Forget part two... I don't even remember what I was going to write about anyway.
For those of you that have been following us here at the Central Target Research and Sound Laboratory, you'll realize that while this is a music blog, it's not really about music. Music is merely the frame with which to hang a given topic on, providing an ostensible topic for the moment, but usually elaborating on whatever I've been thinking about in the real world. Incidentally, I realize fully that it's poor writing to explicitly lay your literary devices on the table within the same work you're using them. However, while to you this blog might be entertainment, but to me it's a project of "personal journalism", so let's not quibble.
The thing is, I've been very taken with certain types of electronic dance music lately, specifically the Detroit school of early techno music and the minimalist work of Richie Hawtin's Plastikman project that I have, as of late, found difficulty finding a respective perspective to latch on to.
In high school, I finally began to investigate electronic music, after years as a punk. As a media-saturated child of my age, techno and dance music seemed like a wild, colorful adult world, and based on the imagery of 1980s dance club culture, it was very, very adult. Conversely, as a boy, I spent a few years living in Vienna, Austria (with my family - I wasn't just a globe-trotting preteen). It was 1989-1992, and acid techno and house were exploding all over Europe. It was absolutely omnipresent, and there was still enough E-influenced, Day-Glo good-naturedness to it that a part of me has always believed that it really was the dawning of a new era in culture. The early 90s were a culturally cool time anyway, with the coked-out decade of greed winding down and an explosion of multiculturalism. Although I didn't understand the social framework at the time, it felt like everyone was walking around with their eyes open and embracing vibrancy for a while. I loved the squelching soundtrack of acid house music, and ever since have always had a soft spot for it. By the time I hit high school 5 years later, my tastes were a lot more elitist, preferring the jittery, brainy end of electronica (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Warp Records) to the ass-shaking end of things.
As I've mellowed my position with age, I've noticed that there's a ton of intellect in the better dance music, and the late-80s/early-90s Detroit scene is a perfect example of this Zen minimalism. The "Belleville Three" have all made wonderful records, both dancefloor-ready, and cerebral enough to stand up to armchair listening. However, it's Plastikman (one of the several aliases of producer Richie Hawtin) that's been eating up a lot of my listening time. Minimal to the point of being subliminal, the tiniest change in the music can warp the beat into another rhythm, building brilliance out of only the barest essentials. His second album, Musik, is a masterpiece.
On the other side of the spectrum is my love of dubbed-out ambient house. The Orb, in this writer's opinion, stands above the pack as a favorite. The rubbery, intergalactic psychedelia of their first few albums is the soundtrack of an outer-space journey in your own head. Tinkling atmospherics and soft, cotton-wrapped beats eventually gave way to ambient noodling in their later years, but everything they did up to (and sort-of including) Orbvs Terrarvm is worth checking out. In fact, see if you can track down the full 39-minute version of "Blue Room", the longest single ever to top the UK charts, with a memorable TV appearance featuring the band members in space suits, playing chess in front of footage of dolphins. Trippy.
Since I've spent so much time between headphones, though, I find myself without anything to say about the music, as there is little vocabulary in the rock dictionary to capture the essence of some of this intensely introspective music. I've always looked at electronic music (dance-derived, rather than the electronic experimentation of early artists like Stockhausen) as running on a similar but parallel universe to the rock sphere since about 1977 - just as rock has developed sub-genres and stylistic diversions, so has this electronic music spawned acid house, techno, trip-hop, trance, drum 'n' bass, gabber, microhouse, and on and on and on. There's so much to dive into that with this introspection phase, I've just been cruising around in my own head for a few weeks. How do I hang my hat on that?
Realizing today that I've been neglecting my writing duties, I've decided not to change my listening from a techno and dub diet, but to dig deeper, to push further, to peel back the layers and really find something to say about this music. Maybe an album review of AFX's Analogue Bubblebath 3 (one of the greatest acid techno records ever), maybe a reflection on the co-opting of psychedelia from guitar-based rock to the mindspace of bedroom beatniks, or maybe just me blathering on and on about just how good 808 State is. We'll have to see.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Part 1: Clearing The Field
Sometimes it's easy to get complacent as a fan of anything. When you're immersed in something, it's easy to forget the boundaries, and easy to forget that there are very few innovators in any given field. I listen to a lot of music, so sometimes, it takes something extreme, something that I rarely listen to, to shake me out of my jaded state and really make me perk up. Quality is not the issue, as it's easy to hear and appreciate a great record that still fits within the boundaries of "normal" music.
I put on some James Chance & The Contortions today and it was like I'd never heard anything so aggressive in my life. Now, the funniest thing is that yesterday, I was listening to The Birthday Party (R.I.P. Rowland S. Howard), and felt the same way. I often forget that sometimes I need a brain cleansing. So many "confrontational" bands or musicians are simply "confrontation signifiers", throwing out all the established imagery, conjuring up an image of danger or confrontation without actually being so. And there's really nothing wrong with that. Art is art, it is not life. Art is a representation of aspects of life. However, when (specifically) music is authentically confrontational, there is a certain "magic ingredient" that is almost palpable, but hidden in the spaces between the notes - it can't be quantified, but it's obvious when it's present.
