Contort Yrself

it won't be any easier in the future, either

2008-04-27T03:13:00.000-05:00

it's called "Blackwater"

2008-04-26T03:00:00.002-05:00

He’s nicknamed “Brock” by those that have nicknames for nuclear bombs. Our skepticism recedes like a wave; if you look back across the salt flats, you can see where the nineteensixties broke. History wrote me a letter that made reference to several noteworthy events. The Antietam v. Sharpsburg debate, for instance. Where brick meets mortar. Where mortar meets flesh. He's nicknamed “The Green Zone” by those that have nicknames for power relationships. If you name a disease after an army, does that make the army more powerful? I call my cock “the black death” and append the word “optimistically” in my stand up comedy special. You better believe they love that shit in Maryland.

it's sublime

2008-04-24T20:59:00.005-05:00

------>

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it's worth it

2008-04-23T18:01:00.001-05:00

it happens

2008-04-22T17:31:00.001-05:00

from time to time

mc escher fashion school

2007-12-18T23:56:00.000-06:00

screwed & chopped vocal = "MC Escher fashion school"
weightlifting?

damn simon reynolds to hell.

2007-12-18T17:31:00.001-06:00

the all-american funkathon recent recommends

2007-10-21T16:44:00.001-05:00

sir richard bishop polytheistic fragments
murcof cosmos
archipelago images of popular deities
the grand hotel the upper reaches of wind river
burning star core body blues b/w the pleasure is all mine

new drones friday midnight-saturday 2a on wtul 91.5

in da club

2007-10-21T16:39:00.000-05:00

here come the technology and sirens and light shortages and things.

exact status #2

2007-09-18T21:51:00.000-05:00

Due to communication gaps, the exact status of trains between MARTINSBURG and HARPERS FERRY may not be available. All grant applicants will be notified by e-mail: successful applicants will shortly receive individual notifications indicating the exact status of their range of uncertainty about the exact status of the element and the exact status of those facilities would be determined as part of a discussion between the IAEA team, which will arrive tomorrow. As I understand it, Air Force procedures for following up on shipments that contractors have not confirmed as received are ineffective, leaving the exact status of the couple questions. Why do you want to know the exact status of the battery at all time? Unless you were extremely low when you started reading...

exact status

2007-09-18T16:07:00.000-05:00

The do-over was one of childhood's most powerful rites, for it exerted our dominion over the laws of space and time. The clock was rolled back, the game was restored to its exact status as before before the contested event and play was resumed. If the original play was particularly important and the second attempt was dramatically different (e.g. the player striking out instead of hitting a multi-base shot as in the original play), the do-over might be invoked again. This second invocation would give the team another chance thereby insuring that the universal forces of fair play were being righteously maintained.

Yes, it is with fond memories that we recall the do-over a divine method of resolution, and contemplate the untold blessings it could bring if it were somehow extended into our contemporary lives.

playlist, saturday 9/15 midnight-2am, new things

2007-09-15T23:56:00.000-05:00

1. the show has moved to late-nite on friday/saturday - midnight to 2am friday night/saturday morning. fewer people, but more appropriate
2. WTUL is now using a system called radioactivity to log the playlists. as such, the lists here shall be ganked from there in the future. you will notice the new formatting. you may not notice, but should, that the lists are in backwards order. last song to first song. that's just how it is.
3. there were, at one point, other things going on here. they will soon again.

in the meantime, listen in.

Geoff Farina, Luther Gray, and Dan Littleton "Pouring Water on Stone" New Salt Xeng
David Krejci "The Cleophone" The Cleophone New American Folk Hero
Tim Hecker "Spectral" Radio Amor Alien8 Recordings
Rhizome "Compund Live (excerpt)" Kaon trnsnd
Religious Knives "Blackbird" Remains No Fun
Tirath Singh Nirmala "Moor Edge Hush" Bluster, Cragg, and Awe Digitalis Industries
Chirstopher Flores "Feldman's Broken Glass" Testing the Blues Temporary Residence, Ltd.
Fursaxa "Ché Elum" Alone in the Dark Wood ATP Recordings
Windy and Carl "Elevation" Consciousness Kranky
L-R vs. Radiomentale "Soulmates" I Could Never Make That Music Again Sub Rosa
Ov "Canals" Noctilucent Valleys Soft Abuse
Potpie "The James Earl Jones Effect (excerpt)" Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind self-released
Terry Riley "Purple" Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band Elision Fields
No Age "Every Artist Needs a Tragedy" Weirdo Rippers Fat Cat
James Whitehead "Air Attack Over Kabul Airfield" An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music, Vol. IV Sub Rosa
Alasdair Roberts "On the Banks of Red Roses" No Earthly Man Drag City
LSD March "Nude and Bizarre" Empty Rubious Red Archive Recordings
Greg Davis "Diaphonous (edit)" Somnia Kranky
The Field "From Here We Go Sublime" From Here We Go Sublime Kompakt
Disco Inferno "Next Year" DI Go Pop One Little Indian
Spieglein "Not Only Panasprined" Proto For Subsequent self-released
Jasper TX "Blown Out to Sea, I'm Never Coming Back" I'll Be Long Gone By the Time My Light Reaches You Lampse
Keith Fullerton Whitman "Stereo Music for Yamaha Disklavier Prototype, Electric Guitar, and Computer" Multiples Kranky

playlist for tues. 9/4 3-6p

2007-09-04T17:48:00.000-05:00

archipelago "opening of the face" IMAGES OF POPULAR DEITIES
tirath singh narmala "moor edge hush" BLUSTER, CRAGG AND AWE

3:30 airbreak

phonon "10" PHONON
terry riley "purple" POPPY NOGOOD AND THE PHANTOM BAND
no age "semi-sorted" WEIRDO RIPPERS
osmo whitely "for sarah" OSMO WHITELY

4:00 airbreak

ov "bone of the bone scholar/moon of the moon scholar" NOCTILUCENT VALLEYS
joshua jugband 5 "3" DAMASCUS DOLDRUMS

4:30 airbreak

alan bishop "the medina of sound" RADIO MOROCCO
seefeel "climactic phase #3" SEEFEEL BONUS DISC
nonloc "piano stream" BETWEEN THE HEMISPHERES

5:00 airbreak

mace "movement III for harp/tape" CIRCULATIONS
von spar "xaxapoya" XAXAPOYA / DEAD VOICES IN THE TEMPLE OF ERROR

5:30 airbreak

low in the sky "how to make a paper hat" WE ARE COUNTING ON YOU
robert horton "decayed time" DIRT SPEAK
religious knives "blackbird" REMAINS

playlist for wednesday, 8/29 2-6p

2007-08-29T17:58:00.001-05:00

ekkehard ehlers “aint no grave” A LIFE WITHOUT FEAR
lsd march “nude and bizarre” → “empty rubious red” EMPTY RUBIOUS RED

2:30 airbreak

tirath singh nirmala “ rytsn 7.14” BLUSTER, CRAGG, AND AWE
l-r and radiomentale “I could never make that music again” I COULD NEVER MAKE THAT MUSIC AGAIN

3:00 airbreak

jasper tx “blown out to sea, I’m never coming back” I’LL BE LONG GONE BY THE TIME MY LIGHT REACHES YOU
ov “ghost of the future” THE NOCTILUCENT VALLEY
sq “ round VI” ROUNDS
r. keenan lawler “grace period” GHOST OF A PLANE OF AIR
chad oliveri “over and out” PATHETIQUE

3:30 airbreak

dialing in “cutting thunder in clouds” KETALYSERGIC METHAMOTHER
so percussion “drumming IV” DRUMMING

4:00 airbreak

burning star core “the universe is designed to break your mind” BLOOD LIGHTNING
the north sea “sunrise” SUMMER DECAYS INTO OCTOBER’S ALCHEMY

4:30 airbreak

dean roberts “all the pidgins sent to war, palace of adrenalin v and e.e.” BE MINE TONIGHT
nonloc “corpus collosum” BETWEEN HEMISPHERES
salah abd alghafour “walla (by god)” CHOUBI CHOUBI: FOLK AND POP FROM IRAQ

5:00 airbreak

rich west “glenn’s conducting” HEAVENLY BREAKFAST
the world on higher downs “ascension and” LAND PATTERNS

5:30 airbreak

faust “krautrock” IV
anton batagov “circle of time IV” WHEEL OF THE LAW I

playlist for tues. 8/28 3-6p

2007-08-28T17:50:00.000-05:00

omar souleyman “arabic dabke” HIGHWAY TO HASSAKE
kemialliset ystävät “superhimmeli” UNTITLED
jandek “part one” MANHATTAN TUESDAY

3:30 airbreak

terry riley “purple” POPPY NOGOOD AND THE PHANTOM BAND
james whitehead “air attack over kabul airfield” ANTHOLOGY OF NOISE AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC VOL. IV
ghosting “why not be utterly changed into fire? (excerpt)” WHY NOT BE UTTERLY CHANGED INTO FIRE?
dj sandrinho “berimbau” RIO BAILE FUNK: MORE FAVELA BOOTY BEATS

4:00 airbreak

david torn “structural features of prezens” PREZENS
alan bishop “the medina of sound” RADIO MOROCCO
archipelago “god of the star at the tip of the bowl” IMAGES OF POPULAR DEITIES

4:30 airbreak

christopher flores “feldman’s broken glass” TESTING THE BLUES
seefeel “charlotte’s mouth (avant-garde mix)” SEEFEEL BONUS DISC
the twilight sad “14 autumns and 15 winters” 14 AUTUMNS AND 15 WINTERS
greg davis “archer” SOMNIA

5:00 airbreak

nels cline and devin sarno “swinging london” BURIED UNDER BUNKER HILL
robert musci “8” STEEL WATER LIGHT

5:30 airbreak

marhaus and asheim “claveolina” GRAND MUTATION
the world on higher downs “alpine low” LAND PATTERNS
religious knives “bind them” REMAINS

million dollar raise

2007-08-27T02:46:00.000-05:00

playlist for wednesday, 8/15, 2-4p

2007-08-16T03:46:00.001-05:00

can “future days” FUTURE DAYS
school police “knottie dread” GROW YR HAIR
the dead c “angel” VAIN, ERUDITE AND STUPID

2:30 airbreak

l-r and radiomentale “I could never make that music again” I COULD NEVER MAKE THAT MUSIC AGAIN
archipelago “god of the star at the tip of the bowl” IMAGES OF POPULAR DEITIES

3:00 airbreak

earth “Miami morning coming down” HIBERNACULUM
david torn “bulbs” PREZENS
omar souleyman “Arabic dabke” HIGHWAY TO HASSAKE
jeck/yoshidide/tetreault “untitled #1” ANTHOLOGY OF NOISE AND ELECTRONIC MUSIC VOL. I

3:30 airbreak

seefeel “silent pool” QUIQUE REISSUE
osmo whitely “for sarah” S/T
so percussion “drumming iv” DRUMMING

back in a week.

the most important pledge so far?

2007-08-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

To make the government more accountable, Obama said he would post all non-emergency bills online for five days before he signed them into law, allowing Americans a chance to weigh in on the legislation. In addition, he said he would post all meetings between lobbyists and government agencies online.

Obama said he would require Cabinet officials to speak to Americans via national broadband town-hall style meetings to discuss issues at their agencies. He also pledged to issue an executive order that information about the government's operations must be released to those seeking it unless it could harm a protected interest.

Obama cited his record of backing ethics and lobbying reforms, including co-authoring a bill that requires all government spending to be posted online — allowing anyone to do a simple Internet search and find that information.

the article is here.

the form that breaks the structure it's supporting; the language glitch for reasons we won't go into here; don't worry about it; or, by weaving a nest

2007-08-09T03:56:00.000-05:00

of titles, we've decided already a few things: subtitle: when literalism and symbolism get together and do nothing much really

The owl you heard hooting
In the middle of the night wasn't me.
It was an owl.
Or maybe you were
So asleep you didn't even hear it.
The sprinklers on their timer, programmed to come on
At such a strangely late hour in life
For watering a garden,
Refreshed your sleep four thousand miles away by
Hissing sweetly,
Deepening the smell of green in Eden.
You heard the summer chirr of insects.
You heard a sky of stars.
You didn't know it, fast asleep at dawn in Paris.
You didn't hear a thing.
You heard me calling.
I am no longer human.

