Introducing Ron Hardly, whom several of you already know as Nattymari. Paying homage both in name and in primal, hammering house track(s) to Chicago house DJ, Ron Hardy, The House Sound of Chicago is 5 tracks(x) worth of old fashioned, bare bones, strobelit, straight-up house.

Briefly, Ron Hardy was one the founding fathers of house music, taking over The Warehouse after Frankie Knuckles left in 1982(!). (Just to give you some idea how far back house goes… Back far enough that Hardy made his own reel-to-reel edits and then, you know, played them back on a reel-to-reel as part of the mix. He also was one of the first DJs to seriously fuck with the EQs when DJing, bottoming out the bass to drown the high end or dropping the low end to ride the treble. And he devised his own method of playing records backwards, which involved rotating the needle upside down and dropping the wax on a cylinder that allowed the record to rest on the needle. So, shove that in yer noise-hole, everybody who’s ever said “DJs just play other peoples’ records. I don’t see what the big deal is.”)

To set the scene for Ron HardLy’s work, here’s the original Ron Hardly behind the decks (including the inverted one) and reel-to-reel working his magic. (The reversal happens at the 3:20 mark).

…
And here’s one more, which leads off with the mechanized, minimal banging that we’ll see tribute being paid to below:

…
Back to Ron “Nattymari/CurtCrackrach/NetNanny4.0/theaGitator/toomanytolist” Hardly.

The title says it all. Hardly gives off the same sweat-pouring-down-the-walls vibe that Hardy exuded during his sets, relying on a mixture of deep, soulful house and brutal, simplistic beats, the latter of which is sometimes dismissed by critics as “track-y.” As in, more a “DJ tool” than an actual “song.”

The pioneers of house, however, had their hands full producing even simplistic, “track-y” shit. Early drum machines were anything but precise, requiring the operator’s full attention to crank out anything resembling an unwavering 4/4 beat. Cobbling together a rudimentary drum track often meant several hours of dicking with presets and hoping nothing would wobble out of alignment.

Case in point: DJ Sneak’s anecdote about the genesis of his classic house track You Can’t Hide from Your Bud:

“One day in 1997, Sneak promised his friend and fellow Chicago DJ Derrick Carter a new 12-inch for Carter’s label Classic, then spent hours fruitlessly laboring over a basic, bustling four-four beat. Finally, Sneak gave in and smoked the J he’d had stashed for later in the day. When he came back inside, he carelessly dropped the needle onto a Teddy Pendergrass LP, heard the word “Well . . . ,” and realized, “That’s the sample, right there.” He threaded Pendergrass’s 20-year-old disco hit “You Can’t Hide From Yourself” through a low-pass filter to give it the effect of going in and out of aural focus, creating one of the definitive Chicago house singles. “An hour later,” he says, “I called Derrick and played it over the phone: ‘I’ve got your track.’”

Nattymari/Ron Hardly has never been shy about his preference for music to work out “wrong,” so despite today’s handy toolboxes and their metronome-like precision, he’s paying homage to the “basic, bustling four-four beats,” the track-y result of dozens of man-hours.  And track-y or not, it makes the house move:

…
While the whole EP is worth a listen, the standouts are tracks 2-4, each one of them a simultaneous throwdown/throwback, enjoyable on their own terms, but even more so with a little history behind them. For an artist best know for destruction and distension of other peoples’ beats, it’s a bit of a blast to hear him deploy something at full speed.

Check out the full EP at Aural Sects. While you’re there, admire the fully stocked digital shelves and pick up something for the kids. (I recommend the Thoed Myndez, the Nattymari:Obliterated and the Aparition. This is not to disparage the other artists on the roster, but for every album I listen to on the back nine, another release [or two] has been uploaded to take its place. [OK, here's a couple more: DJ Deathray and the mammoth, 61-track Icepunk compilation.]

/s/CLT

You’ve gotta love it when a band you love covers a song you love, especially when the song covered is one of the prettier moments in a sprawling, inconsistent back catalog. Dinowalrus take on Psychic TV, one of the weirder groups to ever find itself lumped in with the industrial scene (mostly due to lead singer Genesis P. Orridge’s previous band: Throbbing Gristle).

Dinowalrus – Godstar.mp3

Godstar is an ode to former Rolling Stones’ guitarist Brian Jones. Why Psychic TV felt compelled to craft a sonic shrine to Jones is open to speculation (maybe it was the mutual appreciation of loads of drugs), but no matter the reasoning behind it, it was probably the closest Psychic TV got to pure, unadorned pop. And in Dinowalrus’ capable hands, it veers even closer, shimmering with a pristine brightness that belies the troubled subject of the song. (Brian’s doing lines with the angels now…) But the best thing about a cover like this is that it gets you looking into Psychic TV’s recorded output again. (That’s if you’re me. RESULTS ARE NOT TYPICAL.)

Along with about a million live albums, Psychic TV released several albums of near-industrial psychedelia. The oft cross-dressed P. Orridge never shied away from confrontation, controversy or following his muse down a few dead ends. Of all the cul-de-sacs Psychic TV ended up in, none was more inadvertently entertaining than its brief foray into acid house.

Two albums, Jack the Tab and Tekno Acid Beat were released as pseudonymous ”compilations.” Along with Towards Thee Infinite Beat and Beyond Thee Infinite Beat, these albums  saw PTV exploring Britain’s exploding club music scene. It was a misguided exploration, though, as Genesis came to the not-altogether-erroneous conclusion that the “acid” in “acid house” referred to LSD rather than the acidic tones of brutalized Roland TB-303 bass emulators. An easy mistake to make, especially if you’re a tourist. Drug use was not unheard of in the club scene (UNDERSTATEMENT), so perhaps the confusion was inevitable.

However, PTV’s two “acid house” albums went long on their slightly-off take on house music and were completely bereft of “acid,” not counting P. Orridge’s no doubt prodigious intake of LSD. So while these albums don’t stand up on their own merits (that being: acid house albums), they do stand up as a curiosity permanently relegated to the outside of the scene. In terms of PTV’s output, the Jack the Tab albums (along with the/Thee twin Infinite Beat follow-ups) are a driveby two-off (like a one-off, only with two albums dedicated to misunderstanding the scene). There’s a sort of a tuneful darkness to some of the tracks (Black Rain) and some naff house tracks (much of the remainder), but there’s also a few keepers.

Psychic TV – M.E.S.H. (Meet Every Situation Head-on).mp3

M.E.S.H. (Meet Every Situation Head-on) is the power of positive thinking as relayed by a drug-addled man in a full-length dress. Jigsaw has a nice minimal funk to it. But if there’s one song to keep from these albums, it’s Joy with its filtered and phased “J-O-Y” refrain and its filtered and phased everything else. Hardly danceable but also hardly anything but a dance track. You can dance to it, but your moves will have more in common with Ian Curtis’ near-epileptic movements (the only way to dance to Joy Division — see also PTV’s tribute to Ian Curtis, I.C. Water) than today’s raver staples (like that hand thing – if you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about).

BONUS OBSERVATION: Witch house impresario(s) and all-around mystery men Mater Suspiria Vision seem to be borrowing a page from PTV’s design manual. You can’t sell the brand without a logo. Compare the following two images:

A wonderful stroll down memory lane, as far as that goes. (About 700 words, it would appear.) But we’re here to talk about DINOWALRUS, are we not?!!? We are! So… let’s do exactly that.

A new memory lane.

If I’m not mistaken I was first pointed in the direction of Dinowalrus by ultra-fine music blog Waves at Night which, up until recently, sported a revolving set of background images that would occasionaly, without warning, fill your entire screen (other than what you were reading) with bare female nipples. The site is now much S’er for W and the quality of the music featured remains high, if a little disco-heavy.

The descriptor “drum and drone” caught my eye, as did the band name, an unlikely match of animals, the likes of which the world hadn’t seen since the underrated Cabin Boy, which featured a mythical Halfsharkalligatorhalfman.

Then there was the track title: Electric Car, Gas Guitar.

A very short internal conversation followed. “There’s no way we’re not listening to that!” Sounding pretty much like Hawkwind allowing Lemmy to make all the creative decisions, ECGG is an exhilarating sonic headbutt, not miles away from the muscular post-DFA1979 spacerockfunk of That Fucking Tank.

But the track that took me from fist-pumping rookie to fist-pumping acolyte was Mae Shi’s remix of Nuke Duke’Em, which dials back the speedometer a bit while applying plenty of low-end thump.

Dinowalrus – Nuke Duke’Em (Mae Shi Remix).mp3

Then, of course, there was Actually, the best Spiritualized song ever to not appear on a Spiritualized album (click through for some more CLT wordage).

On top of all this great music and stylistic shift, Dinowalrus is one of the better reads on Twitter (this feels like the most left-handed compliment of all, but I assure you, it is not), ranking right up there with That Fucking Tank (again) and HEALTH (some grains of salt and a strong stomach occasionally need with this last one), all three of which are lively and active enough to remind you that an ACTUAL FUCKING HUMAN BEING is running the Twit, rather than just some PR flack pressing “SPAM” repeatedly.

/s/CLT

I was given a copy of this album a few hours before its release by Revolving Door Records label head ƸC†OPL∆SM. It seems odd to say “given” considering the album is freely available at Bandcamp, with the emphasis on FREEly, but nonetheless I was given a few hours’ head start with the tunes. Of course, life being life, I was unable to take advantage of the advance copy, but here’s where I pay back that favor, but not before I head off on a bit of tangent.

There are a lot of netlabels and a lot of artists on those netlabels, all of whom seem to be generating hundreds of hours of music per year. At this point, my Facebook feed resembles a firehose of multicolored, symbol-laden, provocatively dressed avatars, each cranking out link after link to their stuff, their labelmates’ stuff, the stuff they listen to when not making music, the stuff they’re intending to remix/rap on/obliterate, etc. Just between ƸC†OPL∆SM (Sam Hatzaras), Nattymari (Dafydd McKaharay), Joe Royster ( Co-founder – Aural Sects netlabel; spf5Ø), Mike TXTBK, Matt Supa Solley (Sortahuman), Party Trash, Mikey Shad-do (Baku Shad-do netlabel) and the Amdiscs label, there’s more music being foisted upon the public than any one human being could reasonably be expected to listen to.

You know that old complaint about how piracy has taken away the incentive to create because nobody can make money with music anymore? Well, that’s obviously complete bullshit. This may mean those who were used to getting paid (back in the day) have lost the will, but sweet goddamn christ, it doesn’t seem to be slowing down anyone who’s been creating without the expectation of getting paid. If anything, this whole internet thing has turned them into some sort of compulsive creators and we, the people on the receiving end, are the beneficiaries of a leveled playing field, even if that means that we’ll constantly be swimming upstream against a torrent (or with torrents – piracy joke lol) of incoming music, knowing we’ll always be at least a foot under metaphoric water.