It's easy to get wrapped up in this world of signifiers, but it makes it incredibly powerful when dosed with the real deal. And No New York, the compilation of No Wave heavy hitters, sounds like the real deal. So does the Birthday Party's Prayers On Fire, but it's Chance and his ilk that I'm listening to right now, and it's so disconcerting that I'm having trouble keeping my thoughts straight enough to type. It's not the knowledge that early shows often ended in actual physical confrontations, sparked by Chance himself, in an attempt to shake the jaded NYC audiences out of their complacency - it's that this music often sounds dangerously close to coming apart at the seams. "Dish It Out" is the sound of frantic, sweating fear.
On Thanksgiving, my mom makes a cranberry walnut salad that I love. It's tasty, but so tart that it completely cleanses the palate... something that this raw nerve, live-wire music can do. After hearing something this harrowing, it's easy to lean back and just enjoy the nuances of something that's not so intense.
And while I'm listening to these records now 30 years out, this is not the only era to generate bands like this. However, it is a rare occurrence. If you ever spot one live (and it will most likely be live, since bands this electrifying aren't usually around long enough to properly document), take heed. Both in the cycle of rock music and one's listening habits, palate-cleansing, cranberry salad moments like this are like forest fires... clearing the debris for something new and fresh to grow. Which is why it's serendipitous when the universe draws me to music like this at the same time it presents me with the sonic alternative, which we'll be discussing next time on Central Target, in Part Two...
I put on some James Chance & The Contortions today and it was like I'd never heard anything so aggressive in my life. Now, the funniest thing is that yesterday, I was listening to The Birthday Party (R.I.P. Rowland S. Howard), and felt the same way. I often forget that sometimes I need a brain cleansing. So many "confrontational" bands or musicians are simply "confrontation signifiers", throwing out all the established imagery, conjuring up an image of danger or confrontation without actually being so. And there's really nothing wrong with that. Art is art, it is not life. Art is a representation of aspects of life. However, when (specifically) music is authentically confrontational, there is a certain "magic ingredient" that is almost palpable, but hidden in the spaces between the notes - it can't be quantified, but it's obvious when it's present.
It's easy to get wrapped up in this world of signifiers, but it makes it incredibly powerful when dosed with the real deal. And No New York, the compilation of No Wave heavy hitters, sounds like the real deal. So does the Birthday Party's Prayers On Fire, but it's Chance and his ilk that I'm listening to right now, and it's so disconcerting that I'm having trouble keeping my thoughts straight enough to type. It's not the knowledge that early shows often ended in actual physical confrontations, sparked by Chance himself, in an attempt to shake the jaded NYC audiences out of their complacency - it's that this music often sounds dangerously close to coming apart at the seams. "Dish It Out" is the sound of frantic, sweating fear.
On Thanksgiving, my mom makes a cranberry walnut salad that I love. It's tasty, but so tart that it completely cleanses the palate... something that this raw nerve, live-wire music can do. After hearing something this harrowing, it's easy to lean back and just enjoy the nuances of something that's not so intense.
And while I'm listening to these records now 30 years out, this is not the only era to generate bands like this. However, it is a rare occurrence. If you ever spot one live (and it will most likely be live, since bands this electrifying aren't usually around long enough to properly document), take heed. Both in the cycle of rock music and one's listening habits, palate-cleansing, cranberry salad moments like this are like forest fires... clearing the debris for something new and fresh to grow. Which is why it's serendipitous when the universe draws me to music like this at the same time it presents me with the sonic alternative, which we'll be discussing next time on Central Target, in Part Two...
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Top Ten Albums Of 2009
It takes a special breed of person to make end-of-year top ten lists of a given category. I don't mean "special" as in exemplary, or somehow a cut above. I mean "special" like "he wears a helmet in the bathtub." Interestingly, though, that demographic dovetails nicely with the type of person who might think that their ranting and hyperbole might be interesting to the whole wide internet. So here's a list of Mike's Choices for the Top Ten Records Of The Year. The year might not be over, but unless the Young Jeezy record or 30 Seconds To Mars or Rod Stewart albums is going to COMPELTELY BLOW MY MIND, I'm going to call it a wrap on the year. These are ranked, largely, by how much enjoyment I got out of them, how much I liked them, how much I listened to them. There is no science, other than the decades-long mental warping I've incurred. Not terribly empirical, but it seems to work for me. Comment, people, comment!
10. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
I didn't know they still had it in them. It's not that their past few records have been bad (except maybe that last one), but even at their most fried point in the early years, they were never this... spaced out. The trippiest, freakiest, most acid-drenched head record of the year. Totally deserving of any year-end roundup.
9. The Raveonettes - In And Out Of Control
I've never considered them one of my favorite bands, but it seems like every year the Raveonettes release a record, it makes my top ten list. This year's is no different, in that it's completely satisfying, sounds wonderful, and has good songs. I just can't get enough of their surf/noise/spy guitars and cooing backup vocals. Last year's Lust, Lust, Lust was a comeback of sorts for a band that never went away - it was just a great, lean, dark rock record. If you like almost anything else on this list, you'll like this record. I guarantee it* (*this is in no way a guarantee).
8. Varsity Drag - Rock 'N' Roll Is Such A Hassle [Live]
Ben Deily left the Lemonheads in '89, put out a record with his new band, Pods, in 1994, then disappeared to have a real life until '06, when Varsity Drag debuted on record. This career-overview live disc shows that while he hasn't been prolific, Deily has certainly been consistently excellent. Everything from early L-heads songs up through 2009 material, it's a fantastic collection for anyone who likes good punky rock songs. Considering how good these songs are, I don't think I need to sell it any further.
