Allmusic

Looking for new music is an activity that has recently reached the stage of unhealthy obsession, and the internet seriously didn't help.

I have to admit that it started nicely. The (very famous) music listening program (that doesn't fall far from the tree) I use has a built browser that allows easy access to review and biographies, which include lists of similar artists. I don't remember which countless bands were discovered during nights of music exploration, but there were definitely many and I don't regret any hour that I wasted on there.

But like anything in this entire universe, AyToons has some obvious problems. The main one, for me, was the absence of any AC/DC information. There, at the bottom of each review, each biography, I thought I had found the culprit: Allmusic.

How could something pretending to cover all music not have AC/DC? 

The answer to this futile question doesn't really matter. The important part is that this led me to allmusic. 

This website is evil. Beautifully evil. Reviews are long, links are numerous, exploration endless. They do give arbitrary ratings to the music, but  I have to admit I've mostly agreed with them over the years (mostly). They cover, well, all music (try to guess what allmovie & allgame are about) and do a pretty good job at it. Articles are sometimes interesting, and their news selection is honest, but that's not really what they're there for. They're there to expand your musical horizons - like that other guy would say, to infinity and beyond. 

Allmusic

Well that was mildly interesting. I said I'd write this though, so here it is. Maybe I'll change it soon.

JNCT

...

"From the depths of the Axolotl's nest"

Seeing Flavio's tendency to review only very recent releases, I wondered if I would be able to overcome my fascination for the sixties/seventies and present an album that wasn't from those decades (or too obviously inspired by them) but that I still felt strongly enough about.

The best I could find was Dinosaur Jr.'s Beyond.

2007 was an interesting year for music. Take one of the most questionable things to do for a band (i.e. reforming after more than a decade), and apply it to the following: The Stooges and Dinosaur Jr (ironically enough, J Mascis - Dino's guitar/singer - is responsible for both those reunions). The former helped define rock music, both as a way of life and as an artistic product, while the latter helped it go through/recover from the very painful eighties. Were they still going to have something interesting to record after respectively 34 and 19 years of abscence?

Oh yes. In fact, I like The Weirdness (Stooges') and Beyond better than both bands' original work. Picking your favorite is a personal matter - mine happens to be this one...

Dinosaur Jr.

Beyond

2007, Fat Possum Records

... and this image shows the first reason: by putting a guy sinking/being eaten by a couch on the cover, I knew these people, whoever they are, were going somewhere interesting. 

To many (too many) J is the slacker. A living definition of that word - Allmusic & Pitchfork for once agree on the  adjective with quintessential. I can't deny I thought that was a good thing, a first step towards having something in common with that guy. Because his guitar work literally melted my brains out, and their songwriting was a perfect mix of melody and agressivity. Not the classical Nirvana mellow-loud dynamics, but a slightly more contemplative philosophy that suggests there still is a chance.
 
Just like the monotonous Massachusetts winter will end at some point, something good is bound to happen. At some point. If you wait long enough. 

The opening song, Almost Ready possesses this incredible (I'm weighting my words carefully here) drive, drenched in fuzz and muscular guitars. A fluid, so good it's almost painful solo is followed by drooling lyrics, courtesy of Massachusetts' own guitar hero, the so-lazy-he-nicknamed-himself-with-one-letter J. Go back and forth between the fuzziness and witty/emotional verbal nonchalance, and end with a mash-up of unrelated sounds. The other pieces have a healthy variation of rhythm, texture and lenght, making the album coherent but not repetitive, surprising but not (too) overwhelming. Like a good surprise in a familiar place.

Live, his face is most of the time obscured by an impressive silver hair. Like a cool Gandalf (Ents on their last album's cover!) who went to college in 80's Massachusetts, studied whatever required the biggest amount of bullshit (and was succesful at it) then went for a sparkly purple Jazzmaster rather than a wand, like a badass Dumbledore, the man mysteriously nicknamed the electric veal by Rock n Folk pushes the limits of what used to be called alternative music towards a (mostly) mind-bending blissed apocalypse of loud guitars.

