I did an edit of Black Moth Super Rainbow's "Twin of Myself" (featured here a couple weeks back). Hope you enjoy.
Twin of Myself (P Bayne Edit)
Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days you ask? Well there's Lamburg Tony. Sound collage hip hop (sort of) made with pots, pans, toys and field recordings (casinos?), drums and bottles, and vintage synths. Then everything gets recorded onto old tape machines (why?) and sent of to get mastered by electronic agitator Goodiepal (?!). Just what the hell are the Danish up to these days? They're outta their minds, that's what. Who said it was ok to make music this free? Why is it that this music has zero presence in the American avant pop scene? I can't get my hands on his full record unless I fork over 22 euro and wait for the LP to show up that's partly why. Lamburg Tony is opening for Black Dice on some European dates so maybe we can expect something but I'm not holding my breath. I've got one track off Hip Hop Nation which is a gem, and makes Prefuse 73's new album sound like it was made in 1992. Screwed up vocal samples, glissing harps, a cut up ragged flute line, and a dirty ass drum beat. Try out his myspace for more or get ambitious about the LP.
Værtshussport
This new Basement Jaxx single makes me want to be 15 in a European club for the first time, drinking shitty weak cocktails and watching sweaty Spaniards sweat on unassuming but generally enthusiastic American girls wearing miniskirts too short for the suburbs. When the beat drops at 1:00 everybody is gonna jump up and down like idiots and it'll all start making sense. There's about 6 too many gimmicks in this song, but you got to hand it to them for the stacked density of elements and the buzzy engine driving the whole thing. I could of used not ever hearing the lyrics "Just like a waterfall, straight through the heart of me", a seriously cringeworthy moment that nearly derails the whole track. But listen, imagine all those sweaty Spaniards shouting those lyrics in broken english and then earnestly leaning in for a sloppy slurp and a mean dancefloor hump and the picture starts to look a bit more benign.
Raindrops
Brand new Dirty Projectors from their forthcoming record Bitte Orca. This is one of the most adventurous bands, at least vocally, that I know of. Two albums back, on Gettysburg Address, Dave Longstreth's (composer/singer/guitarist) first LP, the same could be said of their arrangements which were all sorts of weird. Cutups of orchestral arrangements of very idiosyncratic pop hooks, very odd beats, irregular time signatures and loss of tempo altogether, modern and chant like choral passages mixed with Longstreth's oddly shaped, melismatic melodic lines, sung in an unnerving falsetto/chest voice hybrid. It was basically a completely modernist take on pop that I'm truly surprised the New Music community never noticed. Then on Dirty Projectors second full length, Rise Above, they turned more rock, covering (at least lyrically) a Black Flag record but sporting a West African influenced guitar language (with hints of hardcore) and songs with just a hair more narrative continuity. Now on these few preview tracks from their new record, it seems like they're getting more involved with beats, straying even further from the orchestral and focusing straight on the vocal harmonies and flourishes and west african guitar tones, trills and runs. The lead single, "Stillness Is the Move" has an 80's programmed beat palette with an almost latin feel alla Janet Jackson's circa Rhythm Nation. Combine that with Amber Coffman's (correction!) scarily agile Mariah Carey impression which takes the premise of Longstreth's melismas (which are normally just right on the verge of R&B) much further into readable territory. The short of it is that this is more accessible stuff (I think) where melody and rhythmic structure act a bit less like an epileptic cat, and you can even dance a little. But the oddball theatrics are still around. Check out the superhuman vocal hocketing midway through "Remade Horizon" (I'm pretty sure that's only two people), or the guitar solo in "No Intention" which is built almost entirely from baroque ornaments. It's almost all fluff but it's gorgeous and completely tender at the same time. But on the whole Dirty Projectors are culling their strengths and playing to them. It makes it utterly enthralling for the rest of us to watch.
Stillness Is the Move
(Links removed by request of the label!!)
No Intention
Remade Horizon
Gooey globs of sun crusted bong haze packaged in a sticky orange wrapper. What is Black Moth Super Rainbow's new single "Twin of Myself" like? Plinky toy pianers, vintage drum machine oomphs, some nice imitative counterpoint between the rubbery bass line and the purest, truest of synth melodies they've come up with to date, everything else gets enveloped in a fuzzy blanket. Midway through an engorged synth line stretches over the whole proceedings threateningly. Oh if everything could be this perfect. I don't plan on stopping listening to this any time soon. The lyrics are fascinating in a disgusting kind of way. Something about creating a new twin of yourself from "the seed of the big black cloud above." I imagine something almost as mythologically twisted and narcissistic as this image above from their art on forthcoming album. Only with more viscous fluorescence.
