Artist: She & Him
Song: “In the Sun” (from the upcoming album Volume 2)
I think this is the first time a video of Zooey Deschanel didn’t make me crush madly on her. She’s a lot less awkward when she stands around staring awkwardly. Indie indifference suits her better than twee pop joy.
In a world where experimental electronic music exponentially splinters into a multitude of rogue genres that slowly shuffle the globe from demilitarized dance floors to sleeper cell bedroom studios and back, a team of disparate scientists tracks this solanum-like pandemic while desperately trying to interpret cryptic field recordings of Samhain’s past, not one day at a time, but from Amen to Zombie…
ZOMBIE
Somewhat of a departure from our modus operandi, but still apropos I think. This time of year is when a very special radio station WFMU holds their annual pledge drive. If you’re familiar with the station get off your butt and give up some cash. They are, I think, the longest running independent, community-run radio station in the country, and at the very lease the oldest free-form station. The station is funded solely from listener support, which allows them to run commercial-free and indulge in a lot of nonsense. I recommend The Best Show on WFMU, Tale of the 12″ (which is a podcast only), and Airborne Event as entry points to all the goodness of WFMU.
Needless to say, I love WFMU. Both well archived and always on with something interesting, the radio station is like the best parts of all the college and public radio stations all over the country. But you don’t have to put up with Car Talk or some freshman trying to work the board and play three hours of garage rock from the 90s that you’ve already ingested ages ago. No, WFMU plain and simple is just cooler than you are. They’re in Jersey so they’re close enough to NYC to get out-of-towners in the studio. There is an endless list of culturally important artists that appear on station, from Daniel Johnston to Patton Oswalt.
Now before you think, “Not everything can be cool about the station,” what I mean when I say that the station is cooler than you is that they have been a grassroots organization that has carefully balanced freedom of speech and democracy to ensure that their content is both representative of the individual DJs and their specific aims and goals within the context of a radio show and that those who wish to be heard over that radio station are given opportunity, access, and support to develop their goals and aims.
And they also have the Free Music Archive. The idea is that because of the way publishing and the music industry in general is these days, a radio station that is sitting on the edge of extinction and being supported by listeners propping in up from the void might not always get to play some of the music that they do. Granted, they do play very esoteric and underground music that they don’t have to pay to play, but they are a radio station. And you’re going to have to pay to put on some ABBA.
So the brilliant solution to the problem of not being able to pay to play any of the music — or even if the situation were worse and WFMU could only pay for the electricity to keep them on the air and literally nothing more — there would still be the FMA.
The Archive is full of original content — live, recorded or found. And it’s all free. Royalty-free and free to download. Their slogan “It’s not just free music, it’s good music.” is absolutely true. In-studio performances by Yo La Tengo? Check. Interviews with pioneering artists like Morton Subotnick? Check. EPMD live at ATP? Check.
And what’s more is that you can get yourself a little user account and make playlists. For the big boys, you can also apply to be a curator and throw up your catalog should you actually own a record label.
And, speaking of which, we’ve made our way to a little gem on Happy Puppy:
Music For Vampires features eight artists and groups, each with their own unique interpretation on the subject of vampires. The only rule given to each participant was that the music remain instrumental (with a minor exception here and there), and the results are very reminiscent of scores and soundtracks.
Fittingly, starting out with a clock tower striking midnight and some spooky chords, the album holds very tight the instruction to make the results reminiscent of scores and soundtracks. Mostly Jon Carpenter soundtracks, but I’m so down with that I’m… in… the… BASEMENT!
I hesitate to put too much thought into this review because, after all, the music is free to you. Just go download it already. It’s a soundtrack to an imaginary vampire movie. What more do you need? That’s an amazing thing to think about, let alone organize eight different tracks from eight different musicians. And to help you along with the plot of your imaginary film, there is a nice story arc in the music and programming of the album. Those bells starting out the album come from Nevermore Eleanor. I would have preferred that no names or track titles be used, because they are all as hookey as that. But the content is there.
There are stops at moonlit windowsills for quiet contemplation of an everlasting life in darkness. Motorcycle punks doing doughnuts in mall parking lots biting pretzel stand hotties. The hot breath of a vamp jutting into the stone hallway of a castle’s ruins as victims scramble to escape. Fighting amongst the ranks of vamps, before a hasty retreat from sunrise and the survivors stuporing around in the morning light. A hot dusty trail back into town. Regrouping, explaining, and night falling again as the album ends with “Underground” by M. Patuluci, which would fit nicely on a Halloween sound effects CD. But one with way more class than I’ve reviewed here. Think of a CD with a cranberry velvet slip case.