A common criticism, and one of the reasons that tore the band appart in the 80's, is that sadly enough J's guitar proficiency supposedly involves some sort of megalomania, which isn't helped by the fact that he writes and sings most of the songs. To hell with that: when you make an album as good as this one, it was worth going through 19 years of separation, at least for your audience. And even if J is a very important member of Dinosaur Jr., Lou (bass) and Murph (drums) do a very impressive job. It's not easy being the two dudes playing with the 3 (or 4? 5? !!) Marshall stacks man. Where J is a monster of power and inventivity, Lou & Murph, also sporting monosyllabic names, provide a more than necessary backbeat, a driving rhythm for J to roam freely and produce what seems to be some of the most daring solos in modern rock music. Consider Neu's Hallogallo, turn the mood knob from relaxed to eternal disappointment, go from the German Autobahn to the Northeastern winter forest road on a sunny cold day, and abandon some machine-esque efficacity for some overwhelming emotion expresed through soaring guitars rather than smooth filtered layers of waves, and you might get an idea of what Beyond sounds like (where rhythm is underlying but still essential). Ironically enough, there still is so much beyond that.

One could wonder what brought those three back together. Here's my hypothesis: J wondered how he would make his day useful, and found Lou's phone number on an old piece of parchment that had been delivered by a trained hawk. The following ensued:

Hypothetical Phone Call between J and Lou: 

2005 or something. 

"So... Lou... erm.... yeah listen I was wondering if you wanted to play with Murph. I just got a new Marshall stack and I think it would sound good for Dino songs.

- Yeah? erm... let me think

(4 minute silence during which Lou makes eating lucky charms sounds)

wait what?

- I want to jam with you and Murph again.

- Ha! finally got you to admit it!

- You're such a kid.

- Probably. We'll figure something out next time we run into each other at Whole Foods. Hey, if Thurston's there with us again maybe we can have coffee. Maybe even lunch at Atkins. Our kids can make a music video for the next Sonic Youth single.

-Sounds good Lou. See you tomorrow."

This probably isn't what happened. But honestly, I don't really care. Nevermind reality, these guys came up with my favorite album of the 2000's. One that packs a punch, but satisfies a need for reassurance that there is optimism in this world, even if it's quite inactive. One with a good opener, a good ending, and a good everything-in-between. Hopefully all of this was enough to convince you to try it. I hope you like it as much as I did.

Pitchfork review 

Allmusic review 

If the best I could find was the Dinosaur Jr. - a band formed in the mid eighties, with influences including early 80's punk but also very largely 60's & 70's references like Young and Sabbath - reunion album, then it's a good thing Flavio contributes to this blog: at least one of us will be on top of his releases. If it's hard to find what you like in the sea of lesser known golden time gems, it seems to be even harder to know what you'll like in the internet-obscured ocean of recent releases. Subtitle:  If the web doesn't always have what you need, it always has more than too much of what you don't need.

I'm never using a sentence I brought up during a bar argument again.

By The Way, Here is an Axolotl. Hope it Helps: 

JNCT

...

At War with the Cynics

I am one of those (lazy? obnoxious? - you name it) people who think a good introduction/introductory song is key to a good album. Not that a solid first song automatically makes for a stupendous album - that would be a preposterous claim indeed. Nor is it that an album with a "mmmm-not-so-exciting" start can't ever get better in its next couple tracks (Lykke Li's Youth Novels is a good example that such things can, and do, happen). But, on the whole, a decent opening track really helps, if only to draw your listener in. Bag him/her in your net, if you will.

Now imagine this: A bold oration, on an old, crackling recording, inviting us, from the depths of the past, to collective self-sacrifice; the speech goes on for 45 seconds of gradual tension; finally comes the climax, with these blood-stopping, goosebump-inducing words: "As a nation of free men, we will live forever, or die by suicide." Followed immediately by rapid, nervous drums and rumbling guitars, building towards explosion; a youthful, commanding voice surfaces, in whose strains and determined shouts you can hear disgust, anger, a last-man-standing kind of pride; quickly, again, the voice is interrupted by a large, nearly implacable instrumental break… Whew. Oh, it's not over. There's still much to come in "A More Perfect Union," a wild and whimsical pop-punk romp, 7 minutes long. Holy fuck, you tell yourself. This band - a New Jersey quintet named after one of Shakespeare's most infamously violent tragedies - means business. Meet Titus Andronicus.