Twin of Myself
Amazing video from Philly band Man Man of "Rabbit Habits" of their album of the same name. Fred Armisen and the actress Charlyne Yi (the stoner chick from Knocked Up who puts in an amazingly hilarious performance here) are on a blind date which turns terribly wrong. It helps that the whole video seems to have been shot in my hood. There's the Short Stop, the Vista, and Echo Lake...
Here's your Friday Finds back from hiatus somehow this wasn't posted on friday but here 'tis afterall.
141 - In Out
Baby Charles - Invisible
Royal Flush - I Never Made 20
Shogun Kunitoki - Riddarholmen
Bobby Blue Bland - Ain't No Love In the Heart of the City
Rhythm Based Lovers - Boogie Vision
Them Use Them - Able
The Lines - Have a Heart
CFCF - You Hear Colours
Steinski - Everything's Disappeared
Bonnie Prince Billy - I Won't Ask Again
Ilija Rudman - In Motion
George Clinton - Too Tight For Light
Little Feat - Fool Yourself
Click here to download the zipped mix
I imagine Higamos Hogamos travel in big stupid hats and fur coats. I think they might be the most self assured sounding rock band I've heard in a long time. Before grunge and indie rock, rock bravado was a given. Now to hear a band that really knows what the fuck they're doing is such rarity. It think that's partly why I lean so closely these days to dance music and hip-hop. Because in those genres it's all about the outward assurance of musical prowess. It's about showmanship and talent, it's about carnal entertainment. You'd be hard pressed to find anybody in hip-hop feigning malaise and passing it off as hot blooded the way a vast majority of the indie rock scene does. Higamos Hogamos sound so seasoned they make you believe they might have actually accumulated their influences straight from the source. You know, maybe they WERE hanging with Popol Vuh in Munich in 1971, maybe they really took guitar lessons from Zappa, or had a few pleather capes tailored by Bowie's costume designer. What's totally thrilling about how the motorik works its way into this music is that it doesn't just come as a principle function, it's not the motivating force, or the ritual, the way it might have been for Can, for Neu, or any of their contemporary droids. I'm just thinking that the drummer is a fucking rabid animal, who can only play a few different beats, but at least he plays 'em hard. It's not an anemic aesthetic, it's a discerning one. There's an amazingly balanced interplay between synths and guitars. So many groups playing off krautrock or glam end up with 20 different moogs and korgs on stage and no one wielding an axe. The marketplace is too overloaded with vintage synthesizers!! Listen to the opening track "Infinity Plus One", how the synth licks move from foreground to background as the guitars do the reverse. It's smart writing here, it's not all cock and stance. They have a brilliant way of slipping from certain territory into something totally surprising without making it look planned. "Little Switch" is a captivating romp of T.Rex punk that drops the dark machismo mid way through and gets all southern rock. "Moto Neurono" sounds most like a Can groove here, but ends up in a total prog paradise. "The Illuminoids" starts out like Italo disco nightscape and ends up in Eno's detuned spazz world from Here Come the Warm Jets. This is an awesome record everyone. Let it not get remixed ever again.
Infinity Plus One
Moto Neurono
Little Switch
The Illuminoids
Major Blitzkrieg
** For those interested, the story with the name Higamos Hogamos is that they got it from a story about some early 20th century philosopher named William James with a penchant for illicit substances particularly nitrous oxide. One particularly experimental evening, James discovered the meaning of life and wrote it down. The next morning he woke up and having forgotten his discovery of the previous evening he picked up the piece of paper on which was written "Higamos Hogamos".
Chilled by Nature, a Balaeric house outfit, gets a few reworkings first by SF's Windsurf, then by a duo called Black Mustang (I hvae no idea where from) of one of it's chimey cuts called Otherworld. The windsurf version is sweet in its way, bleepy, and sun drenched, but the Black Mustang version is cold as fuck. Disembodied voices, a moroder bass just plodding away, some sleigh bells, a bleak, harsh vision. It doesn't really go anywhere, but then again, I'm not sure there's really anywhere to go. For some of us spring is already in effect, but for those of us still stuck in the brutal cold, this one's for you.
Otherness (Black Mustang's Frozen Moon Jam)
Back from hiatus here everybody, my apologies for the sudden disappearance. Here's something yummy.
New Villager are an indie dance band out of Brooklyn. Their track "Genghis On" strikes me as extremely extremely dangerously repeatable till it becomes annoying. Try it out. It's all about how the melody lags behind chord progression which simultaneously sounds like it's jumping the gun, about the guy playing the spoons on the right channel, and especially the faux gruff voice overs sounding like Lonely Island doing Color Me Badd which complements so roundly with the flightiness of that falsetto chorus.
