Archive for May, 2008
No Fivehead This Week
May 31st, 2008
Since it’s technically Saturday morning as I write this, and I haven’t gotten this week’s Friday Fivehead out the door, it looks like another Fiveheadless Friday. Yeah, I know: I suck—but I’m very busy researching and rewriting the first seven chapters of my Lovecraftian novel, “City of Pillars” over at Footnotes to the Human Species.
Next week’s Fivehead is gonna be a blast, though: Ripper’s Delight! I’ve been ripping a lot of old CDs I haven’t listened to in years. CDs that perhaps you haven’t listened to in years, either. Well, let’s have another listen to them, shall we? Has Huang Chung’s first album stood the test of time? What about Thompson Twins’ Into the Gap? You’ll know next week by this time!
The Fat Lady Slims Down and Runs 1,000 Yards on First Down!
May 29th, 2008
Firefox v2.whatever was a total waste of bytes. It was a notoriously bloated memory and processor hog, and just an all-around piece of crap. Nonetheless, it was my browser of choice mainly because of its extensability: common extensions such as Web Developer, MeasureIt, ColorZilla, AdBlock Plus, and Greasemonkey alltogether made the browser extremely useful for a webdesigner like myself, and made my everyday browsing experience much better by blocking annoyances and enhancing content. Unfortunately, I began to use Firefox less and less over time because of its innumerable memory leaks (which its developers stupidly claimed to be a “feature” rather than an obvious flaw) and its pathetic performance. In fact, I was ready to give up on it.
So when the first beta versions of Firefox 3 came out, I immediately jumped on them, thinking, There’s no way on Earth that Firefox 3 could be as bad as 2. The lads and ladies at Mozilla were announcing that Firefox 3 was going to be a vast improvement over 2. New features were going to be added to give the browser more functionality by default, but a great emphasis was going to be put on fixing the browser’s flaws. Yeah, right, I figured. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Well, I saw it. And now I believe it.
Firefox 3 (currently available as a Release Candidate) is everything that Firefox 2 wanted to be—in fact, should’ve been—and more. I’m not even going to mention its new bookmarking system or other new interface elements, all of which are meant to be subtle, enhancing the user experience in simple ways; in this article, I simply want to focus on the functionality of the browser itself.
First off, memory usage has at last been curtailed. Firefox still uses up a substantial chunk of memory (generally about 200mb to 300mb), but has never gone above 300mb in either Windows XP or Windows Vista, even with two windows and at least 45 tabs open. Memory usage in Vista is actually somewhat better than XP, but regardless of which Windows OS you’re running, you will notice a significant levelling of Firefox’s memory usage. As I loathe both Linux and Macs, I haven’t been able to test FF 3’s memory usage in a *nix or OS X environment, so I encourage any Linux or Mac users reading this to post a comment indicating FF 3’s memory usage; I’m curious to see how it runs on those systems. I’ll bet that its resource profile is the roughly the same in Linux or OS X, because one of the main goals of the developers on the Firefox 3 team was cross-platform stability.
Firefox 3 is much easier on the ol’ processor, as well. I haven’t noticed any processor spiking since Beta 2, which was a bug eliminated by Beta 3. Even with a variety of extensions, FF 3 is still better on both memory and processor resources than its predecessor.
Firefox 1 was a truly revolutionary application, and rightly began to chip away at Internet Explorer’s pathetic dominance of the browser world. Firefox 2, however, was a de-evolutionary step that no doubt inspired Devo to begin recording again. Firefox 3 is a true evolutionary iteration of the browser.
So go n’ get it already. Even if you’re not the kind of person who likes to jump on pre-release versions of software, I highly recommend upgrading to Firefox 3 if you are an FF 2 user. And if you’ve never used Firefox before, then by all means, check it out now! Even with Internet Explorer 7, and beta versions of IE8, finally showing that Microsoft gives a damn about web standards and user security, Firefox 3 is still a superior browser that will let you do everything you want to do on the Web (and then some) without bogging down your computer.
The Friday Fivehead: eMusic Bonanza! Tonight, Final Fantasy, Hector Zazou/Katie Jane Garside, Sunny Day Sets Fire, Terminus
May 23rd, 2008
Buying mp3s online can be an extremely frustrating experience. Even today, after DRM has been soundly shouted down from every tech pulpit in the United States, many online mp3 sellers still continue to sell mp3s encumbered with DRM. Steve Jobs likes to spout a lot of blather about how much he dislikes DRM, but that doesn’t change the fact that the iTunes Music Store is still the greatest source of DRM-chained mp3s on the ‘Net. Quite frankly, if you buy DRMed music from the ITMS or any other DRM-supporting retailer, you’re a goddamned idiot.
There are plenty of DRM-free online mp3 stores, though. Amazon.com’s own mp3 store is 100% DRM-free. So is Amie Street (though I find their popularity-based pricing schematic to be a little weird). And there are many, many, many more. However, when it comes to purchasing mp3s from the Web, there’s one place I always go: eMusic.com. eMusic has been around for years, has always been DRM-free, has the best prices, and has a truly gigantic selection of (primarily indie) music to browse through. So much music, in fact, it’s easy to get lost in the aisles, as it were, unless you either know exactly what you’re looking for or you’ve got some serious browsing skillz.
Or, you could just read this week’s Friday Fivehead and go after the five artists/albums I’ve chosen to profile this week!