You definitely don't hear introductions like this one every day. The album on which you'll find it, The Monitor, is Titus Andronicus' second full-length. It also serves in defense of my initial argument: opening with an absolutely magnificent song, it is a truly superb record.

Both gorgeous and glorious, lyrical and ground-shakingly epic,The Monitor is also ambitious, a quality that's always been rare, but stands out even more sharply against a lot of the lackadaisical, ambiance-driven indie rock I've been listening to in the last few months. You could call it political, too, in a personal, gut-level kind of way: its stretched-out, loosely-structured songs, its heart-gripping choruses, its diverse instrumentation, all carry the instinctive rebellion of a teenager smashing furniture in her room after a shit day at school.

But there's more. The intimate, emotional apocalypse of the The Monitor's lyrics points to something darker, like the defiant, unflinching despair of a man walking onto the highway to face a world that's fucked him over. "I'm at the end of my rope, and I feel like swinging," sings frontman Patrick Stickles on the album's fifth and most beautiful song, "A Pot in which to Piss." Much of the other tracks express utter dejection, alienation, and solitude. Yet he's not quite alone: on the album's second track, the band joins Stickles into a soaring battle song, chanting, "the enemy is everywhere." Clearly, The Monitor is out to wage a war. The New Jersey suburbs and their alcohol-ridden drear are a primary target ("All my asshole buddies are comin' over and we'll be a little too alright"). A certain heart-breaking girl also gets a few gobs spat at her face ("There's only one dream that I keep close, and it's the one of my hands at your throat"). In the end, though, The Monitor is fighting a larger, much tougher war: against cynicism, and our tendency to stifle emotions - both of which Titus Andronicus equate with the slow but certain destruction of our humanity.

"Nothing means anything anymore; everything is less than zero" laments Stickles on the slow-burning intro to "A Pot…" But instead of letting themselves sink into an abyss of defeated misery, Titus Andronicus pick themselves up off the ground, and fight gloom with everything they have - i.e. vibrant, exuberant, rock music - thereby making The Monitor sound uncommonly heroic. "I will not deny my humanity: I will be rolling in it like a pig in feces! 'Cause there's no other integrity, than awaiting the demise of our species" goes one of the many climaxes on track "Richard II." It's been a good while since I've heard a record on which those words manage to sound not only convincing, but damn mesmerizing as well.

Titus Andronicus, The Monitor

XL, 2010

Deathfest!

Death " ... For The Whole World To See"

Drag City, 2009 (originally issued in 1974)

'Tis a tale o' three brave lads from the merry town of Detroit: David, Bobby, and Dannis Hackney. The three boys, courageous as can be, decided to form a band of the most glorious persuasion, reinterpreting what their elders (by a few years) of the MC5 or the Stooges had presented to the world to express their rage and frustration.

Don Davis was pleased with what he heard, and decided that a band such as Death should not be left unrecorded. After an adventure, United Studios were made the band's headquarters', and songs now regrouped on ... For The Whole World To See were recorded. A few LPs were issued, then the record slowly fell in the abysses of commercial oblivion. 

Skip forward 35 years: the few copies of this record have attained a legendary status, collectors asking for prices ridiculously high for a circular slab of plastic. Drag City, sensing the commercial opportunity (or actually considering the disk musically worth reissuing ?) decides to re-edit the LP in 2009, making this album enjoyable by all willing to give it a shot. 

And you should.

Death's obvious affiliations to the bands mentioned above should be enough to interest any appreciator of fast and raucous rock'n'roll. However, their main feat is the ability to transcend the then developing punk format: of course, their album is only twenty-six minutes and nineteen seconds long, with most of the album being played with the metronome around what seems to be 130 bpm. "Politicians In My Eyes" is obvious in its engaged statements, and what would later become classic punk beats and hooks are present here. But throw in a drum solo here, a little melody there, slow the tempo a couple of times, give this riff a little groove, and all this "proto-punk" stuff hits you in the face ten times harder than the Sex Pistols ever did. One might even add that not only does this album makes the connoisseur's delight, it also serves as a rockin' introduction to the one that stumbles upon the treasures of seventies Detroit music. Which you've heard here before: I'm definitely trying to introduce varied subscenes of musical history through this blog.