"The owl you heard" F. Seidel Ooga-Booga

playlist for wednesday, 8/8 2-4p

2007-08-08T15:50:00.000-05:00

hala strana “wedding of the blind” HEAVE THE GAMBREL ROOF
talk talk “the rainbow” SPIRIT OF EDEN
david torn “ak” PREZENS

2:30 airbreak

jandek “part four” MANHATTAN TUESDAY
marhaus and asheim “claveolina” GRAND MUTATION

3:00 airbreak

pole “aoeberfahrt” 3
third eye foundation “next of kin” SEMTEX
unknown artist “choubi choubi” CHOUBI CHOUBI: FOLK AND POP FROM IRAQ
ov “noctilucent valley” NOCTILUCENT VALLEYS
chad oliveri “over and out” PATHETIQUE

3:30 airbreak

r. keenan lawler “a plane of air” GHOST OF A PLANE OF AIR
robert horton “dirt speak” DIRT SPEAK
the north sea “desert air” SUMMER DECAYS INTO WINTER’S ALCHEMY
von spar “dead voices in the temple of error” XAXAPOYA B/W DEAD VOICES IN THE TEMPLE OF ERROR

playlist for tuesday, 8/7, 2:30 - 6p

2007-08-07T17:43:00.000-05:00

mohammed “jimmy” mohammed “sewetchi men yilalu” TAKKABEL!
jandek “part one” MANHATTAN TUESDAY
disco inferno “new clothes for the new world” DI GO POP

3:00 airbreak

sq “round 1” ROUNDS
junior kimbrough “I’m leavin’ you baby” YOU BETTER RUN
ekkehard ehlers “ain’t no grave” A LIFE WITHOUT FEAR
keith fullerton whitman “stereo music for yamaha disklavier prototype, electric guitar, and computer” MULTIPLES
the field “from here we go sublime” FROM HERE WE GO SUBLIME

3:30 airbreak

scott walker “jolson and jones” THE DRIFT
burning star core “the universe is designed to break your mind” BLOOD LIGHTNING
kemialliset ystävät “kokki, leipuri, keylettäjä, ja taikuri (enna 132 eaa.)” UNTITLED

4:00 airbreak

stars of the lid “the atomium pts. I, II, III” AVEC LAUDENUM
lsd march “nude and bizarre → empty rubious red” EMPTY RUBIOUS RED

4:30 airbreak

david krejci “the cleophone (excerpt)” THE CLEOPHONE
harry partch “Ulysses at the edge” THE HARRY PARTCH COLLECTION VOL. I
roosevelt graves and brother “woke up this morning (with my mind on jesus)” GOODBYE, BABYLON

5:00 airbreak

seefeel “charlotte’s mouth” QUIQUE
manuel göttsching “e2 – e4 (excerpt)” E2 – E4

5:30 airbreak

tinariwen “chet boghassa” AMASSAKOUL
headdress “arizona” TURQUOISE
archipelago “god of the star at the tip of the bowl” IMAGES OF POPULAR DEITIES
christopher flores "feldman's broken glass" TESTING THE BLUES

playlist for friday, 8/3, noon-2p

2007-08-03T13:45:00.000-05:00

seefeel “silent pool” QUIQUE
colleen “le labrynthe” LES ONDES SILENCIEUSES
aaron martin and machienfabrik “cello recycling” CELLO RECYCLING
gonzales “overnight” SOLO PIANO

12:30 airbreak

robert horton “decayed time” DIRT SPEAK
l-r and radiomentale “I could never make that music again” I COULD NEVER MAKE THAT MUSIC AGAIN

1:00 airbreak

flying saucer attack “whole day song” NEW LANDS
joe + n “four” NEITHER PAINTING NOR SCULPTURE
hala strana “wedding of the blind” HEAVE THE GAMBREL ROOF

1:30 airbreak

christopher flores “feldman’s broken glass” TESTING THE BLUES
aemae “walking along edges” THE HELIAL WORLD
anton batagov “circle of time IV” THE WHEEL OF THE LAW I

playlist for wednesday, 8/1 2-4p

2007-08-01T15:53:00.001-05:00

disco inferno “new clothes for the new world” DI GO POP
tom carter and robert horton “rocket #9” STEELJAGUAR FOR ROCKET

2:30 airbreak

von spar “xaxapoya” “XAXAPOYA” B/W “DEAD VOICES IN THE TEMPLE OF ERROR”
bjerga/iversen “burning the light at both ends (excerpt)” BURNING THE LIGHT AT BOTH ENDS

3:00 airbreak

stephen r. smith “in held ambit” AUTUMN IS THE END
ov “ghost of the future” NOCTILUCENT VALLEYS
dean Roberts “all pidgins sent to war, palace of adrenaline v. and e.e.” BE MINE TONIGHT

3:30 airbreak

the dead c “max harris” VAIN, ERUDITE, AND STUPID
paavaharju “aurinkotuuleen” SUMMER AND SMILE OF FINLAND
lsd march “nude and bizarre” EMPTY RUBIOUS RED
marhaus and asheim “claveolina” GRAND MUTATION

playlist for tuesday, 7/31 3-6p

2007-07-31T17:46:00.000-05:00

chad oliveri “over and out” PATHETIQUE
disco inferno “footprints in snow” DI GO POP
faust “krautrock” FAUST IV

3:30 airbreak

omar souleyman “toul al zeenah” HIGHWAY TO HASSAKE
dialing in “babel” KETALYSERGIC METHAMOTHER
burning star core “the universe is designed to break your mind” BLOOD LIGHTNING
fursaxa “ché elum” ALONE IN THE DARK WOOD

4:00 airbreak

tim hecker “whitecaps of white noise I & II” → “blood rainbow” HARMONY IN ULTRAVIOLET
oval “textuell” SYSTEMISCH

4:30 airbreak

christopher flores “red jam” TESTING THE BLUES
jasper tx “all those broken birds singing winter into spring” I’LL BE LONG GONE BEFORE MY LIGHT REACHES YOU
toumani diabate “marielle” DJELIKA

5:00 airbreak

wyndel hunt “d leofl” NK AK
main “xiv” FIRMAMENT III
mohammed “jimmy” mohammed “mala mala” TAKKABEL!
Jacobscale “predator syndrome” MODULATIONS

5:30 airbreak

steve reich/so percussion “drumming IV” DRUMMING
the north sea “sunrise” SUMMER DECAYS INTO OCTOBER’S ALCHEMY

important music

2007-07-31T15:52:00.001-05:00

2007-07-31T05:17:00.000-05:00

Popmatters would also like to inform you that Crazy Town really fell off after their "Butterfly" single.

"the cleverest in scatter the world"

2007-07-31T04:58:00.000-05:00

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business "It's told shake heart a garden knife, isn't it?"

perspective

2007-07-26T15:29:00.000-05:00

Let's keep things in perspective. The Simpsons is an inexhaustible repository of humor, invention and insight, an achievement without precedent or peer in the history of broadcast television, perhaps the purest distillation of the glories and failings of the United States ever conceived. The Simpsons Movie is, well, a movie.

wed. 7/25 2-4p

2007-07-25T15:52:00.000-05:00

seefeel “filter dub i-01 mix” QUIQUE REISSUE
omar souleyman “arabic dabke” HIGHWAY TO HASSAKE
talking heads “seen and not seen” REMAIN IN LIGHT REISSUE
biosphere “black lamb and grey flora” CIRQUE
murmur “the wish granting gem that fulfills both aims” RELEASE
kemialliset ystavat “superhimmeli” UNTITLED
chad oliveri “over and out” PATHETIQUE
colleen “sun against my eyes” LES ONDES SILENCIUSES
headdress “skydye” TURQUOISE
aaron martin and machienfabrik “cello recycling” CELLO RECYCLING
johann johannssen “ibm 1403 printer” IBM 1401 A USERS MANUAL
jasper tx “all those broken birds singing winter into spring” I’LL BE LONG GONE BEFORE MY LIGHT REACHES YOU
hala strana “molars of smoke” HEAVE THE GAMBREL ROOF
the jahlights “right road to dubland”
bark psychosis “rose” CODENAME: DUSTSUCKER
jacobscale “lexomilk” MODULATIONS

2007-07-25T10:14:00.000-05:00

sometimes go to niagra / sometimes go to the grave

tuesday, 7/24 3-6p

2007-07-24T17:47:00.000-05:00

1. van morrison “ring worm” THE BANG RECORDS CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION SESSIONS
2. sq “round VI” ROUND
3. greg davis “diaphanous (edit)” SOMNIA
4. flying saucer attack “whole day song” NEW LANDS
5. can “future days” FUTURE DAYS
6. stephen r. smith “ink burned white” SLATE BRANCHES
7. l-r and radiomentale “I could never make that music again” I COULD NEVER MAKE THAT MUSIC AGAIN
8. scott walker “jesse” THE DRIFT
9. lsd march “nude and bizarre / empty rubious red” EMPTY RUBIOUS RED
10. ov “the noctilucent cloud” THE NOCTILUCENT VALLEY
11. dialing in “babel” KETALYSERGIC METHAMOTHER
12. mohammed jimmy mohammed “aykedashem lebe” TAKKABEL!
13. alan bishop “exterior grooves” RADIO ALGERIA
14. james whitehead “air attack over Kabul airfield” ANTHOLOGY OF NOISE & ELECTRONIC MUSIC VOL. IV
15. headdress “Arizona” TURQUOISE
16. ghosting “why not be utterly changed into fire? (excerpt)”
17. osmo whitely “for sarah” S/T
18. earth “a plague of angels” HIBERNACULUM

abracadabra

2007-07-24T14:18:00.000-05:00

a memorectomy

2007-07-22T18:24:00.000-05:00

most common form is pleural mesothelioma which accounts for 75% of all malignant cases however there are two other types peritoneal, and pericardial which you may be interested in reading about.Understanding MesotheliomaDealing with mesothelioma is a very difficult process. It will require a lot of physical and emotional endurance, a strong family and social network, and expert medical and professional advice and assistance. The best way to approach dealing with mesothelioma is to first learn everything that you can about the disease. This should include the causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of mesothelioma. SymptomsSince mesothelioma takes a long time to develop inside a human body it is often difficult to identify the symptoms. In the early stages there may not even be any symptoms at all. When they do appear the most common early symptoms are shortness of breath and chest pains. These symptoms on their own will not usually identify the disease and are often misdiagnosed as asthma or other respiratory problems like pneumonia. Tests and DiagnosisAs discussed previously

Thursday, July 26, Circle Bar, 10pm sharp

2007-07-22T18:04:00.000-05:00

Yellow Crystal Star | Murmur | Ear is the Brain
Thursday, July 26. Circle Bar. 10PM sharp. FREE.
The cannabis-drenched acoustic drone side project of potpie and friends (including members of Chef Menteur and many others) will be performing an ultra rare live performance, their first in over 2 years. Murmur has had several super limited cd-rs released over the last 7 years and only a handful of live appearances. They will be opening for an amazing guitarist from Tallahasse called Yellow Crystal Star who will appeal to fans of Acid Mothers Temple guitarist Kawabata Mokoto' solo work or much of the Kranky label. Also playing will be Ear is the Brain who is Nepalese and plays minimal acoustic psychedelia.

a memorectomy?

2007-07-22T18:00:00.000-05:00

2007-07-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

in the same vein: that is, couplets (why couplets?) with gracefully constructed sentences describing things

report

2007-07-22T17:12:00.000-05:00

In that long pause I saw you visibly trying to suck the air from the room. Victorious warriors win first, defeated [REDACTED] Although China [REDACTED] a shipment of about 2000 tubes had already been sent [REDACTED]. Loosen yr collar, the air feels poisoned. In [REDACTED] June, 2001, the tubes arrived [REDACTED] authorities, [REDACTED], seized the tubes. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] several sample tubes [REDACTED]. A [REDACTED] intelligence assessment said [REDACTED]. It’s about time that we said it: [REDACTED] [REDACTED] redacted.

Some things I've enjoyed this year/1: songs

2005-12-25T04:26:00.000-06:00

I begin the (more) arbitrary (than usual) listing of items for the years end. Today, I'm going to list several songs that I quite enjoyed - songs that existed independently of albums that I purchased or songs that were unfortunately attached to rather mediocre records.

---------

Archer Prewitt - "Judy, Judy" from Wilderness

Whenever I listen to this record, I think of that one Basil Bunting poem that goes something like "...remember ascetics, prophets, half-wits / young girls with little tender tits / that fellmonger death is waiting over all." Anyway, it's something like that. I think its the pencil-sketch on the cover. But the record for the most part, like Basil Bunting, I cannot latch onto, tho I can recognize its inherent quality as far as composition. Of course, that's the way I feel about a lot of this Chicago stuff - a lot of Jim O'Rourke records, Sea and Cake, Tortoise, Shrimp Boat, etc. "Judy, Judy" is the little tender tit in the center of this record that gets my attention and sticks out in my memory. Kinda sounding like classic rock radio staple America without being quite so discouraging (America makes me feel as if its not really worth it to do anything at all, ever, for any reason). And how can you argue with the too-polite-to-be-insistent drums coupled with the lyric "Judy, Judy, come on..."? You can't. You just get sort of exasperated and sink back into the couch. The sweet sound of failing up.

Andrew Thompson - "We're In Business"/"Don't Get Down" from Egad!

Tho the rest of his debut record is just as awful as the title would suggest, these two tracks push thru the rest in order to bring the heavy 1983 vibe. "We're In Business" is the whitest Off the Wall outtake and probable contender for "Best non-Parliament/Funkadelic Song About Robots". "Don't Get Down" probably would've been song of the year until I found out that the chorus lyric is in fact "Cheer up, Isaac" instead of the infinitely more brilliant and ambiguously gorgeous "Sheila...Isaac". Still, an affecting little synthpop track that would dovetail nicely with "We're In Business" had the two been released as a 7" instead of a full length. Strangely, this is on the same label that gave us Edan's Beauty and the Beat record that had all the heads going "hells yes."

Mike Jones & Paul Wall + Britney Spears - "Tippin' Toxic" (Hollertronix Mash) from Hollertronix Vol. 2

I am still not 100% sure about what Hollertronix is, exactly (record label? studio? artist collective? website distribution center?), I only know that when I see Hollertronix attached to something, I give it a listen. And tho this sometimes unsettling mash-up is far from the best I've found with that tag, it's an oddly compelling track right from the get-go. It does miss Britney's tech-fucked vocal fills, but the "Tippin'..." chorus slides in so perfectly around Bloodshy and Avant's brilliant string hook (possibly the most genius hook since Mary Wells' strings/handclaps/vibes combo on the stupendously unbefuckinglievable "Honey Boy" single) that it's hard to really fault any of the clunkiness of the verses. And whenever I put this on, I can't help but see that really bored-looking chick from the "Still Tippin'" video - you know, the one dancing in front of the turntable in the yard - compelling, if rather confusing.

I was gonna put up the track here, but since YSI isn't cooperating, I'll put it up later along with some more song favorites. But for now, the internet and I need to rest.

A comment on the previous post

2005-12-20T17:32:00.000-06:00

Now that I can make it past the first 3 bars of this song without getting all emotional, I feel it necessary to mention to anyone interested in the song that Tom Waits does eventually come in to add his voice to the proceedings, which changes the meaning of the titular phrase to mean something more along the lines of "I use Jesus' blood to stave off the impending spectre of eternal doom and damnation...bwahahaha." Still, tho, a powerful little excerpt, even if I would like, now, for there to be a "tramp" version and a "Tom Waits" version. Ah, well.

Soon, I will be talking about "Things That I Liked in Twenty oh Five" and the corresponding "Things I Really Could Have Done Without in Twenty oh Five".

Also in the works is a special project, undertaken to honor dance music and Continental theory. We'll see if I have the stamina/ability to complete it.

I am fucking sobbing

2005-12-20T04:57:00.000-06:00

I am not kidding right now. I can't remember the last time I did this. My hand is covered in snot and my glasses have just fogged up. I can't explain this. I want to put this song on a CD and mail it to everyone I have ever known. This is so fucking cheesy.

Yeah, I took this shit from another blog. Yeah, I've only listened to it three times. Maybe this is shitty. Whatever. I wish I had this kind of faith in anything.

Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Goddamn it. I've gotta go dry off the underside of my beard.

