Prism of Eternal Now

From a post on Wikipedia referencing Adam Forkner's new White Rainbow album, Prism of Eternal Now:

Prism Of Eternal Now is the most recent album by ambient/soundscape artist White Rainbow. Unlike Sky Drips Drifts, this album is not one continuous track, but rather a collection of shorter works that show the more recent loop-based phase of White Rainbow's music. Also, unlike ZOME, the album has no title tracks, extended songs, or words for vocals. The back cover of the disc is not unlike the label of Dr. Bronner's Peppermint soap, inasmuch as it is an almost solid block of text on a pink background (or a white block for some variation). A picture of Adam Forkner appears on the back, tucked away in the bottom right hand corner, which again marks a difference from other albums where Forkner's face never appeared. The text itself is all about the supposed healing powers of the music contained on the disc, and includes instructions on how to use the album as a method of self-healing, the benefits of Prism Of Eternal Now, and exhorts the buyer to not rip it into mp3 due to reduced bitrate. A block of text identifies the gear list (":::::ONLY THE FINEST GRADE:::::"), which includes phasers, guitars, delays, synthesizers, breath, jug, tabla, and a mysterious "etc". Another block has the track listing, and the third block of white has an explanation of the album title and "vibrational energy" contained therein.

Whoever wrote the above paragraph takes this album way too seriously, or found the perfect excuse to wave his dick around.

Gotta love the internet.

We Are Floating In Space...

Ladies and gentlemen, I've been trying to decide where to take this whole backlog and move it into the future (like Steve Miller?). Seems a little unsure at the time. I have time, if I choose to use it: just can't seem to figure what to write about and whether that opinion/criticism is worth adding to the constant babble of the internet. After all, it's hard to disagree with Jess Harvell's points -- am I adding to discourse or just making noise by hitting the repeat button? But maybe we can make this worthwhile after all. For a dude that loves black metal so much, John Darnielle sure is an optimist.

And, for the record, I kind of like "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance", in the same way that I liked Yellow Pills -- a record by perfunctory young adults overwhelmed by the need to make disposable, time-capsuled pop music. (I haven't heard the rest, and am apathetic about it to be honest.)

Also: know what's funny? I don't think anyone remembers In Rainbows and that shit was 3 weeks ago.

Foos

I know it's not very indie of me, but the breakdown + exploding background makes the hair stand up on my arms. This song kicks ass.

Foo Fighters - The Pretender (Video Premiere)
Uploaded by Alisvideo

My new best friend...

Just got a pair of these Sennheiser HD 595 cans above. Gotta say, I thought that money headphones were BS and all the things I was reading were all viral marketing. Not so. I can't speak for the other 5000 competitors to these (I'm sure some are better, whatever), but it's literally like someone wiped a layer of grime off of all my music. It's pretty hard to listen to Zep right now and not want to raise a lighter hearing Jimmy Page picking like a madman and every sweetly recorded Bonzo snare and tom.

"Great For College Campuses and Abroad"

I'm having a bit of trouble getting back into this. Every post I start begins "ever since I was young" or some goofball generalization. Sorry. Quality control - at least for the first couple since my last one.

See you soon?

Yeah, it's been a while. Soon I'll be back with something more, but I'm alive.

In the meantime, UGK's new one, Kanye's new one, and Scarface's old one are all amazing. And that's just recent hip-hop discoveries.

G: Goo, by Sonic Youth

Seventh grade for most people is super-awkward. I was no different. While it’s tough to remember perfectly, I do recall it junior high to be a greatly uncomfortable time. And yeah, looking back on it, I was a huge herb. Sixth was cool: I wasn’t sexually aware yet, They Might Be Giants were my favorite band, I had my little brother do somersaults for my “Bring Your Pet to School Day”.

