Happy New Years!

Politics recap, via Tom Tomorrow





My politics year in summation: Saddamn Hussein hanged, Augusto Pinochet dies of old age at 92, Henry "Anything that flies on anything that moves" Kissinger gets to make jokes on the Colbert Report. Having the incorrect ideology is the only political crime ever punished; mass murder is just a convenient excuse to be used or discarded at will. Fuck you, world. Fuck you.

Let's go

As you might have noticed, school work has decreased, so my amount of posting is now increasing. I should bring back that graph I did a while ago...

Some pointers to other year end roundups:

Stylus just finished their top 50 tracks of the year, and are starting out on their top 50 albums

Pitchfork just posted their top 100 singles (have to one-up younger brother Stylus...) and apparently will be posting their album list tomorrow.


As usual with these things, take out all the indie rock and both singles lists have a quite a lot of overlap with mine. Nice to see Hot Chip and The Knife doing well, and of course everybody loves JT and Nelly Furtado. The pitchfork lists kinda nice too, since they even have handy mp3s to download for many of the tracks...

I might, if I feel up to it, post some year end musings about politix and other things that i post about round here, but don't hold your breath.

YEAR IN REVUE?

Inevitable end of year round up. 2006 did not go by quickly, it was stuffed plain full of shit: some of it the good shit, some of it the bad. Thinking back about the things that went on at the beginning of the year, and all that has occurred since, seems like it was ages ago. It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times, y'know how we roll.

MUSIC: the turtles year end mix

Amongst the music nerd circles which I rotate around in internet world, much dissatisfaction was expressed with the state of music world, by which they meant music made in North American and European places. Me, I thought there was precisely 12 fuckloads of great music put out this year, and let me assure you 12 fuckloads is a lot. And that's not even to get into all the excellent music not put out this year, of which there are too many fuckloads to count.

Particularly a good year for albums I thought, a solid helping of very strong artist albums from the techno/house lot, something they generally fail at miserably. In fact, a solid year on the house/techno front in general. Electronic music with a four/four beat continues to be my number one love and passion when it comes to music, and damn if there weren't just a constant stream of shit hot house put out this year. If you (my few, few readers) have been following along, you know what's good.


K, that's house, let's do this rundown genre-dimensional:

Pop: Timbaland's year, hands down. Produced Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake albums? Oh my. Well done Tim, well done. Dance pop and R&B sounding lovely. Distinct lack of Kelly Clarkson-rock tho :( And Paris's album is still dope!

Hip-hop: T.I. & Clipse, Gnarls Barkley sounds like trip-hop, mid 90's gangsta rap is excellent, erik b & rakim surprisingly underwhelming. I think I might like the new K-OS tho I really want to punch him in the face whenever I seem him. Dilemma!

Grime: totally fell off the radar, unfortunately. Grime-sessions at Shine shut down. I barely listened to Wiley's new album, nor any of the various mixtapes floating about. I haven't even got a hold of Ruff Sqwad's new mixtape yet, and I think Ruff Sqwad are better than the Rolling Stones, Nirvana and God all rolled into one. Kinda mystified as to why I lost touch with this stuff...

Krautrock: continues to be a gold mine of gold. Really loving all the Tangerine Dream-ish synthy stuff, but also the drummadness of Can and Neu! and holee shit is Manuel Gottsching's E2-E4 amazing.

Folk rock: big big dive into this stuff this year, capped off by the stunning Joanna Newsom album. Not sure why, guess I need some moping guitar music, but just couldn't hack the current tousled-hair-cut indie. Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Byrds, Woodie Guthrie, Gene Clark, Sandy Denny. I'm seriously thinking about making my mom a mix of this stuff, which is quite the commentary.

Dubstep: distinct increase in dubstep love over grime love. A couple of my favourite records of the year were dubstep. Shackleton's "blood on my hands," kode9's "9 samurais," dmz's "anti-war dub," plus some heavyweights (bass-literaly) from last year: loefah's "horror show" (got my bro his first noise complaint!) and skream's anthemic "midnight request line." Yet actually not that much time spent listening to dubstep overall.

Garage: I totally balled up on ever finishing my post about UK Garage 'n' all that, but still loving all the garage variants out there. Garage house to UK Garage to current nu-skool 4x4 stuff, just gotta dance.

Regae & Dancehall: not so much dancehall, but the occasional dips into reggae. The congo's fisherman style compilation was just lovely.

Jazz: despite reading up, not much movement here. Still stuck on Sun Ra, but damnit space IS the place!

Disco: slowly gaining ground here. Italo disco is awesome, as is that Tom Moulton mix, and an old Larry Levan mix I downloaded

'Ardcore Rave: I downloaded "the greatest single thing I have ever downloaded from the internet" (quoting myself there), aka 4.6 GB of someone's old 'ardcore rave record collection, all ripped to 320 kbps mp3s. I'm still trying to get all the way through it, but MAN ALIVE there are some great tracks in there. Also finally downloaded DB's History of Our World Part 1 mix, and it is, indeed, a testament to the brilliance of early rave culture.


Hmmm, that about covers the majority of my music listening over this past year I guess, but you do realize that this was just the overview. What comes next is the lists! yipee! And yes, lovingly, I've zipped up 12 of my favorite tracks of the year (tracklist is at the bottom of this post) in case you feel like listening to them is what you should be doing, which is at least something i'd suggest. It fits nicely on a cd too, for those so inclined.

Anyway, ordering of the below is somewhat haphazard, except for between tiers.


ALBUMS:

TOP TIER:


Joanna Newsom - Ys: Just keeps getting better and better. Super strong from start to finish. Lovely



Hot Chip - The Warning: Dancy, up beat, a bit strange, a bit heartfelt--very poppy. I don't know anyone who's really disliked hot chip yet...



The Knife - Silent Shout: Both Hot Chip and The Knife add vocals and something of a pop sensibility to otherwise obtuse electronic music and end up with two very different, though no less interesting albums. I wish albums like these were the norm rather than rock music.

SECOND TIER:


Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet: Didn't expect too much out of this, but i'm just loving it. Warm, enveloping, with an undercurrent of menace. A good combination emotions :)



Burial - Burial: Heavy and dusted with the detritus of late night city streets. love it.



LCD Soundsystem - 45:33: I've snuck this into the multi-cd changer at our house in my quest to slowly inflict more and more of my music upon my poor roommates. I think they actually like it! Goddamn brilliant, in my book.


THIRD TIER:


Ricardo Villalobos - Achso
The Congo's - Fisherman Style
V/A - Big Apple Rapping
Gregor Treshor - Neon: Works in the Mix: okay, so i just downloaded this on Sunday, and my love may fade somewhat, but what the hell these lists are stupid bishy-bashy business in the first place anyway


V/A - Total 7: I think this is the prettiest variation of the coloured dots theme yet, wouldn't you say so?
Junior Boys - So This is Goodbye
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Lisbon
Justin Timberlake - FuterSex/LoveSounds
Nelly Furtado - Loose
Ali Farka Toure - Savane


Luciano - Sci.Fi.Hi.Fi Vol 2.
Tom Moulton - A Tom Moulton Mix


MPFREE mixes:
booka shade essential mix
sven vath - sexy techno at cocoon
dj peepin tom - nu skool sessions vol 1
ricardo villalobos - live at fabric birthday party 10-21-06 (esp part 2! swoon)
soundslike - How do you say 1981 in german?
woebot - kosmische show


TRACKS:

TOP TIER:


rice twins - for penny and alexis: Probably my most listened-to track of the year. Just so unbelievably fluffy and bright and uplifting.


isolee - cite grande terre (luciano's luck of lucien edit): Peaceful, zen-techno. Held in stasis in moonlit garden, or something like that...


shackleton - blood on my hands: Mournful dubstep crypto-eulegy for 9/11. The bass is pure bottomless depth, especially when cranked to max on my speakers at home. Unfortunately don't have a proper mp3 rip of this, just the actual vinyl. Shit is hard to find on zee internetz, yo.


