Blogcritics Author: zingzing

The Other Listening Room: La Monte Young

zingzing — Tue, 5 Feb 2008 06:53:25 EST

The Well Tuned Piano and an installation space in TriBeCa. Damn.
Since the 50s, La Monte Young has been at the forefront of modern music, turning the hippies on to Indian raga, influencing the minimalism of Terry Riley, Steve Reich, and Henry Flynt, the drone of Tony Conrad and John Cale (in Young's own Theater of Eternal Music/Dream Syndicate group), and the rock of the Velvet Underground. Lou Reed credits...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Music Review: Band Of The Week - Chromatics

zingzing — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 09:15:32 EDT

Chromatics/Glass Candy/Farah/Mirage/Professor GeniusAfter Dark (Italians Do It Better Records)After Dark is a compilation of vinyl and unreleased cuts from Troubleman Unlimited offshoot label, Italians Do It Better. Accordingly, it could be a mess, a lumpy sampler with no flow. Label compilations, especially those released by fledgling labels with only a few acts and releases, are generally useful for flipping through and finding interesting sounds… but little else. Italians Do It Better have dodged that bullet by two hairs. First, Johnny Jewel produces a majority of the music, and if he doesn’t produce the rest of it, someone is sharing drum machines. Second, even though the acts range from Portland to Texas to New Jersey and over into Europe, they all have one spiritual home: Italy, early-80s, at the Discothèque. Italo-disco was a European strain of disco, mostly centered in Italy and Germany, but leaping over into the rest of Western Europe and, eventually, back over into America. In Europe, disco didn’t suffer the violent death it did in America, and it was therefore allowed to openly grow both with technology and the artistic maturation of its artists. The beat slowed, the strings and horns and cheese dropped back, minimalism became a virtue. There was a lot of diversity in italo, especially as it moved west, but the era came to an end when house music took over. Yet, much like in America, the change was almost imperceptible, more an evolution than a revolution.Jewel has a very particular, if never static, style of production. He tends to favor female singers just this side of consciousness. His drum machines are designed to sound real, to the point that I’m having trouble deciding that they actually are drum machines. Handclaps are a distinct signature. His synths are analog, his bass lines low, his guitars chicken scratch. Brass and strings sound sampled, if only because one has to doubt that he has the budget for the real thing. There is a vinyl warmth -- real or imported -- to his productions, even at their most icy.Glass Candy gets the most attention with four contributions, three of which are covers. Their covers of Belle Époque’s “Miss Broadway” (reviewed here), Kraftwerk’s “Computer Love” and Dark Day’s “The Chameleon” show off singer Ida No’s wonderful range. She sounds variously jaded, full of dread or life. She also has a wonderful Yoko Ono-like shriek, which she employs almost at random. The only Glass Candy original, “Rolling Down the Hills,” is one of Jewel’s gauzier productions. It’s almost drowning in the vinyl crackles from the string and horn samples, the bass zooms around underneath and squiggling synths dart about. It’s too bad so many covers are showcased here, as Glass Candy have several stunners on vinyl-only releases that would benefit from the exposure.Chromatics are represented by three cuts, including the 12” version of “In the City,” a shorter version of which I praised a few months ago (here). Suffice to say the new version extends an already good thing to about 8 minutes of dirge and disco splash. “Hands in the Dark,” originally performed by R.L. Crutchfield’s Dark Day, is all angles and straight lines, but there is a lushness to the precision. A repeated synth stab continues throughout, while string-like elements are woe to change except on the one beat and an almost subliminal bass line and chiming bells provide the melody for the Chromatics’ narcotic singer (Ruth) to drool over.Ruth is a wondrous bore, barely awake it seems, but she’s positively bouncy compared to Denton, Texas singer Farah. Farah’s spoken word mantras are as textually dense as they are musically minimal, and her voice sounds exhausted as if having just crawled out of the grave. Jewel’s production on “Law of Life” is particularly amazing, featuring just a heavy bass drum beat, a deep bass synth and a slowly shifting keyboard loop for about half the song. It breaks down to just the synth before reemerging with a snare and creeping strings that heighten the tension to an almost unbearable degree. Put this on in the club at closing time only. Mirage, Italians Do It Better’s resident Italian, first appears here remixing Indeep’s “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life,” and may have the disc’s only real attempt at a club anthem. The beat is a mid-tempo disco shuffle, amplified by a bass synth that makes it positively swing. Synths variously sooth and saw, soar and shudder, but it’s that bass that grounds it all. Mirage’s two originals are more heavily synthesized than the Jewel productions, featuring arpegiators, vocoders and the cleaner, digital sounds of mid-80s Italo. Yet, there remains a remarkable similarity in production sensibilities, and that goes a long way towards fostering an identifiable label aesthetic. Professor Genius presents Italo as it was drifting off into space and filtering into late-80s House. Entirely instrumental, his contributions have a cinematic feel, and for whatever they lack in song craft, they make up in momentum. I see them as more useful here, rather than as stand-alone works, allowing movement between slower chunks of more impressive music.Taken as a whole, After Dark presents both a historical record and a document of where italo stands today. It’s tempting to see Glass Candy as the late-70s Disco face of italo, Chromatics as the early-80s comedown, Mirage as Electro’s rise and, in Professor Genius, the fade into house. As Johnny Jewel and his songwriting partners (Adam Miller, Ida No and Farah,) become more confident, the sounds they reach for will hopefully keep one foot in the past and the other stretching forward. They have already made remarkable progression from this time two years ago, and it seems like they are only just now finding their collective voice.After Dark is available at Troubleman Unlimited.

