Danzig

10 posts

I'm a young man with internet problems, music problems, and internet music problems. Residing in Colorado presently and finishing a degree in Political Science. My favorite band is Coil, but I've been on a pretty serious Swans kick lately.

Stray Tracks of the Week (3/21-3/25/11)

*This is also posted on my personal blog, which is pretty quiet lately due to school obligations.*

I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Saturday night, mods willin’.

*** I had to take a week off for school stuff (which is also the culprit behind the dearth of proper album reviews around my blog for the last month or so) but I’m back. This week, acid technopop from EOD, a Daedelus remix from UK House guy Floating Points, and acoustic folk from RM Hubbert. ***

EOD – questionmark 2 (from Questionmarks, self-released via Bandcamp)

Perhaps due to his high profile in the 90’s, or the vacuum left by his long, languid release schedule, a lot of people have taken cracks at cribbing the Aphex Twin’s myriad styles. Most of these artists tend to go straight for an AFX-style hard acid sound centered almost entirely around Roland TB-303 arpeggios, and while that’s all well and good, oftentimes the music feels more like faithful genre exercise than anything else. I would be a lot less enthused with Rephlex-style IDM were it not for EOD, a Norwegian producer who captures the uniquely skewed electropop sensibility that Richard D. James brought to IDM as very few do. Following the pretty amazing Ultrecht EP for the acid-centric 03030 imprint, he has released a new EP on short notice to raise funds to repair his Roland TR-909 drum machine, which suffered damage from a power surge.

Ultrecht was pretty evenly divided between airier Selected Ambient Works Vol. I compositions and analog acid techno, but Questionmarks is pretty much entirely in the latter mode, sounding throughout like two or three Analord singles that were never released. “questionmark 2” is akin to some of the outliers in that massive 42-track series, a rushing 4/4 acid-electro instrumental that never really flags in pace. The multiple synth melodies, which by this point are a sort of EOD signature as much as an IDM touchstone, surge and twist in emotive and spectacular ways, and the rubbery 303 bass arpeggios, which admittedly aren’t as acrobatic as they are in some of EOD’s other efforts, provide a more dynamic rhythmic underpinning to the track than the fairly standard 4/4 drum pattern (which still pulls off a satisfying break every once in awhile, and manages to get more interesting towards the end of the track). The only real downside is that it ends out of nowhere, but in a song with this sort of momentum, satisfactory stopping points are hard to come by.

Stream “questionmark 2” on Soundcloud.
EOD – questionmark 2 by Dicccccccce

(“Questionmarks” is a digital only album sold through EOD’s Bandcamp page.)

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Daedelus – Tailor-Made [Floating Points Remix] (from Tailor-Made Remixes on Ninja Tune)

Daedelus has been credited with sowing the seeds of the current Low End Theory-centric “Beat” scene in Los Angeles (notable home to Flying Lotus, among many many others), releasing music since 2001 and cultivating an air of eccentricity in concert (mainly due to his Victorian gentleman dress and fairly spectacular use of a Monome) that hasn’t always paid off on his recordings, primarily due to the fact that he’s so prolific, and thus often inconsistent. Thankfully, the first single off of his new album for Ninja Tune is one of his best in awhile, staking out territory between Bonobo and Joy Orbison with a sultry female vocal (courtesy of Milosh) over a track that quietly builds forwards and up before ratcheting back down again.

For the prospective single / remix EP, Daedelus (Ninja Tune?) picked out a pretty strong pair of artists to retool the track, but the strongest of the two (to my mind at least) is Floating Points, who’s quietly built up a reputation in certain circles over the last few years as a UK House wunderkind. More recently he’s been exploring more jazz-influenced sounds (primarily though his live ensemble, also on Ninja Tune) and his edit for Daedelus follows in this vein. Floating Points takes a bit of a risk in essentially removing the track’s forward momentum, but he compensates by leaning a lot harder on Milosh’s vocal and teasing out its latent lounge potential through tasteful use of a Rhodes (always a good choice) before inserting softly squeezed organ synths and a shuffling rhythm that I would call “dubstep” if the term wasn’t so meaningless these days. Overall, FP pretty much steals the song from Daedelus (it’s more of a deconstruction than a remix) but in so doing he makes a better case for himself as a certain sort of jazz composer than he did with his ensemble group. It’s sort of a shame that Daedelus is probably best known at this point for being Flylo’s LA-based mentor and Floating Points is now known as the guy who talked over the radio debut of the recent Four Tet / Burial / Thom Yorke collab, but if this song (and its remix) are any indication, they certainly have the chops to gain greater recognition for their own work.

Daedelus – “Tailor-Made (Floating Points Remix)” on youtube.

(You can purchase the digital version of the “Tailor-Made” Remix EP, also including a Tokimonsta remix, over at Bleep)

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RM Hubbert – Hey There Mr. Bone (from First & Last on Chemikal Underground Records)

There was a time, not too long ago, when I considered myself an electronica partisan. Tired of the skepticism of people I knew over electronic music in general, I started to articulate a distinctly anti-rockist stance, arguing against the musical primacy of the album format and, more importantly, the emotional primacy of the guitar as a musical instrument. Mostly, this was in reaction to the continued vexation of Radiohead fans who felt as though everything the band made post-OK Computer was “not real music”, and the rise of Chillwave and Witch Hosue, which I considered (and still consider) to be illegitimate, historically ignorant sham genres (I was great fun in conversation, as you can probably imagine).

Over the past year, however, as my music-buying habit has expanded and I noticed that I’m not as drawn to UK Bass music as I used to be, I’ve begun to revisit guitar music. I still find myself largely bored by most permutations of rock and blues (exceptions being shoegaze and certain types of metal) but through my recent induction to the Swans fan cult I’ve delved into the Young God Records back catalog and discovered that I have a greater affinity for folk music (the darker and drone-ier the better) than I thought I did. This impulse took me from Gary Higgins to Angels of Light to James Blackshaw to Mountains and finally to the wider world of fringe folk, at least, that which I can find through Boomkat (always the closest resource at hand for a musically cloistered soul such as myself). A few weeks ago I was sifting through their new releases and came upon a Scottish guitarist named RM Hubbert and his First & Last album, which I had never heard of, but when I played the sound clips I knew I had to have.