SECOND TIER:

robag wruhme ft. a whole bunch of funny germans - katze geil
alex smoke - never want to see you again (ada mix)
tim hecker - chimeras
gui boratto - like you (supermayer mix)
gregor tresher - on
mask - hottie
the knife - like a pen (stephan bodzin mix)
the knife - we share our mothers health (radioslave mix)
pan pot - black window
justin timberlake ft. ti - my love
hot chip - boy from school
booka shade v brandy - branderine girl
Joanna Newsom - Sawdust and Diamonds
kode9 - 9 samuris
dmz - anti-war dub
Rhythm & Sound w Paul St. Hilaire - Free For All (Soundstream Remix)
the knife - silent shout
agoria - les violon ivres



THIRD TIER:

cassie - me & u
rihanna - sos
t.i. - what u know
oxia - domino
jojo - too little to late
kissogram - my friend is a seahorse (radioslave mix)
booka shade - in white rooms
Joanna Newsom - Emily
the knife - neverland
the knife - like a pen
ricardo villalobos - ichso
ricardo villalobos - siezo
ricardo villalobos - zieheuer fizheuer
justin timberlake ft. timbaland & 3-6 mafia - chop me up
justin timberlake - what goes around.../...comes around interlude
nelly furtado - promiscious
nelly furtado - maneater
nelly furtado - wait for you
d1 - give it back
gregor tresher - full range madness
cassius - toop toop (oliver koletski mix)
nathan fake - grandfathered
answering service - call me mr. telephone (lindstrom & prins thomas remix)
paris hilton - jealousy
pussy cat dolls - i don't need a man
heartthrob - baby kate
keshia chante - 2U
clipse - mr. me too



best music message board thread:
"German DJs and their living rooms" pictures of these peoples' living rooms are strangely informative about their music. Also the video of DJ Koze dancing around in his living room linked to at the bottom of the thread is just good old fashioned fun.



DJ TURTLES IN DA MIX '06
Well, okay, the tracks aren't actually mixed, but they are uh, compiled, i guess. The following are many of my favourite tracks from this passed year, zipped up all nice for your hearing pleasure. Hopefully will give peeps an overview of where my head was at, musically, this year, though it's by no means exhaustive. No dubstep, for instance, cuz the uppity bastards don't like making mp3's available because it messes with their "pure" bass tones. But the rest is pure gold! Enjoy.

01 Gregor Treshor - On: unfortunatly taken from out of a mix, but man! what energy and life in this thing.
02 Gui Boratto - Like You (Supermayer Mix): wonderfully produced, big fun minimal/house. I love the bell-percusion breakdown in the middle, and the rising bassline throughout.
03 Justin Timberlake ft. T.I. - My Love: best pop track of the year? hard battle between this and "me & u" but I think Timberlake & Timbaland get the call in the end, cuz there's more synthesizers :)
04 The Rice Twins - For Penny and Alexis: i think i've said i love this track a few too many times already
05 Mask - Hottie: blast i just relised this is actually '05, but fuckit. This is uk garage at it's upbeat, danceable finest.
06 Agoria - Les Violons Ivres: more classically constructed that most current minimal techno, two things make this track: the bleepy arpeggio, and OH! the strings. Classic, classic techno.
07 Hot Chip - Boy From School Jacking house beat with fey, heartfelt vocals briliantly put together into one.
08 Rhythm & Sound w/ Paul St. Hilaire - Free For All (Soundstream Remix): Soundstream takes R&S's dubbed out bliss and turns it into deep house bliss. Thank you jesus!
09 Cassie - Me & U: it's been commented upon before, but what's so remarkable about this track is the SPACE. Every element of this song sounds so far away from every other element, there just so litte there. But that's what makes it so good.
10 The Knife - Like A Pen (Stephan Bodzin Mix): big giant evil minimal track of the year. though it was a tough battle between this and radio slave's remix of "we share our mother's health," bodzin won out cuz his synths are just that much bigger and cacophonous.
11 Tim Hecker - Chimeras: standout track from his new album. i listened to this on headphones late at night in the cold as the snow was falling on the street. that's what it sounds like.
12 Isolee - Cite Grande Terre (Luciono's Luck of Lucien Edit): as discussed above, awesome!






OKAY THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS PEACE OUT

Metorites, Meteors, & Meteroids

Joanna Newsom, St. Andrew-Wesley Church, Tuesday, December 5th. Any takers? This is, in fact, the day before my project report is due, making me rather hesitant to sign on for it myself, but I thought I'd ask anyway. This also gives me a chance to point out that Ys is currently sitting as the no. 3 highest rated album of the year on metacrtic, has gotten the "Best New Music" seal-of-approval/kiss-of-death from pitchfork (oh noes, cheesy indie fux will be all over it now!), who also have a nice indepth interview with her as well.

Basically she's become the toast of the critical world, with all that entails. I have mixed feelings about this, in that it pains me that Ys will be grouped alongside much middling indie pablum, while I'm excited to see so many people recognize this album for the work of wonder that it is. My only hope is that it will have a positive affect of pushing indie tastes into more expansive and interesting areas, rather than becoming a stand-in for musical adventurism in a genre otherwise bereft of interesting ideas...

Mnml

Not enough good things can be said about ohmygosh.se. And really, not enough good things can be said about minimal right now, as I am currently running an INSATIABLE appetite for new minimal tracks. Names that even three or fourth months ago meant nothing to me all of a sudden have become bright stars in my personal music constellation: radio slave, stephan bodzin, pan pot, mark houle, loco dice, gui boratto, ...along with old(er) faves like booka shade, dominik eulberg, luciano, villalobos, mathew jonson, trentemoller, mathew dear/audion, sleeparchive, the Kompakt krew (Total 7 is an excellent example of this), even carl craig...aarrrrrggg! Fantastic.

It's strange because at the beginning of the year I was a bit cool on the whole "minimal explosion" thing, it struck me as often being quite dry and boring, but now the plip-plop dry stuff has somehow turned into insectile mind-invaders (see: pan pot, villalobos, sleeparchive), while erstwhile electro-house has decayed from enriched uranium rods of hook-filled death to depleted uranium shells of trace-elements rave-hooks (see radio slave, stephan bodzin, booka shade). And even though "explosion" is a very relative term here, they played a mostly minimal set in between acts at the Ladytron concert I went to a few weeks ago (good call Kirkham!), and this club night looks to be pretty much right down this alley (anybody wanna go?). K, so, some samples:


The Knife - Like A Pen (Stephan Bodzin Mix) ****this was the track that inspired this whole damn post, download it!!****

Kissogram - My Friend is a Seahorse (Radio Slave Remix)
Pan Pot - Back Window
Audion - Mouth to Mouth

[you may need to login to yousendit to download some of these...it's fairly painless, i've done it already...can i help it that none of these tracks are less than 9:30 minutes??? That's another great thing about minimal: super long songs, yesss!!!!]


Please remind me to make a mix of this stuff! I was going to make a mix closer to the beginning of the year, and by now I could probably make about three pretty good ones. I always hate I never get around to making a mix and then later on when I look back at something I was pretty into I can't remember what all the good tracks were (this totally happened with grime, i had 2-3 solid mix cds worth to put together and never did, and now that i don't really listen to grime that much any more i'm already starting to forget what the good stuff was...).

But really (and going back to the first sentence of this post, that I kinda forgot about) just go to ohmygosh and download the stuff he says is good, cuz it is. That site has played a large, large role in my getting into minimal over the last few months...

Success!

Well, that was considerably harder than I had expected...still would like to make the template a little better, but that was a big enough pain in the ass already.

Anyway, above pic is from Philip Sherburne's latest "This Month in Techno" piece at pitchfork. No one writes about techno (minimal) with more passion or style than Sherburne does. I would definitely recommend checking out the back issues of that column; Sherburne's been on point for a good long while now. How techno is that picture?

"We should have no illusions: liberal communists are the enemy of every true progressive struggle today"

I've made this argument before: why people like bill gates, bono, oprah, no matter how much money they give to charity, always cause more suffering getting to the top then they will make up for with their philanthropy. No matter how much they give, they are only attacking the symptoms of the cause which made them rich in the first place. Thankfully, Zizek says it much better than me. Required reading.

(can you tell I really like Zizek?)
(and yes Dan, this one IS political...)

20% - Presentation to class

A slide supposedly shown at a top secret military meeting, according to the New York Times. Now let's leave aside the rather uninteresting point that the US military thinks Iraq is moving away from peace and towards chaos (I mean, no shit), and talk about the real important issue here: how terrible is this slide design??? I mean waaaay too much text, hardly any whitespace, the chart is pushed over into a tiny awkward space on the side and is red-green coded so any colour-blind members of this meeting (which is likely all male, so has a pretty good chance of getting one of the 1/10 men who are colour blind) won't be able to read the chart properly . Oh god and the text is so thick and heavy and black against the white background you get all sorts of vibrations and other weird optical effects when you stair at it for any amount of time--which is not helped by the underlining of titles, which just makes the whole thing even noisier, without making the titles stand out any more...and they're using red-green for their little classification icons with no indication of whether they are supposed to coincide with the colour codings on the chart (does "routine" unorganized spontaneous mass civil conflict represent a step towards peace?? If not, why the fuck is it green?). That slide is just ug-ly.

