tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82692749391870797802024-03-12T17:53:04.797-07:00<< >>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-3239223078769049612015-02-19T14:55:00.002-08:002015-02-19T14:57:15.595-08:00Voices of Law<div style="text-align: justify;">
Audio-video of a presentation I gave in March 2014 at the Rietveld Academy's
Studium Generale - <a href="http://voicecreatureoftransition.rietveldacademie.nl/" target="_blank">Voice: Creature of Transition</a> - is now available. The day was curated by artist and theorist <a href="http://lawrenceabuhamdan.com/" target="_blank">Lawrence Abu Hamdan</a>, whose work is great. Really nice to be involved in an event with such attention to detail and production values. Presented at the theatre De Brakke Grond in
Amsterdam.</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://ytimg.googleusercontent.com/vi/9jwY4MSj9Xs/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/9jwY4MSj9Xs?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-40352415208397679992015-01-12T22:03:00.002-08:002015-01-12T22:08:11.172-08:00end-of-year-ism and the 'best' of 2014 with PC<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JFv1FGkYcSM/VLS1McYDNoI/AAAAAAAADXU/Y0vp3g73VVs/s1600/endofyearsalebanner550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JFv1FGkYcSM/VLS1McYDNoI/AAAAAAAADXU/Y0vp3g73VVs/s1600/endofyearsalebanner550.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></div>
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Musings with <a href="http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">PC</a> on endofyearism and the best of 2014 over at Far Side Virtual #pbs<br />
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<a href="http://pbsfm.org.au/taxonomy/term/649/2014-12-23" target="_blank">LISTEN HERE</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-58938610305797428042015-01-12T21:29:00.000-08:002015-01-12T23:12:39.414-08:00Review: Liquid Architecture 15 <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Rbnf6HE2PaMsBVjZyy7ABafgfzJI2EhsbYWZiHjmySgPGUxhwQSW2smv-NpLkn8HGkz0da8Q4QthGxWP_UNRj9E5-3MSiwEHxZiZQjBDtZ9wAF_S9vr8VYGdyTRq6q-2uzE1Sn-5Tnc/s1600/_MG_9334-cmyk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2Rbnf6HE2PaMsBVjZyy7ABafgfzJI2EhsbYWZiHjmySgPGUxhwQSW2smv-NpLkn8HGkz0da8Q4QthGxWP_UNRj9E5-3MSiwEHxZiZQjBDtZ9wAF_S9vr8VYGdyTRq6q-2uzE1Sn-5Tnc/s1600/_MG_9334-cmyk.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
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The 15th edition of ‘Liquid Architecture’, Australia’s annual festival of sound art, took place between August and October 2014, with more than 50 artists performing across a range of venues in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and, for the first time ever, Singapore. Evidently, this was a year for growth and diversification, because in addition to extending the festival’s geographical reach, newly appointed curators Joel Stern and Danni Zuvela adopted a far more expansive take on the sonic arts than in previous years. Following recent debates about the place of sound in the field of contemporary art – and especially since New York’s Museum of Modern Art’s much discussed ‘Soundings’ (2013) and the subsequent publication of author and critic Seth Kim-Cohen’s controversial polemic Against Ambience (2013) – the gesture felt timely. </div>
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At stake in these debates is nothing less than the ontology of sound. On one side, the likes of philosopher Christopher Cox argue for sound’s objectivity. Sound is as an ‘asignifying material flux’: a force, a flow, an energy. On the other, Kim-Cohen and others argue for a sound art that celebrates and plays with what they take to be sound’s necessary social-embeddedness. Stern and Zuvela’s curatorial theme, ‘The Ear is a Brain’, offered something of a middle way. ‘There’s a position between “sound in itself” and “non-cochlear” approaches,’ they claimed in the curatorial statement, ‘that is not uninterested in what it sounds like, just more interested in what its effects are, what the forces are that produce it. This position hears, but also reads sound.’ This approach came through very clearly in the festival’s programming ...</div>
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For the full piece, purchase a copy of <a href="http://shopcc.frieze.com/products/current-issue-january-february-2015">Issue 168</a> of Frieze or if you're a subscriber log in to their <a href="http://www.frieze.com/issue/review/liquid-architecture-15/">online archive</a>. Otherwise, click <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mH4HsTAipzbDNXbUtsclhTdlE/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a>. Or head <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6mH4HsTAipzdkJZSTJPcjl1b2M/view?usp=sharing" target="_blank">here</a> for the/a director's cut, with a word or two about the reading groups and in particular Peter Szendy's concept of "critical listening".</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-23842396267476382652014-12-06T21:28:00.000-08:002014-12-06T21:29:59.610-08:00What is critical about contemporary music criticism? On Knowing and Not Knowing in Nicholas Szczepanik, Owen Pallett, and PC Music (with Nick Croggon)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdBP-zKYIHHx4rLe14hTZzZJT1vbLaoHI8uepWB1OXej13MQo6mnOh_WJf3QosuzkPvHuOc-41Y0Wa4YBsBPZaF6XqTyZ0kF74yeIrQ0v4Hin_YwA33TOvBGaogFYZtqOnmOAjk5G1BQ/s1600/f-a-14-12-critcism-content3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqdBP-zKYIHHx4rLe14hTZzZJT1vbLaoHI8uepWB1OXej13MQo6mnOh_WJf3QosuzkPvHuOc-41Y0Wa4YBsBPZaF6XqTyZ0kF74yeIrQ0v4Hin_YwA33TOvBGaogFYZtqOnmOAjk5G1BQ/s1600/f-a-14-12-critcism-content3.png" height="203" width="320" /></a></div>
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What was music criticism in 2014? Or, more precisely, what was “critical” about it? How exactly is offering a critique different from, say, regurgitating a press release or clicking “like” on Facebook? In other words, just how critical is contemporary music criticism, and why, in the end, does it matter? </div>
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Out of all the reviews, features, comments, blogposts, tweets, and discussion boards — all the endless, interminable text — that comprised the collective conversation about music in 2014, two moments stood out to us as especially symptomatic of where things currently stand on these questions. The first almost certainly passed you by, trivial, a non-issue in the vast data-sea of music discourse, but no less telling for it. The second you may have noticed, because for a few brief weeks in March, it was everywhere. </div>
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It’s with these two moments that we want to begin. From there, we’ll move on, in the final part of the essay, to consider how they might speak to one of 2014’s most talked about phenomenons: the dramatic rise of London-based label PC Music.</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/2014-what-is-critical-about-contemporary-music-criticism" target="_blank">Read the whole piece here </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-38119275099458117372014-05-09T18:33:00.001-07:002014-05-09T18:38:58.316-07:00 Pop & Non-Pop After The Conceptual Turn: How pop’s appetite for itself has led to a taste for the sacred (with NIck Croggon)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6LCJXrw8KHzM-isR5v37o7R27HHoUznFzHCHPxMS-TcgKG8_nyROYnWIrUv_P0Ju0ItORWHyYZc_45iIlb1ljnAZYqhSYf5HRFVMNCeV-ZuvMHG1ai9Jp2iLCY3SIalXHJWbDlfEFjs/s1600/f-a-14-04-sacred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN6LCJXrw8KHzM-isR5v37o7R27HHoUznFzHCHPxMS-TcgKG8_nyROYnWIrUv_P0Ju0ItORWHyYZc_45iIlb1ljnAZYqhSYf5HRFVMNCeV-ZuvMHG1ai9Jp2iLCY3SIalXHJWbDlfEFjs/s1600/f-a-14-04-sacred.jpg" height="205" width="320" /></a></div>
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This essay is the second in a <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/writer/james-parker-and-nicholas-croggon">semi-regular series</a>
of slightly longer pieces exploring some of the ideas and conceptual
strategies we think are at the heart of music production and reception
today. </div>
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Our last piece, <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/the-trouble-with-contemporary-music-criticism">“The Trouble with Contemporary Music Criticism,”</a>
was about history. We argued that contemporary music writing often
fails to think about history adequately because of its commitment to a
mostly unacknowledged ideology of progress. This is particularly
problematic, we said, when so much of the strongest music being made
today seems to take history itself as its main point of orientation.
Musicians keep presenting us with alternatives to this default idea of
music as the endless progression of the new, and we keep missing it. The
best in contemporary music is often much smarter than we think it is —
and much more productive too. </div>
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Contemporary music is often accused of a kind of passivity: of
refusing to be sufficiently “political,” of failing to “innovate,” of
capitulating to the stultifying forces of retro-culture, of being little
more than a composite of historical references. But in order to think
that way, you need to commit to a pretty narrow view of “politics” and
“innovation”. It is, by contrast, perfectly possible to listen to
contemporary music and hear something extremely <i>active</i>: music
that, in its best instances, is right in the thick of both questioning
and rethinking ideas and hegemonies (like history and progress) that
underpin art, culture, and social life. For this reason, it is also
robustly political. It really does <i>matter</i>. </div>
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But our last essay left a lot of key terms unaccounted for. What did
we mean by “contemporary music criticism,” for instance? Or, for that
matter, “contemporary music”? If the answers to these questions seem
self-evident, or if the questions themselves seem redundant, they
shouldn’t. The assumptions we make about each of these key terms are
directly bound up with how we write and listen. </div>
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We’ll look at the question of criticism next time. In this essay,
we’d like to tackle the question “What is contemporary music?” The
answer to this question will unfold in two parts. First, we’re going to
argue that the key to this question is the relationship between pop and
non-pop: a relationship that contemporary music, with increasing
intensity, is actually already investigating itself. And second, we’re
going to argue that it is this investigation that has laid the
groundwork for some of the most inventive musical experiments in recent
years. </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<big><b>PART 1: POP AND NON-POP</b></big></div>
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<b>Pop Eats Itself</b></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
If you asked yourself what sort of music you tend to listen to and
read about on sites like Tiny Mix Tapes, what would you say? Underground
music? Experimental music? Terms like these are always either too
specific or too vague. Usually, the easiest method is to answer by
putting the music we like into dialogue with what it is not — whatever I
listen to, it’s predominantly <i>not</i> pop music. This pairing is
the most common way that music in the 20th century has been defined —
popular vs. serious music, pop vs. experimental, mainstream vs.