But seventh sticks out. Girls started getting boobs, voices started cracking, unwilling things started happening downstairs. (Sample thought: “Please Mrs. Hall, don’t don’t DON’T call on me to come to the board. Damn my pants are tight.”) Adding insult to injury, one of our gym teachers made a group of us come up with a choreographed dance to a song of our choice. Seriously. You imagine what that can do to a little guy’s self-esteem when he has to get in front of a group of his peers (read: girls) and dance. At the time, I was way into Nirvana and some of the bands that Kurt liked, including Sonic Youth. My friend Kenny started me and my buddies on them and Goo was pretty cool to me with its terrifying feedback squalls and occasional hot-chick vocals. Long story short, Kenny, my future high school bandmate Layton, and I did the hand jive (no shit) to “Mary-Christ”. It’s the first thing I think about every time I hear Goo, something so ingrained and irrepressible, no matter what I could have hoped to do. I just picture myself red-faced with the song blasting over the shitty gymnasium speakers adding another layer of weird grime due to the echo and a crusty tape dub. (I should note that I stopped listening to Goo until senior year in high-school out of sheer embarrassment every time I heard it. Yeah, I’m a wimp, I know.)

Listening back now, it’s not all that hard to see why an inexperienced, Nirvana-loving teenager would like a band like Sonic Youth, particularly Dirty and Goo’s version. The songs here are skewed pop, angry enough to communicate on that level, groovy enough to make the listener feel cool and arranged in a way that made the kid dreamer think this type of thing might be possible even with his untalented self. The songs can be punky (“Titanium Expose”), aggressive (the second half of “Dirty Boots”) and definitely hip (“Kool Thing”), all things that angst-y suburbanites want in music as a replacement for their dull, monotone lives. I guess being honest, it’s kind of what I still want from music every once and a while.

On a grander scale, while it never hit the wide range audience that it was supposed to, SY’s Goo still stands tall as an accessible moment in a sometimes impenetrable and difficult discography. Goo is something of a leaping point for getting into high art-rock and the avant-garde due to its feedback swirls and hardscrabble noise elements tempered by grunge-era melody. And if it isn’t for you, well – just play it for your pimply 13-year old cousin with the Staind t-shirt. Maybe they’ll understand.

F: From Here We Go Sublime, by The Field

From the first icy cool bass drum and oxygen deprived vocal snippet that graces From Here We Go Sublime, it’s clear that minimalism is at play here. I’m going to take that a step further and be honest: minimalism in house, (tech-house, whatever) in and of itself, is flat out boring. Electronic dance music was made for ecstatic moments. So when close to the 2:00 mark during this record, a weird vocal breakdown plus wave-em-like-you-just-don’t-care synth starts pumping, it’s damn near perfect. You have the backbone of minimal house, with its well sculpted drums and the flamboyance of regular old dance music in all its neon glory.

The Field is one Axel Willner, a man I wouldn’t know from any other at your local American Apparel store (serious, look up at that dude’s picture), but it’s obvious he’s cribbed some notes from melancholy pop music over the last 40 or so years. Not in a while have I heard a vocal-less album that’s so lyrical. If fact, the repetition of the tracks prove to be the best thing going, pushing (not pounding) the sunwashed melodies into your head. There’s one influence in My Bloody Valentine that has only been nodded at in his composition, not blatantly ripped off like so many other guitar-based bands. The Field does Sheilds and co. justice by convoluting comforting melody in unique and off-kilter ways forcing you to pay attention yet still find it familiar.

Between Willner and Gui Borrato’s Chromophobia minimal house producers are finally realizing that tech-house doesn’t have to undermine melody, structure and composition and relegate itself to the background of the lounge part of some megaclub. To paraphrase Brian Eno, this has the potential to be background music, but you’ll find yourself unable to not pay attention. And if you still aren’t, there’s no way that during the ear-splitting moment halfway into “The Deal” you won’t start shaking your legs and nodding your head crazy like. Shit, the first time I listened to this I think confetti exploded out of my ears.

...

Yeah, I've been gone for a few days/weeks. Been busy: ran a 10-mile race, had a fiancee finish year 2 of law school, been in and out of NYC twice in the last two days. But yeah, I promise that I'm making an effort to write more, even with an irregular schedule. See you soon.

E: "Everybody Thinks I'm A Raincloud (When I'm Not Around)"

Kicking off their last album, Guided By Voices have pretty much everyone’s highest expectations to live up to. It’s fitting then that it’s one of those perfect, mid-fi Bob Pollard tunes that doesn’t smack you in the face, but slowly, deliberately makes you reach for and raise your lighter. Everything’s intact here: jangly guitars, Who worship, well enunciated lyrics, that slight yet fake British lilt, and a handful of powerchords. If there was a more perfect band for raising your glass to the erasing of bad memories, being awesome for one night only, and power of rock and roll I don’t know them. It doesn’t matter that Bobby and co. made this song about (literally) 3,000 times. It just matters that this at this particular moment GBV proved rock music could be perfected.

