Joy to the World! More activity over yonder

Speaking of early 1970s post-hippie rock, there's a new post at Documentary Mixtape on Three Dog Night's smash hit "Joy to the World"

RIP Dan Peek

Can't say I'm an enormous America fan, as I am under 50, but I do quite enjoy the following two song, as well as "Children" (which I can't find anywhere). Also, to name your band America is pretty bold. To put Native Americans on the cover of your debut album is even bolder. As far as Christian rock is concerned, "Lonely People" ain't half bad either.

Post-Industrial Devolution

My latest column is a reading on early Industrial music and how its shifts reflected actual shifts in the industrial labor force in late capitalism.

It focuses on the genre's troubling fascination with fascism and rock's avoidance of it, also tracking the ways in which industrial and techno overlapped (with only the latter surviving in the popular imagination).

FYI, I did not choose that image at the top of the page of Kraftwerk, who don't really figure into this story at all.

There will be a part 2 coming soon with information on where industrial sound continued in IDM, Glitch, Downwards Records, Gabber, and other modern musics.

Glory Be to the Resurrection!

A look at Virgo Four's fantastic new reissue Resurrection, which rivals their self-titled debut.

Building Upwards

A review of Moritz Von Oswald Trio's Horizontal Structures

For the historical record, here's my review of their first album.

Blood, Sweat & Tears- Variations on a Theme by Erik Satie (1st and Second Movements)

A post on the second track of the first year mixtape is up at Documentary Mixtape. It concerns womb music, Satie, Eno, Blood Sweat and Tears, and, as usual, memory.

Wuppdeckmischmampflow

Robag Wruhme's very pleasant autumnal Kompakt mix reviewed.

Everything's Gone Gray

30 Years later, Basquiat's band makes an album and I review it.

I Am the Alphabet

Finally got a chance to talk about Black Moth Super Rainbow's awesome Dandelion Gum on the occasion of its deluxe reissue. Read the review here.

Documentary Mixtape

555 Enterprises long ago dissolved into a series of links about keeping up with whatever I'm writing and whoever's dying any given week, but I've started a new blog with original writing on it and I hope you will all keep it in your blogroll as I do promise to make it as interesting as possible.

The series is called Documentary Mixtape and it is a series of essays devoted to every single song on 28 (so far) mix CD-Rs that I've made, each one representing one year of my life. The earlier years promise to be both intensely personal and somewhat not at all, but each essay will mix personal recollections with historical and sonic surveys of the artists and songs in question.

You can find more about the impetus behind this blog in the opening essay here.

And you can read the first essay on the first song of the first mixtape, Bing Crosby's "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's An Irish Lullaby)" here.

RIP Martin Rushent

Just a smattering of his amazing production work:

The Pendle Witches in Eternal Agony

Demdike Stare are one of those bands that seems to have lit up the entire critical community (at least those I respect), but seem far too ascetic to make as lasting impressions as these reviews suggest. With all the kind ink, it seems these words are better reserved for conjuring peers (foremost, Coil) who came first and did it better. With that said, Tryptych is not bad, but for the almgamation it supposes (horror soundtracks/ deep drone/ Modern Love style dubtronics/ Caretaker or concrete Radiophic hauntology/ Shackleton style Fifth World rhythm) it should sound better.

Here's the review

This Island Earth

New review of Friendly Fires' maddeningly enjoyable Pala, an album which is sonically smart and pretty lyrically idiotic.

More Music About Housing Projects

Albeit with a completely different vantage. A short review of Salva's Complex Housing