Hubbert’s music plays sort of like a less studio-bound James Blackshaw, which is to say this is unaccompanied acoustic virtuosity par excellence. This particular track (the first on the album, dedicated to Hubbert’s dog) is marked by its distinctive use of on-instrument percussion, which meshes seamlessly with Hubbert’s flamenco-indebted playing, which slides and flares with natural finesse. On record I figured must have been multitracked or performed by someone else, but live footage seems to indicate this is all Hubbert, which is certainly impressive. My vocabulary for this sort of music is lacking (well, more lacking than usual) so as with any music I’m naturally intoxicated by, I can only really speak of the feelings it elicits. I could probably break out any number of hoary scenarios such music would be perfect for (bike ride through an orchard with your sweetheart in the Summer, I’d say) but suffice to say this is the sort of music that a particularly lucky person might walk in on at a cafe somewhere – unpretentious, supremely competent, and personal.

RM Hubbert – “Hey There Mr. Bone” live. The actual song starts up around 1:05.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUnb20mBdg

(Boomkat has “First & Last” region-locked outside of the US [props to Rob for the assist there] but it looks like the digital version, as well as other formats, may be available direct from the label)

The GAMBIT Project, and The Gaming Community’s Minority Problem

Kotaku recently published an Owen Good editorial in response to a recent study conducted by the GAMBIT gaming research center at MIT that explored the legendary capacity of anonymous gamers to utilize hate speech in play and on internet forums.

At first I thought the article’s title – “Is This Studying Hate Speech, Or Just Intellectualized Trolling” – might have been one of Gawker Media’s signature pageview-grabbing titles, but upon reading the text I found several things that I felt compelled to address. Normally I’d just leave a comment, but their system seems to be on the fritz again, and besides, I feel as though my thoughts on this are numerous enough to compile a full retort, blog-style, and this is as good of a place to provide that as any.

I should preface all of this by providing my “credentials”. I am in what is often considered the core demographic of the gaming industry – a white, nerdy male in his mid-20’s pursuing undergraduate degree. I have loved video games (particularly those of the role-playing variety) for as long as I can remember. My favorite game is the original Fallout (for some wizened veterans of the gaming community, that might serve as a dog whistle warning), which I received for Christmas as an 11-year old in 1997.

I think a lot about games, about their design, about what makes them fun and their potential for real brilliance. But I have some beef with gamers and the gaming industry – I’m skeptical of the notion of games as legitimate art and I find myself at odds with the culture in general and its activist strains in particular. So it’s no small wonder that I get my hackles up over pieces of gaming journalism such as this one.

The GAMBIT study involved creating and registering gamer profiles with the names PROUD_2B_MUSLIM, GayPride90 and Black_N_Proud90, and playing Halo: Reach online with random players (for those who don’t know, the use of hate speech in gaming is usually associated with the proliferation of console multi-player gaming via the original Halo). As you can probably guess, the players using those names suffered much verbal abuse directed towards the identities their names indicated they had. Not only that, in player vs. player combat those with the minority-identified names were more aggressively targeted.

Good’s analysis of this study is, to my mind at least, indicative of the ossified privilege that is endemic to gaming as an industry explicitly designed to serve the sensibilities of disgruntled white teenage boys. Good looks at the hate speech and aggressive play and concludes that the minority-identified players brought the abuse upon themselves. Good writes – “If you’re looking to be called the usual filth-flarn-flarn-filth-flarn, those are some awesome gamertags, well worth the 800 Microsoft Points change fees.”

Good’s insinuation, as per his title, is that GAMBIT is involved in “intellectualized trolling” here, but his use of the term “trolling” is both disingenuous and fundamentally incorrect. Trolling, as those who have spent even a small amount of time on internet message boards will tell you, is a sort of forum sport in which a member posts something for the sole purpose of causing arguments and strife within the topic or thread. By definition, trolling is provocation – it is done solely to elicit emotion and negative response.

Thus, what Good is really implying is that being a Muslim, or black, or a woman, or a gay person, and being open about that fact to others, is an open provocation in the gay community, that being a minority player is something that you inflict on other people. There’s no real scandal in being called a nigger or a fag or a cunt in a game, or being singled out for aggression based on your identity – it wouldn’t have happened had you kept it to yourself. The onus is on the abused to prevent abuse. This is, obviously, a repugnant view to hold to, but it’s one that seems to be held as widely agreeable within the gaming community.

It’s not just relegated to multi-player games, either. In recent months, gay panic in single-player RPG gaming has hit an all-time high. When Fallout: New Vegas came out there were a surprising number of people who were shocked, shocked to discover that a perk called “Confirmed Bachelor” unlocked in-game flirting with same-sex characters. As the game’s lead designer noted, players would only experience a majority of these encounters if they deliberately indicated that their character was interested in the same sex, via the perk choice. But this didn’t really address what I suspect is the core concern of the horrified gamers – that gay characters were visible in-game at all.

Just a couple of bros, hanging out and doing friend stuff — "Confirmed Bachelor"

Dragon Age 2 is another game that features a degree of sexual diversity within its game-world, and in the weeks since it came out there has been some fan uproar over “neglecting straight male gamers”. From a poster on the Bioware Social Forums, one of the skeeviest corners of the internet –

“every previous BioWare game, I always felt that almost every companion in the game was designed for the male gamer in mind. Every female love interest was always written as a male friend type support character. In Dragon Age 2, I felt like most of the companions were designed to appeal to other groups foremost, Anders and Fenris for gays and Aveline for women given the lack of strong women in games, and that for the straight male gamer, a secondary concern.