This month, I decided to browse only brandnew music, stuff that has only been added to the site in the last week or two. Naturally, I headed right for the Alternative/Punk section and went straight for the New Wave, Goth, and Indie Pop subsections. Considering my tastes (and the fact that those three “labels” are so expansive that they can contain music ranging from pure electronic to acoustic folk-rock), those are always good places to start, and this week I ended up purchasing music from five artists I had never heard of prior to sampling them on eMusic.
First, I stumbled upon a 4-track EP, Modern Romance, by a lovely little synthpop duo called Tonight. I was sold the second I listened to the first few measures of the first track, “When Galaxies Form,” which is a gorgeous oldskool synth gem which features swirling synths, beautiful vocals, and spaced-out sci-fi lyrics that will immediately have you thinking of Peter Schilling and S.P.O.C.K. Tonight’s vocalist (”the chick”—I couldn’t find names or any further info on either bandmember) has a lovely, soft voice that has a Blondie-like tonality, but isn’t slathered in so much reverb that her vocals become just another instrument in the mix—something that I’ve seen happening a lot in synth music lately. Much like Bobby (from last week, remember?), Tonight’s music is both danceable and catchy: the beat will definitely get you moving on the dancefloor, but this is not anonymous dance music like most techno (ugh)—the melodies are very memorable, and you most certainly will find yourself singing along while the tracks are playing, and afterword as well. I can’t recommend this EP highly enough. It’s got something for everyone, because it’s a masterpiece of popular music, but will particularly appeal to New Wave and space disco enthusiasts, as well as sci-fi geeks and analog-synth afficionados.
And then there’s Final Fantasy, who come from the complete opposite end of the music spectrum. Where Tonight is an obviously beat-driven, melodic group, Final Fantasy is a mostly-percussion-free, oftimes abstract orchestral outfit. He Poos Clouds is a collection of miniature symphonies, comprised primarily of live strings (violins, violas, cellos), piano, and harpsichord with vocals flying over them all like the titular poo’ed-out clouds. There are very few catchy hooks here, and many of the songs are so abstract that they will primarily appeal to people who like their music complicated and avant-garde. However, several of the songs, particularly “The Arctic Circle” and “This Lamb Sells Condos” are lovely pieces of music that immediately call to mind the orchestral pop of Annie Lennox…only weirder. Final Fantasy is most definitely a weird band. Their lyrics are strange and their arrangements often needlessly complex (too much damn Schoenberg, I think) but I’m still telling y’all to download this entire album NOW. Why? Because it’s one of the most unusual and idiosyncratic albums I’ve heard all year. You may find it a little hard to get into, but just sit back and enjoy the strangeness. It will grow on you quickly once you realize that it sounds like the soundtrack to a mutant, dada-esque stage musical from the 1920s.
If, on the other hand, you want music that’s got the same quirkiness as Final Fantasy but is more accessible, then let me point out Hector Zazou and Katie Jane Garside’s dark nu-jazz/trip-hop masterpiece Corps Electriques. This album is what Portishead’s miserable Third album should have been: a bass-heavy, glitchy barrage of gritty beats and slutty-little-chanteuse vocals. Remember Recoil, Alan Wilder’s post-Depeche-Mode project best known for its dark but sexy lyrics and its heavy industrial soundscapes? Corps Electriques sounds like Recoil crossed with lounge jazz. The beats are harsh and clicky, the bass murky, and the music a complicated bolus of live and synthesized instruments over which Ms. Garside’s shrill little voice streaks like a trail of sputtering light. The vocals really make this album, as Garside can leap from orgasmic trills that would outdo most pornstars to silky-smooth croons in seconds, her voice shuttling up and down octaves in a dizzying—but seriously hot—hurricane of words. Much like Final Fantasy, this group, too, has a very evident dada aspect to it: the combination of beauty (the melodies) and ugliness (the shattered, rusty beats). But lest you think this a difficult album to listen to, let me assure you, it’s not. Garside’s gorgeous voice and Zazou’s jazzy instrumentation combine perfectly to create a lively, if dark and bipolar, album that will appeal to traditional vocal jazz lovers as well as it does industrial freaks.
Sunny Day Sets Fire is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop band, and Summer Palace, their latest album, is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop album. But don’t think that this is an “easy-listening” album—Sunny Day Sets Fire’s lyrics are peculiarly dark, which gives their bouncy, melodic songs an ironic edge. But not the all-too-common, self-aware “irony” of your typical Pitchfork Media Darling: SDSF is a band who clearly enjoys writing music high in hummable content and low in self-righteousness. “Stranger” is, first and foremost, a good jam whose rather somber lyrics don’t detract from the jam but actually bolster it by making both the music and the lyrics sound rather tongue-in-cheek. Classic pop melodies and good songwriting always works, no matter what the subject matter of your lyrics may be, and SDSF is very aware of this: they’re not trying to sneak some kind of “message” into your head via their perfectly-crafted songs, they’re just out to write some good songs that, okay, do deal with rather tough topics at times. “Teenagers Talking” is a rather vicious song, lyrically, but, man, if you don’t find yourself bouncing along to the melody then, unlike Sunny Day Sets Fire, you’re clearly taking yourself and your music too seriously. After the weirdness of Final Fantasy and the harsh realities of Hector Zazou * Katie Jane Garside, Sunny Day Sets Fire is a good palate cleanser that doesn’t leave you with the stilted, self-important aftertaste of, say, a Radiohead album.
