Do the android dream of electric sheep and why would I care?

Nebula: Atomic Ritual (2003, Liquor & Poker)

    Second album of Nebula's psychedelic tryptic (preceded by To The Center and followed by Apollo), Atomic Ritual is an album that not only assumes the fact that it'll please sci-fi fans, but transcends it, makes fun of it, and does it well all simultaneously.

    Let's go over the mild parts first, because they will be meaninglessly stomped by the qualities of this record. The cover is a a cheesy graphic design piece that would be barely good enough for the 12th re-edition of a weird Lovecraft meets Moorcock meets Asimov and Nostradamus' bastard child fanfic space opera (which 13 year old boys might appreciate nonetheless). The lyrics/titles (when payed attention to more than as an added melodic line, which they're not intended for) are not much more than an uninspired rip-off of the previous authors, mixed in with a bit of californian epicurism. Finally, Eddy Glass' voice strangely oscillates between an upper-register Ozzy and a growly Mark Arm, which might bother some.

    If you're willing to put all those aspects behind you, the music equivalent of a winter wonderland will be opened to you - imagine a soundscape, covered in riffs. Like a prayer to Mudhoney, The Stooges, Hawkwind and Black Sabbath, Atomic Ritual is referential without ever stagnant, hyperactive without ever reaching the Mars Volta, and varied. Songs, which range from 3:00 to 9:42, might go from an upbeat psychoblues jam to a downtempo atmospheric in seconds, or develop a riff for the whole song Dopesmoker style.

    The first wave to hit you are the guitars, provided by the ex-Manchu Glass, building layers & layers of glorious tone(they did go a bit haywire on the overdubs, sometimes with simultaneous solos, multiple rhythm parts and the like). With the classic stoner rig (SG, fuzz, phaser, wah, Marshall stack), he delivers all of the headbanging knowledge he left Fu Manchu with, but this time drenched in psyche-rock juice (noises, self-oscillations and is that a wonky filtered organ I hear in the background?).

    Even if the guitars are more than reason enough to try this record, it shouldn't take to long to notice that the rhythm section is at least as worthy as melodyman Eddy. Providing a more than necessary backdrop and low end to the record (the guitar has typical boosted treble bite), they fuel the cosmic journey that is this record, going from exploratory tempos (that leave an opportunity for guitar excursions of the epic level) to a quick let's flee this hostile alien planet speed, all in a crash of cymbals, and with a touch of Spike (Cowboy Bebop) level class .

    Atomic Ritual, produced by legend Chris Goss, with its memorable artwork, heavy-yet-melodic riffs, and balanced spaciousness/richness, is the '00's Space Ritual. Beyond the obvious title reference, it is, like Hawkwind's early 70's masterpiece, a collage of pop melodies (acoustic guitars, piano), drug hazed atmospheres (DikMik, wherever you are, this record is a straight up tribute to your bleeps'n'swooshes), and fuzzpower. Dave Brock should be proud, Lemmy should be pissed (but isn't he always), and Ozzy should wish he bought a phaser for Tony for the '73 christmas. I'll certainly be enjoying this record many more times.

As I said, mixes every week (!!), reviews every 1st and 15th of the month. I probably won't have time to post anything on Jan. 1st, so you can count the "shortgoodquestionnable" mix and this review as a first installment.

JNCT

....

11 songs in 14:51 minutes: The Short, Good, and Questionnably Arranged ESS Mix

Very good songs are sometimes very short.

Here are 11 songs, all between a minute o'seven and a minute thirty eight. All of certain quality, maybe questionnably arranged.

Expect acoustic guitars, angry people, quasi-silence, tributes and jokes, not necessarily in that order or in specific combinations.

11 songs happen to be the lenght of mixes Flavio picked over at Payola. I have to admit it works pretty well. Thanks, Flavio

JNCT


...

Review Grab Bag - Happy Holidays!

To all reading this blog: Merry holidays. May 2011 be full of fun and productivity for all of you

Here's a bunch of records I listened to this year, and my opinion, resumed in one line. This idea is shamelessly ripped off the Thundercurrent Express, maintained by my good fellow David Axel Kurtz. Please publish his novels.

FORMAT:

[band name]: [album name]
[short sometime offensive comment]

------------

Angel Eyes: Midwestern
like Isis or Neurosis, but enjoyable. Maybe I should give Oceanic another try.

Arc Of Ascent: Circle of The Sun
a good stoner rock record from New Zealand. Just in: copying Kyuss still works.

Belle And Sebastian: Write About Love
You'll love this if you wear flannel and leggings.

Black Diamond Heavies: Alive As Fuck
White Stripes - guitar + Organ x Lemmy = fun and a headache

Caribou: Odessa
Water pop - tasteless, but enjoyable from time to time. Keep some around

Jack White: anything he made this year
enjoy your revenge on hype

Dreamend: So I Ate Myself, Bite By Bite
Black Moth Super Rainbow goes acoustic not really - awesomeo

Dum Dum Girls: I Will Be
Enjoyment follows a logarithmic curve with time

High On Fire: Snake for the Divine
"I'll take the usual please. Wait - make that a double."

LCD Soundsystem:
Made for clubs. I don't go to clubs.

MTV: Lost Boy
Self production sounding like a load of fun.

Mogwai: Special Moves
Post Rock for dummies

Mono: Holy Ground
Goddamnit. Japanese rockers are the craziest.

