Behold, Some New Things

Stuff that you should already be listening to but may not be because you're dumb/uninformed.

Zach Hill "Face Tat" - Okay, there's not a great deal of surprises from Hella drummer Zach Hill here:  chaotic yet mathematically precise eruptions of satanic drumming with static-filled currents zapping throughout, ripping ass of all those in the path of its destruction.  The only real surprise is just how much ass is getting ripped and what an improvement this record is from the last solo outing.  So highly recommended.  Cheapest if you download from Zach's bandcamp page.

Salem "King Night" - Salem isn't exactly an obscure subject right now.  In fact, they're about to blow up.  It's inevitable.  This record just impresses anyone who hears it.  Just show them the first track, and they'll go get their own copy of the record.  I'm feeling reluctant to elaborate more than that, because words can't really do justice to the enormous power and awesomeness of this overdriven drum machine epic-goth sexsplosion.  The title track will end up on a film or trailer.  I would bet everything in my possession on that.  Just fucking get it before it becomes too overplayed, because it most certainly will be.

Parlour "Simulacrenfield" - More post rock from Temporary Residence, the label that refuses to give up on this overdone genre.  Parlour, however, add a beautiful horn/woodwind section to the mix,  not like that of the last Do Make Say Think record, which was good, but more like a Harold Budd composition, which is better.

 

Retrospective Series #6 - Retrospection within Retrospection

I was at the Acid Living Room one night, sitting in the middle of a furniture-less room on the floor with my pal Kell Bells.  We were eating our nightly Taco Bell when Andrew came in and said he would play a record for us as we dine.  As the needle dropped, a single, warble-y "beep" tone sounded, followed by hollow air of analog tape playing a low fidelity voice from the other side of a phone call. "Hey this is Bobby Dale, pick up the phone," the voice announced in a thick southern accent. "Pick up, pick up, pick up... alright, I'll holler at ya."  Then the beep sounded once more.  What was being played for our enjoyment was a compilation of answering machine tapes, compiled by a Nashville-based label, Sebastian Speaks, who collected vintage, obsolete answering machines from southern pawn shops that still contained their previous owners' cassettes, chock full of interesting messages.  The recordings include dramatic notifications, such as, "I'm in jail!" as well as the desperate and lonely, speaking endlessly to themselves, as if using the answering machine as a therapist.

While the messages are entertaining, no doubt, what's really enamoring about the record is the obsolete technology and how it stimulates a deep nostalgia for the years it represents with its haunting tape warble.  The sound quality itself creates this womb-like comfort, but at the same time an anxiety about the loss of such experiences and the end of archived material in the easily deleted digital age.

Hilarity and Despair is one of numerous project put out by Sebastian, with other works including a 64-page book of discovered artifacts in an abandoned house and a somewhat kickass record by Deluxin (featuring Nathan Vasquez of Be Your Own Pet and far superior to the more successful act).

Why None of You Know What You’re Talking About

Many western classical theorists draw a definitive line between music and noise.  There has been continuous debate on the exact location to which that line belongs, and the argument was only further complicated with the arrival of 20^th century composers who deliberately blurred said line with the innovation of noise as music.  What’s unique and intriguing about noise as a genre of music is, of course, the blatant oxymoron.   This explains why noise has been a less popular brand of composition, not simply because its dissonance is unappealing, as much popular music involves dissonance (to the extent now causing the jarring C chord in Beethoven’s Eroica to seem laughably tame), but because it is an extremely intellectual style requiring the understanding of multiple, simultaneous representations that are occurring.  This includes the acknowledgement of what is noise and what is music, as well as the comprehension of placing the concept of one into the paradigm of another.  

                To simplify, the general, broad notion of what constitutes noise as distinct from music is the absence of distinct pitch and perceivable patterns.  Sources of such could be interference, such as the static on a radio, audible distortion (an alteration of an original sound), and/or frequencies emitted from electronic devices (the low hum of a running refrigerator).   One can take from these sources, however, and manipulate their qualities within a traditional structure for composition, thus creating music out of noise, which would technically no longer be noise now that you’ve removed its randomness/undesirability.  In the digital age, however, noise is dying.  Computers run quieter, modems aren’t crying through a dial-up, televisions buzz less.  This may be why noise continues to become more acceptable: because of the loss of the association with undesirability and obnoxiousness.  The sounds are just otherworldly now.