Really, with idiots like whoever designed this slide in charge of the US operation in Iraq, is it any suprise they're screwing up so bad over there?

[/design pedant] ;)

ps. i gotta figure out how to change my blog template so I can post bigger pictures without running into my links bar...

Brown paper packages tied up with string...

Okay, just to reiterate: I srsly can't get enough of that LCD Soundsystem track I posted below. It's, like, a near-perfect piece of music man! It's all I want to listen to right now.

Prior to this, the last piece of music that I couldn't get enough of was Joanna Newsom's Ys, and since it still doesn't come out for another 3 weeks or so, I've upped the whole damn thing for all you lovely people. Now this one actually I could imagine many people disliking...but oh well. Sounds kinda like a medieval Bjork. Will maybe write more about it, but I think my main point is that while this is coming from a very similar place as most indie rock, I think it manages to completely rise above most of the dreck that gets put out. I think it's really pushing things forward in an interesting direction, while still being quite accesible and tuneful. Anyway, make up your own mind:

Joanna Newsom - Ys

The Knife - Like a Pen

?

Srsly, how great is this video? More creativity in three frames than the entire thursday night primetime television schedule. But what does it all mean? For one thing, that is clearly a pencil.

What to the running

LCD Soundsystem - 45:33: Nike+ Original Run


So many reasons why this is good.

1. It's a solid 45+ min track of space disco gold, shifting through numerous stages of wonderful kick-assitude.
2. It was commissioned by Nike specifically for the purpose of being a soundtrack to jogging, and is available only as a DRM-protected mp3 on iTunes. This song couldn't be more sold-out. (For those who are confused, selling-out is the opposite of all that rock, and especially indie rock, stands for in this day and age, and is therefore good).
3. I actually really want to try jogging to this. This music is so wonderfully calculated in its pure functionality: it's made for dancing and/or jogging, none of this being artistic crap.
4. Despite/because of all this it's actually alternatively beautiful, hypnotic, funky and calming.
*edit* 6. I forgot: it's also loosely inspired by Manuel Göttsching's E2-E4, whichi is, like, the greatest peice of post-krautrock, pre-techno dance music ever!

Love it.


(yes posting's have been a bit slack round here, i'm still on the downward slope of that graph posted below. Hopefully I'll have a good post up soon about the use of liberal critiques of Muslim and Arab society as a tool for racist oppression...fun!)

This one should be a hit: Planet of the Arabs!

Via brownfemipower via lenin's tomb via some other websites. Ah internet memes. Still, a pretty disturbing viewing.

Bonanza!

Negative correlation between start of class and amount of blog posting, p < .05.

In apologia, here's a brief summary of what i've been into recently, because I've been balls deep in good music this last little while. also, please download the robag wruhme track, it will bring joy to your life, honest!


Recent Purchases:

burial - s/t [finally got my hands on a copy of this]
ali farka toure - savane [somewhat embarrassingly only heard about him when he died, but checking out his stuff, i really liked it. 'african blues' they call it, which sorta describes it, but not really]
fuckpony - s/t [a bit undistinguished, but with some nice highlights]
rhythm & sound - see mi yah remixes [a couple of duds, but mostly gold]
keith fullerton whitman - lisbon [update of one of my all-time favs Playthroughs. not quite as good (unsurprisingly), but very interesting nonetheless]


Other Albums I've been feeling:

gene clark - white light [tip off from Woebot's excellent rundown of 60's and 70's folk/rock from LA]
the knife - silent shout [should have cottoned on to this when it came out in january, but man! super dark and mean sounding, yet still quite pop and catchy. Very interesting sound, here's a taster: the title track]
junior boys - so this is goodbye [I think I like this better than their first one, not quite as r&b influenced, more of a house/disco vibe too it. Still very polished and melodic though]
hot chip - coming on strong [still enjoying this, still haven't bothered to write anything about it, may never get around to it, oh well]


joanna newsom - ys [this is the one, something else entirely. not out until november, but it will be huge. so lovely. i may have completely underestimated freak-folk as a movement].



Trax I've been feeling:

robag wruhme feat helge schneider, rocko schamoni, lenja fina and dorle - katze geil [was expecting more minimal from wruhme, but instead he turns in something reminiscent of St. Germain at his best (think "So Flute" and "Rose Rouge") except touched with an oddball minimal aesthetic. Sorry, I didn't make it clear: IF YOU DON'T LIKE THIS SONG YOU DON'T LIKE FUN! Really, this should be very appealing to normal techno-phobes, the beat is super happy-catchy. Sounds like it should be soundtracking George Clooney committing a sophisticated diamond robbery while a bunch of germans party it up in the room next door. really, DONWLOAD THIS TRACK. your head will bob]

renegade legion - torsion [pure darkness. good for clearing out the webs if you've been listening to too much sad-sack music]
dillard & clark - the radio song [favorite song off the dillard & clark collab mention in the Woebot piece. Much of the rest of the album gets a little too country for me, but this is pure folk beauty].
justin timberlake ft t.i. - my love [already posted it, but still, sooooo good]
jojo - too little too late [classic r&b ballad--what a chorus! also, i totally love saying her name. JoJo...JoJo]
cassie - me & u [kick ass r&b minimalism]
azzido da bass feat. johnny blake - lonely by your side (booka shade deep mix) [grabbed from ohmygosh -- oh my gosh do i love booka shade]
fred falke - omega man [another forgotten gem on my harddrive unearthed by random play. classic big french house, reminds me how good that alan braxe album was from last year]
audion - mouth to mouth [aka "the swarm of bees track" large, large tune]
agoria - les violons ivres [classic strings plus bleepy chuggy beat == heaven!]
the knife - we share our mothers health (radio slave's secret base rmx) [now THIS is minimal. dark epic and grooving. kicks a whole lot of ass]

booka shade - essential mix 07/02/06 [the first half of this is a live set that completely makes up for their rather disappointing album. absolutely awesome. if you ask nice i'm might up this]



oof. this post went epic.

Why all politcal debate is essentially null

Oh man, this is so depressing. Really, the title says it all: in the end everyone's bought into the ideology, despite any surface differences. :(

Jumpstyle!

Oh man this is so cool. Totally restores my faith in techno to keep pumping out wack shit well into the future. There's a whole bunch of videos of very euro kids doing this dance to crazy hardcore gabber on youtube, all under the tag "jumpstyle" which is apparently what the dance is called.

This one in particular is really neat, just the setting alone, in some random school yard/town square in either belgium or holland somewhere with a crowd of people around is kinda interesting. I also like how they're all just standing there calmly, with their hands in their pockets, and then all of a sudden the beat drops and they go MOTHERFUCKING KICK DANCE! and just fucking bust out the dancing like nothing else.

The music is great too, btw. But you knew I'd say that.

Idiots!

The White House, while reiterating its traditional stance of not commenting on classified reports, said The New York Times story "isn't representative of the complete document." [from here]

How the hell do you write that sentence without your brain exploding? I mean, had he completely forgotten about the first half of that sentence by the time he got to the second half??? Man, journalists are dumb.

OMG NOT SO LOLZ!!1

S E V E R E Driving off the road: 254,419 Falling: 146,542 Accidental poisoning: 140,327

H I G H Dying from work: 59,730 Walking down the street: 52,000. Accidentally drowning: 38,302

E L E V A T E D Killed by the flu: 19,415 Dying from a hernia: 16,742

G U A R D E D Accidental firing of a gun: 8,536 Electrocution: 5,171

L O W Being shot by law enforcement: 3,949 Terrorism: 3147 Carbon monoxide in products: 1,554

Mortality rates, by category, in the US since 1995. From this Wired article. Where is the war on walking down the street?