D: The Dismemberment Plan, Live at the Black Cat, April 27, 2007

Coming up on the start of the show, there was a peculiar calm over the Black Cat that I’m unfamiliar with. Most concerts I’ve seen where there’s a high level of anticipation, it’s like the roof on the venue is about to blow off. People can barely contain themselves, sporadic shouts pepper the atmosphere. Last Friday, the Black Cat was seriously tame compared to, shoot, the Lightning Bolt show I saw on Wednesday of that week. It could be any number of things, but my money’s on an overall sense of disbelief. We haven’t seen this band in (we’ll be generous) five years. Holy shit! After J. Robbins’ gracious speech and explanation for the (unfortunate) reason that we were really all there, they stalked out, all kinda doing the coy smiling thing. Holy shit! And just like old times: “Hi we’re the Dismemberment Plan from Washington D.C.”

Without sounding like a day had gone by since their last show, they struck right off into Emergency & I’s palate-cleanser “A Life of Possibilities”. No one forgot the words. Just like old times, some people were jumping around, some people were emo-ed out, crying every word, some people were standing with arms folded taking it in, and some were just grinning ear to ear. I couldn’t help being all of those, probably all in the course of one song, multiple times throughout the night. I felt like a teenager again: they were again saying everything that I wanted to say but way better and more loquaciously.

The Plan hit pretty much everything that a fan would expect -- “Doing the Standing Still”, “What Do You Want Me to Say?”, “OK Joke’s Over” (with Beyonce interlude, yeah!), “You Are Invited”, “Following Through”, “Gyroscope”, “The Dismemberment Plan Gets Rich” – and some of what you wouldn’t – “Girl O’Clock” (a personal favorite), “Ellen and Ben”, “Rusty”. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I (very) slightly disappointed, like I had seen it better. And I had -- the first time. I had never seen a band that unique before and I was awestruck, soaked from too much dancing, and ecstatic. Friday’s concert was my 7^th time, I’ve grown up a little, and I’d moved on to different things. That’s not to say that it wasn’t good, I was just pining for those first couple of times when it was just so insane that I could barely contain myself.

Still – virtually every song was met with fans shouting every word, there was an erotic cake, there were the requisite d-bags yelling for songs no one likes including them (but they’re on the first album, bro). It was a riot. After their set, which seemed to fly by too quickly, they came back for the encore playing “Sentimental Man” and their best song ever ever ever “The City”. I sat there swaying, happy as shit thinking, after all, the night was perfect. Ready to turn around and leave, they stuck around for one more song, “Onward, Fat Girl!”. It summed up the night for me: a set that sent me on a course headed for starry-eyed nostalgia, only to right me right at the end and slap me in the face to say that, yeah, things end. Particularly not the way you expect or maybe even want them to.

Back soon...

Yeah, been missing lately, but for good reason. Been seeing a ton of shows, some more are on the way. Saw Spoon last Sunday, Lightning Bolt yesterday, going to see the Dismemberment Plan reunion tomorrow and LCD Soundsystem in a couple of weeks. Once I'm back, "D" will be devoted to the D-Plan. Cheers!

Videos...

I was thinking about doing "D" on the Drones, and I still might, but here's some videos in case I don't. This band kills.

"Sharkfin Blues" solo:

"Jezebel" video:

C: Cryptograms by Deerhunter

For a band that’s come from a perennially uncool city (Atlanta), these mothers have been drudging up some pretty heavy hype. Rightfully so, one tends to cast a shifty eyeball on any art that comes out of nowhere to near unanimous praise. It seems unfounded, unwarranted, unearned. But backlash for backlash’s sake is shit (see the smart review of the new Klaxons album on Pitchfork, which isn’t all that bad): it’s just lazy, let’s make an argument by taking the opposing view journalism.

Regardless, by reflex, I tend to get disinterested when the hype machine starts steamrolling. Still, my brother recommended I check them out as someone that I’d like. (By the way, he and his friends at 16 have way more advanced musical tastes than I ever knew existed at that age. I thought Fat Wreck Chords was as underground as it got.) So I did. And he was right.

