No Time for New Years

Fact Mag over here composes a long list that is oddly poised against rhetorical question "Has there ever been a year Quite like 2013?"

It's perhaps rhetorical because a simple antipodal response would not suffice. "No" is almost certainly incorrect because the article being linked is nothing more than a litany of comebacks and reunions, the past regurgitating itself, a perverse ouroboros wherein death is staged, sometimes only for a few years, only to facilitate the cycle of rebirth. "Yes", however, would also be wrong, because what we're witnessing is not the singular revival of a style (garage/postpunk/synthpop/Balearic/Italo/house...). Rather, 2013 seems to be the year of the zombie vanity project. A ouroboros that doesn't engender recreation, just reaffirmation. Everybody on that list (with a few others that have resurfaced to boot) are brands, name acts whose sudden re-materialization is accompanied by a successful flood of hype. The reaction to the music itself is almost secondary. Simply returning in and of itself reestablishes the brand, and thus pushes the act into the contemporary.

(David Prince- Ouroboros)

There used to be a healthy amount of cynicism towards the reunion tour and the accompanying "comeback" album (some of it earned/some of it not), but these acts have almost unanimously been greeted with open arms. The result is a 2013 in which a flood of old names have become the zeitgiest. As someone who came of age at the tale end of the music biz siege on the popular imagination, it's almost heartening to see a collective nostalgia for the "event" album resurfacing, particularly for folks I'm keen on like Bowie, MBV, or Boards of Canada (and we can expect a great deal more think pieces on music's marketing in 2013 than its music- some Philip Sherburne has articulated well over at Spin). But thus far, there hasn't been a whole lot that has popped up from the margins to demand attention like Death Grips did last year. The closest to the mark that I've heard is the stuff glowing from the loose assemblages of the American queer rap scene, which is still rising but which poses the danger of shaving its edges for more widespread acceptance.  And its press, while kind, seems to somewhat treat it is a novelty, an addendum to a perpetually progressive scene (which hip-hop is not) rather than a legitimate attempt to branch off from the dying root of hip-hop, which sure has good singles, but you know there's trouble in genreville when your single of the year is the one where Rick Ross drugs a rapes someone.  Yes, there's also a good deal of quality footwerk out there that, luckily, still sounds alien, but we're now talking about a scene almost a decade old.

Maybe this lack of surprise is on me, as I've admittedly been tuning in less (focusing myself somewhat on the past). Even as I scan the blogs and the zines though, it still seems like music at the current moment is being swept up in investment into (diminishing) returns rather than the shock of the new.

That said, here's what I've been digging this year:


Welcome In

RP Boo's Legacy



Jagged, disorienting, abstract masterpiece ten years in the making.  I can't put this on and do anything else.  I mowed the lawn and went off in zags. I tried it at work and got the slight sensation of vertigo.  I tried jogging and nearly got lost. Proving that footwerk is still pretty much the most viable and dynamic artform currently out there, it's music that hijacks your senses and not only in a club.  Everywhere you go.  Tarzan howls.  Aaliyah samples that underline tension and uncertainty rather than confidence and assurance.  Use with extreme caution when operating a vehicle.  One word tossed around frequently when describing Legacy is "surreal" and there's parts of it that remind me of Negativland's Escape from Noise LP, the way stoic newspeak phrases were turned from something lucid and calculated into something mysterious and indistinct.  RP Boo is doing that same thing with music-taking sounds we know and unlearning them for us, meaning it's not only introduces the new but deprograms the old at the same time.

Also, DJ Rashad's Rollin' EP on Hyperdub is pretty dope, but I've only listened to it through once so far.

Le1f- Fly Zone 
Mykki Blanco- Betty Rubble: The Initiation 
Zebra Katz- DRKLNG 




In essence, these three form a three-way split between the now-ism of the past few years of techno, crafted in new forms to create vertical pop poetry out of these more horizontal forms.  Le1f is the  post-everything  eclectronica of contorted and wabbly synths a la Night Slugs, LIES, Numbers, et al.  Mykki's a bit more industrial, not quite at the level of desperation as the Perc Trax and Sandwell District folks, but definitely way more scorched early than his peers. Zebra Katz is austere minimalism, with cold detached lyrics that betray the neutrality of such tones, presenting them instead as something perverse and somewhat frightening.  What makes this core so unique in special is their willingness to get dirty, to go to dark corners, and to ignore anyone's perception of what a hip-hop track should be or how a hip-hop artist should act.  Perhaps most importantly, they've all elected at points to tell the backbeat to fuck off, choosing producers (including themselves- all are very talented and would do well to weird up a Yeezy or Miguel track) that understand how stale beats are killing hip-hop.