OMG LOLZ!!!11

NYC Unviels 9/11 Memorial Hole

Yesterday being 9/11 Part 5 obviously necessitated endless bullshit parades from the jackals that sit barking at us from our televisions. Amongst the jagged braying and "grief porn" money shots of teary-eyed mothers there were occasional moments of relative sanity and insight, but the oppressive weight of Remembrance and Mourning was hard to escape. It must truly be hard to have lost someone in 9/11, your grieving process forever hijacked by ideological narratives, dredged up every year because WE MUST NEVER FORGET those patriots who died that day, those worthy victims. Oh to have a son who died of AIDS, his death would be swept so nicely under the rug, referred to only obliquely through the occasional statistics-quoting talking head.

But this is getting away from what I wanted to talk about, which was Slavoj Zizek's article in the Guardian. Now firstly if you haven't read Zizek's piece written right after September 11, you really should get on it. It's a very insightful take on the symbolic importance of the attacks on the American psyche, and is quite readable despite the occasional forays into Theory-speak. In Zizek's article yesterday he continues his description of 9/11 in terms of Hollywood fantasies writ Real (and then consumed as fantasies once more). The one specific point he makes that really struck me though was one concerning the two recent 9/11-based movies United 93 and World Trade Center. These movies were praised upon release for their realism and lack of sensationalism. But, as Zizek explains:

The realism means that both films are restrained from taking a political stance and depicting the wider context of the events. Neither the passengers on United 93 nor the policemen in WTC grasp the full picture. All of a sudden they find themselves in a terrifying situation and have to make the best out of it.

This lack of "cognitive mapping" is crucial. All we see are the disastrous effects, with their cause so abstract that, in the case of WTC, one can easily imagine exactly the same film in which the twin towers would have collapsed as the result of an earthquake. What if the same film took place in a bombed high-rise building in Beirut? That's the point: it cannot take place there. Such a film would have been dismissed as "subtle pro-Hizbullah terrorist propaganda".

This, it strikes me, is extremely true. How is it that a movie set in a "bombed high-rise building in Beirut" would inevitably be seen as making a political statement, yet a similarly-made movie about the WTC can be praised for being apolitical? Why are our victims depoliticized, but their's politicized? Sure, racism, yeah, but that seems too reductive an explanation. Similarly, Zizek's claim that the movies' abstention from direct message gives an implicit message of trust in one's government seems to miss the more interesting implications of his posed question.

Obviously the dead of 9/11 have been used extensively for political ends, yet somehow in making these movies they have been presented as just "normal" people who happen to get caught up in this catastrophe. Now I haven't seen these movies, but from what I've read it appears that by avoiding showing the perpetrators of these crimes, or spending time delving into their motivations, the movies effectively depoliticize the events. It can't be argued against that the events took place; however politics enters into the equation when you try to explain why they took place. Did the attackers have some legitimate grievances, and if so, who is responsible for these grievances? Could the attacks have been prevented had certain groups preformed their jobs more thoroughly? These are the two most contentious questions, I would argue, and would almost inevitably be encountered if some of the broader context of the attacks been covered.

In our hypothetical Beirut movie, we could similarly never show the American-made Israeli warplanes dropping bombs from above, never discuss why they were attacking, whether it was justified or not. But still, in showing the required scenes of crying parents and suffering children, the film's political critique would become unavoidable. Because we know who dropped the bombs causing this suffering, and we can't help but ask why we would ever create such suffering. Why does one movie provoke such a questioning reaction, the other not?

Five years on, the events of 9/11 no longer posses the traumatic punch that they once did, they have been fully assimilated into the ongoing storyline of "the war on terror," becoming, if not actually understood, at least absorbed into the culture. (The Real has returned into the symbolic order, Zizek would say, or at least something like that). The Western story about 9/11 heavily involves its victims, the poor innocents killed by savage terrorists. The Western story about the conflict in the Middle East (for example) largely has to do with what the Arabs have done to us (or our allies in Israel). A story about the victims of 9/11 fits nicely into the dominant narrative (or dare I say, discourse?) being espoused by our politicians and media. A story about the Lebanese victims (or Iraqi or Haitian or...) of American violence does not fit into the dominant discourse about these events.

The first thing that is almost always brought up in "proper" complaints about the war in Iraq is the number of American soldiers killed, when in fact this number is far FAR smaller than the number of Iraqi civilians killed (this goes the same for Vietnam too: oh it was a costly war for America was it?). If we are to go by the basic moral standard that the lives of innocents have the same value regardless of race, sex, religion or culture (as Chomsky so often reminds us), then surely the emphasis of these narratives are grossly skewed towards American lives. WTC and United 93 continue with this government-approved bias, while a hypothetical Beirut movie would uncomfortably puncture this communal fantasy, placing the victims of American violence on the same plane as American victims.

Most people, when confronted with the suffering of others will feel compassion regardless of race, religion, etc. Discussion of 9/11 is suffused with mention of its victims, so why would seeing a movie about its victims cause any confusion or questioning among the viewer? However in discussion of America's follies in the Middle East and elsewhere, mention of civilian victims is relegated to a code word: "collateral damage". The confusion one would feel, the questioning that would occur were you to see this collateral damage up close, if only in movie form, comes from the struggle to fit this information into a discourse that leaves this tragedy as a footnote for historians.


I suppose in the end it is just good old racism.

RANDOM

So, feeling in a somewhat musically unsettled mood the last few days, I put my entire downloads directory (sitting at about 15 GB, I really need to tidy it up) on random play. These are some of the gems I've forgotten about but in fact really kick ass. [warning to those who care, mostly dan i guess, this post is a fucking gold mine!]


Answering Machine - Call Me Mr. Telephone (Lindstrom & Prins Thomas Remix)

Super long cosmic/beardo disco remix by it boys Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. The best part is around 6:30 were the vocals suddenly get all desperate and haunting with a mean synth somwhere in the background. Other than that, titanic groover.


Liquid Crystal - You Got Me
Essence of Aura - Destiny

Oh man rave music. Oh man. The piano build up in the first track is damn near unstoppable euphoria. And that second track? Pure rave evil. Oh man.


Pineapples - come on closer

Shitty radio rip that I really need to find a better version of, but oh fuck, posibly the best italodisco track ever! How could you not love this? Your heart would have to be a frozen peice of rock with big pointy thorns on it covered with barbed wire and dead puppies or something.


Sudenten Geche - Are Kiss

German new-wave (aka Neue Deutche Welle), big in some necks of the old internet-woods. Sounds like moody 80's electro-pop, at least this one, though others are much more punky.


Public Image Ltd. - Poptones

Classic, classic post-punk from John Lydon's (aka Johnny Rotten's) second, less famous, and perferred-by-me band. Heavily led by a the wonderful bass of Jah Wobble, sounding like punk only in it's attitude, not its sound, thankfully. You should see the performance of this song and "Careering" that they did on American Bandstand, pulling audience members on to the stage to dance, Lydon not even bothering to lip sync, Dick Clark clearly having no idea what to do with these people, it's just mindblowing but apparently Clark had it removed from youtube the fucking bastard. Dick Clark should die, though obviously you can't kill what is already dead.


Isolee - Cite Grande Terre (Luciano's Luck of Lucien Edit)

Last and definitely not least, this absolutely stunning Luciano mix, easily one of my tracks of the year. The absolute calm space and beauty of this track is just enthralling. The beat exists in this weird half-ambient-yet-propulsive realm that keeps you in this kind of pleasant stasis throughout the whole track. Ultra-minimal yet hyper-detailed (just try to follow all the shards of sound comprising what would otherwise be known as the high-hat/snare drum pattern), this one really seems to grow and expand on you as the track progresses, punctuated by the dubbed out echoes of Isolee's original work. Let it sit with you for a bit.


well, let it not be said that ALL i listen to is pop music, eh?


Anyway, I know many of you really prefer the non-music posts, but I don't really have anything to say right now on the politix front that isn't being said elsewhere, and I don't really feel like providing a bunch of links right now, so screw you. :)

I WROTE THIS SONG FOR THE GIRL PARIS HILTON (or, how i learned to stop worrying and love pop music)

There are a lot of good reasons to hate Paris Hilton. She's had her whole life handed to her on a silver platter and acts like she was entitled to every bit of it simply because of who she is. She's a symbol of Western excess, greed and uncaring as well as the selfish egotism of good old latter-day capitalism. Furthermore, the terms of her success have been almost entirely defined by her ability to fit into male fantasy: the rich heiress, the blond bimbo, the spoiled daddy's girl. Which is not to say that her appeal is aimed entirely at men, she undoubtedly has as many female fans as male ones (though "fan" may not be quite the right word here), and she can be said to embody a kind of strong female role, in that her success has come through her skillful manipulation of these fantasies (The Simple Life would be a good example of this). In fact, it is this manipulation of image that I find so interesting about Paris; I don't really know what kind of person she is outside her mediatized image, and frankly I don't care. But Paris Hilton the image, and how that image came to be, are a lot more intriguing topics.