And finally, back to synthpop for a moment. Terminus‘ first album, uncreatively named Debut Album, is actually a very creative little collection of New Wave songs that combine synths and “real” instruments to create excellent jams that are both inspiring and melancholy, at the same time. Much like Tonight, Terminus is big on science and science-fictional themes: “Song for Laika” is a pretty—if necessarily sad—song dedicated to the first dog in space, and the album opener, “Colossus”, is an eerie ambient soundscape built around a sample from the awesome old AI movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. The album is evenly divided between instrumental numbers that recall early-80s Kraftwerk without sounding particularly dated, and club-friendly synthpop songs that vary widely in their BPMs. This is a good thing: it keeps the album from becoming repetitious. In fact, Debut Album sounds more like the soundtrack to a late-1970s sci-fi movie than it does a typical synthpop album. The airy, heavily-reverbed female vocals give the songs a very retro feel, especially on “One more Love Story” and “Girl in Electronica”, but the despite all retro connotations this album still sounds futuristic—mainly because Terminus uses the classic analog synth sounds that have entered into the collective unconscious as the iconic Sounds of The Future. Make sure you’re wearing your tinfoil spacesuit with the fishbowl helmet before you listen to this record, just in case you experience any loss of cabin pressure or find yourself beyond the orbit of the Moon!
Aaaaaaand, that’s it. Go forth and get ye an eMusic membership—hell, $20 a month for 75 downloads is a damn good deal—and grab these albums. You won’t be sorry…unless, like, you really wanted that new Britney single and somehow ended up with Final Fantasy instead. Then you might be sorry, for a little while…until you realize you downloaded something a thousand times more interesting. I’m gonna go and listen to that Terminus album a few more times now, so I’ll catch y’all next week. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!
Technorati Tags: music,review,tonight,modern romance,final fantasy,he poos clouds,hector zazou,katie jane garside,corps electriques,sunny day sets fire,summer palace,terminus,debut album,friday fivehead,derek c. f. pegritz,pegritz
The Friday Fivehead: Bobby, Mindless Self Indulgence, Mark Nicholas, Atmosphere, and Arkestra One
May 16th, 2008
Holy shit—get in here before someone sees you out there! Didn’t I tell you to never knock on my front door? You want the entire Internet to know we’re doing this?! Do you have any idea what the government would say if they….<sigh>. Nevermind. Here’s the Friday Fivehead. Yes, in Russian: I did the translation myself. DON’T OPEN THE ENVELOPE—the CD-R in there will melt down and erase itself five minutes after you expose it to oxygen. No traces, right? OK, now when you go out the basement door, don’t go through the yard—just—aw, jesus, he didn’t just—
Oh! Hey there! What’s happening? I wasn’t expecting you this early. Who? What guy with a ski-mask pulled over his head running down the alleyway behind my place? I don’t hear a helicopter—oh, wait, that was just a sound-effect on the soundtrack to Good Morning Vietnam that I was listening to. So. Uhhh. Have a seat and let me run this Friday Fivehead past you. That’s not a real Uzi, by the way: it’s just a special controller for GTA 4 on my Wii.
This week we’re going all over the map, transcending international borders, genres, eras, species, orbits. So if you’re sensitive to sudden changes of direction and gravity, then you’d better take some Dramamine before we get started. A’ight, ready to go? Then let’s kick it:
Y’all know by now that I’m a major synthpop freak, right? Electronic pop music just makes my world go ’round. And right now, my world is spinning around at nearly 3000RPM because of Bobby (official site). Their latest album (only their second), Thursday In This Universe, is the most exciting, most melodic, and most beautifully-produced synthpop album I’ve heard in ages. There is not ONE track on the entire album that hasn’t earned a five-star rating in my media player. The opening track is a beautiful dance number written in honor of one of the bandmembers’ father, who passed away during the recording, but is still a killer dance track propelled by swirling synths and a funky plucked bassline. The current single, “Autumn Never Leaves” is simply gorgeous, with its sensual string intro and its acoustic guitar lead and its “In Fashion” is an unbelievably beautiful track on which vocalist Julian Barndt’s voice is literally aching with emotion and the piano melody is perfectly matched with the main vocal melody. “Dancing in Los Angeles” is another floorburning dance track, as is my personal favorite “Masquerade.” The album has a few extraordinary ballads as well, such as “Ingrid Wait For Me” and the rather cheesy but still great “Romantic Flow” (I mean, hey, it’s a ballad: it’s supposed to be cheesy). The best thing about these songs is that they are propelled by bare emotion that most emo bands would give their asymmetric haircuts to express and propelled by sweet, memorable melodies. I cannot recommend this album enough. Seriously. Get it. NOW.
Mindless Self Indulgence (official site) has returned with another sizzling, Ritalin-driven album, the simply-titled If. These crazy motherfuckers really are too cool for the second grade, as spastic vocalist Jimmy Urine howls on the opening track “Never Wanted to Dance” (which will, right out the gate, make you want to leap up out of your seat and start flailing around like a complete idiot on crystal meth). There’s nothing on this album that pushes the envelope: it’s just another album of punkish, high-BPM freakout music that mixes ludicrous-speed drumbeats, crunchy guitars, and staticky synths with loopy vocals drenched in irony. Every word Jimmy Urine sings or shouts is sharpened with his silly, but usually spot-on, sarcastic lyrics that make fun of everything from the bands own fans to the singer himself. This is one band that resolutely refuses to take itself seriously, and aims only to rock and roll. In that sense, they really stand out in the pathetic ashes of the industrial-music scene. They aren’t trying to bring back the heydays of the 1990s or write music that will stand out for centuries—they write music that is fun, energetic, and very listenable even as it is harsh, pissy, and uncompromising. “Lights Out” with its bouncy little chorus “Punch your lights out / hit the pavement / that’s what I call entertainment” and its pit-summoning beat is the highlight of the album, but almost every track on this psychotic little shotgun blast of an album is worth listening to. But don’t—I mean don’t—listen to this album if you’ve got a headache, because it’s so driving and punchy that it will probably make your skull crack open and let a UFO fly out. Pegritz ain’t kiddin’ you, people. “All that violence makes a statement” as the song goes—and that statement is: rock n’ roll is not serious business. Lighten the fuck up. Now get out there and beat the shit outta some stupid goth kid in the pit because he thinks that goth is a lifestyle, not a choice.