The f[cr]unk accent/2

2005-12-16T03:09:00.000-06:00

I'm sort of feeling guilty, because it seems like the only reason I have this little lot in the middle of the luminiferous ether is so that I can do year-end summaries. My summary of 2004 was pretty damn fine, if I may say so, and I may, since I can delete any comments that say otherwise, yet I haven't really done anything (other than an unfinished analysis of Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein) with nearly as much aplomb - excepting, of course, dependent-clause-twister (my own Joycean game, (cf. M. Foster's paper "Oh! The places young polits will go!" for more fine examples) not nearly as much fun for you - witness fending thru this textfarm). In any event, I keep hoping that all will change, but since I cannot seem to get my shit together enuff to establish a solid hour of mixtapery for WTUL's temporary stacks (methinks I'm agonizing too much), I cannot reasonably hope to get it together in time to develop a good body of work, a voice, a paycheck, etc., before Greenland turns into a mountain dew slurpee and we all duck and cover into Colorado. By which I mean next summer, because all you fuckwits and yr four-wheel drive vehicles are the stones in this glass greenhouse of putrid vomit (see, Joyce would've said "snotgreen") and I shouldn't be throwing up because I'm not doing much better in my Chevy brand-name-was-filed-off-along-with-serial-number-because-I'm-pretty-sure-I-got-it-hot -off-of-the-same-Puerto-Ricans-I-got-my-dog-from. His name is Tristan and the car doesn't have a name because it sucks cocks and the passenger side door frightens people when they open it. We blame all of his eccentricities on his Puerto Rican heritage but none of his cuteness. This is because deep down all white people are racist fucks who can't be trusted to wipe their own asses, much less run a legislature. Not that I'm saying black people or chicanos or latinos or asians would be any better. The only people qualified to govern are blue libertarians. If we're going to have the end of the world, it may as well surge forth with a guy from Montana made of silver.

How did I get here?

Luckily for me (but unluckily for you, since I can't guarantee internet connection consistently), I'm only here in PHX for a scant 11 days before I return to the Irish Channel and begin looking for different things with water lines to throw up on. The soundtrack will be Neil Young's "Song X", but that's not at all what I came to show you today - I came for funk, and "Song X" is a pirate song, and only good for getting wasted and vomiting on flood damage.

Actually, that's somewhere between funk and crunk, which means I'm rethinking my original mission.

Neil Young - Song X

Now see, if I were sleeping well, you wouldn't be privy to all this. Buy this record if you dare.

The funk accent/1

2005-12-11T02:54:00.000-06:00

It's really been too long. And I don't say that as greeting, I say that as self-flagellation - it's really been too long.

Well, I'm making my return for any and all selves interesting in contorting - with a new series! Yes, the last series was left off, but just like all zombified swamp-dwellers it's coming back, more dissolved than ever.

For now tho, I'm opening my heart to funk in unlikely places. It's a little-known fact that a lot of bands are actually funk bands. I bet that you, for instance, didn't know that. Well, it's true. And we'll start with a wonderful little example from an oft-overlooked "funky" era, the early 1980s.

Normally, a record called Discipline wouldn't be a harbinger of funk to come. Of course, normally a record called Larks Tongues in Aspic wouldn't be a harbinger of good music to come. So, with King Crimson, we have to take things in stride and open our minds as best we can. We also must consider that, at the time of this incarnation of KC, the band had been on haitus for the better part of a decade, and had just added erstwhile head talker Adrian Belew. I shouldn't have to tell you about his role, but if I do, you'll love (one of) my next posts.

When I first began listening to a lot of records from the early 80s era, one of the first things I had to get over was the "clean chorus" effect that guitarists seemed to love. I think it might've had something to do with cocaine. Or art school. Or the pernicious influence of Billy Ocean. Even on the best clean chorus-ed songs, the effect teeters very close to dismantling whatever good songwriting has worked so hard to assemble, like Neu!'s "Cassetto" without the helpful backstory.

King Crimson - Elephant Talk

Here, Frippertronics work their magic on a cleanly chorused guitar by coming very close to wiping it out. Damn. But the very slight off-kilteredness of the guitars is one of the very few instances where the extreme chorusing is actually put to somewhat effective use (not effective enough to warrant turning the "depth" knob past 4, but you know).

King Crimson's The ConstrucKtion of Light is one of the only records I've ever smashed to pieces on the floorboard of my car, so be careful when navigating the rough seas. I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt.

Start here. You can overcome yr fear of the early-70s double LP later.

Briefly

2005-11-28T14:13:00.000-06:00

Sometimes, I think there almost has to be a God. And that he loves this shit.

$$: "The piece that fell was over the figure of Authority, near the peak of the building's pediment, and to the right of the figure of Liberty, who has the scales of justice on her lap."

If this was in a novel, it would be too ham-fisted.

----------------

Sorry. I know, I know. I'm getting there.

Holy Shit!

2005-11-09T22:26:00.000-06:00

No more staring at GEMM's $90 asking price for a scratched-ass CD. No more pondering purchasing Catch the Breeze when I already have 80% of the tracks on it. No more futile attempts to find a torrent. On November 24, Castle rereleases the long out-of-print Pygmalion by Slowdive. Hooray!

Sweet shit, this is apparently the beginning of a reissue project from Castle. If I'm going to be dropping $40 for two discs of rarities and two discs that I already own (the former being the inevitable b-sides and outtakes bonus discs, the latter being the actual remastered Just For a Day and Souvlaki), then I'll be needing a bit more, perhaps, than a waitstaff position.

This month's special: $15 handjobs. Come and get 'em.

Some Common Ground in New Orleans, but for how long?

2005-11-04T20:26:00.000-06:00

Down in the 9th Ward, it's good to see that some folks are doing something. I've got only the details from nola.com and their own promotional website, but it looks like a group of neocrunchers is setting up shop in the lower 9 and Algiers - with a free health clinic and various other types of aid, such as tool rentals, mold abatement, and, it seems, polemics.

Of course, the actual physical presence of these people in the city can only be a good thing, and their intention to stay for the long haul is also a good thing. But how long will their trust funds last?

Is that a cheap shot? Maybe. Maybe not, though. I believe we ought to be acknowledging the problems present now, before the storm, and historically in the city of New Orleans - problems that existed mostly for poor, black (emphatically so, it has been said) citizens of the parts of the city that few not residing in ever saw, unless, of course, they were going to Spellcaster (I'm, in fact, surprised Common Ground didn't just set up their base camp there). As I said before, poverty was a pervasive and isolating phenomenon.

Even tho I'm certain these people have had a lot of experience with racial tension and poverty at Oberlin - or that they've at least taken a hip-hop dance class, and, probably, dressed up as Ali G this halloween - I'm still somehow not confident that this Alternative Spring Break: New Orleans is anything more than an immersion class writ large.

The best thing I can say about their Katrina manifesto is that it wasn't a Katrina Mynifesto and had no humyn rights declarations. But the talk about solidarity and "multi-directional communications networks" is exactly what I just finished reading articles on for lit theory. Not that lit theory is bad, just that it won't help you butt heads with Orleans Parish School Board on when you should reopen a gutted middle school. And that's where the real long-term community solidarity is going to come from.

[PS & BTW, how, exactly, are they a community group?]

Common Ground is doing good work, from the pictures I've seen and the accounts I've read. If I were back in the city, I'd probably seriously consider pitching in (this is the point at which I get labelled part of the problem). But I'm not back in New Orleans yet. However, I will be two months from now, and I will be two years from now.

So I repeat my earlier question: will their trust funds last that long? I hope so. Rue de la Course could use their patronage.

Dissolved/2

2005-10-30T04:33:00.000-06:00

When the world comes crashing down (or the oceans crashing up, depending), I wonder if it's going to be with wind flurries and swirling air currents or if it's going to be atomized via CNN. I vote for the latter, but that's only because disaster seems to happen that way to us middle-class white kids with mobility. I'm hinting at something now. Heavy wink and nod. Think several letters ago. Several alphabets ago, actually. Several ages ago.

But lets say it does happen with air currents and wind flurries and buildings shuddering, turning to dust, boats run aground. Ground run asea. I picture music boxes in childhood bedrooms all going off at the same time while the water rises/the land sinks/the wind blows shit over. I've been Bruckheimered, we all have, maybe - the common mythology of precious sentimentality. Dial 0 for Barthes.

I've been thinking a lot about the end of the world these past few months, what with hurricanes and earthquakes and mudslides and scientists. Sometimes I make peace with it and sometimes I don't. But it's kind of like when I started actually thinking about what it means to die and not exist anymore. One night I thought about it for about 45 minutes - thought about not existing, that is (I know, emo, bullshit, French, whatever, &c.) - and got so completely terrified that I resolved never to think about it for any length of time again. By and large, I've maintained that commitment.

Whenever I pull close to being ok with impending doom, it sounds something like this. And the optimistic part of me includes the afterconversation with landlords. Because when I was getting my atomized mass disaster via Wolf and his 900 TVs, I didn't think about my landlords. But a month later, there they were.

Disco Inferno - Footprints in the Snow

It's all just as beautiful and noisy, so get it here, if you can't find it anywhere else (tho I think One Little Indian may sell it).

--------------------

In case you didn't notice, a series is beginning to take shape. There are a couple more serieses being readied, with new records ahoy. Well, not new new, but new to me and (hopefully) new to you. More to come in the Dissolved series.

Dissolved/1

2005-10-28T02:43:00.000-05:00

Water keeps rising, like cartoonish. Like pouring over walls and making whitecaps with its own force a little down the street. In their garage, these kids keep playing. The water pools around their feet, soaks their shoes and the bottoms of their amps, but this is one of those pop songs. You don't stop those pop songs - not for anything. If you've ever started playing one in a garage, you know. The shitty reverb off the garage door and the car next to the space you cleared out start to work.

The water reaches the high E, this kid lays off it. But, you know, this is cartoon-quick. The whole guitar's swamped. But you don't stop these pop songs. The strings rust and rattle, you know, cartoon-quick. But physics has never stopped a pop song. The strings rattle and the sound moves a bit slower, thicker, numb-tongued thru the water. It smooths the whitecaps.

And this pop song, you know, it's one of those. If you've ever played one, you know that a split finger, broken string, missed 2 or 4, isn't going to stop it. These kids play a little harder, a little faster, to break up the water. When they float up and run out of room at the ceiling, flat on their backs, like a lazy jam session on the floor. The cello takes a few breaths. The violin takes a few breaths. The guitar's gonna make it, but just barely. He finishes up with his last little bit.

That's the way to go: for one of those pop songs. Those pop songs can beat anything, even death. Especially death.

Ride - Vapour Trail

Buy it here. And what a fucking cover.

Je m'appelle Serge Gainsbourg avec synthesizers

2005-10-22T20:02:00.000-05:00

At least, that's what I imagine Le Grand Magistery's Toog would say if I began a conversation with him, preferably via a translator, over croissants.

I picked up this record a week or two ago because it was $0.95 (tho fucking 3.95 with shipping) and because somebody called it something along the lines of "great French electronic music". Between Gooom Disques and Stereo Total, it would seem that something about France just lends itself well to preciousness and electronics. Maybe it's all the vacation time.

6633 (the record in question, BTW) is certainly recommended for fans of the aforementioned Gainsbourg - persons amongst whom I wish I could count myself, but aside from "Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus" with Jane Birkin I really couldn't care less - and possibly Of Montreal and Matmos, in that it's electronic and a bit cutesy from time to time. The vocals are totally Gainsbourg, though I have no idea what he's saying (nor Gainsbourg). It's something about the tone of the vocals.

So, I bring you my favorite track on the record so far, which it displeases me to announce is the first one. I have always had a problem with records wherein the first track shows itself to be unequivocably the best, which is very much the reason that you've heard nothing here about a record I'd been looking forward to listening to for a while, A.R. Kane's 1989 record i. "A Love From Outer Space" is a million machines making beautiful pop music after coasting to Jupiter for 50 years and getting bored and then the rest of the record was made by Dave. You were right not to do it, Hal. Human, all too human. Just average.

I digress. The first track on here is a lovely little odd pop song that lasts for just shy of two minutes, and while other songs cop its off-kilter lexicon, they just don't quite have it (although I had high hopes, too, for the last track, called "L'Amour Dentaire" - "Dental Love"). It's just a touch creepy, and the translation in the insert indicates that the lyrics are about a boyfriend creeping around his girl's house, accidentally going into her parents' bedroom, and then crawling into a hole in the garden to hide, naked. Not bad.

Toog - Le Jugement

Get it here.

Go! Team in Tempe

2005-10-19T02:48:00.000-05:00

My ears are overflowing with tiny metallic wasps' nests, which can only mean one thing: that some lucky bastard has played Claudius to my sleeping King. And we'll call the harmonium quicksilver.

Go! Team performed tonight at this venue (in a fucking stripmall) called "The Clubhouse" that I would link to but for the indignity. It was fun, tho much noisier than I would have expected. They still haven't learned to master mixes for their live shows, but theirs is not a music that lends itself to mastery. No, theirs lends itself to leaping wildly, booty dancing, high-speed chases, purple blazers for no reason and, apparently, horrible opening acts.

Yes, local scions Peachcake continue to offend my ears, just as they did the first time I heard them. To summarize, which is what I do best, if you take the worst elements of a Flaming Lips show and a Quintron show and combine them with the beats that Explogasm thought were too tasteless to use, then you'd have a close approximation of the musical abortion that is Peachcake.

Also, the very cute and half-purple The Grates are proving that while it may have taken 15 years for hair metal to make it to Saudi Arabia, it only took 5 for The Yeah Yeah Yeahs to make it to Brisbane. And they went and got all cute instead of singing about dicks.

What we got was an opening act shitty dance-off that was impossible to score and even more impossible to win. Some of my personal favorites:

"The oh-it's-my-shoe" - performed by The Grates - Used to good effect during that song that sounded like "Maps". The difference? Karen O would've rubbed her vagina on something instead of hopping and pointing at her footwear.

"The shaving-in-a-bucket" - performed by Peachcake - Their lack of facial hair didn't stop Peachcake's lead singer and...extraneous guy...from shaving over buckets with electric razors while their Fruity Loops played a kick drum for 7 minutes.

"The leaping-on-beat" - performed by The Grates - This was most effective during the song that sounded like "Art Star".

"The running-thru-the-crowd-playing-a-melodica" - performed by Peachcake - I do not remember a single song during which this didn't happen. You think I'm kidding, don't you?

"The mod-dress-so-mod-hand-dance" - performed by the Grates - This looked best on the song that sounded like "Bang".