underground. </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
But by defining pop by what it is not, we often ignore the fact that
pop music has always had a bit of a knack for defining itself. </div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
In 1957, Chuck Berry released a song called “Rock and Roll Music.” It went, <i>“Just
let me hear some of that Rock And Roll Music/ Any old way you choose
it/ It’s got a back beat, you can’t lose it/ Any old time you use it/
It’s gotta be Rock And Roll Music/ If you want to dance with me/ If you
want to dance with me.”</i> The song peaked at #8 in the US charts and,
in obvious tribute to an artist and a genre they loved, would go on to
be covered by the likes of Bill Haley & The Comets, The Beatles, and
The Beach Boys. All of them were making rock & roll <i>about</i> rock & roll.</div>
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Without listing endless examples, what we’re suggesting is that, from
its very beginnings in the 1950s and 1960s, the modern form of pop
music has always had a certain self-reflexive quality. It drew its own
boundaries to some extent, defined itself in the process of its own
embodiment and production. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What’s most striking, however, is just how much pop seems to have upped the ante in this respect over the last 60 years. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Let’s take three examples from last year. In September 2013,
14-year-old US pop star Madison Beer released “Melodies.” The video
starts with Justin Bieber listening to the song on a set of purple Beats
speakers. “You hear that, Ryan?” he asks. “That’s a smash.” He signs a
set of matching purple headphones, puts them in a big red box, and we
cut to Madison opening said box somewhere in middle America. She takes
out her newly Bieber-pimped Beats, puts them on, and hears <i>herself</i> singing. <i>“I
hear melodies in my head, hear melodies in my head, hear melodies in my
head… My heart is a beating drum, repeating my favorite song.”</i> This, then, is an earworm <i>about</i> the fact that it’s an earworm. This is pop eating itself.</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/pop-non-pop-after-the-conceptual-turn" target="_blank">Read the whole piece here </a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-65233192297473163112014-01-16T15:52:00.001-08:002014-01-26T13:58:29.981-08:00 The Trouble with Contemporary Music Criticism: Retromania, Retro-historicism, and History (with Nick Croggon)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1jzhhgioQK9XbyiES0u382bX9oNU8v4ANe6gtswxinJOzt5XOKWOk67JsXXElxx0z4qd0FNa7iT_a2vAdr3FrElPVDffkL7aht_Vdfn0I9DzsEtvMEhbl_Hz2pkxpYv3IY2YTVpAL1yY/s1600/f-a-13-01-trouble1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1jzhhgioQK9XbyiES0u382bX9oNU8v4ANe6gtswxinJOzt5XOKWOk67JsXXElxx0z4qd0FNa7iT_a2vAdr3FrElPVDffkL7aht_Vdfn0I9DzsEtvMEhbl_Hz2pkxpYv3IY2YTVpAL1yY/s1600/f-a-13-01-trouble1.jpg" height="273" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqwcbONq9lJ5drjp2oLL0RdrvQtRQ_U92gADaLLfapWV4nB8RivG5xM9JxflU2yAPJx-mZgqdn8yUqZGu031K_q9Gk9bUq1xLruR3gtc5KDNqk3ScsOzpLVC5M07SvsOhHYhBJHtZRMWQ/s1600/f-a-13-01-trouble2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqwcbONq9lJ5drjp2oLL0RdrvQtRQ_U92gADaLLfapWV4nB8RivG5xM9JxflU2yAPJx-mZgqdn8yUqZGu031K_q9Gk9bUq1xLruR3gtc5KDNqk3ScsOzpLVC5M07SvsOhHYhBJHtZRMWQ/s1600/f-a-13-01-trouble2.jpg" height="169" width="320" /></a></div>
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1</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Two hundred years before the release of Daft Punk’s <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/daft-punk-random-access-memories"><cite>Random Access Memories</cite></a>,
people were losing their shit over a different sort of robot entirely.
This one was known as the Mechanical Turk, and it was built at the end
of the 18th century by a guy named Wolfgang von Kempelen. The Mechanical
Turk comprised a puppet dressed in Turkish robes, sitting on top of a
box containing an apparently complex set of mechanics. And it played
chess. The Turk was so good at chess, in fact, that it toured the world
for the best part of a century before it was finally destroyed in a fire
in 1854. It played for Emperor Joseph II, Frederick the Great, Charles
Carroll, and Edgar Allen Poe, and it actually beat Napoleon Bonaparte,
Benjamin Franklin, and Catherine the Great. On one tour of the UK, it
won 45 out of 50 matches, and it played them all with a one-pawn
handicap.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The amazing Mechanical Turk turned out to be an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdT4yG8wczQ">elaborate hoax</a>
of course. The machine’s interior was an ingenious system of smoke and
mirrors, expertly designed by Von Kempelmen to conceal the chess master,
a small hunchback nestled snugly <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Tuerkischer_schachspieler_racknitz3.jpg">inside</a>.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
2</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the realm of contemporary music criticism, there is an equivalent
of Von Kempelen’s Turk, a criticism machine that is making the rounds of
contemporary music circuits, amazing a largely unquestioning audience. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The contemporary music critic machine plays its game by confronting
and demystifying any and all contemporary music as nothing but a series
of historical references — well-known dance outfits from the 1990s, not
so well-known German synthesizer duos from the 1970s, and totally
obscure British sound recordings from the 1960s. We read this criticism
and are impressed at its apparent rigor and erudition — never realizing
that, concealed within the box, something else is pulling the strings. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
3</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In 2011, Simon Reynolds introduced the world of music criticism to
the notion of “retromania.” The idea was that, more than ever before,
contemporary music is concerned with being “retro,” with repeating its
own very recent past. In justifying this central claim, Reynolds
detailed numerous examples, both pop and experimental, that referred
either explicitly or implicitly to music of bygone eras: the eternal
return of 60s- and 70s-era garage rock, Amy Winehouse and Adele’s
ludicrously successful neo-soul, the onslaught of 90s Eurodance recently
unleashed by David Guetta <i>et al.</i> on the world’s charts. And in
the global underground: chillwave, hypnagogic pop, hauntology, hipster
house. In each case, Reynolds’ diagnosis was almost entirely negative.
For Reynolds, retromania is a sickness, a form of cultural malaise. With
each passing year, he worried, the pulse of the present is growing
increasingly faint.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Reynolds’ book struck such a chord both with the public and in
critical circles, because his account married perfectly with a way of
thinking that has dominated critical discourse about music since at
least the 1960s. This approach is premised on the twin ideas of
“novelty,” on the one hand, and “historical progress,” on the other. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In <i>Retromania</i>, as in so much of the music critical tradition,
including Reynolds’ own previous work, music is at its best — indeed,
achieves its core social function — when it confronts the listener with
the shock of the “new”: the exhilaration of experiencing a soundworld
totally unlike anything they have heard before: the thrill of having
‘been there’ at the birth of rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop, techno, or rave.
Moreover, this shock, this experience of radical novelty, is not only a <i>historical</i> experience, but also an experience of history <i>as such</i>
— albeit a specific type of history. In Reynolds’ terms, the excitement
of new music is the experience of being on the very edge of the present
as it hurtles into the future: it is the experience of the essential
truth of human historical existence as constant progress and change. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The retromania of contemporary music, characterized so astutely by
Reynolds, fundamentally challenges this way of relating to music. Its
contemporaneity consists precisely in its <i>repudiation</i> of progress, its <i>refusal</i>
to create new sounds: in some cases by shamelessly or irreverently
copying or reframing, and in other cases by carefully paying tribute to
or unarchiving the music of the past. Either way, a denial of the
inevitability or desirability of change. And this is why Reynolds
condemns it.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
4</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
In the wake of <i>Retromania</i>, the world of music criticism has
undeniably become increasingly “retro-sensitive.” The contemporary music
critic hears retro everywhere.<br />
<br />
Of course, with the likes of YouTube, Wikipedia, Spotify, The Pirate
Bay, Discogs, and a vast data-sea of blogs at their disposal, it is
increasingly easy for them to do so. Struggling for a reference? Google
it! Wondering which precise Ash Ra Tempel record the new Emeralds record
sounds like? Spend just a few minutes surfing YouTube! </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
The result is a now almost ubiquitous form of music criticism which
we call “retro-historicism.” It can be found in the printed music press
of <i>The Wire, NME</i>, and <i>Rolling Stone</i>, and most
predominantly, of course, on the web. In essence, its critical project
is the reduction of music criticism to a form a historical list-making: a
mechanical exercise in influence fishing, the mere identification and
cataloging of historical reference points before moving on to pass
judgment, as if that were in any way sufficient. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
All this is not a tribute to or a continuance of Reynolds’ project,
but a depressing performance of precisely the approach to music he
condemned. Contemporary music criticism has become infected by its <i>own</i>
version of retromania — in other words, its own obsession with the
past. Although, rhetorically, such criticism’s appeal to history
projects a certain kind of critical rigor, it is our belief that
retro-historicism involves nothing less than the abandonment of the