Now for something a little less confrontational and vicious. Mark Nicholas has been writing great electropop music for years under the name Cosmicity. Mark retired the name Cosmicity so that he could work on “edgier” stuff, and, yes, his new stuff, released under his name, is definitely edgier than his Cosmicity work. The synths are more distorted, the beats harder, and the subject-matter of the songs a lot darker—but Mark’s excellent songwriting skillz still shine through in catchy, witty lyrics and heartfelt vocals. Make sure you download his Free EP to get a taste of his new stuff, which is supersaturated with energy, vocoded vocals, and bitchin’ beats. “I Wish” is definitely the standout song, with its relatable lyrics—”I wish I could stop scrubbing my skin / but I’m sure it’s still not clean.” A little darkness does Mark good: his “solo” work is a lot deeper than Cosmicity, and as such the songs are more memorable. But don’t think Mark’s now taking himself too damn seriously. Ooooooh, no. The Free EP comes with a awesome cover of Dr. Dre and Tupac’s “California Love” that is pure fun, and you all saw the video for his cover of “Maniac” that I posted the other day. If that shit doesn’t get you up and moving, then you’re either dead or a zombie, and no matter how much they may think they can, zombies can’t dance. Get on over to Mark’s site and freakin’ show him some damn love already! You can order both of his CDs—autographed or not—for just $20. You get more good music for you $20 than you will buying some shitty “alternative” CD at the record store. Get real. Get Mark.
Now let’s take a left turn toward the hip-hop side of the spectrum. Atmosphere, one of the most innoventive and deep underground hip-hop acts in the world, is back with a new album: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. I just saw Atmosphere on freakin’ MTV the other day—which is actually a very encouraging sign: it means that people are finally giving these guys the recognition they deserve, and perhaps—just perhaps—the era of ringtone rap is growing old and people are looking for more content in their music. Slug brings that content, rapping about real-life situations that bring us all down: drugs, bad life decisions, stupidity, relationships….You name it, it’s all on this album. It will speak to you. But this album’s a little different than Atmosphere’s last handful of albums: the music on this one, very jazz-inflected and laid back, is a LOT more memorable (damn, that really is my World Of The Day, ain’t it?) than anything else Atmosphere has ever done. This album is what Outkast’s Idlewild should’ve sounded like. Take “Puppets,” for instance. What we’ve got here is a soulful tracks whose big beat is armor for the powerful ’60s-soul harmonies of the hook. “Shoulda Know” and “Yesterday” are strong songs with lyrics that don’t hesistate to point the finger—both at you, and Atmosphere themselves. There is an everyman humbleness to Slug’s flow that makes you immediately identify with him, because he’s not rapping about bling and bitches and bullshit, but about stuff that has happened to him and you. This isn’t disposable, worthless ringtone rap, this is real world rap. And if you’re not brave enough to face up to Slug’s lyrics, then go listen to some shit like…Soldier Boy, or any of that crap (I don’t even know the names of these chumps, they’re so interchangeable).
And finally, let’s wrap up this Friday Fivehead with some nice, lowkey weirdness that will slip through your ears like brain worms and infect your dura mater with some acid-head chillout music. Arkestra One’s debut album brings some ’60s lounge music back to life, twists it, mutates it, then let’s it float free into the atmosphere of your mind like a silver balloon full of xenon. This is spacey stuff, yo. “In The Light,” the album opener, is pure atmospheric lounge music that will slowly come over you like the settling feeling you get after eating a handful of Valiums. You just want to sit back and turn into a puddle while the nu-jazz bassline and slinky beat of “I Really Want You” (featuring vocals from Nina Miranda) wraps around you like cool satin sheets and Miranda’s vocals caress your lips with the taste of a frozen margarita. Ahhhhh, yeah, baby…that’s the ticket in this thicket of swirling sounds. Even more upbeat numbers like the samba-infused “Train to Machu Pichu” have a Beat-Era coolness to them that just makes you feel sooooo, sooooo good. So quit abusing those painkillers, jack—here’s some musical Vicodin that will leave you craving for more than just another handful of hydrocodone. This music will literally make you feel poetic. Man, what I wouldn’t give to hear Slug from Atmosphere droppin’ some science over Arkestra One’s moonraker beats and hookah-headed melodies. As I’ve always said, music is better than drugs because 1) it’s cheaper; and 2) the highs last ever so much longer. Drugs just tweak your biochemistry. Good music tweaks your very soul. Arkestra One is good music. I am very tweaked, sitting here in lotus position languidly typing this sentence to the luscious lushness of “Shine.” Shine on, people. You crazy diamonds, you….
And, like, yeaaaah…that’s it for this week, peeps. I’m sorry I’m a little late getting your Fivehead out here, but my stomach was giving me hell last night. But hey, it’s still Friday, so don’t gimme no grief and bust my Arkestra-One-influenced chillness, yo. Peace.
