Make me some money!
Can't alienate anyone, but have to be interesting and unique...to the masses you hate, but pretend to enjoy entertaining.
That is a tough couple of variables.
Is bears kicking dicks pornographic?
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
CD Reviews for SLUG Magazine
A Place to Bury Strangers
Self-Titled
Killer Pimp
Street: 10.07
A Place to Bury Strangers = The Jesus & Mary Chain + Joy Division + The Cure’s first four albums + Bauhaus’s In the Flat Field
To all the babies who pine for the Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine to reunite, I have one thing to say: move on. How can you whine when terrific artists such as Autolux, Liars and Voyager One exist? Now A Place to Bury Strangers, one of the purer, more nostalgic shoegaze outfits, competently picks up the discarded fuzzy, spaced-out, heavy pieces shattered by your heroes. The band cover its already gritty tinny-to-shrieking guitars, picked bass, post-punk-rhythm-spewing drum machines and reverb-soaked vocals with even more grit, volume (!) and otherwise raw production. The harmonies and solos are frugal yet meaningful, and the lyrics mysterious and hard to hear: in other words, it’s the ultimate homage to the aforementioned legends. Unoriginality is rarely a pleasant compliment, but only because it never sounded this perfect! – Dave Madden
Ellen Allien
Boogy Bytes, Vol. 04
Bpitch Control
Street: 4.15
Ellen Allien = AGF + Luomo + Cluster
Be it Microhouse, Tech House, Dubstep, Glitch, Minimal or any other myriad of Techno, Berliners know electronica. While not all of the artists on this compilation are natives, the disc was, however, mixed by Bpitch owner, Mistress/High Priestess/Early Grandmother of Berlintech, Ellen Allien. So what’s so special? Though these tracks contain a beat, familiar rhythmic couplings, synth stabs and the other basic elements of all dance music, there is a mysterious sheen, something just “off” that makes this gathering of sub-genres unique. For example, the bass drum isn’t so up front and refuses to pummel, allowing a pleasant Sunday morning headphone mix if you so desire; dusty, swirling textures flicker in and out and make for something just as interesting to those who make this fare as well as those who sweat to it. Not your average party jam, Boogy Bytes might even undo the years American ruined electronica. – Dave Madden
Meat Beat Manifesto
Autoimmune
Metropolis
Street: 4.08
Meat Beat Manifesto = Consolidated + DJ Shadow + Public Enemy
MBM’s Jack Dangers has, from the beginning, continued to hone his panoply of ideas with each release, sometimes dedicating whole albums to just one of them (i.e. dub on In Dub, the use of his EMS Synthi 100 on R.U.O.K?). His practice makes perfect, as demonstrated on Autoimmune, a culmination of the 21-year-old MBM mythology. The hip-hop of “Young Cassius” tears apart your speakers with vocoders, spine-bending breaks and an MC (Young Cassius) tough enough to handle it; “Hellfire”, “62 Dub” and “Guns ‘n’ Lovers” feature enough bass and lugubrious backdrop sounds to make Scorn blush; MBM’s trademark scratchy spoken-word samples abound, particularly on “Solid Waste” where Dangers takes his fierce, punctuating, circa 1992 raps (Satyricon) and explodes, both politically and musically, alongside baller-ass turntable scratches. Some artists can get away with recycling concepts, especially when said old tricks are creative light years away from anyone else on the planet. – Dave Madden
The Microphones
The Glow, Pt. 2 (Remastered)
K Records
Street: 4.08
The Microphones = Robot Ate Me + Swans
For those who missed out the first time around in 2001, The Glow, Pt. 2 is Phil Elvrum’s magnum opus as far as his The Microphones project is concerned (currently he’s Mount Eerie). His approach for this album is a complex simplicity that few singer-songwriters get right: diary-style lyrics that silence everything around you, supple acoustic guitar and ornate orchestration that pours shame into those who didn’t try harder during sound recording classes. Panned guitars, field recordings, room noise and all manner of “kitchen-sink” instruments are all manipulated and made subservient to Elvrum’s words and concepts (“Something” and “Something (cont.)” also stands as one of the greatest sad-and-gorgeous to noisy-and-ominous interludes ever recorded). For those who already own it: you get a splendid bonus disc of “other songs” and “destroyed versions” Elvrum wrote during that time. Rarely has being so lonely, cold and heartbroken felt and sounded so wonderful. – Dave Madden
Why?