critical task. </div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/the-trouble-with-contemporary-music-criticism?page=show" target="_blank">Read on at TMT </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-19348740396721014622013-10-20T16:47:00.000-07:002013-10-20T16:47:55.912-07:00oneohtrix point never: r plus seven (warp)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja_sowSBxdrvIIwfP6yIG2u2F7D4_t0i1xu01A3G_54xKQtiW4Egdb6zkjjD9BxnLopO3IeZIxJs9qriYa30rRBZXiqc0CaRLVBu24dd3GCUues2Fg2eI6DVm-dCW2nYFx3-MDjIC_g9s/s1600/oneohtrix.preview.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja_sowSBxdrvIIwfP6yIG2u2F7D4_t0i1xu01A3G_54xKQtiW4Egdb6zkjjD9BxnLopO3IeZIxJs9qriYa30rRBZXiqc0CaRLVBu24dd3GCUues2Fg2eI6DVm-dCW2nYFx3-MDjIC_g9s/s320/oneohtrix.preview.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
R Plus Seven is Daniel Lopatin’s fourth full-length release under the
Oneohtrix Point Never moniker, and his first for the pioneering Warp
Records. It’s a perfect home for him. There are few artists currently
working whose output has been as restlessly forward thinking: even as it
is also heavily referential and thoroughly postmodern. Pulling off that
balance has been Oneohtrix Point Never’s greatest trick: to make music
that is at once overtly conceptual and yet thoroughly listenable.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
Slowly but surely over the course of the last 5 years, Lopatin has
increasingly moved away from his roots in ambience and noise. Whereas
2011’s Replica was an unsettling collage of vocal fragments, fractured
loops and hazy half-memories, R Plus Seven finds Lopatin working
primarily with ‘generic’ synth-sounds and presets. From the canned
pipe-organ that opens the record, to the ready-made strings and choirs,
arpeggiators and e-pianos that feature throughout, somehow Lopatin is
able to carve out something strange and exquisite. As if to say, these
distinctions we like to make between generic and authentic, prefab and
original, banal and transcendent are less clear cut than we often
imagine. There is real beauty even in the apparently mundane, just as
the unique and soulful quickly resolves itself into monotonous
convention. Even Mozart used presets, after all. It’s just that he
called his an orchestra. </div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.pbsfm.org.au/node/29851" target="_blank">Originally posted at PBS106.7fm</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-28237128053751953752013-10-11T15:37:00.003-07:002013-10-11T15:37:55.905-07:00sky needle: end games (bruit direct disques)<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/gyQ_HpCCIHw" width="420"></iframe>
</div>
<br />
Man, oh man, it’s been a great few weeks for videos. First came Oneohtrix Point Never’s amazing (and sadly <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/watch-oneohtrix-point-never-still-life-betamale">temporarily non-existent</a>) collaborative techno-erotic exploration with <a href="http://jonrafman.com/">Jon Rafman</a>. Next came Tim Hecker’s exquisitely warped and washed-out gothic video for “<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/watch-tim-hecker-black-refraction">Black Refraction</a>,” a track from his forthcoming album Virgins. Now, viewers are presented with this little bit of genius from Brisbane’s Sky Needle. <br />
<br />
So simple and yet so totally intense and absolutely effective, like some sort of primitive psychedelia, build, build, building to its demented Dionysian climax. <br />
<br />
ME AH BOY THE STAR OF THE HEAD BORN A STAR YOU THAT STYLE THE FLOOR FLAWED WE ARE VILE THE GASSED OF DOOR PLAN BORED IS BY THE WAR RYE KNOW EYE WE ARE BY THE GUEST OF THE HEAD BORE A PIE THE BOAR HIGH RISE HORSE BEER OR MILES THROUGH OUT THE N I G H T BUY BILE STARTS SKY ONE WHY WHALES BE BEE OUT SIDE WALK THE… <br />
<br />
And what are these words now but squawks of sound and passion: phlegm, lungs, loud, wind, whine, throat, thrust? <br />
<br />
(UNINTELLIGIBLE) WE ARE SO HOT SO SOLAR… <br />
<br />
In promotion of their latest album, <a href="http://skyneedle.bandcamp.com/album/debased-shapes-lp">Debased Shapes</a> (out NOW on Bruit Direct Disques), Sky Needle just finished a European tour alongside Melbourne skuzz-rock act <a href="http://madnanna.bandcamp.com/">Mad Nanna</a>. If you dig Debased Shapes, make sure you check out 2012’s <a href="http://skyneedle.bandcamp.com/album/rave-cave-lp">Rave Cave</a>. It’s similarly fucked up, but in the best possible way, of course.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/watch-sky-needle-end-games" target="_blank">on tmt </a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-16042190154123623602013-10-11T15:34:00.002-07:002013-10-11T15:34:43.015-07:00gil michell: no friends (this thing)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKY09jutJnL_hsTb5bTsDH-j1VQ0IUIEcuduudKusqh4epvNsKsyj7IofMvLS2l4VOZw7c8Hs8Rt6YUoMpDmB6lQka6mJ314CB0P618tBViH6_TX0UqxUn02aVK5aVVBv6hJCz4-9m0aQ/s1600/gil+michell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKY09jutJnL_hsTb5bTsDH-j1VQ0IUIEcuduudKusqh4epvNsKsyj7IofMvLS2l4VOZw7c8Hs8Rt6YUoMpDmB6lQka6mJ314CB0P618tBViH6_TX0UqxUn02aVK5aVVBv6hJCz4-9m0aQ/s320/gil+michell.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
I want to call this footwork. I mean, just check that percussion. But if this is footwork, it’s certainly not a strain we’ve heard before. This particular mutation — the latest offering from Melbourne label <a href="http://www.thisthing.us/tt/category/releases">This Thing</a> — is deep and mellow. Beats like this have never sounded so cool, so totally chill. Seriously, this is what it’d sound like if you gave Traxman’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzOG_v0ituY">“Footworkin on Air”</a> a couch, a couple of brews, and a Valium. <br />
<br />
“No Friends” is the first single to surface from a new collaborative project between This Thing stalwarts <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/galapagoose-commitments">Galapagoose</a> (Gil) and <a href="http://w00shie.bandcamp.com/">Wooshie</a> (Michell). And it sees them trading in their wonky, disjointed hip-hop for a much more ambient, contemplative sound. For now, the vinyl’s only available to pre-order, but I’ve already copped a listen, and man it’s good: #forserious. New territory for both artists, no doubt about it. Or maybe even just straight up new territory. New ground being — oh so cooly — trod…<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-gil-michell-no-friends" target="_blank">on TMT</a><br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F110175342" width="100%"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-69718064109958888202013-10-11T15:29:00.001-07:002013-10-11T15:30:37.210-07:00friendships: i'm an impressionist, you're dumb: a compilation of bass tracks<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHiofLCdzzQRC6rcNUWEYBD5EpzMHDR6rxT2twC9TqD3TiadvXu1f4r4kPz642AqruBDzcu1Xa7ZvZR1-eZdLJkIaHFd-qVtm_joAhA8ObmoF5Bp2PWCB6odRG672xNqP613P9m4sorA/s1600/friendships.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkHiofLCdzzQRC6rcNUWEYBD5EpzMHDR6rxT2twC9TqD3TiadvXu1f4r4kPz642AqruBDzcu1Xa7ZvZR1-eZdLJkIaHFd-qVtm_joAhA8ObmoF5Bp2PWCB6odRG672xNqP613P9m4sorA/s320/friendships.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
friendships entered the room. [1:22 AM]<br />
tmtcrew entered the room.<br />
squirrell_nuts entered the room.<br />
<br />
<b> *Type /help for a list of commands. </b><br />
<br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/friendships">Friend_ships</a>: DAMN [1:22 AM]<br />
<a href="http://mishagrace.weebly.com/">M I S H A</a>: LOL [1:22 AM]<br />
CliffOrd //M//: Hi! [1:22 AM]<br />
Friend_ships: waaaaaaaaaa? [1:22 AM] <br />
<br />
M I S H A: I’m an impressionist [1:23 AM]<br />
Friend_ships: You’re dumb [1:23 AM]<br />
JP∆rk: Ur a Drag [1:23 AM]<br />
JP∆rk: Drop that B A A S S S S [1:23 AM]<br />
<a href="https://soundcloud.com/skinimin">Skinimin</a>: word [1:23 AM] <br />
<br />
M R P: 1am (slow release) is tiiiiiight [1:23 AM]<br />
CliffOrd //M//: mmdammmmmnnn [1:24 AM]<br />
<a href="http://rarakin.com/">RaRakin</a>: represent [1:24 PM]<br />
Friend_ships: who the hell is squirrel_nuts!? [1:24 AM]<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-friendships-im-an-impressionist-youre-dumb-a-compilation-of-bass-tracks" target="_blank">TMT </a><br />
<br />
<iframe seamless="" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=284078844/size=small/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 42px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://friendship.bandcamp.com/album/im-an-impressionist-youre-dumb-a-compilation-of-bass-tracks">I'm an impressionist, you're dumb: a compilation of bass tracks by friendships</a></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-62306162572447526892013-02-03T00:23:00.000-08:002013-07-08T19:26:07.290-07:00scissor lock - churn (self released)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSsWubJtw0oYqm4_IaNwWfvz-V5Wo9orKdCTZgVpR7lXeIhbRE83uDIxGVKGM5ODWHFDwzhQbNfo7bDt7om21_O2rNsMz7N6s90rg5KeSTincM2imuTfBc4ym66rp_zE2HFA_qDyTUebw/s1600/churn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSsWubJtw0oYqm4_IaNwWfvz-V5Wo9orKdCTZgVpR7lXeIhbRE83uDIxGVKGM5ODWHFDwzhQbNfo7bDt7om21_O2rNsMz7N6s90rg5KeSTincM2imuTfBc4ym66rp_zE2HFA_qDyTUebw/s320/churn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Let’s begin with that cover. Because it’s not so much a cover as a
framing device. A freeze frame actually. Taken from the exuberant video
to JB’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moq-2WUWazw">“Beauty and the Beat”</a> just as a drop of water partly blurs his face. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
What is captured here? A number of different things, I think. In
stillness, movement. In intimacy, distance. In celebrity, a void. And in
the familiarity and pleasure of pop, a strangeness: a distortion.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
It’s the last of these pairs that seems to interest Marcus Whale. As one half of <a href="http://collarbones.bandcamp.com/">Collarbones</a>, and in particular on the remarkable <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moq-2WUWazw">“Hypothermia”</a> from their second full-length <a href="https://soundcloud.com/collarbones/sets/die-young-1"><i>Die Young</i></a>,
he’s been responsible for some of the freshest sounding “pop” these
ears have heard in a long while. Which is to say a kind of mutant strain
of it: at once totally reverent of the mainstream and, at the same
time, actively subversive of it. As if to say: yes, yes, I LOVE the
Biebster’s “One Time,” I really do; I love its energy and its sincere
enthusiasm, but wouldn’t it be better if it sounded like <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsIINsb6uVk">this</a>?