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

Interview: Band Of The Week - Chromatics

zingzing — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 11:00:45 EDT

A couple of weeks ago, I carefully went out on a Thursday evening (my, how life has changed), got a bit sloshed and saw Glass Candy, a Portland musical act featuring one Johnny Jewel on synths and bass. Jewel also happens to produce and play in another Portland group named Chromatics. I was to meet Adam Miller, singer/guitarist/songwriter for Chromatics, so that he could give me a CD, which is reviewed somewhere around here.I had some idea who I was looking for, having seen Chromatics once about a year ago, and from pictures on the interweb but, couldn’t identify the man in the crowd. I had my suspicions about two people, but one looked too short and the other a bit goofy (well, at least his dance moves were goofy). Upon closer inspection, neither ended up being Mr. Miller, but both needed a bath. By the time Glass Candy began their set, I still hadn’t located him and was beginning to believe he wouldn’t show at all. Jilted by yet another rock star? Why me?Chromatics have, over the past year or two, become something of an obsession of mine. They have a mystery, a groove, and an aesthetic to them I just find irresistible, and sometimes, only their music will scratch whatever itches. Loving them has lead me back to Johnny Jewel’s other production work, to Dark Day, to Italo Disco, Suicide and more. (The band Suicide. Listening to the Chromatics won’t make you want to die. Well, maybe “Baby” will.)Ida No and Johnny Jewel played, Ida doing her slinky dance thing while cooing and shrieking, Johnny wearing a nice pair of slacks and a red silk shirt, halfway unbuttoned for that Italian feel. They were great, I danced, (which, if you know me, you know I’m white-white-white,) fun was had by all and Glass Candy sampled the Geto Boys. Oh, happiness.After the show, I gave looking-for-Adam one more shot, and I soon spied him leaning against a wall near the bar, talking with someone but generally acting aloof. I wondered if he had even watched the show. He had on white pants and a black leather jacket—so rock ‘n’ roll, even in the hot club. I was a sweaty mess, but he seemed cool enough. What’s the point in being a rock star if you can’t pull off (on) a pair of white pants and leather? Most people look stupid in white pants, I have to say. I would look stupid in white pants. I guess it shows off your junk nicely, and isn’t that what it’s all about? Turns out he’s a real pleasant guy. Nothing too “rock star” about him. Except the leather and the white pants. Which I suppose he has a right to. So, I emailed him, asked him some questions and he spent six hours, he says, thinking of a reply (a good man, and thorough). And this is what he has to say about his band, fast money, dance music, Seattle and the end of the world.Chromatics have been through quite a few line-ups, from the early punkish days to the current Adam-Johnny-random girl singer. Obviously, there have been some "musical direction" issues. What makes you so fickle? I started Chromatics alone in my bedroom when I lived in Seattle in 2001. At the time, I was 22 years old, going to community college a little bit and working nights at the reception desk of a hotel. I had been playing music in some bands, but started to get tired of how whenever they began to build momentum, things would come to a halt because of people’s personal differences.I started writing songs and recording them by myself on a four track with a guitar and a drum machine; the process was smooth and produced more results when there weren’t so many strong personalities to clash over every detail. I was heavily into those two Cure records, Seventeen Seconds and Faith, along with Glass Candy and a tape Johnny had made for me of R.L. Crutchfield’s Dark Day. These three groups were all huge inspirations for me to start Chromatics. This label, run by an art student from Los Angeles, heard some of the songs I had done and released a single called “Beach of Infants.” The response to “Beach of Infants” was inspiring enough for me to try and put a band together to perform the songs I had written. My friend Michelle joined Chromatics, she had never been in a band before. We practised a few months as a duo until our friend Devin joined us on the guitar, then played a few shows as a trio around Seattle spring of 2002. Hannah Blilie started playing drums for Chromatics that summer and things picked up for the group. We toured the West Coast three times that year, the U.S. once, recorded some singles w/ Calvin Johnson and an album that Johnny produced called Chrome Rats Vs. Basement Rutz that generated a lot of interest in the music, before that version of the group dissipated in 2003. There was a lot of pressure on us and we were not well prepared to handle it. Devin, Michelle and Hannah began playing in another band called Shoplifting. I moved to Minneapolis for a couple of months to get my head on straight and then back to Seattle that fall.The next few years Chromatics went thru more line-up changes. I was still writing the majority of the music. My friend Nat joined to play the bass, we used a drum machine, but for one summer Ron Avila sat in on the drums. We had a good time together, did some touring and even got to open up for The Fall, which to me at the time was like opening up for the Beatles. After we returned from a two month tour, Nat left Chromatics to go to school and the band was just back to me being the only member again. I had lost touch with Johnny over the years while I was touring or back in Seattle making donuts on the graveyard shift, but sent him a letter and CD of some music I was making again on the four track. He saw potential in some of the songs, particularly “Healer” and “Ice Hatchets,” and agreed to try producing and recording the project again in his studio. I drove down to Portland for a weekend in August 2004, we were planning to finish tracking at least a couple of songs, maybe even completely tracking the album. We ended up spending the entire first night just trying to get