Alopecia
Anticon
Street: 3.11
Why? = cLOUDDEAD + Beck + The Blow
Yoni Wolf aka Why? mastermind, once a force in the juggernaut “hip-hop” outfit cLOUDDEAD (someone once said “they are to hip-hop as Nirvana is to, say, the blues”), returns with more of the same obtuse songwriting he has displayed since he began. He can create interest out of nothing, offering commentary on the minutia of everything from kitchen towels to white-boy auto-erotic literature (“only look at black and Puerto-Rican porno/’cuz they want something that their dad don’t got”) to sleeping positions, all subjects he flits between in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. Together with Andrew Broder and Austin Brown, Wolf complements his words with a mélange of hip-hop, new wave and twang, the trio capably realizing all sorts of mix-and-match experiments. After dozens of solo and group releases, Why? still manages to work a niche that thrives on ambiguity, forged ingenuity and unassuming trinkets, their own genre that only they know how to work. – Dave Madden
Ghastly Hatchling
Writhe
Red Light Sound
Ghastly Hatchling = Black Dice + Sissy Spacek
It seems that everyone and his leather-clad dog in Salt Lake is a “noise band” these days. As you may have experienced, half of these follow the “turn on machines, wave hands around, tweak knobs in an angry fashion, call it a piece of music” aesthetic. Not so with Aaron Zillionaire’s (neé Smith) Ghastly Hatchling project, as his work reflects a masterful, patient human interaction with his instruments. He carefully guides his meager sonic source, the grinding skronk of a dumptruck shifting gears despite a blown clutch (or so it seems), while paying attention to tension, release, form, harmony, settling into and exploring the pitch of each screech before moving onto new ideas during the near-twenty-two minute “Ergot, Belladonna, and Cakecrumbs” and six-minute coda, “Laminated Testicles and Blown Fuses”. On Writhe, Smith shows that he understands development, augmentation, cadences, intriguing soundscapes and everything else that makes for interesting music. – Dave Madden
Evangelista
Hello, Voyager
Constellation
Street: 3.11
Evanvelista = (literally) Carla Bozulich + Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Hello, Voyager is not some cliché of healing, yet there is a sense of satisfaction in the growl of this disjointed flotilla of mangled orchestration, string quintets, stark intimate songs and eidolic production. There is a moment a few minutes into the last track, a determined pile of percussion, trumpet, hushed feedback, shouts-turned-to-screams, background yelps and staccato guitar discharges, when you hear Carla Bozulich, say “ow!” (a drumming injury, I’m told). This is the same word going through your head as you peep from behind your hands during the previous eight tracks. It is not, however, the “ow” as in “ow, what a broken-hearted song” you felt on Bozulich and brilliant company’s previous record, Evangelista (so much to communicate, still, they named the band after the album, perhaps). Now, the “ow” is the one you scream as you jump from the window of your drunk daddy’s burning house. Yes, he is inside. – Dave Madden
MGMT
Oracular Spectacular
Columbia
Street: 1.22
MGMT = Tubeway Army + MSTRKRFT
Immediate, seemingly-shallow lyrics with step-on-your-genitals vocals over sophisticated early era Gary Numan style synth-pop? Here is a list of who will (or already does) dig MGMT: girls, girls on coke at clubs, dudes in tight jeans who think it is acceptable to copulate in club bathrooms with girls on coke, girls who like Erasure, dudes who like Burial, dudes who can pick House and Progressive and Trance out of a lineup, people who think Moby is underrated, people who know one Aphex Twin song, people who claim to love electronica but have never heard of Autechre, people who love Justice, droves of people who like it for all the wrong reasons (see above), critics who want something new but just barely new (see Burial), critics who will, eventually, secretly concede that the disc “has some worthwhile traits” after hating it because so many stupid people like it for the wrong reasons. – Dave Madden
Take
Plus Ultra EP
Inner Current
Street: 12/07
Take = Flying Lotus + Nobody