DJ Clap- Best Night Ever





Though there are parts of this release that are Footwerk-y, I think this album has  been branded as such because it's mostly composed of rapid-fire CD skips that occasionally bust off into abstruse tom-heavy beats, but there's also a lot more lock-step here than most Footwerk include many sequences that play like straight-up accelerated house/techno.  DJ Clap pilfers the gabber pace and its spotlight on the meth end of molly and its endless micro-repetitions, but also adds the euphoria of (happy) hardcore in the lush timbre of its sounds.  Last time I listened, I kept thinking equations like M83 gabber or Traxman Drill N Bass, which seem cheap, but cheap may be the key here. Like the leading title, Best Night Ever is music that assembles the tiniest slivers of bliss it can find and violently shakes them at you until you're nauseous.  Moderation is best, but impressive stuff nonetheless.


Various- This is How We Roll




When I last checked in on Blackdown's Keysound Recordings label, they were doing some quality and competent, though not particularly groundbreaking bass music.  With this latest compilation, it appears they've upped their game a bit. I'll have to dig a little further into the catalogue to see what I missed.


Sarantis- Electric City




A number of good things coming out of the Senseless Records Bandcamp page for a while now.  Like DJ Clap and RP Boo, this one might also not be great for those prone to migraines, but for the rest...





Welcome Back


My Bloody Valentine- M B V




Everybody seemed to have made up their mind about this by the time most of us were finally getting the download page to load.  My initial thought was, like many's final determination, that yep, This is yr Bloody Valentine.  And particularly when I got to "Who Sees You", I was A-OK with that. But the weird twist that the second half of the album took some getting used to.  I've decided that it is indeed pretty great, though I do feel now like I want more, something I ironically never felt with Loveless. There's a tension in thewhirlwind event horizon of "Wonder 2" that makes the record feel incomplete. Hopefully, we'll find out what's on the other side of that black hole sometime in our lifetime.


Locust- You'll Be Safe Forever




Locust is principally the project Mark Van Hoen.  So in this sense, You'll Be Safe Forever is not really a comeback.  Van Hoen's been active for a while.  In fact, last year's Revenant Diary was a career highlight.  This is the first time he's gone by Locust though in 12 years.  The music on the album does not necessarily veer into far-off directions like contemporaries Seefeel did with its digitally pixelated return album a few back, but the swelling hazes, vocal manipulations, and radiophonic allusions are more contemporary than ever now as underground electronic music has finally caught up with Van Hoen.


The Knife- Shaking the Ritual



I've actually only heard this one once too, but it was impressive and I really like the above.  I was never interested when their early naughts albums came out, but I've it on my calendar to dig in further.


Various- Interpretations of F.C. Judd





A bunch of today's most compelling acts taking a stab at Judd's 60's electronic experiments, but not in the usual way wherein artists remix to make the original sound like their own signature style.  On this album, the productions truly compliment each other and the artists involved have done a good job at pushing themselves out of their comfort zone.

Well Come Around

5 to listen a little further:

Stellar Om Source- Joy One Mile

Mu-Ziq- Chewed Corners

Broadcast- Berberian Sound Studio sdtrk

Various- Night Slugs Vol 2

Kurt Vile- Walkin on a Pretty Daze

Top of the Pops

5 for the charts

Timberlake/Timbaland- "Blue Ocean Floor"

Timberlake/Timbaland- "Tunnel Vision"

Disclosure- "When a Fire Starts to Burn"

Kanye- "New Slaves"

Iggy Azaelia- "Work"

Further Down the Well

5 lower underground

Boards of Canada- "Reach for the Dead"

Low- "Just Make it Stop"

Tropic of Cancer- "Fall Apart"

Stanislav Tolkachev- "Heartbeat"

Ducktails- "The Flower Lane"

The Past is a Regional Dialect

Another dead blog post. This blog refuses to die. Should I just cut off life support? Should I let it all go? Who the fuck is even listening at this point?

Most of my online activity as of late has been at the “Vintage series” of blogs I’ve set up, which aim to commemorate the anniversaries (in increments of 10) of all that happened in music 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 (maybe more?) years ago.

50 Year Vintage 

40 Year Vintage 

30 Year Vintage 

20 Year Vintage 

10 Year Vintage

The original idea behind all this was that theoretical proposition that I think any music nerd pontificates on at one point or another; what would it be like to spend a week/month/year in (insert “golden age” era here)? I’ve heard of a few people trying this out, restricting themselves just to music that came out during a specific year for a month  or so to try to encapsulate what was unique or important about that era. But these kind of thought experiments always miss the mark because it’s too difficult to denote the gaps that broader culture gave context to (see the nostalgic 80s film trope that paints the bubbly music, bright fashions, and aspirational wealth as some kind of benign utopia whilst ignoring the misery and darkness of that era).