This is how we all lose. I was so sore from disapproval that I almost didn't want to stay for Go! Team. That, and Tempe's draconian no indoor smoking laws. Fuck Tempe. Fuck Peachcake.

The Grates I actually have no beef with, I just sorry for them. They're one of those permanent opening bands, kinda like New Orleans' own The Public. Both quite likeable, tho.

This is my first show attended since the hurricane. Feel sorry for me.

My English I teacher would be ashamed.

2005-10-18T00:28:00.000-05:00

Not only of my tardiness, but of my form.

Last (Jesus, was it Thursday already?) post was essentially my attempt to convince myself that I have not been entranced by the inside of my own eyelids for the past few months. I did, indeed, listen to some records that came out this year, but might I say that nothing has really, really reached out and grabbed me? Xiu Xiu was disappointing, Akron/Family was good but had (and has, I suppose) a whole lot of distracting elements (such as the track "Ak Ak Was the Boat They Sailed In On"), and I can't really think of any other records immediately from this year. LCD Soundsystem and Juan Maclean? They burned out faster than "The Situation Room". Ditto for M.I.A.

And today's post is some kind of attempt to convince myself that I'm doing something as valuable as Split teaching hungry, cold children how to speak the language of the hegemon. And it appears we haven't been listening close enough. But I'm hooked.

Plus, he's in Europe! Can't argue with that, no indeed.

A great article today about academia that probably won't move you unless you've cleaned up the vomit of a prominent university professor's dog for $2 an hour. And tho we're all tired of hearing about it, who doesn't love taking on the women's studies department? My taste for it has increased exponentially since reading Gardner's "A Midsummer Night's Dream: 'Jack shall have Jill;/Naught shall go ill'" and Montrose's "Shaping Fantasies: Configurations of Power and Gender in Elizabethan Culture". It's not that I disagree, just that I don't care.

We need more feminists like Kate Bush. Take that "we" however you like. When Montrose produces The Dreaming, then I'll read beyond chapter III. Tit for tat, as it were. As it were.

And, in keeping with the "I love 1981" theme that I've seemingly been running for a while, I have to mention that I'm currently listening to David Byrne's The Catherine Wheel for several days now. It's a delightful record in that he never bothered to a) make the tracks flow together or b) separate them out. Ambient soundscapes abruptly end to be replaced by Middle-Eastern percussion and tlinky electronic bleeps. I haven't given it all the time yet, but you can imagine how I'm feeling at this point. It rests somewhere between My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Remain in Light, which, as you may imagine, oft finds honey as a sauce to sugar. I need time to ungoo myself.

Speaking of sugar, 3 tablespoons may sound like a lot, but trust me, the nam plah needs it unless you enjoy anchovy noodles. Not sure? Do you enjoy the smell of your bellybutton lint?

I'm going to pour some sugar on your tongue anyhow, even tho I had indicated that this wasn't what I was going to do and now I'm doing it anyway.

David Byrne - "My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)"

Buy it here

And tho Orbis Quintus already picked it up (see the linkbar), I'm going to repeat that there's one of those lists floating around now of books that Time thinks you oughta read. Interestingly, I've only read 17 of them, but am currently reading 1 (Pale Fire by Nabokov) and just purchased two (Snow Crash by Stephenson and White Noise by DeLillo). Several more are on my wish list, including "The Crying of Lot 49", "The Sportswriter" and "Ubik". I've heard that's the best Philip K. Dick from some sources, but my PKD source, who knows who he is and currently is owed one copy of "Counter-Clock World", has adamantly refused to qualify that one. So we'll see.

Hopefully I can get another thing up here without waiting almost a week. Any thing, really.

Sexy Beast (Lame)

2005-10-13T23:05:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's really easy to tell someone what is quote-unquote important about the music I like. Whether it's a justification game (the one I played with myself for about 6 months before giving over and putting "Toxic" on every mixtape I made) or actual historical contingency (which winds up sounding like a biblical geneaology; and the Sex Pistols begat Joy Division, who begat New Order, Fad Gadget, and the Cure, who begat Echo, son of Bunnymen, etc.), there is this thing that obsessive collectors do where we try to place records in context and then examine how they differ or create the context in which we find them. Whether or not they actually had anything to do with the narrative into which we put them is sort of irrelevant, it's a tool for ordering the world. This, of course, becomes more imminently necessary as one's iTunes begins to bulge and buckle at around 10,000 songs. The only way you're going to remember any more than maybe 150 records offhand is by placing them in narrative context: this begat so and so, maybe I'd like to listen to that today.

Which is why records like Nathan Michel's The Beast tend to sit for long periods of time unused until I stumble around and find them, blindly, without intention. Because, how, really, do you put a record like this in context? I was trying for a while, but as far as I got was Steely Dan.

Nathan Michel is like a cubist painting of Steely Dan. And it's pretty; arms sprouting from heads and shoes with disembodied legs in them aside, this is a pop record made by a food processor. So there's not much separation of flavor. You get it all or you get it none.

This is a friendly record on which things happen. The melodies in and of themselves wouldn't be a challenge to anyone who has heard any crisply produced pop record - hence the Steely Dan (the jazz inflections that occasionally flavor the puree also reek of the Dan) but Jim O'Rourke isn't inappropriate, either - but The Beast uses the same vocabulary with different syntax.

I'm gonna have to show you, aren't I?

Nathan Michel - A to B

Rikki don't lose that intro. See what I'm saying? This is possibly the most unfucked song on this record - scratch that, this is positutely the most unfucked song on this record. But it's a lot of fun, nonetheless. I mean, wah. Who, other than Sr. Chinarro, can get away with using wah? (We'll get to Sr. later, when I'm ready.) The point is, this a tremendously interesting little tune. But I'm gonna have to show you something else to convince you to buy this record, I fear.

Nathan Michel - Planet

Goddamn, man. It's just a Stereolab tune, but with somebody falling asleep atop the pitchshifter. And that's awesome. And, actually, it's only really a Stereolab track in construction - which could be equally well applied to any number of krautrock bands or anybody else who eschews linear songwriting for lots of things at once. But this track is probably the best example of why The Beast is such a fucking record.

Plus, to make things better, the record's on out-ass pseudo-electronic label Sonig, which states its mission as creating "...a space in which new terms for music can be located." Looks like somebody got their master's degree and a record label.

But fuck-serously, get this record, which is one of the better to come out this year. I like to think I'm so past ranking, but I'm not, so there you have it, if you need quantitative and comparable schemata in order to get you to buy records.

So, yeah, buy it here, unless you buy it thru Sonig or somewhere else, which is just as good.

Soon enough, we'll be talking about feminism. Stick around for that if you'd like to call me a pig.

"Post-Music" Music Primer II

2005-10-07T04:21:00.000-05:00

My brain feels ready to cleave in two. I think this means I need to leave this town, but it may mean that I need to stop pogoing between Richard Rorty's antiessentialism and the vast libraries of everything else. Blunted.

Anyway, Post-Main exploration, I felt like I'd short-changed those of you who might otherwise be inclined toward picking up a new record. Though Main's Motion Pool is certainly a good one to start with, it's not the record that grabbed my attention right off the bat. The record that really opened the door to me as far as "music my brother calls 'post-music'" is concerned exploded onto ContortYrself all the way backin December.

I immediately associate this record in my head (then as now) with New Orleans fog. Mirages is a viscerally heavy record, almost oppressive in its density. There's a grit there, too, like vines and mud on limestone walls. It's not a swamp record, not the fog of Dr. John's Gris-Gris, which summons evil women to crawl out of Bayou St. John and conjures demons on horseback past Congo Park. This fog is sifted thru skyscrapers. It's just as menacing on Poydras Street as Jackson Square or Tchopitoulas. Or the Lower 9 for that matter. It speaks thru the mouths of news anchors as much as mystics. That buzz might be a transistor radio or a satellite in orbit. That fuzz might be music underwater or it might be cabin pressurization. Those guitars might as well be sighs.

"Incurably Optimistic!" is just that: terminal. If there's any hope at the end of things, then that hope is the same kind of oscillating slow-shifting organ note. Whether the end creeps up or pounces, it will envelop. I can't say whether this is warm or cold, viscous or vaporous. It just is. And on nights like tonight, when my brain is worrying itself to no end and thinking in two directions - like past and future, like that yeah - sometimes the end needs to come in an wrap it up. Like cabin pressurization. Like the end.

They'll get it for you at Aquarius. Search for "Hecker".

"Post-Music" Music Primer

2005-10-04T22:52:00.000-05:00

Anybody that has listened to my (former) WTUL show, or ridden in the car with me, has usually found occassion to ask about how the hell I tell the difference between the various CDs I own that seem to mostly involve clicking and buzzing of various frequencies. My brother referred to it as "post-music", a title which I don't wholly reject. A lot of it is ambient, some of it not so much, but it all owes a debt to Brian Eno and Throbbing Gristle. I was thinking for today, since I can't think of much else to do, that I go thru a few of the artists that I think are most powerfully prescient in the genre my little brother dubbed "post-music". My initial plan was to put up some MP3s for yr sampling pleasure, but I don't think I'll do it all at once. We'll see. I haven't planned this yet. Onward, then, for as long as I feel like writing.

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Main - Motion Pool, 1994 (Beggars Banquet)

Buy it here.

I haven't heard much of Main's other work, but they descend from a metal outfit as far as I can tell. This is about as "musical", with one exception, as this stuff gets. They call their compositions (but with these guys you can actually call them "songs" without stretching too much from common usage) "drumless space". Consider these guys the Radiohead of post-music. They generally like to start with midrange droning static and build from there, but unlike a lot of these acts, they aren't afraid to use some actual guitars that sound like guitars, drums, and even audible and non-moaning vocals. For the uninitiated, this record is probably one of the more accesible in terms of being noisier than Sonic Youth but not nearly as academic as, say, LaMonte Young, or as abrasive as, say, Rubber O Cement. Not that I actually like Rubber O Cement, I'm just saying.

In any event, this record has got a lot of different looks, from the proto-industrial of "Core" and "Crater Scar' to the more ambient "Liquid Reflective". A fair amount of dub is buried under the static of this record, so if you find yourself ever reaching for a Pole record (who is iffy as far as meriting a mention here, he's almost too melodic) then you might like this Main record. I don't know if there's any truth in it, but I would be very surprised if Pole had never heard it.

I'm already exhausted, it's been a long week, so hopefully I'll continue this later, and put up some samples when I'm more feeling able.

New additions.

2005-10-03T20:17:00.000-05:00

Taking a break from taking a break from engaging with things to do a bit of housekeeping here at ContortYrself, not that I'm at all confident that such things are important right now. Anyway, you may notice that the linkbar (I like that better than blogroll, which sounds like what happens to overweight fifth graders on the playground, and I would know) has been updated with some new names. This is to reflect the expanding focus - which makes little to no sense, but disregard that - of ContortYrself. Among the additions are friends, notably Hot Air Balloons' Split Foster, a tremendous human being in the Nietzchean sense and author of an extremely engaging travel blog, as well as one of my very best friends. I also added Rod Aminian over at his LiveJournal hovel. Usually, I'd be apprehensive about placing a personal blog link here, but Rod remains consistently engaging, even aside from the voyeurism. Add this to the extremely quoted Mike Slaven over at Newsthoughts and you've got a nice little contingent.

I also added Orbis Quintus, not only because he's in Baton Rouge and has deliciously academic sympathies, but also because his most recent post has a bad thing to say about Christopher Hitchens, and just about anyone who can recognize that Hitchens is a bloated corpse of dessicated Anglo-American journalism is delightfully welcome to sit at my linkbar.

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I'd initially intended to write a bit on why you should go over to the Stypod immediately and find their delightful trove of house musics, but in reality you should check them every day, so let this be your one warning. They are responsible for introducing me to the finest song of the new millenium, Polmo Polpo's epochal "Kiss Me Again and Again" as well as my favorite Muslimgauze track, from 1999's Box of Silk and Dogs, "Help Afghanistan to Grow More Poppies".

Also, I'd thought about commenting on Harriet Miers' nomination, but Slate covered it here, here, and, peripherally, here better than I could, though you also must avoid a Hitchens story - be careful where you click. But, really, everybody but Fleshbot has weighed in so far. And they're on their way.

I really must return to the grind of multiple articles about citizenship, but hopefully, the expansion of ContortYrself doesn't sit ill with my three or four readers. I'll get to posting some music when something really compelling happens, which hasn't been the case for the past few weeks.

Oldfield's "Citizenship and community" & peripheral concerns

2005-10-03T05:03:00.000-05:00

I've got multiple piles of books that needs finishing, though I can't really seem to couple the time with the motivation to finish them up. You'd think sitting here and listning to Muslimgauze that I'd do something, but instead I'm sitting here and listening to Muslimgauze; not to say that sitting here and listening to Muslimgauze is non-existant, but merely that it isn't the class of activity most elevate to the class of "activity". Who says English needs fixing?

In short, I should've finished Catch-22 as well as Philosophy and Social Hope (Rorty) and Holy War, Inc., but instead I didn't finish any of them. Didn't even touch Rorty. This is disappointing, because I have yet to finish Pale Fire, yet to start Rememberance of Things Past and thus am nowhere near attempting a reread of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Also sitting and waiting are Carnap, Quine, Heidegger, Arendt, Jamaica Kincaid and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Clearly, I'm rapidly broaching worthlessness. However, I have made several runs thru my meagre collective of Musimgauze, and particuarly enjoy the track called "Help Afghanistan to Grow More Prosperous" from 1999's Keffeen Head. I like to listen to it while reading Holy War, Inc. Also filling time have been Van Morrison's Contractual Obligation Sessions, a LaMonte Young record that I believe is called Pre-Tortoise Dream Music, Vol. 1 (but that I ripped from WTUL and was never quite informed of the title), and the new T.A.T.U. single called "Cosmos (Outer Space)" which is much better than it has any right to be.

On the other hand, I have finished reading an article by Adrian Oldfield called "Citizenship and community: Civic republicanism and the modern world", which is a pretty tremendous placental gumbo of Rousseau, de Tocqueville, Mill, John Rawls, and Aristotle. I can't really tell if a point is ever made; it is asserted that community is a good thing, then that citizenship is a good thing, then that we need the one to get the other, and then, in an Isaiah Berlin-esque blast of maddening commonsense, that education is good. Of course, at no point do we really break out of the cycle of using citizenship to justify community or commnunity to justify citizenship, but it seems to make sense while your brain is getting Iron Maidened in the middle of it. Specifically engineered to miss anything vital, so the metaphor tropes off into the distance.