a good kick drum sound. The next night we recorded the bass for “Healer.” I had to leave and go back to Seattle for my job, but it became apparent from that weekend that recording Chromatics was going to be a much more involved process than ever before if I wanted to take making music seriously. I started commuting to Portland nearly every weekend, as frequently as I could. This went on for a while. The music kept on getting better. Immediately upon working with Chromatics again, Johnny became more involved than just being the producer. I would bring a song to work on in the studio and we would alter it based on his suggestions and the songs finally felt completed. I learned from that moment that everything that makes a song a song is in the details, an idea I had never appreciated before.Johnny contributed his songs, we worked on my songs and the more we worked together, the more realized the concepts became. I had no choice but to move to Portland in February 2006 to be closer to the studio. The next year and a half we performed live with a couple other people trying to make Chromatics not just a recording project but a strong live band. We had some moments, but things didn’t click live or on recordings like we wanted them to until we started playing with Ruth. After we did “In the City,” it became apparent that we needed Ruth to be the singer of Chromatics. The band is now much more of a collaboration between everybody, and I am more excited about the music than I have ever been before.So, what do you think of Shoplifting?When they started up, Shoplifting were awesome. It was a great name for a band and they definitely inspired me to step my game up, because I knew people were going to be making inevitable comparisons between Chromatics and Shoplifting. It was something special when both Michelle and Hannah sang together, but the group was never the same after Michelle left.There is a separation between the live Chromatics experience vs. the records. What really separates the two? Who is the drummer? The separation between a live Chromatics show and our recording output confused people for a long time. For years, you never knew who was going to be playing in the band—sometimes I never knew. Live shows could be great for us and they could be disasters, but the inconsistency ended up keeping people away. The separation between live and recorded Chromatics is the central reason why we didn’t play a show in almost a year. After we did “In the City,” a live audience was going to be expecting a lot more of us. The only way the band could continue was if we shaped up. It was do or die. It’s great to be playing out again, and I feel more supported by the audience. For the first time since we started our MySpace page in 2005, Chromatics is actually performing all the songs in our jukebox live. As anyone who has followed the band since then knows, that is a major feat for us. Johnny does all the drums and drum programming/production on our recordings. Nat Walker played drums with us on our last U.S. tour in 2006, and is going to play live with us again. He also played the saxophone on Glass Candy’s “Miss Broadway.”I first heard you on the "Nite" and "Healer" singles. Since then, you seem to be abandoning the noir-disco for the less easily defined sound of stuff like "Baby." Have you just lost your fascination with dance music? Or is it something else? Also, are there any influences you care to tell us about? What bands are exciting you right now? We have a fascination for all music and, recently, dance music is one of those fascinations. We approach dance music as total outsiders, and right now some of our songs have been crossing over to dance audiences. I know very little about dance music and it makes me want to know more. Some of the stuff I’ve been hearing is so psychedelic and takes me to a different place. I love how repetitive it is. To be honest, I don’t know the names of most artists making dance music. But that’s what intrigues me about it, the anonymity, the focus on making hot music and not as much about having an image or “keeping it real,” like it can be in other scenes. I Groups like Daft Punk make me want to go out and be around people, they make me happy to be alive. I identify a lot with Justice too because their music is so dark. It’s obvious to me that some of their stuff is coming from a similar place as our music. They appreciate a group like Goblin in the same way Chromatics does. Aside from the stuff I have loved for years (Stooges, Roxy Music, Velvet Underground, Suicide, Joy Division) and that has clearly influenced my songwriting, I really dig new Hip Hop and R&B, especially singers like 50 Cent, Ciara, Rihanna, T-Pain, Cassie, whatever’s hot on Top 40 urban radio. R. Kelly. I am a huge R. Kelly fan. Right now is an exciting time for music and to be alive. A lot of genres and ideas are crossing over in ways they never have before. It’s exhilarating trying to keep up. Everything we experience in the world—not just music—influences us. As far as I can tell, you've only released "Nite," "Healer" and the forthcoming, "In the City" singles as this version of Chromatics. Where's the album? And what's it going to be like?The old “Healer” single and “Nite” 12” are both dated versions of the band and not a reflection of our current state. “In the City” will be out in the U.S. on 12” vinyl at the end of the summer and pressed in Europe this fall. We spent a lot of time making this 12” a complete experience, from the music to the design & packaging.We’re working on a new 12” later this year for a song of ours called “I Want Your Love” and finishing up another CDR of “Shining Violence” album demos called “Night Drive,” which will be done in August. The plan for the “Shining Violence” album is to create a piece of music that people can relate to and revisit over the years, something that will stay in their record collections. We want to make good music that holds up. At least until 2012."After Dark," the Italians Do It Better label comp, is available now at Troubleman Unlimited. "In the City" 12" will be released soon on Italians/Troubleman. Go see Chromatics at MySpace.