Wouldn’t it be better if experimentalism and pop hadn’t become so
antithetical? You know, like back in the day when Aaliyah and Timbaland
were kicking it? Or like some of Yasutaka Nakata’s recent <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edyARJq9sgM&list=FLNLFJ7LNl10G2pnMCu3JETw&index=8">production work</a> for J-Pop sensations Perfume?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<i>Churn</i> (free download <a href="http://scissorlock.bandcamp.com/">here</a>) is Whale’s first solo release as Scissor Lock, following an excellent early-2012 <a href="http://newweirdaustralia.com/projects/thomas-william-vs-scissor-lock-jewelz/">collaboration</a> with <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/thomas-william-deccan-technicolour">Thomas</a> <a href="http://thomaswilliam.bandcamp.com/album/deccan-technicolour-remixes">William</a>.
It’s less direct, less upbeat than his stuff with Collarbones, but it’s
no less potent. Heavily processed voices drift over slippery synths and
gently skittering beats on “Outer Space.” And the sparkling, metallic
drones on “Churn” and “I guess” recall Oneohtrix Point Never’s <i>Returnal</i>.
Except, with the distant and heavily treated vocals added in for good
measure, perhaps this is closer to Laurel Halo’s phenomenal <i>Quarantine</i> (<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/laurel-halo-quarantine">TMT Review</a>),
yet another experiment in the sonics of posthumanity, the experience of
being always already mediated. Nowhere is this clearer than on the
appropriately titled “None”: a near total effacement of self, the pop
mainstream’s obsession with Auto-Tune taken to its logical conclusion. </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
It’s as if with Collarbones Whale was trying to show how pop could be
otherwise — more interesting, more experimental. And with Scissor Lock,
he’s trying to re-imagine the experimental underground through the lens
of pop. Which is to say we could read the cover image to <i>Churn</i>
exactly the other way round. Not as a distorted take on pop. Rather, the
focus here is precisely on the splash of water, the distortion. <i>That’s</i>
where our attention is being directed. And what we’re being invited to
see/hear is the pop that was always latent behind it, waiting to peak
through.<br />
<br /></div>
<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="100" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=2073442931/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" style="display: block; height: 100px; position: relative; width: 400px;" width="400"><a href="http://scissorlock.bandcamp.com/album/churn">Churn by Scissor Lock</a></iframe>
</div>
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/scissor-lock-churn" target="_blank">Originally posted on TMT here</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-68570823043297967492013-01-25T16:47:00.001-08:002013-01-25T16:48:01.219-08:00 ECO VIRTUAL: VIRTUAL大気中分析 ( Advanced Climate Research & Analysis)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1gBS56KTfVbhJh3LCwhz6Ajmt1Usg74_uUCHbJZPxb-874-3SdQmHHgMCp3zKC1lY5gHMX9uD5z43iwUqWqKEEOS2Da_4kHrXPP5wV-iV_IhE64CAw9Xo9H8ucH0NQfhEptGBeR1sXRI/s1600/choco-13-01-eco-virtual.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1gBS56KTfVbhJh3LCwhz6Ajmt1Usg74_uUCHbJZPxb-874-3SdQmHHgMCp3zKC1lY5gHMX9uD5z43iwUqWqKEEOS2Da_4kHrXPP5wV-iV_IhE64CAw9Xo9H8ucH0NQfhEptGBeR1sXRI/s320/choco-13-01-eco-virtual.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-eco-virtual-virtual%E5%A4%A7%E6%B0%97%E4%B8%AD%E5%88%86%E6%9E%90" target="_blank">Vaporwave is dead. Long live vaporwave!</a> What does it mean when a genre reaches its <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Vaporwave">maximum saturation</a> and influence to date long after its <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/datavis-forgotten-light-prism-projector">obituary</a> has been written? Especially when that genre is so <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/emeralds-just-to-feel-anything">closely related</a> to hauntology? And when its methods are so easily replicable? Or appear to be? At what point is a replica of a genre <i>entirely premised</i>
on the logic of the replica (which is also to say its impossibility) no
longer good enough? Which of vaporwave’s many afterlives will endure?
And which will fade into the ether?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
By pushing the genre’s techniques in new and interesting directions, <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-vektroid-enemy">Vektroid</a>
has already begun to answer some of these questions. With ECO VIRTUAL,
things are less clear. On one level, this is total vwave boilerplate, a
perfect clone. And yet there’s something really nice about the
conceptual integrity here (the videos, courtesy of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/EcoVirtualTV?feature=watch">EcoVirtualTV</a>
work particularly well). Not so much innovative as a perfect
realization of the genre’s already extant associations with weather:
both its corporate soundtrack and the connotations of climate, ambiance,
mood alteration, biomanagement, and perhaps even the stratospheric or
transcendent.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="100" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=3748740600/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" style="display: block; height: 100px; position: relative; width: 400px;" width="400"><a href="http://ecovirtual.bandcamp.com/album/virtual">VIRTUAL大気中分析 by ECO VIRTUAL</a></iframe>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-2741715867858201132013-01-25T16:42:00.003-08:002013-01-25T16:44:09.656-08:00naps - 7" (self-released)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhcGVuY1wh5SBmGMTC_5mA3_A_2sYmqqGgrtxu7-SEUrXCvqxlWPjF7EA9ABNJoHXvnJP5JIy3m9UAnR7E2eZr3opQxNsViFhmMInyUKSljsc3nInohuQusHp0V4JP1PWzRbvXC464oY8/s1600/naps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhcGVuY1wh5SBmGMTC_5mA3_A_2sYmqqGgrtxu7-SEUrXCvqxlWPjF7EA9ABNJoHXvnJP5JIy3m9UAnR7E2eZr3opQxNsViFhmMInyUKSljsc3nInohuQusHp0V4JP1PWzRbvXC464oY8/s320/naps.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-naps-7" target="_blank">A bit behind on the ball on this one.</a> Sorry folks. I blame the
holidays. But it’s too good to miss! Melbourne producer naps first
caught my attention last year with a quality little EP called <a href="http://notaquatic.bandcamp.com/album/earthsea">earthsea</a> on <a href="http://www.thisthing.us/tt">This Thing</a>.
Watery, degraded, tropical, new age… and probably other words too; it
was a genuinely intriguing proposition. Well, the follow-up is even
better. The territory is similar sonically: still pretty chill, but with
slightly more emphasis on the loping, disjointed beats. And there’s a
definite weirdness here, something slightly uncanny about the lounge-y
sample (is it even a sample? does it matter? maybe!) on “kids” and both
the choice and treatment of the vocal on “squai.”</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I’m struggling to think of comparisons actually. Daniel Lopatin by
way of Dolphins into the Future maybe? Except that there’s a definite
hip-hop element here too. I’d suggest you file it alongside TMT fave <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/ahnnu-pro-habitat">ahnnu</a>,
who (not coincidentally) turns up with a whacked-out remix here. Both
artists are doing exciting things in what seems to be a particularly
fertile backwater of the global beat-making community that has
apparently made <a href="https://soundcloud.com/naps">Soundcloud</a> its home. It’s here evidently that, as 2012 becomes 2013, new territory is being carved. But you knew that already…<br />
<br />
Played a killer set recently for <a href="http://boilerroom.tv/boiler-room-australia-melbourne-this-thing-secret-warehouse-show-hiatus-kaiyote-kane-ikin-rites-wild-max-crumbs-silent-jay-whooshie-galapagoose/" target="_blank">BoilerRoomTV</a> too. Was rad.<br />
</div>
<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="100" src="http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/v=2/album=2189619881/size=venti/bgcol=FFFFFF/linkcol=4285BB/" style="display: block; height: 100px; position: relative; width: 400px;" width="400"><a href="http://notaquatic.bandcamp.com/album/7">7" by naps</a></iframe>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-26046188171802095132012-11-28T21:23:00.003-08:002013-07-08T19:29:34.288-07:00emeralds: just to feel anything (editions mego)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG_6FbQRjcwomaTqYe-yye0CeFhDpZZ85h54mYpNjTwadBaEAnrbbMTmGaRu2I5SYAF06TO90cfieI2hxn5Ys2Y76HzkMx9UirgB6JnmbyITy11S8M85_DbGYOFne33tYvXy8wGk6Ewbw/s1600/emego150cvr-350x350.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG_6FbQRjcwomaTqYe-yye0CeFhDpZZ85h54mYpNjTwadBaEAnrbbMTmGaRu2I5SYAF06TO90cfieI2hxn5Ys2Y76HzkMx9UirgB6JnmbyITy11S8M85_DbGYOFne33tYvXy8wGk6Ewbw/s320/emego150cvr-350x350.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Emeralds are doubly anachronistic. It’s not just that they’re retro. They aren’t even retro in a particularly contemporary way. With <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/?search=vaporwave">vaporwave</a>, 2012 saw the culmination of a logic that had partly begun in the mid noughties with hauntology and hypnagogic pop. Ariel Pink, Burial, Oneohtrix Point Never, James Ferraro, Ghost Box, Not Not Fun. This sort of music always had a certain “aboutness” to it. Burial wasn’t reproducing rave; he was mourning it. Ariel Pink wasn’t just resurrecting the pop of yesteryear; he was remembering it. On <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHMb3u8t2mw">“Artifact”</a> from 2005’s tellingly entitled Worn Copy, he sings through a fog of hypnagogic fuzz “Never forget the Golden Age… This is an artifact of that.” Both lyrically and sonically, this was music about other music. And that was a large part of what made it interesting. <br />
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This was the logic that vaporwave took up this year and radicalized. In doing so, it introduced a different regime of art-practice to the musical avant-underground: the readymade. Unlike seapunk with which it was regularly and <a href="http://vimeo.com/54166230">erroneously lumped</a>, vaporwave was always more than just a “sound,” a shared archive or set of production techniques. At its most radical, what it did was interrupt the logic of modernism. By dramatically foregrounding the act of appropriation, precisely by refusing to be “original” in the conventional sense of the term, it made the listening experience all about that original; maybe even about the discourse of originality itself. Either way, it seemed to be <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/internet-club-vanishing-vision">adopting some sort of critical position</a>. And the impossibility of ever determining once and for all whether this amounted to endorsement or disavowal was a crucial part of the intrigue. <br />
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In other words, vaporwave did for music what Duchamp, Warhol, and Koons had done before in visual art. But it also did something else, something more. Vaporwave wasn’t simply derivative of a familiar logic; it extended and deepened it. In its musicality, its sonority, vaporwave had a fleshiness, a sensuality to it that even the <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpqbzMfdXhXovfdviL0hxPPXCOszZQ86V5tAlwtPC6lcesqqjxQocoIjy-3KI1sKEMKtPt9h0IMxZxXbeCx27B3w_vGiXBKt6mtmW7YcgL8lH5ceUXJEZfVjcNiTHcWGJzHIYGMlPyQe8/s1600/koons+balloon+dog.jpg">biggest, brightest Koons</a> never managed. Vaporwave was always more than just a conceptual gesture, in other words, a mere staging of the undecidability of the critical task. It enfolded you in the experience of that undecidability, held you in it, really forced you to feel it: to notice your attention coming in and out of focus as the album unfolded, at turns indifferent, the sound just washing over you, genuinely compelled and occasionally, yes, disgusted. <br />
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Emeralds’ relationship with the past is of a different brand entirely. What’s more, after vaporwave, it feels outdated and, to these ears anyway, uninteresting. Having originally made a name for themselves as a drone outfit, Emeralds officially “crossed over” with 2010’s Does It Look Like I’m Here (<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/emeralds-does-it-look-im-here">TMT Review</a>). For the first time, there were melodies, song structures, and a distinctly “pop” sensibility to add to the neo-kosmiche new age vibes. Mark McGuire’s guitar noodlings took a distinctly proggy turn, and it all started to sound a lot like mid-to late-70s Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching. These weren’t exactly slavish recreations. It was as if Emeralds had simply decided to pick up and continue to explore a genre that had last touched base with the zeitgeist some 30 or so years previously.</div>
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Nothing has changed on their most recent outing.</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/emeralds-just-to-feel-anything" target="_blank">Head here for the rest </a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-36442022568051264272012-11-07T21:22:00.002-08:002013-07-08T19:29:48.245-07:00ital: dream on (planet mu)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin92WB-qry2m_2XTOrfMTK0GKYtvNwg33ZXsymj5VMqmyOMR78YGNlAnxU4dJ5N1E41lCmixUeEOJnV4iobflzDBJL1BvVu8Dau1YgvB9mchvvUZC1cBXZNc3kGXvm93VC-sMIRhsvdxk/s1600/dream+on.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin92WB-qry2m_2XTOrfMTK0GKYtvNwg33ZXsymj5VMqmyOMR78YGNlAnxU4dJ5N1E41lCmixUeEOJnV4iobflzDBJL1BvVu8Dau1YgvB9mchvvUZC1cBXZNc3kGXvm93VC-sMIRhsvdxk/s320/dream+on.jpg" width="317" /></a></div>
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If you’d asked me a year ago which artists best exemplified the state
of the contemporary avant-underground, I’d have said Daniel Lopatin and
James Ferraro, and left it that. No doubt about it. Today, I’d want to
add Daniel Martin-McCormick to the list. </div>
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While mainstream pop is busy converging on a single mutant mega-genre
— euro-dance, feat. R&B, feat. hip-hop, feat. rock, feat.