Technorati Tags: music,review,bobby,thursday in this universe,mindless self indulgence,if,mark nicholas,cosmicity,duchess 33,free ep,atmosphere,when life gives you lemons you paint that shit gold,arkestra one,friday fivehead,derek c. f. pegritz
Mark Nicholas, "Maniac"
May 14th, 2008
Mark Nicholas is back, people. Best known as "the dude from Cosmicity," one of the more popular synthpop artists of the late ’90s/early 2000s, Mark retired the Cosmicity moniker a few years back so that he could take his music in a direction somewhat different, more "edgier" than that of Cosmicity. He currently has two albums for sale on his website, Duchess 33 and Perversions, the latter of which features his Totally Wicked cover of Michael Sembolo’s "Maniac," a.k.a. "that song from Flashdance" (and the video above, if you haven’t, like, been paying attention).
Best of all, you can get both albums—autographed!—for just $20! C’mon, people, show Mark some love. He’s totally awesome!
If you want to sample his stuff before you buy, download his Free EP, which features his Absolutely Most Bitchin’ cover of Dr. Dre and Tupac’s "California Love." Seriously, download the EP if only to hear this cover. It’s so incredibly bad-assed. You don’t even know, Napoleon.
Technorati Tags: music,synthpop,review,mark nicholas,cover songs,maniac,cosmicity,michael sembolo,flashdance,dr. dre,tupac,california love
The Friday Fivehead: Flight of the Conchords, Sam Sparro, Ultraviolet, Padded Cell, and The B-52s (with a brief mention of Madonna, too)
May 8th, 2008
Man, this week has sucked ass. Not only is it Finals Week at the college, which means Mr. Pegritz is busy grading tons of student papers, but on Sunday night my computer’s monitor fell off my desk and…well—CA-RACK! The LCD shattered like an assassin’s bullet had taken it out. Every goddamned surface in my house is uneven and far from level thanks to fifty years worth of mine subsidence: all the angles and surfaces in my old patch-house have shifted so much that I’m living in a non-Euclidean hypersolid. Walter Gilman would have an aneurysm if he even walked into my livingroom, and Keziah Mason would be shitting Brown Jenkins like a cat having kittens. (And if anyone gets that allusion, you win a cookie. A non-Euclidean cookie.)
Anyway, I replaced the monitor and bought a new, more stable computer desk with the George W. Bush Blood Money Check which arrived for me on Monday. The only thing that kept me from flying into a whirlwind of despair and furious hate this week has been…well, the usual: The Infinite Power of The Jam. I’ve gotten some great new music this week—as well as some disappointing stuff as well—so without further ado, let’s just skip the Real Life drama and get to the Friday Fivehead, eh?
This week I picked up Flight of the Conchords‘ debut album on SubPop Records. Basically, it’s just the soundtrack to their extremely popular HBO show, which in turn was basically just a compilation of silly narratives built up around the songs they’ve written for their comedy act over the years. Honestly, the songs minus the stage banter and/or the hysterical deadpan goofiness of their TV show might sound a little…out of place, somehow—like you’re listening to a taperecording of Eddie Murphy’s Delirious and you’re missing out on his hysterical prancing and rubberfaced antics on stage. But even given that, the Conchords are great musicians, who have mastered damnear every genre of music there is: from the straight-up folk of “A Kiss is Not A Contract” to the Pet-Shop-Boysian synthpop of “Inner City Pressure”—plus soul (”Think About It”), French Riviera music (”Foux du Fafa”), psychedelic rock (”The Prince of Parties”), David Bowie-esque spacerock (”Bowie”), and even hip-hop (”Hiphopopotamous vs. Rhymenocerous” and “Mutha’uckas”). The songs are very listenable, almost satanically seductive—one listen to “Business Time” and you’re going to be singing it all day long, especially when you’re with your ho and it’s…well, it’s business time, knowhatI’msayin’? This album explodes in your face like a fragmentation grenade: lines from the songs are going to get stuck in your brain like shrapnel and you’re gonna be inadvertently speaking with a kiwi accent by the time you’ve listened to the album for, like, the eighth time in one day. Cheers, mates.
Now…who in the world is Sam Sparro? Through various devious means, I ended up with a promo copy of Mr. Sparro’s debut self-titled album (which will officially be released on May 13), and while I was listening to it, I honestly thought I was listening to an electro-funk/soul masterpiece from the early 1980s—perhaps from the same Sun Records label that gave us Shalamar—that had been rescued from oblivion, remastered, and reissued. Turns out, Sparro’s a skinny, weird-looking white guy originally from Australia who seems to have literally eaten the soul of Stevie Wonder. This album is utterly fantastic from tracks one to thirteen. Sparro’s voice is soulful and young, his lyrics wickedly sharp, and his music primarily composed of synths. In many ways, the music is rather reminiscent of Black Cherry-era Goldfrapp, but a lot smoother—the tones silkier, the rhythms more fluid, the production more suggestive of ’70s funk than ’80s videogame sounds. This album is awash in classic soul harmonies and analog riffs, especially “21st Century Life,” which sounds like an updated ConFunkShun classic that traded its horn section for more discofied strings and pads. The album’s brightest moment, though, is “Pocket,” which will immediately summon to mind scenes of blaxploitation flicks—as you’re listening to the song, you can easily close your mind and see Richard Roundtree in a leather jacket and white turtleneck, walking angrily down a street in Harlem or Chocolate City, planning bloody revenge on the crooked cops who sent him up for a ten-year bid in the pen. Okay, I’m just gonna say it: Sam Sparro is this generation’s Rick Astley. Everyone hearing him will think he’s a black guy, but in truth he’s just a skinny little white boy who may very well be Curtis Mayfield reincarnated.