Moonhearts: S/T
What does it take to sound honest these days? 29 minutes, apparently

Mountain Man: Made The Harbor
Vermont: good cheese, good music. Bonus points for recording a folk record in an old ice cream truck

No Joy
The single sounded so much more memorable than the album…

Pet Milk: Demo
What does it take to sound good these days? : 17 minutes, apparently

Rien: 3
Only the French could use post rock yet sound innovative and miles above the national musical average

Sleigh Bells: Treats
Proving that Lo-Fi sounds better unfinished

Sloath: S/T
Bonecrushingly relaxing

Soft Pack: S/T
Incredibly close to being perfect

------------

More to come. Expect an obnoxious end of the first year of the decade favorites list, as well as a short mix as soon as its uploaded.

MERRY WHATEVER. I love you all.

JNCT

...

list #6.1: where to procrastinate

http://whenparentstext.com/

http://trollscience.com/

http://www.dead-philosophers.com/

http://www.savethewords.org/

http://chainsawsuit.com/

http://awkwardfamilypetphotos.com/

http://hipsterhitler.com/

http://www.lookatthisfuckingperson.com/

http://www.lamebook.com/

http://gawker.com/

http://www.stumbleupon.com/

http://www.sporcle.com/

http://www.picagon.com/

http://babieswithlasereyes.com/

http://failbooking.com/

http://www.urbandictionary.com/

http://brownsharpie.courtneygibbons.org/

http://abstrusegoose.com/

http://www.theonion.com/content/index

http://www.fmylife.com/top

http://www.robandelliot.cycomics.com/index.php

http://mylifeisaverage.com/

http://unhappyhipsters.com/

http://www.questionablecontent.net/

http://failblog.org/

http://thereifixedit.com/

http://ericsaysfuckyou.blogspot.com/

http://awkwardfamilypetphotos.com/

http://oracleofbacon.org/

http://epicwinftw.com/

http://www.textsfromlastnight.com/

http://itmademyday.com/

http://pictureisunrelated.com/

http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/

http://oddstuffmagazine.com/

http://hipsterpuppies.tumblr.com/

http://www.daisyowl.com/

http://www.latfh.com/

http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

http://scanwiches.com/

http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

http://xkcd.com/

"Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment."
Robert Benchley (1889 - 1945)

Untitled # (2+√5)/√5

 lets play a game. It's called spot the grinning mustachioed man with aviators and a star around his lefteye.

My computer tells me that it's three am. Explaining how I got precisely to the point at which I'm standing right now would be a boring and long story, truth is I'm just procrastinating - as of 20 minutes ago, I like Radiohead's OK Computer, ending a solid 5 years of vague indifference towards their repertoire generally and hatred towards Creep more particularly.

Anyways, an announcement: as soon as I am done with what I'm supposed to be doing at this very moment, and stop reading the procrastination page on wikipedia, I'll be posting mixes all over this place. One a week. every week. until next year. In a similar fashion, record reviews will be twice a month.

FOR THE SAKE OF SELF CONTROL.

BLARGH

JNCT
...

Decembrrrrrrr

For those of you who haven't noticed, it got pretty fucking cold lately.

Chanukah, Christmas, whatever you do, you're probably going to listen to music anyways. Which is why you should get PAYOLA MIXES and your weekly dose of ElephantSpaceSnowstorm.

Doctor said so. Don't discuss with the Doctor, d'accuerdo?


To go with freezing your gonads off, here's a healthy dose of contradiction for you. Can you fit Fugazi and Eels on the same mix? How about Sleep and Vampire Weekend? Spacemen 3 and AC/DC? Well, I just did, and I think it sounds ok. This isn't a compilation for anything or anyone, it's just music, for you, when you want it. Little bites for the busy.

JNCT...

THE SELF TITLED INTERVIEW: LAETITIA SADIER

http://www.self-titledmag.com/home/2010/11/24/the-self-titled-interview-laetitia-sadier-of-stereolab-monade/

I guess I just love Laetitia Sadier for her music.

JNCT

...

Throwback! 3 - The Emperor Strikes Back... I know, that's episode 2. Qu'est-ce qu'il se passe quand on lance de l'ail contre un mur?

My dad doesn't have a vinyl collection. His CD shelf is basically a mix of classical music him and my mother got when I was born (Mozart makes kids smarter, anyone?) and a collection of what's been in the top 40 of whatever country he was in pretty much since CDs became available commercially.

After numerous siftings through this nevertheless exhaustive collection, the only two albums I've taken to the relative safety of my room are Eric Clapton's Unplugged and Soundgarden's Superunknown. The first he got because it has a song that mentions my sister's name a number of times (I'll let you guess what that is), the latter he described as "a mistake I only got because it was number 1 somehow. I've never listened to it entirely". For a long time, he described my music with the expression that my great-uncle uses to talk about old-style rock'n'roll: de la musique de peaux-rouge. Which happens to be mildly offensive, so I'm not translating that.

So no vivid vinyl memories for me. No passing on of buried treasure, no shared tastes. Sure, I had a vague backstreet boys moment around 9, as well as other momentary radio crushes, but they always felt tasteless - going with the easy option, what was readily available.

So what changed that? Well, I didn't write this lenghty useless introduction for nothing. If you're still reading this, it means you have some nerve, and must be really interested. I'll skip the Linkin' Park and Good Charlotte episodes and the Blink 182 covers (although I have to say Travis Barker is still a sick drummer), and finally get to my point:

DIGIMON

That's right. I would probably be a very different person if it wasn't for that fairly catastrophic child's pokemon ripoff cartoon. More specifically, the movie that spawned from its success, and very precisely, the sequence with Smashmouth's song All Star. To this day, I still haven't thought too much as too what the song is exactly about, nor do the lyrics make any sense in my head (I was still learning English back then). It's been about 10 years since I first listened to this song, and I finally got around to actually reading the lyrics. 