euro-dance, feat. R&B — elsewhere the name of the game is radical
eclecticism and artistic self-difference. Multiple projects and
personae. #keeponmoving @changenotevolution. N E V E R S E T T L E. And
the attitude always seems very deliberate, studied. The musical
sensibility I’m getting at here always seems to have an <i>agenda</i>. This is the era of the concept musician, the PhDJ and their necessary foil the academicritic.</div>
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Look how perfectly Daniel Martin-McCormick fits this bill. He first
made a name for himself between 2001 and 2004, releasing two excellent
records with the post-hardcore turned free-improv and general freakout
five-piece <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthWHB6c9-E&feature=related">Black Eyes</a>. After that, his next project was Mi Ami. Initially Mi Ami <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxgsCYMnxos">did post-punk, though with more than a passing interest in dub</a>. But by 2011’s <i>Dolphins</i>,
the group had discarded the paraphernalia of rock entirely, trading in
their guitars for “ancient drum machines, a sampler that runs on floppy
disks, and the simplest keyboard presets imaginable” (<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/Mi-Ami-Dolphins">TMT Review</a>). The result was a kind of dystopic, ultra lo-fi <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REvLf2Ky-2Q&feature=related">electro-pop</a>
that, although it was clearly indebted to old-school house and disco,
nevertheless wore its own lack of roots in the dance tradition firmly on
its sleeve. And if this were true sonically, it was even more obvious <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iWvj4UQ8zQ&noredirect=1">visually</a>. When Mi Ami made the shift to Not Not Fun offshoot 100% Silk for their most recent effort <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWC379nibBw">Decade</a>, it made perfect sense.</div>
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In fact, Martin-McCormick’s association with Not Not Fun had already been established for some time as Sex Worker, probably his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-YUQNpbM7c">weirdest project</a> to date (which is saying something). And when the <a href="http://vimeo.com/16456782">Ital</a>
moniker emerged in 2011 on a series of EPs for 100% Silk, there were
mumblings right from the very start that maybe this was an artist we’d
heard from before. If it was hard to tell, that’s because this was the
first time Martin-McCormick had abandoned his trademark squawk, hitherto
the only continuity between the various projects. Moreover, this wasn’t
just a surface level difference. It signaled that for the first time
Martin-McCormick might be interested in making straight-ahead dance
music rather than some sort of semi-ironic commentary on it. Not
“hipster house,” just house. And by 2012, he had duly made the move to
the estimable Brighton-based electronic label Planet Mu.</div>
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In another era, that’s probably where this brief synopsis would have
ended. In 2012, it’d be wrong of me not to mention Martin-McCormick’s
regular (and high-quality) output as a critic for Dusted magazine as
well. Look at the <a href="http://www.dustedmagazine.com/writers/martinmc">records he’s reviewing</a>. Look at his favorites of <a href="http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/940">2010</a> and <a href="http://www.dustedmagazine.com/features/1004">2011</a>. This is a guy who’s not just listening to but <i>theorizing</i>
exactly the same stuff we are. Which is to say E V E R Y T H I N G:
noise, dubstep, techno, punk, footwork, hip-hop, African disco, reggae,
Colin Stetson, Matthew Herbert, Cooly G, Laurel Halo, Hype Williams, and
plenty of Oneohtrix Point Never. And it’s fascinating to notice, for
instance, that Martin-McCormick reviewed Planet Mu’s superb <a href="http://www.dustedmagazine.com/reviews/6132">original Bangs & Works compilation</a> shortly before signing to the label and suddenly injecting a heavy dose of footwork into his own sound. The result, <a href="http://vimeo.com/34732403">“Doesn’t Matter (If You Love Him)”</a> from February’s formidable <i>Hive Mind</i> (<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/ital-hive-mind">TMT Review</a>)
is for my money one of the standout tracks of 2012. The fact that
“Privacy Settings” follows only two tracks later is testament both to
the depth of Martin-McCormick’s talent and to the breadth of his
artistic vision. “Privacy Settings” offers four of the darkest, most
unsettling minutes you’re ever likely to experience. Footwork this
ain’t.</div>
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It’s this diversity that makes Martin-McCormick such a tantalizing
proposition. You get the sense that anything goes with him; that’s he
totally unalloyed to genre; that he could go anywhere or do anything
next; that none of the rules apply except when he wants them to, except
when he’s deliberately invoking and exploiting them; that having already
tried his hand at punk, noise, and improv — and admirably so — on his
next album he might simply abandon electronica entirely and move on
again.</div>
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He didn’t. Not this time at least...</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/ital-dream-on" target="_blank">head here for the rest of the review</a>.<br />
<br />
and i did a bit of an artist focus on dmm on my radio show <a href="http://pbsfm.org.au/node/21040" target="_blank">here</a> if you fancy some high quality listening</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-20352672538815846092012-10-24T23:08:00.001-07:002012-10-24T23:08:39.161-07:00sun araw: the inner treaty (drag city)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA2Dv6vSbQF12X6dHhWYqb8QaCSQ_SBYZi5GAf3Q9WIhnyJMeGQdxSzJV9HvsBgKy1F221LGCe3sMqwKTMSsOQKP3hcFvatrqOeGXy-WPWQj-R3xFT9CNuqb0iXHwgLrLDriXwWj658i4/s1600/sun+araw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA2Dv6vSbQF12X6dHhWYqb8QaCSQ_SBYZi5GAf3Q9WIhnyJMeGQdxSzJV9HvsBgKy1F221LGCe3sMqwKTMSsOQKP3hcFvatrqOeGXy-WPWQj-R3xFT9CNuqb0iXHwgLrLDriXwWj658i4/s320/sun+araw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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He’s certainly <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/yyu-timetimetimetime">not the only one</a>, but Cameron Stallone really likes to fuck with time. Sonically, the woozy THC-addled reggae-psych underwater space jams1 he makes as Sun Araw never quite go anywhere. Then again, they never quite stay still either. The effect is one of transit without arrival. Ebb, flow, cycle, and return. Tracks have a tendency to merge into each other. On and on and on and on. Swelling bass lines, bubbling percussion, flabby synth stabs, languid guitars. And all of a sudden the record’s over, the silence startling after all that timeless fog. <br /><br />Stallone is an artist for whom the term hypnagogia has always felt particularly appropriate. And I mean that in the strictest sense of the word. Sun Araw’s music is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia">“presomnal.”</a> It’s located precisely at that point between sleep and wakefulness when sensations get simultaneously drawn out and suspended. <br /><br />Then there’s <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/sun-araw">all the talk</a> of the ancients, mythology, “neo-primitive vibes,” Stallone’s encrypted references to his musical idols. Not only does the music fuck with your sense of time as you experience it, it’s in constant and self-conscious conversation with its own history too. Even though this latest record, The Inner Treaty, has been released by Drag City, the long-standing association with Not Not Fun makes total sense in this respect. Sun Araw’s music always feels totally idiosyncratic to me. I couldn’t imagine ever mistaking it for anyone else. But it situates itself firmly in that interzone between then and now. Time out of joint. <br /><br />It’s an attitude — an ethos actually — best exemplified on Stallone’s <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/sun-araw-m-geddes-gengras-meet-congos-icon-give-thank">extraordinary collaboration</a> Icon Give Thank with 70s reggae legends The Congos and fellow L.A. resident M Geddes Gengres from earlier this year. Honestly, my ears are still ringing with the utter blessedness of it. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rPKOZo8hVg">Sunshine</a>. A ray of joyous reverberant light. The record brought together three very different perspectives on dub history, two from one end and one from the other, and the combined effect was magic. In 2012, not a helluva lot has sounded better. Testament to the fact that innovation does not always need to mean the unceremonious discarding of what has come before. Retrospection, not Retromania. A healthy kind of respect for the past without being beholden to it...</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/sun-araw-the-inner-treaty" target="_blank">Full review here </a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-19955723667333325872012-10-16T03:45:00.003-07:002012-11-28T21:26:54.332-08:00a vaporwave primer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjleci_PKuc-DRyigkJzA7RPhItIowm-5X-JUADvck_uz_2l_aq5045yDJrkibs6SGk0unQPgYTFVIGA0m3oI0TGXml6ciEox9F0KZYzFw16KN8oO011d_0XRTJvtmTepsD3U6xWZNnXwA/s1600/vaporwave.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjleci_PKuc-DRyigkJzA7RPhItIowm-5X-JUADvck_uz_2l_aq5045yDJrkibs6SGk0unQPgYTFVIGA0m3oI0TGXml6ciEox9F0KZYzFw16KN8oO011d_0XRTJvtmTepsD3U6xWZNnXwA/s320/vaporwave.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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Monday night was the fourth edition of a semi-regular music criticism segment I do with <a href="http://www.discipline.net.au/" target="_blank">Nick Croggon</a> on <a href="http://www.pbsfm.org.au/farsidevirtual" target="_blank">my radio show</a> at Melbourne's PBS 106.7fm. The topic was Vaporwave. Our intention was to provide a bit of a primer of the nascent / already fading micro-genre. As we point out in our chat, it's a genre that seems to have a particularly intimate relationship with critique, almost <i>needs</i> or <i>depends</i> <i>on</i> it in fact. So it seemed liked a particularly suitable topic for the segment. You can stream the audio back <a href="http://www.pbsfm.org.au/node/20691" target="_blank">here</a>. The playlist is below. But I thought it might be worth including some other relevant links here too. </div>