And, still, a Shakespeare play plus one paper, as well as a paper somewhere in the middle of this Oldfield article and three more, are all slated to slide of my loins by this Thursday. We'll see about that. Luckily, the philosophy course that I thought would be Continental, then became (briefly) mathematical logic, then became analytical, has become cancelled for this week, leaving me a whole Wednesday on which to write the Shakespeare paper. Given the level of analyticity of the given Shakespeare course, I expect it should take little more than a quick squat to finalize the character study required.

A trip back home to New Orleans is in the works, but not until there is water. And not on the stoop, either. I need to bargain with the steaks my roommate bought that apparently became a sort of black fluid as of two weeks ago - I desire that they leae peaceably. I also need to see about continuing to rent my apartment. Maybe the fluid can pick up part of the rent. Now I just need a time.

For some reason, I'm glad Slim Goodies reopened.

2005-09-27T23:12:00.000-05:00

I spoke to my friend Muscle today, who is currently exiled in DC and hating every minute equally as ferociously as I am hating Phoenix. Each time we talk, we inadvertently expose the ridiculousness of the whole situation; we bitch and moan about having to stay in the godforsaken cities where we are, but really, we didn't lose so much. Well, M's family probably lost their house. So actually, he lost a lot and it's really just me who's bitching about nothing.

But anyway, we tend to oscillate wildly between the best and worst case from conversation to conversation, changing roles each time (today I was the optimist). In any event, for the first time he brought up what happens if we can't go back, because of school, for over a year. We sort of both felt like moving somewhere Northeast - or at least not where we currently are. He mentioned New York, which wouldn't be a bad place to be, I suppose. Of course, we'd both prefer to simply loft the city of New Orleans in a hot air balloon, letting it circle the globe seasonally. Permanent vacation.

And for every moment of desperation, there's an equal moment of hope; the selfish thought that we'll go back and help build back something, wherever we can. Maybe it'll be Nick's. Maybe we'll just hold on to some sort of memory of the city "the way it was". Maybe someday I'll be one of those old guys in Mandina's, if Mandina's still exists. For now, I'm looking forward to getting back and turning the amp up loud.

The St. Charles Avenue Pub opened back up today. Slim Goodies is open again. I'm feeling pretty good about that. I was even happy to see Fat Harry's being cleaned.

And Eddie Compass resigned. Good riddance, but not for anything having to do with the hurricane. Just for being a shitty chief.

If I wrote about this shit every time I thought about it, this space would be nothing but blubbery rambling. Luckily for whomever keeps riling up my hit counter by 3 or 4 at at time (Hello, adbots!), I'm totally capable of maintaining an ironic distance from it all. I can disappear so far up my ass, in fact, that the light disappears altogether.

I'll try to find something meaningful to write about for later.

the Amazon

2005-09-25T22:28:00.000-05:00

I spend some days poking around amazon.com, for various reasons, not least of which is that I'm hoping, thru sheer force of will, to get their "Recommendations Wizard" (RW, if you like) to begin making intelligent decisions rather than throwing 19 early 90s Kate Bush records at me because I bought, and rated highly, Hounds of Love. And goddamn, I do love Hounds of Love. I love The Dreaming, too, but that doesn't mean I'm snatching up her whole catalog all nimbly-bimbly. In fact, I can't really forsee a world in which I wind up buying many more of Kate's records. That's not the point. THATS NOT THE POINT! The point is this: why call it a recommendations wizard? It's neither recommending nor is its skill anywhere near what I would call "Wizardry". At best, it is a "Purchasing Aggregator", which is much more dystopian and one of the reasons my dreams are filled with flying robots that find me in my bedroom.

So, of course Amazon isn't going to advertise a "Purchasing Aggregator", for the reason listed above as well as many others. But, really, the RW is, tho addictive, really a lot more trouble than its worth. For instance, I bought a book recently called - actually, it doesn't matter what it's called (I can't remember) - it's about how "the Gift" is a concept removed from normal capitalistic exchange and how art factors into all that. I was really looking forward to reading it, but now its lost underneath Catch-22 and Pale Fire (I know, what is this, high school? Sorry, I was sleeping then, didn't read this stuff. I thought I liked ee cummings then - which I didn't.) In addition to a million other things and all the articles I'm reading for classes at ASU. But anyway, shortly after I bought this book, just about everything with "gift" in the title started showing up on my flying robot machine and overwhelming me. Now, I'm sort of interested in those things that breach normal rules of capitalistic exchange - I'm a fan of the Hayekian conception of the free market as a mover of information, but skeptical that it must exist - but I don't think I want to read 10 books about gifts. Maybe I do, but not now. I don't have the time.

The other thing that pisses me off about Amazon is the customer list. The customer list shows up on sidebars very frequently, and is just as infrequently useful. I often read lists of people's top whatever records, and I'm quite a fan of them, but only in as much as they give some insight into the person's listening habits. As it turns out, everyone on Amazon who as listened to Stereolab hates Radiohead and thinks that, by hating Radiohead, they are striking a blow for real elitism against all those fake kinds of elitism practiced by mouth-breathing members of the General American Public (GAP; thanks Slaven). I happen to think that you can not only like Radiohead and Stereolab at the same time (you can also like Doveman and Supersilent and Deerhoof and all those other oughta-be-two-words-but-is-heavier-because-its-one bands) but that you can maintain a healthy elitism regarding your Radiohead consumption. I mean, sure, Kid A went to number one on the US album charts, but only you caught the Eno refrence on "Treefingers". And before I get called on the "one word bandnames" rant, I didn't exempt my own high school incoherencies. I'm past that now. Mostly. But anyway, unless you're listening to more than 40 new (or newish) records a year, you probably shouldn't be making a list. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. If you're not well-versed on Kant, don't send contributions to an ethics journal.

In this way, too, we can maintain our elitism, Radiohead-appreciators. And in case you're wondering, I chose 40 so that I can still make a year-end list with plenty of wiggle-room, should I want to take it.

Just in case you were wondering, this weekend was filled with watching my home flood again and listening to copious quantities of Stereolab and Muslimgauze. And still reading Catch-22.

Apple vs. Warner Music Group?

2005-09-24T22:50:00.000-05:00

An article up today about the little spat occurring between Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Warner Music Group (WMG henceforth) CEO Edgar Bronfman. Apparently WMG is pushing for music downloads to be placed on a sliding price scale, which Jobs, perhaps rightly, characterizes as "greedy". There are a lot of issues at play here, but I want to focus on the money quote, reproduced here for your pleasure:

“To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers. The market should decide, not a single retailer,” said Mr. Bronfman. “Some songs should be $0.99 and some songs should be more. I don’t want to give anyone the impression that $0.99 is a thing of the past.”

Ah, the market. That glorious vehicle for delivery of goods and services. The problem is, the market has already decided how much people will pay for downloaded music. Napster, anyone? Innovation is still a part of the market even if you don't like it and it doesn't fit your business model. Now, of course, the music industry would like some protection for itself from the market, which has proven that a much smaller number of people will pay for the product that a record label delivers, which is, strictly speaking, a service-product.

That's right; record labels don't actually deliver anything in terms of a real product. When WMG releases a record, they are essentially a middleman between bands, studios, producers, promoters, advertisers, media outlets, and duplication services. To the best of my knowledge, there are very few labels that have in-house record-duplication services. WMG is not responsible for a single thing that you hold in your hand when you pick up a record at the store, other than some fronted capital. Basically, WMG floats a loan to your favorite band.

But whatever. That's a digression and not fundamentally important to the matter. What is important is that record labels, like a million other corporations on this planet, like to use "free market" as an excuse for "whatever is best for us". The market works both ways, as an information indicator to both parties - consumers and sellers - and everyone else peripherally invovled. Apparently, a lot of people decided that it was more worth their time to install KaZaa and its massive log of spyware onto their computers so that they didn't have to pay $18.99 for the two songs they wanted from that one record by the faceless band. A smaller, but equally important segment of the music consumer base, decided that their favorite bands deserved their money if they put out great records with beautiful packaging and a tracklist of solid songs that spoke to them.

I say all this as someone who doesn't download music, except from .mp3 blogs, and that's, of course, for sampling purposes only. But whatever. Just don't look for someone to protect you against a shifting market paradigm, part of the motion of a free market, and then invoke the very market you want protection from in order to justify it. Have some goddamn integrity.

Tom Waits on NO Benefit

2005-09-22T02:07:00.000-05:00

Apparently Tom Waits waded waist-deep thru a putrid puddle of jam bands to perform at Madison Square Garden for the New Orleans benefit show. He performed "Make It Rain", which is why I love Tom Waits with all my heart, though I sometimes forget this fact. If I can get an .mp3, I will violate my earlier statement about this not being an .mp3 blog anymore and put it up. If anyone has it, please do let me know.

Band camp

2005-09-18T19:53:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm just getting weak, but I was watching MTV2 today and very nearly teared up. Without any pretense at poesy, the horns in the Neptunes' "Hollaback Girl" quite literally thwart my meager attempts to lend some sort of imagery to them. If, as Shlovsky says, the making of literary language exists in the making unfamiliar of reality; in the destruction of the algebra of human thought wherein words are left unfinished and symbols in their place fill our discourse with half-ideas and shorthand, then "Hollaback Girl", in the sheer awfulness of its lyrical content (which extends, certainly, to the delivery, which, like swallowing bleach, has been known to induce tremors and vomiting but does, on the upshot, clean out one's system), defamiliarizes the unconscious musical legacy of a youth surrounded by half-baked appropriations of hip-hop and whatever the hell happened in the seventies that I don't understand. So, yes, my eyes blurred with tears today watching MTV2. Not that this is any comment on their respective merits, but I've never cried while listening to Future Days. Bananas, indeed.

Another shot of New Orleans, and thoughts on microlending

2005-09-15T21:27:00.000-05:00

If ever I had readers, they're certainly gone now. Nevertheless, at Contort Yrself I believe in nothing so much as the business of carrying on, despite what the past few months may have inconclusively demonstrated.

I just finished watching Bush's address from Jackson Square, and once I got past the urge to shout at the screen "Get out of my city!" I began to listen, for at least the policy-oriented portion of the address. Of course Bush began with the pledges for billions and billions of dollars - all of which is good but expected. He actually addressed the history of race issues in the city and in the South, which is good also, but I don't see anybody doing much of anything about it. I don't think his day tour of New Orleans (I would assume like a ghost tour, except with water and debris) has opened his eyes to the general nature of poverty in the South in some broader way.

It was his three policy intiatives that I mostly would like to comment on. First and foremost, he seemed to want to introduce an element of micro-lending, which I like very much. If anyone has ever read any of my essays (articles? columns?) over at Newsthoughts, you would see that for a while I was pretty hung up on microlending as a great solution to problems in areas where normal economic infrastructure doesn't exist. This isn't so much the case in New Orleans, but the issue is that many people haven't historically been involved so much in the existing infrastructure. If you microlend (such as Bush's second proposal, setting up worker accounts for training, job searching, and interim childcare), you accomplish two things. First, you put the money right in the hands of those who need it. Second, you engage people who otherwise might not be involved in the economic infrastructure. The biggest benefit to this plan for a city like New Orleans, however, is that these loans will reach those who will be left behind by insurance claims and the flood of tax breaks that Bush will certainly prescribe for the area. I'll address these in a moment.

The third proposal, an Urban Homesteading Act, is something that, on the surface of it, strikes me as a good idea. The Federal government will take Federal land, divide it up, and raffle it off, essentially, to low-income families. They must, in return, pledge to build on the land with the aid of either a mortgage or a charitable organization. I think if you couple this with some other local ideas - job counseling centers in these areas, perhaps mixed-use buildings (which have seen great success, as near as I can tell, in cities like Phoenix - where I'm staying now) with middle-income and low income housing and storefronts.

What I worry about most is the first proposal, the creation of what Bush is calling a "Gulf Opportunity Zone", which is one of those phrases that you know is full of troublesome riders. Sort of like "compassionate conservatism". Now, if I know Bush, and I think after 5 years I do, this will mean rampant tax cuts (Bush left the door open for not only small and minority owned business to recieve these breaks, but also "any employer" - meaning Wal-Mart as well might get a tax break) for any business that moves into the area. Along with these kinds of tax breaks, I'm sure that the Feds will mandate that cities lower some of their restrictions and resistance to national corporations. For anyone who has heard of New Orleans' long-standing resistance to Wal-Mart and other "outside" intruding businesses, this might not fly so well. I've heard rumblings also that they might wish to further lower Louisiana's already dismal local environmental standards, and the even more dismal national EPA ones.

If there's anything New Orleans doesn't need, it's more environmental degredation. It was costal erosion that helped cause some of this flooding to begin with.

And my final bitch-and-moan, which I deliver on the basis of a throwaway line in a recent NY Times article...actually, I don't even need to say it, I'll just quote the article and you can figure it out:

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government...

Here's the link. Fantastic. Now we can count on New Orleans being used to help sustain a permanent Republican majority. Of course, I haven't heard anything confirming this for sure, but if it is true, it is the first real and definitive sign that George W. Bush really doesn't even give a shit if disaster happens in the US. The last thing we need is his fixer leading the reconstruction.

So I hope that's actually false. But, I wouldn't put it past them.

If you'd like to replicate my current mind state, pull out your worn copy of Hank Williams' 24 Greatest Hits and loop "Mind Your Own Business" ---> "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)". Top it off with Gregory Isaacs.

Time isn't up to us.

2005-09-14T15:13:00.000-05:00

It's been very many months since I've done anything here, and for a great while I was very much dedicated to not ever touching it again, since the instant gratification I had hoped would come with web diffusion hadn't happened. Now, of course with different priorities (of course), I'm leaning towards coming back to the blog, though what form it will take is an issue that I still have to ponder. Certainly not an MP3 blog - that's too much work and I can't tell if anyone was actually downloading the tracks.

In any event, I'm refugeeing it and living with my mother in Arizona until December probably. Until I figure out something better to do here, I'm going to post, for anyone else in similar relative-comfort-all-things-considered like myself, a few of the records that have been constantly rotating thru the course of the past couple of weeks.