OK, Sam Sparro segment is a wrap. Cue John Cleese: “And now for something completely different.” Ultraviolet’s The Thin Line Between Love and Addiction. Why no picture? Why now Amazon.com link? Because I literally cannot find any information concerning this artist or this album. AMG’s Allmusic lists five different Ultraviolets, and not one of them has an album called The Thin Line Between Love and Addiction. I’ll be honest with you: I don’t even know how I got this album! Did some one give it to me? Did it just appear on my hard-drive? No clue. So…we’ve got us a real Mystery Band here, folks! “Funk dat!” you say. “Who gives a shit if they’re a bunch of ghosts, what’s their music like?” Driving, gritty, dark and plush synthpop that greatly recalls Depeche Mode’s Playing the Angel: plenty of nervous but downtempo beats, morose vocals, scratchy distorted synths, and lyrics that…guess what? Compare love to drug addiction! Wow, really breakin’ new ground there, Ultraviolet. But you know what? It works. Yes, the music sounds like outtakes from DM’s Playing the Angel sessions. Yes, the singer clearly wants to be Dave Gahan. Yes, this band is completely ripping off Depeche Mode. But so what? It’s very well done, well-mixed, tuneful, and interesting. Though the band doesn’t have much of an identity to clearly call their own, it really doesn’t matter because the music is memorable and just flat-out good: Ultraviolet can stand next to Depeche Mode and not look like a bunch of poseurs, but like a musical mirror image. If nothing else, DJ’s take note: download the album for the fourth track “Crash,” which mixes brilliantly with DM’s “Precious.”
Padded Cell’s Night Must Fall, on the other hand, is also a mysterious album—but it’s mystery is 100% intentional. Though the band (a duo: Richard Sen and Neil Beatnik) are contemporary Londoners, their musical souls live in Italy, circa 1975, and they are writing tracks for classic Italian horror and science-fiction films. Padded Cell, in fact, sounds like Goblin being remixed by Giorgio Moroder. Lots of disco beats and funky basslines form the bellbottomed bottom of almost every track, but floating atop these head-bobbing beats are all manner of weird synth noises, creepy pads, eerie organ sounds, incomprehensible vocoded rants, all encompassed by a weird space-rock vibe that would make Nik Turner and David Bowie smile. Much like any work by Nightmare Lodge, Padded Cell’s Night Must Fall is a soundtrack to a movie that only exists in your head—but it’s definitely a low-budget, gritty, grimy grindhouse horror flick full of lesbian vampire biker-sluts, witches in diaphanous gowns, spacemen in padded silver suits and bubble helmets, and vast quantities of green slime. “Faces of the Forest” in particular, with its utterly insane saxophone chatter, sounds like the music that should be playing during the club scene in which the lesbo vampire biker-sluts and the spacemen stalk each other through a crowd of wriggling hipsters and mods. “World of Mouth,” with its lovely female vocals, is an actual contender for club play…nelle profondità di inferno!
And finally, guess who’s back in the muthafuckin’ house, with a phat beat for your muthafuckin’ mouth? The B-52s! They have a brand new album out on Astralwerks, Funplex, and get this, people—IT DOES NOT SUCK! Not one bit. In fact, it’s friggin’ fantastic! Amazon.com’s brief editorial review of the album prettymuch sums up my thoughts on it exactly: “Like a time capsule, the B-52s’ first album in 16 years reanimates that familiar fusion of danceable post-punk and bizarrely conceived songs of the oldest new wave.” And that’s exactly what the album is: a return to roots. There are pitch-perfect pop songs on this album, like the beautiful synthpop number “Juliet of the Spirits,” but then you’ve got wild, weird surf-punk confections like the opening track, “Pump,” which sounds like “Rock Lobster”’s more grown-up, somewhat more straightlaced, but equally eccentric older sister. Kate and Cindy and Fred may be old enough to be my grandparents, but they sound absolutely youthful on this album—and they look it, too! Just look at that picture. Have these people spent the last 16 years in suspended animation?! They—and their sound—hasn’t aged one bit. In fact, Funplex sounds more like a followup to Wild Planet than every other album they did after Wild Planet. Let’s just put it this way: Fred’s still as wild and crazy as always, Cindy and Kate still have big hair and big vocals, and the beats…the beats just demand you report to the goddamned dancefloor and get down. I don’t wanna hear any backtalk on this one or I’m sending the monster in my pants after you!
By the way, the B-52s review goes right out to my boy Dave slavin’ away his life on the night shift in the Uniontown Herald-Standard’s composing room. I really wish I was still there, brother…but hey, if I was, I wouldn’t have time to be writing these hyar reviews!
And wham! bam! thank you, Saddam!—that’s it: another Friday Fivehead in the can. But before I leave you this week, I’ve gotta take a moment to address one last thing this week, and it concerns another wonderfully-preserved relic of the ’80s: Madonna. I’ve just got to take a second here to warn you the HIZZELL away from her new album, Hard Candy. It sucks. It sucks more than the last week has sucked for me. Ever since Ray of Light, Madonna’s output has been very inconsistent: Confessions on a Dance Floor was a great album, but Music was just an auditory abortion that should’ve been quietly disposed of in a biohazard container out back of the women’s clinic. Well, Hard Candy isn’t a total abortion, but it’s patently ridiculous. Madonna attempts to adopt hiphop beats and styles to lyrics that make fuckin’ 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” sound like “Blackbird.” The Friday Fivehead is all about telling you about music you should check out…but I feel I just wouldn’t be doing my duty if I didn’t warn you away from Hard Candy. Honestly, I’d rather be listening to Portishead’s Third, which I still think is my frontline contender for Worst Album of the Year…but at least Portishead isn’t clearly trying to cash in on pop-radio’s current obsession with ringtone rap.