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DOWNLOADS / LISTENING:</div>
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<a href="http://internetclubdotcom.angelfire.com/" rel="nofollow" title="http://internetclubdotcom.angelfire.com/">http://internetclubdotcom.angelfire.com/</a><br />
<a href="http://newdreamsltd.tumblr.com/" rel="nofollow" title="http://newdreamsltd.tumblr.com/">http://newdreamsltd.tumblr.com/</a><br />
<a href="http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/" rel="nofollow" title="http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/">http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/</a><br />
<a href="http://fatimaalqadiri.com/" rel="nofollow" title="http://fatimaalqadiri.com/">http://fatimaalqadiri.com/</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cAdJ3Ns1gE&list=PL17F85307BEC87434&index=7&feature=plpp_video" target="_blank">representative playlist on youtube</a></div>
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CRITIQUE:</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/favorite-30-albums-of-2012-so-far-staff-feature" target="_blank">Macintosh Plus</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.dummymag.com/features/2012/07/12/adam-harper-vaporwave/" target="_blank">Adam Harper's piece in Dummy Mag</a></div>
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/virtual-information-desk-contemporary-sapporo" target="_blank">情報デスクVIRTUAL</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/mediafired-the-pathway-through-..." target="_blank">Mediafired </a><br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/yyu-timetimetimetime" target="_blank">BEER ON THE RUG / YYU</a><br />
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/internet-club-vanishing-vision" target="_blank">INTERNET CLUB</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/gatekeeper-exo" target="_blank">Gatekeeper</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/datavis-forgotten-light-prism-p..." target="_blank">Datavis / Forgotten Light</a><br />
<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/emeralds-just-to-feel-anything" target="_blank">Vaporwave vs genre fanboyism</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/corporate-takeover" target="_blank">Muzak / Corporate Takeover</a></div>
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<a href="http://dismagazine.com/" target="_blank">DIS Magazine</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.artspace.org.au/publications_theory.php?i=1" target="_blank">Rex Butler</a></div>
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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -<br />
Software | Island Sunrise | Digital Dance (1988) <br />
<br />
James Ferraro | Linden Dollars | Far Side Virtual<br />
Oneohtrix Point Never | Nassau | Replica<br />
Chuck Person | Eccojam A1 | Chuck Person's Eccojams Vol.1 <br />
<br />
Computer Dreams | track 2 | Silk Road<br />
Laserdisc Visions | Malls | New Dreams Ltd.<br />
new dreams ltd initiation tape | meditations save me o lord | part one<br />
Laserdisc Visions | Information | New Dreams Ltd.<br />
情報デスクVIRTUAL | XX ''RUBY DUSK ON A 2ND LIFE NUDE BEACH'' ☯ . . . の生活・・・「ロベルタ」 | 札幌コンテンポラリー <br />
<br />
Mediafired | cinderellas-big-score | The Pathway Through Whatever<br />
INTERNET CLUB | BY DESIGN | VANISHING VISION<br />
ECCO UNLIMITED | WITHIN REACH | NHK REMINDS YOU TO BOOST YOUR SIGNAL <br />
<br />
S L O W W E A T H E R J A M Z<br />
Fatima Al Qadiri | Vatican Vibes | Genre-Specific Xperience<br />
HD BOYZ | UNZIP <br />
<br />
Macintosh Plus | 壊れた | Floral Shoppe (bonus edition)<br />
INTERNET CLUB | WEB FANTASY (REAL ESTATE OUTSIDE OF EUCLIDEAN SPACE MIX) <br />
<br />
Wakesleep |To Anyone | Unreleased<br />
Bee Mask | Unripe Pears | When We Were Eating Unripe Pears <br />
---<br />
Kane Ikin | Rhea | Sublunar<br />
Emanuele De Raymondi | BV1 | Buyukberber Variations <br />
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Emanuele De Raymondi | BV4 | Buyukberber Variations Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-11855963106280606492012-10-11T22:17:00.002-07:002012-10-11T22:17:45.567-07:00datavis + forgotten light: prism projector (hexagon)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh_jZT1d6GUGt-Hs7xBOVF2SJGzfdEylb76DIIWTGO32zZ_krd5LYnZjC7UJWMK9zT-1a6NfE5S9PVvbthspSKSsWVLWVTH6oWh7958ZeF47bRYboFvT52KS_gfsRFabeTU3Mm4w2RqRg/s1600/prism+projector.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjh_jZT1d6GUGt-Hs7xBOVF2SJGzfdEylb76DIIWTGO32zZ_krd5LYnZjC7UJWMK9zT-1a6NfE5S9PVvbthspSKSsWVLWVTH6oWh7958ZeF47bRYboFvT52KS_gfsRFabeTU3Mm4w2RqRg/s320/prism+projector.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is both an obituary and a baptism. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/virtual-information-desk-contemporary-sapporo">Vaporwave</a> will turn out to have been <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-internet-club-final-tears-album-stream">a blip</a>: less a genre than a <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/internet-club-vanishing-vision">methodological and conceptual gesture</a> pursued briefly but vigorously by a number of highly prolific artists inspired by Daniel Lopatin and James Ferraro. Although it was already beginning to emerge from bedrooms/internet connections in 2011, vaporwave will have registered in the critical consciousness for only about six months, between mid 2012 and the start of 2013. And even then only in a few dark corners of the web. And then it will have vanished, its practitioners and theorists moved on to new projects, different gestures, unrelated sounds. <br /><br />What’s more, there will be exceptionally little to show for it. Vaporwave will have yielded hardly any physical releases and will barely ever have been heard “live.” Apart from a bunch of MP3s, almost all of which will have been exchanged “for free” (that is, their interaction with the market will have been limited to the $$s vicariously donated to ISPs and Apple), vaporwave will have left very little mark on the world. Not just that. In 10 years’ time, virtually no one will still listen to it. <br /><br />Nevertheless, vaporwave will have been important. And it will have been important because this sort of story will become ever increasingly familiar in the musical avant-garde as the decade continues. A method will be pursued, a “concept” interrogated, intensely and <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/yyu-timetimetimetime">repeatedly</a>, but no sooner has it been around for long enough to seem to coalesce into a genre than it will be discarded. Monikers will proliferate. Sometimes it will be possible to establish continuities between them. Often not. Lopatin and Ferraro will be gods. The only constancy according to this new model will be change. Which is not necessarily to say evolution. Evolution will have been for the Rockists. </div>
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Prism Projector, a split cassette between Datavis and Forgotten Light, is not vaporwave, but it is crucial to understanding both how vaporwave’s practitioners work and what will become of them. Datavis is <a href="http://sunsetcorp.tumblr.com/">Will Burnett</a>. Is INTERNET CLUB. Is ECCO UNLIMITED. Which is to say, one of vaporwave’s major exponents. And Forgotten Light is <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/premiere-forgotten-light-repetitions-for-the-depressed-stream-mix">Leonce Nelson</a>. Which is to say Geotherm. And La Mer. And, with Burnett, one half of <a href="http://datavision.bandcamp.com/">Datavision Ltd.</a> Together, the two (nine?) of them run <a href="http://hexagonlabel.com/">Hexagon Recordings</a>. </div>
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What’s so interesting about this record, what makes it so pertinent in relation to my argument above, is the fact that it could hardly sound any less like vaporwave if it tried. It’s a pretty standard drone record actually...</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/datavis-forgotten-light-prism-projector" target="_blank">Head here for the rest of the review... </a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-2118487414212458712012-09-30T22:07:00.001-07:002012-09-30T22:08:54.905-07:00flying lotus: until the quiet comes (warp)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmumuIXGqtx189bc3RJxXV_jWpcTFQ1WvVHWMvRhvyGbKE7cFnyE5wrQyzmIqFqhQdXFlxd5n-fh3DX0QXIgSu1BPJRKO50qT31FSObqchLx2i6Nxm1teZLRv4Ca8X62xXRNPHkJjP9Ic/s1600/WARP230_Packshot_480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmumuIXGqtx189bc3RJxXV_jWpcTFQ1WvVHWMvRhvyGbKE7cFnyE5wrQyzmIqFqhQdXFlxd5n-fh3DX0QXIgSu1BPJRKO50qT31FSObqchLx2i6Nxm1teZLRv4Ca8X62xXRNPHkJjP9Ic/s320/WARP230_Packshot_480.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2od42AkD8Gw">Listen again</a> to the opening seconds of Cosmogramma. Now do the same with “All In,” the opening track of Until the Quiet Comes, Steven Ellison’s fourth record now as Flying Lotus. Everything you need to know about the difference between these two records is contained there, each album’s essence potently distilled. If you like what you hear in the latter case, well then <a href="http://drownedinsound.com/releases/17253/reviews/4145531">good for you</a>. But if you don’t mind, I’m going to reserve my right to be seriously disappointed. <br />
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Because Until the Quiet Comes is the negation of everything that made Cosmogramma great. It is relentlessly beige. It is “mature.” It is a chai latte. It is loungetronica. It is David Sanborn. It is Nora Jones. It is über proficient. It is no longer the sound of the future. In its obstinate blandness, it is a surprisingly arduous listen even though it only lasts 45 minutes. It is coming straight from Warp to a cocktail bar near you and, soon after that, a Starbucks. It is the sound of an artist in retreat from the shadow of his own success. <br />