Verdict: song's pretty bad. But it made me get Smashmouth's 2001 self titled album: 

Beneath the horrible cover was the first CD I had really asked for. As mentioned before, and like for Flavio, I was learning English at that time, which made me able to consider the lyrics more as sounds then anything with a message (let's be honest, the words to most of these songs are fairly horrendous).

However this record shaped my tastes: I liked the coolness of the first track, the relative "violence" of the second track (qualified by my dad as sounding like a drum carnage), the violin synths of the 3rd track pretty much made me want to vomit... 

So why would I ever talk about an album that is important to me only it was a random starting point? 

First of all, this was Flavio's idea, and I just went with it. Read his own blog too, it's awesome.

Second, it's obvious that this record has little musical interest. Sister Psychic still sounds like an ok song to me, and memories of Shrek and Digimon are woken up by listening to All Star. The Monkees' I'm a Believer is also covered on this record, and that reminds me of The Spy Who Shagged Me, which is probably the movie that turned me on dumb absurd comedies. The harmonica solo in that one song is kinda cool, that gnarly synth in Force Field makes me understand why I like Tobacco today, Shoes'n'hats is a bro version of AC/DC (which remains one of my favorite bands). You could even say that Smashmouth's only feat is that they take a number of influences/characteristic sounds (ranging from hip hop to metal and going by 60's pop and lounge) and making it sound like a cohesive blend pop record. 

In short, it was a pretty awesome introduction to modern music for a 9 year old kid. Your young cousing/familly member is coming over for Christmas and you don't know what to get him? This blog just provided the longest most inconvenient and specific gift advice of all times. Enjoy.

Quand on lance une gousse d'ail contre le mur, elle rebondit. C'est le retour du jet d'ail.

This one's for you, Arthur.

...

Throwback! 2 - Basement 5, 1965-1980

Although my dad's vinyl collection is by all standards pretty impressive, very few actual records made an early impression on me. Now that I think about it, however, it's perfectly understandable: we didn't always have a record player in the house (the details of what stereo equipment followed us where are somewhat blurry before the early 2000s), and even when we did, CDs were always the dominant format. Vinyls were played only occasionally — when, I imagine, a nostalgic mood much like the one driving this post took hold of my dad —, and remained an archaic, overdelicate and thus implicitly forbidden medium for me until… Well, until I left home and discovered that people my age owned them and even played them regularly.

So while I'll never forget the wonder I felt handling CDs, opening up empty cases to unfold cryptic liners, and quickly matching particular artwork with artists or songs I especially liked, I have only three vivid vinyl memories. One was pondering the sleeve to Ziggy Stardust; one was wondering why on earth someone would call the Sex Pistols music. Less cliché, perhaps, was a deep, somewhat inexplicable fascination with Basement 5's 1965-1980.

(Basement who? Ah yes, my apologies. The Wikipedia note for the band confirms the little I know about it: Basement 5 formed in London in the late 70s, released only one album and an EP (both of which I believe are out of print today), and played an, I quote, "avant-garde" mixture of punk and reggae. That's not really doing justice to the Basement 5 sound, though, so I'll add a further hint for the connoisseur: they were produced by Martin Hannett. Oh, come on: the man responsible for Joy Division's spectral, abrasively cold, cathedral-punk sonic identity?)

I don't remember exactly when the following scene takes place; I probably wasn't more than six or seven. Imagine a cozy, standard living room in a well-to-do family, in, say, late-afternoon lighting. I was busy with what occupied most of my days, back then, which was reading (funny how things have changed, cough cough), on our dark-green-and-red sofa. I watched my dad walk to the bottom row of records on our wall-long shelf, pick one with a whitish sleeve and something that looked like a BMW logo on it (my grandpa owned a BMW, which is how I know… oh whatever), and drop a needle on the mysteriously oversized black disc.

I listened in terror as a strident siren filled the room, followed by an intimidating bass, laced around a sharp, martial and commanding drum rhythm. But that voice. That voice was truly paralyzing: deep and rough, grating even, toneless and aggressive, buried under layers of tinny echo, it sounded more like a German shepherd barking into a megaphone than anything human. Since I didn't know English, it wasn't until my dad starting yelling random words and phrases ("There's a riot going on!" "Immigration, you know what it's like!") that I gathered there were words being enunciated. As for my father himself, I'd never seen him like that: maybe this is the veil of memory distorting the facts of history, but he was dancing. Or at the very least, bobbing around, nodding his head, tapping his hands on his jeans. At that point I had set my book down and stood up; I proceeded to join in, ecstatic and utterly terrified. We danced, he blurted out more slogans I couldn't understand, which I probably repeated in my own version of Shakespeare's language (much like this Bulgarian Idol contestant), and — Awwwwww! — we bonded.

Shortly afterwards, though, my mom stormed into the living room to turn the volume down, my dad picked up a magazine, and I tried to go on with my book. Years passed, during which Basement 5 made too few appearances — all of them instantly recognizable, and a source of complicity between my father and me —, and it wasn't until this summer that I set out to find a CD or digital copy of 1965-1980. (No, I don't own a record player.)

