Timh's Mixmas Xmas

a Wintry mix for the holidays for all y'all.
Downloadable here

Setlist:
Imagene Peise- Winter Wonderland
British PSA
Tom Waits and Peter Murphy- Xmas Sucks
Jerry Goldsmith- A Gremlin's Christmas
Jackie Mitoo- After Christmas
David Sedaris- Six to Eight Black Men
John Baker- Christmas Commercial
Sun Ra- It's Christmas Time
The Vandals- My First Christmas as a Woman
Dance Hall Crashers- I Did it For the Toys
Tomita- Ave Maria
Eazy E- Merry Muthafuckin Christmas
Chuck Berry- Run Rudolph
The Ronettes- Sleigh Ride
Corporal Blossom- White Christmas
Squirrel Nut Zippers- Santa Claus is Smoking Reefer
Mel Torme- The Christmas Song (Sonny J mix)
Windy and Carl- Christmas Song
Pizzicato Five- Snowflakes
Martin Denny- Exotic Night
Esquivel- Snowfall
The Heptones- Christmastime is Here
Cotton Bottom Mountain Sanctified Singers- Christ Was Born on Christmas Morning
CKY- Santa's Coming
Monster Magnet- Dead Christmas
Mark Mothersbaugh- Let There Be Snow
Forcefeel- Subvert the Snow Authority and Let it Die Before it Snows

PopMatters Best of 2008

Looks like PopMatters have started their Best Music of 2008 features, starting off with the Best Singles. I've got blurbies in there for Cut Copy and Britney. Check them out. It's an interesting list. Not one I can say I agree with much of, though their pick for number one single did match mine this year.

Check it Out Here

I will have a few more pieces for the rest of the week, so continue to check out the picks as the week goes on.

Computer Incantations for World Peace II

A Short take on the compilation Computer Incantations for World Peace II curated by Gerd Janson of Running Back records.

The White Album/ Alps

Fans of musicology will want to check out the 40th Anniversary celebration of The White Album that PopMatters's Zeth Lundy and Bill Gibron assembled. Not least of all because today (the last day of 5 days worth of writing) features a short essay on "Cry Baby Cry" by yours truly.

Nicholas Bromell, author of Tomorrow Never Knows, saw the album as the band's experimental attempt to mystify and codify (rather than commodify or consolidate) the decade's intensity into an impenetrable talismanic art object. "Referencing so much as the history of popular culture, The White Album ridicules efforts to assemble that history into a sequential story", Brommell said.

The Beatles seem increasingly hesitant, as the double album progresses, to settle on one solution, one genre, one vision, one truth, one reality. It's necessary then for them to present the possibility that it's all a game, a laugh at our expense. After all, there is no mysery. The walrus was Paul and everything recondite is actually exactly as it seems.

Central to the "clues" of The Beatles is "Cry Baby Cry", my selection:

here's the full feature

here's the specific page with my entry



Also, I have a short review up for the wonderful new album by The Alps (members of Tarentel, Tussle, Arp). This probably would have made my Top Ten year end album list for PM had my list been handed in later. Oh well, this blog will probably see a much different list by year's end.


Read the review here



As a third note, I have a follow-up bit of information with regard to my Sound Affects piece on the texturalists (see two posts down). It turns out that one of the primary reasons Edison became interested in phonography was to capture the voices of dead loved ones after they're gone. I thought this was an interesting point as it correlates to the theme of decaying sound and perhaps gives a little more credence to digital music for its ability to perfectly preserve the dead the way they were when they were alive. However, I retain my position that we will be losing something culturally and sonically if all sound becomes faultlessly mummified in such a fashion.

Read the aforementioned piece here

Showroom Dummies

I have a review on the new DVD called Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution, a more heady discussion on the development of electronic music- from concrete and krautrock to the early eighties period when Kraftwerk became obsolete.

I'm a little disappointed with it as a piece of writing, but nevertheless it's about some of my favorite music of all time so I must nevertheless recommend it to you. You can find it here:

Read my review at PM

The Texturalists vs. The End of Time

I have another new article, discussing a group of musicians who use time itself as an instrument in their work. Working off a Woebot article (linked in the piece), this analysis was published around the same time that FACT published a new article by Woebot himself on the persistence of cassette culture and its similar implications. Read that here.

More importantly though, read my article here.