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What’s more, Ellison knows all of this. Because that was exactly his intention. Here he is in an interview with Britt Brown in the most recent issue of The Wire: “I like the idea of pulling back,” he says. “I made this really grandiose kind of statement, now I wanted to make this quiet statement, trim all the fat and just get a small, tight story out of it, instead of trying to tell the story of the birth of the universe.”</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/flying-lotus-until-the-quiet-comes" target="_blank">Full review (smackdown) here </a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-61389525309182666752012-09-25T15:14:00.000-07:002012-09-25T15:25:53.433-07:00internet club: vanishing vision (hexagon)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi2u3cCtjB5cSVLVqq7DW2rj5XOeRbFYfI2RQKN7WwyYUxU7C3ubftGuhSPOyF9vdwgxQ1_mejI8ns4UisV3bFo8mnoaPVF-K17sXkuDv40wfkuiX4JEpHJxIYM8W7Z4Qiv54fLNStbm4/s1600/internet_club-vanishing_vision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi2u3cCtjB5cSVLVqq7DW2rj5XOeRbFYfI2RQKN7WwyYUxU7C3ubftGuhSPOyF9vdwgxQ1_mejI8ns4UisV3bFo8mnoaPVF-K17sXkuDv40wfkuiX4JEpHJxIYM8W7Z4Qiv54fLNStbm4/s320/internet_club-vanishing_vision.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here’s what we know. Vaporwave is a form of appropriation art. Its major exponents — INTERNET CLUB, New Dreams Ltd., Computer Dreams, Lasership Stereo,VΞRACOM — all tend to work with glossy corporate mood music, dredged from the nether regions of the internet, which they then reframe (sometimes obviously looped, pitched, and screwed; sometimes not) in an intriguingly ambivalent gesture between endorsement and critique. Sometimes the effect is genuinely sublime. Often it remains vacant and grotesque. But in either case, the act of repetition and recontextualization produces an ontological shift: what started off sounding a hell of a lot like muzak turns out to be about it instead. The banal is imbued with a kind of ironic distance, and it is this distance that gives vaporwave its peculiar critical function: its “aboutness.” <br />
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That’s step one. In step two, vaporwave isn’t just “about” muzak or the acoustic experience of capital. It doesn’t just stage a moment of either approval or condemnation. In step two, what vaporwave is “about” is precisely the impossibility of the critical task itself. What it stages is the profound ambiguity of the music it takes as its source material: that moment when you catch yourself humming along to a pan-pipe cover of Billie Jean as you wait to be connected to the call center, and, to your horror, you notice your own pleasure. In one of the <a href="http://dummymag.com/features/2012/07/12/adam-harper-vaporwave">first pieces</a> to attempt to theorize the genre, Adam Harper wondered whether vaporwave involved “a critique of capitalism or a capitulation to it?” His answer: “Both and neither.” Undecidable. <br />
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In this respect, vaporwave is doing nothing more than dramatizing a logic that we have already seen play out in reverse. It is the product of a culture, in other words, in which the music/muzak distinction has <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/corporate-takeover">already collapsed</a>. It was as long ago as 1984 that the Muzak corporation first started using original artists’ material to lubricate the exchange of capital. Since then, it hasn’t looked back. Today, it offers “multi-sensory branding solutions” for everything from retail outlets to restaurants, healthcare, and finance. Muzak’s <a href="http://www.muzak.com/">website</a> trumpets the fact that the corporation experienced “unprecedented growth in the first decade of the new millennium.” From a catalogue of nearly three million songs, “more than 100 million people hear Muzak programs each day.” The <a href="http://www.muzak.com/samples?series=elements">“indie electronic” playlist</a>, for instance, offers a diverse daily diet of “electronic-based music drawing from house, techno, IDM, indie pop, downtempo and other styles from the club and lounge scene.” “Artists include: Fever Ray, Cut Copy, Junior Boys, Matthew Dear.” The Pop Underground hasn’t been underground for a long time now. Today, it’s simply the soundtrack to a different kind of shopping experience. <br />
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One way of thinking about vaporwave then is as a response to the death of canned music: an act of mourning as much as celebration, and a dramatic demonstration of the fact that the music/muzak distinction has always been unstable at a time when it’s less stable than ever before. <br />
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/internet-club-vanishing-vision" target="_blank">READ THE REST ON TMT</a><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-24801441974440400562012-09-04T22:29:00.003-07:002012-10-09T21:05:51.621-07:00 YYU: TIMETIMETIME&TIME (beer on the rug)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6PldGNrRTXbI53A__XG05NrOG2XN3i_haPT0OeXtkIj7R11ueYPrw5trlmiTZ-xfQrBeCK4B7Hs4A1brduW-yjyx0PniTZQsfAKvC1qe-OZYP1MjojoX_URf5daGPUwSvEQpokwjv3A/s1600/yyu-time.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6PldGNrRTXbI53A__XG05NrOG2XN3i_haPT0OeXtkIj7R11ueYPrw5trlmiTZ-xfQrBeCK4B7Hs4A1brduW-yjyx0PniTZQsfAKvC1qe-OZYP1MjojoX_URf5daGPUwSvEQpokwjv3A/s320/yyu-time.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/">Beer on the Rug</a> is one of the most interesting labels to have emerged in the last year or so. Early releases from the likes of World Series, The Arcade Junkies, Midnight Television, and (a little later) Boy Snacks were all in that Ariel Pink, James Ferraro circa Night Dolls With Hairspray region of ultra lo-fi hypnagogia. But the next wave of output, beginning with Laserdisc Visions’ New Dreams Ltd. in July 2011 and continuing on with albums from Napolian and Computer Dreams, Macintosh Plus, and, most recently, 情報デスクVIRTUAL took the label into different territory entirely. All of a sudden, there was less emphasis on grime and far more on gloss. <br />
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Where hypnagogic pop was concerned with hazy and degraded re-productions of and odes to vintage pop, this new breed of artists — while still looking to the past for their raw material — seemed to be far more interested in re-using and re-purposing: re-branding, to use an appropriately corporate term, the sonic lubricant of commerce for the purposes of the musical underground. An act of appropriation and recontextualization. Sometimes the raw material is looped, restructured, pitch- and/or tempo-shifted. But sometimes it can be virtually impossible to detect the presence of the artist at all. And the effect is an intriguingly ambivalent gesture somewhere between valorization and critique. <br />
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The term being bandied around for this stuff is <a href="http://www.dummymag.com/features/2012/07/12/adam-harper-vaporwave/">vaporwave</a>. It’s <a href="http://ailanthusrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/dreams-3d">by no means limited</a> to Beer on the Rug, but the label is certainly a major hub for it. It’s these artists, most of all, who have brought the label attention. And as a result, I really wasn’t expecting their latest release, TIMETIMETIME&TIME by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/YYU">Californian </a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LcI3UQ5mT4">artist</a> Ben Straus a.k.a. <a href="http://yyumoo.bandcamp.com/">YYU</a> to sound like <a href="http://beerontherug.bandcamp.com/album/timetimetime-time">this</a>.<br />
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/yyu-timetimetimetime" target="_blank">FULL REVIEW, wherein I pontificate further on vaporwave and the logic of repetition</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-63333392512535813752012-09-04T22:27:00.000-07:002012-09-25T15:18:33.401-07:00various artists: new weird australia / fallopian tunes: gloss & moss (nwa) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDn9nS3ST07VJmk0I-qpuV8iPLsr8ljbv4vKCshTmP9y07Yhe7tnenPapdAfsixEDtmTCqGsrBWfgljnSHJa_IUhwbp7j706fvuiB-8IdS9b4_VgEQuw3RPLfmNoEqtehfd7A8oEFOIQ/s1600/gloss+and+moss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBDn9nS3ST07VJmk0I-qpuV8iPLsr8ljbv4vKCshTmP9y07Yhe7tnenPapdAfsixEDtmTCqGsrBWfgljnSHJa_IUhwbp7j706fvuiB-8IdS9b4_VgEQuw3RPLfmNoEqtehfd7A8oEFOIQ/s320/gloss+and+moss.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Ours is a curator culture. That’s pretty clear by this point. Everyone’s doing it: not just galleries, festivals, labels, and websites like this one but, most of all, you, your sis, and the guy/gal behind this <a href="http://indifferent-cats-in-amateur-porn.tumblr.com/">little doozy</a>: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Spotify, Pinterest, and all their myriad siblings and offshoots. Confronted by the information ocean, taste is the hottest commodity around. Presumably that’s why the activity of curation is increasingly being outsourced to mathematics too? Algorithms mean $$, people! YouTube and Amazon are the paradigms here. It’s all about getting ‘relevant content’ into that sidebar. Hells yeah I like catz! And I think I’ll have that new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0415771315">Sound Studies Reader</a> while I’m at it. <br />
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Not everyone’s comfortable about such developments, of course. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/magazine/pinterest-tumblr-and-the-trouble-with-curation.html">This recent piece</a> on Pinterest and the curatorial manufacture of desire (I’m paraphrasing!) includes the following little screed from Choire Sicha, co-editor of The Awl: “As a former actual curator, of like, actual art and whatnot,” he writes, “I think I’m fairly well positioned to say that you folks with your blog and your Tumblr and your whatever are not actually engaged in a practice of curation. Call it what you like: aggregating? Blogging? Choosing? Copyright infringing sometimes? But it’s not actually curation, or anything like it…” Ironic really, given The Awl’s own <a href="http://www.theawl.com/about">mission statement</a>: “We believe that there is a great big Internet out there on which we all live, and that too often the curios and oddities of that Internet are ignored in favor of the most obvious and easy stories. We believe that there is an audience of intelligent readers who are poorly served by being delivered those same stories in numbing repetition to the detriment of their reading diet.” <br />