It wasn't easy, and took a lot of looking around. But I now have confirmation: that album is pure, unrivaled genius. Just when you think you've heard about all that a punk-dub fusion can produce, you get hit in the face with a massive piece of cracked concrete, with mean riffs and lead-heavy grooves ("No Ball Games", "Last White Christmas" - CLASSICS! Seriously.), with visceral, depression-era working-class politics, charged with anticolonial rage and urban exasperation, all of it clad in a steel-armor sound both icy and incendiary — like tear gas in a blizzard.

(Thanks to Thom Henley for the hilarious video.)

"THOUGHTS ON... " - EP. PRIMERO: HALLOWEEN

The best thing I like about Halloween is that I have an excuse to listen to the Misfits' Monster Mash without shame (apparently they started sucking when Danzig left? Nice of the music press to inform me of that after years of listening to Famous Monsters... meh. You know what, AV club? Go cook yourself an egg).

The second best thing is getting a mix from Flavio. It kicks ass. GET IT HERE!

Other than that, I'm the grouchy old man that doesn't give you candy when you ring at his door. I've half-assed my costumes for the past two years (I wasn't even doing halloween any year before that), and I don't like getting scared.

What really makes me excited is dumb ridiculous senseless laidback things and beers. Which is why, next Halloween, I'll be staying home, trying to lure my trickortreater friends into watching Plan 9 with me and drink weird allegedly pumpkin flavored beer.

Ok I'm done. If you've made it through this rant, here's a r e w a r d. kind of.

Should You Fear Satan?

Kingpins of a kind of rock that came after rock (What was that? Oh you mean that makes no sense? no, it doesn't. Whatever, I'm over it), Mogwai cultivate an image of being mildly unfriendly Scottishmen who have been studying the balance between power and melody in music, and the very special place where both meet.

Rest assured, this isn't the intro (yet) to a book I'm writing that would be titled "Mogwai: a decade-long study of dynamics in popular music", just to an article about their latest record, which also happens to be a live recording. Their first, I believe:

Mogwai, Special Moves

Rock Action, 2010 

You'll find many reviews for this album. Most of them will describe the intensity of the songs, how Mogwai has been constantly innovating in their own fairly specific subgenre, and managed to maintain cohesiveness. They should then move on to describe the setlist choices, how each song is live rather than in studio, etc... They might mention some lack of direction, but will reassure right away with something like "most bands who sound like that do that" so if you like Post Rock, you should like this, hipster (offended? email me, hipster!)

It would be worthless to repeat this here. I understand lazy people, so I'll even put the link to two such reviews so you can get your usual info there:

Allmusic

Pitchyforky (that's right, I just called it that)

So what's left to say? Well, here's a few thoughts for you to munch on: 

• Mogwai is one of the very few bands who knows how to use a vocoder. Well done guys.
• THIS IS A GREAT RECORD. GIVE IT A SHOT.
• How much time will the cheap trick of playing softly then bashing power chords for an entire show will go on? Long, I hope.
• Buy the record. You get a dvd (which is supposed to be awesome, but that I never got around to see) and 6 bonus tracks. It's all good. Really good.
• The packaging is gloriously minimalist. Black and white pixelated security cam with all caps text inside and one horizontal line of lightning blue as the only colored element. Should make the graphic designer inside of you (if any) shiver.
• This is a comprehensive guide to Mogwai so far.
• Recorded in Williamsburg. Keep it local, hippie.

That's all I got for now. Go enjoy it rather than read my nonsense. You better come back here though. I'll be watching you.

JNCT

///...///...

The Valvewizard

It's been way too long since I last posted something up here. No one complained, which is kind of sad in its own way, but I wasn't expecting to have more than 7 readers anyways.

So for you 7(+/-5) faithful friends, here's your latest dose of Elephant Space Snowstorm. It's a triple feature, because that's how much I love you and all that internet shit.

PART I:

The Elephant Space Snowstorm's Been Busy As Fuck Mix - Volume I: 

1. Boxcar by Jawbreaker 
2. Transcendental Evisceration by Capricorns
3. Queen For A Day by The Jesus Lizard
4. Winder by Hum
5. Forest Of Fountains by Solar Bears
6. Melee by Russian Circles
7. Fuck Addict by Torche
8. Catastrophe And The Cure by Explosions In The Sky, Remixed by Four Tet
9. You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told) by The White Stripes
10. We Stood Transfixed in Blank Devotion as Our Leader Spoke to Us, Looking Down on Our Mute Faces with a Great, Raging, and Unseeing Eye by Red Sparrows
11. St. James Infirmary by The Gutter Twins
12. Rise / Set by Tjutjuna
13. Nice One by Jackie-O-Motherfucker

PART II: 

REVIEWS (FUCK YEAH)

Ok, I admit it, I was on Altered Zones a bit too much this summer. "Pitchfork ruling over indie blogs, blabla, boohoohoo, rabble rabble rabble"? Maybe, but I'm not going to complain, because they found some awesome shit on the internet and are sharing it with me. So thanks. 

First up on this list of Awesome Shit, Tjutjuna's self titled LP:

With seven songs and 35 minutes of synthesized space-inyourface-punk, these Colorado dudes have a debut album that sounds like Lemmy took over Hawkwind and made everyone take speed while dressing up as pirate-bikers. It's not just your usual synthyhawkyspacerocky ripoff (coughLitmuscoughcough), here Robert/James/Adam/Brian not only have mostly British names but also find the sought after balance between synth lines/drones, echofuzzed guitars and rhythms that could bring you to Mars and back. Effortlessly moving from keyboard riffing to full on guitars to noise section to laidback progressions, back into noise and the pleasures of analog delays, Tjutjuna has managed to make an album that's about as insanely awesome as the cover they came up for it. 