Go, just go and click this link for an example of what I’m talking about. This is the Aural Sects netlabel. Click on that link. I’m not even asking. DO IT. Click and gaze in wonderment at the almost-literal wall of album covers. Each of those represents, at the very least, two tracks to listen to. Many of those are full albums. Some are the internet equivalent of double albums. By the time you’ve finished gazing at that and reading this sentence, Royster and his conspirators will likely have uploaded another 15-track compilation and a couple of EPs and is, even as we “speak,” dumping the links into my Facebook firehose. (Abbreviated hereafter in this set of parentheses only as “FaceHose” for maximum comic effect.)

I wish all these guys (and girls) the best. Holy shit. They’re amazing. The counterargument (often delivered by the same people that think no one will create without incentives) is that if it’s for free and there’s that much of it, it must be about 90% shit. It’s a terrible argument, based more on leftover physical label elitism than on any, you know, research. Not only that, but this “counterargument” fails to take into account a little thing called “subjectivity.” One person’s 90% shit is another person’s 90% gold. Even if it is 90% shit (and it definitely isn’t), at the prices they’re charging, you can afford to bin 9 out 10 songs. You’re not going to be out of much, if anything, other than time.

That’s where I hit the wall: time. There’s no way to keep up with it all. I’ve downloaded several albums, dumped them into the mp3 player and am now making my way through them at my own pace, which is roughly 1/100th of the speed that it’s being generated. There’s some amazing stuff, some merely good stuff, a lot of average stuff and a few absolute clunkers. But all that statement means is that it’s exactly like any other genre distributed in any other fashion. Just because there’s no limited edition vinyl and radio airplay and etc. does not mean the quality of the music is any more or any less than anything else out there. The ratio of bad-to-good is no different with these netlabels as it is with other, more “acceptable” labes, whether it’s Fat Possum or Sub Pop or 4AD or Sony.

So, you have this constant onslaught of NEW STUFF.  And if you’re going to deal with it, you going to need some filters. I’m one. Other blogs are. I’m a clogged filter though, time having filled most of the holes with two jobs, a house and a family to take care of. Consequently, there’s a backlog of dozens (quite possibly hundreds) of songs I want to write about and even more albums that I’d like to review, all trapped in my filter, unable to make it further in my position as your filter. If I could limit myself to 30 words and a something-out-of-5 rating system, I might be making some progress. But when I like something, I want people to know why I like it. And if that’s not enough, I want people to understand the how of why I like it, if that makes sense, which takes even more time, because there will be pictures and links and digressions and inside jokes.

This is how I do it. “Be a music writer. It’ll be easy. You like music, right? The shit practically writes itself and there’s plenty of music out there. Easy. LOLOLOLOL. [Laughter trails off leaving only an uncomfortably manic gleam in my eye as it watches my FB wall fill up YET AGAIN.]“

But, getting back to the recommended album at hand. I was specifically given this to listen to. I had some time free up and I listened. And I was blown away.

I’m not sure why I expected less. Maybe it’s the numbing effect of running into a scrolling wall of creative effort every time I log into the Feeb. Maybe it’s the fact that between Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Youtube, these artists I’m in contact with are adding to their CVs pretty much around the clock and while they’re keeping the hose going, I can only dip in periodically and hope to come up with a winner. Maybe it’s the feeling that, while I expected it to be a good listen based on the pedigree (thus making it full of Things I Like), I didn’t expect it to be as great as it is.

Keep in mind: without Hatzaras singling me out, it would have been caught up in the firehose/loop that I’m praising/complaining about at great length. It would have scrolled by and fallen off the radar, ending up far away from my ears. Which would have been a real shame, because it’s a solid, inventive album that goes far beyond the scene that surrounds it.

The Cult of Mr. Light (Alexein P Oris and Phelyx Lambert) have crafted a stellar album and you don’t have to be tuned in to witch house, drag, icepunk, seapunk, juke, or any of a million other microgenres (each one full of unstoppable creative bastards, all attaching their own feed lines to my INCOMING FB scroll) to enjoy it. You just have to like music.

It’s essentially genre-less. Electronica, except with huge doses of acoustic guitar. Ambient, except with moments of tense propulsion. Industrial, except more prone to borrow from Italo-horror soundtracks and late-70s sci-fi-obsessed disco. It’s hardly everything to all people but it is definitely not for genre divisionists or electronica acolytes only.

Firing it up, I was hit with the first of many unexpectations: acoustic guitar. The reptilian brain recoils slightly, wondering a bit about whether this album might just be someone’s pretensions masquerading as music. (The “reptilian brain” is borrowed from someone, but I can’t remember who. P.J. O’Rourke? David Foster Wallace? Help me out here. [Use the comment thread.]) “I didn’t sign on for THIS.” I tuned down my internal dialogue and went browsing elsewhere as the track unfolded pleasantly before veering down a very dark alleyway in which lurked David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti, waiting to beat me up for my drug money and abuse me with violent sexual imagery. The reptile brain subsides.

And then thrills. Track 2, Phone Calls from God is straight up electronics, a 2-1/2 minute ominous set of oscillations, leading into another surprise left turn with Space Fanfare (see above), which finds the complementary tones of Italo-horror soundtracks and retro-futuristic space disco (Goblin vs. Gianni Rossi, basically).

Many, many more highlights follow. Neon Island is the sound of a waking dream. And not a good one. Hallucinogenic and eerie without having to resort to the cliché of doom-laden chords from the “heavy” end of the keyboard. Tribute to Glauber Rocha brings back the acoustic guitar, resulting in something almost pretty enough to play in mixed company, but still spiked with surface tension. Assassins is Middle Eastern pop falling apart on a faulty reel-to-reel, menaced by various electronic devices.

Then there’s Interzone, which really deserves a post of its own. Electronica-space-rock that scorches the earth while heading for the stars, sounding like Hawkwind with a headful of steam and a welcome sense of focus. Without resorting to a guitar-heavy sound, The Cult of Mr. Light manage to erect something that could very possibly kick out the jams, motherfuckers, if given a little shove. Or less profanely, the ultra-tight retrolectro sound of Giorgio Moroder producing Palermo Disko Machine under the influence of a fistful of amphetamines. I’ve played this one repeatedly and respectfully suggest you do the same.

The final track is an extended coda, surpassing the 10-minute mark without requiring you to a.) zone out or b.) muscle through it. There’s an underlying theme that never goes away, but does get fucked about with in a rather amiable fashion. It unwinds and recoils reflexively, circling itself and unveiling new twists every few minutes.

In summation: a fucking brilliant album and one that makes me wonder just how much other truly great shit I’m missing by being unable to keep up with my FB feed. Probably lots, if I’m honest. Which is my loss, and consequently, yours as well. But I’m trying. To everyone I pointed out way, way back in the introductory paragraphs, I’ll get to you. Really, I will. It may not be timely, but it will be… eventual… I guess. Go and download For A New Conception of Time. You won’t regret it.

/s/CLT

This post has been on the back-burner for awhile now. I originally planned to write this up more than a month ago, but when I dove back into it, certain links and references I was planning to use seemed to have just… disappeared.

I was first clued in to the existence of AIDS-3D via Wikipedia’s “Witch House” page. On returning (Wire ref, yo),  I found the skeletal remains of Wiki’s take on witch house and any references to AIDS-3D and their connection to the scene excised. That’s the first oddity.

So, veering away from that dead end, I decided to revisit their official website, aids-3d.com, where I had previously downloaded several of their freely distributed tracks. But that trail has gone cold as well. At some point during the last couple of months, the site went dead, leaving me with the dozen or so tracks I had helped myself to months ago, but not much else in the way useful information.

What remains on the web deals almost exclusively with their physical art projects. There is little to no information on their music.

Here’s what we do know: AIDS-3D is a two-man art collective composed of Americans Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas, both of whom now reside in Germany. In addition to the OMG Obelisk featured above, AIDS-3D has also done several other art installations, including one in which they re-purposed sneeze guards.

There’s also this video, which features a alightly different mix of Spreading Love All Over the World  (found below) as interpreted by a dancer. (The video itself is part of a Vimeo group called “NOS: Naked on Stage,” so keep that in mind if clicking thru at work.)

We also have a little information about the group’s charming name itself: AIDS-3D. Definitely a provocative combination, but charmingly enough, the algorithmic output generated by a piece of software used by brand consultants to develop brand names — in this case, the brand consultant was… Daniel Keller’s mom.

Dan’s mom, is a well-known brand consultant, and she helped develop the AIDS-3D trademark for us. She uses a fairly complicated computer program to develop ‘brand-idents’ for her clients. This program (I can’t remember the name of it), simulates suggestibility/response levels in various microdemographics using a huge amalgamation of data like google searches, brainwave scanning, credit reports, numerology, psychoanalytic statistics, etc. The program suggested AIDS-3D as a perfect fusion of our mutual interests in contemporary art, social activism and state-of-the-art technology.

Now, there seems to be no direct link between the pitch manipulations of AIDS-3D’s remix work and the DJ Screw emulations of several members of the witch house genre. The most probable explanation is that AIDS-3D performed these deconstructions on their own and witch housers found something they liked — a kindred set of tempo-fuckers and welcomed them unofficially into the fold, as a sort of after-the-fact association.  The dates listed on their former mp3 page (page is dead, but oddly enough, hosting still seems to alive [or archive.org does a much more thorough job than I thought] — most of the tracks are still downloadable) range from 2007-2009, putting them very slightly ahead of the witch house curve.

AIDS-3D still maintains an active Soundcloud page but the tracks featured there include none of the work that was archived at their now-dead website. One of their uploads is the improbably titled North Face® Winter 2012 Mens SmartPhone Demo, which is, in fact, none of the things listed in the name. It’s a mixtape that flows like a DJ set played on the world’s shittiest set of belt drive turntables. The tempo shifts up and down, going from “walking underwater” speed to post-happy-hardcore 200 BPM freeform techno.

No attempt is made to “normalize” any of this set (bpm, vox, etc.), because, honestly, when you’re already this far beyond the “DJ set pale,” why even bother. It’s an experience that many would dismiss with the left-handed compliment “interesting,” if not bypassing niceties completely and dismissing it as “fucking annoying.” It is (“interesting”) and it isn’t (annoying). And it is definitely worth a listen. (It runs at 666.0 BPM, apparently):

…
Now that we’ve explored this dead end, let’s move on to the music I (apparently) salvaged from the defunct aids-3d.com, most of which was filed under the heading “11 Songs I Like More When I Slow Them Down.”

AIDS-3D – RushRush.mp3

Skyscrapers and ultraviolence, cruising at warp speed in a faux NYC, driving a faux sports car, looking for faux trouble, Radio Flashback cranked All The Way Up. “Rush rush get the yayo.” Cocaine makes the world go ’round.

AIDS-3D takes one of my favorite tracks from the Grand Theft Auto III soundtrack and sedates the hell out of it. Throwing the brakes on Blondie’s ode to the Drug of the Eighties, AIDS-3D turns Rush Rush into the zombified shuffle of a burnout. It still retains some of its reckless cheerfulness, but the pitch-shifting turns the vocals into the time-stands-still molasses drip of forced withdrawal (and takes them right up to the edge of farcical “Techno Vocals.”)

