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December 19, 2004
What is a DJ if He Can't Scratch?
What is an MC if he can't rap?
And what is a blogger if he doesn't bloody well write something now and again?
Excuses abound, especially when one has two jobs plus one of the greatest volunteer gigs around, is trying to finish an academic article, &tc., &tc. But there is no time for that now, it is Sunday afternoon and records call.
Finally broke the shrinkwrap on the Get Back!/Earmark reissue of The Au Pairs' "Sense and Sensuality" only to find that it's been radically re-mixed, dumped into Pro Tools and had its "80s-ness" digitally removed (like that won't sound just as dated 15+ years from now). Thanks, guys, and I do mean guys, as the conspicuous absence of contribution from the female half of the band in the liner notes and the remixing process adds to the impression that this reissue affair was largely a "boys in the studio with their new toys" kind of thing, kind of an odd note to end on for a band so concerned with gender politics and specifically male control/influence.
Given that, it still sounds pretty good, crisp, rhythmic. Still, I am a staunch opponent to the kind of revisionism that leads drummer Pete Hammond to gush about removing the electro-'80s sheen from his drum sound. The challenge, as it seems to me, is to create a noteworthy and "timeless" (whatever that means) work of art in spite of the temporal limitations and inclinations of whatever time period you happened to create it, not to remove your generation's worst excesses post facto. Could you imagine de-producing Unknown Pleasures this way?
In other news, loads of grimey bidness making its way over to Oakland courtesy of the newly revamped Juno and the pick of the lot is without a doubt John E. Cash's "Hating Shit MCs". Amazing title aside, what really hits about this 12" is its weird sped-up vocalisms, which had me thinking I was playing it at the wrong speed the first time 'round. In all seriousness, you may be interested to know that Alvin the Chipmunk is seriously tired of all the wack MCs clogging up the area, and from the sound of things is about ready to do something quite nasty about it.
Also recommended from the gutter garridge stash is the Run the Road sampler (when's it coming out here, mate?), esp. Wonder feat. Plan B, "Cap Black," in which they use the track to hawk its ringtone, will the wonders of hypercapitalism ever cease? Loads more stuff, too, although I must admit I'm a little frightened to crack open the Grime 2 comp., how can there be such a massive difference between that kind of "grime" and the MC-driven stuff? It really is like two totally separate scenes.
(Turns out I'm a bit late to the game as I'm as behind on my blog reading as I am on my listening. Simon Reynolds busts neologistics on the dichotomy here. Hello, Grimm!)
In the ambivalent department, we have Ulrich Schnauss' A Strangely Isolated Place. One of the many musical weaknesses here at Head Gone Astray would have to be, without a doubt, an alarming tendency to buy, sound unheard, any record compared favorably to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, or any shoegazing band. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson after Mogwai, and I did, to a certain extent, but every once in a while I go and fall for it again, (cf. another operator in Schnauss' general scene, Guitar) so here I am again, despite the fact that I really did sing along to the tune of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (there was also a song that sounded a lot like "Where The Streets Have No Name") while watching one of Ulrich's songs at some sort of Pelicanneck/Boomkat/CCO thing at the Contact Theatre in Manchester. Thing is, it ain't half bad. It suffers from the same post-rock, indietronica aversion to songs and things like, you know, vocals, that tend to go with that (though fair's fair, there are one or two vocal tracks on there), but it does get the mood of something like Souvlaki pretty much down, instead of just being a car crash of effects pedals/DSP plugins with a vaguely rock beat holding it down (M83, I'm lookin' at you). Afterwards, I threw on a Donna Regina album only to find the exact opposite problem, plenty of songs, no mood. Funny, innit?
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Posted by Andrew at 2:24 PM | Comments (0)
December 5, 2004
Nostalgia for a past I never really had
Been listening a lot lately to the old Airspace compilations lately (yeah, I've got a bit of a backlog) and it kind of surprises me how consistently good they are, and this is coming from someone who's spent a pretty good chunk of the last eight years listening to this kind of post-C86 indie pop type stuff. Sure, all the names are there, Field Mice, Flatmates, Darling Buds, Mousefolk, etc. but the songs are really good, almost all of them not the usual compilation throwaway fare.
Another thing I really miss is the social/political bent of so many of the compilations of that era; Calling at Duke Street, Becket House, Airspace I & II, heck, even Fortune Cookie Prize, if you want to avoid being entirely Anglo-centric. At this relatively dire point in history for progressive politics, why are there relatively few indie type benefit compilations, or even expressly political singles a la "Defy the Law"?
Is it because the economics of making records independently have gotten even tighter than they were 18 years ago? Is it because this is not only true, but also (as I curmudgeonly suspect) the music isn't as good these days (even less chance of selling) and furthermore, bands these days try to avoid being explicitly political (definitely a point for discussion in the future; are musicians (in the U.S. at least) avoiding explicitly political statements like a Democrat shying away from the "liberal" tag pinned on him/her by a Republican opponent? Or is it simply not "cool" to make such statements?). The only counterexample that comes to mind is the McSweeney's Future Soundtrack for America, but I can't help feeling that relying on a lit. journal's newfound political awareness to inject some social conscience into the musical arena emphasizes, rather than detracts from my point.
Plus, Blink-182 is no Benny Profane, you know what I mean? (Although props Elliott Smith for the song title "A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free," that's what I'm talking about!)
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Posted by Andrew at 1:10 PM | Comments (0)