I’ve said it before and…you can finish that cliche yrself, my point is: if you still haven’t checked out Micachu (above) you are a victim of self-abuse (2xmeaning). Please do so ASAAAP (As Soon As As As Possible). I hear hectares of new music, most of which quickly proves not to be, really. She - and The Shapes - are definitely now, and maybe, next.
Less excitingly, wanted to dump a tombstone (there’s a visual image) to mark the doleful demise of Cutting Pink With Knives (who wrote a really happy-go-lucky tour diary in our current issue - what gave?) ‘Laser Hannon’, like being kicked in the face by an cool and ornate boot, below. Beyond that, well - at least Holy Roar continues…
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by kicking_k on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 (No Comments)
Even those of you whose interest in hip-hop stretches to occasionally scolding popular artists for their conspicuous and elaborate tough/money/sex talk (three breaches of bourgeois etiquette) will probably have heard about Nas’ new album. Well, the first video is here, above, and it’s an eight-minute historical epic. By the time you’ve reached the chorus, Nas’ nerve in taking this stuff head on (and refusal to add in humour as distancing effect or safety valve) cdn’t be any more evident - it’s a direct challenge - catchy enough to sing along to - but will you?
I’ve been sort of crazy obsessed with Prurient, aka Dominick Fernow ever since I caught him playing some grotty noise event in Bristol back in 2005 (see above) and picked up his record on Load, Black Vase - a thoroughly despicable mix of tinnitus frequencies, pounding drums and vicious fucking TANTRUM vocals slithering out all cut and bleeding through a bramble of distortion. It was the immediate, visceral thrills that got me hooked, but there’s a certain depth and meticulous care to Dom’s records that separate him from most of the noise crop; these are clearly records about (and conceived in the spirit of) obsession, beautifully packaged and internally complex. I have a good dozen of his releases and keep buying more.
I keep meaning to sort an interview with Prurient for Plan B, but I haven’t got round to it yet. Soon, hopefully. I just stumbled on this one by Kristen Thomas online at Impose Magazine, though, and it’s pretty fascinating, and not at all what I expected: who’d have thought, for instance, that the dark synth undertow of Pleasure Ground was inspired not by black metal - one of the genre mainstays at Dom’s New York store, Hospital Productions - but the album Trance Nation America 3? it’s too tempting to quote a massive chunk and that’s bad blog etiquette but here’s just a little bit. I’d go check it all out, though, it’s a great read and sheds light on his records in a way that enhances them, not demystifies them.
“There’s two ways to look at [noise], the ideology and the philosophy of noise and the genre of noise. And people furiously, as fast as they can, scoop it into a genre. Like any other sort of music, with any other set of predictions and expectations. But at the real core of it it’s supposed to be the freedom to pursue personal obsession outside of audience or genre. So in that sense, making [noise] more musical at this point is further negating that idea of gentrification. But also in terms of lyrical content, there is this emotional sadomasochism or a sadomasochistic quality to it where there is this play between the abused and the abuser. But it’s also, in that sense of yin yang, what makes the yin yang what it is, is not simply the idea of two opposing forces, but that both of those forces and elements are constantly trading places with each other and transforming into the other.”
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by Louis Pattison on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 (No Comments)
Another candidate for tune of the summer, ‘From Day’ by Double S, now has deceptively cheap looking video. Understand that’s cheap in a good way, as in spontaneous, raw, but with hidden depths. To fully appreciate it’s intricacies you need to also check the making-of mini-documentary with DJ Cameo, Misty Dubz, Chipmunk, Marvell, Ras Kwame, Tim Westwood, and a bunch of random kids (that’s actual squeaky voiced rugrats circa four foot high) hanging out at the video shoot. Much is explained, but sadly they don’t answer the key question, how did they get hold of my first Walkman? I thought that thing had been crushed in a dumpster back in ‘87.
The fact that Laurie Anderson week has thus far consisted of two posts, alpha-and-omega-style, shd be held against me rather than her. Maybe a Laurie Anderson week, like a light year, is a distance (how far our hero travels in seven days?) That seems appropriately oblique.
Anyway, today I wanted to alert you to the three of her albums you shd hear first, thereby beginning to convert all yr own waking hours into Laurie Anderson weeks (…as a state of mind?) Whatever - investigate the following…
Easily her best known redord, due to the presence of perhaps the least likely chart hit in UK history, make sure you also hear ‘From The Air’ (the most conceptually satisfying song I know: “This is the time/And this is the record of the time.”) ‘Let X=X’ is another favourite, represented here by an Eighties student video (mindlessly over-literal, but a likable vintage).
Bright Red, a collaboration with Brian Eno, is perhaps the most rigorous and austere of her records - pushing the use of pitch-shifted (and so, notionally male/female) voices into solo cross-examination. It feels neither as playful or populist as other releases, and consequently there’s a depth and darkness which comes to feel autobiographical. For all that, though, there’s also some of her most enduringly beautiful numbers - ‘World Without End’ has an epic grace (plz ignore the fanvid), and ‘Same Time Tomorrow’s immense power comes from restraint. Note: this version comes from…
Her best live document, the first I ever heard of her, and easily one of my favourite five albums ever. Essentially a spoken word performance, with traces of music, and fragments from across her career scattered through casually-delivered anecdotes. It changed the way I write.