Second is Solar Bears' She Was Coloured In double LP: 

If Tjutjuna is the crazy aspect of Hawkwind, Solar Bears is its laid back, cool as hell equivalent. Warm sounds building immense soundscapes, always changing and evolving yet cohesive and driving from start to end, Solar Bears inscribes itself in a tradition of Irish electronic musicians who decided that U2 shouldn't be their country's main musical export (saying just export doesn't work because Guiness trumps all).

Building songs like some people make cakes (as in layer by layer, not from a pre-made mix), Solar Bears not only sport 2010's coolest band name but manage to evocate decades of electronic music history without sounding blatantly ambient or nostalgic - just epic. Sinoia Caves' The Enchanter Persuaded, although wonderful, had a "tribute" aspect that made it not quite as good as it could've been, especially if you're into a Tangerine Dream/Klaus Schulze/Cluster phase at the same time. That's not the case here - Solar Bears do a wonderful job of being evocative, but their references are numerous enough that you'll be thinking of a Guy Ritchie movie one second and of Boards of Canada the next. Of course, Berlin school electronic music inspirations come back more often than Age Of Empires soundtrack references, but ultimately all of it is relaxed/interesting enough that She Was Coloured In is an incredibly smooth, driving record (think of the gliding feeling you have when you listen to Kraftwerk's Autobahn. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're in for a treat). 

Not afraid to mix different techniques (tape editing techniques/loops, samples, acoustic instruments, synthesizers, or a combination of those), this Dublin duo makes songs that will make rest you, make you want to headbang and be more efficient at working, simultaneously.

I know, that sounds confusing. Just listen to the goddamn record, it's awesome and you'll get what I mean. 

Until next time (and god knows when that'll be), enjoy. And again, call your mom. She deserves it (probably).

JNCT

...

Real Estate @ Hampshire College, Monday Sept 6th 2010

    Let's be honest, this wasn't a My Bloody Valentine or Sleep reformation epic - you just can't pull that kind of event at a place like the Hampshire library lawn, for better or worse. It wasn't going to be about embracing an extreme of any kind, either.  Was just about one guy in uncomfortably tight jeans and a shortsleeve shirt with his buddies, returning to his college's lawn for the sake of good times.

And good times were had.

After the less than memorable DJ set preceding Real Estate's show, a flock of people ran from every direction towards the tent to the sound of Beach Comber, a song that doesn't seem to get old. Population under said tent went from 30, half sitting, to at least 200, all standing and wiggling to the band's joyful harmonics. Sound was surprisingly pristine, the reverberating guitars echoing at will throughout the bands show. The performance was only occasionally bothered by some feedback: considering how many people here think feedback is music, it probably didn't bother that much.

Running through their first album as well as a bunch of new numbers, some untitled, some almost leaning towards heavy surf riffing, the 4 lads impressed not by their professionalism or skills (which they did have in respectable amounts anyways) but by their Beach Boys-like good vibrations. From the guitar player talking about his own days at Hampshire to everyone else being generally friendly to each other, this felt like a nice way to start the semester. It wasn't really about individual songs or lyrics, but more about the "enjoy yourselves" atmosphere. Newcomer or returning student, everyone present at the show seemed to appreciate and bond over how well this music fit the lush Massachusetts landscape on that pleasant summer night.

The audience loved Real Estate so much in fact, that about 30 of them decided it would be fun to jump on the unoccupied part of the stage for the last 2 songs, letting loose a frenzy of fifti-er than thou dance moves between the amps that almost transformed into a hug orgy. It also meant that Martin Courtney's guitar would get unplugged, letting him barely enough time to plug back for the last verse of the show. But when the band went back to full power on those last 15 seconds, they hit the audience with all the power of the frenzied psych surf band they are - approximately equal to that of a giant stuffed Kirby being parachuted on your head from a low-orbit satellite.

"Where are the parties? If anyone wants to hang out after the show… well… we'll be around."

- Real Estate drummer

He would be seen the next day at nearby all-girl Smith College, wearing the clothes he had at the show, checking his Facebook. Congrats to him.

photos by Kevin Schwenkler

JNCT

...

Music And Depression, Epilogue

Flavio, I hope you'll excuse me. It was impossible for me not to make this reference

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"

Music and Depression, Third and Final Part: Your Heart Will Break, No Matter What You Do

Sometimes you stumble upon music so simple it sounds primordial. It's always been a (beautiful) mystery to me, how that happens, but with Perfume Genius' Learning, there's no mistaking it: piano melodies bare and insistent enough to sound clunky, if it weren't for the haloed ring of struck chords filling the spaces, and for faint, wavering synthesizers holding everything together in a precarious haze of atmosphere; a soft, boyish voice — it reminded me of Sufjan Stevens' own angelic falsetto, in the slowest, saddest of his songs — buried under immemorial crackles; here and there, a sprinkle of discreet electronics. Not much else, and yet Learning, in under half an hour, carries more emotional power than any other album I've listened to this year.

In this sparse universe, the lyrics are often vague, but they haunt. "No one will answer your prayers, until you take off that dress; no one will hear all your crying, until you take your last breath. But you will learn to mind me, and you will learn to survive me.": cryptic first words that leave you wondering who exactly is being addressed, what it exactly means. Apart from "Mr. Peterson," the album's single and most explicit piece of writing (romance with a depressed and suicidal math teacher), the rest of the songs bask in the same sort of indeterminacy, calling, at various times, to different but equally remote characters (Mary, Perry, "you," "we," "him" and "her"). Regardless, in their slow, whispered march, these songs and their words carry emotions so self-evident they become utterly devastating. Sorrow and desolation hang heavy, suffocating, like the aftermath of a sad dream in a pitch-black bedroom.