AIDS-3D – Spreading Love All Over the World (Moore’s Law Remix).mp3

There’s a bit of a nerdy joke contained within this track. Familiarity with the law itself is a bonus as it explains AIDS-3D’s insistence on spinning the dials to infinity, taking the bpm from “casual stroll” to “Six Million Dollar Man.” Not completely unprecedented (see also: Moby’s Thousand) but still enjoyable.

Much like blogging, fucking with electronics to build yourself an in-joke is its own reward: the joy of expression that is (mostly) undeterred by a lack of attention. “If nothing else, I’m amusing myself.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

AIDS-3D – Girl

AIDS-3D takes on Suicide’s Girl because musical antagonists make the best music, especially when combined. Confrontational minimalists Suicide get confronted by transplanted Germans with a knack for running the pitch well below zero. Alan Vega’s gasps, moans and half-croon/half-choke vocals take on even more weight as they’re dialed back into hellish invocation territory. At 11 minutes, this one might run a bit long, but that’s the way AIDS-3D rolls, but rest assured, it doesn’t seem anywhere near that long, perhaps do to the fact that the audio drops completely out around the 6-minute mark.

AIDS-3D – I Just Wanna Fuck.mp3

If several minutes of a remixed Suicide threnody is too much for you, why not unwind with whoever the fuck this is being unwound even further by AIDS-3D? Nothing fancy going on here. Just a screwed loop repeating over some beats that make click tracks look positively ostentatious. Again, not for everyone, but it does hold a bit of brutalist allure. Turn it up loud enough and you’ll hear some unexpected guitar strumming kick in about halfway through.

AIDS-3D – ZOMBIE.mp3

We’ll leave on a relatively high note. AIDS-3D takes on Zombie Nation’s colossal club hit Kernkraft 400. Oddly enough, the beat seems to pick up exactly where I Just Wanna Fuck left off, leading me to speculate that some of these tracks may have been part of a larger mix at one point.

Like every other track here, it’s nothing as simple as simply turning the dials to the left. Most of AIDS-3D’s reworks sound as if they’ve actually done their own drum programming, rather than just rely on the pitched-down tempo to do all the heavy rhythmic lifting.  If you’re interested in more, well… I’m not sure what to tell you. Normally, I’d say something like “go to AIDS-3D’s site to pick up more” but all that would get you is your favorite browser’s impersonation of an Alzheimer’s patient. (Save yourself and your browser the embarrassment and sneak up on it via archive.org.)

If nothing else, AIDS-3D will continue on as an artistic entity, while their musical efforts will apparently be largely secondary. Travelling slightly ahead of witch house makes for some entertaining theories but beyond that all we’ve got is a chunk of speculation and a dead website. THESE THINGS HAPPEN. I’m going to keep poking around. If I find anything, I’ll be dropping it off here.

/s/CLT

[Featuring Yuck, Pink Mist, Sloan, Slowdive, Ivansxtc and Music for Headphones.]

And we’re back. See also: Part One, also known as the “Noisier Half,” (but not officially) as this second half will have some noisy parts as well. (But not quite as many as the first half. If this were a DJ set [please say you'll pretend it is], this would be the end of the night shift to downtempo tracks, warmer sounds and the excruciating realization that the fucking sun is up already???!!! Shit…)

Yuck – Rubber.mp3

If you haven’t a.) listened to Yuck and b.) lived through the college rock heyday of the late-80s/early-90s, then all I can say is I feel for you, man. (Or as the case may be, woman. Or just “dude.”) Yuck echo the altrock past without wallowing in nostalgia or simply aping their predecessors. This is full-bodied guitar rock, sans post-grunge pretension, sans pre-grunge cock-waving and sans the last vestiges of baggy Mancunian rock that seemed to drag its multicolored ass all the way up into the mid-nineties for no real reason other than to carry the dying hopes of the last A&R men on the bandwagon.

The guitar is front and center but not confrontational. The vocals take a schizophrenic approach, sometimes peeking over the top of the noise wall, other times allowing themselves to be dragged down by the sonic undertow. Tightrope walking on the delicate edge between noise and melody, Yuck channel everything you loved about early-nineties indie rock (and by “you,” I probably mean “me,” but play along) into a roiling storm of Sonic Youth-damaged chords and Jesus and Mary Chain-trademarked feedback. While Yuck may not wallow in nostalgia, feel free to do so yourself. (Most likely meaning “myself.”)

Pink Mist – Touchdown Kid.mp3

Some of you may recall Pink Mist from a rare period of prolificness over at the Other Blog (specifically, the Top 50 Tracks of 2010 feature). There’s not a ton of Hawaiian bands cranking out superb, shoegaze-esque rock. (Off the top of my head, I can think of only one: Pink Mist.) But crank out superb shoegaze they do. And Touchdown Kid is one of their best.

The first 45 seconds are a bit of a dodge, with sparse instrumentation delivering something edging towards the always-oxymoronic “acoustic rock.” But then the guitars kick in, reminding you that prime tropical real estate be damned, Pink Mist is here to make a bit of thunderous noise. It’s a melodic blare that encompasses the bleak lyrics (She gives me nothing for nothing), before tailing off into a quiet coda just past the last part of the chorus (I don’t know what is right anymore/Probably just go home and sleep on the floor). 2-1/2 minutes of quiet (and not so quiet) musical bliss. A concise charmer wearing its broken heart on its sleeve.

(Additional fun: while Pink Mist sounds like a short-lived Sprite flavor, its actual definition is markedly better/worse.)

Music for Headphones – Ich Bin Zang.mp3

They ain’t lying. While the right pair of finely appointed and nearly-justifiably expensive speakers (“Tell me you did NOT just set your drink on my Kilpsch.”) would no doubt give this track the ride of its young life, it really needs the opportunity to crawl entirely inside your skull in order to serve its purpose. Music for Headphones obviously know how to craft soundscapes and mini-opuses that pile layers on layers and sprawl casually across your frontal lobe with all the confidence of the slick con man who’s currently banging your sister young man who’s obviously playing a “long game” that should culminate in making her an honest woman.

There’s some Krautrocking going on amidst all the shoegazing, but MFH keeps things moving along as much as music containing both these elements can reasonably be expected to “move along.” (Yeah! Get off its back already! Can’t it just be itself for awhile?!?) Surprisingly defensive music writing aside, Ich Bin Zang stands on its own merits, among which include a.) some refreshing and airy vocals, b.) a propulsive Kraftwerkian bass/synth line, c.) a bit of organ (always welcome), d.) a rather lovely drop and build around the 5 minute mark, which gives the listener a head fake before heading into e.) a bit of a relaxing coda occasionally interrupted by scorching (but brief) blasts of guitar.

Ivansxtc – Yesterday.mp3

Copypasted  from here. My old post will have to do as nothing new has surfaced on who is behind Ivansxtc.

I may overuse “gorgeous” but that’s exactly what this is. Ivansxtc whips up a sonic daydream out of indescribable longing buoyed by repeatedly cresting waves of guitar crush and minor keys. Bears a solid resemblance to Peter Murphy taking My Bloody Valentine for a quick spin through the darker corners of 4AD’s catalog. Apparently, Ivan cuts his product with tears of quiet desperation.

Can’t be said much better than that, but let’s go ahead and throw some more references and superlatives in the general direction of this faceless, nameless entity.

Yesterday is the kind of track that a million bands with a million effects pedals would give their original drummer to be able to crank out. Yesterday is the kind of track that makes all other songs named Yesterday sound like the stuff cranked out by Open Mic Night contestants who couldn’t make it past the first round. This INCLUDES the Beatles, the epitome of songwriting, rockandroll, etc. according to millions of Beatles fans. I, for one, will be stuffing this track in my ear repeatedly, rather than listen to the tepid balladry of four British moptops, of whom half are dead and the other half are a.) self-righteously annoying (vegan edition) and b.) self-righteously annoying (no one ever took me seriously edition). I encourage you to do the same.

Sloan – What’s There To Decide?.mp3

After all the carefully controlled mayhem of Part One (and parts of Part Two), it’s time to sit back and let the waves of sound gently wash over our body like the tide curling over a corpse left too close the shoreline. Or feel free to imagine something more pleasant, like a kitten laying on a warm blanket in the sun, lazily looking over at the corpse of its owner and wondering at what point it can move on from grieving the lack of food in its bowl and start eating the body lying awkwardly on the floor.

This track is from Sloan’s debut, which appeared roughly a lifetime ago (1992, to be exact), the product of some inventive Nova Scotians who went on to do bigger and better things, drawing comparisons to the Beatles and such as well as forming one of the most well-behaved and fiercely loyal fanbases in music history. But this is from Sloan’s audacious first album, which featured several shoegazey/indie rocking tracks led by cheerful rushes of distorted guitar and some rather amazing harmonizing. While probably not the saddest song recorded (perhaps due to the band members’ aversion to mid-career suicide), it is still one of the saddest songs ever recorded by Nova Scotians.

Easy to sing along with and filled with inviting tones that offset the at-arm’s-length detachment of the lyrics. Dying on the inside is never pretty but it sure makes for some achingly beautiful music.

Slowdive – Dagger.mp3

You know that feeling that comes from knowing you’ll keep hurting someone as long as you’re with them? Not the much more fun “I’m bad for you, but in a good way” feeling that leads to amusing misadventures like having a quickie in the broom closet at church or renting a convertible and going on a cross-country killing spree. None of that. This would be the feeling that expresses itself more quietly, through long painful silences punctuated by slammed doors, truncated late night phone calls and, every once in awhile, a suicide-homicide.

Slowdive know that feeling (the second one) and have expressed it in a very spacious but restrained way, allowing the vocals to rise to meet the instrumentation. It’s all aches and pains of the heart/soul variety, impossible to precisely locate, but overwhelmingly present all the same. The singer implicates himself over and over (“And me, I am your dagger/You know I am your wound“) but is unable to change a thing, because That’s Just How These Things Go Sometimes. I’m bad for you and you’re worse for/because of me. I’d change everything if I could but I can’t because I can’t actually change anything. Mutually assured self-destruction makes for some very pretty music.

[For more "I hurt everything I love" music, see also: the afore-mentioned Sloan's I Am the Cancer which I will what-the-fuck-why-not just go ahead and embed directly below, because that's how the internet works, people. Show. Don't tell.]

Follow the link below for the entire Eyes on the Floor set contained in one zip file. In addition to some COMPLETELY OBJECTIVELY AWESOME cover art, you’ll find three (3) bonus tracks appended. [Mogwai’s spacious remix of Yuck’s Rubber, a more “plugged-in” version of Slowdive’s Dagger and, because you just can’t spell “shoegaze” without My Bloody Valentine, their cover of Wire’s Map Ref 41°N 93°W)

Eyes on the Floor

/s/CLT

[Featuring the Haiduks, BrthCtrl, Wood Owls, Weekend, TÅNK and Stellarium.]