It makes things very awkward when your male companions keep making passes at you. The fact that a “No Homosexuality” option, which could have been easily implemented, is omitted just proves my point. I know there are some straight male gamers out there who did not mind it at and I respect that.

When I say BioWare neglected The Straight Male Gamer, I don’t mean that they ignored male gamers. The romance options, Isabella and Merrill, were clearly designed for the straight male gamers in mind. Unfortunately, those choices are what one would call “exotic” choices. They appeal to a subset of male gamers and while its true you can’t make a romance option everyone will love, with Isabella and Merrill it seems like they weren’t even going for an option most males will like. And the fact is, they could have. They had the resources to add another romance option, but instead chose to implement a gay romance with Anders.”

This sort of complaint actually first started cropping up when the first Dragon Age game, which had a bisexual male character that the player could “romance”*. The character, Zevran, was widely disliked, and there were anecdotal reports of players killing the character at the first opportunity so that they never had to deal with him. There were also complaints about being pigeonholed into gay romances, but as in the case of New Vegas and Dragon Age 2 (which also received the same complaints), gay romances actually had to be entered into deliberately and could be stopped at any time (except for New Vegas, which had no romances at all).

It seems as though the very existence of gay characters (who just come out and say they are gay and act as gay without the player’s permission!) is fundamentally threatening to many gamers, in a sad sort of reflection of grade-school level homophobia (is there any other kind?), like homosexuality is some flesh-eating virus that you can’t even acknowledge for fear of infection. It’s as sad as it is revolting.

And all that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The problems faced by female gamers are as old as multi-player gaming – ask a woman who plays World of Warcraft what she plays as, and chances are good she’ll be a male character so that she can move through the game without people assuming (correctly) that she’s a woman and acting according to game standards.

As for race, well, going back to Dragon Age 2, the third most popular fan-made modification for the game in its unofficial mod database is a reskin mod for Isabela, a dark-skinned romanceable character, that gives her fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. All told it’s been downloaded about 13,000 times as of this writing.

In his closing line, Good asks what the point of even talking about all of this is. “…if this kind of behavior is already known and largely assumed to be the norm,” he asks, “what is the application of this information?”

My reply is this: As represented by Kotaku and countless other gaming blogs out there, gamers have a pretty massive chip on their collective shoulder. They feel unfairly maligned, scrutinized, and persecuted. They feel stereotyped and disparaged (ironic, that). They hate being dismissed as ignorant, piggish college boys with no taste or intellectual merit, they feel like what they love is an art form, legitimate and worthy of respect. They want to be taken seriously.

The only way that the gaming community will ever receive respect (or be worthy of it, even) is by taking responsibility for itself, and that includes the ugly elements within the community. This sort of harassment and bigotry has no place in any other collective passion, why should it be accepted in gaming? The odd fatalism on display in Good’s editorial (“this kind of behavior is already known and largely assumed to be the norm”) is a tacit admission that a) Racism / Homophobia / Misogyny are acceptable as they are in gaming culture and b) there is nothing to be done about them. If these things are not worth paying attention to, how can they be worth addressing?

I think that taking ownership of these things is something that is actually possible, but given that a bigotry-supporting, victim-blaming opinion piece such as this one can be received with fanfare from one of the most prominent advocates of gaming culture on the internet, chances aren’t good. I honestly doubt the community is willing to commit. My only real hope is that diversity in games will be continue to grow, and that anxiety over it will abate. But that’s a slim hope. In the meantime, I’ve gone back to not reading Kotaku.

*And before you get the impression that Bioware is some vitally progressive company, they’ve refused to include queer male characters in their Mass Effect series, citing their “inappropriate for PG-13″ nature”, although female player characters can romance an alien character that is, by all signifiers, culturally and physically, a woman. The alien race is mono-sexed, so it’s not really a lesbian relationship, you see. They have ruled out exclusively gay characters in their games (all non-straight characters are bisexual) citing a lack of market incentive. Progress!

Stray Tracks of the Week (3/7-3/11/11)

*This is also posted on my personal blog, which was quiet this week due to school obligations.*

*** This week is all-digital. We’ve got a track from Wagon Christ (aka Luke Vibert), Angel Eyes, and Baths.***

Wagon Christ – Mr. Mukatsuku (from Toomorrow on Ninja Tune)

It was sort of a shame that attention towards the 90’s IDM boom so often focused on Warp’s Big Three – Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Squarepusher – resulted in a lot of other, equally interesting producers (Jega, u-Ziq) falling by the wayside. In terms of recognition, Luke Vibert probably falls in that second category, but it hasn’t really stopped him from continuing music well into the present. Vibert is so ultra-prolific that he adopted numerous aliases that were all about as productive as your average mono-moniker’d producer, and each one filled a different stylistic niche. Harder junglist impulses were sated via the Plug alias, acid house / techno tracks went to a whole host of aliases including Ace of Clubs, disco went to Kerrier District, and drum and bass went to Wagon Christ. In all cases, Vibert’s signature silliness and love of old funk drum break samples remained constant.

But somewhere around the middle of the 00’s it seemed like Vibert had tired of all his pseudonyms. The last seven years or so have seen Vibert releasing music almost exclusively under his own name, all displaying a greater focus on the acid house influences that act as a sort of great unifier for all first-wave IDM artists. So it’s sort of odd that he’s decided to dust off the Wagon Christ moniker after 7 years of dormancy.

While much of the Toomorrow album is hard to distinguish from more recent music released under the Vibert name, “Mr. Mukatsuku” manages to recapture the weirdly melancholy feel much of Wagon Christ’s earlier music had (which often contrasted nicely with the Looney Toons-indebted madcap goofiness of the persona), most of which is attributable to the iconic sound of the Rhodes electric piano, used to great effect here, and the swooning brass samples applied in all the right places. The languid pace of the drum machine boom-bap (with just a bit of swing, for a jazz feel) gives the proceedings a sort of “lounge music for robots” feel, which is entirely appropriate, and the quivering acid synthline leaves no real doubt as to the song’s author. It could have seamlessly fit into Musipal, which is about as high of praise as you can give a Wagon Christ album. If only the rest of Toomorrow was as focused as this.