Okay, that’s that. Catch y’all on the flipside next week when I come correct with yet another fistful of jams!
Technorati Tags: music,review,friday fivehead,flight of the conchords,sam sparro,ultraviolet,the thin line between love and addiction,padded cell,night must fall,b-52s,funplex
Our Awesome Planet: Volcanic Cloud OF DOOM.
May 8th, 2008
No, that’s not an asteroid strike, one of the Great Old Ones or Other Gods visiting Earth, nor is it a sign of the Singularity—or the Rapture, the Great Judgment, or ( insert your own apocalyptic event here )—it’s a volcanic eruption in Chile. According to the original article on National Geographic News:
The mingling of lightning and ash seen above may be a “dirty thunderstorm.”
The little-understood storms may be sparked when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in the plume collide to produce static charges—just as ice particles collide to create charge in regular thunderstorms.
Hmmmmm. I think a “dirty storm” is going to show up in my fiction sometime soon, because that there…that’s just awesome! Makes me wish I lived somewhere within shouting distance of an active volcano: far enough away to avoid pyroclastic clouds, lava bombs, and the like, but close enough that I could sit on my back porch and enjoy the primal fireworks and ash-falls.
Technorati Tags: our awesome world,volcano,chile,national geographic
The Friday Fivehead: DISCO BONANZA! The Shapeshifters, Chaz Jankel, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, KLF, and Shalamar
May 2nd, 2008
Sorry ’bout the absence last week, folks: it’s the end of the semester and that always means I have a billion-and-one things to do. My fuckin’ Outlook To-Do list is longer than the damn novel I’m writing. So anyway….
Do not even try to deny it: YOU LOVE DISCO MUSIC. Everybody loves disco music, secretly or openly. There are people like myself who wear their love for disco on their polyester, wing-collared sleeves and own vast collections of disco music from the 1970s through today and frequently dance around their houses wearing afro wigs. Then there are the people who sniff and snarl and say “DISCO SUCKS! I just listen to real music, like black metal and emo!”…but you just know that there’s at least one Abba song that they absolutely love, though the mp3 is probably named “Dimmu Borgir - I Love Satan So Much That This Could Never Be An Abba Song No Way.mp3″ on their hard-drive so no one ever discovers their dirty little disco secret.
There’s one simple reason why all human beings love disco: it is music targeted directly at the limbic system, the ancient mammalian part of the brain that controls our emotions and our booties. It doesn’t matter whether you think disco is great, well-composed music or nothing more than derivative sonic filler used to stir large groups of people up at dance clubs, the simple fact of the matter is that no matter how hard you may try to resist the groove, there is guaranteed to be at least one disco jam Out There that crashes into your limbic system like a Magic Bullet and gets your head bobbin’ (if it doesn’t blow it all over a Dallas streetcorner*) and your butt wigglin’. Because the human brain is hardwired to respond to driving, steady rhythms and catchy melodies. And what is a good disco song if not the perfect marriage of both of those elements?
So this week’s Friday Fivehead is devoted entirely to the booty-rockin’ majesty of disco—but we’re not talking the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever or Evelyn “Champaign” King’s Greatest Hits here: this is all about disco that you might not have heard of. Whether brand new, or twenty years old, chances are you haven’t heard of this stuff, or you’ve just forgotten about it. Well, either it’s time to refresh your boogie memory and/or input some brand new data, so get ready to shake ‘dat ass.
Let’s start not with the early ’80s (we’ll get to that) but with right now—as in, this year. The Shapeshifters’ (sorry, no link: I can’t find a homepage for them anywhere) new album Sound Advice is 100% Pure, Unadulterated Disco. You’ll most likely find it classified as house music, and that is most definitely is—but never forget that house music is nothing more than contemporary disco. This album has every single earmark of great disco: booty-rockin’ beats, funky twangin’ basslines, phased-out wikkitywakkity guitars, epic strings, and, of course, soulful disco-diva vocals. Of course the lyrics are shallow: the usual “You’re so great, you’re all I want, blah blah blah”—but is there any disco song in the world with great, meaningful lyrics aside from…say, “I Will Survive” or “YMCA”? The album opens with a rather bland, hip-hop-influenced number called “You Never Know” that may lead you to expect something more Basement-Jaxxy from the album, but with track two, the absolutely rapturous “Sensitivity”, you get kicked right into full-on lasers-on-the-dancefloor disco mode. But if you want to talk about disco songs that literally reach into the depths of your limbic system and start pushing all the buttons marked “Fucking Awesome If You Touch This”, then “Back To Basics”—with its incredible string melody (that sounds like a combination of McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” crossed with Shalamar’s “Help Me”) and its Bootsy-esque bassline—is literally going to make your soul explode out of your body and burst into rainbow fireworks!