…
Shoegaze is the genre that never really went away. The original scene got stuck in a recursive loop while the rest of alternative rock turned into something completely unrecognizable, populated by fitted ballcap-wearing aggressors with a tendency to abusive the dynamic shifts when not abusing rhyming dictionaries. As grunge rose, fell and was replaced by a succession of increasingly dull roars, shoegaze went into hibernation.

Now that all that unpleasantness is behind us, shoegaze (along with most of the 80s) has stepped back out into the sunlight, even if only metaphorically, as darkened venues are preferable to the harsh glare of unshielded UV rays when it comes to making layered noise. And what better way to celebrate this resurgence than a handpicked compilation of shoegazer tracks, curated by your host with no consideration given to whether these bands even claim the genre as their own or the fact that this “brand-new” resurgence has actually been going on for years.

Without further underselling, here’s the inaugural edition of Miscellaneous Themed Compilations, thrust upon you by your favorite underproductive music blog, Minor Scratches. Keep in mind that this is a 2-part post, and while there won’t be a quiz at the end, there will be door prizes. (Which include, and are limited to, a zip or rar of all the tracks and some handmade cover art.)

Haiduks – Use Up My Time.mp3

This must be what it sounds like in Kevin Shields’ head. All. The. Time. While otherwise normal people (who have never helmed a seminal band whose career culminated in a masterpiece (Loveless) that simultaneously set the bar unreachably high and devoured an entire label) would hear something tunefully fuzzy and a bit askew (like say, Sloan’s Lemonzinger), Kevin Shields, here embodied by the Haiduks, hears looped guitar chords suffering from intense vertigo.

In a word: askew. But pleasurably so. Disorienting but engaging, like taking a ride on a sonic Tilt-a-Whirl in need of repairs but otherwise not life-threatening. Or firing up a worn-out belt drive turntable, only with guitars and such.

BrthCtrl – Hiroshima.mp3

As long as our kilter is still a bit off, let’s head into something else delightfully noisy and prone to lurching around like Grandpa in search of some more MD 20/20. This track is so extremely rare that even Writer Mike himself has probably never heard it and I’m pretty sure he’s heard everything that was recorded between 1930 and earlier this afternoon.

BrthCtrl is the (mostly) unrealized, unreleased side project of home crowd favorite rraaiillss, itself a rather Jesus & Mary Chain-y, shoegazey effort. (Some day I’ll have to put together a list of “home crowd favorites” in some sort of order. And then maybe I can rotate them periodically, giving them each a shot as “Blog Mascot,” a title that comes with no prize money or additional accolades. It does, however, come with a fiercely loyal blogger whose lack of frequent updates tends to undermine the positive aspects of having such a blogger in your pocket.)

Unrealized or not, BrthCtrl rocketlurches from the gates with a monumental guitar swoon that seems on the verge of collapse any number of times, pitched to and fro like the drunken love child of MBV’s Only Shallow and Nirvana’s Radio Friendly Unit Shifter before the drums kick in and push it towards MBV’s Soon and most of JAMC’s Honey’s Dead. In other words, great stuff delivered guilelessly by a master craftsman and exclusive as fuck to boot.

Wood Owls – Breathless.mp3

Ah, this is nice. A refreshing blast of blasting. Well, in all honesty, it’s probably not “nice” but it certainly is bracing. In order for it to be “nice,” your definition of “nice” would have to be as flexible as my definition of “shoegaze.” This verges on No Wave (No Gaze?) in its single-minded pursuit of noisy guitar anti-heroics.

If the Jesus & Mary Chain met My Bloody Valentine’s pre-Loveless EPs in your garage for a session that would result in your eviction from the Homeowners’ Association, it would sound like this. (But probably only after mastering. [If that even happened. This sounds like 1985 opened a wormhole and shoved this through. Right into your garage. Weird. Try not to drop anything useful in there...] Before any sort of ultra-rough mastering, it would probably sound like this [starting about 5:50]:

…
So… basically the Wood Owls sound like your Marshall stack invited all the amps it knew to a party in the local bomb shelter WITHOUT TELLING YOU and you only found out because the goddamn bay windows buzzed right the fuck out the frames and collapsed on the ground to the accompanying sound of your voicemail filling up with increasingly profane noise complaints.)

Weekend – Coma Summer.mp3

What’s that about a “life worth living?” Pish and of course Posh. Weekend have brought the noise and are shaking things loose from your skull, waking you up just to tell you that they’re going to sleep for a long, long time.

I awoke from a coma summer.

Sometimes life’s what you make of it and sometimes it’s the parts that pass you by that affect you the most. Let’s sleep it off. Good luck sleeping, though! Oh, sure. It starts quietly enough. The drums kick in and there’s not much more than forward motion for a short while. But then the feedback kicks in, riding alongside a guitar set to “squall” and the pace never lets up, belying the inactivity of the title, but by no means suggesting that Life Is Being Made. You’re going for a ride and Weekend’s in the driver’s seat. We may not end up anywhere but at least we’re moving, am I right?

The guitar heat raises prickly bands of sweat on the back of your neck, perfect for dirt collecting during summer in the city. The feedback arcs and dives but never completely goes away. Fever dream music for the masses.

TÅNK – Des Oeufs (Les Manifestants ont Lancés).mp3

French one-man-band Christophe Mevel (a.k.a. TÅNK) isn’t normally associated with the shoegazer genre per se, but given the liberties I’m willing to take when arguing from the ear of the beholder (and doing battle with a variety of incomplete metaphors), we’re finding him grouped here despite his more Krautrockian leanings. Sure, this track may edge closer to space than to the introverted gauze of The ‘Gaze, but the necessary signposts are there. Manipulated guitars straining at the leads, surging on the backs of a theoretical “shitload” of effects pedals. Drumwork that propels, underpins and otherwise sets the pace (and the controls) to the heart of the sun while the surrounding swirl renders the rhythm section’s best intentions worthless – an enveloping fog that makes directional sense completely theoretical and as least as accurate as the old guy at the gas station who reeks of distilled Aqua Net and a lifetime of regrets.

Still, you’ll feel a bit more thump than shoegazing is accustomed to, but don’t worry, we won’t suddenly be taking a left into Germany’s idea of what rock should sound like if it’s not being played by The Scorpions. Instead, we’ll take a pulsing meander into the spacier side of shoegaze, which is at least as enjoyable as it sounds. And as to what exactly a “pulsing meander” sounds like? Two options: a.) TÅNK and b.) someone reaching the end of their mental thesaurus.

Stellarium – Tomorrow’s Monday.mp3

This track is a bargain. Introspective and downcast in the front, pure sonic overdrive in the back, like a wallflower at the dance that springs to elbow-throwing life when the DJ throws MC5 on the turntables. Suddenly, caution is thrown to the wind like so many journals full of overwrought poetry onto the bonfire. Maybe it’s not a party in the true high school drunkfest sense of the word, but it is definitely a Happening.

Going from bruised to bruising about halfway through, Stellarium flex their tonal muscles, which is never just mindless bulk, but rather just “cut” and “ripped,” like an aural Brad Pitt in Fight Club (or an Iggy Pop anytime). [Speaking of which, there is something a tad bit Stooge-ish in the blown-out swagger out the second half of the track...] Lithe but strong enough to make you feel that punch for the next several weeks. The build is as important as the release, setting you up for a series of uppercuts by lulling you into dropping your guard.

That’s it for this session. Part Two is on the way, featuring some more hazy instrumentation and effects pedaling, as well as a (probably) welcome shift in tone and tempo. (I originally typed that in as “shit in tone and tempo” and was EXTREMELY tempted to leave it that way. Now that you’ve been inside my head for a moment, allow me to gesture vaguely at the exits here, here and here. Feel free to drop back in any time. The door is always open. Or missing completely…)

EYES ON THE FLOOR: PART TWO

/s/CLT

[Parts of this post originally appeared over at Lost in the S0und. I had a lot more to say about the subject at hand but felt it might be a little rude to use ALL THE WORDS at someone else's place. This being the home turf, I have no problem whatsoever with going long. Enjoy(?)]

…
Without juxtaposition, a mashup is nothing.

There has to be some sort of A+B tension in order to pull it off. If you’ve got one hip hop artist rapping over another hip hop artist’s beats, you’ve got a mixtape, not a mashup. The trick is finding something complementary, yet unexpected.

There’s no real analogue for a mixtape in other forms of music. An aspiring singer could conceivably sing one song’s lyrics over another song’s melody, but if anyone has ever done that, I have yet to hear it. This is where the mashup artist steps in, freeing vocalists from the constraints of their chosen music and allowing them to wander into other genres.

The greater the juxtaposition, the better the mashup. (In most cases. There will always be exceptions or stuff that just doesn’t work.) Did you ever have the urge to hear Katy Perry fronting Joy Division? Of course you didn’t. Don’t even come in here with that bullshit. No one wants to hear this and yet someone (in this case, mashup artist Oki) heard something the rest of us didn’t and performed Frankenstein-esque dark art to give us what we clearly didn’t want, but find to be surprisingly listenable.

Oki – Means to a Firework (Katy Perry vs. Joy Division).mp3

Extreme juxtaposition allows fans from disparate genres to meet in the middle, if only to discuss how FUCKED this mix is and HOW DARE THEY, ETC. Mashup artists know this and go crate-digging with enthusiasm, looking for stuff that shouldn’t work but does. Rock icons are demystified. Graves are pissed on. Genre limitations are burnt to the ground and salted. Audacity is the name of the game and whatever can have a hook (lyrical/musical) hung on it, will have exactly that happen to it.

Audacity. Juxtaposition. The unhealthy urge to put incompatible parts together and coax them into cohesion.

Weakling has done exactly that: juxtaposition with an outsized serving of audacity.

I was minding my own business, browsing the “Remix” tag at Bandcamp when I ran into this. I won’t put you completely in my unguarded shoes, though, because I have no idea where you’re listening to this and who else might be listening alongside you, so here’s this disclaimer:

WARNING: The following mashup contains some language that most people would consider unsuitable. It’s not so much the words as it is the context. Proceed with caution (and headphones preferably, if at work).

…

The track starts out amiably enough, with Biggie’s flow playing nicely off the repeated tones. It’s not until you get to the “chorus” that you’ll run into trouble. And it’s trouble that starts with playful verbal gunshots and ends with ugly-ass ignorant hatred.

Hearing this unlikely (and possibly unlikeable) “collaboration” featuring Notorious B.I.G.’s “Sky’s The Limit”  paired up with samples and a reprehensible chorus courtesy of the equally reprehensible (and pseudonymous) Johnny Rebel*,one is tempted to ask themselves many questions, most prominently “Why?”

*If you’re wondering who or what a Johnny Rebel is, let me fill you in (follow the link above for even more info). Johnny Rebel is the alter ego of Cliff Trahan, a Cajun country musician who, during the tail-end of the desegregation fight in the South, decided (or was prompted) to write a string of singles celebrating bigotry. More (oh sweet jesus much much more) on him later in the piece (my god… it’s full of words).