“Mr. Mukatsuku” on Youtube.

(The physical versions of “Toomorrow” are due next week, but you can acquire the digital version presently over atBleep.)

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Angel Eyes – Dire Dish (from Dire Dish on Not Not Fun)

Gotta feel for Andrew Cowie – the Australian lo-fi recording artist who releases music as Angel Eyes and who, if he had come around just a year earlier, would have been enjoying all the critical acclaim that Forest Swords is at the moment. At first listen, the two sound extremely similar, but patient listeners will find ways to distinguish the two in ways that serve Angel Eyes.

The production is what will fool you – both artists use a lot of reverb and lo-fi recording techniques, giving the sound a hollow, dubby feel. But the actual style of the music itself is different enough – the guitar work of FS and Cowie are both clearly indebted to Ennio Morricone, but Cowie often goes for expansive, ambient-ish meditation where FS aims for a curious sort of muddy bombast. Ultimately it’s the instrumentation that really does it – The pounding drums of Dagger Paths is entirely absent on Dire Dish, while Cowie utilizes synthesizers in an intriguing way that’s absent in his contemporary’s work – the low fidelity recording takes the keening tone of the synth and strips it of a few layers, resulting in a harsher, but also warmer, sound that gives “Dire Dish” much of its character. Now, if Angel Eyes ends upcovering an Aaliyah song, at that point we’ll start having a real problem.

Stream “Dire Dish” on Soundcloud.

(You can get “Dire Dish” digitally via Boomkat.)

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Baths – Nightly, Daily (from The Nothing / Nightly, Daily on Anticon)

Whither Anticon? The venerable Californian “backpack” (read: white) rap label seems to have largely lost interest in the sorts of music that it helped to pioneer, ostensibly at least. In part this might be due to some latent desire to “transcend” hip hop, and while a lot of their artists definitely fit the bill as rappers, some of their more famous acts display a (foolish?) musical ambition that seems to belie a dissatisfaction with the genre. Just read any interview with Adam “Doseone” Drucker and in his own colorful way he’ll outline for you what is either disappointment or resentment or a good old-fashioned chip on his shoulder with regard to rap music.

It’s been happening for a few years now. It started out with WHY?, who started off as a hip hop band and turned into a sort of indie sing-spoken poetry thing (they put on a truly abysmal live show in my town and since then I haven’t given them the time of day), and continued with the patronage of perpetually stoned electro-bro Tobacco, who’s taken to collaborating with a tired-sounding Beck lately. The latest acquisition for Anticon’s diversified portfolio is Will Wiesenfeld aka Baths, a young guy with muttonchops from Chatsworth, California who’s operated under a few different names, notably Post-Foetus (unfortunately it does not sound anything like Foetus).

Baths’ music is markedly different from the aggressively weird acts that make up the rest of Anticon’s new school – a lot of critics have lumped him in with LA’s Low End Theory scene, America’s pre-eminent electronic music movement at the moment, but Baths (usually) dispenses with thudding bass in favor of more delicate pop harmonies. “Nightly, Daily” furthers the trend, with a lovely indie-folk sensibility that meshes impressively with the usual scraping, hissing drum programming. It reminds me a lot of the sorts of little dalliances that Hrvatski would venture on 6 or 7 years ago, but this is really the core of Baths’ aesthetic – sunny, sweet music for gentler people than you’ll find out in the clubs on any given night. It’s pleasant and a little bit light in comparison to some of his album cuts, but that might be why it’s on this short EP. Given another album or two of music this consistent, Baths could end up as the best thing on Anticon’s roster.

“Daily, Nightly” on Youtube.

(You can acquire “The Nothing / Nightly, Daily” in lots of different places. I got mine from Bleep.)

Masterpiece Twitter: Ice-T and Coco

By Danzig and Dancing Queen

During its nearly five-year storied history, Twitter has remained steadfast in its commitment to bringing the best…or just bringing 140 character expressions from individuals around the world. The Twitterverse is filled with eclectic characters and contemporary celebrities who have filled the ether with their random thoughts on life, love and luxury.

In this weekly series, Danzing and Dancing Queen will risk brain cells and credibility scouring the Twitterscape to bring you the best of Twitter. We will then perform dramatic recitations of these tweets for your listening pleasure. Please, enjoy.

This week we feature Ice-T and his wife, Coco.

WARNING: Pictures and language are NSFW (Not safe for work, for the uninitiated)

Ice-T, as performed by Danzig:

Coco, as performed by Dancing Queen:

*Danzing and Dancing Queen are not professional actors, but do play actors on Crasstalk.

Stray Tracks of the Week (2/28-3/4/11)

*This is also posted on my personal blog, which features pictures of a hairy, mostly naked man this week.*

*** This week saw the arrival of a few packages from Mimaroglu and Boomkat that I’d been expecting for some time, as well as the usual bumper crop of digital music. I’ve got an old track from 13 & God, new stuff from NWG (aka Niggas With Guitars), and a new compilation entry from Subeena.***

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13 & God – Von Gradleute (Hrvatski Remix) (from Men of Station / Soft Atlas on Anticon)

While researching a Keith Fullerton Whitman / Hrvatski split casette I invested in a few weeks ago, I came upon a happy discovery – a set of remixes that Whitman’s “breakcore” guise Hrvatski had created for the great Anticon supergroup 13 & God (a collaboration between “art rappers” Themselves and German art pop group The Notwist) – and I just had to have it. 13 & God was centrally important to my entry into indie music 6 or 7 years ago, when a friend of mine included their perfect pop song “Men Of Station” on a mixtape he sent me, and I fell in love. The prospect of Whitman (my favorite experimental composer) having his way with that song and others was too much to resist.