7. Sune Rose Wagner - Sune Rose Wagner
It doesn't sound like a Raveonettes album, but it couldn't have been made by anyone who wasn't in the Raveonettes. Gossamer, drifting, dreamy - I hate to fly, and this record put me at ease from Cleveland to Boston. All the Spector-esque arrangements you've come to love, but like Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, it sounds like it's being recorded by ghosts. It's beautiful, and the fact that it's all sung in Danish makes it even more ethereal. Forget the Cocteau Twins, this is what dream-pop should sound like.
6. The Dead Weather - Horehound
I'm no great champion of the Kills, singer Alison Mosshart's main gig, but I've got no beef with them. I am on record as being a Jack White fan. So what's the deal with this ill-received project? Voodoo blues. Dark, oozing, psychedelic evil grooves. And it's fantastic. I do like the White-sung tracks a little better, but there's not a truly weak track on this. People didn't like it because it didn't sound like the White Stripes, didn't have big hooks, wasn't catchy. So what? This is way more Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man than anything by Buddy Guy. If you wrote it off, try it again. If you haven't heard it, now's the time to get on board.
5. A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Having been angry that I slept on their self-titled first album, I was thrilled to hear about this follow up. Where the first album was a collection of recordings cobbled into an album release, this is the first one recorded as an album. What does this mean? Sonic cohesion. Every one of these static and reverb epics flows into each other, sounding like a monolithic call to feedback arms. It's a good year to be a shoegazer.
4. Early Day Miners - The Treatment
Not so much the sound of a band changing... more like snapping into focus. After several albums of hovering, beautifully longing soundscapes, tunes that felt like memories, a sharpening of hooks and shortening of tunes makes this feel like a new band. Post-punk seems like a touchstone, but it's hard to put my finger on just what this sounds like. Danceable rhythms, mercurial guitar lines, and hooks. Lots of hooks. A surprise? Maybe. Fantastic? For sure.
3. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
With some of the more jagged edges sanded down from the unexpectedly amazing Beyond, what we have here is an imminently satisfying collection of wistful melodies and extended soloing. If you like Dinosaur Jr., you'll love this record... but if you don't like the band, this album might just win you over anyway. Barlow's rumbling bass guitar and Murph's furious tom rolls build a structure to hold up swirling, winding, neo-psychedelic explorations wrung from Mascis' Jazzmaster. It's impressive that any band could make a record this good, much less one that broke up less-than-amicably 20 years ago.
2. The Vandelles - Del Black Aloha
Coming from out of a buzz-less nowhere with their debut EP, they followed up with a full-length that did everything you would want a first album to do after a killer EP... more of the same, but deeper. Sonically, it's halfway between some wicked surf band we've never heard of and a blast of feedback like a bucket of cold water in the face. Once again, Jesus And Mary Chain comparisons aren't inaccurate, but it's more than just sounding like a good band that makes this a great record. Thrilling sonics, oceanic reverbs, swaggering hooks... it's got what a good rock record needs to have.
1. The Big Pink - A Brief History Of Love
Huge without being silly, atmospheric without being limpid, it's just booming, thundering neo-shoegazer of the finest variety. Maybe not the best record of the year on a technical scale, but I've listened to and enjoyed this album more than any other this year, and it only came out in September. Bits of everything from My Bloody Valentine to the Jesus and Mary Chain to New Order are folded into the mix, but without ever really sounding specifically derivative. I heard the "Velvet" single and had to go out that day to get the single, just to have a real physical copy of it. I haven't done that in years. It's that good, and there is no hesitation in me naming this my favorite album of the year.
--------------------------------------
Psst... are they gone?
Also-Rans: This was too good a year for music to constrain it to the top 10. There were several excellent records this year that just barely didn't make the cut, but deserve one more largely-unread blog to sing their praises.
ofthemetro - "April Is The Cruelest Month/Roboboogie": honestly, there would have been a place for this at the grown-up table if it had been more than 2 tracks. It was a best albums list, but this is only down here because of a technicality. What does it sound like? Electronic music that sounds HUMAN. That should be all you need to know. http://www.myspace.com/inastationofthemetro
Asobi Seksu - Hush: More dream-pop than shoegazer, it shows that you can strip huge things down, and if they're really good, they'll stand up. This does, and it's beautiful.
Death - ...For The Whole World To See: pre-punk, Motor City Dirtbombs-esque garage'n'roll that proves that obsessive record collectors deserve to be listened to from time to time.
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
Far better than I expected, not an earth-shatteringly amazing record, but it's nice to hear a band that I know are honest about doing what's good about big, huge, old-fashioned rock music.
Madlib - Beat Konducta, Vol. 5-6: Hazy hip hop fragments from the underground's best (I said it) producer.
Sonic Youth - The Eternal: solid, tight experiments from the kings and queen of avant-alterna-rock. Fantastic.
Metric - Fantasies: Haunted, danceable modern pop. It SOUNDS perfect, and probably would if it sounded different, too.
Mos Def - The Ecstatic: Not enough hip-hop on my proper list, but not for want of trying. After being written off for a couple of albums, Mos Def comes roaring back with his best since his debut.
Spinnerette - Spinnerette: hard-edged Rock that shows that Brody Dalle is a lot more than a punk screamer. Almost made number 10 up there.
10. The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
I didn't know they still had it in them. It's not that their past few records have been bad (except maybe that last one), but even at their most fried point in the early years, they were never this... spaced out. The trippiest, freakiest, most acid-drenched head record of the year. Totally deserving of any year-end roundup.