But then so does empathy. Burdened by themes of loss, isolation, suicide, abuse, illness, each song still shimmers with the promise of an extended hand, of a warm lap into which to lay your head, of sweet-smelling fingers wiping the tears from your cheeks, of a reassuring presence stroking your hair as you watch the snow fall outside your window. Again, nothing is explicit: much remains ambiguous and fragile ("Mr. Peterson, I know you were ready to go. I hope there's room for you up above, or down below."), and no answers are given (except perhaps in the album's last and most frankly religious song). But Learning touches the soul and offers a bed, a blanket, a quiet and and intimate space to the heavy and weary heart.

It's extremely rare that an album makes me cry. It's even rarer that an album makes me cry every single time I listen to it. But Learning still does.

And I've been listening to it since mid-July.

Seattle's Perfume Genius

Music and Depression, Part II: How Do You Say You're Sorry, and There's Nothing to Be Afraid Of?

One thing that also works very, very well to make you (or me, please forgive the generalization here) happy is finding that a concert for which you had absurdly high expectations not only matches them, but flattens them completely. I've tried to describe that feeling to a number of people, but so far it's been difficult getting them to understand how and why that bubble starts to swell in your chest, uncontrollably, until you actually want to cry, tears of sheer… what? Joy? Pure, simple emotion? Beats me.

Fever Ray: I'm not even going to go into why an album that blends folk intimacy, gothic theatricality, hip-hop, smoked-out dub echoes, swampy, oppressive atmospherics and pristine, Ice-Queen electronics is perfect, because that would take way too long — and all you need to be convinced is a listen anyway. I will say , though, that I was **pretty psyched** when I bought tickets to her show at the Paris Olympia (where the concert was moved after a quick sellout at a smaller venue); I don't remember being that excited for live music since… at least a month and a half ago.

I got there just in time to see Zola Jesus start her set, which itself was a neat surprise: I'd been reading about her seemingly everywhere for a while, and had just got her album the day before. What a coincidence, I could've told myself, if her presence as an opener for Fever Ray wasn't so logical it was almost disturbing. I knew none of her songs, but prowling back and forth on the stage, she had the audience mesmerized. A fantastically gripping voice.

Then the lights went out again and the bubble started swelling almost instantly as rows of old, antique-looking lamps flickered onstage, in rhythm with crackling samples — creaking wood and running water, frozen generators in an empty street — and from that moment on, until the lights came on again, I (and, I think, the rest of the room) was hooked into a awestruck communion with weirdness, into a indescribable space in which cold and warmth, dawn and dusk, hopefulness and fear, were hard to distinguish.

Music and Depression, Part 1: Ode to a Wonderful Rainbow

Tuesday was a day of national strike, the kind we French seem to cherish.

Heavily affected, the metros and subways of Paris ran sporadically, forcing people to stand in tight rows along the platform, almost to its very edge, making them pack into wagons until one wondered whether there would be enough air, and causing fights to break out between disoriented commuters. Twice (on line 2, Nation-Porte Dauphine) I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket but could not free my arm to grab it; it was hot and wet and the air was suffocatingly foul.

Outside, it was gray, rainy, and cold enough to chill the sweat on my back.

Lucky for me, Tuesday was also my first day of work. I was unenthusiastic, to say the least — confused at first, later bored, but mostly anxious and unconfident throughout. And from the moment I stepped out of bed, I was sad. Where I was was certainly not where I wanted to be.

Picking out music for a day like that is a tough one, I know. I flipped through the 30-odd albums on my iPod at least a dozen times. I had almost given up, ready to resort to the Shuffle option, when the twitching blue highlight on the screen fell upon a Wonderful Rainbow. By that point I was already walking down the stairs into the neighborhood Métropolitain (line 12, Porte de la Chapelle-Mairie d'Issy) and stood a few feet from the turnstiles. What I then said to myself was: Fuck it. And everything about this day.

And that's how I came to make a truly fabulous discovery.

On the metro I found I did not mind the people, the smells, the heat, the contact with too many foreign body parts. I didn't worry about being late (and I wasn't). I felt indifferently calm, and even extended a quiet sort of sympathy towards the people suffering around me. I felt delightfully detached.

How? is what you surely ask yourself.

Believe it or not, it helped that my brain was being pummeled by frantic drums, far too fast for my heart to follow; slammed by over-muscular, frenzied guitars, climbing into hypnotic swirls of purely physical intensity, onto exhaustion and trance; assailed by a peculiar (and moderately disturbing) image — that of a bodybuilt speed freak violently humping a washing machine in the middle of a spin-drying cycle.

I closed my eyes and in my mind I proceeded to punch, kick, jump, hurl myself at the walls of the subway car, against the greasy metal poles, against the center seats and at the men, women and babies who occupied them. Then I imagined myself running, running away, until my lungs collapsed and I passed out somewhere on the Parisian asphalt.

I couldn't do any of that — couldn't move at all, that is — but a direct pathway had been established between the music and every nerve in my body. My anxious brain was subdued, or numbed, while sound and body became united in an triumphant mental spasm, an eruption of pure, gleeful energy into which my anger, my anxiety, my sadness flamed like pine needles in a forest fire. In other words, I no longer needed to be violent to myself and to others; the music channeled all of that for me.