So, instead I decided to just give a broad scope overview of the sonics of the years in question (2003, 1993, 1983, 1973, 1963). With the potential though unlikely exception of 2003, it’s unlikely that any living individual from any of the aforementioned eras would have ever been in contact with all, or even most, of this music. Therefore, it’s more of an internet-age assessment than a cultural thermometer. If blogs had been around at the time, the vintage series would be what those online portals graphed out of the full scope of the landscape that was worth retrieving.

Music mags from these eras are peculiarly biased by their audiences.  Though there were certainly exceptions in which rock mags started embracing hip-hop, dance, et al., the limitations of the culture industry failed to recognize many things that the internet's long, long, neverending tail has been retrieving ever since.  

For the two eras that I was somewhat musically cognizant in (1993 and 2003), I’ve also included a few things that worked for me at the time, but which maybe are not so great in retrospect. Nostalgia's a powerful force when wrapped around a memory.

Some of the posts are just a Youtube link, while others contain a brief paragraph or two about the song, album, or artist in question. For the most part, I’ve tried to stick to one track per album/single/release, but I have and will cheat on occasion.  Rules are loose here and this is obviously a taste factory that I've conceived, not one purposed with any specific historical thesis or theoretical objective.

Why put forth so much effort? What’s the point of all this?

• It’s not that much effort. For the most part, this is just music I’m listening to at work and posting when I come across something relevant.It’s a timefiller satisfying a retromantic impulse to gaze backwards, illustrating how impossible it is to capture it all
• It’s a cumulative education. At the end of the year, I plan on posting year-end lists, just as you would in any current year. I also figure that this project can go on as long as I need or want it to. If I make it through 10 years, I will have pretty much documented the whole of post-rock-n’-roll history.

Outside of this (loose term here, people) "work", I’ve also submitted a few pieces of fiction to some publications, though I’m open to ideas though of what some good places that publish are.  Please send suggestions as I'm not too familiar with mags, zines, anthologies, that do short fiction, plays, or speculative non-fiction (do any places do this in a respectable capacity anymore?  Not to even remotely compare myself, but where would a Ballard go now? ).

I also have a cassette release that is the second release on Good Behavior Records, run by my former neighbor in Philly, Donnie Felton of Grubby Little Hands (whose very good psych/chillwave-ish album The Grass Grew Around Our Feet was the label’s first release- I did a couple remixes of the lead track here). The album, Harvest Monsanto, is being offered in special deluxe packaging as a limited edition “Investors Only” 100-run cassette that is jewel-encased in ugly chemical plastic and complete with nutrition label, rubber glove, and a short pitch for a cutting edge corporate product.

Stream the album or purchase the cassette here (If you’d like to review the album and want a free copy, e-mail me)

RIP Shadow Morton

Producer of such fine tunes as:

RIP Damon Harris/ Richard Street of the Temptations

RIP Kevin Ayers

Head in the Clouds

Some interesting thing on here, notably:

1.  Robb Banks's idea that "The age of TV is almost, like, done" and that TV is being usurped by the internet. This shouldn't be a difficult concept to grasp to anyone who's actually keeping up, but it's a wild concept to think of in terms of music consumption since I'd venture that much music consumption still comes from archaic forms like TV and radio. I'm unaware of any moment in history previously when the main broadcast mediums for music were in such direct competition with each other, particularly as regarding youth culture.  There was definitely overlapping hierarchies of influence between, say, MTV and radio, but the former caused an enormous rupture and was so successful in asserting its taste as an authority for all.  As much weight as we internet folk pretend Pitchfork has, it's pretty limited compared to the license MTV had on the imagination in its heyday.

Teens are undeniably all over Facebook and iTunes, but there's definitely a bifurcation between those rushing to those stations as method of reinforcing or resisting the external cultural influence of TV, Radio, Apple commercials, et al.  How and why does this split happen?  It seems in previous generations, this disconnect was enunciated in very specific cultural clashes- stoners v. jocks, goths v. preps, riot grrls v. valley girls, et al. Are teenagers today actually putting aside their musical difference to clash on purely social terms?

