Ben Frost has Me by the Throat

For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of hearing Ben Frost already, think of an anthropomorphic, classically-trained lawnmower with explosive diarrhea (and the diarrhea is beautiful and you love it).  Frost has been one of the greatest contributions to noise in the last decade, making other noise acts like Black Dice seem amateurish and uneventful.  While noise has often been criticized for being unexceptional and indulgent, Frost's compositions are alive, melodic, expressive, and exciting. 

A native to Austrailia, Frost now resides in Iceland (the other middle of nowhere), where he has collaborated with the likes of Bjork and Nico Muhly.  The album I am reviewing today, By the Throat, was originally released last year, being the first full length recording since his critically-acclaimed breakthrough Theory of Machines, and is now finally available on vinyl (here, for instance).  Frost continues his style of glitchy fuzziness accompanied by moments of acoustic instrumentation (not unlike our favorite Azusa Plane).  At other moments, the music is undeniably electronica, but it's represented tastefully through this skewed, dark lens, decorated with distortion.  The music moves endlessly without tiring you, with huge, dense swells of static and warmth, engulfing you in its giant waves of controlled chaos.  I think of Frost's music as I do David Lynch's films, walking a thine line between the avant-garde and the accessible with perfect balance, with constant and (mostly) seamless shifts between moderate harmony and noisy intensity.  This is by far my favorite record of this year and last.

Digitalism (not the french electro-dance band)

I told a friend I had considered getting an mp3 player. “Are you serious?” she asked with surprise and suspicion.  I first assumed she was thinking, why do you want to be a part of that white earphone gadget-obsessed culture?  But of course, she was actually thinking, you really don’t have one already?  And the answer was no, I did not already have one.  Throughout my entire life, I’ve been slow, not necessarily reluctant, but slow to integrate new technology into my experiences of media.  Once a particular method of experience is learned and enjoyed, it’s not easy to alter the ritual without paranoia of a lessened effect.  I didn’t want to switch from cassette tapes to CDs because CDs were always skipping in the portable players.  I thought DVDs would fade like laserdiscs.  Mp3s, though, seemed especially detrimental to my experience of sound.  Those low bitrates sounded all gargly, downloading takes away the fun of record stores, and digital files lack the tangible artwork I’ve grown up flipping through during first listens.  After a while of living in New York, however, I realized I was hardly ever listening to my vinyl anymore.  My attention to recordings had diminished to moments of house cleaning or getting ready for work.  I also began to be intrigued with the easy organization of mp3 players.  In addition, I soon realized the benefits of the digital age: less production of plastics (dangerous ones like vinyl), less consumption of paper, having your entire collection at your fingertips, etc.  I concluded that vinyl could be my go-to, and I would back things up with mp3 copies for portable use/mixes.  I never acted on the idea, though, until one drunken rainy night when I lost my phone.

So you purchased an iphone?  Fuck no.  One of my problems with the mp3 market is that it has already been monopolized by Apple, with merely a few surviving competitors to itunes.  The fascist lack of freedom in Apple products also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  So what did I do?  I went to the lesser of two evils: Google.  Not exactly the underground choice, but android phones are neat!  I decided to go with the brand new Mytouch 3G Slide.  Below is a comparison to the current generation of iphone.

Keypad.  I don’t like punching around on the screen, hoping for accuracy.  This has a slide-out full keypad for cavemen like me.

Headphones.  The headphones are shit; I think Apple’s shit headphones are even better.  Best to use your own.  Who can keep those little earpieces in, anyways?  Not me.

Music player. About the same as the iphone’s, though I like the fluid album flipping on Apple’s version a little better, even if it’s not necessary.

Other shit.  Android has way more of all that extra cell phone crap.  But we’re not discussing that here.

Have mp3s ruined my life?  Not yet.  The other day while walking home after a hard day of work, I listened to the new Lightning Bolt record and felt so much better.  Not having a car in New York, I had forgotten how important it was to have a soundtrack to your escape.  Here’s to new experiences.

Show Review: Skeletons

In my title, I was going to use some pun along the lines of "rattle my bones," but I resisted.  I mentioned it, however, so that I could basically still use it.  Skeletons is an interesting act to follow, as it manifests itself in numerous forms, not unlike the projects of Phil Elvrum,  with a revolving cast of players, most of who attended Oberlin's music school together. The core concept of Skeletons is reminiscent of a jazzier Arkansas Man (I know most of you haven't heard of Arkansas Man, but that's part of being an esoterrorist) or a sound that would have been produced by Briano Eno in the late 70s/early 80s mixed with some post-free jazz that would be released on Ecstatic Peace Records.  You know what I'm talking about.  This particular performance was the "big band" version of the group, a 13-piece, fully orchestrated hour of movement, ecstasy, melancholy, and lots of dissonant brass.  The performance was one of a series being hosted by Roulette, a charming space in Soho that caters to new and experimental music in a pleasant, seated atmosphere that demands reverence to the artist. The band played two sets with a Mt. Eerie meets Clogs sort of arrangement, consisting of epic bursts of brass decaying into minimal trickles of acoustics with vocal moments tiptoeing in every so often, softly ponderous. Beautifully spacey movements would erupt into utter rock-outs or progressively groove and grow, fall, glide.  If you can't already tell, I'm a fan and plan to keep an eye on this group, as you should as well.

