Category: Music

I’ll have a post-Terrastock core dump here shortly but here’s a couple things in the meantime…

I programmed episode 15 of the Deconstruction Podcast and it was just posted over the weekend. The podcast is worth a listen… I tried to limit myself here to more recent pop stuff that’s been released within the past three years. As usual things take a left turn midway through and that 7% Solution track breaks the rule (it’s from 1996) but I like how it turned out.

Track listing is:

1. The Morning After Girls – “Run For Our Lives”
2. Asobi Seksu – “New Years”
3. Airiel – “Thrown Idols”
4. The Oohlas – “Gone”
5. Persephone’s Bees – “Muzika Dlya Fil’ma”
6. Hooverphonic – “Stranger”
7. Goldenhorse – “The Last Train”
8. The Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound – “The Morning Maiden”
9. Mahogany – “Tesselation, Formerly Plateau One”
10. Emily Loizeau – “L’autre Bout Du Monde”
11. The Lovetones – “Everybody Hides Away”
12. Telenovela – “Breakfast With Birds”
13. The High Violets – “Xstacy”
14. 7% Solution – “The Road And The Common”
15. Ed Kuepper & The Kowalski Collective – “Miracles”

Episode 15 link. RSS feed for the podcast.

Years ago I helped briefly on Fire Records’ Chamber Music project and after a long gestation it’s finally about to be released. NPR interviews producer James Nichols and discusses the project.

Terrastock VII is taking place in Louisville, Kentucky this weekend so, as always, if you see any befuddled-looking underground music types in the nation’s airports, give ‘em a break.

I’ll be there for all four days so say hello if you’re going also (and happen to be reading this). See you on the other side.

Ned Raggett tags me with the following blog meme that’s been making the rounds:

“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to.”

So here we go…

1. Edith Nylon – “Edith Nylon”
1979 French new wave with all of the requisite elements for fantastic new wave: shouty vocals, insistent bass/drums, a synthesizer that does nothing else except announce it’s presence, a guitar line good enough to carry the whole song, vague title/band name reference to synthetic material (think Plastique Bertrand, Poly Styrene, The Age Of Plastic, etc.). Sometimes attitude is indeed good enough.

2. Swervedriver – “Duel”
I fished out Raise and Mezcal Head once word of the reunion tour leaked out and I revise my earlier estimate. “Duel” is now objectively 72% more awesome than I originally remember it being (originally I had this pegged at 62% more awesome when the Juggernaut Rides compilation was released two years back). And for me, Swerve is the kind of band that deserves to be measured in units of “awesome!” “Duel” is my favorite song of theirs by far – you think it’s going one way and then it shifts into another song and then back again. Bonus points for the chiming major-key guitar riff during the “I’m going down, down to the marketplace” chorus. (Video from last month’s show here in LA)

3. Motörhead – “We Are The Road Crew (instrumental)”
A couple months back I stumbled across the VH-1 Classic Albums episode on Ace Of Spades. No further word is necessary here, but there’s an extra from the DVD that made it onto YouTube – a semi-reunion (Clarke is in a different studio and effectively pasted in here) of the Lemmy, Clarke, and Taylor line-up who blast through “We Are The Road Crew” as an instrumental.

4. The Long Blondes – “Nostalgia”
Couples has a bucket full of “difficult second album” clichés, but when I saw them last week they are as furious live as Hanley/Scanlon-era Fall. Obvious pick would be the skittery Can-meets-P.I.L. “Round The Hairpin” but I’m going with “Nostalgia.” This is to 2008 what the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps” was to 2004. At least it should be.

5. Bo Diddley – “I Don’t Like You”
This 5:25 clip is as important to civilization as the discovery of fire, but the first thing I thought of was this track from the utterly insane The Black Gladiator album where Bo reconstitutes himself as a Sly Stone-style funk monster (Dave Alvin’s “The Night Bo Diddley Banned The Beat” is far more instructive rememberance than any of the other pieces last week). The Beat isn’t here, but Bo summons up a wailing howl worthy of Screaming Jay Hawkins before launching into a raunchy version of Booker T. & The MGs.

6. Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark – “Radio Waves”
Yes I did just pick up the new reissue of this. Uncomfortably sandwiched in between their New Wave singles and subsequent John Hughes pop, Dazzle Ships was the outsider album of 1983. “Radio Waves” is the best combination of collapsing circuity and flat out new wave, but you’re never really sure which part of the song is going to take the lead. Producer Rhett Davies should get a little credit for egging OMD on with this. He produced all those Brian Eno albums as well as The B-52’s Wild Planet and Dazzle Ships is the best possible amalgamation of that. Still my most favorite Peter Saville album cover too.

7. Holly & The Italians – “Rock Against Romance”
It’s a fantastically great song. Skip ahead to the 2:40 mark here and go nuts.

That’s it. I’m tagging these folks to carry on the meme.

• Highway 62
• Faris McReynolds
• Doug Orleans
• Everyday Literacies
• Jonsonblog
• Westward Ho!
• Rotting America

Forget any of that “spend it on the economy” malarkey, I contributed some of it to the Irish-American Drone Rock Reunion Fund and the rest on our own 2008 travel fund.

Cthulhu knows how this is all going to turn out. The online fever pitch going into these shows is matched only by Kevin and co.’s secrecy. Apparently Papal elections are easier to get into than MBV rehearsals.

Stars Of The Lid are touring the US right now, and if the Echoplex show was any indication you would be well served to check it out. And Their Refinement Of The Decline was on my 2007 top ten and there’s very few ambient groups out there who bring something interesting to their live shows.

Some clips for you:

R.I.P.

Ned says it much better than I can. I recall that my first real exposure to Neu! was from one of those KUCI cassette tapes.

Why are the gentlemen below grinning?

1. Because they’ve monetized the advance leak of their own album
2. Because they threw a stink bomb into the morass of major label fear, uncertainty, and doubt
3. Because they’re in possession of real data as to what people will/will not pay for downloadable albums
4. Because they’ve steered the discussion about album downloads back to, well, complete albums, not just piecemeal tracks
5. Because they’ve made album release dates exciting again
6. Because they’re taking bets on which journalist/blogger/whatever will come up with the most preposterous story as to What It All Means (by the way, hey Pitchfork – an ARP is also a type of synthesizer)
7. All of the above

So last week I pulled the trigger on the electronic version of In Rainbows as soon as the announcement was made. While waiting for the download announcement to arrive last night, the mood about the music boards was kinda old fashioned – it felt like everyone was waiting in line outside Tower Records for the midnight sale. When I finally received the download link, I got a respectable 415 KB/s download speed. Overall an unbelieveably easy transaction.

In the interest of full disclosure: I paid 50p per track. If the dollar wasn’t so crap against the pound, I would have gone for the full vinyl and CD package. I’m not a Radiohead superfan, but I do want this experiment to succeed.

Meanwhile, Thom – meet Trent. Thom, Trent… Meet Tim.