Dublab darling Take works a slab chipped of the instrumental hip-hop (aka stonertronica) genre: at once, the music reflects the soft, frigid aspects of IDM, the rhythmic snap of hip-hop and the spiritual free-flow of Sun Ra. And yes, it could be the soundtrack to a mushroom-fueled camping trip, dreamy enough to calm your anxiety but intricate enough to give those dancing lights on the tent corporeal mass. This EP is a collection of remixes from Take’s Earthtones & Concrete, all worked by fellow L.A. beatologists such as Daedelus and Ras G. A problem with a lot in this brand of music, the mellow nature here is sometimes too self-effacing and subdued, rendering the music as background noise for a hip sushi bar. However, the tracks wrapped in arresting personality (the game show disco of “You High (Daedelus RMX)”, the wah-wah’d bass-driven “Slouched Over 12” Edit”) overshadow any weaknesses and warrant the price of the purchase. – Dave Madden
Self-Titled
Killer Pimp
Street: 10.07
A Place to Bury Strangers = The Jesus & Mary Chain + Joy Division + The Cure’s first four albums + Bauhaus’s In the Flat Field
To all the babies who pine for the Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine to reunite, I have one thing to say: move on. How can you whine when terrific artists such as Autolux, Liars and Voyager One exist? Now A Place to Bury Strangers, one of the purer, more nostalgic shoegaze outfits, competently picks up the discarded fuzzy, spaced-out, heavy pieces shattered by your heroes. The band cover its already gritty tinny-to-shrieking guitars, picked bass, post-punk-rhythm-spewing drum machines and reverb-soaked vocals with even more grit, volume (!) and otherwise raw production. The harmonies and solos are frugal yet meaningful, and the lyrics mysterious and hard to hear: in other words, it’s the ultimate homage to the aforementioned legends. Unoriginality is rarely a pleasant compliment, but only because it never sounded this perfect! – Dave Madden
Ellen Allien
Boogy Bytes, Vol. 04
Bpitch Control
Street: 4.15
Ellen Allien = AGF + Luomo + Cluster
Be it Microhouse, Tech House, Dubstep, Glitch, Minimal or any other myriad of Techno, Berliners know electronica. While not all of the artists on this compilation are natives, the disc was, however, mixed by Bpitch owner, Mistress/High Priestess/Early Grandmother of Berlintech, Ellen Allien. So what’s so special? Though these tracks contain a beat, familiar rhythmic couplings, synth stabs and the other basic elements of all dance music, there is a mysterious sheen, something just “off” that makes this gathering of sub-genres unique. For example, the bass drum isn’t so up front and refuses to pummel, allowing a pleasant Sunday morning headphone mix if you so desire; dusty, swirling textures flicker in and out and make for something just as interesting to those who make this fare as well as those who sweat to it. Not your average party jam, Boogy Bytes might even undo the years American ruined electronica. – Dave Madden
Meat Beat Manifesto
Autoimmune
Metropolis
Street: 4.08
Meat Beat Manifesto = Consolidated + DJ Shadow + Public Enemy
MBM’s Jack Dangers has, from the beginning, continued to hone his panoply of ideas with each release, sometimes dedicating whole albums to just one of them (i.e. dub on In Dub, the use of his EMS Synthi 100 on R.U.O.K?). His practice makes perfect, as demonstrated on Autoimmune, a culmination of the 21-year-old MBM mythology. The hip-hop of “Young Cassius” tears apart your speakers with vocoders, spine-bending breaks and an MC (Young Cassius) tough enough to handle it; “Hellfire”, “62 Dub” and “Guns ‘n’ Lovers” feature enough bass and lugubrious backdrop sounds to make Scorn blush; MBM’s trademark scratchy spoken-word samples abound, particularly on “Solid Waste” where Dangers takes his fierce, punctuating, circa 1992 raps (Satyricon) and explodes, both politically and musically, alongside baller-ass turntable scratches. Some artists can get away with recycling concepts, especially when said old tricks are creative light years away from anyone else on the planet. – Dave Madden
The Microphones
The Glow, Pt. 2 (Remastered)
K Records
Street: 4.08
The Microphones = Robot Ate Me + Swans
For those who missed out the first time around in 2001, The Glow, Pt. 2 is Phil Elvrum’s magnum opus as far as his The Microphones project is concerned (currently he’s Mount Eerie). His approach for this album is a complex simplicity that few singer-songwriters get right: diary-style lyrics that silence everything around you, supple acoustic guitar and ornate orchestration that pours shame into those who didn’t try harder during sound recording classes. Panned guitars, field recordings, room noise and all manner of “kitchen-sink” instruments are all manipulated and made subservient to Elvrum’s words and concepts (“Something” and “Something (cont.)” also stands as one of the greatest sad-and-gorgeous to noisy-and-ominous interludes ever recorded). For those who already own it: you get a splendid bonus disc of “other songs” and “destroyed versions” Elvrum wrote during that time. Rarely has being so lonely, cold and heartbroken felt and sounded so wonderful. – Dave Madden
Why?