As a general rule, remixes (and album-length compendiums of them in particular) are a grab bag, as you’ll usually have so many different artists pulling the music in so many idiosyncratic directions that at best you’ll get a few remarkable edits among a number of inessential curiosities. The single format that the Men of Station / Soft Atlas release takes is a lot easier to handle, and it helps that it’s backloaded with the two Hrvatski remixes, one for each song. “Men of Station” was my favorite 13 & God effort, and much to my relief Whitman’s edit does not disappoint. The song’s central melodic motifs are wisely kept intact, and even augmented by swirling harp samples, as well as reverb and delay that are sorely lacking in the original, and Whitman’s frenetic jungle drum programming fits in better than it has any right to. I’m sort of perplexed it took me this long to figure out that this remix was out there – I can only imagine how ecstatic I would have been hearing this when I was first listening to 13 & God and Hrvatski.

Stream “Von Gradleute” on Soundcloud.

(I acquired “Men Of Station / Soft Atlas” on vinyl because I’m dumb like that, and if you’re dumb too KFW probably has a few more copies over at Mimaroglu, but normal people can find it on iTunes, along with the 13 & God full length. Their follow-up LP is due in the next few months, so that’s exciting.)

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Niggas With Guitars – Milky White (from Ethnic Frenzy on Digitalis Vinyl)

This was the other half of my 13 & God Mimaroglu shipment, one that I picked up on a whim based on chatter that I had heard from associate tape collectors I respected. I have no idea who these people are or why they felt like “Niggas With Guitars” would be a good name for their outfit, but their music is definitely interesting. The vinyl was so new when I got it that there was no indication of which side was which, so my naming convention might be way off.

“Milky White” (if that is indeed the name of the song) is either the second or fifth track on the 6-track album, and like all of NWG’s music that I’ve heard, it is quite disarming. It could, one imagines, fit nicely into some odder corner of the “chillwave” scene, steeped as it is in a certain sort of nostalgia – the lilting, gentle synth melodies and horn-like drones call to mind old nature film soundtracks or meditation music ripped from casette (fittingly, NWG kicked around the fringe music casette scene before landing this endorsement from the sterling Digitalis label). But more than anything else, it’s strongly reminiscent of the interlude music that Boards of Canada would insert between its more propulsive songs on their old albums. Lovely, if slight, music. Now if they could just do something about that name…

Listen to “Milky White” on Soundcloud.

(I purchased “Ethnic Frenzy” as soon as it hit Mimaroglu, and your best bet might be finding it there [it’s up there at the top] – if Discogs is to be believed, there are only 200 copies for the world, with the first run of 75 sold out at source. Better hurry!)

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Subeena – Miscalculate (from Super Volume 1 on Super Recordings)

I’ve waited for Italian producer Subeena to go “next level” popularity-wise for awhile now and it hasn’t happened, much to my chagrin. Of all the dubstep(ish) techno-leaning freshman producers to come out of the UK in the last few years, Subeena was by far my favorite, as her love of early Warp records sounds was something that I shared, and she spent some time in the Planet Mu roster, which I’ve always looked to for more forward-thinking trends in electronic music. Popularity’s kind of a relative thing in electronic circles but I’ve always felt like she didn’t get the sort of recognition her talent called for.

“Miscalculate”, which just popped up on her friend Raffertie’s Super Recordings compilation, doesn’t sound like it’s going to break that trend. Overall it takes after some of the more recent work she’s done for her own Opit label, which finds Subeena contributing vocals, and bringing a more rave-ish sensibility to the music. But I feel like this track in particular is a little too reminiscent of “Spectrum”, the b-side from her “Picture” single. Perhaps it’s just the fact that the track feels in general a little too much like a b-side (not that anyone should expect A-material to show up on label compilations, necessarily). The track is still fun enough, but in comparison to Subeena’s best work it doesn’t quite measure.

Stray Tracks of the Week (2/17-2/25/11)

*This post is also posted on The Pop Stalinist, my personal blog. There were a few reviews that didn’t make it over here this week.*

This week was actually pretty light, with a lot of my listening time devoted to older Swans records and newer Angels of Light recordings, which I have dug up in light of an incredible show put on by the former that I attended in Denver this past week. These are musical supplements I’ve been taking. I put in entirely too much work last week resizing Youtube (and apparently it slows WordPress down) so I’m just linking to songs this time.

Antena – Camino del Sol (from Camino Del Sol on Le Disques du Crepsecule / Numero)

This is actually an old song, from a band I wasn’t even aware of until Numero re-released their 1982 Camino Del Solcompilation / mini-album on vinyl not too long ago. Antena was a French band originally signed to Le Disques du Crepsecule, a small Belgian indie that became notable for its close relationship with the Benelux subsidiary of Factory Records, who in large part birthed the “Madchester” scene from which Joy Division / New Order and many other notable post-punk bands emerged. Unfortunately for Antena, Manchester’s heat didn’t rub off on them (though Factory Benelux artists, such as A Certain Ratio, did meet with some success) and they and they became the sort of act that obscurity collectors raved about but few really remembered.

It’s somewhat sad to contemplate, given a track like “Camino Del Sol”. This is certainly a sort of pop music, albeit the sort of pop that goes ignored all too often. Antena’s stock-in-trade is tropicalia (or as Neil Tennant called it, “electro-samba”), which, as you might expect, translates into typically sunny moods, but Antena’s song (and most of the album from which it is culled) contains a remarkable melancholy largely attributable to Isabelle Powaga’s whisper-sung vocals and the (synth harpsichord?) chords that make up the melody, giving it an extra depth. In terms of production, it near-perfect, so good as to feel contemporary, with the electronic elements blending seamlessly in with the percussion and the vox. It feels like a lost classic, perfect for a warm Summer, or a Roger Moore Bond film. One wonders what more Antena would have produced had they received the attention they deserved.