Genghis On
So in the days of the 90's, my teenage years, I was a huge tape collecting, show going, hippie dancing, band mythology loving, Phish fan. I had cassette tapes with jackets that I designed, tapes totaling in the hundreds, some of tremendously shitty quality, some off the mixing board and sounding amazingly clear. I spent ages and ages hunting online for this stuff, and it was really my first foray into the internet, and into band obsession. Time passed and I became, as many have, pretty disillusioned with the whole hippie ethos in music, jam bands, Phish's new music was getting blander and blander, shows were getting preppier/yuppier and dirtier. Anyway, I haven't even listend to Phish in more years than I can remember. Today I downloaded the whole weekend of shows that are available for free on livephish.com just to hear them again, and listen to whether the rumors about how much tighter and more energized they've gotten were true. Well it definitely is true that they've gotten a lot tighter. The energy still remains a bit less driven and giddy than in the past, but it brought me so much back to how much I loved this band and why they are so unique and wonderful. I know I'll be doing my best to go see them if they make it out west anytime soon.
My weekly installment of Friday Finds is here. Some nice stuff this week, playing all over the map like genghis khan.
Futurecop! - Transformers (Ghosthustler remix)
Cooley-Munson - Slightly Sue
Archie Shepp - What Would It Be Without You
Micachu and the Shapes - Lips (We Have Band remix)
Gucci Mane - Gucci Girl
Dan Deacon - Get Older
Harlem - Come Back Jonee
Hidden Strength - All We Need Is Time
Knight Rider - We Love You
St. Vincent - Strangers
Soft Circle - Avalanche
Gas - Vier
Download the zip here
Bibio is Stephen Wilkinson, a young composer, producer, and folk auteur from Black Country central England. He has a new record on Mush, called Vignetting the Compost. In it he seems to be splitting time between field recording bugs, winds, lake shores, and all manner of small flapping things, and pillaging Incredible String Band recordings. It's a lovely lofi wistful piece of artifice the affect of which is not unlike that of The Books, where existential innuendo and aimless nostalgia are housed in the body of a wizened old twanger. That said, Bibio's got his own, blissed out but hyper musical persona. If I ever did take a fishing trip with my grandfather in central England (supposedly the source of the name Bibio comes from a fishing lure his grandfather used to make), I would hope the soundtrack would be like this. That said, I can only imaginatively entertain this mythologized scenario for so long. Sometimes it begins to look plainly old fashioned. Take the excessive reversing of waveforms for example (i.e. where a sound is heard backwards). It's not that the reference to 60's experimental psychedelia is a problem, it's just that it's used so frequently and in such obvious contexts (strings, guitars) that it starts to sound like a crutch.
Or take some of the tracks with vocals ("Great are the Piths", "Mr. and Mrs. Compost"); it's fine to emulate the tone of Art Garfunkel, but don't act like that correlates with how memorable a melody is. The tracks with vocals also in a way give the lie to the majority of the album that doesn't have lyrics. Why didn't he write vocal parts for every song? Are the songs with vocals meant to be centerpieces, or at least bear more weight, and if so, why do the vocal parts sound so much like an afterthought? One of my composition teachers always said that no matter what, when a human voice is introduced into a piece of music, it will be the center of gravity for every other moment or element in the rest of the piece. Its absence, even, should be defined not as the moment where the voice stops and the instruments continue, but where we begin to wait for the voice to return. Bibio treats voices like just another patch of color in a delicately sewn quilt, or a reference point to an indefinite past. It's not someone singing, it's the memory of what it sounds like when someone sings. This self-referentiality is attractive in the way that vanitas stlye still life is; it cooly offers up a tangible vision of life which is actually hypostatizing as a vision of the inevitability of death. This is ultimately corrosive of Bibio's true aim, which is not to revisit something that has died and lies curdled in our memory but to re-envision it as a fruit on the vine (at least if I am to believe the album art). There are moments on this record that spring with this in mind, such as the lilting "Weekend Wildfire", the haunting "Under the Pier", or the playful "Doppleton". But there is such a wealth of decomposing items, awaiting their rebirth in fresh soil, that the record becomes mildly creepy, and not in a good way, smelling of mothballs before it had even been worn.
The new grizzly bear album just leaked this morning. Too bad it's 128 kbps, we'll have to wait till the release date (may 26) to hear the album in hi-fi but still, it's pretty unbelievably beautiful at this quality - early highlight tracks: two weeks, about face, i live with you and pretty everything else on the album. Biggest record of the year? ....(decade?) In all honesty, I'm completely biased, i grew up with ed droste the lead singer. I'm not posting the link to the leak for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say that it's a pretty astounding piece of music. please please please buy the album and support one of the most orchestrationally imaginative, melodically gifted, structurally audacious bands in the world. Also, they just posted their tour dates for the summer here. They'll be in LA at the Wiltern June 19 (!)
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