of popular music like Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, and Huey Lewis and the News turns those objects into further screens and cyphers, marketing slogans and yuppie ideology acting as depth, as subjectivity, the cultural counterpart to his ruthlessly disciplined body. <span style="background-color: white;">On Spring's EP, "Like a Fire" and "When Tomorrow Comes" are the songs Bateman might like, finding in them mirrors of his anomie, his murderous materialism, his amoral desire for exposure regardless of the absence of those sentiments in the music. Their musical signifiers are trappings of his ideology: the synth bass of "Like a Fire" combines with the glossy keyboards and plastic guitars to perfectly reblog the 1980s as an image as much as a sound (moreso even than her take on the Eurythmics' song), the triumphant upsurge of the song's chorus evoking music videos as much as music. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Ultimately, what saves the EP are its first two songs and closer <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn1c6K34Ce4" target="_blank">"6 More Weeks."</a> T</span><span style="background-color: white;">hough these tracks work with a similar palette to the rest of the EP, they are more ambiguous, with inside and outside becoming confused. I can't help but be reminded by Kate Bush in some way. "Happy at Your Gate" is all cool glamour, but its seductive, breathy atmosphere is also charged with a nervous momentum, a tension carried over by the harsher keyboards of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDYv7o7_a8" target="_blank">"Hidden,"</a> reminiscent of Broadcast's <i>The Noise Made By People</i> and the gloriously downer pop of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-0rFPsfQw4" target="_blank">"Come On Let's Go."</a> Indeed, the repeating pulses throughout "Hidden" make clear that her mention of Terry Riley and Philip Glass in <i>The Fader</i> is not just attention-grabbing namedropping. If "6 More Weeks" isn't quite to the level of these two songs, it at least feels a more able synthesis of the avant cool chill of the likes of Broadcast and Stereolab and 80s synth rock than either "Like a Fire" and "When Tomorrow Comes." Or, put more simply, if the latter are pastiche, the former feels like a step away into a more personal vision of how to use these styles. Given this, it's doubtful that anyone will label Spring's EP revolutionary, but it is smart and endlessly catchy; on a warm summer night, it can be an ice cube on the back of the neck.</span><br />
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*As Baudrillard writes in that essay in reference to the recreation of the Lascaux caves, "It is possible that the memory of the original grottoes is itself stamped in the minds of future generations, but from now on there is no longer any difference: the duplication suffices to render both artificial."<br />
**Though as something of a tastemaker given his status, isn't Dan Bejar's statement with <i>Kaputt </i>closer to "Remember the 1980s? I do, too, and they sounded like <i>this</i>"? Thus, musical "re-blogs" of that sound confirm Bejar's memory as the true memory of the 1980s, almost retrochronically creating the decade and its aesthetic in <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html/" target="_blank">Eliotic fashion</a>.</div>
<span style="border-width: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: baseline;"></span>bourgeoiseauxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11226752824178595894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8725814722409776118.post-6678782286743762082012-07-20T15:11:00.000-04:002012-07-20T15:11:52.947-04:00Cs AND THE ARBITRARINESS OF FORMSWhile re-reading Houston A. Baker, Jr.'s excellent <i>Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance</i>, I came across this humourous (and true!) passage:<br />
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When the cubes of ice intended for a refreshing lemonade (or a more severe potable against academic malaise) melt while we are explaining to a student who has telephoned that his or her "C" is only a letter, a convenient form explaining nothing deeply relevant about his or her psyche, we grasp a notion of the arbitrariness of form.</blockquote>
If there is a solution to this problem, I'd love to know it. On a slightly more substantial note (though not much of one), <span style="background-color: white;">Baker's book is excellent not only because of the quality of his argument, but also because it is filled with passages like the above that demonstrate his lightness of touch even with his most complex material (this passage appears in the midst of his definition of the strategy of "mastery of form"--exemplified by Booker T. Washington's mastery of the minstrel mask, enabling him to sound "back and black" to whites). The combined effect is to tun what could be a slog into a rather enjoyable read that balances impressive readings of texts with some heavy duty theorizing without sacrificing the author's character and personality. </span><br />
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