Of course, the formula has been exhausted to death (...) by more recent bands. Green Day, Blink 182 and other Offspings have sucked the life out of rock-inflicted punk and turned it into this questionnable enterprise (that I'll sometimes enjoy, for middle school nostalgia's sake). Rest assured, honorable reader of this scarcely visited website,  that Death were close to the first, and if calling them the best is a matter of personnal opinion, then I'll call them the artistically honest: they refused to change their name, losing them a deal with Columbia, and accepted to wait 35 years to see their record decently released. 

Probably their best move: the fact that this record comes out only today is like a big, smiling, ironic middle finger to all the people who make music without any soul or integrity today: "Here's how you're supposed to do it, you dumbnut". Hopefully they'll understand. 

Allmusic Review (4.5/5, AMG Album Pick)

Pitchfork Review (7.1/10)

Rolling Stone review (3/5)

Dusted Magazine review 

Uncut Magazine review

Rising Storm review

Dan's (Ongakubaka) thoughts & links on this record

Order the album, and check out Drag City records

Death's Official Blogspot

Hey, look, the cover art is killer!

Death... killer artwork... get it?

Sorry.

JNCT

...

In (Moderate) Defense of the Hipster

This blog post comes from a book I found lying around in my friend's dorm room about two weeks ago: The Hipster Handbook. Yeah, you might've heard of it. Up until then, I'd always used the word "hipster" (or, less often, its remote affiliates, like "hip") freely, and usually charged with overwhelmingly negative connotation, but I'd never actually tried to define what a hipster is. And now I'd found a book to do it for me. The thrill.

But as I flipped through its pages, disappointment replaced eagerness. In its defense, the Handbook - or, at least, the edition I had in my possession - dates back to 2003; it's understandable that some of its (quite funny) definitions and cunning remarks would feel "dated" and/or irrelevant. But more generally, what struck me was that, in spite of the book's attempts at nuance and relatively diverse categorization, its overall definition of "hipster" felt completely unsatisfactory. So much of my own vague definition of the term didn't seem to fit anywhere in the book; so much of the book's mapping of "hipster" seemed at odds with my personal understanding of the notion. (Because I know even less about style and fashion than I do about everything else, I'll stick with a strictly musical discussion here, even though many people have rightly pointed out that "hipster" involves an entire "way of life" - i.e. includes more than music taste.)

I'm not trying to say that I would've written a better Handbook. I am certainly no more of an authority on hipsterism than anyone else. And I'm not even trying to reflect on what my own definition of the term would be - I have too little data and not enough interest to even think of making sweeping sociological generalizations. What I simply mean to say is that, reading this book, I realized that I had I never, ever encountered a satisfactory definition of the word. Not once. People around me, friends, critics, fellow bloggers (quite a few, really interesting articles listed on the Wkipedia page for "Hipster"), all have their own, private definition - one that they usually refuse to share, but that they gladly work from to demean so and so's behavior or clothing style, and, in the musical world, so and so's taste or musical decisions. The word "hipster"'s frequent throwing around in musical commentary and analysis is thus, most often, completely at odds with the lack of clear definition accompanying it. This could be because, like me, most people just write from their own, relatively uninformed perspective, constructing a definition of "hipster" from what they know of think is common knowledge. It seems to me, more and more, that hipster isn't so much a reality in contemporary musical criticism as it is a perception, and as such it has no precise or even fixed content.

Neon Indian: Hipster? Does it matter?

The question we then have to face is, "What defines music, and by extension its listeners, as hipster?" Crucial question, if only for my own sake: because of my musical tastes, I've been implicitly labeled as a hipster by several acquaintances (Rob Horning's recap of the New School/n + 1 panel on the "death of the Hipster" shows how, whenever we undertake a discussion around the topic, it's usually to make the claim that we aren't hipster). Now, the best and most articulate attempt at a (again, strictly musical) definition of "hipster" I've encountered goes as follows: a hipster is someone who consciously seeks out a particular and yet eclectic taste in music, strictly (or mainly) because s/he knows that such a music taste will set him/her apart from the larger group of what s/he considers "mainstream." (Thank you Becca.) At first, I was tempted to agree with much of this definition; but I also believe that all of our cultural choices, in one way or the other, are made to distinguish ourselves from another (real or perceived) cultural group. More than we realize, and definitely more than we usually like to admit. And this does not mean, at all, that we don't also make those cultural choices based on what we love, on what makes us feel particular emotions. The two - emotions and cultural distinction - don't seem mutually exclusive to me, and I would even say that they go together.