It's very interesting to me that Paris actually acquired the trappings of fame after she became famous, sort of as a post-hoc justification for her fame. This rearranges the supposed order of celebrity, in which fame follows as a symptom from staring in TV shows, movies and pop albums, to a new order where being a movie star or a pop singer are symptoms of being famous. It is as if, once we (the people, the big Other) accepted her as famous, we almost forced her to do these things in order to justify our belief in her fame. This is becoming more and more the case in celebrity culture--witness the number of actors or musicians branching out into as many other mediums as possible. Do these young stars feel pressured to justify their massive fame by taking on as many new projects as possible? Yet Paris stands above them as the first person to completely shortcut the whole process of becoming famous, simply just starting out being famous, showing the paradoxically self-referential nature of fame: the most important aspect of fame is being famous. And Paris the persona could only ever be famous, it's a required precondition to her being Paris. Once achieved, she is swallowed whole into the celebrity machine, slotting perfectly into the place that was already there for her. For Paris does know how to fit into the machine--either unwittingly or knowingly or both; she is able to work her celebrity image in her own favour like few others.


Paris Hilton - Fightin' Over Me ft. Jadakiss and Fat Joe


Witness her new album Paris, an expertly crafted pop music gem. Others stars have tried to step into the pop music arena and failed miserably (Jennifer Love Hewitt, anyone?), but somehow, against all odds Paris has avoided this fate. Using a similar formula for success that many others have tried (throw lots of money at all the best current-day pop producers) she nevertheless has come up with a pop album that stands competitively against the best of this year's crop of pop such as Nelly Furtado's Loose and Rihanna's A Girl Like Me (though not as good as JT's new album!). If we take the view of this excellent review on the Plan B website, we can argue that Paris represents the ultimate test for those still hung up on notions of authenticity when it comes to music--and judging from the reaction on the Plan B forum there are still a lot of them out there (Plan B's demographic is essentially run-of-the mill indie fans, btw). Her music is indeed slick and breathy, as one would expect, expertly toying with her image (as in the above track) and continuing her tabloid feedback loop (as in the below rather excellent discussion of her relationship with Nicole Ritchie).


Paris Hilton - Jealousy


Paris touches base in nearly every modern pop style around, from dance-pop to hip hop to Kelly Clarkson-style pop-rock to the pseudo reggae of her first single "Stars are Blind". For many a pop star this would be interpreted as pandering, but for Paris it's rather beyond the point. Her entire image is so devoid of authenticity that to accuse her of "just giving the people what they want" is to essentially pay her a compliment. And why shouldn't crass populism be seen as a positive feature? Why must artists always be staying true to some sort of occult "artistic vision" that endows their music with some magical true essence of Art? What's wrong with making some good tunes that people will like? To assume that we know what goes on in the artists mind when he or she creates some piece of music, and that we can sense the virtue of the effort and emotion that the artist has put into the music, is just bullshit projection of our own feelings. Hilton's music, because of both her reputation and the sound itself, deflects this hopeless search for the real meat underneath, forcing the listener to confront the song as surface only (this was the same move Glam made back in the 70's, so I understand). For some, the perceived empty heart of this music will be too much to overcome (ie., some people just can't stop hating Paris), but if you can overcome your knee-jerk reaction to her there's a lot to be found within her album.


Paris Hilton - Heartbeat


On the above track, Paris sounds like a lost child expressing dearly-held beliefs of fairy-tale love; in others she is sexy, angry, sultry, playful, but always with a curious lightness that avoids overwhelming the tracks. She does not over-emote, doesn't try too hard to prove anything, simply gliding over expertly produced beats singing in a voice barely more than necessary. It's a relief to hear music so devoid of undertow, where the meaning is up front for you to play with all you want. And the wonderful thing is that the fact that it is Paris Hilton singing only adds to this effect. Unfortunately, a singer such as Kelly Clarkson, who could have pulled this off immediately after her American Idol win, has now climbed so far up Credibility Mountain that her music has gained too much weight to pull off such a lightness of touch (which is not to say that I don't heart Kelly, because few people heart kelly like I heart kelly). Of course this does not guarantee a perfect album, and indeed the final few tracks are rather generic and bland, but the opening string of 7 or 8 tracks have enough quality to justify my (rather exorbitant?) claims.



What I love about Paris (and this also goes for many other pop stars as well) is her ability to show how musical styles so caught up in notions of authenticity can be just as easily performed without any of the bullshit backstory, just the signifiers of the backstory. Strike the pose, play the cords that the best money can provide, and watch as the same feelings are expressed, often with more skill than they were before. One of the initial thrills of Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" was just how well she succeeded in "rocking" despite her so openly fabricated image. (Once again, after success a pop star goes about establishing post-hoc rationalizations of her new image. Though probably unplanned, I'm sure Kelly's agents/handlers couldn't be more pleased with this video that's been making the rounds on the internet of Kelly swigging whiskey and singing Guns 'N Roses songs with random metal cover band Metalskool). Paris has the same effect, showing that it was always the image that we reacted to in the first place. Paris the album is filled with a sense of how fun it is to not have to stick to one image, to try them on and throw them off at will, and that sense of enjoyment comes through in the music itself. This album could only ever be made by someone as fake as Paris Hilton, and that is one of its clear strengths.




*Postscript* This was my first attempt at serious pop music criticism in the vein of some of my more favored writers, so if it veers towards pretension more often then not and makes some pretty wild claims, well shit, it's just a bit more fun that way. I'll probably look back at this and wince at some point in time, but oh well. In other news, I'm still pissed off Pluto is no longer a planet. Also Nicole tells me she has a new pencil. Yes, Paris, Pluto and Pencils, there's a message in there somewhere, you just need to look hard enough. :)

OH MY GOD!!!

Holy holy crap, the new Justin Timberlak album is FUCKING OUTSTANDING. Go here and download now! Here's a little sample to convince you:

Justin Timberlake - My Love ft. T.I.

My jaw literally dropped at the beginning of this track. Those synths! T.I.'s bars! Arrrg, I am clearly overexcited.


Also, yesterday I ate 13 tacos.


*Update* Alright so the last three songs are pretty crap. I blame will.i.am.

Waiting for goddamn nicole post.

Well, in place of my long-delayed and half-completed post on UK Garage, as well as a half-completed post on Paris Hilton's new album (having problems finishing what I started, no?), here's a track off of Rihanna's new album that's for whatever reason has really stuck with me the last two days. Rihanna's album is actually suprisingly slow and mellow, given its lead-off single of S.O.S. (track of the summer, NE1?). This one's a pathos-laden, suprisingly dark, guitar-led piece. The guitar melody really reminds me of some metallica song...maybe the accoustic bit from "one"? Embarissingly it's been a while since I've done any heavy Metallica listing. Anyway:

Rihanna - Final Goodbye

Linky Blinky

Yay, K-Punk goes all deep and profound on Rihanna's last two singles. This is the kind of pop music writing that I really appreciate, where music is just the jump-off point into discussions of a whole lot of interesting ideas. Maybe it makes me a pretentious wanker, but I love this stuff. (also K-Punk's last post about Kate Moss is a pretty interesting discussion of celebrity and image that some might wish to check out too)

UKG Pt 2

I'm on some sort of Kafkaesque infinite deferral tip here, where any step forward towards my actual goal only results in additional ancillary work that, while entirely relevant and necessary to the task at hand, nevertheless succeeds only in making my final target appear even further away. Thus we have here my personal, not overly definitive take on the roughly 20 year history of Garage music right up to the beginning of UK Garage proper.


K, so: Garage the genre was named after the Paradise Garage, a legendary disco club in New York helmed by Larry Levan, one of the greatest disco DJs and a key figure in the development of the Garage sound. One way of looking at Garage is that when people starting making House music in Chicago in the mid '80s, the same disco kids in New York took the Chicago House sound, added more swing and a lot of disco to it, and called it Garage. Or they added more House production techniques and sound to the Disco they were making. Either way they started producing tracks that would get a lot of play by Levan in the Paradise Garage, which would in turn lend its name to this new style, in a similar way that tunes played at the Warehouse in Chicago were given the name House. House, Garage...yeah, building fetish or something...