9. The Raveonettes - In And Out Of Control
I've never considered them one of my favorite bands, but it seems like every year the Raveonettes release a record, it makes my top ten list. This year's is no different, in that it's completely satisfying, sounds wonderful, and has good songs. I just can't get enough of their surf/noise/spy guitars and cooing backup vocals. Last year's Lust, Lust, Lust was a comeback of sorts for a band that never went away - it was just a great, lean, dark rock record. If you like almost anything else on this list, you'll like this record. I guarantee it* (*this is in no way a guarantee).
8. Varsity Drag - Rock 'N' Roll Is Such A Hassle [Live]
Ben Deily left the Lemonheads in '89, put out a record with his new band, Pods, in 1994, then disappeared to have a real life until '06, when Varsity Drag debuted on record. This career-overview live disc shows that while he hasn't been prolific, Deily has certainly been consistently excellent. Everything from early L-heads songs up through 2009 material, it's a fantastic collection for anyone who likes good punky rock songs. Considering how good these songs are, I don't think I need to sell it any further.
7. Sune Rose Wagner - Sune Rose Wagner
It doesn't sound like a Raveonettes album, but it couldn't have been made by anyone who wasn't in the Raveonettes. Gossamer, drifting, dreamy - I hate to fly, and this record put me at ease from Cleveland to Boston. All the Spector-esque arrangements you've come to love, but like Dylan's Time Out Of Mind, it sounds like it's being recorded by ghosts. It's beautiful, and the fact that it's all sung in Danish makes it even more ethereal. Forget the Cocteau Twins, this is what dream-pop should sound like.
6. The Dead Weather - Horehound
I'm no great champion of the Kills, singer Alison Mosshart's main gig, but I've got no beef with them. I am on record as being a Jack White fan. So what's the deal with this ill-received project? Voodoo blues. Dark, oozing, psychedelic evil grooves. And it's fantastic. I do like the White-sung tracks a little better, but there's not a truly weak track on this. People didn't like it because it didn't sound like the White Stripes, didn't have big hooks, wasn't catchy. So what? This is way more Captain Beefheart's Mirror Man than anything by Buddy Guy. If you wrote it off, try it again. If you haven't heard it, now's the time to get on board.
5. A Place To Bury Strangers - Exploding Head
Having been angry that I slept on their self-titled first album, I was thrilled to hear about this follow up. Where the first album was a collection of recordings cobbled into an album release, this is the first one recorded as an album. What does this mean? Sonic cohesion. Every one of these static and reverb epics flows into each other, sounding like a monolithic call to feedback arms. It's a good year to be a shoegazer.
4. Early Day Miners - The Treatment
Not so much the sound of a band changing... more like snapping into focus. After several albums of hovering, beautifully longing soundscapes, tunes that felt like memories, a sharpening of hooks and shortening of tunes makes this feel like a new band. Post-punk seems like a touchstone, but it's hard to put my finger on just what this sounds like. Danceable rhythms, mercurial guitar lines, and hooks. Lots of hooks. A surprise? Maybe. Fantastic? For sure.
3. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
With some of the more jagged edges sanded down from the unexpectedly amazing Beyond, what we have here is an imminently satisfying collection of wistful melodies and extended soloing. If you like Dinosaur Jr., you'll love this record... but if you don't like the band, this album might just win you over anyway. Barlow's rumbling bass guitar and Murph's furious tom rolls build a structure to hold up swirling, winding, neo-psychedelic explorations wrung from Mascis' Jazzmaster. It's impressive that any band could make a record this good, much less one that broke up less-than-amicably 20 years ago.
2. The Vandelles - Del Black Aloha
Coming from out of a buzz-less nowhere with their debut EP, they followed up with a full-length that did everything you would want a first album to do after a killer EP... more of the same, but deeper. Sonically, it's halfway between some wicked surf band we've never heard of and a blast of feedback like a bucket of cold water in the face. Once again, Jesus And Mary Chain comparisons aren't inaccurate, but it's more than just sounding like a good band that makes this a great record. Thrilling sonics, oceanic reverbs, swaggering hooks... it's got what a good rock record needs to have.
1. The Big Pink - A Brief History Of Love
Huge without being silly, atmospheric without being limpid, it's just booming, thundering neo-shoegazer of the finest variety. Maybe not the best record of the year on a technical scale, but I've listened to and enjoyed this album more than any other this year, and it only came out in September. Bits of everything from My Bloody Valentine to the Jesus and Mary Chain to New Order are folded into the mix, but without ever really sounding specifically derivative. I heard the "Velvet" single and had to go out that day to get the single, just to have a real physical copy of it. I haven't done that in years. It's that good, and there is no hesitation in me naming this my favorite album of the year.
--------------------------------------
Psst... are they gone?
Also-Rans: This was too good a year for music to constrain it to the top 10. There were several excellent records this year that just barely didn't make the cut, but deserve one more largely-unread blog to sing their praises.
ofthemetro - "April Is The Cruelest Month/Roboboogie": honestly, there would have been a place for this at the grown-up table if it had been more than 2 tracks. It was a best albums list, but this is only down here because of a technicality. What does it sound like? Electronic music that sounds HUMAN. That should be all you need to know. http://www.myspace.com/inastationofthemetro
Asobi Seksu - Hush: More dream-pop than shoegazer, it shows that you can strip huge things down, and if they're really good, they'll stand up. This does, and it's beautiful.