Another aspect of "hipster" that seems to come up in discussions, including musical ones, is that the hipster's attempt at distinction usually follows pretty predictable and commercially-determined patterns. You become hipster to distinguish yourself from the mainstream, but in the end, your style and taste correspond to so many other people's style and taste that they can easily be categorized into a Handbook. Or, at the very least, can easily be spotted and recognized in the street, on a billboard, or at a concert. As Julia Plevin nicely puts it her Huffington Post article: hipsters "conform in their non-conformity." You can find the equivalent in accusations that a band is simply catering to a trend, or indulging in ridiculous nostalgia/plagiarism. Call me naive, but I tend to think that neither people nor music usually fit that easily into the stereotypes we form in our minds. And if they do, well then it's quite another phenomenon, distinct from hipsterism (because applicable to ALL groups in society), that we are discussing: contemporary consumer culture and the production of standardization. The two have to be distinguished, because when they aren't the danger is to dismiss all aspects of contemporary, youth musical culture as "sold out" and consumerist. See, for example Douglas Haddow's ridiculously simplifying and pseudo-prophetic discussion of "the dead-end of Western civilization" (which echoes in some ways Theodor Adorno's horrified rants against jazz some 60 years ago). If we do conceive of contemporary society as swallowed whole by consumerism and postmodern capitalism, a view with which I tend to agree, then focusing on the "hipster" to denounce processes such as the "selling out (of) alternative sources of social power developed by outsider groups" (Horning) or the co-optation of historical symbols of resistance and identity (Haddow), seems to me highly unfair, and more like a way to place the blame on someone else in order to avoid acknowledging that we all take a part in these processes.

I would then agree with Rob Horning when he asks: "Are there really hipsters, actual hipsters, or just a pervasive fear of hipsters? Hipster hatred may actually precede hipsters themselves." In music, at least, I don't think any quality makes a song or an artist inherently hipster. Dismissals of such kinds (and lord knows I've indulged in my share of them), affecting artists like Neon Indian, genres like so-called "shit-gaze," or blogs like Gorilla Vs. Bear (even sites like Pitchfork), often rest on strictly personal taste or, less often, on debatable assumptions about "authenticity" in music (such and such artist is stripping a genre of its authenticity, or such a public's quest for new and "hip" sounds is calculated and lacks authentic feeling…). Leave the hipster, the hipsterism and the hipness out of music, is what I say - your own, personal opinion is interesting enough that you don't need to buttress it with such accusations. I don't mean to say that hipsters don't exist and that none of the people making music these days would qualify as hipsters. But I do think that the category of "hipster" adds very little to musical analysis - unless it's very rigorously defined. I want to add: of course people are bound to get excited about new artists and new songs, and of course sooner or later more and more people are going to think these artists and songs are "cool." Normal processes of cultural production, as far as I know. Through similar processes, at a given time, of course there'll be a given group of people listening to the same artists and songs, and/or producing similar-sounding music. But they'll rarely have the same exact reasons to do so. What's more, beyond any stylistic similarities between artists and between fans, a song won't ever sound the same to two different people, and two songs, however similar, won't ever be perfectly interchangeable.

Wavves in concert: Hipster? Who cares!

Underground I Heard the Footsteps of a Girl

Liars have always been a truly scary band - and I don't mean Alice Cooper scary. Their first album, They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top was frightening not only because of its title, but because it injected a heavy dose of deep, dark psychosis into the post-punk trend that, in 2001, was already sounding the charge for early-00s "rock revival" (The Rapture, Radio 4, Interpol, and all their British and American offspring). Right off the bat, it was clear that Liars didn't give a fuck about any sort of revival: for them, rock and roll was already a diseased, sore-infested corpse they were anxious to beat and trample. Which they gleefully continued to do with They Were Wrong So We Drowned, a bad-trip noise record conceptualized around New Jersey's witch trial history, and recorded in the woods with production guru David Sitek; the album was so full of jolting screeches and jarring, angular rhythms that it took a lot of sunlight and a few whisky shots to sit through its full 40 minutes without running for the door.