2.  The idea of hip-hop being "old" and growing up into Cloud Rap.  There's a part of me that wants to believe this, because despite what Lily Mercer claims is a scene full of youthful energy, I don't really hear that intensity that has most defined other scenes marked by "youthful energy". In fact Cloud Rap, between its gigantic puffs of weed smoke, seems to be more about de-intensifying as much as anything, the chillout room to more hardcore styles. Yet, it's not a fully mature and grown-up hip-hop either, at least not in the stuffy terms of "sophistication", humility, and concession that defined rock's descent into middle age (not to mention the fact that cloud rap's stars are all youngsters too).  Instead, cloud rap seems to exist on a kind of flattened plane of time, much like the cloud or the internet itself.  It's neither about youthful vitality or the impending impotence of status post those years/inching towards death.  Cloud rap, like its closest rock parallaxes in shoegaze and ambient, is about being weightless, floating in an e-world untied to the engagements of either passivity or activity.

RIP Reg Presley

I always thought this one would have sounded awesome under a title sequence for a trashy film.



The Troggs and Presley occasionally had hints of Bolan in them.





Who hasn't wanted to sample that "Aw No!" at the beginning of this song? Nothing could be closer to Lester Bangs's debased ideal of rock as adolescent primitivism than band called The Troggs (short for The Troglodytes). At times, they lived up to that, settling for the simplest, most stripped down riffs and rhythms.



Those who had flipped over the "Wild Thing" single were treated to this seedy little devilish incantation. Of course, "Wild Thing" was a pretty dirty little number too, but I'll have to abstain from posting that one since it's responsible for launching both Sam Kinison and Charlie Sheen's comedy careers, and thus must be cursed by some kind of culture-crippling black magick.

Please Stand By

Had a tiny blurb on Laurie Spiegel's The Expanding Universe in PM's 20 Best Reissues list

 Also logged these reviews, all of which wound up on my Best of 2012:

Andy Stott- Luxury Problems
Jurgen Muller- Science of the Sea
Nick Edwards- Plekzationz

Also have started a blog on all things 1993 here

RIP Mike Scaccia

Mike Scaccia's metallic guitar work in Ministry's catalogue, from In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up onward, is often seen as the nail that slowly secured the coffin of the band, but Scaccia and Jourgenson's work together in support of creating grindingly heavy, ugly monoliths of sound was initially that rare merge of brutal and beautiful that makes most metal I come across now seem like a defeated attempt to re-render that same formula.    In fact, the only metal band from that time frame I can think of that did it better than Ministry was Godflesh* (admittedly, I don't listen to much metal though).  The riffage on Psalm 69 and Filth Pig isn't a technically complicated style, but its use (and abuse) of distortion and effects pedals, particularly when combined with industrial/mechanical locked grooves, takes on an atmospheric and psychedelic quality not out of line with what was going on at the same time in the realm of shoegaze and post-rock.

Check the death's head tantra of "Scarecrow" and tell me its persistence doesn't recall Robert Hampson's textural use of feedback in Loop's discography or Main's first couple of records:



Or the way the very simple call-and-response chords of "The Fall" take on an apocalyptic grandeur when juxtaposed against twinkling pianos and a squealing noise loop synched to a jittery beat:




Unfortunately, after Filth Pig, the band did become everything fans thought they were becoming, though they had one two decent moments here and there.

Feels Like We Always Go Backwards: The Best Music of 2012

I've been avoiding publishing my year-end list because there's so much to say about the music here and I had anticipated being able to scribe some year-end thoughts on the selections listed below, rather than just blankly tag them for spamming purposes.  I hope to still be able to do this, but oh time it does fly and there's apocalypse now going on all around us and all that.



In short though, it was a phenomenal year for music.  I've got lists at least twice as long as the below of heavily-praised records I haven't gotten around to spinning yet.  Also, zoning in on which albums stood out when your listening habits entail psychogeographical forays into obscure labels at Bandcamp and leaps into Youtube wormholes is taxing, vexing, and perplexing.  As I stated in my previous post, I postponed listening critically for a good part of the year and just dove into the dizzy whirlwind of tunes and tones of 2012 and it's been a bit like a memory-crushing drug binge; you remember sensations more than the names of tracks, first impressions rather than solid standings, mystification rather than comprehension.   In a way, this must be what listening to pirate radio was once like.  Still, it doesn't seem sustainable, as what winds up floating to the top of my brain (as indicated below) is the music with plenty of representation at the level of word counts, while the unsuspecting discoveries slip away from me. 