“Camino Del Sol” on Youtube.

(Camino Del Sol is currently being sold in vinyl format on Boomkat, but if digital music is your thing I’ve only been able to find it on iTunes, which is weird!)

Hype Williams – Business Line (from One Nation, forthcoming on Hippos In Tanks)

I admit that I reacted poorly when “Witch House” became a thing. Beyond being unimpressed with Salem‘s inexplicably acclaimed minstrel act and wary of blog-defined microgenres (as opposed to, say, regionally defined ones), beyond the universally irritating use of wingdings in band names and cheaply acquired occult signifiers, as an industrial music fan I had a chip on my shoulder over Witch House’s debt to that venerable scene. Every booster of Witch House (some bloggers briefly tried to rebrand it as “Drag Music” when it was clear the “House” designation was an albatross) seemed to go on about how a given act (usually Salem) was creating totally unprecedented music – dark electronic music with a debt to hip hop. I felt this was clearly bullshit, and I was ready to write the whole thing off.

But as the bloom came off Witch House in the mainline indie press and the paremeters of the sound, which were always nebulous, started to expand beyond acts that had hit my shitlist almost immediately (Salem, Tri Angle records, and Creep, who will always and forever be that band who called their music “rapegaze”), it started to sound better. All it really needed was a de-emphasis of the Screw Musicinfluences and the tacky triangles-and-hoods bullshit. Hype Williams was more than willing to offer those things. It’s not entirely clear what their story is – it’s possible that they’re an anonymous collective, but the public face of the group, such as it is, is a duo, Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt, hailing from Russia and London respectively. Perhaps their distance from the States (and the general lack of hype from the usual blogroll suspects) made them better candidates to push Witch House forward, but whatever the case, their sound palette has proved quite diverse in the project’s short history.

“Businessline” is from their forthcoming LP debut on Hippos In Tanks, and what’s striking about it is how out-of-time it seems – It could certainly have come from the same 80?s VHS haze as “chillwave” did, but the winding synthline brings it forward to the 90?s as well, when Richard D. James was intermittently putting out demo-quality tracks that brought a certain rough-hewn pop sensibility to IDM. It’s a short track, but its unmannered lightness stands in sharp contrast to the sort of contrived gloom that defined Witch House when it was born. If I had to wager I’d put money on Hype Williams being one of the few bands that survives and moves on when that house of cards collapses, assuming they’re anywhere near the premises when it happens.

“Businessline” on Youtube

(“One Nation” will be available from various retailers in just about a week’s time. In the meantime, you can download “Businessline” from XLR8R, for free.)

Solar Bears – Cub (Keep Shelly in Athens Remix) (Unreleased)

Solar Bears’ She Was Coloured In was one of my favorite LPs from last year (I think it ended up on #2 or #3 on my list) but “Cub” was probably the weakest track on the album. At first listen it sort of fits into the Geogaddi-era Boards of Canada sound that Solar Bears appeared to be tapping into when their music first hit the blogs. But on She Was Coloured In they showed a range of influences and capabilities beyond mere imitation of BoC (and there are far worse acts to hound). As it stood, “Cub” was an anemic sketch, really little more than a tasteful hippy guitar jam that goes nowhere over 2 minutes and 45 seconds. Worse than pastiche, it was bad pastiche.

Luckily for us, Keep Shelly In Athens (who I had never heard of before this) took to remixing duties on “Cub” and pushed the BoC era a bit forward, to The Campfire Headphase day, doubling the song’s length and adding all the dramatic bombast and sonic texture that the original lacked. I’d be remiss to say there wasn’t something a little bit off about the track – probably the fact that all the song’s emotion is front and center, on its sleeve, so to speak, and the meticulous production is sort of wasted on that bluntness. But it’s still head and shoulders above the original in terms of efficacy and quality.

“Cub (Keep Shelly In Athens Remix)” on Youtube.

(This remix isn’t on any official releases. XLR8R has it for free download, however, along with a surprising number of other Solar Bears tracks.)

Today In Poor Judgment (Newsrag Blog Edition)

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Somehow, the most prominent aspect of the attack on Lara Logan that has caused forthright people to desire intense social isolation has been the opportunity it has allowed people to, apropos of nothing, display a total lack of forethought and respect where sexual violence is concerned. The news cycle being what it is, you would think educated, otherwise sensible people were falling over themselves to go out of bounds with judgments over this they have no real connection to. They have been publicly shamed, some of their careers have been disrupted, and yet it seems like the open season for blithe pontification on the Logan case seems to still be in effect.

The latest to tread dangerous waters appears to be Ward Harkavy over at the Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog. The title of his first thought piece? “Lara Logan: Was She Actually Raped? It Makes A Difference”, which anyone for whom sexual violence is salient will be taken aback by. Wading into the text mixes the initial shock with a dose of healthy confusion, as Harkavy is pushing to clarify whether the attack on Logan was “actual rape” because he feels that there isn’t enough outrage over it. Harkavy’s follow-up post (“Lara Logan: The Rape Question, and a Scandalous NYPD Connection”) elaborates a bit further on this point – he argues that “sexual assault” is a sort of soft word, used to defang and discredit cases of rape (he cites a pretty heinous NYPD case to illustrate this).

I have to admit that when I started to write this post, when I was initially shown the “It Makes A Difference” editorial, I was aghast enough to make it about how the Village Voice royally fucked up and embarrassed themselves, but even as I think the particulars here are still really messed, the concerns Harkavy’s justifications raise are worth considering to some degree. “Sexual assault” as a term is meant to eliminate the sort of hierarchal stratification of violence that puts penetrative rape at the very top, to the exclusion of all else, but it stands to reason that the intentionally generic nature of the term lends it to use as a sort of desensitizer.