I have this wicked LP called Garage Trax - The Sound of New York Garage from 1987, a compilation of tracks released all in that year. I would post some except they're only on the record and I can't find any of them online (and people ask me why I buy records! ;-) ).The sound has lots of disco diva vocals, horns, pianos and fat basslines. In short, its awesome, one of the real jewels in my (admittedly rather small) record collection. The thing to note is that even at this early stage in development the low-slung Garage bassline was already in effect, giving the trax swing and a more live feel, especially in contrast to the more rigid, minimal Chicago House trax. Don't have any samples from that early in the game, but I do have some tunes from a few years down the line when Garage House had matured a bit and would probably fall under the general heading of Deep House (which is a whole 'nother story, which actually I'm not all that well versed in). At this point a good chunk of House made in New York (and New Jersey too) would probably fall into the Garage category, and labels like Nu Groove and artists like Todd "the god" Edwards had been representing the sound with pride to the outside world. This particular track is from 94, and seems to exhibit all the signs I would associate with Garage House, including divas, pianos, and of course a bouncing bassline working its way alongside the obligatory 4/4 kick.


Indo - Are U Sleeping (original Stonebridge Mix)


Garage House is still around really, or certainly it can show up now and then, and people like Todd Edwards are still releasing Garage tracks today. Interestingly, Todd is even still included amongst the present-day practitioners of UK Garage (where the style is termed 4x4 Garage, which I'll get to later). But while Garage House was merrily making its way along in New York, a bunch of crazy kids in England began making a hybrid of Garage House and the Jungle/Drum and Bass sounds that were so dominant in London around the middle of 90s. Jungle of course originally came from House music anyway (from Acid House through Oldskool Hardcore). Essentially Garage House sped up to around 130-140 beats per minute (as opposed to the standard House 120 bpm), with greater emphasis on the breakbeats and bassline, Speed Garage was the direct precursor to UK Garage, and there is in fact a rather large overlap between the two genres such that it gets kinda damn confusing sometimes trying to fit it all together. The Electronic Dance Music Consistency in Genre Name Usage Council is a bunch of unorganized stoners, as far as I can tell. Apparently Speed Garage very quickly went mainstream in England, having a huge breakout year in 97. I actually wish I had more Speed Garage, and may end up downloading some soon, but until then I'll just toss up this beaut from 97 which in addition to having that big dumb (and I mean that in the best way possible) Speed Garage bassline that I love (though some people hate) it also samples Enio Morricone's soundtrack to For a Few Dollars More one of the classic Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns.


187 Lockdown - Gunman


While Speed Garage was some sort of maximized house + bass equation, there remained a host of producers who had moved into Garage from Jungle, and were thus far more interested in intricate drum programming and the creation of a more "urban" (read "black") vibe. If you want a very detailed analysis of Speed Garage's metamorphosis into UKG/2-Step and a thorough description of the UKG culture around the turn of the century, you would do well to read Simon Reynolds' epic think piece on UKG from 1999. But to save you all from an extended reading session (as this post is already long enough!) the real key change that moved Speed Garage to UKG was producers dropping the second and fourth beat from their tunes, abandoning the steady "4 to the floor" beat of House, leaving considerably more room for Jungle-inspired rhythmic trickery. A tune mentioned in that Reynolds piece as one of the first definitive UKG tracks, Dem 2's "Destiny," is a pretty clean illustration of the space opened up by dropping half of the downbeats in favour of twitchy snares and high-hats, basslines, and--importantly--vocals, used here half as textural percussive elements (in this case, the female vox) and half as poppy melodic hooks (the male vox).


Dem 2 - Destiny


What's this then? Several thousand words later, are we actually going to *gasp* TALK ABOUT UK GARAGE???? Tune in next time when I actually get around to talking about the topic that I originally set out to cover. Unless something else comes up.

(PS to Dan and anyone else who cares, here are the Loefah and Hot Chip tracks that I talked about in my last Garage post, but won't be talking about again. I'll re-up the other UKG tracks when I finally get into them in Part 3 of my UKG series, which I should be done with in the next few days).

Survey says: "Bring back lynching!"

Just thought I should echo Lenin's post on this article, about a recent Gallop poll which found 39% of Americans think Muslims should be required to carry special ID, while roughly the same number admit to having some prejudice against Muslims. So America is now 2/5ths openly racist towards Muslims. And that's just the people that admit to being racist, let alone the people that hold various racist/xenophobic beliefs that they don't recognize as being so. Given the blanket media coverage these days, it's a good bet that probably almost all of us have a few of these squirreled away, unexamined in our mind, waiting to pop out just when you've convinced yourself what a good enlightened citizen you are. Sometimes I'm surprised when my actions actually line up with my explicitly held beliefs...

Anyhoo, had a request from the now-married brother for a re-up of my UKG tracks, will likely do that this evening, giving me a chance to write a bit more on our momentarily favourite break-beat focused genre :)

Happy Post :)

Alright, happy post to counterbalance the sad post below, let's have some fun links to entertain those who wish to be entertained.

Vice magazine has their latest photo issue out. I have a distinct love-hate relationship with Vice, a lot of their articles are crap, either borderline racist, pseudo-right wing bullshit or juvenile hipsterism, but they also push the boundaries in a lot of the right places, which I appreciate. But, one thing I consistently enjoy is their photo issue, which usually has a lot of very interesting and unusual photos. Usually I don't give two shits about photography, but a lot of these tend to catch my eye. This issue seems a little heavy on the "topless/hot girls doing strange things" variety of pics (thanks guys, we get it), but there are also some definite winners, like the above, plus some much more disturbing/weird ones. Also I should admit that I am embarrassingly totally addicted to their "dos and don'ts" section, snarky commentary and all.


Also, if you really want to waste some good time, I'd go check out Stylus' top 100 music videos of all time, complete with handy youtube links for each one, so you can watch 'em all and compare if you really felt like it, or just randomly pick a couple that sound neat, like I did. I highly recommend any and all the videos directed by Chris Cunningham or Michel Gondry.


Okay, have a good long weekend, I'm off to see my brother get hitched (ack!).

sad post :(

Well, to keep the slavering masses at bay while I'm off in Fiddlesville, Nova Scotia, I'd best give a parting post to fill the void until next Wednesday, when I return.


Apparently not all of my intended audience is keen on my musical taste. While deeply disturbing, it nonetheless shows the prudence of diversified content. So Scott, this is for you; also, die. I suppose you all heard of Isreal's "48 hour cessation of major air bombing" which was kinda reported as a ceasefire to deal with the Qana bombings that killed at least 19 children, among others. But of course 48 hours turned into about oh, zero, as bombings continued and in fact, Isreali generals decided to step-up the ground war. Well, thanks for that bit of kindness and compassion, Isreal.

Some interesting things about how Isreal is trying to spin it's targetting of civilians, I've heard several times now the justification that by law (the Geneva Convention? too lazy to find the reference) if an opposing army operates puprosely in and around a civilian population then they are legally held responsible for their welfare. In other words: "It's nor our fault!" Now of course the problem with this doctrine, as it has been Iraq as well, is that after you've blown something to pieces, it's really hard for someone else to prove, one way or another, that there actually were enemy combatants right beside these civilians. Maybe they got away just at the last moment, right? But of course, it usually is all too easy to tell if there were civilians, because they're the ones lying dead in the rubble of a collapsed apartment building--or better still in red cross ambulances. Now things like bombing ambulances are where this smokescreen really starts to fall apart. As Michael Warschawski explains:

In these wars, the lives of civilians are not only of very limited value -- as in all wars -- but considered as a legitimate target, actively or passively guilty of supporting terrorism: a terrorism which is, in fact, part of their very culture. In ten years, we witnessed a gradual evolution of the dominant discourse: from terrorist groups, to terrorist states, to terrorist peoples. The ultimate logic of the global war is full ethnicization of the conflicts, in which one is not fighting a policy, a government, or specific targets, but a "threat" identified with a community. Fear is the starting point of the new era, hatred is its finality.

I keep thinking of these kind of things as "the new racism," where in your words and in your mind you believe yourself to be thoroughly un-racist (as opposed to, for example, a KKK member), yet in your actions you prove to be thoroughly racist. We've just manage to create better justifications. Though really, this is hardly "new," it's much more of an extension of the old imperial racism of things like English Empire.