Regardless, I really do commend the selections on my lists.  I'm not just cobbling together enough music to round it off into a cozy number. Each and every one of the selections on the below lists is terrific in its own rite.  The ordering is bound to change as listening habits do.  With dynamic and moving music like this being made, it's hard to fathom a critical community that piledrives adoration over perversely backwards-fawning R&B or MOR hip-hop or strummy indie fluff or post-hardcore opuses that wouldn't recognize hardcore if it tripped over its grave.  In a banner year for gay rights, "queer" as a synonym for "weird" risked being whitewashed into a bracket of discrimination, difference becoming a fatal stance for a culture with its sites set on assimilation.  I'd take Le1f over Frank Ocean any day though.  If a precondition of equality is that all LGBT dress up and act respectably indistinguishable from their hetero peers, it's just another form of conversion therapy.   In a time when women are finally beginning to outnumber men in terms of producing daring sonics, why settle for the middling passivity of Beach House?  If your puffs of weed smoke find you returning to Kendrick Lamar's same old beats rather than trying to figure out the contours of Jam City, Traxman or Arca, you're not a sonic journeyman, you're a headphone couch potato. 

And then there's Death Grips, who in one of music's gothiest years of record was probably the only group to encompass the brutality of a year of Travyvon Martin, Hurricane Sandy, mass shootings, pedophilic cover-ups, Libor, Gaza assaults, zombie cannibals, indefinite detentions of whistleblowers, drone strikes, further austerity,  et al.- a hardline channeling of anger that's like the digital techno animal lashing out at its Frankencreators.

2012 was devastating, but also liberating.  Though Occupy didn't topple the power structure, they gained undeniable credibility post-Sandy and got a couple candidates from their side of the fence into Congress.  Guns in America seem to be due for a long-awaited twilight. In direct inverse to the norm just a couple years ago, gay marriage won the popular vote in a number of states.   The U.S. is now home to the most progressive drug policy in the world in a couple of its states.  As frustrating as Obama can be, the fact that his opponent did not win can only be seen as a coup in the battle against the race to the bottom.  The Supreme Court and the voting electorate decided that we can't take away people's healthcare, even if the costly band-aid fix of Obamacare kind of sucks.  People power meant cops joining with Anonymous to oppose Westboro Baptist, Wal-Mart working with everything to risk walking off the job,  and fast food employees weighing the benefits of organization.

Likewise, 2012's music contains many reasons to be cheerful, but not to be content.  Music at all times faces the possibility of retreat and that is always more likely the case when we don't recognize the new because we're busy calculating its referents. 


The Best Albums of 2012

1. Death Grips- The Money Store
2. Julia Holter- Ekstasis (listen here)
3. Le1f- Dark York (dl here)
4. Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, The Congos- FRKWYS Vol 9: Sun Araw & M. Geddes Gengras meet The Congos- Icon Give Thank (listen here)
5. Carter Tutti Void- Transverse
6. Jam City- Classical Curves
7.  Arca- Stretch 2/ Stretch 1
8. Swans- The Seer
9. Mark Van Hoen- The Revenent Diary
10. Andy Stott- Luxury Problems
11. Tame Impala- Lonerism
12. Dan Deacon- America
13. Nick Edwards- Plekzationz
14. Burial Hex- Eschatology II (or the precession of nightfall pt IIL Awaken sons of the fire festival) (listen here)
15. Traxman- Heat EP/ Da Mind of Traxman (listen/dl)
16. Voices from the Lake Featuring Donato Dozzy & Neel- Voices from the Lake
17. Burial-Kindred EP
18. Container- LP
19. Death Grips- No Love Deep Web
20. Stay+-Arem
21. The Weeknd- Echoes of Silence
22. Tig Notaro-Live
23. Perc- A New Brutality EP (listen)
24. Robert AA Lowe- Timon Irnok Manta (listen)
25. Mykki Blanco- The Cosmic Angel: Illuminati Princess (DL)
26. Sculpture- Slime Code
27. Panabrite- Soft Terminal (listen)
28. Animal Collective- Centipede HZ
29. Grimes- Visions
30. Black Moth Super Rainbow-Cobra Juicy
31. Lilxlil- II- Cirrus (listen)
32. Pye Corner Audio- Black Mill Tapes Volume 3: All Pathways Open (listen)
33. Beak>-Beak>> (listen)
34. Opponents- Temple of Decadence
35. Peter Van Hoesen- Perceiver (listen)
36. Liars- WIXIW
37. B. Bravo & teeko- the starship connection
38. Grubby Little Hands- The Grass Grew Around Our Feet (listen)
39. Ship Canal- Please Let Me Back Into Your House (listen)
40. D'eon- Music for Keyboards vol 1 (DL)