But there are more pressing problems with the argument, beyond that it’s a, uh, novel way to approach the issue, and could just as easily be a thin veil to cover the harrassment of survivors (I take Harkavy’s apparent concern for justice in his posts at face value). The first problem is that this isn’t an abstract, hypothetical thought experiment, it’s a real horrific thing that happened to a real person, and seizing on her case to make a wider point does her a grave disservice, to put it mildly. Harkavy’s argument that the public interest trumps Logan’s right to privacy is not just a tad unsettling. The second problem is that the question being asked accepts in its premises the idea that non-penetrative assaults are less worthy of concern than (to use Whoopi’s unfortunate phrase) “rape rape”. It’s a gamble that Harkavy is cavalierly taking on Logan’s behalf – if penetrative rape did in fact occur, he can then forcefully argue for greater media salience and activism, but if it didn’t he’s painted himself into a corner from which he can only admit that it isn’t as big of a deal as it’s made out to be. There are several possible scenarios that could prove to be just as traumatic as penetrative assault (and if it doesn’t really matter, why would you ask in the first place?)

But even as Harkavy’s posts are, at best, woefully misguided and essentially counterproductive to efforts to recast dialogs around violence, I don’t think it’s appropriate that this guy should be pilloried, as he probably will be (in some corners at least) in the near future. From the looks of his post history, the guy is the Village Voice’s crime beat reporter, and I imagine (though I could very well be wrong) that his perspective is akin to many of those in law enforcement: Simpatico in many respects with the desires of citizens against sexual violence, but at least partially tone-deaf when it comes to matters of structural and social injustice. The dude is not John Boehner, and as disrespectful and callous as his posts come across, I would disagree with the calls to fire his ass that are surely on their way. Who knows if a clarification or begrudging apology is appropriate, but the very least to be done is an immediate moratorium on the pursuit of this “clarification”.

Ultimately, the brunt of the blame for this embarrassment likely lays with the Voice’s editorial staff. With his history of covering rape cases for the paper and hammering out alerts regarding wanted suspects and missing children, it’s possible that the editors felt Harkavy was a good fit for an editorial series on the Logan attack. It’s disappointing that no one was willing or able to point out the severe problems that naturally followed from the series’ line of questioning. I expected more from a decent rag like the Voice.*

As for the possibility that the Village Voice used the headlines it did to cynically court outrage and the pageviews it brings? The idea is so preposterous as to be beyond consideration.

* I was halfway through a complaint to Foster Kamer before I realized he doesn’t work there anymore.

Stray Tracks of the Week (2/14-2/18/11)

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I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Thursday or Friday night, mods willin’.

This week yielded a bumper crop of drone-folk and neoclassical records that I’m falling in love with, along with my usual assortment of House and club music oddities. We start out with Portland, the whitest town on Earth, and its lovely indie-folk.

Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose – Younger (from Bridge Carols on Holocene Music)

Hate to say it, but there’s only one thing remotely problematic with Laura Gibson & Ethan Rose’s Bridge Carols music, and that’s Gibson’s vocal similarity to a great many other indie darling folksters, particularly Joanna Newsom or Regina Spektor (it’s the heaviness of the “ah” and “aw” sounds, I think). It’s not a terrible detriment by any means – indeed, while it wears a bit thin over the entire album, it’s quite effective on a song-to-song basis, particularly in the LP’s first three tracks, the last of which is “Younger”. Ethan Rose’s bed of warm, swooning woodwinds, electro-acoustic trickery (chiming guitar and a bit of… jangling keys, sounds like) and sparingly applied brass evoke the dream-like feel of some of Grouper‘s more romantic tracks, but it only lasts for about half the song – the final 3 minutes are bog-standard, if pleasant, acoustic folk.

Gibson’s lyrics are nonsensical, all stars and fighting and dark places, but it’s fairly difficult to focus on them – the purpose of the song is the mood it creates, and every element of the song sheds definition in service to it. Not the strongest track on the album, but a beautiful and relaxing one all the same.

(“Bridge Carols” looks to be unavailable for purchase in the US on Boomkat, but it’s apparently available via 7digital.)

FaltyDL – Hip Love (from the Hip Love single on Ramp Recordings)

FaltyDL (ne Andrew Lustman) is one of the more prolific producers operating at the moment, releasing some new remix every few weeks and dropping an album or a clutch of EPs (or both) on a yearly basis, and perhaps as a result of that his sound hasn’t really grown in some time. Sure, he’s changed things up a time or two, but ever since he dropped the weirder, more melodic elements of his full-length debut Love is a Liability in favor of straightforward NY Garage revivalism, all his tracks have been either somewhat samey (most every single he’s released in the last year, plus the Phreqaflex EP) or nondescript (Endeavour, a slo-House experiment that should have been much more effective than it ended up being). One gets a sense there’s a definite “quantity over quality” problem occurring here.

While “Hip Love” has all the same elements that make up Lustman’s lackluster tracks (the shuffle in the rhythm and his signature snare / hi-hat sound) it’s apparent that something is just a bit different this time around, and it doesn’t fully register until about the 1:45 mark, when he launches into a jazzy drum machine solo that belies Lustman’s hidden love for jungle. It perfectly fits in with the smoky NYC soul aesthetic articulated through the chanteuse vox and horn brass samples that pepper the track. It’s easily the best thing Lustman’s done since All in the Place dropped almost a year ago.

(You can grab the “Hip Love” single, featuring a remix from Jamie xx of The xx fame, for download over at Boomkat)

Mountains – Map Table (from Choral on Thrill Jockey)

I like drone music of all kinds. Most people, I think, get apprehensive when they hear the term “drone” being thrown around, and not without good reason – the sort of dense, academic tone-music that someone like, say, Keith Fullerton Whitman routinely creates will only appeal to certain people. But there are many disparate and distinct schools of drone music, and perhaps the most accessible of these is folk-drone. Where synth-based drone is often alienating and esoteric, folk-drone tends towards the sort of uplift and sustained bliss that’s commonly associated with its stylistic cousins in post-rock and ambient music. The focus on acoustic instrumentation is a big part of it – there’s a certain vital element introduced in folk-drone that is often missing in more experimental variants of the form.