A few other fun points:
-Isreal warned Lebanese citizens south of the Litani River to evacuate in order to avoid the massive bombing campaign that was to come, but suprisingly many of them were unable or unwilling to do so for a variety of reasons. Good to see that the US is not the only country not to learn the lessons of hurricane Katrina.
-The "consensus" view seems to be that there needs to be a peace-keeping force of some sort in the south of Lebanon to keep Hezbollah under wraps. Great idea. But it's missing one teeny-weeny little detail: who the hell is actually going to be in this force? So far absolutely no country has stepped forward to lead it, the US doesn't want to do it, neither does NATO, and no UN countries are quickly volunteering, leaving the Lebanese army, which has been bombed thoroughly by the Isrealis. Hmmmmmm, bit of a stumper, that one.



okay, i've decided to split this into two posts, sad post and happy post. that was the sad post, happy post is next.

Watchu talkin bout "urban"? Whatchu talkin bout "2-Step"?

...and like THAT, I'm way into UK Garage. Totally obsessing on it, pretty much all I've listened to the last four days. I love these random musical obsessions, where you hear something that maybe you've listened to a bit before and then all of a sudden you go "hot shit! this is great!" I have a feeling this might last a bit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this is going to be a bit of a long one...

This current genre binge comes courtesy of two current musics indebted in varying degrees to UK Garage. Firstly dubstep, which I've been listening to a fair amount these days, as it seems to be getting a lot bigger these days, with the number of interesting releases rising accordingly (see my discussion of Burial below). Dubstep is directly descendant from UK Garage, basically rising out of the dark 2-step sounds of El-B, Zed Bias and others circa about 2001. (Terminology note: UK Garage is often also referred to as 2-step, though 2-step can also be used to describe the type of beat used in UKG as well as other UKG influenced genres such as Dubstep and Grime. I try and keep the genre "UK Garage" separate from the beat "2-step," myself). One of the interesting features of current Dubstep is the "half-step" beat, which features only one snare hit per bar instead of two, making for an extremely slowed-down, spacious beat that is perfectly suited for creating dread-filled bass monsters. Interestingly, I read a comment somewhere (probably lost deep within this thread) that to those who have listened to a lot of UKG, only the nearest hint of a 2-step beat--a single snare to a bar--is needed to recall the 2-step framework to mind, imposing its jittering rhythm on an otherwise empty soundspace. Firstly, I find this a really interesting comment in that it shows how strongly affected our perception and experience of music is by our experiences with prior types of music; a musical artifact is never simply experienced in isolation, but always in relation to other music one has heard. It's also a great illustration how emptiness can create structure and attract attention as much as things that are actually there. Presence-through-absence. (But that's a whole other story, minimalism...) Anyway, the problem being that to me, I couldn't really hear these empty echoes of 2-step. Missing out on consensual auditory hallucinations, no fair! As a treat, here's one of the first big half-step tunes, the very aptly named "Horror Show" from Loefah. Do not even bother listening to this without a subwoofer, there's simply nothing there otherwise.

Loefah - Horror Show

Hot Chip, whom I keep threatening to write about as I've been listening to their new album a lot recently, are the other reason I wanted to get more into UK Garage, really for similar reasons as above. I read one description of Hot Chip as a "post house/2-step beach boys" seemed to me like a ridiculously good idea. And it is quite good, but the problem is I'm just not hearing the 2-step influences! Blast. (I really like Hot Chip, though the first time I heard them I hated them. This is the track that I hated-then-loved which also has the 2-step influenced beat that keeps kinda slipping me by, maybe you'll learn to love them to by the time I get to writing about them: Hot Chip - ABC)

So all this preamble was largely to show that I was interested in listening to some more UKG, to see if I could catch this 2-step structure and more firmly root it in my mind. All I needed was a catalyst, and it came in the form of this mix, specifically the second-half El-B tribute (the first half is only so good). Though often cited (as I just did) as one of the forefathers of Dubstep, I'd actually not heard very much of his original work, as it is actually quite hard to come by (so I hear). This was thus an easy in, and oh what an in it was. Still clearly rooted in UKG's 2-step beats, but moving towards the darkside that dubstep would later wholeheartedly embrace, it's a lot more limber than dubstep often tends to be, still spry enough with 2-step's wobbled basslines, off-beat drum programming and desiccated r&b divas to stave of the hyper-masculine bassworhsip of dubstep.

Thankfully, I had gone on a bit of UKG downloading binge a while ago (almost a year, say the tags on the mp3s), but for whatever reason had not given the tracks a thorough listening to--turns out the bandwidth bottleneck is not between the download host and my computer, but in fact between the speakers and my ears; I just don't have the time to give full attention to everything I download. This does, however, leave me with little easter eggs hidden about my mp3 collection that can later reappear much to my pleasant surprise. As was the case for The Best Garage Anthems...Ever! and Garage Anthems 2005, which I had downloaded when I was more heavily into Grime and was interested in checking out some genres around it. Trolling back through these has really been enjoyable and definitely upped my appreciation for the genre.


***


Great, well I've circled around the topic long enough, time to actually talk about Garage itself.

Garage is kind of an odd genre, with a long history of mutation and cross breading. I...shit I just balled up right there and realized i'm never getting through everything I want to say before I gotta go today, but I've already upped most of the tracks I was gonna talk about, so since the links only last 7 days, I should just post the damn things, and hopefully I can continue my Garagic rantings another day.



Sweet Female Attitude - Flowers (Sunship Edit)

Craig David - 7 Days (Sunship Remix)

3 of a Kind - Babycakes

So a lot of UKG is heavily influenced by r&b, often sounding like a housier r&b with more interesting drum programming and bass. The above three tracks are all beautiful examples of this, sexy, sophisticated dance music. A lot has been made about how UKG is a very adult and feminine music, especially compared with a lot of the much more male-dominated rave genres. Because of course the interesting thing about UKG is that despite its sometimes r&b trappings, it is actually a direct descendant of several rave genres, specifically jungle Garage House (which came out of New York). Thus we get tracks like the below, which venture into darker and more abstract territories. In these songs the tension between the pop tendencies of sexy vocals and the darker bassive tendencies of jungle and rave produce interestingly disorienting results. (I just made that word "bassive" up. I like it :) ).

Encore feat. Stephen Emmanuel and Eska - Coochy Coo

Zed Bias - neighbourhood



And this is not even getting into Garage House and all its earlier permutations which are also excellent and will be posted about sometime, blogging gods permitting.

trying to remain cool...

I know it's a beautiful day heading into a beautiful weekend, and I hope you all have as happy a weekend as can be but...this (and this) puts the final lie to Israel's war on Lebanon and Palestine: it was, in fact, the Israeli's who first abducted two Palestinians, a doctor and his brother. The abduction of the Israeli soldier in Palestine was a retaliation for that (in the likely hopes of a prisoner swap)--and thus the escalation began. Not that had the case been as the media has reported it (with the abduction of the Israeli soldier being the starting point), it would have at all absolved Israel of the blame for the massively unnecessary and cruel punishment of the Lebanese and Palestinian people. The Israeli government is waging a war of (not on) terror against the Lebanese and Palestinian people. End of story. Israel and/or the US could stop this war in a second if they wanted to, but they do not.

Check out Lenin's coverage of the war over the last week or so, the man is blogging fire.

carry on in the sunshine...

jah love

matt b - city too hot mix

Just grabbed this beauty of a dub reggae mix off a dissensus thread here. I've re-upped it so as to not steal his downloads, but the track listing is over there. Matt complained from downstairs that it sounds like some sort of "weird tuba music." I suppose an echoed bass-only version of this music might sound a bit odd, but it IS echoed bass music, reggae with the bassline pushed WAY forward. ahh dub *sigh*

Reggae is one of those hugely imposing genres with such a massive back catalogue and history that I've never been able to make a proper inroad into it, merely sniping bits and pieces that randomly cross my path. And I almost universally love all of it.

95% Music-Free Post

Two songs of pure unadulterated joy. Weirdly both very similar (beats + female vox = joy) and completely different (teenpop != happy hardcore)

Amy Diamond - What's In It For Me?

Bang - Shooting Star (Bonkers Remix)



So the other day I had this dream that was a fully narrated nature show about birds that ate a kind of bulbous green fruit. The weird thing about it was that my dream was the tv show. I wasn't dreaming of watching the TV show, in fact I really had no sense of embodiment at all, it was like I had a TV inside my head that was playing a nature show with typical male narrator-style voice going on about the habits of this little bird (which was somewhat hummingbird-like). And I just accepted that there was a TV in my head playing nature shows. There's some parallel between dreams and television that makes their combination oddly disquieting. They're both fictions that reflect our inner desires and worries, both experienced with a kind of detached passivity, both...? This is really pushing my brain-buttons right now.