In 2006 came Liars' weakest album, Drum's Not Dead, in which they tried to show the world that they weren't so dark, and could be trippin' hippies too. Sadly, the album was still too full of sonic torture and twisted experimentation for us to believe that the drugs passing around weren't dreadfully bad. Their 2007 eponymous album was something of a breather, for Liars and for the listeners who had stuck with the band over the course of their career. The record combined relatively traditional sounds and song structures with the band's noisy penchants and characteristic, charcoal-black atmospherics. What it lacked in explicit insanity, it made up for in brooding rage. Sisterworld, Liars' 2010 release, follows much of the same path, but goes far beyond its predecessor's achievements, in terms of subtlety, songwriting, and, well, terror.

Although opening track "Scissor" breaks from restrained, disquieting harmonies into a sudden, fuzzed-out romp about halfway through the song, actual noise makes itself relatively scarce on the album (there's demented, homicidal biker-punk on "Scarecrows on a Killer Slant," the nightmarish end to "I Can Still See the Outside," and epileptic head-banging on "The Overachievers" - but that's about it). Like The Horrors on last year's Primary Colors, Liars seem to have learned that quiet(er) and creepy can be far more effective than howling and loud playin'. And like their British cousins, Liars have focused Sisterworld on gloomy ambiances, in which somber industrial sounds blend with trailing guitars, repetitive rhythms, evocative synths and even, at times, strings and horns ("Goodbye Everything"). Angus Andrew's singing takes more melodic and varied disguises, sounding at times almost like a pre-pubescent Tom Waits ("No Barrier Fun"), and on "The Overachievers" like a less lethargic Kurt Cobain. But it's in the songs themselves that you can hear the the band's real improvement: more focused, more carefully built, each track is its own, autonomous and accessible universe.

But accessible doesn't mean reassuring. Sisterworld is arguably Liars' scariest album, precisely because the dread lies hidden in the album's tense restraint. The record isn't American Psycho scary, it's Shock Corridor scary: beneath its murmured lullabies and whispered chants, you discern worlds of folly and distress. When Andrew sings, "Carry victims one by one," on "Here Comes All the People," your blood runs cold as a refrigerator. Similarly, "No Barrier Fun"'s eerie xylophone jingle and insistent violin evoke strange shadows in an empty house. Like getting up to pee at five in the morning and finding your older brother alone in the hallway, muttering to himself in the bleak half-light...

Liars, Sisterworld

Mute, 2010

FC

Impressionistic Music

Impressionistic Music

It's well past midnight. You can tell from the empty streets and the dark windows of shops, of houses, that it's later than it feels. You don't mind, though. The air is warm and sticky; there's a breeze gently rushing past your ears and cheeks and arms and thighs as you're biking around town. Or you might be driving, who knows. Somewhere, on wide, deserted lanes surrounded by fresh and empty lawns. You're alone, but the stillness isn't silent, or the silence is not still. Quite the contrary. It's a symphony of sounds - humming neon and occasional sprinkler, rumble of air conditioning, a dog's bark, the whirring of the bike wheels or the pulse of your motor or the crunch of your feet on the sidewalk, like a soft beat - all of it coagulating into ephemeral patterns. They flicker in and out of your ear like a radio that refuses to tune in.

You're back home, wherever that is, in the stairs, at the door, sitting on your sofa, the lights are off, the window open onto the street and the sleeping city and its glow, the long leaves of plants jostling ever so slightly, adding their own autonomous rhythm to the night's music. A drink in your glass, colored reflections in the ice cubes. It tastes like nothing you've ever had; sweet, but also slightly bitter, each gulp a new and delicate balance of tastes. There's fruit in there, a distinct, natural velvet on your tongue, but something sharp and tingly suggests other, stranger chemicals. You imagine their shape, intricate, organic designs. The shapes begin to dance at the corners of your vision as the symphony of silence has gained fabulous momentum. Its loops and rhythms blossom, bubble, shimmer, refusing to settle into repetition. You're drunk. You're happy. It's a cosmic sort of happiness, extending well beyond the reaches of your body into the sounds and shadows all around you. There is Love in You.