Death - ...For The Whole World To See: pre-punk, Motor City Dirtbombs-esque garage'n'roll that proves that obsessive record collectors deserve to be listened to from time to time.
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
Far better than I expected, not an earth-shatteringly amazing record, but it's nice to hear a band that I know are honest about doing what's good about big, huge, old-fashioned rock music.
Madlib - Beat Konducta, Vol. 5-6: Hazy hip hop fragments from the underground's best (I said it) producer.
Sonic Youth - The Eternal: solid, tight experiments from the kings and queen of avant-alterna-rock. Fantastic.
Metric - Fantasies: Haunted, danceable modern pop. It SOUNDS perfect, and probably would if it sounded different, too.
Mos Def - The Ecstatic: Not enough hip-hop on my proper list, but not for want of trying. After being written off for a couple of albums, Mos Def comes roaring back with his best since his debut.
Spinnerette - Spinnerette: hard-edged Rock that shows that Brody Dalle is a lot more than a punk screamer. Almost made number 10 up there.
Friday, December 4, 2009
Tonight May Not, In Fact, Be The Night
Since the dawn of well-recorded music, the fidelity has been a subjective factor in the listener's enjoyment, whether they know it or not. Those who are largely unaware of how audio recording works might not realize it, but that "something about it" that people often refer to when talking about their relative appreciation of a particular recorded work is most likely the constructed sound of music in a way that our ears wouldn't normally hear it.
Since the advent of multitrack recording, this problem/benefit has been compounded. In the early days, microphones and tape would pick up a performance live, as it was performed. But being able to record parts or instruments individually, a crafty recording engineer could now put each element in it's own space, so to speak.
For instance, you could make the drums sound like they were in a small, highly reverberant concrete room, but make a guitar or piano sound like they were down a long metal hallway, while putting the bass right next to the listener's left side. Of course, these are all illusions created by the signals your brain gets about REAL space... it's all a trick.
In some eras of popular music, certain production tricks became the standard, and often, eras with a higher number of standard "tricks" are what sound dated. Certain chorus effects and reverbs can come together to instantly scream "1980s". It was a colder, more digital sound than what was prevalent in the '70s rock arena. Until the legion of dimwit new-new-New Wave revivalists invaded the rock underground, the prevailing opinion was that "70s sounds were warm and natural and therefore good, '80s sounds were cold and harsh and bad". Now, aside from the phramaceutical trends of the ages, this is often true, in a purely rockist sense of the word. Some of those '70s classic rock moments stand up to the "timelessness" test because they have the same sound that people have had through the ages. Warm overdriven guitars and drums that sound like they're in a medium size room are going to be familiar sounds.
However...
There was, in the 1970s, a particular production sound that was so weird and unnatural, despite all of its concessions to normalcy and regularness, that sound more unnatural to me than even the weirdest stuff from '85. So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I humbly submit two stone-cold-classic records that I have a hard time listening to - not because of the harrowing lyrical content, but because of the bizarre production values. Ladies and gentlemen: Tonight's The Night and Berlin.
"B'whaa?" you may be asking. These are what, to some eyes, should be my favorite albums by each of these artists. Harrowing raw-nerve lyrics set to road-burned melodies at the trough of each artists' downward spiral. Confronting the darkest impulses of the human condition. Considered by many their respective artistic peaks. Maybe so, but I pull them out so infrequently that I couldn't sing you most of the songs on either of them, even though I love them. The problem is that I haven't been able to pinpoint why.
The closest I can get is that every instrument has been over EQ'd to death. My ears don't hear like that. You can't spend weeks getting the drums to sound just the way you want them and then set the other instruments to an entirely different set of calibrations. This problem isn't quite as apparent on Berlin, which is largely a collection of "piano and strings" showtunes anyway. But I've been in a lot of rooms with a lot of sloppy rock bands, and while all the playing and activity on Tonight's The Night is "correct", the sound of it isn't. I'm betting that coke and quaaludes have something to do with it, too.
Are there others? By that I mean good records from the pre-punk '70s that just sound wrong to you? I'm sure somebody out there could come up with a good list.
Since the advent of multitrack recording, this problem/benefit has been compounded. In the early days, microphones and tape would pick up a performance live, as it was performed. But being able to record parts or instruments individually, a crafty recording engineer could now put each element in it's own space, so to speak.
For instance, you could make the drums sound like they were in a small, highly reverberant concrete room, but make a guitar or piano sound like they were down a long metal hallway, while putting the bass right next to the listener's left side. Of course, these are all illusions created by the signals your brain gets about REAL space... it's all a trick.
In some eras of popular music, certain production tricks became the standard, and often, eras with a higher number of standard "tricks" are what sound dated. Certain chorus effects and reverbs can come together to instantly scream "1980s". It was a colder, more digital sound than what was prevalent in the '70s rock arena. Until the legion of dimwit new-new-New Wave revivalists invaded the rock underground, the prevailing opinion was that "70s sounds were warm and natural and therefore good, '80s sounds were cold and harsh and bad". Now, aside from the phramaceutical trends of the ages, this is often true, in a purely rockist sense of the word. Some of those '70s classic rock moments stand up to the "timelessness" test because they have the same sound that people have had through the ages. Warm overdriven guitars and drums that sound like they're in a medium size room are going to be familiar sounds.
However...
There was, in the 1970s, a particular production sound that was so weird and unnatural, despite all of its concessions to normalcy and regularness, that sound more unnatural to me than even the weirdest stuff from '85. So, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I humbly submit two stone-cold-classic records that I have a hard time listening to - not because of the harrowing lyrical content, but because of the bizarre production values. Ladies and gentlemen: Tonight's The Night and Berlin.