Other things pushing my brain-buttons right now (on the politix front). Bush administration suddenly on Wednesday declares that it will abide by the Geneva Convention for treating all of its prisoners of war, including the detainees in Guantanamo. Front page headlines everywhere (well New York Times, at least). Finally! I think to myself. But then I also think to myself "wait, let's withhold judgment until you find out what they actually plan on doing." And sure enough, the very next day it turns out the Bushies are looking to get congress to define a set of limitations on how the Geneva Convention applies to detainees (fuck it, PRISONERS, "detainees" is fucking propaganda talk, plain and simple) in Gitmo. It's annoying how easy it is to fall for the soundbite, "oh they're going to follow the Geneva Convention, great!" and just carry on and never follow through and get the rest of the story. And these fuckers know that, know if they just say it loud enough and enough times it will slip past enough people's radar that it will become the de facto truth--the great "common sense" opinion of the "people" that no one actually holds, but everyone refers to.

Also the whole Israeli incursions into Gaza and now bloody Lebanon are SCA-RY. For gods sake's they're bombing the runways of the godamn public airport in Beirut, and apparently trying to claim that Hezbollah is attempting to smuggle the kidnapped Israeli soldiers to Iran. Hol-eee shit. Way to escalate things. And of course they haven't gotten any of the soldiers back yet, because those soldiers are clearly quite low on Israel's priority list. I mean, bombing the public airport in Beirut is helping get back their soldiers how?

Finally, Lenin on point about the treatment of the Mumbai train bombings in the media. Go you media machine, you.


Well I'm off to Swift Current, Saskatchewan for a Medieval themed wedding! See ya'll peeps on Monday. Oh yeah and if you want any of the tracks whose link has expired, just give me a shout and I'll re-up them. And would it kill you to leave a comment? I demand feedback!

What IS in it for me?

Apparently I need to blog more. A keen audience awaits. Who am I to disappoint?



AMY MUTHERFUCKIN DIAMOND. Everyone's favorite 13 (now 14) year old Swedish pop sensation is back with a new album Still Me Still Now. Even Stylus is pumped, but bloody hell it's hard getting a hold of it. I've been unsuccessful tracking down a good torrent for it so far, and soulseek is coming up with bollocks, but thankfully there's myspace--ugly, ugly myspace. Why is something so poorly designed so popular? I don't know, but Amy's myspace page has four new tracks for download (not just streaming, score!). Pick of the litter is probably "My name is love" whose chorus is really uplifting and airy in the way only Swedish pop sung by teenage girls can be; the chorus has this really classic, ageless vibe to it, like it could have come from anytime from the 50's to now. Lovely. Also good is "Don't Cry your Heart Out" which is probably most reminiscent of Diamond's ABSOLUTE BOMB "What's in it for me?" from her first album (which if you haven't heard SHAME ON YOU! go here and watch the video for it and then download it when I post it this evening). The lyrics for "Big Guns" are also ace. Pre-teen politix rox!

In other music news (I think I'll post something non-music-y this evening) I was really impressed with this review of Peaches' new album. It's crazy the way a well written review can pique my interest far more than a high mark for an album can. Pitchfork gets shit on in a lot of places for being an indie-nerdish, knowitall bunch of "cool" gatekeepers, able to make or break a band with a single review. There is certainly some truth to this (The Arcade Fire would pretty much not even exist without Pitchfork), but thankfully Pitchfork has now expanded into such an all consuming beast of internet music criticism, that beneath the surface of pretentious reviews of generic indie-rock bands there's actually a very good site about alternative musics. They now employ about a half-dozen of the best writers around, guys like Tim Finney, Phil Sherburne, Jess Harvell and Nistsuh Abebe (among others...might be more than 6 people really), writing about techno, house, grime, dubstep, dancehall and all sorts of other interesting little nooks in crannies of the music world. Just ignore the indie rock :)


(Note to self: these days you seem to know as much about the music critics as the people making music. Is this weird?)

The old man the boat.

Rereading that last post, I keep trying to figure out whether my last sentence is one of those garden path sentences, y'know like "The man who hunts ducks out on weekends." It just sounds weird in my head, oh well.

So like I promised (hahahahah TO MYSELF) here's the Acen track that vaguely reminds me of that Kode9 track (btw, I've decided that the vocal snippet is saying "A stone'll be thrown at the state/A stone'll be thrown at the church" agree? Seems like an appropriate activity to be soundtracked by the song. That or throwing out HEADBUTS OF DEATH. Double btw, latest scuttlebut is that Matterazzi called him the Italian version of the N word, and then said he was a "son of a terrorist whore." But it's okay 'cuz Matterazzi's best friend is black...Alright, parentheses OVER). Now what about this Acen track? Dark crazy oldskool hardcore rave from '92, I do believe this actually charted in the UK. Oh those crazy Brits. The part with the James Bond sample comes in about half way through, blows my mind every time. Kode fer sure knows this song, it's extremely famous; I wonder if he was at all consciously thinking of it, or whether I'm just needlessly making connections...

Acen - Trip II the Moon (Part 1)

Yes, I realize it's part 1, not part 2. Minus 10 points of music-geek cred for me.

Working hard? Or hardly working?

Well, obviously the latter. I knew it would come to this sooner or later, and sooner it came--blogging from school! Anyhoo whilst determining what to listen to while working (a process that often takes much longer than the actual working) I stumbled upon this recomendation in Ian Penman's blog (yes I read way too many music-related blogs). But holy shit was he right! Go here to Kode9's myspace page and listen to 9 Samurai. Jeebus, those horns! Real meanace to the track, percusions, base, creepy vocals--all on top form.

Remind me to post whichever track off Acen's Trip to the Moon trilogy with the orchestral sample from James Bond that this rather reminds me of. I think it's "Trip to the Moon Part 2" Go horns!

How To Spend Money, Part 325

It had been a while since I had purchased any music, so I felt the bug yesterday and made my way over to Zulu for a little binge...just a small one, really! Anyway, the haul for the trip: two 12" and two CDs--keeping the analog/digital divide well fed.


Maurizio - Domina 12" (M-3)


Maurizio - M4 12" (M-4)


You know you're dealing with some pretty heavily canonical shit when you consistently get compliments from record clerks at cooler-than-thou trendy record shops when purchasing records. I'm pretty sure this has happened 90% of the times I've picked up some Basic Channel or affiliated release, and it was no different again when I grabbed these two last night. But there's a good reason, Basic Channel/Maurizio/Rhythm & Sound are a bloody church of the deepest, sublime dub-techno out there, and their converts are everywhere. I'm really happy that they've finally repressed all of their old records, meaning I can build up my collection without ordering everything in from Germany. And with these two purchases I now have all but "Lyot" from the M series! The difference between me and a six-year old collecting baseball cards? Errr...about 18 years...


Kaito - Hundred Million Lightyears (Kompakt CD 49)


Man do I love syntheziser. And so does Kaito. He also loves trance. I don't love trance that much, but Kaito makes me want to love it like a fucking care bear. Deftly skirts the line that would turn this into touchy-feely new-age diaper-trance (one of the tracks is called "Holding A Baby"), instead it's just warm, enveloping, vaguely propulsive sky-trance. I use too many adjectives.


Luciano - Sci.Fi.Hi.Fi Vol 2 (Soma CD 46)


Spur of the moment pick, Luciano's new mix in this series after Ewan Pearson's, which was also quite good. Decided to take it in place of Keith Fullerton Whitman's Lisbon as I doubted I'd see this one again in a local record store, while KFW ain't goin' nowhere. So yes, Minimal. It dropped the house and/or techno and moved from genre modifier to genre of its own. Congratulations Minimal, you're all grown up now, your own genre! That's a big step. Anyway, I like this, very boompity-clickity beep ping swoosh--as all descriptions of Minimal tend to go these days. This is serious plateaux music, it works better under the longer stretches where you kind of forget that you ever listen to other music that doesn't have a four-four beat. Then all of a sudden all the little micro-flourishes make perfect sense and you can see so clearly all the hidden structures and melodies they were always outlining. Minimal is shockingly big right now.

I have more to say about minimal, micro-house and electro-house and the strange flux they all seem to be in right now, but that'll have to wait.