Goodnight out there, whatever you are.
R. Kelly is crazy. Crazy AWESOME.
Let’s focus, then, on his latest album, one that he was too lazy to name: Untitled. A few of the songs were slated for Twelve Play Fourth Quarter, the fourth album in his Twelve Play series, but when the album was scrapped, Kelly wrote a bunch of new hits and titled the album, well, Untitled. But let’s not let this be disheartening.
Since his inception, R. Kelly has built his career on a few different sub-genres of soul/r&b music: slow jams, club hits, inspirational gospel music, and ballads. His breakout album, 12Play, was a collection of the first: slow jams designed to inform the listener that he had twelve ways to pleasure a woman, featuring a song titled “I Like the Crotch On You.” From there on, he branched out, leaving us last with Double Up, a slightly bloated magnum opus that would have otherwise been one of the best albums of all time.
Despite a few clunkers with Nelly and Chamillionaire, we’ve got excellent narrative songs like “Same Girl” with Usher and “My Best Friend,” featuring Keyshia Cole Polow Da Don. Besides those, we’ve got the one-sided phone conversation YouTube sensation “Real Talk” and the super catchy club hits “I’m a Flirt,” preceded by the two best metaphorical slow jams with “Leave Your Name” and “The Zoo.”
So where does that leave us? The man is recently divorced, cleared of charges, and had a miniature breakdown about his fourth album in a series — he’s ready to let it all out.
One of Robert’s strengths has always been his ability to work very closely with extended metaphor, as well as his command of rhythm and melody. Well, metaphor is out the window on Untitled. We start the album with a song about having a great time, moving into a proposition to leave the club with him, and then a tune about having sex all day and all night long. Then we have two songs deeply devoted to performing oral sex on a lady, and we even have a song later on where R. Kelly flat out tells the girl that she can’t be his girlfriend or wife because he already has a special girl, but that he invites her to be his number two (“Be My #2″). Poop jokes aside, Kells isn’t playing around on Untitled. We are treated, however, to “Number One,” a comparison of having sex being like recording a number one hit single. This isn’t really metaphor though, since the song is mostly about them explicitly having sex, and the radio references don’t go far past the radio announcer dropping in on the chorus to proclaim “THIS IS NUMBER ONE.”
Still, this is undoubtedly a classic R. Kelly album, as the man always has his hands on the mixing board in the studio, and his trademark vocal lines and unconventionally rhythmic beats are as strong as they’ve ever been. The best example of this is “Exit,” a song with a plunking piano walk that dominates the melody. But while he follows it when it pops in and out, Kells lets his main vocal lines hop octaves in a technical vocal trapeze act. The quality of the music is at it’s peak: Kelly has never put out an album this tight in melody and production.
But is that what this column is really about?
Nope. We want to address how a man so skilled can be so batshit insane. The Gray Area we’re going to explore is in between the tribute to the Virgina Tech shootings on Double Up called “Rise Up” and the song simply titled “Bangin’ the Headboard” from Untitled. Or maybe how the man who recorded “I Believe I Can Fly” went on to previously mentioned “Be My #2.”
No matter what the subject of his music, there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that R. Kelly is one hundred percent committed and serious about every song he’s ever recorded. How is this possible? Doesn’t anybody have a filter that keeps them from going all the way off the deep end?
“Hold on, Robert — maybe not everybody would appreciate the fact that you’re telling them that you would never date them but would enjoy their company as a mistress. You should reconsider the song concept, even though it does represent your honest desires, and maybe find something more respectful of women and commercially viable.”
Nope, doesn’t exist. And that’s why R. Kelly is the only honest true artist out in the world today. He’s never secretive or repressed. He ends “Be My #2″ with a chorus of “All you hatin’ motherfuckers” before repeating the word “slap” about three or four times. How does this man sit in the recording studio and say “You know what? I’m going to call out those haters and then let them know that I would slap them” and have the co-producer or engineer think, “Yeah, that’s the way to end the song.”
Who knows? Maybe you just don’t argue with R. Kelly. But at least the American public knows what we’re getting into, and there’s no sense that we’ve been led down the rabbit hole dishonestly.