So while everything around me throbbed and rocked erratically, loud and incandescent, I pictured people's heads bursting into funny pink geysers, and my body surged with excitement and certainty as my mind wrestled with blistering noise and reckless acceleration.

Thank you then, oh Wonderful Rainbow, for beating my brain, my heart, my breath into submission last Tuesday — at ten, at twelve, then again at two and five. Thank you for having stilled the anguish, pinned it to the floor and kept a strong knee on its slippery chest.

I — and you, faithful reader — now know: as a remedy against depression and defeatism, hardcorenoisepunkelectricchaosmusicviolencesonicmasochism works wonders. Try it sometime, and marvel. The Wonderful Rainbow will always be there to illuminate the darkest of times (housefires and explosions!).

+++++++++++ Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow (Load, 2003) +++++++++++++

Note1: Hypermagic Mountain is often prescribed in lieu of the Rainbow. Rest assured, it works just as well, if not better.

Note2: The money you save on psychotherapy and antidepressants will come in handy to pay for hearing aids when you turn 30.

Faire Beacoup Avec Rien

If you talked to me last week, it would have been hard to convince me that there is anything beyond Air, a few Noir Desir songs, Laetitia Sadier and something like 10 electro tracks worth listening to in recent French pop music. The Rita Mitsouko were never my thing, Daft Punk got old really quickly, Telephone ends up being a family classic (and that just ruins it - plus they've been inactive for at least a decade), and I believe I've made my point.

But this week, my hopes are a bit higher for contemporary French rock music (or just French music in general). That's because of a band called Rien, which means literally nothing (haha - sorry...).

Why do you need to like this band (or at least listen to it)?

Because knowing cool French bands other than Phoenix, Air and Daft Punk will make you successful with the ladies abroad.

More seriously (because it won't), Rien is a band from Grenoble, a medium sized French city like many others near the Mediterranean and the Alps. Useless info, you might say, but I like settings for stories.

In that city of Grenoble is an association called l'Amicale Underground (translatable as Underground Friends Union, or something like that, feel free to suggest better), which also serves as record label for Rien. First reason why you need to take a look at this is the Amicale's website in its lo-fi awesomeness:

The second reason: everything that comes out on the aforementioned label is FREE TO DOWNLOAD. I really appreciate that and I don't see why anyone wouldn't give this a try after such a move.

The third reason: if you buy one of the 500 copies of Rien's EP "3" (for 10 €, shipping included, which is a very fair price compared to what some people do), not only do you get a collectible item, you get A VERY FREAKIN' NICE collectible piece of art you can look at for a while. Designed by fellow Grenoble design firm PNTS, here's a few pictures courtesy of their website:

Seriously worth buying if you like the music (that, again, you can get for free - it's like they guilt trip you in buying the best CD package of the year! And did I mention the CD is the most epic slab of black plastic ever?), PNST also did a flabbergasting packaging for Rien's previous LP, Il Ne Peut Y Avoir De Prédiction Sans Avenir (loving the elongated titles à la Godspeed You! Black Emperor - but IN FRENCH). Pictures still courtesy of the PNTS website - awesome people, I'm telling you!):

Unfortunately, this record is out of print. Still good though, and still freely downloadable on the label's website - consider donating (shameless advertisement for other people, yes - least I can do after getting all their records and borrowing pictures).

The fourth reason, and the most important one: "3" contains pretty damn good sounds. It's not at all your usual post-rock record - these people are willing to experiment with sounds as much as motorik-ly repeating one with minimalist style.  On this EP, Rien plays with layers, which, if they sometimes seem conflicting or clashing with the foundation of the song at first, are completely integrated and natural by the end of it. You will come to damn these people, because this record, at 25 minutes and 18 seconds, is about a third of what it should be. Then you will remember what you read on the label's website: 3 is the first of three records, that will come out until 2014, when the band Rien will end (in Japan, apparently?).

What I'm wondering is: How the hell am I going to wait?

JNCT



...

PS: bonus reason: you can make so many puns with this band's name. It's like the fun never stops.

edit: reading my own post makes me feel like I wrote an ad for that record. I tried changing a few things to make this purely subjective post seem more nuanced, but I did really love "3". Considering you can listen to it for free, you shouldn't read any of my nonsense and go directly to the label's website to make you own opinion.

Another Shoegaze Classic...

(USELESS) STATEMENT OF THE DAY: Loveless is one of the — ten, twenty? — albums that fundamentally defined my music taste.

Pretty commonplace, I know. That album has drastically oriented many, many people's musical inclinations. And you hear the My Bloody Valentine influence literally everywhere these days: No Age, Asobi Seksu, Deerhunter, M83, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, just a few names that immediately come to mind — but the list of heavily indebted bands goes on and on.

I remember finding Loveless in my dad's CD tower, one day (ninth grade?), as I was browsing his collection for some new stuff. I recognized the title from the countless "Greatest Rock Albums" lists I'd read and pretty much learned by heart. At that time, if I remember correctly, Lost in Translation was also set to come out, with a huge buzz surrounding the fact that MBV leader Kevin Shields was recording original material for the soundtrack.

I was a little surprised to find the album there because I had never heard my dad play it. Which meant it was one of those purchases he usually dismissed as mistakes, from bands that he invariably reduced to CRAP. I didn't know what to make of the cover, either: a guitar shrouded in pink haze? Cool, I guess.