This isn’t any normal mashup, aimed towards the fans of the rap (or fans of racism, for that matter). It’s not aimed at enterprising DJs looking to throw a curveball at the dancefloor or towards mashup fans in general. It’s not the sort of track that someone sends around to friends for their appraisal and appreciation.

No, this is the kind of mashup that puts a person in the uncomfortable position of listening to a blatant racist periodically spew hate (which pretty much makes it the only mashup in this category). When the chorus arrives in its horribly amiable fashion, it’s like being kicked simultaneously in the brain and soul. After getting sideswiped by Weakling’s tainted bootleg, we’re definitely different people than we were three minutes ago but we’re still no closer to answering “Why?”

Here’s a few theories:

• Juxtaposition as lulz
  Trolling mashup fans with an “oh shit he did not just do that” sample. Nothing but shock value for the sake of shock value. While the internet is full of this sort of thing (I’m looking at you /b/ [and then averting my eyes as quickly as... ohnogodno...]), it seems both a.) unlikely that someone would go through this sort of trouble simply for lulz (it reeks of effort) and b.) the KKK members in the photo sort of tip the hand (but not completely, or enough, apparently — I mean, I saw the hoodies and stuff but didn’t think anything of it until the chorus rolled in).

• Juxtaposition as statement (version 1)
  Black man trumps white fool. Biggie was big. And rich. J. Rebel is still some backwater cracker with a headful of bad wiring and an ignorant streak as long as the mighty Mississippi. Somewhat likely, especially considering that there’s very little crossover between NY gangsta rap fans and racist redneck Cajun country fans. Flipping the sonic bird to Rebel, hoping that this track comes up during his vanity searches via AOL (or whatever).

• Juxtaposition as statement (version 2 — with complications)
  Even slavery and racism can’t keep the black man down. Biggie rose from the hood to the top before his untimely death. Johnny Rebel lives on, all but forgotten. Of course, Rebel may be having the last laugh on this track, being of the mindset that the only good nigger is dead nigger. But it’s a hollow laugh. (Which is probably the only kind of laugh someone like Rebel possesses.)

• Juxtaposition as a tale of two clichés
  Black rapper. Violent, sexist, obsessed with money, drugs and power. White trash. Violent. Sexist. Racist. Obsessed with whites up and blacks down. Two forms of self-destructive ignorance. Crime pays vs. white bigotry.

• Juxtaposition as a much larger statement on rap, racism, inherent violence and various other notions
  Johnny Rebel’s chorus vocalizes gunshots as a casual threat to both blacks and the whites who treat them as equals. His “wop bop bam bam” acts as an eerie precursor to the casual celebration of violence (most often against other blacks) that drives mainstream rap. “Wop bop bam bam” is just a forerunner to M.I.A. triggering gunshot/cash register samples in “Paper Planes.” Offhand violence driven by cash enterprise/turf protection.Rebel runs on hate and perceived superiority. Rappers are far more nihilistic, gunning down others to gain property, money and respect. Who’s laughing now? The South fought against recognizing African-Americans as equals for as long as they could. Now, without having to put any effort into their hating, they can see the entire system (prisons, inner cities, the Drug War) working together to hand the brothers just enough rope to hang themselves. Wop. Bop. Bam. Bam.

• Juxtaposition as juxtaposition
  The “blackest” music ever vs. the “whitest” music ever. Who wins? No one. Or maybe everyone does, drawing their own conclusions and walking away a different person than they were three minutes ago.

Six theories, all of which could be completely wrong, and still plenty of headspace left over to craft half a dozen more. But rather than let this devolve further into Capitalist Lion Tamers’s Conspiracy Theory Generator and Overthinkery, why not just go right to the source?

Introducing the man behind the spiked (head)punch that is Biggie vs. Rebel, Weakling, who informed me that this track was originally part of bigger project entitled “South by South-west: 100 Years of Racial Tension in Music,” featuring various hip hop heroes rubbing sonic elbows with “bigoted white supremacist Nazi punk.” So, the kind of fun that can only be had by forcing people to play nice (via production magicks) who wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room together. (Or, more likely, someone in that room would be dead shortly thereafter):

CLT: Before we delve into this track and the concept behind it, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do when you’re not lacing mashups with toxic samples.

Weakling: I’m a front-end web designer/developer from Queensland. My job is my other passion to music. I’ve spent my whole life around computers which often makes me late for things.

As for this track itself, it’s quite the aural sucker-punch to lay on the average mashup fan. Speaking as one, we’ve come to expect some outrageous or hilarious juxtaposition (see also: Eminem vs. Lawrence Welk, Rage Against the Machine vs. Glenn Miller; Katy Perry vs. Joy Division) but are rarely (in fact, never in my experience) confronted with something as unexpectedly severe as this.

One minute you’re enjoying the masterful mix work, the next you’re trying to collect your jaw from the floor and your shattered brain from various places in your skull. It almost seems like the track should come with a disclaimer attached (as above). Was any part of the creation of this track motivated by a desire to “troll” mashup fans, particularly their tendency to enjoy hip hop more once it’s attached to music that’s “safer” or “whiter”?

Like the ones you listed, mashups are awesome when the tracks come from polar opposites. One of the first mashups I played live mixed Khia’s “My Neck My Back,” Alexisonfire, Public Enemy, Bolt Thrower, a Yo Gabba Gabba song and a bunch of others. I played it at a family-friendly open mic night and there were a few kids in the front row. It didn’t go down as well as I imagined but I had a really great time.

“Sky’s the Limit” was produced to be pretty tongue-in-cheek. I just liked the idea of getting two artists who would never, ever work with each other into a track, even if Biggie wasn’t dead. Mashup music is usually pretty fun with guys like Girl Talk and Yacht Club DJs playing party mixes. I kinda wanted to ruin that and make something a bit uneasy.

How did you come across Johnny Rebel’s music? As far as I can tell, it’s not the sort of thing you just stumble upon without either accidentally or purposefully straying into the uglier parts of the web.

You definitely have to dig deep to find stuff like Johnny Rebel. Movies like Romper Stomper and American History X brought my attention to nazi punk. One scene in American History X, the bigger guy is singing “The White Man Marches On” by Johnny Rebel in his truck and it stuck with me. I illegally downloaded one of his albums (I’m not going to fuel his music career) and listened to it for a few weeks non-stop.

What’s your take on hip hop today in general? (lyrics, production, etc.) Are you a fan? Who of? Who could you do without?

There are some awesome hip-hop acts floating around these days. Some of my favourites are Death Grips, Busdriver, Skepta, Die Antwoord, Army of the Pharaohs, dälek and Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire. I’m also a big fan of instrumental stuff like Burial, Nosaj Thing and Daedulus. I don’t get the huge fuss over OFWGKTA. They’re not bad – I saw them when they came to Brisbane last but I don’t get the hype.

The production on Death Grip’s “Ex-Military” opened my eyes. It sounds like it was recorded under someone’s house with a webcam but it really works.
… 

…
I find it interesting that the word “nigger” still holds so much power when spoken by someone who’s clearly a racist. From my own experience, I can listen to a hip hop artist use it 30 times in 4 minutes without it registering as anything heavier than a comma. But when Rebel’s voice breaks through with the chorus, it’s like suddenly being shoved off a cliff and falling into the ugly underbelly of America. For all the talk of “reclaiming” the word and robbing it of its power, hearing someone use the word with its original derogatory intention still hits hard. It exposes that subset of humanity that will never truly be gone: the hardcore racist.

And it’s not just that subset. There’s a strain that lays under the surface of everyday life. It’s not so much flat out racism as it is simple prejudice. On one of his albums, Chris Rock points this fact out: “There’s not a white person out there who would change places with me. And I’m rich!” It pretty much seems that being poor and white is still “better” than being rich and black. (Sorry. That’s not really a question. But feel free to add any commentary or just ignore my thinking out loud and head to the next question.)

I completely agree, great comment. The context Rebel uses the word in is so much more sinister and defamatory than any black rapper could. As a painfully white guy, I can’t even imagine uttering the word in public.

As an Australian, what’s your perception of racism in America? Does it seem to be a larger problem than Americans perceive it or is it mainly present in the outliers on the edges of normal society? Does Australia have the same problem (or perceived problem)?

I visited the US at the beginning of the year and every city seemed really multicultural and tolerant – race never seemed to be an issue. That’s just an outsider’s perspective though.

Until the 1970’s, Australia had what was called the White Australia Policy, basically an anti-immigration policy for everyone not white, Anglo-Saxon. Australia is an awesome country but there is still some deep, underlying racism in pockets but it’s kept on the down-low. I like to think each generation is ironing out these social problems though.

As for the unfinished project itself, are you attempting to make a larger statement than simply playing off the juxtaposition? I mean, basically, you’re creating a project with a very slim audience. It won’t appeal to hip hop fans, mashup fans or racists, which would leave you a mixture of the curious, the accidental listeners and people who like to think Big Thoughts about music. It’s kind of like announcing you’re going to hammer out an unfilmable screenplay.

You’re right, I can’t imagine the project has a big audience which is fine. It’s corny but everything I’ve released so far is for myself. Every track I’ve finished I’ve released online for free and plan to for all future tapes. I’m sure if I had some big, monetary investment in the project I’d think to make something more commercial but while I can make music in the comfort of home at any time of day/night, I’m going to make things that I like, regardless of who wants to hear it. As a designer, I work in commercial art and Weakling is an outlet for me to explore without thinking about how my work will sell.

Are you planning on trolling white power forums with links to the project? (Because you should absolutely do that…)

Haha, I wouldn’t even know where to start. Kkk.com? I just noticed Google suggests ‘White Powerade’ when you search ‘white power’. I’d better turn SafeSearch off and delve into the dark interweb.

Well, good luck with that (and let me know if you need help trolling). Thanks for your time.

[Check out Weakling at his blog, on Facebook and his artist page at Triple J Unearthed. And by all means, swing by Bandcamp and check out his other electronica, all of which is 100% Johnny Rebel-free and, as he said, costs you absolutely $0 to get ahold of.]

MORE ON JOHNNY REBEL & BIGOTRY (POSSIBLY A BONUS SECTION OF SORTS)

Well, you don’t run into someone like Johnny Rebel without wondering exactly how far down his personal rabbit hole goes. Before we start wading into the murky depths of casual racism, let’s get a look at the little fucker, shall we?

…
[Writer Mike has summarized his look as thus: "I bet the guy looks like an ineffectual nebbish." Dead on.]

Johnny Rebel is Cajun country singer Cliff Trahan’s “alter ego” (we’ll be dealing with plenty of semantic games during this piece, and this is just the beginning). He recorded a string of 10 singles under this name, sporting delightful titles like Nigger, Nigger, In Coon Town, Who Likes A Nigger?, and Nigger Hatin’ Me, all of which were deemed “too hot for the mainstream” (or whatever) and compiled as “For Segregationists Only,” presumably to cut down on returns from people searching for garden-variety, decidedly non-capitalized cracker music.