1. Talking Heads - Remain in Light
Tho it is rare that this record isn't in rotation, more recently it's been even on the docket while I listen to music thru iTunes. Usually, while I'm on the computer I tend to listen to music song-by-song as opposed to record-by-record, which is my MO when I'm in the car (as much out of convenience as any sort of metaphyiscal statement about the "appropriateness" of listening to records en totalé in the car. That said, it does seem more appropriate.) In any event, Remain in Light is one of those records that is somehow both bouyant and important, probably because it maintains an ironic distance from its own profundities - like Mr. Rogers reading Phenomenology of Spirit; "under the water, carry the water" - it's almost cute. "Facts don't do what I want them to." No, indeed they don't. And, of course, the cleverest thing about this record is putting the big release right at the beginning. I think, I'd really like to listen to the Talking Heads now, and then I put it in and immediately get the satisfaction of hearing "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" and bum-bum-bum....HA!. Before the curtain can even part, the "trained" animals are already out in the audience.

2. Dr. John - Gris-gris
A lot of people only know Dr. John from his post In the Right Place-era, which is very wrong. In the Right Place has a couple of good songs, but is nothing even close to the haunting, ramshackle gut-punch of Gris-gris. If Odelay was birthed from the swamp instead of LA, and if Beck actually liked both country and soul instead of pretending to for the purposes of Midnite Vultures, this would probably have been something like the sound. Except Dr. John's voice is, like, a million billion times better than Beck's. "I Walk on Gilded Splinters" makes me want to learn Creole. Also, it makes me wish that the I-10 wasn't obliterated, that my house on Magazine had water and power, and that Nick's wasn't under 4 feet of water. Again, facts don't do...

3. Bark Psychosis - Hex
"Absent Friend". Cheesy? Perfect?

I'll be doing more in the next few days to figure out what I'm doing. If you happen to have stopped here before, and are stopping here again, welcome back.

Just do the whole Midwest at once.

2005-05-02T16:49:00.000-05:00

It may be too soon to really make a valid judgement, but having heard a few tracks from the forthcoming Sufjan Stevens record, I can't say I'm tremendously impressed. Basically, if you liked Michigan (which I did, mostly) and dislike change (which I don't) then you will be completely happy with Illinois. It's the same pretty acoustic guitar/light percussion/delicately arranged/neat narrative stuff that he does so well, but the problem is that it's all he's done. I mean, I wasn't expecting post-rock or free-jazz, but a bit more expansion that what he's given us here. Again, I've only heard three tracks, so maybe the noise experiments are buried in the record.

On the other hand, "Casimir Pulaski Day" is probably the finest example, next to "Romulus", of what Stevens does so well - literate, slightly twee, lacily beautiful pop songs. Still, I can't shake the disappointment that this is virtually exactly like Michigan. I wonder if the tracking and pacing will still be the same. I mean, 50 states is ambitious, but if they're all the same album just retitled, then it won't really be that difficult. I'm holding out for Alaska. Glacial ice sheets? No downtrodden middle-class factory workers? How's he going to handle that? He'll have to do something different.

Why I am an English Major:

2005-04-23T23:31:00.000-05:00

Constant Analysis.

And, also, Louis Zukofsky.

Notes:
1) Benedict XVI, in addition to fulfilling further the prophesy of St. Malachy, has a very gentle, soothing voice when speaking in English. Also: was he wearing sandals under his robe? Ah, comfort.

2) I hate Lou Dobbs (racist). I hate Larry King (annoying). I hate Carlos Watson (grating). Most everyone else on CNN is ok.

3) Bruce Springsteen is an asshat. Did you watch Storytellers? Pompous asshat.

More will come at a later time.

Sometimes I think I'm getting a little frosty, myself.

2005-04-18T13:13:00.000-05:00

It's only been four years since the release of Cannibal Ox's The Cold Vein, so I don't feel too bad about failing to mention it or really listen to it in the two years now that I've owned it. However, it has reached critical mass in my brain, which means that I can't stop thinking about it, which means that this is now the time that I must speak on it to all of you.

Cannibal Ox is, in it's ideal state, a noble gas consisting of MCs Vast Aire and Vordul, and producer El-P. Now, a lot of people don't really count El-P as a member of Cannibal Ox, but these people are all idiots. If Cannibal Ox ever did anything without El-P, it wouldn't be anything remotely important (and, indeed, as the general consensus seems to be about Vast's own Look Ma...No Hands, I'm right, though I haven't actually listened to that record. I should be White House counsel.) The Cold Vein is, in addition to one of the most devastatingly titled records of the new millenium (unearthing the layers of meaning in that title would take most of a quarter in a 500-level lit seminar), the aural equivalent of being dunked repeatedly into an icy-cold fishtank filled with razors. While strapped down. To a splintery board.

Criticism: Vordul is not that great a rapper. In fact, his main role in CanOx isn't, it seems, to contribute anything of that great merit within the songs themselves - he pops off some poetry every now and again, but not with any regularity - but to foil Vast Aire. Vordul is your typical MC, the heads tend to like him a lot better, if every post on message boards can be believed. Vast, however, is another story. His flow is the sound of the first robot that can feel. He creates intricate webs of meaning and wordplay. As far as imagism goes, he's a very very close second to Kool Keith in Dr. Octagon mode, which is to say that he drops lines that make my face ache.

So we come to why Vordul is in CanOx. Think of it this way: Vast is T.S. Eliot constructing "The Waste Land". Vordul is Ezra Pound. As Vast constructs labrynthine paths of crumbling concrete and spiders, Vordul is weaving words around them, constricting Vast's metaphors and keeping them from running amok over the record's carefully considered, constructed, and detonated musical tracks, courtesy of El-Producto. Vordul and Vast are intimate as lovers on these raps. El-P makes their bed, lights some candles, catches the sheets on fire, adjusts the ropes. Vordul and Vast have to work together to untie the knots.

And the zero-point of their strengths, everything amazing and unbelieveable about CanOx, is displayed in the track "Iron Galaxy". Originally on a split with Company Flow (if I'm not mistaken), it's clearly the jumping-off point into the frozen darkness of The Cold Vein. I'm not going to describe it to you, because that would be impossibly worthless, but Vordul begins his most effective verses on the whole album (except maybe "The F-Word"), culminating in the setup "...come home, mad soon...little black girl got shot". Oh oh oh oh oh oh....here it comes!

AND IF THERE'S CRACK IN THE BASEMENT!!!!!

El drops in and you know what's coming next. It's louder than any explosion, it crumbles the very air around my head like a black hole halo. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

"Crackheads stand adjacent."

Oh. My. God. Vordul has put him right out in the open, facing an open court to the basket. There's nothing you can do. He's coming in. He wastes a few lines before beginning his proper introduction, just because he can. El's laughing in the booth as he gears up, not even taking a breath between segue and smackdown.

"You were a stillborn baby;
your mother didn't want you
but you were still born.
Boy meets world, of course his pops is gone.
What you figure?
That chalky outline on the ground
is a father figure?"

A poem in infinite parts courtesy of Vast Aire edited by Vordul layout by El-P thank you goodnight.

"Lets talk in layman's terms,
rotten apples and big worms
early birds and vultures.
New York is evil to it's core
so those that have more than them,
prepare to be victims."

"I rest my head on 115
but miracles only happen on 34th
so I guess life is mean
and death is the median
and purgadory is mode that we settle in."

I could keep going, but you get the idea. And I'm tired of writing. This is the first track; we could keep going, but in a record with two endings, multiple paths, all angles considered, there isn't time right now. Maybe later I'll come back to it. Maybe. For now, I'm exhausted and cut up.

A group of very talented / Cannibals.

Akron/Family

2005-04-13T12:37:00.000-05:00

I'm very excited to hear that Akron/Family, Young God's latest coup, is coming to town with none other than M. Gira himself, formerly of Swans and now of The Angels of Light. Apparently, Akron/Family will be backing him as Angels of Light, so that's a lot of fun.

I have some questions for the guys in Akron/Family, so I hope they'll be around after the show.

Akron/Family - Suchness

I'm totally crushing hard on a lot of these songs; they fit somewhere between the experimental ethos of Animal Collective and the orchestral gothic pop of The Angels of Light. Clearly, a great fit on Young God. The song I posted isn't really the best on the record - actually, it's not the best by a long shot - but it's the song that most piqued my curiosity. See, the opening lyric is "I want to see the thing in itself / I don't want to think no more," then repeated several times. The first time I heard it I was all like, "What?" The second time I heard it I was all like "What! Yeah!" Difference. Totally HEGELIAN, brah. Absolute Phenomenology of Spirit up in that. I want to see if I'm interpreting that correctly. Does anyone know who writes the lyrics in Akron/Family? I have questions.

See, Hegel posited that all objects are not only objects in themselves, but are also containers of features. For instance, when I percieve a can of diet Coke, I don't only percieve a can in totality, I also percieve it as a cylinder. Sometimes, I percieve it as silver. Other times, I percieve it as bearing a label. When I do this, however, I lose the totality of the object. It's impossible to see the object as a whole object, plus all of its features and characteristics. Now, we could digress into the nature of self-consciousness &etc., but that's probably not a good idea. Suffice it to say, deep shit, dude.

Also, "Suchness"? Duns Scotus, anyone?

Anyway, Angels of Light are awesome, too. Should be a fucktastic show.

Buy Akron/Family's self-titled record here

Zbigniew Karkowski One & Many

2005-04-10T18:50:00.000-05:00

I picked up this record because someone said it sounded like Tim Hecker's last work, Mirages, upon which I have heaped effusive praise since the moment it first landed in my gungy hands. One & Many is only like Mirages in that they both come on compact disc.

O&M is a searing burst of staticky noise with some occasional fits of low-frequency sine wave modulation. It sounds roughly like my first experiment in additive synthesis using Max/MSP, except recorded in a big living room on cheap microphones. It's a single 40-minute track, which moves from soft to loud to soft to mostly loud without achieving a real sense of movement. It's elementary and silly; mostly, I think of the Tim Olive & Fritz Welch record Sun Reverse the Footpedal that I had for a while last year, which consisted primarily of someone in what sounded like a barn, banging on sheet metal and pipes with hammers; however they had the decency to break up the record into 10 or so unnamed (and undifferentiatable) tracks. I understand that avant-garde music is supposed to be a challenging listen, but in what context is this kind of thing supposed to be engaging? Am I supposed to not be engaged and instead fight the impulse to turn it off for 40 minutes? Wolf Eyes pummels the hell out of the listener and engages in sheer noise brutality, but it's still capable of being addressed in musical language.

Congratulations on challenging my sense of what music can be. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back and put on Señor Coconut.

2005-04-10T03:22:00.000-05:00

This is pathetic

2005-04-08T13:08:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know, it's been a pathetically long time since I last posted. I haven't been idle, however, as I've been doing...things. As it were.

New records I've picked up:

Polmo Polpo - Kiss Me Again and Again EP: About as good as music gets.

Andrew Bird - The Mysterious Production of Eggs: This record starts out with a bang and develops into a phenomenal middle section, though it's aesthetic does get a bit tiring towards the end. Bird's just too indiosyncratic to not wear out the preexisting grooves in your brain as he tromps around in there, making his own new ones. But the first 5 or so tracks on here make perfect sense even as they aren't really like anything else.

Fiona Apple - Extraordinary Machine: The massive praise heaped upon this record led me to go seek it out. Let me say that the opening track, "Not About Love", is one of the better ones I've heard all year. Even if the whole record is a little bit...faux? (Maybe...) That's probably not the right word. But it's hard to stay with it. Admirable, though. The first track, though, I'm gonna keep listening to.

Morrissey - Live at Earl's Court: What can I say but I love Morrissey and all of his middle-age lounge singer vocal tics?

Christöphilax - goldensmell: Mysterious electronic artist. Very nice micro-ambient noise stuff. You can get his/her stuff for free if you email him/her.

The Books - Lost & Safe: I'm not sure how much I'll wind up liking this, probably not as much as their other two, but thus far, I think "Vogt Dig For Kloppervok" is probably their second-best song, just tailing "All Bad Ends All", and maybe barely beating out "Deaf Kids". Tremoloed vocals! Sweet!

Jóhann Jóhannssen - Virðulegu Forsetar: I've only listened to this twice, but it's magnificently beautiful.

No time to comment on these, but they're also around:

Yann Tiersen & Shannon Wright - s/t
13 & God - Men of Station EP
Akron/Family - s/t
Crystal Stilts - Shattered Shine 7"

And I've also rediscovered the Super Furry Animals' Rings Around the World, as well as Morrissey's Viva Hate over the past week. Oh well.

If you're out tonight, come check out The Oxford Anthology of Twentieth-Century British and Irish Poetry at Howlin' Wolf. We go on at 9:15, I think.

More will be coming in less than 3 weeks.

A Chronicle of Early Failures, Pt. I

2005-03-20T19:48:00.000-06:00

Yes, it has been a week, almost, since I have updated this page. In that time I have experienced enough delight to fill a half-empty glass with poop. In case that doesn't mean anything, consider:

•Today I finally worked up the courage to send my latest sestina to McSweeney's, from which it was rejected no less than 30 minutes after I first emailed it to them. At the very least, they are prompt. At best, they are exclusive. Piss. Lesson learned: my sestinas still blow.

•On Friday I had a brief meeting with my writing professor, at which time I was castigated for indirectness and lampooned for assholiness. Deserving? Maybe. Cold? Brisk. Lesson learned: my sestinas still blow.

•Last night, Muscle Shoals and I played our first gig to lukewarm reception and multiple fuckups. We also played to $40, which mediated the pain of butchering horribly a two-guitar rendition of "Starman". Lesson learned: not as many fans of outer space as I had initially supposed.

STAGE I: Anger, resistance to the unachieved. Universalization and otherization of what has not been done, blame, etc. Punk rock.
Joy Division - Failures (Of the Modern Man)

STAGE II: Despair, realization of the lack of what has not been achieved. Droning sensation in the temples, blood swells.
The Dead Texan - A Chronicle of Early Failures, Pt. II

STAGE III: Acceptance, contemplation. Eno.
Brian Eno - Failing Light

Buy Brian Eno Ambient 2: Plateaux of Mirror

Buy The Dead Texan s/t

Buy Joy Division Substance

I've got the beats to make you bang bang bang

2005-03-14T13:00:00.000-06:00

Well, this was dropped magically into my hands during my Marathon shift, and I thought you all should hear it so you can get as excited about the forthcoming release of Out Hud's full-length as I am. Keep in mind: this is the second B-side from the single. Holy shit. The first 5 minutes are gold, and the turn at 3:11 is magic.