I played the album on my stereo. WTF. A drum crash. Abrasive, repetitive riffs that sound kind of like… a buzz-saw concerto recorded in a tin-walled studio? A soft, sleepy voice, drowned in a dense fog of almost tuneless guitars and lethargic, watery backing vocals. All of it so deeply enveloped in haze that every sound, every note, feels unsteady, wavering between pitches and textures. About to collapse into something thick and indistinct. Definitely unlike anything I'd ever heard before.

I won't pretend I liked Loveless from the beginning. In fact, I was sorta disappointed. Or disoriented. But because I rarely admit defeat when it comes to music (and because I wanted to prove my dad wrong), I kept listening to the album pretty regularly in the months that followed.

In the end, I think the melodies did it for me. I found myself whistling a lot of the tunes I had first thought inept, relentless, almost childish. Once these had sunk in, a window opened onto what makes Loveless truly mind-blowing:

GUITARS

With melodies to cling onto, it became easier to take in the inscrutable piles of distortion, the incomprehensible swirls of conflicting sounds. I stopped trying to make sense out of it all; I let the music assume its own shape in my ears and patiently explored it.

What an exploration! Endless. Mystifying. If ever the experience of listening to an album deserved to be compared to deep-sea diving, then Loveless is surely it.

From Loveless I learned

- That the best albums are the ones who compose their own, idiosyncratic universes.

- That original production is absolutely crucial in crafting unique sound textures and sonic identities.

- That some of the most difficult albums can also, over time, become the most cosily inhabitable (make the most intimate nests for your ears).

- That the confrontation between pop and noise is by far the most gratifying, the most glorious, and endlessly fertile in the entire history of popular music.

- That fleeting, whispered and buried melodies are often — always? — the most beautiful and heartbreaking.

Finally, Loveless taught me that I preferred unpolished and aggressive sounds — noise, if you will — to their crisp and clear counterparts.

Take the "other" revolutionary pop masterpiece of the nineties, Radiohead's OK Computer. That album I bought myself and I did try very hard to love it. I'll admit it's a piece of musical genius and all. But so clean and clinical! The feelings that so many people experienced listening to Radiohead never made it through to me, because I immediately found the album overthought, over-controlled, over-exposed. There was just no space in OK Computer for mystery or uncertainty. Everything was there, clearly revealed, even underscored.

Noise — Loveless, however obsessively controlled the recording was for the album — on the other hand, leaves depths to be scanned. Layers to be peeled. A shifting and unsteady landscape that takes on new shapes with every listen. A haven for the imagination. Perhaps most importantly, a receptacle for any kind of emotion.

Ride, To Infinity, and Nowhere!

Ride's Nowhere appears to me as a masterpiece, mingling melody with violence in a glorious crash of cymbals, acoustic guitar strumming, overdrive & reverb drenched electrics and a powerhouse rhythm section. The noise sister to Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space and pop brother of Loveless is of course English, and obliterates any recent attempt to make something "in the same style but better". This record is in fact so good I can't write anything more than providing you with means to listen to it and a high-res picture of the cover. Which was rapidly taken by yours truly in blatant disregard for copyright laws but never ending admiration for the artist, unknown to me.

another awesome artwork for another awesome record

blog article + links 

streaming option for the folks who prefer that (deezer) 

Ah, maybe one thing to say before I end this article: If that wave on the cover is the start of a 30 meter high tsunami, then it's a pretty good equivalent to the music that's about to crash in your ears, leaving no survivors when it washes out in a foam of goodness.

JNCT

...

Summer Bash #3

Summer is almost over, and as usual, three weeks before the end, I wonder where it's all gone. So many empty hours that I wish I could account for. So many things I would do, or do different, if the clock were kind enough to turn back to May.

But hey, even the weirdest, haziest, most confused and confusing summer has its soundtrack. That's the great thing about music. David Crosby agrees.

So there you have it: weird, hazy, confused and confusing songs, in a mix that makes no sense. Compiling it on a patio in Africa with malarial mosquitos dive-bombing my computer screen was definitely a fun summer memory.

And the more I listen to it, the more I think I'm going to enjoy the few sunny and lazy days I have left. It's like magic!

1. Avi Buffalo - The Truth Sets In (Avi Buffalo, Sub Pop 2010)

2. Candy Claws - Sunbeam Show (Hidden Lands, Twosyllable 2010)

3. Cut Copy - Where I'm Going (upcoming album?)

4. Best Coast - Bratty B (Crazy for You, Mexican Summer 2010)

5. Sunglasses - Whiplash (unknown)

6. El Guincho - Cuerpo sin Alma (Piratas de Sudamérica, vol. 1, Young Turks 2010)

7. Cults - Oh My God (Forest Family Singles, 2010)

8. Tame Impala - Desire Be Desire Go (Innerspeaker, Modular 2010)

9. Keepaway - Yellow Wings (Baby Style EP, Lefse 2010)

10. Pepepiano - No Way (Altered Zones)

11. HEALTH - Before Tigers (CFCF Remix) (DISCO2, Lovepump United/City Slang 2010)

12. Lemonade - Lifted (Le Chev Remix) (Lifted Single, True Panther 2010)

13. Dominant Legs - Clawing Out at the Walls (Altered Zones)

14. Pearl Harbor - Luv Goon (Something about the Chaparrals EP, Mexican Summer 2009)

15. Deerhunter - Primitive 3D (Revival 7", 4AD 2010)

16. Magic Kids - Summer (Memphis, True Panther 2010)

17. David Crosby - Music is Love (If I Could Only Remember my Name, Rhino Atlantic 1971)

... (File Removed WITHOUT REQUEST - Sorry)

FC