Alopecia
Anticon
Street: 3.11
Why? = cLOUDDEAD + Beck + The Blow
Yoni Wolf aka Why? mastermind, once a force in the juggernaut “hip-hop” outfit cLOUDDEAD (someone once said “they are to hip-hop as Nirvana is to, say, the blues”), returns with more of the same obtuse songwriting he has displayed since he began. He can create interest out of nothing, offering commentary on the minutia of everything from kitchen towels to white-boy auto-erotic literature (“only look at black and Puerto-Rican porno/’cuz they want something that their dad don’t got”) to sleeping positions, all subjects he flits between in a stream-of-consciousness fashion. Together with Andrew Broder and Austin Brown, Wolf complements his words with a mélange of hip-hop, new wave and twang, the trio capably realizing all sorts of mix-and-match experiments. After dozens of solo and group releases, Why? still manages to work a niche that thrives on ambiguity, forged ingenuity and unassuming trinkets, their own genre that only they know how to work. – Dave Madden
Ghastly Hatchling
Writhe
Red Light Sound
Ghastly Hatchling = Black Dice + Sissy Spacek
It seems that everyone and his leather-clad dog in Salt Lake is a “noise band” these days. As you may have experienced, half of these follow the “turn on machines, wave hands around, tweak knobs in an angry fashion, call it a piece of music” aesthetic. Not so with Aaron Zillionaire’s (neé Smith) Ghastly Hatchling project, as his work reflects a masterful, patient human interaction with his instruments. He carefully guides his meager sonic source, the grinding skronk of a dumptruck shifting gears despite a blown clutch (or so it seems), while paying attention to tension, release, form, harmony, settling into and exploring the pitch of each screech before moving onto new ideas during the near-twenty-two minute “Ergot, Belladonna, and Cakecrumbs” and six-minute coda, “Laminated Testicles and Blown Fuses”. On Writhe, Smith shows that he understands development, augmentation, cadences, intriguing soundscapes and everything else that makes for interesting music. – Dave Madden
Evangelista
Hello, Voyager
Constellation
Street: 3.11
Evanvelista = (literally) Carla Bozulich + Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Hello, Voyager is not some cliché of healing, yet there is a sense of satisfaction in the growl of this disjointed flotilla of mangled orchestration, string quintets, stark intimate songs and eidolic production. There is a moment a few minutes into the last track, a determined pile of percussion, trumpet, hushed feedback, shouts-turned-to-screams, background yelps and staccato guitar discharges, when you hear Carla Bozulich, say “ow!” (a drumming injury, I’m told). This is the same word going through your head as you peep from behind your hands during the previous eight tracks. It is not, however, the “ow” as in “ow, what a broken-hearted song” you felt on Bozulich and brilliant company’s previous record, Evangelista (so much to communicate, still, they named the band after the album, perhaps). Now, the “ow” is the one you scream as you jump from the window of your drunk daddy’s burning house. Yes, he is inside. – Dave Madden
MGMT
Oracular Spectacular
Columbia
Street: 1.22
MGMT = Tubeway Army + MSTRKRFT
Immediate, seemingly-shallow lyrics with step-on-your-genitals vocals over sophisticated early era Gary Numan style synth-pop? Here is a list of who will (or already does) dig MGMT: girls, girls on coke at clubs, dudes in tight jeans who think it is acceptable to copulate in club bathrooms with girls on coke, girls who like Erasure, dudes who like Burial, dudes who can pick House and Progressive and Trance out of a lineup, people who think Moby is underrated, people who know one Aphex Twin song, people who claim to love electronica but have never heard of Autechre, people who love Justice, droves of people who like it for all the wrong reasons (see above), critics who want something new but just barely new (see Burial), critics who will, eventually, secretly concede that the disc “has some worthwhile traits” after hating it because so many stupid people like it for the wrong reasons. – Dave Madden
Take
Plus Ultra EP
Inner Current
Street: 12/07
Take = Flying Lotus + Nobody
Dublab darling Take works a slab chipped of the instrumental hip-hop (aka stonertronica) genre: at once, the music reflects the soft, frigid aspects of IDM, the rhythmic snap of hip-hop and the spiritual free-flow of Sun Ra. And yes, it could be the soundtrack to a mushroom-fueled camping trip, dreamy enough to calm your anxiety but intricate enough to give those dancing lights on the tent corporeal mass. This EP is a collection of remixes from Take’s Earthtones & Concrete, all worked by fellow L.A. beatologists such as Daedelus and Ras G. A problem with a lot in this brand of music, the mellow nature here is sometimes too self-effacing and subdued, rendering the music as background noise for a hip sushi bar. However, the tracks wrapped in arresting personality (the game show disco of “You High (Daedelus RMX)”, the wah-wah’d bass-driven “Slouched Over 12” Edit”) overshadow any weaknesses and warrant the price of the purchase. – Dave Madden
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