by Chris Barrus
We’re playing at The Derby on Wednesday October 29. Come celebrate Halloween a couple days early. And yes, as far as I know the 8-9pm open bar is legitimate.
In other news, exdetectives.com is open and live right now. Pretty much bare bones at the moment, but we’re constanting adding to it. There’s also a RSS feed.
Freaky Trigger is podcasting ResonanceFM’s A Bite of Stars, A Slug of Time, and Thou, an astoundingly great show on pulp and avant-garde science fiction short stories from 1935 to 1975. Recommended for anyone who’s annoyed at how SF is equated these days with only television and movies.
The second season is already in progress and ends in November, but the entire run of shows is available and worth grabbing.
If you need one show to sample, start with episode #10 on J. G. Ballard’s “Track 12.” An early 1958 short story of his from New Worlds that’s one part Poe and one part sonic weaponry. The followup discussion touches on electroacoustic music, Iannis Xenakis, microsonics, and Ballard of course.
ResonanceFM desperately needs to archive/podcast more of its shows.
Audience at last night’s My Bloody Valentine show.
UFO watchers from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
(MBV photo via Ned)
In his blog Ned alludes to how this show (especially the combo of Spectrum & My Bloody Valentine together) is a resetting of the clock – both groups effectively being the Year Zero for so many bands that followed in their wake.
However, I can’t help but notice just how many bands who list MBV and Spacemen 3 in their MySpace profiles completely miss the point – as if all you need for shoegaze glory is 250kg of off-the-rack effects pedals, some designer amps, and enough time for a smoke break while everything feedsback. Sure, Kevin Shields has the most complex rig I’ve ever seen on stage anywhere, but there’s a purpose to it and coupled with a good sound system that otherwise non-stop autistic tweaking of sound pays off.
I’ve seen an Apollo Saturn V launch. I’ve seen the Swans. I’ve seen Survival Research Lab performances. I once got to see a SR-71 flyby on full afterburner and that gets pretty close to the total frequency response generated on stage. It’s a structured event with ebbs and flows, an endless acceleration of Shepard Tones, and enough VLF to affect every whale and nuclear submarine on the planet. It’s entirely possible that this was all auditory illusions going on in my head.
Attention any other bands who are contemplating reunions: The bar has been set pretty high here. I can’t think of any other band who’s taken sixteen years off and have come back sounding as vital as the day they left. Maybe they’ll even get around to that third album.
Sanity prevails over Cupertino:
To Our Developers:
We have decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.
However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.
Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter.
I suppose this is where I mention that I am now a registered iPhone developer. More news on that later on.
When both Spiritualized and Spectrum play the same venue nine days apart it’s dead easy to draw up all kinds of coincidence and irony parallels. Hell, the music crit review basically writes itself. However if there’s any kind of comparison to look for it’s how Sonic and Jason have both dealt with that long hazy shadow of Spacemen 3 – now seventeen years in the past.
After years of shows with just him and maybe an occasional guitarist, Sonic has a full-band version of Spectrum again. As usual, I’ll patiently await the full album but in the meantime it’s great to hear these songs again. I forget just how brutal of a rhythm guitarist Sonic is.
Some YouTube clips:
“How You Satisfy Me” (yes it was that dark in the club)
“Revolution”
“Suicide”
After years of adding and subtracting band members, Jason finally has a lean version of Spiritualized that sounds great without the overkill of previous full-band tours. Perhaps best of all, Jason was positively chatty (which means saying “thank you” twice) during the show. Songs In A&E is a terrific album. It seems like Jason has finally assembled something that hits just the right elements of skeletal, noise, and over the top excess. Some of the songs remind me of Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription – “Yeah Yeah” and “You Lie You Cheat sound like they could have come out “Things’ll Never Be The Same” rehearsals and “Baby I’m Just A Fool” could very well be a 2008 take of “Walkin’ With Jesus” if it wasn’t for the completely unexpected THIRD chord instead of the usual two.
“Come Together”
“Lord Can You Hear Me”