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

The Other Listening Room: Pussy Galore!

zingzing — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 21:40:44 EDT

If 1991 was “the year punk finally broke in America,” it wasn’t for a lack of trying. From the CBGB’s crowd in the mid to late-70s, to No New York, to SST, hardcore, the class of ’84, Steve Albini and Touch & Go, Ian Mackaye and Dischord… punk had been bubbling under the surface up and down the East Coast, out West and back to Middle America for most of the 1980s. Just what defined punk was a slippery beast, pretty much summed up by statements like, “No, we’re more punk than you because we’re more ____ than you!” (Fill in the blank with words like “hardcore,” “abrasive,” “mean,” “political” or “fucked.”) In 1991, Nirvana’s Nevermind brought “punk” to the masses, dressed up as something called “Grunge” and made into a slick pop record.“Grunge,” Seattle-style, was more of a fashion statement than a musical style, but the genre tag had been around for a while. In the 1980s, the name was applied to bands whose music could be described as such (in the adverb sense). No band fit the name better than Pussy Galore (although another label for the genre was “pigfucker,” which I think is the best genre name ever). Somewhat forgotten in the lead-up to the American punk explosion (or firecracker), Pussy Galore made some of the filthiest rock imaginable. It was positively diseased. Originally part of the DC hardcore (or, harDCore, if you’re nasty stupid) scene, PG was so reviled there that they pretty much had to move to NYC. They never held a steady line-up, their live shows were a mess, they never sold all that well, and there is some doubt as to whether or not they knew how to tune their guitars.Common subject matter for a typical Pussy Galore song included sex, teenagers, Jews, pussy, beatings, and/or some combination of all the aforementioned topics. I’m sure there is a Pussy Galore song that is about Jewish teenage lesbians fucking and beating each other up. Song titles (as well as the only-occasionally decipherable lyrics) took on racism, sexism, and prudes head on, unflinchingly shoving the grotesque bits of human nature in the audience’s face. The music was an all out of tune guitar mass (up to four of them, paying no attention to the others). There was no bass and a drum kit decorated with metal pipes, bits of sheet metal, and a trash can lid or two, over which singers Jon Spencer and Christina Martinez called people names and told each other they wanted to fuck but just weren’t all that good at fucking. Talent was not an issue with this band—pure attitude was enough.The Pussy Galore family tree, if you will, stretches far and wide, and includes much more popular bands like Boss Hog, Royal Trux, Howling Hex, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. But none approached PG’s absolutely nasty take on 1980s American punk. In honor of the 20 year anniversary of Pussy Galore’s first foray into the LP game with Right Now!, I’m going to write a fake (fake!) interview with singer/spokesman Jon Spencer circa 1987. You’re not going to learn much, (but I think that’s in keeping with the spirit), as I’ve never met the man. I was eight when this “interview” even could have happened. I think I owned a couple of tapes at that point. My favorite song was “Rebel Rebel” (the Bay City Rollers version).So, here it is. Enjoy! Just remember that it is "fake."Zingzing: Good afternoon, Mr. Spencer.Jon Spencer: Jon, please, Zing.ZZ: Much appreciated, but it’s “ZingZING.”JS: No problem.ZZ: Thank you for that.JS: Yes, sir.ZZ: No need for the “sir!”JS: All right, you fuckin’ prick, get on with it…ZZ: OK… You were originally from the D.C. area, but quickly moved to NYC—why?JS: New York’s dirty.ZZ: …JS: What? You want more? D.C. had Dischord. That whole scene sucks. No sense of humor.ZZ: Why do you assume they have no sense of humor?JS: Well, when you make fun of someone, and they don’t laugh… they have no sense of humor… do you understand?ZZ: You publicly declared your hatred for Ian Mackaye and Dischord Records.JS: Mmhmm?ZZ: Mmhmm. Would you consider your song titles “funny” then?JS: What’s not funny about “Teen Pussy Power,” “Groovy Hate Fuck,” or “Cunt Tease?”ZZ: Well, they aren’t very funny, but they are a little… gross…JS: Pussy!ZZ: …I’m not offended by the word.JS: No, I’m saying “You Are A Pussy.”ZZ: Well, you seem to like saying it.JS: Ooohhh, testy…ZZ: Let’s move on. So you moved to NYC in 1986 and released a full album cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Exile on Main Street…”JS: Yes, yes I did. All me.ZZ: Stop it.JS: Whatever. Move on.ZZ: Later that year, Bob Bert, formerly of Sonic Youth, joined on percussion. It seems that he uses mostly scrap metal for percussion…JS: …ZZ: …is that true?JS: That’s what you were getting to? For fuck’s sake, learn to do your job! Yes! Everything’s trash! Our drums: trash! Our guitars: trash! Our studio: trash! Our songs: trash! Our women: trash! At least according to our mothers, who are all trash!ZZ: You project an image…JS: That’s it! I’m getting naked!ZZ: Please don’t.JS: [Gets naked.]ZZ: …okay…JS: You want to walk away?ZZ: Yes and no.JS: Do what you think the situation demands.ZZ: Does it demand something?JS: Everything demands some sort of reaction. What will yours be, I wonder…ZZ: Ahem. You project an image—dirty, confrontational, almost pornographic…JS: Naked, at least…ZZ: Sexy, in a way…JS: Are you hitting on me?ZZ: No! No!JS: You look like a Jew.ZZ: [Stunned.] What? You’re just pushing my buttons.JS: Whatever.ZZ: Was that racism?JS: What, to go along with all that misogyny earlier?ZZ: Well, yes…JS: Is that what you think?ZZ: I have to wonder.JS: I’m glad. I’m right here in front of you…in all my naked glory…what do you see?ZZ: …JS: What’s that look? You wanna get pussy stomped?ZZ: How much of this is a joke to you?JS: Depends.ZZ: On…JS: Is it funny to you?ZZ: Sometimes.JS: There you go.ZZ: But what about you?JS: I take this very seriously.ZZ: But the music is so over the top…so…repulsive. Would you stop doing that with your nipples?JS: Then why listen? And, no!ZZ: Well, after a while, you do figure out that you guys CAN play your instruments…it’s not all accidental…JS: Well, I can play. I don’t know about anyone else. They might be faking it.ZZ: There’s a slippery funk underneath it all…JS: “Funk?” As in George Clinton?ZZ: I was thinking James Brown.JS: I like him. Okay.ZZ: Your vocals resemble his, in that they seem to be used more to conduct than…JS: Have you even listened to my lyrics?ZZ: They are really hard to understand…JS: Fuck you.ZZ: But…JS: Fuck off.ZZ: Please…JS: OK. Magic word. Go on.ZZ: Thank you…JS: Think nothing of it.ZZ: Why did you cover Einsturzende Neubauten’s “Yu-Gung?”JS: I like German things.ZZ: Like what?JS: Like Einsturzende.ZZ: Anything else?JS: Schnitzel, burley women, Nazis, facial warts…ZZ: Nazis?JS: Oh yeah, I forgot you were a Jew…ZZ: I’m not! For fuck’s sake! What is wrong with you?!JS: PUSSY STOMP!And so, I learned what a “Pussy Stomp” really is. It’s a dance, I suppose. It’s very painful to witness first hand. Even in my fantasies, I take a beating…And so must you!Pussy Galore-Alright