The Best Singles/Tracks of 2012

1. Death Grips- Get Got
2. Plan B- Ill Manors
3. Grimes- Oblivion
4. Julia Holter- In the same room
5. Mykki Blanco- Wavvy
6. Jam City- How We relate to the body
7. Perc- A New Brutality
8. Holly Herndon- Fade
9. Tame Impala- Apocalypse Dreams
10. Dan Deacon- True Thrush
11. Dean Blunt and Inga Copeland- The Narcissist
12. Death Grips- Hustle Bones
13. Nicki Minaj- Come on a Cone
14. Jay-Z and Kanye West- No Church in the Wild
15. Traxman- Footworkin on Air
16. Burial- Kindred
17. Blawan- Why They Hide Their Bodies Under my Garage?
18. Maria & the Mirrors- Gemini Save My Life
19. Jessie Ware-110%
20. Andy Stott- Luxury Problems
21. Nite Jewel & Julia Holter- What We See
22. Beth Jeans Houghton and the Hooves of Destiny- Sweet Tooth Bird
23. Ital- Boi
24. Stay+- Hush Money
25. Kuedo- Work, Live & Sleep in Collapsing Space/" "(Laurel Halo Mix)
26. Charlie XCX- Nuclear Seasons
27. Darq E Freaker feat Danny Brown- Blueberry (Pills and Cocaine)
28. Tame Impala- Feels like we only go backwards
29. Nicki Minaj- Stupid Hoe
30. Nicki Minaj- Beez in the Trap
31. Le1f- Wut
32. Tame Impala- Elephant (Todd Rundgren Mix)
33. Grubby Little Hands- uneek
34. D'eon- Al-qiyamah
35. Nite Jewel- One Second of Love
36. Jessie Ware- Running
37. Sleigh Bells- Comeback Kid
38. fun.- Some Nights
39. Liars- No 1 Against the Rush
40. Scott Walker- Epizootics!
41. Nicki Minaj- Pound the Alarm
42. Salva & Grenier- forest floor
43. Frank Ocean- Bad Religion
44. Elite Gymnastics- Here, in Heaven 4 & 5 (CFCF mix)
45. David Guetta feat Sia- Titanium
46. Daphni- Ye Ye
47. The Weeknd- Wicked Games
48. The Flaming Lips ft Erykah Badu- The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face
49. Jai Paul- Jasmine
50. Kanye West ft big sean, pusha t, and 2 chainz- Mercy (Salva and RM Grime mix)


The Best Old Stuff Newly Released:
Com Truise- In Decay
Carl Craig- Elements
Aaron Dilloway- Modern Jester
Drexciya- Journey of the Deep Sea Dweller
David Lynch and Alan Splet- Eraserhead OST
John Maus- A Collection of Rarities and Previously Unreleased Material
My Bloody Valentine-Loveless, Isn't Anything, EPs
Jurgen Muller- Science of the Sea
Regis- Adolescence
Laurie Spiegel- The Expanding Universe
Vatican Shadow- Kneel Before Religious Icons

The Anti-EDM Parade

EOY Superlatives begin

Read a couple entries I wrote at The Best Electronic Music of 2012 list on Carter Tutti Void, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Pye Corner Audio, Burial, Burial Hex, and Traxman.

Also, I wrote a pair of entries on Death Grips and the FRKWYS collaboration between Sun Araw, M. Geddes Gengras, and The Congos on the best albums list  (also, Swans at #5!  Not bad for an otherwise fairly conservative list).

Past Year's Man

Hello trolls and other fine digital creatures,

As you might have already figured out, I'm a bit of an irregular blogger, not to mention a pretty awful twitterer, and an absentee tumblrer. Early in 2012, I made the conscious decision to slow down my music-centered writing for a number of reasons.  In terms of criticism, I felt like I was running out of things to say that the music couldn't speak for itself and seriously questioned the need for all these words induced at the inception of a musical object (reviews specifically) in a world where the music naturally creates dialogues.  I'm not even really sure that music needs to be judged right out of the box anymore, and if it does I'm not sure I'm the one to do it.

Prior to this decision, I seemed to be getting bogged down by assignments and was missing out on finding things for myself.  I had a strong desire to distance myself from the rush of exploration and the subsequent crash of divestment, a perpetual cycle of hype and discontent filtered through the feedback apparatus of a bunch of wincing curmudgeons intent on destroying the enjoyment of anyone whose exacting tastes didn't match theirs.  If music writing was becoming a joyless affair, music writers certainly didn't help with their sweeping generalizations, their inattention to detail, their proud prejudices, and their general lack of adventurousness.  I know, I know- all the more reason to keep going, but I kept feeling-and continue to feel- as if it's the trolls that set the parameters for the conversation.    