"B'whaa?" you may be asking. These are what, to some eyes, should be my favorite albums by each of these artists. Harrowing raw-nerve lyrics set to road-burned melodies at the trough of each artists' downward spiral. Confronting the darkest impulses of the human condition. Considered by many their respective artistic peaks. Maybe so, but I pull them out so infrequently that I couldn't sing you most of the songs on either of them, even though I love them. The problem is that I haven't been able to pinpoint why.
The closest I can get is that every instrument has been over EQ'd to death. My ears don't hear like that. You can't spend weeks getting the drums to sound just the way you want them and then set the other instruments to an entirely different set of calibrations. This problem isn't quite as apparent on Berlin, which is largely a collection of "piano and strings" showtunes anyway. But I've been in a lot of rooms with a lot of sloppy rock bands, and while all the playing and activity on Tonight's The Night is "correct", the sound of it isn't. I'm betting that coke and quaaludes have something to do with it, too.
Are there others? By that I mean good records from the pre-punk '70s that just sound wrong to you? I'm sure somebody out there could come up with a good list.
Monday, November 30, 2009
[Redacted]
So, I don't do this often, but I wrote a pissy post this morning about a particular record label that I would now like to redact. Pissiness limply tossed at an irritiating but ultimately peripheral antagonist is no way to live one's life. Confident, incisive, heat-seeking ire is the way to go about it.
So, post redacted (cause it was poor, unfocused griping), but the point still stands, if you had the chance to read it.
So, post redacted (cause it was poor, unfocused griping), but the point still stands, if you had the chance to read it.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
My Little Blue Window/Radio Silence
Recently, a lot of my listening has been taken up by one Mr. Elvis Costello, or as some of you may know him, "Declan MacManus: International Art Thief". I've been a huge Costello fan since high school, which may explain why I wasn't exactly a ladies' man, but it was also reassuring to know that there were other angry nerds out there. My Costello listening never really ceased since then, but for me, it's certainly more of an autumn/winter thing, and I've recently pulled out my EC discography from its digital crate.
It seems that whenever I pull out ol' Declan's records, I not only discover new things about the records that I love (which is most of them, but I'm certainly partial to his '77-'80 output, from My Aim Is True to Get Happy!!), but I usually discover a new record once a year or so. Apparently, I'd never cleaned my ears out to bother to listen to his 2002 "comeback", When I Was Cruel. it seems to be the weird, dark, seething record that he was threatening to make back in '91 with Mighty Like A Rose. The great thing about Elvis is that he's never really been pigeonholed by people who know his music. Sure the "angry young man" image sticks in people's minds, but he's always been as stylistically shifting as even David Bowie, he just changes shape within the "post-New Wave songwriter" boundary. Everything on When I Was Cruel seems dark and muffled, giving it a similar vibe, if not exactly sound, of groups like Massive Attack. That haunted, dark, angry sound is a welcome refresher to those of us who love Costello's razor-sharp wordplay. I've been on record since I was 17 as digging his Burt Bacharach collab, but that was a little sweeter - nobody can pen a put-down like Costello.
Back in '02, I was doing summer duty at a mall record store when I was home from college, and we were pretty restricted as to what we could play (thanks, GloboCorpMedia, Inc.), but When I Was Cruel certainly got lots of play from me, but I wasn't giving it a fair shake, cause I was young and angry, and it wasn't This Year's Model. So I've heard the record, but I'm 7 years late in getting to it's glorious, muffled anger - so what's your point, Mike?
My point is that I'm sick of the Day Glo, pseudo-cheerful 80's retroism of today. It's like people have fooled themselves into feeling things that they're not actually feeling. I'll freely admit that I don't understand why anyone would live at that surface level all the time, but I think that some of these people genuinely think that they feel certain things, but it's all ironic, and some of them don't even know it:
Maybe it's because we're coming out of a dark time, and some of the people in their late teens and early 20s weren't properly emotionally equipped to deal with being plunged into a paranoid era about 8 years ago. The '80s were pretty Day Glo and there was the constant threat of nuclear war. It's back again. But I was old enough to deal with it. And I'm bitter. Bitter at those people, bitter at the spirit of the era, bitter that nobody else seems to be feeling what I'm feeling. Ignoring it with solipsistic dance squiggles and silly haircuts doesn't protect you from fear - you have to fool yourself when all is said and done.
So I'm going to start writing some lyrics for the album I've got in the can. And they're going to be bitter. Because nobody else seems to be doing it with any articulation or conviction. Fuck this dance music. Things might be getting better, but bopping to reheated, rehashed Synth-Pop horseshit isn't going to make this any better. Duran Duran was bullshit then, and their progeny still are. You can't dance your troubles away when the world is falling apart. They say that those that don't know their history are condemned to repeat it, and apparently they've never heard the tale of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
It seems that whenever I pull out ol' Declan's records, I not only discover new things about the records that I love (which is most of them, but I'm certainly partial to his '77-'80 output, from My Aim Is True to Get Happy!!), but I usually discover a new record once a year or so. Apparently, I'd never cleaned my ears out to bother to listen to his 2002 "comeback", When I Was Cruel. it seems to be the weird, dark, seething record that he was threatening to make back in '91 with Mighty Like A Rose. The great thing about Elvis is that he's never really been pigeonholed by people who know his music. Sure the "angry young man" image sticks in people's minds, but he's always been as stylistically shifting as even David Bowie, he just changes shape within the "post-New Wave songwriter" boundary. Everything on When I Was Cruel seems dark and muffled, giving it a similar vibe, if not exactly sound, of groups like Massive Attack. That haunted, dark, angry sound is a welcome refresher to those of us who love Costello's razor-sharp wordplay. I've been on record since I was 17 as digging his Burt Bacharach collab, but that was a little sweeter - nobody can pen a put-down like Costello.