Despite this track record (a recording joke!), Trahan has gone on record as stating that he is not a racist, he “just doesn’t like niggers.” This racial-slur-as-evidence-of-lack-of-racism defense is a common self-delusion. I’ve actually heard this statement in real life (more than once). Supposedly there’s a difference between regular (“good”) blacks and niggers. Trahan’s nebulous defining line is based on “attitude,” as in niggers are blacks who walk around acting like everyone owes them something for decades of slavery. But it’s all good because Trahan knows and likes other blacks, having even worked with them in the studio while recording his segregationist album. Not only that, but not all blacks are niggers. Just “85%”of them. So basically 9 out 10.

(Closely related is the ever-popular “I’m not a racist, but…” with the remaining statement being clearly discriminatory. Much like Trahan, people using this pre-emptive defense are often racists, or at the very least, carrying around higher levels of bigotry than the average citizen who rarely begins a sentence on the defensive.)

It’s not an uncommon pseudo-defense of bigotry, but it is one that is definitely unique to whites speaking about blacks. I have never heard a version of this phrase applied to any other race, gender or culture. No one, to my knowledge, has ever said “I don’t hate Jews. I just don’t like kikes.” Or “I don’t hate Orientals. I just don’t like chinks.” The closest I’ve heard is explanations on the differences between gays and faggots. This is generally applied to (again) attitude and certain mannerisms.

[As a bit of a breather, let's throw this whole discussion into the blender and watch a Canadian gay man sort it all out...]

…
(This doesn’t include people who use the word “faggot” as a catch-all insult [most of any online multiplayer gaming community] or as a self-referential catchall word to be appended to their status [mainly 4chan, in which newbies are "newfags" and the knee-jerk appending of "fag" to everything has led to the redundant incongruity of gay members referring to themselves as "gayfags." That would require another few thousand words to unpack, and millions of words have already been expended in an attempt to unbox [as it were] the true intentions behind those using the word freely. Throwing my two cents in at this point would be like pouring an 8 oz glass of water into an Olympic-sized swimming pool and telling everybody how I helped “fill it up.”)

Listening to his interview with Howard Stern, one thing stands out. He seems like a halfway decent guy. I mean, yes, he’s the author of a string of bigoted singles but he doesn’t come across as someone filled with animosity towards the black race. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a piece of shit. It just means that he’s not in full “piece of shit” mode all the time.

Not only that, but he’s not a bad songwriter. If it wasn’t for the nasty, ignorant bile that passes for lyrics, some of these tracks would be downright hummable. For example, this one. (Careful with that — you may find yourself with it stuck in your head, and that’s pretty much the worst set of lyrics to have rattling around in your brain and attempting to escape your lips periodically.)

He comes across as generally amiable and doesn’t spend a lot of time attempting to justify what he’s done. But the few attempts he makes to justify these songs just don’t work.

…
First of all, there’s the claim that it was “just about the money.” While many people have done regrettable things for money, a small Southern label isn’t going to be throwing around the kind of money that shifts ideologies. Trahan claims to have made only around $5,000 from these singles, which isn’t exactly take-it-or-leave-it money, but it’s certainly not enough to persuade someone to crank out a collection of racially-charged tunes if their heart wasn’t already at least halfway in it.

…
He also claims these songs were “a product of the times,” specifically citing forced busing. While many people may have objections to this sort of forced desegregation, very few of them recorded a bunch of tracks loaded with non-specific hate directed at all “niggers,” which in the context of these tracks means all black people (there’s nothing in here pointing out the good, obedient Negroes). Piling up a bunch of wrongs and calling it “right” isn’t mathematically sound or even remotely credulous.

Moving a few decades on hasn’t healed any of Trahan’s wounds. He complains again and again [and again] in interviews about the “attitude” of these blacks who have earned his designation of “nigger.” He tries to brush off the singles as something from the past done for money, but his antipathy towards a majority of the black race hasn’t changed at all over the passing decades. If anything, he’s become more resentful over time.

Perhaps the only karmic satisfaction comes from the fact that Trahan/Rebel has been largely unable to capitalize monetarily on these singles. For the most part, bootleg versions and compilations swept together by unrelated “white labels” (and that’s a DJing/racism joke!) have cut him out of the royalty loop. (That’s if such a loop even existed – his accounts of the recording sessions make it sound like it was an upfront payment situation with no back end residuals.) Not that these albums would ever go platinum, but he does point out that originals are being sold for several times their face value on ebay.

Digging into Trahan’s recordings (and the sites that pay homage to him) is like picking at a scab. The wound is just under the surface, healing slowly. Racism and bigotry will never be completely eradicated and each legislative step towards this impossibility tends to make things worse rather than better, bringing with it new inequalities and a ton of backlash.

Proponents of changing human behavior through lawmaking unleash all sorts of unintended consequences and cling to idiotic buzzwords like “teaching tolerance.” To “tolerate” something is to suppress your true feelings while barely putting up with something. It’s not nearly the same thing as “acceptance,” which seems to be the goal, but even those pushing through legislation realize you can’t make anyone “accept” anything. So they settle for much, much less – asking people to give the appearance of acceptance under the guise of “tolerance.” Or else.

…
[A quick pause for some C&W meets Eazy-E, courtesy of DJ Topcat.]

DJ Topcat – Folsom Prison Gangstaz (Johnny Cash vs. Eazy-E).mp3

…

Racial relations are an ongoing problem in America and it’s not solely limited to whites. From my perspective is that racism is more prevalent than most whites* think it is but not nearly as omnipresent as self-appointed mouthpieces for various races imply it is after someone like Don Imus says something stupid. I think there’s an underlying tension that will never go away as long as “tolerance” is still preached rather than actual acceptance. There’s also a tendency for policy makers to overcorrect in an effort to make up for past injustices, which leads to backlash that makes the situation worse rather than better.

[*"Most whites" does not include those who wallow in "white guilt" and believe racism is mind-numblingly omnipresent, a trait found in nearly every white person around them, (except for fellow wallowers) and they're even beginning to have doubts about them. These are the type of people that make up entirely new words for genders, sexual orientations and entire cultures so as to avoid words that might possibly designate a certain trait about that demographic. They also tend to create things like "rape culture" out of thin air and proceed to label as many non-wallowers with it as possible, all the while peppering their blog posts and Facebook Shares with trigger warnings. Frankly, they're exhausting and hanging out with them is about as much fun as driving a rendering truck co-piloted by a talkative PETA staffer.

There's enough barely-hidden discrimination in the world that I can't find the energy to get worked up trying to protect everyone everywhere from possibly being offended/troubled by the use of common language. 

Example: trigger warnings for "Ableist language," found about halfway down the page. The language in question? The word "dumb" as used in the context of "Most video games are dumb." I'm really not sure the internet needs trigger warnings posted all over it. If so, then a simple stroll through Youtube comment threads would be enough to send anyone with the slightest condition into a recursive loop. I think people are generally tougher than the ultra-sensitive "protectors" give them credit. “Helicopter parenting” doesn't turn out children with coping skills or self-reliance. "Helicopter blogging" isn't doing anyone any favors, either.

I'm all for making the world a better place. I just don't think that granting millions of people instant (and permanent) victim status is the way to go about it.]

There’s probably no true yardstick for how much racism actually exists and realistically, there’s never going to be a 100% solution. Generational change is probably the most potent defense against bigotry, but it’s a long slow process filled with setbacks and detours. If nothing else, an occasional kick in the head that results in re-examination of the world around you is very definitely a good thing. As uncomfortable an experience as listening to Weakling’s “teaser” track for his (hopefully) upcoming mashup album, I’m looking forward to hearing the finished product. Racism and discrimination are unfortunate and unpleasant, but the worst thing we can do is coast through life conveniently forgetting it still exists. Tracks like Weakling’s “Sky’s the Limit” mashup bring it all back into focus by catching listeners when their guard is down. If this and the rest of his planned “concept” mashup album startle more people into thinking (and talking) [and writing] about these issues, I’m all for it.

/s/CLT

“I can’t stand to see a woman bleed from the mouth. It reminds me of country music, which I cannot abide.”

Linton Barwick, In the Loop

Country music. There are few genres out there that even people who use the vacuous phrase “I like all kinds of music” draw the line at. Country is one of them. Rap frequently joins that list. There are a few who exclude jazz. Various forms of techno sometimes get the nod, but not so much these days, with “EDM” having finally washed up on the US shore, 30 years after the fact.

Before we head off the rails into what exactly is wrong with country music, let’s take a moment to admire that quote, a product of Armando Iannuci’s fiendish mind. Iannucci, the profane genius behind the swearingest show on British television, The Thick of It, has scripted some of the most quotable lines never repeated in mixed company. (“Come the fuck in or fuck the fuck off.” “Useless as a marzipan dildo.”) This one, while lacking the usual f-bombs (and equally as frequent c-bombs), is devastatingly good.

[If you haven't checked out The Thick of It, you're missing out on some of the best paint-peeling dialogue ever to bleed through your TV speakers. Iannuci runs every script through a “swearing consultant” for maximum effect. Behold this mostly muffled "exchange" {and its sheepish "denouement"} and then head to the YouTube to check out the rest of the series.]

Country music, itself an almost self-consciously “rustic” form of music, is dismissed with a phrase just as rustic. Nobody “cannot abide” anything in this era. It’s obsolete vernacular being used to deride an art form whose purveyors frequently celebrate obsolescence. [And we'll continue on without mentioning the casual linkage of country music and domestic violence threaded blithely into the fabric of that quote...]

They still like old-fashioned things like high school sweethearts, marriage vows, decrepit pickup trucks, lite beer and flag-waving Americana. They pride themselves with having a minimum of education and a maximum of good ol’ boy/girl ”intangibles,” like being capable of drinking beer and raising hell. Various undertraveled areas of America are held up as paragons of virtue (the South, the backwoods, any place filled where people refer to themselves as “rednecks,” Texas [itself a country of its own]).

It’s a lyrical form of stasis. (The music keeps moving, but we’ll get to that later.) We like things the way they were before “progress” started moving people to the coasts, taking with them all manner of forward-thinking and culture and desegregation. Permanent nostalgia, delivered with a twang that defines them as “good people” — the kind that eat dinner at the table with the family and cut the sleeves off their denim shirts. The kind that won’t let a little thing like paraplegia or cancer stand in the way of living life. Very positive even in the most negative situations. The sort of thing that would be admirable if it hadn’t already become cliche.

[Quick break for something country-ish and tolerable, courtesy of mashupist KMT. Click through to his Bandcamp page to hear/download more.]