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

The Other Listening Room: Phil

zingzing — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:16:22 EDT

If you haven’t gathered by now, I really love production. Pure sound intrigues me; songwriting is important, of course, but if you can combine production and songwriting, you are an artist, not just some college student fumbling across a couple of lovely chord progressions and your fucking innermost fears and desires. Fuck your fears and desires—gimme something I don’t already have. Many auteur producers have floated through recorded music history: Phil Spector (innocent!?), Brian Wilson (sane!), Brian Eno (bald!), the Bomb Squad (black!), Kevin Shields (sane?)… Every decade seems to have its main man (and they are mostly men, except for Kate Bush) and this decade that man is Phil Elverum. Phil has a way with taking acoustic melancholy and putting it through the gauntlet of his seemingly limitless understanding of acoustic space to create an amazing lo-fi/hi-fi hybrid that dashes all your expectations of where a song can go.Phil is most famous for his work with the Microphones and Mt. Eerie, but he is also responsible for a huge amount of work outside his main outlets. He’s worked with nearly everyone in the K Records stable, as well as almost anyone in his Anacortes, WA hometown. He’s done huge (the Microphones’ Glow, pt. 2), he’s done small (his acoustic live performances, Mt. Eerie’s 11 Old Songs), the complex (the Microphones’ Mt. Eerie is a concept album that takes him through the earth, up into the sky to the sun, to meet with Death and God and finding himself there) and the simple (his latest single decries the internet and smoking). On some of his production work, he lets the artist maintain control and he only appears in the details; at other times, his production voice looms so large that it reduces the artist to a guest on their own song (and the song is all the better for it). At the height of his fame, (Pitchfork album of the year in 2001, tours of Asia, the aforementioned Mt. Eerie album,) Phil ditched his record company, started his own mail order business, changed the name of his band and moved home.The key to Phil Elverum’s genius is most certainly his use of editing, stereo and the abuse of your own expectations. Guitars bounce back and forth between speakers, ghost voices circulate, harmonies are shattered and put back together. Simplicity caves in to mountainous overdubbing which sounds more simple than the deceiving complexity of the simplicity that preceded it. What? I’m trying to say that in Phil’s hands, simplicity becomes complex and complexities mesh so completely that they become simple again. Put on a track by Phil and you may find yourself scrambling for the volume knob. Just fair warning.“The Pull,” from the Microphones’ It Was Hot, So We Stayed in the Water is a perfect example of his technique. Predominantly acoustic and minimalist, it begins with about a minute of two sloppy-yet-kempt guitars jumping left and right and into each other. There is a steady bassnote hum in the middle, but these guitars are recorded like others might record drums, with certain chords playing the parts of snares and cymbals on either side. Phil’s voice comes in on the right side, the acoustic goes down to strumming on the left and a huge space opens in the middle. The guitars reenter briefly, only to be shunted aside again by Phil, now stretching his voice out while slowing the strums down to almost nothing, and a double-Phil and 3-part harmony backing enters and seems to vibrate the guitars across the audio spectrum and on into… just some single guitar notes. Just when you think it’s all building towards something, Phil strips it down to almost nothing at all. Aah, but he’s just fuckin’ with you. Now that he’s got you paying attention… huge drums (free-stylin’ all Keith Moon-like) and 5 or 6 guitars flay your mind with white noise and washes of melody, so deep, so complex… you start to hear bells in the back and as the guitars fade, you realize that you are listening to rolling glass. It’s quite something.Mirah is a friend and ex-label-mate at K Records, the Olympia, Washington label that gave us Beat Happening, Dub Narcotic Soundsystem, Mecca Normal and The Blow. Her Advisory Committee features many contributions from Phil, including album centerpiece “Cold, Cold Water,” which may just be Phil’s greatest single song. The CD single features the song itself and seven tracks that separate the various elements of the song, so that you can edit/mix it yourself… or maybe just admire the insane amount of artistry involved. A strummed Mexican guitar and Mirah’s “I saddled up my pony right and rode into the ghostly light” sets up a Western feeling, sparse and desolate—only to be shattered by martial drums, swelling strings and choruses and a belted “It was wide, wide open, wide, wide open,” the grandeur becoming almost too much to bear. Breaking down to church organs, the song becomes intensely personal, an interior monologue about love and a certain relationship. The organs fade and sweet guitar chords switch between stereo sides and all is happy. That’s the first 45 seconds or so. A muted electric plays some chords and Mirah wonders and asks, “Is it not enough to be complete? Please? Let me give you everything you need, please?” Those same strings swell again, this time with a cello anchor and an amazing percussion device like trotting horses showing just how vast the heart and desire can be. The monologue gets darker, ruminating on the loneliness that comes part-and-parcel with love over percussive plucked guitar notes and a forlorn violin. The cello then dominates, mounting tension and expectation towards some huge blowout that never quite comes as the relationship falters under a man’s “hungry eye.” As she threatens to leave him (over a more strident Mexican acoustic), Phil goes whole-hog for the “Good Vibrations” reference: a beautiful, melting, multi-part harmony chorus of Mirahs lap over each other like ocean waves, only to fade into aggressive electric guitars and mounting drums and a wail of regret. All the tension of building and collapsing sections come to a head and everything rises together, the Mexicans guitars, the strings, the horses, the violins, the martial drums… and as she leaves him in the dust, Phil leaves “Good Vibrations” a “get better soon” hallmark card.It’s an absolutely devastating song on so many levels, with musical invention trumping emotional breadth (there’s a whole relationship here, beginning to end), while leaving room for both. “Cold, Cold Water” is a complete masterpiece of a song. The damn thing brings a tear to my eye. Music’s the greatest thing, isn’t it?

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

Skull and Guts Music! No Fun!