Out Hud - Put It Away, Put It Away, Put It Away, Dad

So, it sounds a bit like a S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. outtake, which is fine with me. And, of course, it could be truncated by a couple of minutes in the last third there. But, let the intro take you, realize this is the second B-side, and get the record soon.

Buy it here.

Wrens documentary

2005-03-11T12:53:00.000-06:00

I can't remember from whom I followed the link trail to this preview, but rest assured that it was not my own insatiable appetite for curiosa that drove me towards finding this clip for you.

Hey kids, it'sThe Wrens - I Am Trying to Break Your Heart stylee. Someone is doing a Wrens documentary (not that I follow who or what exactly is going on). Looks kind of fannish, but it is Wrens footage. Let me be honest, my favorite part in the preview is where they show several copies of Secaucus being held up by the lead singer. Fuck; do you think if I wrote him, he'd send me one? Probably not.

Also, Pitchfork's Editor Ryan Schrieber is featured (apparently pretty heavily, from the looks of it) in the documentary, in all his glorious Wrens fandom.

Otherwise, I haven't felt much like updating this recently, and don't feel much like doing anything big today. If anyone would like to let me know that you're reading, I might be sprung to a sense of duty. At the moment, though, I'm not gonna. I'm going to eat a sandwich.

2005-03-07T10:12:00.000-06:00

Absolutely, my favorite place to go and get a drink on any night of the week (except Monday) is Nick's Bar on Tulane Avenue in Mid-City. Originally, the best selling point was the relative cheapness of the drinks, but very quickly I became enamored with the jukebox. Now, it skips half the time and occasionally just refuses to play what you pick, but it does have one of the better selections in the city. And, up until about 2 months ago, the following song would come on and I would think, every time, "Is this some Wilco track from A.M. that I've never heard?" Of course, I finally went and dug through my rarely-listened to records. There it was:

The Replacements - Unsatisfied

Yeah, I know. Don't look at me weird, I was born a year after this record came out. Somehow, I acquired it but never made it past the first couple of songs, which means I missed what is, to date, my favorite song on the record.

Buy it here.

And to think, today I was going to post a track from Arular, which is getting all the online hottness that you could ask for. I think M.I.A.'s hype machine is doing fine without my 10 hits a day, thank you.

MOUNTAIN GOATS!

2005-03-02T19:57:00.000-06:00

I am totally fucking psyched about the Mountain Goats coming up on April 9 at the Parish. Oh man. Oh man oh man. And, in honor of that blessed news, one of my favourite tracks:

The Mountain Goats - No Children

Maybe anathema to some Goats fans, but I think this song is one of their best. Compared to the majority of standard Goats tracks, this one's a Brian Wilson-esque sound orgy, but I really like it. No, Tallahassee isn't their best album, in my opinion (I still think All Hail West Texas will be damned difficult to top) but it does have some great tracks.

Anyway, totally looking forward to that.

You can get the CD, um, anywhere. It's around. And worth the look. It's called Tallahassee. This is called "being really fucking lazy".

I must apologize

2005-03-01T17:53:00.000-06:00

Well, if anyone cares, I've been terribly remiss about updating this blog-thingy. However, I've also been tremendously blown away, to the point where I'm calling the single of the year right now. You can get it if you go over to Stypod and check the Feb. 28, 2005 entry.

The track is called "Kiss Me Again and Again" and it's by Polmo Polpo, a Canadian DJ who has released a few 12" on his own label Audi Sensa, some of which were later compiled onto a release called The Science of Breath for the magnificent Alien8 Recordings (check out that album cover, BTW). A lot of his stuff seems to be what they might call "Deep Ambient Disco" if they called it things like that. As it is, I don't know what they call it. But his full-length on A8 garnered comparisons (from A8, incidentally) to one of my favorites from last year, Tim Hecker.

He also released a full-length on Constellation Records, best known as the home of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, or wherever they've decided to locate the exclamation point these days.

But this EP/single (clocking in at 21 minutes) is another beast altogether, out on heretofore unknown (to me) Intr-Version Records. The very first thing that hit me when I heard this track was Arthur Russell in big bold thinking letters. This track actually takes from Dinosaur L's "Kiss Me Again" - produced by Russell and released on his own Sleeping Bag records on their 24-24 Music LP in 1983(?). But Polmo Polpo's version takes from all segments of Russell's composition. I think the closest analog that I can draw his the track "Let's Go Swimming (Walter Gibbons Mix)" that was rerelased on the World of Arthur Russell comp last year - which is excellent and should be purchased through Soul Jazz Records.

Anyway, this track moves through funk, experimental pop, traditionally "indie" melodies, etc, seamlessly over the course of 21 minutes and riding a big, unfailing dance beat. The production is impeccable - you can follow every movement in this track and still be surprised where you end up. Within 10 minutes after I'd heard this over at Stypod, I'd bought the disc - which apparently is only available in a limited run of 500. I'd suggest you go get it right this minute. Intr-Version helpfully lists US stores that carry it on their website.

But if you need a little help, buy it atForced Exposure.

Radio Program, 2/17/2005, Stars of the Lid

2005-02-24T19:12:00.000-06:00

First thing: my co-DJ Luke had this to offer last week, when I couldn't make it in to the show:

Calexico - Corona
Kronos Quartet - Mini Skirt
Cat Power - Free You Are Free
Deerhoof - Milkman Milk Man
Dub Narcotic Sound System - Sounds Narcotic
Broken Social Scene - KC Accidental You Forgot It In People
Clem Snide - Made for TV Movie
Tegan and Sarah - You Wouldn't Like Me So Jealous
Marianne Faithfull - Crazy Love Before the Poison
Johnny Cash - Jesus Was a Carpenter
Greg Brown - I Still Miss
Michael Bloomfield - Death Cell Rounder Blues
Carey and Laurie Bell - Trouble In My Way
Loretta Lynn - High On a Mountaintop
Dave Alvin - Rio Grande
Mason South - Room With a View
Iron and Wine - Jezebel
M. Ward - Hi Fi Transistor Radio
Sufjan Stevens - All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands Seven Swans
Mountain Goats - Game Shows Touch Our Lives Tallahassee
Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs
Grandaddy - Now It's On Sumday
Drive By Truckers - Sands of Iwo Jima
Devandra Banhart - Wake Up Little Sparrow
Sergeant Garcia - Revoluçion
The Public - The Initiative
Low - California The Great Destroyer
Professor Longhair - Jambalaya
Pierce Woodward - Leave No Millionaire Behind

As you might can tell, Luke hews a bit closer to the Americana end of things than I do, but it's a good blend. This morning's show was a pretty good one, with plenty of ambient drone to start things off, including the new Greg Davis record (soon to come - full of hottness) and, as promised, Stars of the Lid.

Stars of the Lid - Fac 21

Possibly a reference to the Durutti Column patch of the same Factory Records catalog number, or the FACUS 21 factory patch, or possibly to something I could never understand - this track is, like all SotL tracks, something I feel a little bit uncomfortable taking out of context. Of course, it's not a good idea to post 10 minutes worth of any track online, but the shorter tracks are best enjoyed as part of the cohesive wholes of each disc of this record, The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid. On the other hand, you do get an idea of what you're after, if not the sheer power of the record.

Order here. It's Krank050 at the very top of the page.

The Dead Texan

2005-02-22T19:43:00.000-06:00

If you haven't heard Austin's Stars of the Lid, you're missing out on some of the most affecting and pretty instrumental music made in the last decade. On the other hand, I can understand those who occasionally have trouble with SotL. The music is present, but slow and thick - the definition of what great drone is. So, for those of you who feel like Stars of the Lid might be something you'd like, but want to ease in, check out .5 SotL side project The Dead Texan.

The Dead Texan - The Struggle

This is the final track on the self-titled record from The Dead Texan, and it's fucking pretty. More immediate than SotL and a lot poppier. Tomorrow, I'll post a track from Stars of the Lid's The Tired Sounds of... record.

Buy it, why don't you?

2005-02-21T15:14:00.001-06:00

Hunter S. Thompson
1937 - 2005

Music is back tomorrow.

The studio was a hexagon.

2005-02-18T13:53:00.000-06:00

Today, I have been reflecting upon last year, and the lonliness in which I stood as I ranted and raved about the Fall's record. Lonliness until, that is, my friends stopped scoffing and started listening, at which point they not only bought The Real New Fall LP, but also bought significant portions of the Fall's back catalogue, rarities compilations, greatest hits packages, argyle sweaters, etc. At one point, I was even given a Fall DVD in gratitude for my badgering about this Fall record.

The Fall - Sparta 2XX

And this is the track that hooked everybody. It's hard to argue with the raw energy and pure rock contained in "Sparta". The recording quality is the best the Fall have ever had. The drums, at times, approximate the quality found elsewhere (such as at the bottom link on this post) on This Nation's Saving Grace. The first time I showed this to my friend Adam, he almost drove off the road. Such is the power of Mark E. Smith and the Fall. And this is nowhere near the end of the quality on this record.

For the love of MES, buy it here.

Also, you should get these two records, for your self-respect if nothing else. The holy grail of drum tracking and "Ludd Gang" on one page? Bow down.

The Blackouts

2005-02-17T15:13:00.000-06:00

Before Seattle had a "scene", there were a lot of bar bands. At least, that's what K Records says. I don't know, I was born in Alabama in 1985. But, apparently, the Blackouts were one of the first great Seattle bands, and one who never got their due (although drummer Bill Rieflin now drums for REM). K Records recently released a compliation of all their studio tracks, many of which were recorded with Al Jourgensen (of Ministry). It is quite a good compilation.

The Blackouts - Idiot

This was the first Blackouts track I ever heard, taken from the Lost Souls' Club EP, which was released in 1983 on Wax Trax! and recorded in Boston with Al Jourgensen. It remains my favorite Blackouts track. The lead singer, Erich Werner, has a voice that can hew close to a more dignified Jello Biafra - which I find delighful. He can do very interesting things with his voice.

The Blackouts - It's Clay Again

This is a previously unreleased track just on the History in Reverse comp. that K Recs just put out. Longer, sounds a lot more like the Virgin Prunes circa ...If I Die, I Die than the hard-hitting post-punk elsewhere on this disc. Drummer Bill Rieflin is fantastic.

Get the CD here.

I think that would be a very good idea indeed. Also available on vinyl LP at the same site, krecs.

2005-02-17T14:57:00.000-06:00

Marianne Faithfull

2005-02-14T16:46:00.000-06:00

I must confess to having never heard Marianne Faithfull prior to two weeks ago, when I walked into 'TUL to do my show, and heard the DJ before me, Brian, playing the first cut off the new record, Before the Poison. Instantly, I was sold on this record. The fact that it has some songs that even begin to reach the heights of "The Mystery of Love" is simply icing on the cake. Featuring collaborations with PJ Harvey (on 5 cuts), Graham Coxon and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (backing band for most tracks, I think) - a lot of people are comparing this one to 1979's Broken English in terms of greatness. Having never heard that one, I can't comment. I can only say that this is a helluva record and this track is a helluva track. And I'm not a big user of "helluva".

Marianne Faithfull - "The Mystery of Love"

Buy the record from her site - which I think links to (arg) Amazon.

the Grammys

2005-02-13T21:42:00.000-06:00

Oh, lord God. I tuned in just in time to see U2 win Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals, over Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out". Fucking hell. Now, I get to see Stevie Wonder, Aerosmith, Brian Wilson, Velvet Revolver, Billie Joe from Green Day, et al, demolish "Across the Universe". At least Brian Wilson, Bono, and Billie Joe looked moderately uncomfortable. Steven Tyler, of course, threw up all over the stage with his disgusting presence.

And then John Mayer wins song of the year for something or another. Ah, the song is called "Daughters". Haven't heard it.

Happily, Wilco did win in the "Best Alternative Record" category - not happily because A Ghost is Born was that great, but happily because I like Wilco, and I like for them to win things, like gold records and Grammys.

Tomorrow, I think I'll post some music for everyone. Yes, tomorrow.

"I like a nap after dinner/and to see the seasons come round in good order."

2005-02-12T18:14:00.000-06:00

Today I have no music for you to check out, rather, I have spent it eating, napping, reading Basil Bunting, napping more, then scuttling around the internet like some sort of crab. To that end, I finally saw the video that has set the web ablaze, namely, the overweight guy dancing to Russian pop (excuse me, Romanian pop) in his office on a webcam. I won't give you the link, but if you're that tied up on it, Andrew Sullivan has the link about halfway down his page. Even CNN used the clip at one point on one of their morning shows, but then, CNN is trying to be energetic and newsworthy. For example, on Anderson Cooper 360, they once used Television's "Marquee Moon" as outro music. The track in question, after some research, is called "Dragostea Din Tei" by Ozone. The yodelling is very catchy. Very catchy indeed. Sort of like when I first heard "Baby" by Melody Club.

Speaking of the big fish blogger-types, also linked from Andrew's page is a gallery of fotos of Wonkette, Instapundit, AS, some NYT types &etc. hanging out at some party. They're so much prettier than I thought. Seriously. Well, most of them.

If Elton John can get away with putting his head on a jetliner, then I can get away with a day of no music stuff. Or, I suppose I could just ramble. For instance, Soon, I shall be purchasing albums by the Necks, another Stars of the Lid record (Avec Laudenum, for those keeping score at home) and some delicious pseudo-drone from Staalplaat. Yes, I am heavily in the middle of a drone phase, brought about by Slowdive, nonetheless, which has led me to pronounce The Dead Texan's self-titled record the first great album I've heard this year (even though I get the distinct feeling it was actually released last year). Superwolf is right there with it, and M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us isn't too far behind.

In other news, if you want my band's first full-length, it's available for $5. Self-promotion? Fred Durst does it, so can I. Take that, good taste.

Superwolf

2005-02-11T13:07:00.000-06:00

With the exception of the tremendous I See a Darkness and the exceptional Viva Last Blues, Bonnie Prince Billy/Will Oldham albums usually are difficult for me to listen to all at once. They physically tire me. I love Will Oldham, which is why this is even more difficult.

Bonnie Prince Billy & Matt Sweeney - Beast for Thee

Superwolf isn't yet in the Viva Last Blues camp, but with repeated listens it's getting there. To be honest, I had trouble choosing between "Beast for Thee" and "Lift Us Up". The latter's semi-chorus is genius - the vocal melody is hopeful and destroyed from one breath to the next. But that's not the track I chose. "Beast for Thee" is a rare near-bouyant melody, probably the best collaboration between the two songwriters on the record.