KMT – Jolene Is Mine (Dolly Parton vs. Jay-Z).mp3

As for the music itself, it continues to morph, grabbing whatever bits of crossover-ready rock and pop it can shake loose, devouring it all and regurgitating a bland paste that contains all of the attributes of the appropriated but none of ass-kicking (rock) or the earworming (pop). There has never been another musical format so intent on pandering to so many people at once. Any bit of risk-taking or originality is thrown out in favor of various Mutt Lange-isms. Layers and layers of polish are added until the only thing anyone can see is a shiny, distorted reflection of themselves.

Country gives you everything you want out of music, as long as what you want is just the highlights. There’s precious little anger, and what little there is tends to be of the “righteous” type, which is further limited by being mainly of the “self-righteous” type — which has more in common with patting yourself on the back for being so “emotional” than any ugly display of fury.

There’s no hate. There’s only God-like fully-justified vengeance. There’s no heartbreak. There’s only singers stating that their hearts are broken in smoothly assured tones, like a salesperson expressing his qualified dismay at your failure to add rust-proofing to the option list. My heart is broke (never broken), they declare, before telling you just how broken it is for the next verse-chorus-verse. It’s a few late nights, teary-eyed and sleepless. It’s never hours and days (and years) of bitterness, frustration and frequent indulgence of a psychotic overimagination.

Country music wants you to feel but it also wants you to be able to shift emotions in time for the next track. Right now, you’re wondering where she is. Now, you’re hoisting a bottle in the air, celebrating yourself for being in the company of such good, earthy people. Now you’re wandering down your own personal Memory Lane, as remembered by someone else using events that never actually happened.

It’s less an art form than an act of commerce. Music fans are used to commerce. After all, we have pop. Pop is commerce aimed at everything from the dancefloor to the bedroom. Country music presents itself as an Honest Music, but at this point, it’s more interested in spreading itself as thinly as it can in order to appeal to the widest base. It is, in fact, paper thin music.

[One more break: John Denver remixed by Database. Denver's music was also paper-thin and as wispy as a Carpenter, but at least he had the good sense to exit early rather than be co-opted into some fiscally-sound three-way with Lady Antebellum or whatever.]

John Denver – Sunshine on My Shoulders (Superpose Re-Edit).mp3

THREE EGREGIOUS EXAMPLES

Shania Twain – Any Song

I won’t speculate on the emotional validity of her marriage to superproducer Mutt Lange (who added layers of top-selling gloss to bands like Def Leppard, Nickelback and Foreigner), but it certainly didn’t hurt her career. Her “superproduced” albums proved that you no longer needed to drag an accomplice from outside the genre into the studio to create crossover appeal. You simply needed to create shiny pop things and then add in the bare minimum of genre indicators to secure the label “country.” It’s tempting to lay the blame for country’s current watered-down state at her feet, and so we shall, because resisting temptation is for do-gooding sons of bitches.

(Speaking of do-gooding sons-of-bitches, another indication of country’s overwrought inoffensiveness is the fact that many Christians who decry every other form of music [outside of "praise music"] as “glorifying Satan” are willing to welcome country music into the fold. I’m sure exceptions are made for songs that glorify drinking [and there's several of those], but otherwise country is just good clean fun.

Another indicator of its toothlessness is the fact that it’s the background music of choice at many businesses. The chance of offensive lyrics/unexpected noises is so low as to not even register. THIS IS WHY I HAVE HEARD MORE COUNTRY MUSIC THAN I’VE EVER WANTED TO, FAMILIARITY BREEDING NOXIOUS CONTEMPT LIKE SO MANY INBREEDING TWANGY RABBITS ON E.)

Billy Currington – People Are Crazy

There’s nothing like barroom philosophy, especially when it results in a successful artist stumbling onto another large sum of money by having an old man leave him his inheritance simply because he THAT ONE TIME showed a bit of humanity and discussed the finer things (beer, God, people) with another drunk at a bar. Even if this narrative is false (and it certainly is), the fact that Currington thinks people want to hear about how he became even richer is disturbing. Unless his narrator is supposed to be just some “average guy”and not Currington himself, in which case I can’t even wrap my mind around that. That’s a lot of disassociation to dump on the casual listener, Billy.

The repeated “philosophy?” God is great. Beer is good. People are crazy. FULL STOP. Think the hell out of that one. Most people will agree with two out of three, so go cozy up to the oldest career alcoholic at the bar and keep your fingers crossed.

Toby Keith – Any Song, But Especially Red Solo Cup

Keith attempts to horn in on Jimmy Buffett’s “I’m a madcap careerist who is celebrated by successful boomers and trust fund kiddies alike because I sing about drinking and beach life and THAT ONE TIME about drinking and casual sex” territory, crafting an ode to the only thing a kegger needs other than the keg itself. I suppose it’s a universal thing. Toby might be a millionaire but he still drinks his beer from the same cups as the masses.

It’s full of horrible touches, including backing “vocals” by an assortment of ultra-white hype men and some rhymes that Keith no doubt felt were some of the cleverest ever written:

“In fourteen years, they are decomposable
And unlike my house, they are not foreclosable
Freddie Mac can kiss my ass.”

OH FUCK YEAH ZING! Take that, fat cats! Multimillionaire Toby Keith has chosen to stand with the working man during this ongoing housing debacle! And all the while drinking from the same common keg without a hint of pretension! There’s something about how well he can write his name on the cup and make time with the ladies, perhaps using a surefire pickup line like, “I’m Toby Keith, multimillionaire,” and then remarking on the fact that they both have red Solo cups so why don’t they head out back and have some sort of redneck-y sex.

[Quick breather for something classic by Mr. Cash.]

Johnny Cash – The Losing Kind.mp3

AT THIS POINT I WILL BEGIN MAKING ARGUMENTS IN COUNTRY MUSIC’S DEFENSE.

(Feel free to leave. Or to get up and stretch your legs for a bit.)

1. Making country music is hard.

It seems simple. The same subject matter sung with the same earthy twang over the same instrumentation. Hell, Kid Rock pulled his career out of the gutter with a crossover single. Double-hell, the Head Blowfish, Darius Rucker, has completely resurrected himself with a second career as a country singer, very possibly doubling the number of black attendees at any given country concert in which he appears.

I’ve heard it referred to as the “Special Olympics” of music, a genre where anyone can be both a participant and a winner because the bar is just that fucking low. But it isn’t. Like any other genre, it requires hard work, talent, etc. to get to the top. Maybe the occasional nudge from American Idol. It seems cliche to state this, but to get an idea of just how tough making country music is, browse through this series of posts over at McSweeney’s which detail one man’s attempt to become a Nashville songwriter.

But Nashville, contrary to the belief of people who don’t really listen to country radio, doesn’t hardly ever want a downer. Very few downers. ”Remember: your target is driving her minivan to drop kids off at school in the morning before she goes to work,” is the frequently quoted advice of one well-known songwriting columnist.

A good starting point is Why You Hate Modern Nashville which sums up most of what I’ve said here, before the following posts neatly pick apart all the points I’ve made.

2. Double-standards

Plenty of other genres rely on formulaic cliches. It’s not just country music being lazy. Rap music is just as lazy, another genre that relies on a holy trinity (guns, women bitches and bling) and whose mainstream appeal relies on used-up musical tricks. (808 set to “adequate.” Hype men shouting things. The same eight funk song samples.) There’s also a certain amount of pandering going on, with pop stars grabbing rap stars to bolster their street cred and a ton of half-assed “duets” that go the other direction.

[Another break: The Cramps were about half-country. They were also half-blues, half-punk and half 3/4-crazy. Let's take a listen (and try to ignore the leather-pantsed fiend attempting to talk us out of our last cigarette and only virginity...)]

The Cramps – Muleskinner Blues.mp3

The biggest difference between these two genres is the perceived “safety” level. Very few businesses will tune the communal radio to the “urban” side of the dial during the workday. For the most part, rap is still upheld as indicative of What’s Wrong with America and Kids in General. And rap’s portrayal of the “hood” is generally unfavorable. Sure, never forget where you came from and all that, but you can’t get rich without getting the fuck out. (However, you can still die tryin’.) There’s lots of nostalgia, but it’s tempered with bursts of violence and bleak portrayals of crack houses and rogue cops. No one really wants to go back there and it sure as hell isn’t being glorified as being a “better place” than the world surrounding it. There’s a weird sort of protectionism driven by an even weirder loyalty that tends to add a bit of nobility to the people who populate the hood, but the hood as an object is something to escape, rather than something to yearn for.

3. Country fans aren’t stupid.

People who listen to country are not dumb, despite the genre’s insistence on portraying themselves (and by proxy, their fans) as some sort of holy fools. Living in the deep Midwest for several years has put me in contact with many country fans and for the most part, they tend to be no less intelligent than fans of other genres. If your definition of “smart” is solely going to rely on college degrees, GPAs and cultural spread, then yeah, you’ll probably feel these fans are a bit off. But while I may not be able to engage them in a conversation about economic theory, intellectual property issues viz a viz the motherfuckin’ internet and etc., these guys (and most of the people I know well are guys) know how to do extremely practical things like build a garage from the ground up, incapacitate a variety of rogue animals and repair anything from a vintage Ford pickup to a late model combine.

In terms of actual useful information and skills, they’re way ahead of me or most people that I would consider “educated.” The stuff they know trumps the stuff I know when it comes to day-to-day life. When shit starts to go sideways, who do you think you’re going to want backing you up? The guy who blithely types “viz a viz” into a rambling blog post or the guy who can get your vehicle up and running again using little more than his Leatherman (which he is never without)?

4. The mainstream always panders.

The mainstream is always weak, no matter what genre. Calling out a single genre for excess pandering is a strawman held together with bullshit. I almost completely agree with my own counterargument, but pop seems to be expanding a bit past its usual “everyone do what everyone else is doing” blueprint. Lady Gaga may be the second coming of Madonna we never asked for, but at the very least, her whole persona rides the edge of bizarre like no one else. Other pop artists are grabbing influences from outside pop’s closed circle and bringing a whole new set of influences to the mainstream. (Well, perhaps not the artists themselves, but certainly their producers are.)

Other than R&B’s refusal to rise above makeout music, pop is going in all directions at once, something country definitely can’t say. Only the safest, most universal bits of gloss are being applied to country’s skeletal framework. Formulas are great because formulas work, but the word “formulaic” is never a compliment. You can lay some of the blame at the feet of the undemanding fans but let’s face it: no artist with the slightest bit of self-preservation is going to feel the urge to escape a profitable rut.

AT LONG LAST, A CONCLUSION

As much as I try not to be a musical elitist, I’m afraid that country music is never going to “grow” on me. Call it close-minded, but the combination of lazy musical and lyrical shorthand leaves me completely cold. I can’t identify with the singers, the songs’ protagonists and I simply can’t “abide” the music itself. Of course, country’s an easy target, with nearly as many detractors as fans. The genre will never get much respect from those inclined to think (and write) about such things, which I guess is unfortunate. I’m sure I’d feel worse about it if I were here to defend country’s honor.