Concurrently, there had been a number of creative projects I'd been shelving for years (probably literally over a decade in some instances).  I thrived for a clean break, but every time the e-mail got sent out with the new list of shiny new free objects, the temptation was usually too hard to resist.  I did drastically reduce my output, as you may or may not have noticed, but I found myself still being sucked into the surface web vortex of updates, streams, newness, and novelty.  In truth, I probably enjoyed music far more this year than any past year in recent memory and my semi-objective determination in the long run is that 2012 was a great year for sound.  I'm not yet clear on whether this has anything to do with the the way I listened (without a bypassed deadline roaming around my neck like an albatross) or the music itself, but I'm leaning towards the latter.  Still, reflecting on how 12 months could have passed without any clear objectives being met (in a strictly extracurricular sense since I also work full-time in a draining role at the inverse spectrum of my own personal ideology), I can't help but conclude that it's been a failure. Outside of this, it's been a great year.  Being a father constantly produces levels of joy in me I never knew possible and being more financially secure than ever, owning a fantastic home, and having a great family I can't wait to spend time with make my life a consistent blessing.  Yet, in terms of my goals, my fictional output amounts to some research notes and outline sketches.  I capped off some long dormant musical renderings, but produced very little new (4 Albums may not seem like nothing, but almost everything here was 3/4 of the way done and there are tons of talented folks that shit out twice as much quantity-wise that's at least twice as good quality-wise). I played two live sets and met some wonderful folks via those settings, but still feel desolately alone in terms of an artistic community and support network.  Researching potential peers in the surrounding area recently was a grim undertaking that probably could have been time well spent towards other endeavors (If you're in CT and have even a semblance of interest in the stuff I regularly talk about here, please contact me.  I'm not as much of a sad sack as I'm making myself out to be).

I'm grateful to the handful that do check up on me when I decide to utter some amount of jargon on this or other forums, particularly given the good company of other folks you read.  I'm still not sure that a blog or the other forms of writing I've done in the past are the best outlet to channel the limited amount of energy my exhausted body and brain can tweak out these days, but I'm looking to find a way to make it work better in the upcoming year. If you have any recommendations, I've reenabled comments on this site after a long hiatus.  Feel free to DM me as well.

Here's a couple things I recently scribed:

A review of Konx-Om-Pax's new one on Planet Mu
A review of Gary War's insane album of Spectrum Spools
And a minor blurb on Death Grips's "Get Got" in the annual PM Top 75 Songs List (So much more to say about this band at some point).

RIP Dave Brubeck

Haunted Weather

In terms of historical circumstances operating at the level of metaphor, nothing could be more nakedly symbolic than Hurricane Sandy.  Sandy itself was widely seen as a disruptive force for the presidential campaign, its destructive force spiraled into a discussion, albeit a superficial one, on climate change after the subject was left out of the debate process.  But beyond this stunted and somewhat teethless reaction was an enunciation of what we all knew about the election and which none of the nonstop chatter could seem to articulate; the fact that regardless of who won the vote,  our only certainty in the aftermath was a continuation down the path of disaster capitalism.   And if climate change wasn’t touched upon in the debates, neither were the failures that lead to the 2008 crash, another time when thousands of homes were underwater, and how little has been done to preclude the repetition of those events. 

In Sandy were a vast swath of the American population caught up in circumstances beyond their control, left powerless to a destructive force laid upon them and, in the wreckage, literally without power, left to the ramshackle devices of a busted government  that had been purposely stripped down to incapacitation.   This is not to downplay the amazing work of emergency crews and first responders operating on the government dime, who did do truly incredible work at both avoiding catastrophe and lessening its impact when it transpired.  However, you don’t have to go far to find places where FEMA and even the Red Cross was totally impotent, inert, or absent.

Until recently, you would think Lower Manhattan was the only place that got hit.  Though the devastation was wide, reaching across several countries and over 20 states, the media aimed its focus on New York as the center of culture.  The flooded subways were cleared days before precious resources were even getting to poorer areas like Staten Island, Long Island, and Rockaway Beach.  The concerns of the poor were washed away as the bankers returned to work, Broadway shows began bustling again, and we restarted the marathon race to the bottom. 

Yet, the view from Manhattan made it abundantly clear where the concerns of private concentrated power lay, as the skyline went dark except for the Goldman Sachs building, a bold demonstration of the self-preservation of industry.  GS can’t be blamed for the surrounding area not being hooked into its own grid of generators, but this illustration of the vastly unfair centralization of resources certainly made them look indifferent to the suffering of those around it.