The legendary Chaz Jankel (best known for his work with Ian Dury & The Blockheads) hits you right between the eyes with the rhythm-stick on his latest album, My Occupation: The Music of Chaz Jankel. Chaz Jankel’s occupation is blowing your ass up with everything from jazzy boudoir funk (”To Woo Lady Kong”) to straight-outta-the-’70s disco floorfillers like “Glad to Know You”, “You’re My Occupation” (which has a pronounced Bernie Worrel/George Clinton feel to it), and the absolutely nuclear nine-minute workout jam “Am I Honest With Myself Really”—a song so packed with energy and the sacred spirit of The Jam that it will literally pick you up off of your couch and make you do the Hustle right there in front of your cat. For an album composed and recorded entirely in the 21st Century, there is not a moment on this entire album that doesn’t sound as though it could not have been recorded in 1977. From the first track to the last, this is Studio 54 material. The best element of the album, though, is that Jankel does not lighten up on the horn sections or the spacey Giorgio Moroder synths, so listening to My Occupation ends up being like a trip through the entire disco era, from the early ’70s through to the early ’80s. One of the most common epithets thrown at disco is that it’s all the same—that none of it’s particularly memorable. Bullshit. By the end of this album, you’ll have memorized the hooks and the choruses of at least half the tracks on it. Seriously. I will bet you $5.
OK, time to change the pace a little bit. My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. “Wait a sec,” you say. “They’re an industrial band! Yeah, some of their songs have a kind of disco-ey feel to them, but they’re, like…evil.” Damn right they are! TKK has been down with producing evil disco from Day One—in fact, they’re not so much an industrial band with a disco influence, they’re an industrial disco band. And nowhere is this more obvious than on their 10o%-disco-themed album Gay, Black and Married. Is this their best album? No. But it was never meant to be: this was TKK writing a straightforward, no-nonsense disco album. And that’s exactly what they did: from covering the disco staple “Do You Wanna Get Funky With Me” to one-upping it with such slinky polyester numbers like “Euro-Freak Hustle” and “Freaky Fever”, this is an album overflowing with dancefloor anthems. Like Chaz Jankel, they don’t ignore the Italo-disco synth sound: “One Night Stand” literally sounds like a lost Moroder number…even though it does get rather tedious at 8:35. Most of the songs, though, are a little overlong, in fact, which indicates this is not a “sit-down-and-listen-to-it” trip like, say, a Yes or Porcupine Tree album—it’s more a collection of songs designed to be individually mixed by DJs. Most Thrill Kill Kult albums have unified themes, and this one does, too, even if it’s kind of an anti-theme: it’s an album of 12″ cuts aimed for disco play. DJs, take note. This album is The Shit for any kind of dance night: goth, disco, New Wave, folk, acoustic….It’s guaranteed to get people dancing or triple your money back!
Allright, folks. Now I’ve got to get a little…well, obvious on you here. KLF. The White Room. This album is an absolute dance classic. “What Time Is Love?” “3 A.M. Eternal”. These tracks were absolutely ubiquitous in dance clubs in the early ’90s, and to this day you are still guaranteed to hear these awesome jams. But, wait—isn’t KLF considered “techno”? Where’s the disco in “3 A.M. Eternal”? Well, does it have an unstoppable beat that could lure a quadriplegic out onto the floor? You’re damn right! Does it have an undeniable hook? If you go up to any dance enthusiast and sing “Kaaaay Elllll Effffffff?” they’re gonna immediately answer “Uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh!” And finally…does it have soulful diva vocals? Oh, hell yeah! I’m mentioning KLF here in this Fivehead for two reasons: 1) as amazing as it may sound, there are probably people Out There who have never heard of KLF, sad as that may be; and 2) if it weren’t for acts like KLF keeping the beat alive through the arid desert of the flannel-clad and mindless-techno-besotted ’90s, there might not be any good house and indie-disco being produced today! That’s right, people: if it weren’t for The KLF, there’d be no Shapeshifters, Booka Shade, Bonobo, and so forth. Trance enthusiasts will sometimes claim KLF as part of the evolution of trance, as well, but those people are blatantly lying. Trance is what you get when you strip all the funk and the soul from disco and leave only an anonymous beat and some synth strings. DO NOT BE FOOLED. The KLF is the real product: accept no imitations!
And finally, there’s Shalamar. Disco was supposedly “dead” by 1982, but nobody bothered to tell Shalamar, because Friends is a completely flawless disco record. Chances are, you may not remember the name Shalamar right offhand, but you sure know the song “A Night to Remember”—especially if you grew up in the ’80s, as it was one of the biggest prom/make-out songs ever written. Shit, I graduated in 1991, but even I made out for the first time to “A Night to Remember”! But besides that one song, Friends has soooooo much to offer: incredible hooks, breathtaking strings, bootylicious bass, soul, funk, beat—the album just has everything. The production on this record is absolutely incredible, too: each and every instrument in the deep, plush arrangements stands out perfectly in the mix even as the vocals float like crystal clear water atop the entire mix. Leon F. Silvers III is an unsung genius. “On Top of the World,” with its wicked synths and multilayered vocals is a disco monster, as is the title track, “Friends”. But this album is most memorable for the heartbreakingly-beautiful jam “Help Me”, which features one of the most infectious string arrangements ever written. It will literally make you feel like you’re having an out-of-body experience the first time you hear it—and hopefully you’ll hear it at a disco, so that you can just close your eyes and let the loud-ass music just pour into your flesh and bones. It’s simply one of the best jams I’ve ever heard. Oh, and while we’re talking about Shalamar, Jodie Watley was their female lead for most of their album, including this one. Her voice is a big part of why Friends is just so great.
And that, my friends, is It. I’ll see you on the dancefloor! I’ll be the skinny guy in the loud vintage shirt flailing around arthritically and screaming “THAT’S MY JAM!” every now and then. I may or may not be wearing an afro wig.
*See that little incredibly-bad-taste Kennedy allusion there? That’s called topical humor.