Buy it over at Aquarius or from Drag City.

Dabrye

2005-02-10T16:33:00.000-06:00

So, my first non-New Orleans-based MP3 launch. Today's track is by a guy who's been linked pretty closely to Scott Herren (of Prefuse 73, Savath & Savalas, etc.) and released the album this track is from on Herren's own Eastern Developments label.

Dabrye - D-Town Tabernacle Choir

At first, people told me Dabrye was mostly like Prefuse-lite. And, for a bit, I believed them - but Dabrye's got something else going on. He tends to be a lot more minimal than Herren in either Prefuse or Savath mode and a bit simpler, too. For Dabrye, a lot rides on the hooks he grabs up. On this track, the piano line is near-perfect. He doesn't really glitch it out too much, either. He just lets it ride. Not bad at all.

I hate to do it, butAmazon, as an import, was the only place I could find it.

Also, if you get a chance, run over to Copy, Right? and take a listen to M. Ward's Beach Boys cover. It's no "Let's Dance", but it definately takes the track to M.Ward territory.

DJ Potpie

2005-02-09T22:58:00.000-06:00

It appears that I'm making the unconscious shift to MP3 blog, which wasn't my initial intention, but seems to be the organic unfolding of Contort Yrself's essence. I'm just channeling. To that end, the end of Mardi Gras has come and, thusly let me channel what's going on in your head today (or at some point this weekend):

DJ Potpie - Track 1 (from Hallucinations of a Deranged Mind)

I've never gotten the opportunity to see Potpie and his sine wave generator live, but I would imagine it's a contemplative evening. In fact, it appears that Potpie uses only a sine wave generator and looping pedals with occasional ebowed guitar. For such limited instrumentation, he really got a lot of variation on the 2001 release from which I culled this track. Some stuff sounds more academic, some stuff sounds more pastoral, some stuff sounds like a stripped-down version of a track or two off of the Mirages LP by Tim Hecker, which, if you've been reading, you know is high praise.

Sorry, once again, no track names, as I can't find this disc anywhere online with tracklistings or anything. I don't know where to buy any of Potpie's records either, so if anyone knows, do tell.

That's the last of the explicitly New Orleans content for a little bit - though I may put up a bit of Mr. Quintron tomorrow if the mood strikes me. If I work up the nerve to post some non-local MP3s, some of my more recent favorites might be on the way. In any event, I hope somebody has learned something about the vibrancy of the NO scene - it's more than shitty bar-funk. And apologies that I didn't get around to some other great local artists, like Mexico 1910 and Dave Mooney Trio (their track "Wrinkles" has been blowing me away, recently - great use of hip-hop breakbeat without overdoing it).

Radio show tomorrow (Thursday) morning, 8 - 10am CST, if you're up. Listen in the NO area at 91.5fm or on the web from www.wtul.fm.

Chef Menteur

2005-02-06T20:22:00.001-06:00

In a scant 2.5 weeks, Chef Menteur will be playing their first gig in a long while, to celebrate the release of their first full-length. If you're not familiar with them, they mostly craft delicate, borderline-ambient guitar-based pieces of music.

Chef Menteur - Track 4

This is a track from their 2003 Vive La France! EP. It has some of those Stars of the Lid elements, but it's much too melodic for that category of ambient drone. It's sort of Tortoise-y, from time to time (esp. at the end, when the repeating clean guitar figure comes in), but it's not really so much like that, either. Unfortunately, I don't have the track names for the CD.

Apparently, their records will soon be out on Backporch Revolution records, whose site looks nice but apparently isn't functioning yet. Chapel Hill? It's all adding up now. Enjoy the tracks. It appears that the Vive La France! EP can be purchased at Chef Menteur's live show. Maybe on the website, if you ask them real nice. I don't know.

David Byrne & The Arcade Fire

2005-02-04T13:20:00.000-06:00

Apparently, David Byrne joined the Arcade Fire on stage at Irving Plaza for a rendetion of "Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place)" - which, incidentally, they didn't even play when they came to New Orleans. Fuck. New Yorkers get all the good shit.

Anyway, I Rock I Roll has got the bootleg up and running. It sounds pretty nice. Go check it out.

Happy Carnival, btw.

My first show of 2005, Jan. 20

2005-02-03T13:56:00.000-06:00

Playlist for my first radio show with Luke coming up:

Slowdive - Souvlaki Space Station
Xiu Xiu - I Luv the Valley OH!
The Virgin Prunes - Baby Turns Blue
M.I.A. - Fire Fire
Experimental Dental School - Hideous Dance Attack!
Castanets - Industry & Snow
Dungen - Panda
Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear
Elvis Costello - Redlam
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Abattoir Blues
Tom Waits - Alice
Faun Fables - Lightning Rods
Steve Earle - John Walker's Blues
the Fantastic Ooze - GoGo Space Girl
Death From Above 1979 - Sexy Results
Isis - So Did We
Throbbing Gristle - Slug Bait (Southampton)
Wire - Ex-Lion Tamer
Blackouts - Idiot
Rob Sonic - Shoplift
Libretto - Alma Mater
Hanger 18 - Boombox Apocalypse
Interpol - Slow Hands
Autistic Daughters - Spend It On The Enemy (While It Was Raining)
Bright Eyes - I Woke Up

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Coachella setlist has been announced. It's pretty unreal, Bauhaus, New Order, Wilco, Gang of Four, etc. If I can, I'm going to try to make it out. Anyone from NO going? Hit me up and maybe I can steal your way of getting there. Seriously, a cross-country drive is out for the end of April, still got school and work, and a plane ticket doesn't solve anything, 'cause you've got to get from either LA to Indio or Phoenix to Indio. Blast. On a side note, my Coachella predictions turned out pretty well. Kudos to me.

Also, Wilco has announced that they're playing Jazzfest on Friday, April 22. Hopefully, Jeff Tweedy won't get addicted to anything else in the meanwhile and this show will actually happen.

And, finally, Spoon's new record, Gimme Fiction (not The Beast & Dragon Are Adored, as was previously thought) has a release date of May 10, 2005 on Merge. Tracklist:

01 The Beast and Dragon, Adored
02 The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine
03 I Turn My Camera On
04 My Mathematical Mind
05 The Delicate Place
06 Sister Jack
07 I Summon You
08 The Infinite Pet
09 Was It You?
10 They Never Got You
11 Merchants of Soul

For those of you who weren't there or didn't know, Britt & Co. previewed a fair number of these at their show at Tips a few months ago - there seemed to be a goodly number of classic Spoon moments, with a bit of the Rolling Stones substituted for the usual Pixies muse. Overall, I must say that I'm looking forward to it. I was most taken with "I Summon You", which has been online for a while. I do wonder how it's going to be presented on record, though; judging by the studio track sheets, viewable on their website (above for link), there's a lot of stuff in each song, handclaps and effects and whatnot. Interesting.

Glorybee

2005-01-31T22:38:00.000-06:00

I am recovered. Celebrate! with Glorybee!

Glorybee - Atlantic Dance Panic

My favorite track from GYB: The First Power. You can get it at their website and also from CD Baby. DO IT!

White Bitch

2005-01-29T11:36:00.000-06:00

Though I was too sick to catch the set last night at Big Top, I did spin the White Bitch record, I Can't Find My Way Around, a few times.

White Bitch - Pick Up the Phone

This is the first and best track from the record. It begins somewhere between the BeeGees and the Doobie Brothers - I was surprised how different most of the songs sound on the record than they do live. A lot quieter on the record. Anyway, I have no idea where you can buy this one, either, and as far as I know the White Bitch doesn't have a website or anything. If anyone knows, leave it in comments or email me.

Sick Sick Sick

2005-01-27T21:47:00.000-06:00

I'm totally sick right now and I don't really feel up to posting anything big. Plus, YouSendIt isn't working well. Bah. Anyway, new shows up on the calendar, including Vietnam, who came here last December with DFA1979 and were awesome. Another terrifying show for Twiropa. Why why why?

Soon, hopefully, I shall get some more New Orleans music up. On the list is Glorybee, Chef Menteur, Potpie, and, my favorite, White Bitch. Which reminds me: White Bitch tomorrow night! With Ray Bong and the Bongoloids at Big Top. Starts at 10p. Come out.

As per the masthead

2005-01-25T19:53:00.000-06:00

...here is a track by a band from New Orleans. I mentioned a couple of days ago the Fantastic Ooze, but I didn't get a chance to make it out to their show with Consortium of Genius. I did pick up their record from the station, though, and gave it a couple of spins.

the Fantastic Ooze - Legs That Feel Like Philadelphia

This is my favorite track from their record In Your Brain. Basically, they've got a bit of the Zappa feel, or maybe a more accomplished early Flaming Lips. I can't tell how ironic the vocalist is - sounds like a goodly amount. Anyway, the drums on this track are great, as is most everything else. I don't know where exactly you can buy this record, but if you go to the band's website and drop them an email, I'm sure they'll tell you or sell it to you.

Coachella speculation

2005-01-24T13:23:00.000-06:00

The big deal about Coachella this year is that either New Order or David Bowie might be playing. However, Goldenvoice isn't announcing anything yet, and there's no word when they will. The only bands that I know of to confirm are Rilo Kiley and M83, who confirmed, strangely, on the back of a sticker that came with my recent order from Aquarius Records.

Pollstar, as usual, has a rumors list up and going, but it doesn't include M83, so who knows how reliable it is. If you didn't want to search, also tipped are Franz Ferdinand, Nine Inch Nails, Iron and Wine (I don't really think that's likely, but we'll see), Bright Eyes, Jimmy Eat World (gross), Wilco (I'd say likely after they bailed last year), Death From Above 1979, and Dogs Die in Hot Cars, amongst others.

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I received in the mail today the following albums, which may or may not make it here in some form:

Thalia Zadek - Trust Not Those In Whom Without Some Touch of Madness (Thrill Jockey, 2004)
Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid (Kranky, 2001)
William Basinski - The Disintegration Loops I (2062, 2001)
Oren Ambarchi - Grapes From the Estate (Touch Music, 2004)

Oh, it's a feast. I'm looking forward to it.

Mardi Gras Motherfuckers/Demonic Penguins in My Sofa

2005-01-23T15:03:00.000-06:00

Yes, last night was the first, raunchiest, parade of the Mardi Gras season. If I can get some pictures up here, I will. Everyone should experience the "Jieux for Cheesus" and "Turning Wad Into Wine - Praise the Load!" floats. In any event, in honor of the inexorable advance of Mardi Gras, I'm going to be posting some tracks by some of my favorite New Orleans area bands, for you to experience and, hopefully, purchase.

Mike Freemont - Animatronic Jesus

Mike Freemont - Ella Menner's Plea

New Orleans area hip-hop guy Mike Freemont (otherwise known as the main braintrust behind Sun Valley Deth Trap from Chalmette) released Sounds Created When Two Branes Collide, which has turned into the only local hip-hop that really strikes me. Mike draws from a pretty wide spectrum of avant-hip-hop/electronic music, falling somewhere in between Aphex Twin, Anticon, El-P and Kool Keith, depending on the track. Two of my favorites, "Animatronic Jesus" and "Ella Menner's Plea" are above. "Jesus" hews much closer to the low-budget Aphex Twin range of Freemont's skills, whereas "Ella" sounds a whole lot like Why?, except a lot better. Depending on where you drop the needle on this record, you're going to get a totally different opinion of Mr. Freemont, but the album as a whole is startlingly coherent. This is another record that I absolutely overlooked for most of last year. Definately one of the highlights of New Orleans music in 2004.

You can, and should, buy it here.

Paris Hilton, Joanna Newsom

2005-01-20T23:15:00.000-06:00

I don't know whether to be impressed, terrified, or disappointed by this video for "Paris Hilton" by Mu. I really liked Afro Finger and Gel, still can't decide about this. Worth checking out though.

Also, go to Said the Gramophone and download Final Fantasy's cover of Joanna Newsom's "Peach, Plum, Pear", which was incidentally my favorite track from The Milk-Eyed Mender. It's pretty nice.

Radio show

2005-01-20T21:41:00.000-06:00

Indeed, the time is nigh, and this morning I had my first radio programme of the new year. I'll be working with Luke Stobie, with whom I DJ'd (nominally) last semester.

Thursday mornings, 8a - 10a, pick us up on your drive to work/school/back home. As my playlists come back, I'll post them here.

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Also, Isis' Panopticon is supposedly metal, but I don't think it is. It's much too delightful to really be metal. I mean, metal is for greasy-haired engineering students, right? Well, with DFA1979, Tim Hecker, Corrupted, and Isis, it seems as if metal in 2004 made a big dent on my consciousness. I'm not going to post a full review of Isis, but I will say that if you like music, you'll probably like Panopticon. Hail Satan!

Europopmusik!

2005-01-19T19:20:00.000-06:00

Fasten your beltseats!

Do it!

M.I.A. - "Sunshowers" single (XL)

2005-01-19T13:54:00.000-06:00

As promised, here's the first bit of new music trickling in, this one from XL Records' most hyped new addition, Sri Lanka's M.I.A. Apparently, her new record is dropping on Feb. 22nd, and "Galang", her first single, has already hit pretty hard in the UK. She's drawing comparisons to the XL's other big UK player, Dizzee Rascal, if only in the kind of promotion push that XL's putting behind her.

I've heard a couple of tracks from the Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 mixtape, and I liked a lot of it, even if I didn't get the names of the tracks. The "Sunshowers" single hits close to the top of that pile, but the real surprise is on the b-side, "Fire Fire", which is the best M.I.A. track I've heard and would've been my favorite hip-hop of last year had I heard it then. Like all of her successful stuff that I've heard, "Fire Fire" keeps it really fucking simple, with 1-2 (pause) 1-2 rhythms, a little high hat, some 1-note synth stabs and and occasional bass hit falling to the floor. It leaves room for her voice, which is the best part of an M.I.A. track - she's got a little bit of depth and timbre to it that a lot of female MCs lack. The accent is nice, too.

I also just picked up the "Galang" single from Insound, because XL was all sold out of it. However, Insound doesn't appear to carry the "Sunshowers" single, so you'll have to split up your purchases if you want both of them. Or just wait for her new album to come out.

On the other hand, if you can't wait, here's the 80s hip hop revivalism of the "Galang" video. As I get it, you get it.