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Sicha can put the curator on a pedestal all he likes, enforcing this supposed distinction between “actual curators, of like, actual art and whatnot” and the rest, but the fact remains: The difference between such activities will always be one of degree rather than type. <a href="http://www.etymonline.com/?search=curator">Etymologically</a>, the word ‘curator’ derives from the Latin curare, meaning to ‘oversee’ or ‘care for.’ Curation is fundamentally an act of gathering, on the one hand, and of love, on the other — whatever the scale, whatever the format. <br />
But curation is always also creation. It’s just that what’s being created here isn’t ‘content’ so much as connections. Connections matter. A compilation like this one, for instance — jointly curated by Matthew Spisbah of Melbourne label and collective <a href="http://fallopiantunes.bandcamp.com/">Fallopian Tunes</a> as well as the band <a href="http://fallopiantunes.bandcamp.com/album/poppy-wash">Yolke</a>, and <a href="http://vimeo.com/44859347">Stuart Buchanan</a>, one of the founding members of Sydney’s independent radio-station <a href="http://www.fbiradio.com/">FBi 94.5</a> and now of the increasingly formidable <a href="http://newweirdaustralia.com/">New Weird Australia</a> — is the product of a whole series of prior curatorial and connective acts...</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/various-artists-new-weird-australia-fallopian-tunes-gloss-moss" target="_blank">Read the rest on TMT </a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-33597372161522126222012-08-01T06:13:00.000-07:002012-09-25T15:15:15.470-07:00galapagoose: commitments (magical properties / two bright lakes)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2ikxsrNGQTGI8qQ6_9j9PVPjXzI0FHVreOkjXeZKL2f3Tjbcqr81GyB6dO2S4Wk1S96drWiGyaNEEjMSJmiHAgXYhzT1XZZahEufWxMqAjQ8FRfWRnDDnJYvLkV37RZHRL1fKHyzY5g/s1600/galapagoose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2ikxsrNGQTGI8qQ6_9j9PVPjXzI0FHVreOkjXeZKL2f3Tjbcqr81GyB6dO2S4Wk1S96drWiGyaNEEjMSJmiHAgXYhzT1XZZahEufWxMqAjQ8FRfWRnDDnJYvLkV37RZHRL1fKHyzY5g/s320/galapagoose.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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First the beat was dequantized: unsnapped from the tyranny of the
grid. Then it was obliterated: broken down and denatured almost until
the point of unrecognizability. In the former case, I’m thinking of
course of UK dubstep, wonky <i>et al.</i> In the latter, mainly <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/various-artists-planet-mu-bangs-works-vol-2">footwork</a> and a recently emergent branch of “instrumental” hip-hop that, for the time being at least, remains nameless.</div>
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On second thought, perhaps that “instrumental” doesn’t belong in scare quotes after all. Because it’s not just the <i>lack</i> of vocals that characterizes this kind of music, but the <i>use</i>
of the Monome, Roland SP-404, and other similarly tactile MIDI
controllers and digital samplers. What these instruments do is allow for
the reintroduction of a certain kind of mutant organicism into the
production/performance process.</div>
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Not everyone’s interested, of course. For a lot of people, electronica still means precision. That’s true even of an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=3AtxFyqooTg">MPC magician</a> like AraabMuzik, I think. When I saw him play live recently, the music was <i>so</i>
relentless, so utterly mind-and-body numbing in its regularity, that I
found myself retreating into a side-room after only about 20 minutes:
that was all I could take. But <a href="http://vimeo.com/15799300">look at this</a>. <a href="http://vimeo.com/18493667">Or this</a>. Artists like Melbourne’s Galapagoose, L.A.’s <a href="http://islandofcool.bandcamp.com/">aaronmaxwell</a>, and Brighton’s <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/listen-warm-thighs-cold-legs">Warm Thighs</a>
have taken the sampler and used it to extricate hip-hop from the groove
— or at least to drastically modify our relationship with it anyway. </div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/galapagoose-commitments" target="_blank">Read the full review here</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-59761823945329149812012-07-30T00:24:00.002-07:002012-09-25T15:17:39.089-07:00will guthrie: sticks, stones and broken bones (antboy)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzwrIAFDgHjtOni5pLG6Ia1ahp7Wz2ps7KzA0EqriWlfndSL7FO1s2dlvOticTeftuknO_ak2P0nHGw-NbdiCnK8vp3sIe0JvHP402pROyOymoKLEyIlTbfb4zUQxZ1XvGihy2t2KIg-0/s1600/guthrie-sticks-stones-broken-bones.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzwrIAFDgHjtOni5pLG6Ia1ahp7Wz2ps7KzA0EqriWlfndSL7FO1s2dlvOticTeftuknO_ak2P0nHGw-NbdiCnK8vp3sIe0JvHP402pROyOymoKLEyIlTbfb4zUQxZ1XvGihy2t2KIg-0/s320/guthrie-sticks-stones-broken-bones.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I’m in awe of this record and in awe of the guy who made it. It dropped into my inbox one day a few months back with a view to giving it a spin on <a href="http://www.pbsfm.org.au/farsidevirtual">this radio show I do</a>, and I was immediately impressed. The musicianship, the sheer muscular intelligence of Will Guthrie’s technique, the raw immediacy of 40 minutes spent engrossed with nothing but <a href="http://vimeo.com/29364391">a man and his drums</a>. It’s not just that the record’s good (and it is); the values it seemed to embody felt really unfamiliar and exciting to me as a result of the kind of <a href="http://farsidevirtual.blogspot.com.au/">soundworld I’ve been inhabiting recently</a>. </div>
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Don’t get me wrong. I won’t be arguing the now infamous <a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/%E2%80%9Dhttp://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/pumice-puny%E2%80%9D">Julia Holter line</a> that aesthetic merit is somehow commensurate with or proportional to artistic labour. We all know the virtues of the aleatoric, the ‘unskilled,’ the rough-around-the-edges. But I will say this: there is and always will be something impressive about technique — the beauty of chops hard-won, a body rigorously disciplined and spectacularly in tune with an obviously sharp mind. Give me a run-of-the-mill post-bop gig — keys, fingers, and sticks flailing, performers’ bodies lost to the propulsive groove, heavy breathing — any day of the week over its drone, minimalist or chillwave equivalent. Or at least for the time being anyway. A couple of months back, Sticks, Stones and Breaking Bones was exactly the record I needed...</div>
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<a href="http://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/will-guthrie-sticks-stones-and-breaking-bones" target="_blank">Full review here</a>.</div>
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And I'm excited to report that Will will be in the studio next week on my <a href="http://farsidevirtual.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">radio show</a> on Melbourne's PBS 106.7fm spinning some of these tracks, along with a bunch of other current faves and influences.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8269274939187079780.post-34041846493518310142012-06-17T16:58:00.003-07:002012-09-25T15:22:28.654-07:00simon reynolds, retromania and the atemporality of contemporary 'pop'<div style="text-align: justify;">
At the end of last year I wrote a long-form review of Simon Reynolds' latest book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Retromania-Pop-Cultures-Addiction-Past/dp/0865479941" target="_blank">Retromania</a>. As well as observations on the book itself, the essay includes a consideration of how it fits relative to Reynolds' previous work as well as a bunch of his more recent writings on the web, in the pages of <a href="http://www.thewire.co.uk/" target="_blank">The Wire</a> and elsewhere. </div>
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The piece was published in hard copy a couple of months ago in the new and thoroughly excellent Melbourne-based arts journal <a href="http://discipline.net.au/" target="_blank">Discipline</a>. But it's just been released in soft-form too along with <a href="http://discipline.net.au/Discipline/Issue_2.html" target="_blank">a bunch of other great essays from Issue 2</a>. You can download it <a href="http://discipline.net.au/Discipline/Issue_2_files/James%20Parker%20-%20Simon%20Reynolds%20Retromania%20and%20the%20Atemporality%20of%20Contemporary%20Pop.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmXXRNfpXEMl8LVVvMq_f3ybBjP79RlOk93YOtd5F2dQHVPiz6CRqe49m9Z4bIT5NH5LCC6-ELCWG7Cr22AVCrmIHY6HtrhJGLBOmYXLAeecgE3PDLj8lClQi6dxIg89lMjOAVMwGsyc/s1600/discipline+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwmXXRNfpXEMl8LVVvMq_f3ybBjP79RlOk93YOtd5F2dQHVPiz6CRqe49m9Z4bIT5NH5LCC6-ELCWG7Cr22AVCrmIHY6HtrhJGLBOmYXLAeecgE3PDLj8lClQi6dxIg89lMjOAVMwGsyc/s320/discipline+2.jpg" width="243" /></a></div>
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If you're really keen, I'll be talking about the essay and other related topics with PC of <a href="http://mnmlssg.blogspot.com.au/" target="_blank">mnml ssgs</a> on Saturday June 30th at the <a href="http://tcbartinc.org.au/" target="_blank">TCB gallery </a>in the city as part of <a href="http://tcbartinc.org.au/discipline-and-other-sermons/" target="_blank">Discipline and Other Sermons</a>, a month of lectures and other Discipline related conversations. Things will apparently be kicking off around 3-ish. Live music to follow. Looking forward to it. Promises to be a fun time.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0