Like clockwork, the quips about whatever convenient pet cause God seemed to be punishing us for came spewing out of the mouths of the attention-seekers, but overall we were spared the quips about cleaning up public housing and the like that came out of Katrina, because, you know, rich people were affected too.  Still, God, if he was present, seemed to be telling us a whole lot of things in the rich tapestry of young adult level symbolism masked in drowning Dumbo Carousels and Seaside Heights rollercoasters being carried out to sea, telling us that the halcyon days of the American dream were over. 

In the gas shortages, we were treated to what might have looked to believers to be a recursive loop back to 1979 when the current economic crisis really started and the Fed created new ontologies to deal with it.  With a more global oil crisis a near-guarantee in the near future, those gas lines looked less like a circumstantial setback and more like a grim vision of the future.  The democrats scored great points in the election off of the “success” of the auto bailout (a success paved with concessions by one of the last strong unions around), but without a concerted effort to build fuel efficient cars that the least wealthy Americans (the largest growing population) can afford ,we can only expect to see higher prices and longer lines at the pump we run out of places to bomb for our depleting resources.

As the storm barreled towards the U.S., it caused a massive amount of damage in Haiti, Cuba, The Bahamas and other places that regularly get affected by U.S. actions/inactions but hardly garner a notice in the national attention span.  The news media, in the spirit of Halloween, declared the Hurricane’s mixture of tropical and wintry conditions a “Frankenstorm”, and though it’s hard to make the case for any single weather event being the direct result of climate change, it was hard not to view this beast as something man-made, a Frankenstein’s monster out for revenge on her maker.

The storm approached at a glacial pace and telejournalists, unsure of what to do with no new facts coming in, spent an inordinate amount of time focusing on the HMS Bounty, a ship best known for its use in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies that had been lost at sea.   As certain doom loomed over millions of people, people stranded in their homes strapped to their TVs were using their last bit of energy for weeks watching the news tell them how relics designed to look like they were from the 17^th century were in serious danger.  Kind of like being told that corporate monoliths needed to be bailed out while underwater homes who had been pirated by these vessels sank without so much as a life vest. 

America, via the filter of Sandy, was a home exposed, like the one pictured above, but it wasn’t the image of a bunch of unreliable backstabbers looking to swindle one another on the lifeboat as it went down, sharks patrolling the waters looking for things to loot as the “fake” Sandy pictures indicated.  On the contrary, overwhelmingly, people came out to help their displaced neighbors.   What stuck out was institutional rot, piled up like lines of debris on the side of the street.

Romney’s death knell was not even the campaign rally-not-rally in Ohio that turned into an empty gesture of filling trucks with canned goods that his staff bought to give to people to give back to him that the Red Cross didn’t even want.  Instead, the fatal blow was a quip made at the Republic National Convention months earlier in which Romney ironically mocked the very thing that was about to happen.  “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans”, he said pausing for a laugh with gusto as the sea levels ensure that they’d have the last one, “and to heal the planet.  My promise is to help you and your family.”

But where Romney’s truck fiasco failed at both the level of symbolism and the level of real aid to real families in need, the Occupy movement, quickly regrouped into Occupy Sandy, succeeded in New York.   All the things the media had criticized OWS for were proven immediately wrong- that they would ultimately falter without strong central leadership (on the contrary, without a hierarchical bureaucracy, they were able to help more people), they were too disorganized (the group used real time social media to call attention to hot spots in need of immediate attention and direct essential aid where it was needed), they were a bunch of spoiled whining college hippies (they sprung to direct action almost immediately after the storm struck), the movement was basically dead (recent forecasts on their one year anniversary were almost unanimous in pronouncing the movement irrelevant), and that they would never win popular support without streamlining into a single message (unless they make their core message assistance to those victimized by economic inequality). 

Reports began pouring in from everyday citizens that they had yet to see any government or Red Cross aid, but Occupy Sandy was there.  The effort was so great that even the mayor’s office and the National Guard conceded and acknowledged their service to the city.  Somewhat unthinkably, New York police officers stood in solidarity with the volunteers, chanting “We are unstoppable” with them.  

40 Years back, when our country was the closest it ever got to real revolution since it could only conceive of things with war, a fringe group took its name from a Dylan lyric that claimed “You don’t need a weatherman to see which way the wind’s blowin’”.  A mere week later, a nor’eastern blew in and dropped far more snow than had been predicted in recent weather reports.  Sometimes, all it takes is a strong enough gust to show just how worthless those weathermen are.