Back in '02, I was doing summer duty at a mall record store when I was home from college, and we were pretty restricted as to what we could play (thanks, GloboCorpMedia, Inc.), but When I Was Cruel certainly got lots of play from me, but I wasn't giving it a fair shake, cause I was young and angry, and it wasn't This Year's Model. So I've heard the record, but I'm 7 years late in getting to it's glorious, muffled anger - so what's your point, Mike?
My point is that I'm sick of the Day Glo, pseudo-cheerful 80's retroism of today. It's like people have fooled themselves into feeling things that they're not actually feeling. I'll freely admit that I don't understand why anyone would live at that surface level all the time, but I think that some of these people genuinely think that they feel certain things, but it's all ironic, and some of them don't even know it:
Teen2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Teen1: (shakes head) I don't even know anymore.
Maybe it's because we're coming out of a dark time, and some of the people in their late teens and early 20s weren't properly emotionally equipped to deal with being plunged into a paranoid era about 8 years ago. The '80s were pretty Day Glo and there was the constant threat of nuclear war. It's back again. But I was old enough to deal with it. And I'm bitter. Bitter at those people, bitter at the spirit of the era, bitter that nobody else seems to be feeling what I'm feeling. Ignoring it with solipsistic dance squiggles and silly haircuts doesn't protect you from fear - you have to fool yourself when all is said and done.
So I'm going to start writing some lyrics for the album I've got in the can. And they're going to be bitter. Because nobody else seems to be doing it with any articulation or conviction. Fuck this dance music. Things might be getting better, but bopping to reheated, rehashed Synth-Pop horseshit isn't going to make this any better. Duran Duran was bullshit then, and their progeny still are. You can't dance your troubles away when the world is falling apart. They say that those that don't know their history are condemned to repeat it, and apparently they've never heard the tale of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Don't Know About You, But...
i-ron-y: [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
------------
So, I'm going through my thrice-a-year Pixies binge, because I'm pretty convinced that they might be in contention for the highly unexpected position of "one of my favorite bands ever".
I didn't really like the Pixies when I first heard them.
Annette, a manager at the restaurant I worked at in high school, loaned me Doolittle... passing it along to me like it was a secret. I assume this is the way people with older siblings find out about cool music. I had to mooch off my friends' older siblings. This would have been about '96 (I think), and I just didn't get along with the record. It was a little scratchity, almost too quirky, and the screaming wasn't really my bag at the time. I was just out of my "nothing but hardcore" phase (done with screaming), and the mysterious ambience of Guided By Voices (which she also loaned me, at the same time) held a lot more sway over my listening habits. Everything about the Pixies seemed so out front and clear and flat, like a photograph or film, while GBV was murky and deep.
But I diligently taped it, and kept going back to that cassette ever couple of weeks. I didn't really like it, but I couldn't help but want to listen to it more - it was like a compulsion. I didn't feel like I needed to like it, but it was so alien to me, I just wanted to see if it was as strange as I remembered it being. Naturally, as happens with most listeners (usually earlier than it did with me), I had some sort of epiphany with that record, and it was like a sudden, jolting realization when I understood I was listening to it wrong. I was taking all my preconceived notions - about it being a seminal "alternative rock" album, an influence on Nirvana that never broke through 'cause it was too weird, and the way that fans a generation ahead of me talked about it - and filtering through that.
All I had to do was open my ears and realize that it was just great music, you know? These were pop songs. Skewed, fractured, with scratchy mariachi guitars and screaming and stomping, but they were also 2:30 pop tunes. Shortly after I had this realization, I finally understood why Weezer had constantly been pegged as Pixies soundalikes. "Debaser" could have been on the Blue Album with a different vocal track. The more I listened, the more I liked it. The more I liked it, the more I listened. It was a good time to be an obsessive high schooler.
As I kept writing songs, in my so-called "punk rock" attempts to get away from "classic rock" songwriting (rootsy, verse-chorus-verse, maybe an acoustic guitar), I was drawn to the way their songs were short, like punk, and they were just played wrong as well. Where my primitive tunes had 8 bars of verse, 8 bars of chorus, 4 bars of bridge, 8 bars of chorus again, these Pixies albums were full of moments where they'd play a riff 7 times instead of 8, giving it this weird push-pull, with unexpected changes that actually SURPRISED me. And if Black Francis was the heart of the band, Kim Deal was the soul. She was what really hooked me overall. The frontman was scary, screaming like a deranged hobo about aliens and whores and surrealist films, but Deal's charming normalcy and audible sweetness was reassuring - as though to say "Hey, I know this is weird, but it's cool Go with it... it'll be a fun ride." As prickly as Black Francis seemed (as though he'd flip out at any moment), Kim had this sort of "Oh, Charles...!" vibe that didn't defuse the insanity, it just made it seem like a lot more fun.