zingzing — Tue, 22 May 2007 07:43:10 EDT

For Pico.Say these words aloud: “You boy--What's it like to wet your foot in a cold swimming pool?--What does your voice sound like underwater?--At night?--Can you do the chickenskin swim?--Can you do the chlorine gargoyle?--Can you wriggle like an eel?”Ahh, strong emotion… it’s what music conveys like no other medium. If you really were saying those words, or--heaven forbid--hearing them, there’s bound to be a murder going on. Subtle displays of emotion certainly have their place in music, but it’s screaming anger, blinding love or intense desire that really makes music the art that it is. Whitehouse (formed 1980) is a British band that specialize in something called “power electronics.” At first glance, that sounds like a redundancy, but it does make some sense. If early-80s British synthpop used synthesizers to approximate a full band (including strings and horn sections) under the total control of the producer, Whitehouse perverts this purpose… maybe “molest” is a better word… if molestation included a lot more blood. Whitehouse rewire synths into pile-driving instruments of torture wrapped up in insults, which seems to be the basic gist of their lyrical matter (and has gotten them into quite a lot of trouble in their native England, where censorship of violent content and accusations of misogyny have kept their name in the papers). Further proof is in that name: “Whitehouse” has nothing to do with our president’s home, but is a reference to both a British porn mag and the deceased anti-porn crusader Mary Whitehouse. Live, Whitehouse is said to make Wolf Eyes (the current kings of noise) look like frightened little girls.“Wriggle like a Fucking Eel,” which was released on 12” in 2002, is both representative in its typical Whitehouse sound and something different for the band, as the structure is unconventionally (for Whitehouse) conventional. A sound like a broken air raid siren blares before someone yells out the quoted threats and some contraption starts spitting out bass tones, which sometimes sound like fucked up tribal drums, sometimes like a slowly dying digital fart. The “singer” then gets angry, eventually giving such a scream so as to drown out the air raid sirens, which by this time are beginning to sound like buzzing saws and Sonic Youth blended into a goo. Structurally, “Wriggle” is pretty damn Nirvana-esque, with a loud-soft-LOUD progression that heightens the drama and allows you the pleasure of getting your ass kicked twice. Download the song, give it a listen. Turn it up loud enough that some child under the age of 12 will be warped by it. I guarantee that you probably won’t hear anything else so visceral today. Sometimes, people listen to music with too much of their brain. I’m just suggesting you give your skull some attention. Throbbing Gristle also confront listeners with the brutal side of human life. These granddaddies were making audiences vomit (literally) 30 years ago, using visual stimuli (like band member Cosey Fanni Tutti cutting herself from throat to crotch,) or deafening aural tones that turned guts inside out. Their lyrics concerned the blight [sic] of the poor, burn victims and bird shit (I think, although it could be about jerking off). Lead singer/spokesman Genesis P-Orridge started cults, baited the media with Nazi imagery, and is now partially female. Their music was deceptively simple, almost minimalist in execution, but open-ended enough that their “songs” could stretch out upwards of half an hour or more. “Discipline” is Throbbing Gristle’s last single (released 1981) and was never recorded in the studio. Genesis was always at his best before a bemused audience, but this performance gets downright weird, with audience participation bordering on cult-like uniformity. Witness the frightened looks from the boys and girls when Genesis gets in their faces or hits himself repeatedly during his tantrum, witness the girl holding her head as if it might explode, witness the strangely sedate dance the audience spontaneously participates in. What starts as “I want discipline” slowly turns into “What do WE want?” over crude rhythms and noise generators, and while the music doesn’t really progress, it’s on a death march of repetition that drains the mind and helps you remember that we’re all animals.Is this even music? The British government labeled Throbbing Gristle as the “wreckers of civilization” after their first live shows and Genesis is quoted as having said something like about changing the very nature of music. Shows included blood enemas and Cosey’s pornography, and the censor baiting got to the point that Genesis had to leave England before they took his children away. TG is now making a comeback with an album called Part Two: The Endless Not, but some of the old aggression (and even some of the humor) is missing. Maybe 25 years just mellows a man (woman). Who knows, in 25 years, I could be listening to some limp-ass Fusion records. Enjoy while you can.Kisses!

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

The Other Listening Room: Disco

zingzing — Thu, 1 Mar 2007 23:27:23 EST