Starting off with swirling psychedelic guitars submerged in delay pings and synthetic effects, I’m never sure where the hell things are going to end up. And it’s the inherent fun in Cryptograms: you’re thrown into the melee, occasionally allowed up for air, or floating in an ambient dust cloud. The stationary instrumentals, which at times sound like label-mates Windy & Carl, intermingle with 1,000-yard stare post-punk that reads from the Sonic Youth book, but draws its own conclusions. Yet while those two groups couldn’t sound more different next to one another in form or principal, Deerhunter manage to straddle a very large divide and deliver quite impressive results everywhere.

The title track, “Lake Somerset”, and “Octet” represent more of the college radio friendly fare (and indicative of Deerhunter’s “traditional” songwriting chops?) from the first half of the album, those representing the aforementioned delirious no-wave and noise rock. Their trance inducing minimalism-is-maximalism is flooring, similar to the way Spacemen 3 were able to wring out tons of weight from simple chord progressions and repetition. That first half is rumored (we don’t fact check here, asshole) to be recorded about 2 months prior to the second. The second half, starting with “Spring Hall Convert”, arrives with magnificent Technicolor harmony, subverting the minor-key My Bloody Valentine half for more candy coated noise pop that swells and swells until it reaches the breaking, but unfortunate stopping point. Once you hit “Heatherwood” it almost seems like you’re listening to a completely different band or album, but one that, looking hard enough, comes full circle.

Weirdly, on track 9 of 12 of the distant Cryptograms the singing finally comes into plain focus on “Strange Lights”. Frontman Brandon Cox sweetly coos that “Walking’s half the fun”. It couldn’t be more appropriate: Deerhunter’s a band that emphasizes the absolute joy of tension-building and repetition. The process is always better than the payout.

B: Bonham, John Henry

I read somewhere that everyone goes through their Led Zeppelin phase, no matter how old or for how long. To paraphrase the text I’m not going to be able to reference or describe eloquently, you could be a 15-year old awkward teen or a 30-year old stockbroker, but Zep takes hold and it’s all you want to hear. Like, nothing sounds better than “Black Dog” or that incredibly massive riff in “Moby Dick” and all it makes you wanna do is drink beer or sit on the hoods of Thunderbirds. It’s definitely happened to me, and tends to happen at least once a year. I was a late bloomer, not really digging them until my summer before Freshman and Sophomore years at college when I felt obliged to pick up Led Zeppelin I sensing that the emo well was kind of drying up.

Well.

From the first moment of “Good Times, Bad Times” it’s fairly obvious who’s in charge here. Yeah, there’s a great guitar line, but it’s one of the dime a dozen blues based riff that are pretty interchangeable in the Zep catalogue, so it’s not Jimmy Page. Plant can wail, but not here, he’s pretty reserved. Obviously it’s not John Paul Jones – guy plays bass and this ain’t Primus. It that crazy sonovabitch John Bonham and his maniacal right foot. He makes this group absolutely explode with drive. He punctuates bars with the perfect thundering fills and literally sounds like an octopus at times. (In trying to figure out what I was gonna write for this I listened to their live version of “Moby Dick” where Bonham solos for what seems like 3 hours. I’m surprised that dude’s arms are still on after that tour de force.)

I’m a guitar player, but I’ve always been way more drawn to the sounds of drums. Nothing’s better when a band has someone that can kick the shit out of their kit. But nothing’s better than if that same virtuosic drummer can fit in the pocket and give a song its pulse all while fleshing out and coloring a song with their skill. It’s obvious why Led Zeppelin split after Bonham died – they lost the guy the foundation of the group.

Check out:

I was gonna do "B" tonight and write about Black Flag, but it's pretty painfully obvious that I don't need to add much to the discussion. What I do know: this picture rules.

Hope to see you tomorrow with something.

A: Amon Duul

A: Amon Duul

Krautrock is as good as people say it is. It served a great purpose in the development of music: a simple, motorik beat repeats ad nauseum while minimalist melody unfolds over top, for often a 10+ minute duration of the songs. And apart from that, some of this stuff was just plain great – just try to not love Can’s “Oh Yeah” at about the half-way point. Without krautrock, most electronic music wouldn’t exist and, for that alone, respect is due. Yeah, sometimes the ideas formed didn’t seem to go anywhere. (Example: you can fault Can on some the second half of Tago Mago in the wrong frame of mind.) But, in the right mood, it’s some of the best stuff you’ve ever heard – stretched out minimalism that’s both disorienting and occasionally transcendent.