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by kicking_k on Friday, June 20th, 2008 (1 Comment)
Just too funny. All I know about Ice Kid is hearing Wiley on the radio earlier this year going on about how he’s the future. Haven’t heard loads by him, but an endorsement like that’s enough to get anyone’s attention. And a vid like this is enough to keep mine locked there for a while.
Some background. Our man has travelled up to Bristol to do a show with Ghetto. Outside the venue he’s challenged by a local MC with short curls who may or may not be called ‘CuthbertGRAFF’. But let’s assume he is. Anyways, Cuthbert is third rate with a bunch of old school UKHH rhymes retooled to a vaguely grime flow, and a half assed smirking attempt at swagger that shows you he knows it. Ice Kid waits patiently through his bars, then cuts short an off-camera female who tries to challenge (and is actually slightly better than Cuthbert, but whatever), then lunges in for the kill. Priceless.
Sincere’s new single ‘Once Upon A Time’ is the rarest of things, an earworm that doesn’t make me want to bludgeon strangers with a well aimed headbutt. An earworm that’s actually welcome. It’s been rolling around my head most of the last two weeks, mostly the chorus “Good god I done sold my soul/I’m tryna be sincere but the sin’s taking ohhhh-ver/Got the devil on my shoulder”. Trust me, I’m the kind who tries to seek out some sort of personal significance from infections like that but, in this case, there ain’t any to be found. It’s just an earworm with character, horny production from Firstman that an idiot like Mark Ronson would sell his coolest kicks for, and the killingest lines of a year chock fulla killer lines. My favourite? When he says “I’ve been doing things that would shame Whitney” and you know he’s been up to some seriously bad stuff.
I’m not sure the video adds a lot, but it’s nice to see ‘Addicted To Love’ is still a big influence on folks.
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by Ringo on Monday, June 16th, 2008 (No Comments)
For me, every week is Laurie Anderson week. For you, it’s this one right here.
I begin with “Language Is A Virus’ (above) because it’s a pretty good litmus for the the uninitiated. I have shown this video to many people in the hope that they will relate. Most don’t, really don’t. The best (most hurtful) response was (heavy paraphrase): “She says something clever-clever, does something surreal, has a bit of a dance. What’s the point?” To which there’s no real answer… Sometimes I point out that her dance partner at 2:00 is William S Burroughs, hence title (cue shrugs). No matter. For better or worse, I’m not sure you can talk floaters into this stuff. It feels pretty binary. You either light up with signal or get irritable.
Her spoken word, more discursively-conceptual side is represented by ‘Mach 20′, below. Pledge yr allegiance, opposition or confusion in the comments. More to follow.
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by kicking_k on Monday, June 16th, 2008 (1 Comment)
What follows first ran in the magazine’s weekly beemail, along with listings, special offers etc - you can sign up here.
They have been making and swapping summer mixtapes on the Plan B forum. I did not join in - heat induces torpor, and pollen, mucus. But if I did…
Os Mutantes - Panis Et Circenses
What I like best about the clip above is the Manichean culture wars in the comments box between people who write “wtf is up wit the crowd? so miserable, lolz” and those who sweep in after saying “THEY WERE LIVING UNDER A DICTATORSHIP - PLEASE STUDY SOUTH AMERICAN POLITICS BEFORE POSTING”.
New Order - Perfect Kiss
Won’t embed, for some reason. Click! This isn’t the New Order track I’d put on my superfucking summer max-mix, but the video of the band layering up one of their epics in characteristically bashful fashion makes them seem even more titanic.
Loose Ends - Hangin’ On A String
Ok, so now we cool down with what is basically the audio equivalent of modish gourmet ice cream. Frictionless. I could write paragraphs on this song, but that would only be slowing you getting frosty cool over at the motherlode.
Dr. John - Danse Flambeau This is what I’ve been listening to at my desk when evening is finally arriving and - as heat and light recede - the immediate world becomes bearable again. I couldn’t find the particular song, but here’s a creepy alternative.
Hey Willpower - Double Fantasy II
If twee indie R&B (with extra cream) sounds like a bad (and perhaps suspicious) idea, well, it often is - but this is done right: camp, imperfect, kind of warmly dumb, but sincere enough to endear.
Paris - Bring It To Ya
This stone cold classic, meanwhile, takes the perfect tang of g-funk’s bass/synth combo and replaces slack gangsterism with a couple of fiercely smart blasts of righteous rhetoric. Be warned the (unofficial) video mostly consists of police brutality.
Droids - (Do You Have) The Force? Click it! Currently being sold by PRs as Daft Punk - from the Seventies, here’s this French Italo duo performing their biggest hit. It may well cause a disturbance in yr heart.
High Places - Jump In
Another casualty of Wordpress and YouTube’s trained relationship. Anyway, get past the muddyish beginning to where they play ‘Jump In’, a song they wrote for a local school. It’s like a tyre swing, or fireflies, or any one of those midsummer signifiers I’ve read about. Goooooooo allergens!
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by kicking_k on Friday, June 13th, 2008 (No Comments)
Performing both sides of their debut single - the palindromic ‘Mirror Rim’, above - and ‘The Newlyweds’ Song’ below.
Back when I first interviewed them, last year, I asked if they’d seen the (german language) YouTube adaptation (in lego) of the novel their name is lifted from. They said they preferred the Fassbinder version.
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by kicking_k on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 (No Comments)