Reunited!

Do you think New York City is overrated? Me too.  So for this post, we're getting on the train to Jersey to show those New Yorkers back home how it's done.  No, I'm not talking Jersey shore and spray tans, I'm talking Ivy League and tweed.  Last weekend I participated in an annual ritual of the cult of Princeton, the Princeton Reunions.  Though I am not an alumnus, I do my best to make these get-togethers now, not just for the unlimited amounts of booze or the 2 million dollar fireworks display (because that is actually kind of offensive), but for what that charming, hyper-white town has to offer, two things I can't get enough of: The Princeton Record Exchange and Hoagie Haven.  While graduates return to reunite with one another and their campus, I am reuniting with these two businesses.  I'll start with the former.  

As I've stated before, NYC record stores aren't especially great, with Hospital being the exception.  But Princeton, New Jersey, has one of the best in the area.  This most likely isn't news to you, as the nearly 30 year-old store is quite famous for it's infinite stock, obscure collectibles, and knowledgeable staff (doesn't sound like the NY shops at all, does it?).  I first visited there as a guest with my friend Sharon, and have since visited once a year with an alumnus during reunions.  As always this was a delightful visit to the shop, with their 20th Century Composer section overflowing with gold.  I finally found an original pressing of John Cage's recorded performance of Variations IV, which isn't really rare, but I never had the cash on me whenever I encountered it.  There was also some cool Tristram Cary LPs and lots of noise.  My most notable find, however, was a 3 LP compilation released on Sub Rosa, a label out of Brussels, who have ambitiously attempted to catalog noteworthy but not necessarily rightfully praised innovators and contributors to last century's noise and electronic music.  This particular release, an anthology of noise & electronic music / second a-chronology volume 2, is the second installment of the label's history of deconstruction, featuring rare and/or previously unreleased material from Captain Beefheart, Luc Ferrari, Meira Asher, and many more.  The record's a lot of fun but also extremely academic, with thorough artist bios to accompany the record and elaborate track explanations from music writers or the artists themselves.  If you're some scumpunk futurist that doesn't care about the details, feel free to simply crank the record and rock out (or pass out during the drone tracks).  It's versatile that way.  Be sure to keep an eye out on more anthologies from this label as well.  I hear they even have one for the Chinese noise scene, which, I must agree with them, is pretty unheard of around these parts.

Okay, but this isn't the only reason to visit Jersey.  No sir, one must also appreciate the art of the Jersey sandwich, perfected into masterpieces at a little dive known to its die-hard, artery-clogged fans as Hoagie Haven (click the link and look at the menu, comes with a map to the hospital).  After drinking Bud Light all day at those darn Reunions tents, one requires enough savory flavor in one's meal to overpower the thick layer of beer mold resting on one's taste buds.  The Haven shall deliver... well, not really, and it's a bit of a walk out of the way, but worth it.  Now before you go categorizing these words into the pre-established schemas of your simple minds, you should know what I mean when I say hoagie.  It's not the Subway footlong.  It's not that pussy sandwich you ate at the corner deli.  No, it's more than those throwaway bite-sized snacks.  You see, at Hoagie Haven, every sandwich contains a secret ingredient: nards.  Big, hairy nards.  And you don't just eat these hoagies, you submit to them, let them teach you things.  You'll never understand until you eat one, but I'm going to at least try to explain the sandwiches' majesty to you
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Here's a picture of a wrapped hoagie on my lap.  I include my legs in this picture so that you can see the size in proportion to a 6'5 young man.  These sandwiches are 16 inches long, and despite whatever you've heard before, it is 16 inches that is the perfect size.

I had a rough schedule planned out, to where I was eating here at least once a day for 4 consecutive days.  It was tough on the body but was good for the soul.  I'll work up slowly and progressively to the most intense sandwich so that I don't scare you right away.  We begin with the heart stop, 16 inches of italian bread stuffed with cheesesteak, fried eggs, bacon, and mayonnaise, all dippied in the fryer for a finishing touch.  I had this without water and almost choked.

Next, the big cat.  This is six hamburger patties lined up on the bread, topped with bacon, eggs, and cheese.  I ordered it with the works, so it also had lettuce, tomato, and every kind of pepper you can think of.

Up next, the phat lady.  This one includes its own side on the inside, consisting of cheesesteak, cheesesticks, and french fries, all crammed into the bread, and once again, lightly fried all together.  Yum.  I always liked cheese on my sandwiches, but cheesesticks supply an additional fried texture and oily discharge that a typical deli slice can't deliver.

Lastly, and this is the most famous, most delicious of all, the Dirty Sanchez.  This is fried chicken cutlets and cheesesticks topped with Hoagie Haven's specialty sauce (some sort of mayo-based goodness).  Get it extra dirty for more sauce.  My god. If I only had videos of faces to show you.  Faces of those first-timers who think I am overreacting about a sandwich.  They change.  They transform.  They call their parents and tell them that they love them.