Disco may be the most pervasive form of music on this planet. There is no strict definition of what makes disco disco: a 4/4 beat is all you really need. People claim to despise disco, although admitting to liking some disco singles has become acceptable. Listen, fuckers, you always liked it, you only “hated” it because everyone else “hated” it and now you, flippantly, want to admit that you like a few singles? You know what? YOU LIKE DISCO. Don’t bother denying it. Sigh… it’s getting old.Okay. Here’s the history of disco: Disco bubbled up in the early-70s’ Philly Soul sound, floated over to Europe, came back to NYC fucked up and electro, got all over everything, was loved, hated, died, was reborn a few years later, and has quietly roamed the Earth ever since, sometimes showing itself, sometimes hiding behind such words as “post-punk,” “new wave,” “techno,” “house” or “dance-rock.” Disco wasn’t destroyed in a Chicago baseball stadium. Disco never went underground. Disco got punched in the face, that’s for sure, but disco has no face, so what does it matter?This week, I want to present you with a few modern-day versions of that glorious, classic disco sound. Some will fit your idea of disco, some may not. Chromatics’ "In the City" begins with a simple 4/4 bass drum, a sampled, chiming keyboard loop and a two-note ice-pick synth stab. Deadened guitar notes are added with the snare beat, an equally dead female vocal picks up and a squelchy synth cuts through like a lazy razor. The bass is as uncomplicated, both as rhythm and harmony, just adding occasional weight. Chromatics use disco as a foundation, then empty out the space around it until the strength of 4/4 time seems barely enough to hold the song upright. An errant or unnecessary note could topple the construction. From the sound, it is obviously nighttime, and the atmosphere is not euphoric, but paranoid and frightened. Violence and suicide are implied but never confirmed within the lyric. This is disco on ice, and everybody has bare, wet feet.Like Chromatics, Glass Candy are from Portland, feature a hottie singer, and are produced by Johnny Jewel. Jewel has a way with drum programming, investing bones—if not flesh—into his machines, lending the whole thing a slightly inhuman swing. Unlike Chromatics’ black vision, Glass Candy are all color and emoting. On their cover of Belle Epoque’s 1977 "Miss Broadway", strings, sequenced and echoed synths, pianos, saxes and Siouxsie Sioux battle six or seven minutes for your attention. Glass Candy started as a garage rock band, Chromatics as punk rock, but both have slipped more and more towards disco as they have developed. Chromatics stole Glass Candy’s producer and Glass Candy has stolen some of Chromatics’ cold air, and each have emerged as flipsides of the same tarnished coin, coming off like some coked-out 1979 loft party on the 6 AM down-slope. (In searching for Glass Candy mp3s, I found another Johnny Jewel production, this time by a Texas native named Farah, who’s bare bones and darkness rivals Chromatics’ stripped corpse of a sound. The “Law of Life” remix [found at the link above] has the patience of a saint, sitting on its bass drum for almost six minutes before developing a backbeat. Chromatics, Glass Candy and Farah are all hard at work on new albums and singles, which should be available soon on the Italians Do It Better label, distributed by Troubleman Unlimited.)If there’s been one thing unsaid so far, it’s that none of the Jewel-produced disco is all that danceable. It certainly isn’t disco one is likely to hear at a techno club. Sweden’s Lindstrom, however, has been one of the hottest producers of club disco for a couple of years now. His "I Feel Space"(dig that Donna Summer title) is all about the beat, which is exceptionally smooth and deep, riding hi-hats, hand percussion and shakers over an oscillating bass loop and icicle synths. It all feels organic, yet electronic, tapping into the electro-acoustic production that early disco unveiled as possibility and perfection. Guitars and keyboards dash about in space above the beat for the first half, before the breakdown ups the percussive density, keeping the whole thing landed and spinning out of control. (You can find this song on the Smalltown Supersound/Feedelity CD, It's a Feedelity Affair.)Striking a balance between all-out dance-rock and trad disco is !!!, a New York by way of California 8-piece that features more drums than any band traveling by van has any right to have. While !!! features heavy production on the back end, they tend to keep their instrumentation restricted to the standard guitar-bass-drums, with occasional horns and analog synths. !!! has gone from funk to disco-punk to clubbish stuff to a slick, yet muscular disco sound found on their latest single, "Heart of Hearts." You hear the beat being built brick by brick, the bass blares and—boom—a smooth swoosh of synth and sinewy guitars sound off over the syncopated cymbals and shit… sorry. Shouldn’t have started. Stop. Stank you. Anyway, this is certainly the most pop song !!! have ever released, and as it pulses and pushes its way towards some sort of climax, the whole thing breaks down and comes back as a rougher, spacier version of itself. The guitars take off, while the drums become more elemental and organic. Another breakdown follows, and when the drums reenter, they are grimier still, with cymbals becoming gong-like and the bass drum pummeling the earth in search of nothing but dirt to bury itself in. (“Heart of Hearts” is available on Myth Takes, out on March 6, 2007.)There is no conclusion to this. Whether you know it or not, disco continues in its lovely ramble across popular culture. Disco is like an incurable STD, bubbling up when and where it wants to, consistently explained away as something else, all the while laughing at its ultimate power over your poor and deluded soul.