There are some things I like about it, but most of what I like comes from years past. Like Dolly Parton:

And (more recently), this caught my ears (and eyes). Taylor Swift (who has the most symmetric face I’ve ever seen) covering Eminem live (kill it at 1:40 to avoid Uncle Kracker):

And, of course, the Dixie Chicks turning on George W. Bush (and their own audience), which certainly means they won’t be invited to play a Wal-Mart shareholder’s meeting for the rest of ever. (Which they did in 2001. I know. I was there. Not at the concert, but a mile or so away stuck in a shitty top-floor dorm room on the Univ. of Arkansas campus. Remind me to tell you about it sometime…) I hate knee-jerk politicking as much as the next libertarian, but alienating your own audience is always a tough card to play. So, minor applause for that.

But when it all comes down to it, I have no interest in the genre as a whole. The music, lyrics and entire “god, guns and the American flag” pretension make it unbearable. And the few moments away from the holy trinity are usually spent espousing such dubious things as The South, The Country, The Beer and The Way Things Used to Be. I cannot abide.

-CLT

This track is pure, uncut sex. Combines the dismissive seductiveness of Gainsbourg’s vocals with Boys Noize’s commanding bump-and-grind, turning Trick Pony into an aural lapdance.

Charlotte Gainsbourg – Trick Pony (Boys Noize Remix).mp3

Play it loudly enough and you’ll probably receive letters of complaint from prudish special interest groups, letters which you won’t be able to answer because you’ve been arrested for corrupting every minor in earshot. So, for your own good, put on your hastily discarded clothing, close the drapes and plug in the headphones, unless you’re fine with being the epicenter of skyrocketing pregnancy rates.

[P.S. I would totally do this song, were it somehow personified and ambulatory. I would. With enthusiasm. And in front of a crowd. In mid-winter. Outside. (RAWRR and such noises.)]

/s/CLT

Continuing on from where we left off on Post #1, wherein I detailed my brief DJing career and the downside of doing a job you love in place you kind of hate. From the Big Beats, we move on to the house/trance gems that were forced upon unsuspecting drinkers and shoved down their ear canals until they LOVED it, or at least, hated it a little less.

We’ll start out with something dark and long (and not actually by Underworld). I’ve found that Deep Dish’s originals tend to be hit-and-miss affairs, but they are unstoppable when operating as remixers. This is their epic take on Love & Rocket’s Resurrection Hex, a track off their latest (ha! – it was like more than a decade ago!) and apparently L&R’s last.

There’s a ton of breathing room in this track despite the 4/4 pounding, which I often filled with HAL 9000′s modulated death threats and death throes. (“My mind is going… I can feel it…“) In fact, I did this often enough that it became the preferred version. Deep Dish + L&R+ HAL 9000. Sure, 90% of the requests came from the bartender but when you’re allowed to drink on the job,  this is the person you want happiest.

Love and Rockets – Resurrection Hex (Deep Dish Luv ‘n’ Dub Mix).mp3

3 THINGS A DJ NEVER WANTS TO SEE

Some more DJ info for you, scientifically gathered via personal anecdotal evidence. Also this: the fine love/hate notes you see scattered in these posts are courtesy of No Breasts No Requests who lovingly aggregate the best passive aggression ever scrawled drunkenly on a cocktail napkin/coaster.

1. Bachelorette Parties

If you’re not familiar with the “thrill” of an incoming bachelorette party, you might actually think the world “thrill” should have the quotes stricken from the record. A bunch of theoretically unattached women drunkenly escorting the bride-to-be from bar to bar. It would seem like a match made in heaven for drinking men everywhere. And maybe that’s true. But it does nothing for the drinking man handcuffed to the DJ booth.

The problem for the DJ is that this pack of women is under the mistaken (and usually, drunken) impression that the entire bar revolves around them for as long as they deign to grace us with their presence. This means they will travel to the DJ booth multiple times, usually as a group, to state their music preferences and constantly remind the DJ that “X is getting married,” as if getting married was some sort of extraordinary act that hadn’t been performed by millions of others before them, a large percentage of which have ended in failure.

[Quick break for some more music. You've met Deep Dish and their exceptional remixing skills.   This track is just another example of why they are like knob-twiddling gods to me and, to a lesser extent, the dancefloor denizens who were alternately pummeled and soothed by this colossal remix. Not one, but two (2)(!!!) HUGE, verging-on-bombastic drops that are as drop-dead gorgeous as any sweeping vista you can imagine (and subsequently instagram into some sort of postcard). I do mean HUGE. The first breakdown runs from 3:54-5:10. The second runs from 8:25 (with a full drop at 9:10) to 10:51.]

Sven Vaeth – Barbarella (Deep Dish Armageddon Breakdown Mix).mp3

Not only that, but bachelorette parties have, collectively, the worst taste in music. I don’t know how it’s possible, considering every bachelorette party represents a cross-section of women in general, but apparently something happens on this “special night” and every reasonable request is replaced by a plea for horrible pop tunes that even the most die-hard Top 40 fan wouldn’t touch. Every novelty pop hit that burnt itself out long ago is given mouth-to-mouth by this group of trying-so-hard-to-party-so-hard girls, much to the dismay of everyone else. On top of everything else, they’re just visiting. No bachelorette party ever stays in one bar for the full night.

[More music. System F (a.k.a. Ferry Corsten) has been a trance icon since before trance was cool, as well as during trance's heyday and continues to hold his "icon" position well past the sell-by date. Mauro Picotto pumps up the pace and sets dials to stun for the breakdown. As with all great back-in-the-day trance, Out of the Blue is nothing if not subtle. No, wait. The last part: "not subtle." Big room trance, brighter than daylight and built for pleasing crowds. There's a reason it was immensely popular.]

System F – Out of the Blue (Mauro Picotto Mix).mp3

2. Office Parties

I didn’t often hit the decks before 9 pm so I usually caught the tail-end of these rather hollow experiences, whether it was something “officia”l (like a birthday) or just a “hey, let’s all go out and have some drinks” occasion. Either way, the cross section of the late 30s-early 40s demographic and people who didn’t normally go to bars meant you were instantly inundated with requests for disco, classic rock and Jimmy Buffett. Someone might mix things up by requesting something “current” (meaning a track off a half-decade old MTV/Jock Jams compilation).

If obliged (and I was, as the normal crowd was still on its way), the playing of said musical “gems” would sometimes be accompanied by the half-hearted awkward dancing of people who a.) didn’t normally dance and b.) would be off to free up the babysitter in another hour. The question “Do you have…” would normally be followed by “No,” which would then be followed by the person staring skyward as they dusted off the record collection of their minds. “What about…” Again, “No.” Helpful suggestions were made. “Well, I have…” I’d offer, dusting off the unused parts of the CD collection. “I guess. How about…” After this unproductive back-and-forth, vague suggestions about “disco” and “fun music” and “not rap” were made, accompanied by my mostly internal eye rolling and giving of the finger.

[Timo Maas' rerub of Azzido Da Bass' Dooms Night conquered dancefloors everywhere, but most subjectively, it tore apart the one I was in charge of. Taking Mr. Oizo's Flat Eric as a blueprint, Dooms Night shook speakers with eruptions of overcharged bass noise. Pre-dating dubstep's fascination with the drop, Timo Maas extended and morphed the distinctive tone into an instantly recognizable whomp. And so it went: whomp whomp whomp whomp whompwhompwhompwhomp. Fists were raised and pumped. The uninitiated left us to our own devices and looked on in bemusement as the unholy brown noise echoed around the bar.]

Azzido Da Bass – Doom’s Night (Timo Maas Mix).mp3

There’s nothing sadder than a bunch of people trying to have fun because they feel like they’re having fun. The dancing and lyric-mouthing and outdated hand gestures gave off the desperate air of someone trying to convince a kidnapper they were indeed “not going to breath a word of this to the cops if you let me go.” Gun-to-the-head enthusiasm mixed with it’s-getting-kind-of-late attitude does not make for a pleasurable experience. Not for the DJ and certainly not for the office party, which would get a handful of tracks thrown in its general direction before the “real” music started and they all faded quietly into the night, never to be seen again.

Space Raiders – I Need the Disko Doktor.mp3

The Space Raiders were another Skint signing, joining such illuminaries as Fatboy Slim, Midfield General and the Lo-Fidelity All Stars. More house-oriented than its labelmates, Space Raiders played slightly left-of-center in their chosen field and operated with a welcome sense of humour. Disko Doctor hollas back at disco while keeping one foot in the present with its loping, looping take on disco-house. Vocal samples get filtered, vocodered and spun backwards, riding atop an ear-worming, good-natured house beat.

3. Radio DJs

Seeing them in the crowd wasn’t an issue. But more often than not, you’d see these poor souls in the DJ booth as the result of periodic aneurysms that management mistook for “ideas.” This was followed by an attempt to “leverage” some sort of “cross marketing” by bringing in a DJ from whichever radio station the club was advertising on. Someone would say “free advertising” and actually believe it.

The logic seems to be complete. People listen to x radio station and therefore, they’d come to listen to x radio station’s DJ do his day job, except at night. Overlooked was the fact that, yes, many people listen to the radio but with very rare exceptions, no one cares who’s playing the music. Plus, DJing at a club is much different than DJing in a highly-regimented format plagued by intersitial ads and “hilarious” banter. Club DJs know their crowd. Radio DJs know playlists and demographics. A “crowd” and a “demographic” both involve groups of people, but they are very different things.

Most of these radio DJs didn’t last very long. Seeing that no adoring audience was lining up to hear you play tracks in a this-works-on-the-radio fashion has to be a bit of a blow to the ego. Having people visit the DJ booth simply to tell you that you suck and ask “Where’s the other DJ?” doesn’t help. Some DJs can do both but in my experience, not a single one of these DJs could.

Trancesetters – Roaches (Peace Division Mix).mp3

Electronic music was never mainstream (except that now it actually is — go figure). Roaches is the Trancesetters’ “Positive Affirmation of the Day,” validating the freaks’ love of repetitive beats and occupying the edges.

Underground will live forever, baby
We just like roaches
Never dying
Always living

We were the kids that weren’t like the other kids. While the others were happy with their Top 40 and their crossover country hits, we were driving out to open fields in the middle of nowhere (and one time, memorably, the VFW) to hear DJs spin pounding, strobelit “techno.”

Josh Wink – Don’t Laugh.mp3

Josh Wink tore acid house a new one with his twisted and screeching Higher State of Consciousness. He then went back to the studio and tore house music some new ventilation, operating with enthusiasm trumping technical skill (although he has plenty of the latter). Don’t Laugh is a dare, I suppose: a quasi-house beat paired with a constantly-fucked-with laughter loop. To sing along is to appear insane.

On the other hand, sanity seems overrated in the face of constant laughter, pitched to and fro by Wink, with both hands on the knobs and tongue safely secured in cheek, landing on just this side of “annoying novelty single.” and pointing our way towards Vol. 3 in this subjectively nostalgic series where I’ll be throwing out a selection of the noisiest stuff I got away with playing. Until then…

/s/CLT