Mountains’ Choral is a good example. Many otherwise drone-averse listeners will be immediately struck by the sustained, undulating organ (is there a more beautiful sound?) upon which the title track slowly build into a vibrant wall of sound. An entire album of this sort of composition would end up rich but ultimately a little daunting, and Mountains subvert expectations to some extent with the launch of their next song, “Map Table”, which is built almost entirely around an evocatively played acoustic guitar. Comparisons to neo-folk artists like James Blackshaw are probably inevitable, but ultimately the track avoids the sort of showboating that virtuosos like Blackshaw sometimes fall prey to. A little after the 3 minute mark the melody is dropped and the guitar becomes a percussive instrument, creating a sound like bicycle spokes clicking erratically as lulling, murky piano comes to usher the song towards its end. The attention paid to the acoustic guitar is sustained over the next few tracks, holding the otherwise effervescent album together. A little bit of variety goes a long way.

(“Choral” is available digitally from the Fina store. I would strongly advise tracking down a vinyl copy, as it includes two excellent extra tracks)

Deaf Center – The Day I Never Would Have (from Owl Splinters on Type)

I have to credit Svarte Greiner (ne Erik K. Skodvin) and Otto Totland for, in large part, introducing me to “modern classical” fandom. Greiner’s “doom folk” (his album covers are art in themselves) and Totland’s cinematic piano pieces (check out his Nest project’s Retold, you won’t regret it – my favorite record of 2010) helped me develop the patience that’s often required to digest the more deliberate compositions that I seek out in the present day. Their second collaborative LP as Deaf Center, Owl Splinters, is one I plan on reviewing in full at some point in the near future, but I thought I’d take a moment to focus on the album’s centerpiece, the grand epic “The Day I Would Never Have”.

At 11 minutes it seems daunting, but from the moment Totland’s grand piano first makes its appearance the song begins to slowly gain an undeniable momentum. Skodvin’s elegaic, quietly wailing strings surface and they build and build up in intensity, endlessly, upward until the song becomes a seething mass. Then it drops, like a continental shelf, leaving Totland to reintroduce his flitting, graceful piano in an open expanse. It’s a breathtaking piece, almost too effective for the album as a whole to hold, and it delivers fully on the promise of Skodvin and Totland’s collaboration.

(You can buy “Owl Splinters” at Boomkat)

Whew! That took longer than I expected. I might have to stick to 3 or so songs a week or at least work on my brevity problem. Hope you liked some of this stuff! I’ll be back next week, barring excessive school obligations, with more.

New Radiohead Is Go. “King of Limbs” Due This Saturday, Vinyl Edition in May

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As they did with In Rainbows, prog-pop paranoiacs Radiohead just announced a new album with no lead-up, countdown or fanfare. The King of Limbs is their eighth album. The details of the release are listed below. I’m curious to see how their sound will have changed (if at all) after the Ink Spots-inspired, heavily orchestrated In Rainbows, and needless to say I pre-ordered the vinyl edition, because of course I would.

The cryptic “perhaps” aside might mean nothing, or maybe it means we’ll get something before Saturday. Either way, this is pretty exciting news!

Radiohead’s new record, The King Of Limbs, is presented here as the world’s first* Newspaper Album, comprising:

Two clear 10″ vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve.

A compact disc.

Many large sheets of artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradeable plastic to hold it all together.

The Newspaper Album comes with a digital download that is compatible with all good digital media players.

The Newspaper Album will be shipped on Monday 9th May 2011 you can, however, enjoy the download on Saturday 19th February 2011.

Shipping is included in the prices shown.

One lucky owner of the digital version of The King Of Limbs, purchased from this website, will receive a signed 2 track 12″ vinyl.

*perhaps

Newspaper Album + MP3 PRICE $48.00
Newspaper Album + WAV PRICE $53.00

Radiohead’s new record, The King Of Limbs, is presented here with a choice of two digital formats:

MP3 version is a 320K constant bit rate file.

WAV version is a full CD quality uncompressed digital audio file.

One lucky owner of the digital version of The King Of Limbs, purchased from this website, will receive a signed 2 track 12″ vinyl.

The King of Limbs can be pre-ordered now and downloaded on Saturday 19th February 2011.

MP3 PRICE $9.00
WAV PRICE $14.00

Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson, 1955-2010

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Peter Christopherson died today. He was a founding member of several seminal industrial / avant-garde groups of the 70’s and 80’s, including Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV and Coil.

If I were to choose just one band that I would be forced to listen to for all eternity, to the exclusion of all else, I would choose Coil. They started out making very harsh industrial music in the mid-80’s, influenced as they were by the AIDS epidemic that was killing so many of the band’s friends. Into the 90’s and ’00s the band started experimenting with acid house and neo-folk, and were heavily invested in a stark sort of dark ambience by the time of Jhonn Balance’s death and the dissolution of the band. I keep my set of Ape of Naples vinyl away from everything else on my mantle because it is something approaching a sacred object to me.

Everything that Sleazy participated in, from TG all the way up to Threshold Houseboys Choir (his de facto solo project), was brilliant, and his music was changing and evolving throughout his career. I was looking forward to more decades of beautiful music from Sleazy, but sadly he has been taken from us too soon. I haven’t been this devastated over the death of an artist since Jhonn Balance, the other half of Coil, fell from his balcony to his death in 2004.

I was meaning to send Sleazy an email — he apparently would respond in full to every fan email he receieved and have extended conversations with writers – but somehow I slept on that and now I’m obviously kicking myself pretty hard. RIP.

The Quietus has a brief remembrance from Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti here. No word as yet from Genesis P. Orridge, who left the reconstituted TG a few weeks ago.

Coil – Who\’ll Fall?