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.

The Other Listening Room: Alvin Lucier - "I Am Sitting in a Room"

zingzing — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:44:22 EST

Welcome to The Other Listening Room, your bi-occasional survey of what your BC Magazine writer (me) has been listening to for the past 20 minutes. These are quite probably the best songs ever, and while they may not ever be my favorites, they certainly kept Advil in business this morning. You could do worse than to try a few of them out and see what they do for you. Painkillers, that is.Yip:What you are about to read is the complete score for Alvin Lucier’s 1969 vocal piece, "I Am Sitting in a Room." I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.Really, this isn’t just a vocal piece, although the human voice is the only true “source” of the sound that you hear. The real instrument, however, is the room where the piece is recorded. The acoustic qualities of the architecture (and, to some extent, the recording device) decide what it is that you hear. In case it wasn’t made clear above, Lucier recorded his voice, saying exactly what is quoted above, played it into a room, recorded that, played the recording of that recording back into the same room, recorded that, and on and on, until his voice was slowly overtaken by pure musical tones.Of course, just which musical tones develop completely depends upon the structure of the room into which the vocal recording is played back. The different resonances produced by recording the piece in a small room versus those created in a large concert hall are central to the idea. This recording, Lucier’s first attempt in the fall of 1969, is “harsh [and] strident,” according to the composer, while a spring 1970 recording is “beautiful.” Even in the 15-minute 1969 version, melodies and rhythms are quite apparent. At 45 minutes, the 1980 version has much more time to develop properly, if in an almost completely different manner. A 2005 version, made by a computer, is fully distinct again. This is true ambient music, dependent entirely upon the context in which it is created.The most impressive thing here is the elegance of the idea, the simplistic but absolute creativity. One almost need not hear the actual music to appreciate its beauty. Yet, in hearing the recording, particularly a recording made by Lucier himself, the listener is treated to another surprise. Before listening to the piece, I wondered what Lucier meant by “I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.” There is something of a clinical quality to almost any process music, as if the idea behind it is more important than what the idea actually produces. He handily escapes this when his intentions fold back in upon themselves, creating an additional lense through which to view the piece.Lucier created the recording, he says, “to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have,” but it is those irregularities that lend such a human quality to the piece. Lucier suffers from a pronounced stutter, particularly on the “R” sounds, but he also pauses uncomfortably at other times. It must have been a source of embarrassment for him, although one has to wonder if he could have produced this masterpiece of vocal/aural suicide without it. In destroying (and thereby perfecting,) his stutter, Lucier may have been escaping into a sonic debris of his own making, but the listener is witness to a man’s desire to correct his personal flaws.

Zingzing is condescending. Zingzing make no bones. Zingzing has bigger ears, and more of them, than you do.