Gray Area Score: Is Patron gray? I know he sings about it a lot. I think maybe it’s silver. Oh well.
Original photo by Andrew Steinmetz
Kasabian: Perhaps the best band Britain has to offer?
Everyone knows my views on prize-giving ceremonies but even I couldn’t help being pleasantly surprised to see Kasabian scoop best album at this year’s NME Awards for their extraordinary third LP West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum. A huge creative leap from the leaden glam-rock of 2006’s sophomore effort Empire, it’s a staggering blast of the very finest Britrock.
LTJ Bukem
AMEN
Back into the Juno catalog, just about finished with the Bs. The sands of Juno are ever shifting, so my new strategy is to actually go through one letter at a time, instead of looking at the whole catalog. Hopefully I won’t miss as much of the new stuff as the changing stock list pushes or pulls records in their position in the catalog with this new strategy. And speaking of new stuff…
Loads of new albums coming out this spring. On Hyperdub, Ikonika’s debut long player, the mighty ASC with the first album on the impressive NonPlus+ label, and Fly Lo comes back to Warp with a new album and headlines MAH’s stage @ the Sonar festival with a live PA gig. It’s always sort of a naive thing to say that this year will be a big year for music, but any fan of underground electronic music would be excited about any of those albums. Let’s hope that the album will continue to be a viable format for electronic artists.
This post is not about this man, sadly.
I had a brilliant idea in the shower two days ago. I’d write my next Gray Area column about R. Kelly. Robert Kelly, a true American musical genius and auteur. But a lot of you have a hard time taking that man’s work as seriously as he does, and I don’t think you’re ready to write an honest, critical analysis of his work.
So instead, we’re going to chat about Canadian hucksters Fucked Up. Equal parts Pixies, Jethro Tull, and Minor Threat, the band cuts their roots as an 80s hardcore band, but it’s fairly clear from the get-go that their riffing is a bit too soft, their intentions a bit too grand, and their output a bit too well orchestrated. We’re talking about a band here who staged the longest concert ever in Times Square, trashed MTV Canada twice just because they could, and has put hidden grooves in some of their numerous seven-inch singles. It’s hard to really try and pin down their true intentions, or their true musical direction.
Artist: Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
Song: “I Built Myself a Metal Bird” (from the album Kollaps Tradixionales)
It’s not too often bands use a live version of a song for their video. An interesting choice that works fairly well. Not sure why the audience is so grumpy though.
Kollaps Tradixionales came out last week and is, perhaps, the band’s best work to date. Much like this video, there’s a much clearer punk ethic involved that wasn’t as evident on previous works.
Kind of makes a guy a little less upset about Godspeed You! Black Emperor not being around any more.
In a world where experimental electronic music exponentially splinters into a multitude of rogue genres that slowly shuffle the globe from demilitarized dance floors to sleeper cell bedroom studios and back, a team of disparate scientists tracks this solanum-like pandemic while desperately trying to interpret cryptic field recordings of Samhain’s past, not one day at a time, but from Amen to Zombie…
ZOMBIE
Here’s two words that you might not expect to see on the same insert of a CD jewel: “Famous” and “Horrors.” This week’s redux of otherworldly transmissions highlights one in the Drew’s Famous series of Halloween recordings.
A little ribbing is in order here. From the Drew’s Famous website:
Read the rest of this entry »
America-centric thinking is far too easy a habit for us stateside music fans to adopt, but the influence of our brothers across the Atlantic in the great United Kingdom should not be overlooked. Join us as we dig into the best that Britain has to offer.
I didn’t even bother to watch The Brits last night. If you read my rant about the NME Awards last week then you’ll have a pretty good idea why. The UK’s answer to The Grammys has long lost its lustre. Gone are the days when Oasis famously baited INXS front man Michael Hutchence and socialist indie outfit Chumbawumba drenched Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. Nowadays, it resembles the long-defunct Smash Hits Pole Winners Party; little more than an excuse to celebrate the commercial big-hitters in UK pop and not much else.
Artist: Eluvium
Song: “The Motion Makes Me Last” (from the album Similes)
Eluvium is known for his signature ambient drones and soundtrack-esque climactic instrumentals. Similes is his first foray into using vocals and percussion in his music and, if you ask me, it’s working for him. Paired up with a crisp, single-shot, panning landscape of his hometown of Portland, Oregon, it makes for a few sublime minutes.
You can stream Similes online at NPR this week. The full length will be in stores next Tuesday, February 23.