(WTF? It's very difficult to describe Four Tet's music. When I bought my first album of his, I'd read several different reviews and still had no idea what I was paying for. I guess the title did it for me - Everything Ecstatic, who could resist? I've now listened to it a few dozen times, along with the extremely unsettling mix he compiled for the DJ Kicks series; all the same, if someone were to ask me what Four Tet sounds like, I'd be incapable of giving them a straight answer. Granted, There is Love in You is slightly easier to describe than the man's earlier work, if only because it references more "traditional" genres of repetitive electronic music (which is to say, the album has a beat and a progressive structure - for the most part). But what all of Four Tet's productions have in common, and what makes them dazzlingly beautiful, is tremendous evocative power.)

Four Tet: "There Is Love In You"

Domino, 2010

FC

ToonSpork

I should've explained why exactly I don't consider Pitchfork to be as good as Allmusic. There are a few reasons:

first of all, they don't cover as much ground as Allmusic (who is only 6 years older), may it be stylistically (let's be honest: they review hip music) or chronologically (they refuse to review albums that haven't been issued or reissued during their relatively short existence).

second, Pitchfork doesn't provide as much connections between artists as most review websites do. The internet allows you to put artists just a click away from each other, why would you not use that option? Being someone who uses review websites primarily to find similar musicians/read biographies, Pitchfork is more of a well designed distraction than anything useful.

third, they may offer fancier things than Allmusic, such as countless lists, videos... but in the end, its all pretty much fancy nonsense: lists are good mostly for late night friendly arguing (have you ever honestly agreed on a list with someone else?) and video streaming is painful (might be my connection - still, painful).

Three problems with me trashing Pitchfork and comparing them to Allmusic:

-I still visit the 'fork regularly, meaning they're not totally uninteresting: indeed they aren't! See previous article for explanations.
-I link to their reviews: that's for you folks out there who like Pitchfork. I can respect that.
-For the sake of positivity, these posts should say why Allmusic is good, rather than why Pitchfork isn't really.

To justify myself of those decisions, these posts will be uploaded soon:

-A rant trashing the Rolling Stones
-A post concerning Allmusic

For the following respective reasons:

-As you might have noticed, it feels good to rant
-Because they deserve to be mentioned before Pitchfork on more than just Wikipedia

 Until then, do the same things you used to do before. Just listen to music at the same time. And try to make your own mind about it.

JNCT

...

The Principle Of Maximum Confusion

On this beautiful sunny day were I should be outside enjoying the fresh air, I have decided to sit at my desk and stare at my computer for a while. For my defense, my window's open and I do have a nice view, so all is not lost.

In any event, this early Spring weather somehow made me think of Mclusky.

Mclusky: 

"Mcluskyism: A Sides"
Too Pure Records, 2006

Mclusky...

Let's put it this way: If you have ever craved something agressive, yet that retains enough melody to not just sound like a record of bacon frying, Mclusky will satisfy that. And so much more.

Making nonsensical shouted/yelled lyrics ("We take more drugs than a touareg funk band"? Really?) meet with gnarly guitars and awesome pop hooks, this compilation of A sides from the three Welsh men that make up Mclusky is quite glorious.

Starting with the 1 minute and 12 seconds Joy, this record is clear as to what its going to offer you: not necessarily joy, but badly distorted guitars, drum and bass playing a skeletal version of Ramones songs with some of the greatest lyrics ever written being harshly thrown at you. However, saying that Mclusky is about noise is about as wrong as saying that AC/DC is a metal band. Underneath all the yelling and the constant sonic attack, these guys have come up with some of the greatest melodic hooks I've heard in a while, some maxed-out version of the Strokes if they had decided be a punk band and were a tad more into the Monty Pythons.

Highlights in this album are numerous, and will provide some awesome (albeit confusing for people not familiar with Mclusky's oeuvre) material for late-night street drunk singing. Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues should be the Blitzkrieg Bop of the 00's, powerful, noisy, catchy: 110 seconds of blissful agression that will leave your neck hurting and your throat oh how very happily soar.

To Hell With Good Intentions will act as an evil little brother to the previous song: slower tempo, which allow an understanding of the words being thrown at you. Watch out though: the lyrics don't make more sense than in the previous songs. Still, you will more than gladly yelp them loudly when the opportunity arises.