The Signal and the Violence of American Identity Politics

I have a new article at PopMatters on the overlooked 2008 horror film The Signal. It's an article that was a long time in the making. When I started it back in July, the economy was doing just peachy keen (sort of) and the election still seemed like a distant dream. With any apocalyptic film, there's apt comparison to an economic downfall, but I think The Signal's vision of individualism is particularly pointed in the post-WaMu, post Lehman world, which maybe I'll have time to comment on later.

The article was trimmed down quite a bit. I think it all still makes sense, but I'll post a director's cut version on here sometime in the near future.



You can read part one here
(warning, there's a few spoilers within- probably best if you've seen the film)

Friends that are Fukt

Tobacco, of Black Moth Super Rainbow (whose Dandelion Gum was on my top 5 picks of 2007), has a new release full of just-as-gooey goodness. It's called Fucked Up Friends and here's my review

08AMA

[Paraphrased]

Bart: Wow, [Our country picked Obama]. I feel so full of...what's the
opposite of shame?
Marge: Pride?
Bart: No, not that far from shame.
Homer: [quavering] Less shame?
Bart: [happy] Yeah...

Dead Rockstars at the Fore

There's a fantastic new article up at PopMatters about the Obama/Palin rock star dichotomy (between arena rock grandeur and punk rock plebianiasm) that very intelligently examines the tag supplied by the media and weighs its potential meanings.

1968 is Undead

Hello folks,
I'm back from honeymoon and yes, I'm officially married now. It feels good. Also, I'd like to point out that I hate the Phillies fans who were screaming and honking outside my window until 3AM last night.

In lighter news, let's talk about death.

Marco Lanzagorta has assembled a collection of 30 fantastic essays prepped for the 40th anniversary of George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (including an intro by the man himself) and not only is this a fascinating compendium, but yours truly has an essay in it, published in today's segment.

1968 is Undead touches on the ways that we are "haunted" by the 1960s, even today (and this essay was written before Bill Ayers, a Weather Underground member turned college professor, became such a central figure behind John McCain's campaign).

Here's the rest of the feature. When you get a chance, you really should go through a check out a few or all of them.

Monolake and Joe Gibbs

Two new reviews on reissues:





Monolake- Hongkong Remastered
Their classic album retooled.


Joe Gibbs- Scorchers from the Mighty Two
The late reggae hitmaker has some of his best compiled.

"People’s homes were just a medium for the redistribution of wealth"

Douglas Rushkoff on the credit crisis, published a while back but recently reprinted by the revived Arthur Magazine ofr its poignancy with regards to...well, you know.


Also, interesting of note to anyone annoyed by or entertaining the notion of Obama's supposed ties with Bill Ayers, Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert explore the cozy relationship between Palin and the secessionist, anti-American Alaska Indendence Party in this article over at Salon.

RIP Alton Ellis

Author of one of the most gorgeous love songs ever written (see above) and the godfather of Rocksteady

Partial Blackout

I've been real busy lately. I'm getting married in less than a week, so it's been hard to keep up. Here's a few I recently wrote:

Populous and Short Stories- Drawn in Basic

Max Richter- 24 Postcards in Full Colour
More on that one soon, I hope.

Adventure- Adventure
Although I don't think my article makes its case that well, it was interesting to see an essay by Simon Reynolds for The Guardian reference the same idea of background sounds in childhood television as instructive electronic tools (as discussed in this article about the BBC Radiphonic Workshop). I think 8bit chiptune music, like the Nintendo songs heard on endless loop during childhood play, were equally the base of electronic music fanaticism. The fact that the Nintendo experience was more tactile just reinforces the intimacy of the connection to electronic sounds, which were at one time totally weird and progressive. That the airwaves were peppered with new electronic sounds as new wave, freestyle, and even soft rock was overtaken by Casio and Roland, and television and film composers fired their orchestras and hired a single synth player to score the mess of 80s action and comedy, is secondary. Nintendo sounds produce Pavlovian responses because they were directly linked to the adrenaline and endorphins released under the tension of game-playing.

For more on BBC Radiophonic Workshop, see The Alchemists of Sound documentary in its entirety on Youtube (under the user's video. See part one below)



Also check out:
Make Believe Maverick by Tim Dickson (Rolling Stone)- A total smear to be sure, with its share of distortion, but still a concise biography of a man who has used a cozy relationship with the media to win popular support around a biography that's not even remotely accurate.