All of the records are good, although my favorite often changed. Doolittle is probably their objective best, the most realized combination of fucked-up weirdness and hyper-catchy spazz-pop. Lots of my friends claim that Surfer Rosa is, like, THE ONE, and I know a few people who think that Trompe Le Monde is the best thing they did, due to the combination of heaviness and texture (the keyboards on that are actually really good). I'm the only person I know who really likes Bossanova, thanks to my love of surf music and space rock, although I know it's probably their weakest album. My favorite is Come On Pilgrim, not because I think it's their best, but because it's the most unique. All the songs sound like they were recorded live, in that order, on the same day, over the course of about 45 minutes. No super hits (no pop magic like "Wave Of Mutilation" or "Velouria"), and every one of those songs is catchy, but sounds like no other song I've heard before. And it was their first EP! How does a band do that?!?
What's the point of all this rambling? I'm coming to terms with the fact that while they've always been a band I really liked, and obviously thought was great, they may have just edged up into that rarified strata of "Mike's Favorite EVER Acts", up there with The Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello, et al. I would not have expected that the band I put on in high school and though "Too shrill. Too quirky." would end up a perennial favorite. And I stand by my assessment the other day. I am in the "Breeders" stage of my life right now. I no longer FEEL the way these songs feel. But they sure do compliment each other well.
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
------------
So, I'm going through my thrice-a-year Pixies binge, because I'm pretty convinced that they might be in contention for the highly unexpected position of "one of my favorite bands ever".
I didn't really like the Pixies when I first heard them.
Annette, a manager at the restaurant I worked at in high school, loaned me Doolittle... passing it along to me like it was a secret. I assume this is the way people with older siblings find out about cool music. I had to mooch off my friends' older siblings. This would have been about '96 (I think), and I just didn't get along with the record. It was a little scratchity, almost too quirky, and the screaming wasn't really my bag at the time. I was just out of my "nothing but hardcore" phase (done with screaming), and the mysterious ambience of Guided By Voices (which she also loaned me, at the same time) held a lot more sway over my listening habits. Everything about the Pixies seemed so out front and clear and flat, like a photograph or film, while GBV was murky and deep.
But I diligently taped it, and kept going back to that cassette ever couple of weeks. I didn't really like it, but I couldn't help but want to listen to it more - it was like a compulsion. I didn't feel like I needed to like it, but it was so alien to me, I just wanted to see if it was as strange as I remembered it being. Naturally, as happens with most listeners (usually earlier than it did with me), I had some sort of epiphany with that record, and it was like a sudden, jolting realization when I understood I was listening to it wrong. I was taking all my preconceived notions - about it being a seminal "alternative rock" album, an influence on Nirvana that never broke through 'cause it was too weird, and the way that fans a generation ahead of me talked about it - and filtering through that.
All I had to do was open my ears and realize that it was just great music, you know? These were pop songs. Skewed, fractured, with scratchy mariachi guitars and screaming and stomping, but they were also 2:30 pop tunes. Shortly after I had this realization, I finally understood why Weezer had constantly been pegged as Pixies soundalikes. "Debaser" could have been on the Blue Album with a different vocal track. The more I listened, the more I liked it. The more I liked it, the more I listened. It was a good time to be an obsessive high schooler.
As I kept writing songs, in my so-called "punk rock" attempts to get away from "classic rock" songwriting (rootsy, verse-chorus-verse, maybe an acoustic guitar), I was drawn to the way their songs were short, like punk, and they were just played wrong as well. Where my primitive tunes had 8 bars of verse, 8 bars of chorus, 4 bars of bridge, 8 bars of chorus again, these Pixies albums were full of moments where they'd play a riff 7 times instead of 8, giving it this weird push-pull, with unexpected changes that actually SURPRISED me. And if Black Francis was the heart of the band, Kim Deal was the soul. She was what really hooked me overall. The frontman was scary, screaming like a deranged hobo about aliens and whores and surrealist films, but Deal's charming normalcy and audible sweetness was reassuring - as though to say "Hey, I know this is weird, but it's cool Go with it... it'll be a fun ride." As prickly as Black Francis seemed (as though he'd flip out at any moment), Kim had this sort of "Oh, Charles...!" vibe that didn't defuse the insanity, it just made it seem like a lot more fun.
All of the records are good, although my favorite often changed. Doolittle is probably their objective best, the most realized combination of fucked-up weirdness and hyper-catchy spazz-pop. Lots of my friends claim that Surfer Rosa is, like, THE ONE, and I know a few people who think that Trompe Le Monde is the best thing they did, due to the combination of heaviness and texture (the keyboards on that are actually really good). I'm the only person I know who really likes Bossanova, thanks to my love of surf music and space rock, although I know it's probably their weakest album. My favorite is Come On Pilgrim, not because I think it's their best, but because it's the most unique. All the songs sound like they were recorded live, in that order, on the same day, over the course of about 45 minutes. No super hits (no pop magic like "Wave Of Mutilation" or "Velouria"), and every one of those songs is catchy, but sounds like no other song I've heard before. And it was their first EP! How does a band do that?!?
What's the point of all this rambling? I'm coming to terms with the fact that while they've always been a band I really liked, and obviously thought was great, they may have just edged up into that rarified strata of "Mike's Favorite EVER Acts", up there with The Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello, et al. I would not have expected that the band I put on in high school and though "Too shrill. Too quirky." would end up a perennial favorite. And I stand by my assessment the other day. I am in the "Breeders" stage of my life right now. I no longer FEEL the way these songs feel. But they sure do compliment each other well.
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