More than any of their contemporaries, Amon Duul are recognized as the forefathers of the whole krautrock movement. They originally consisted of, what I assume to be, hippie commune burnouts in late 60’s Germany, making appropriately stretched-out and red-eyed rock music on their debut Psychedelic Underground. At the time, psychedelia was just blossoming, but their take on the scene was distinct, unusual, occasionally terrifying/uplifting and incredible. Most popular rock music at the time (Beatles, Stones, Who, etc.) borrowed heavily from American foundations, whereas Amon Duul and the burgeoning krautrock scene favored something unearthly and individual – (poorly recorded) drum circle focused freakouts (try “Ein Wunderhubsches Madchen Traumt Von Sandosa” with time/patience), confounding tape experiments or baroque musings. For my money, Psychedelic Underground may have kick started the krautrock movement, but Amon Duul didn’t move in a different or more exciting direction until they became Amon Duul II.

Amon Duul II’s configuration dropped (some of) the hippie commune vibe for more straight forward rock tropes and way higher production values. Granted, we’re not talking three chord pop songs, but the guitar and therefore song composition began to become more of a focal point. Both Phallus Dei and Yeti are high points for this, balancing experimentation with tunefulness, particularly Dei’s title track and Yeti’s “Soap Shop Rock”, “Archangels Thunderbird” and, even if it’s short, “The Return of Reubezahl”. Amon Duul began to approach a way further out version of Yes. Their turn into songwriting yielded occasional singing that was (and is) pretty embarrassing, but they still honed their flourishing improvisational chops. Particularly on Yeti, my favorite Amon Duul record by a narrow margin, they sound tight as hell on “Yeti (improvisation)”. But listen to the drums – it’s not a krautrock song by definition – they’re playing rock music here.

Unfortunately, in the mid-70’s, Amon Duul took an ill-advised plunge into mainstream songwriting territory, but for a short while there, they were able to balance joyful improvisational power with exuberant songwriting. Thankfully, we have a few records left of the magic: a band that masterfully could span the divide of improv and composition.

Check out: Yeti, Psychedelic Underground, and Phallus Dei.

B is for Boring Idea

Driving back from Northern NJ today for work I came up with a wonderful idea to give myself some more initiative to post on here. While lifting an idea from Sue Grafton is probably a horrendous idea, I'm going to anyway to give myself some parameters to write. Essentially it'll be A: (band name/genre/city that begins with A), B: (band name/genre/city that begins with B), etc. It'll give me direction and on a writing schedule that'll have a definite topic -- sometimes I find myself floundering about for something to write about. Similar to what James Murphy did with 44:33*, I'm giving myself certain boundaries, but truly imaginary boundaries that "restrict" only in the sense that I'm giving myself 26 consecutive things to write about. By the way, this won't be done in 26 days and if I feel the need to write about something else, "off-letter", I will. I care about you, that's why I'm doing this. Just so you know.

*This is untrue.

10 Years Later...

The Beta Band broke up to very little fanfare sometime in the last two years. For a band that had a hugely promising focal point in a great movie (High Fidelity), it was strange to see such a unique and, let's be honest, agreeable band disappear. I remember the first time my (now reformed) Banana Republic sporting ass saw and heard "Dry the Rain" on the big screen. All those moments of trying to find my niche and what I was going to waste 90% of my time finally became clear. Record collector! But, it seems like time's unkind to bands like the Betas in recent memory. I've just been checking out The Three EPs, and, hell yes, these dudes could gel. Particularly on "B + A" and "Dog's Got a Bone" they take the mindset of a electronic act, manipulating their sound ever so slightly and minimally to reach the grand apex of release, but they're doing it within the claustrophobic boundaries of traditional rock music and instrumentation. Pretty impressive stuff. Now, you could point to plenty of earlier examples of this type of music, but rarely are they as genuinely enjoyable to listen to. It honestly seems that people are waiting another ten years until we can like this stuff again. So when you hear about the super-deluxe digi-release of the Betas epically mind-melting masterpieces, don't buy it - just enjoy it for what it is. Some very good grooves.

(By the way, Daft Punk ripped off "Monolith" on "Technologic". Sayin'...)