                So then what constitutes noise as a distinct genre?  It’s kind of like how Potter Stewart can’t define pornography, but he knows it when he sees it.  But if we were to set regulations on the genre, which should probably be done, we could fashion those after the laws of winemaking in regard to pure varietals.  To be considered a true Cabarnet Sauvingon, and thus earn your right to proclaim such on your bottle’s label, you need somewhere between 80-85% of the wine to be derived from actual cab grapes.  Within these boundaries, noise would then need to be comprised of at least 80% of sounds which can be emitted from electronic devices going wrong.  That’s a fair standard, I believe.

                And so let’s apply this to how popular forms of music are being said to now include “noise.”  A particular target I would like to shoot at is the latest M.I.A. record, which in reviews has been said to “draw from influences such as noise.”  I’ve also seen the new album listed as pop/electronic/dance/noise.  No.  No.  You can’t do that.  You can’t refer to something as noise because it gets noisy.  M.I.A. has no noise influences; dance music is just getting more distorted and over-compressed these days.  That’s all.  M.I.A. isn’t mixing beats with Merzbow.  At best, she’s a cheap blend, a table wine in a box.  Okay, just wanted to address that briefly.  But it seems noisiness is indeed infecting all new popular forms of music and so the overlap is further complicating how we discuss noise and music, which means we could be very close to entering the utopia that Cage once dreamed of where all things to all people are very much a song.  This would further diminish the commodity fetishism of recorded sound art, devaluing music as property, and the music industry will collapse in a chaotic apocalypse.  Then former RIAA agents will turn to crime in their desperation, and the streets won’t be safe, and everything will be so damn NOISY!  Luckily that will never happen.  As stated before, it’s a genre for intellectuals who have graduated to the formal operations stage of Piaget’s development theory, which requires at least a high school education.  America’s too stupid to ever fully embrace something that you can’t dance to.

Anti-Aesthetically Pleasing

I was at the Moma with P-Ballz once, when we stumbled upon a small, inflated tent made of clear plastic.  The exhibit noted that the artist was inspired by an encounter with a homeless man (obvious) and that the piece was a protest against homelessness (because it's some sort of movement?).  Disgruntled, P kicks at the tent, shouting, "More like a protest against aesthetics!"  And she was correct.  And though that tent was a product of amateurish dilettantism, many artists, from neo-dadaists to punk outsiders, are out there just to make a mess and rub it in your face.  And so on that topic, here's some random stuff that I love because it's so unlovable!

Cassis Cornuta, aka Daniel De Wereldvermaarde Botanicus, is a Dutch noisist (trying to make this a word, join in the cause) who has been creating damaged, fractured, and vandalized sound-art since the '70s.  His new LP, mag ik eens even in uw broek pissen, continues his tradition of broken-sounding anti-music, spliced and diced, which is surprisingly listenable but by no means a crowd-pleaser.  With fear that his record may be too listenable, Cassis drilled multiple spindle-holes in the center of the lp, enabling off-centered play on your turntable.  According to Cassis, the record is meant to be listened to from any and all of these "alternate centers."

The Argentinian experimental group, Reynols, has always been a favorite for fans of "other" music, especially for those who get preoccupied with the novelty of their drummer, Miguel Tomasín, who has down syndrome.  While much of their output is psychedelic rock, a great deal of their releases involved you in the experiment, such as their first album, dematerialized CD, which consisted, of course, of an empty CD case.  Then there was Blank Tapes, and yes, it's recordings of blank tapes playing, mixtures of soft, white noise.  My favorite was a 7 inch I picked up (can't remember where) of 10,000 Chickens Symphony, which is also self-explanatory, though surprisingly harsh and unrecognizably chickens (after 100 things start to distort, or so I'm told). 

Danish artist Asger Jorn in collaboration with the French artist and theorist Guy Debord put together the infamous book, Mémoires, a work of psychogeography detailed with graphics, collages, and theoretical text.  What's most referenced of this book is its cover, made of sandpaper, which will inevitably scratch the other books on the shelf, thus we have a product of pop culture designed to destroy it, or at least damage it.  This was reprinted in 2001 and may possibly be available without high collector prices.

I thought about listing some really harsh, shrill noise bands here as well, but a lot of them are being saved for another list.  Plus, I'm already bored with this.  So that's all.

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.