Alan Is A Cowboy Killer, following those two songs (pretty evil trio there) distills drops of calmness in the ocean of glorious cheap distortion that is Mclusky. That's only to surprise you even more when yelling comes back, convincing you that Alan indeed is a cowboy killer.

All the other songs also are worth your utmost attention. Mclusky gives faith in this dark (even though today is still sunny) musical era, because Mcluskyism proves that you can still make original music today without being too proficient technically or technologically. Kick the computer out, plug that damn thing in, turn it to 11 and play (that Mclusky doesn't get the recognition it deserved, and still deserves (even thought the band has sadly broken up), is what's wrong).

-Note to Invading Aliens: Avoid This Town Like This Town Avoided Us

-Note to self: Be A Wreck By Half Past Ten. Be Strong. Be Proud. Be Able. Be Charmed.

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Allmusic Review (4.5/5, AMG album Pick) 

Pitchfork Review (8.4/10) 

Drowned In Sound Review - Couldn't agree more with the last paragraph

Victorian Squid Music Review + Good Ol' Links

In a world were musicians would get what they deserve, Mcluskyism would be a religion.


JNCT


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The utensil for a hole in the ground

What is Pitchfork worth?

Probably not much. Sure, I'll try reading whatever they throw at me, but that's mostly because I'll already have looked at anything new on Allmusic, went through all the usual blogs and spent a while looking at babies with laser eyes, dogs with glasses and allmighty xkcd, but still didn't want to work.

A secondary reason to check Pitchfork is that they have a web designer that kind of knows what he's doing. Some organization decision are arguable, but my general impression is that it's probably the music review website that's the most nicely done. Not great, but compared to some other websites with god-awful loading times or murkiness, I can live with it.

No, mostly, the best argument for Pitchfork is Mark Richardson, their managing editor. So what if he gave a 9.6 to Merriweather Post Pavillion, his Resonant Frequency column keeps on making very interesting points, if not making my head explode in awe. I don't necessarily agree with him or share his music tastes (very far from that), which moves him from the status of interesting to fiendishly wicked journalist.
Anyways, stop reading my boring opinion and make your own mind about Richardson:

Resonant Frequency

A good one

Mr. Richardson's Blog

Remember the Lion? He -would- like an ice cream.

JNCT

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Sundown In The New Arcade (Milky Way Echo)

Sinoia Caves 

"The Enchanter Persuaded"
2006, Brah Records (Jagjaguwar)

The place I'm writing this post from is far, far too bright.

The Caves' music is meant to be listened in a dark place. Not pitch black, no, rather a room faintly illuminated by a computer screen or a muted TV. If I were the kind of person who spent his primary school years playing strategy computer games, I'd say this music is the best soundtrack to an epic college dorm room nostalgia-induced Age Of Empires II all nighter. Since that's not me, I'll just stick to saying that "The Enchanter Persuaded" is an album with quite ethereal qualities (...).

Assembled by Black Mountain's own bleeps'n'swooshes master Jeremy Schmidt, this CD (...please issue a vinyl version... ) is obviously separated into 2 types of songs: long, layered, lethargic Klaus Schulze style galactic vagabonding, and shorter pieces that actually have time signatures. Both will satisfy the Virgin-era Tangerine Dream/10,000 Hz Legend Air fans willing to make their ears feel lost on either an infinite foggy plain or in a dense, ancient forest in the springtime (think Lord of the Rings Ent territory). Combined, these 50 minutes of music will probably make you imagine weird things. Awesome Weird things.

Of course, this 2006 album is pure revivalism (although I've never heard someone actually make music that reminded me of Age of Empires), and references will be obvious to anyone familiar with, say,  early 70's German electronics or any other obscure niche of moody synthesized music. Those people should still consider giving the Sinoia Caves a chance, because Schmidt's tribute to the aforementioned golden era masters is an interesting and summarizing one. For the same reasons, it'll serve as a perfect introduction for the ones not yet familiar with the world of rhythm-less electronic music.

In a few words, The Enchanter Persuaded is up there with Tangerine Dream's Ricochet, and even if it might not be equally good or innovative, it's honorable try: for that, Schmidt's efforts should be acknowledged.

As much as I would have liked to invent the post's title, it's actually the fifth track's name. 



Yogradius' Review
Dusted Magazine's review
Allmusic Sinoia Caves page (no review)

JNCT

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