Archive for the 'Music' Category
The Friday Fivehead moves to W♥M
July 12th, 2008
Yeah, yeah—I know. It’s been a while since I posted a Friday Fivehead. Well, since I started writing for W♥M, I haven’t really had the time to gather up a few albums a week to review all in one big chunk.
Well, The Friday Fivehead is coming back on We♥Music this week! I won’t be posting it here anymore, so make sure you’re suscribed to the W♥M RSS feed. This upcoming week, I’ll be reviewing stuff I got from eMusic this week: namely, Otto von I-Am-Fucking-Out-Of-My-Mind von Schirach’s Oozing Bass Spasms, 2562’s Aerial, Chromeo’s Fancy Footwork Special Edition (aka Fancier Footwork), Nebula 3’s Another Way, and Black Devil Disco Club’s Eight Oh Eight.
Be ready to be smacked in the mouth with a fistful of jams!
Pegritz Joins We♥Music
June 28th, 2008
I’m very proud to announce that I’ve been asked to join the gang at We♥Music as a music reviewer. Don’t worry—The Friday Fivehead will continue as well: I just haven’t posted it as regularly because I’ve been incredibly busy with the ol’ job-search thang these last few weeks.
Writing for We♥Music is a great opportunity to introduce folks to new music as well as inform younger readers about older musical works that they should check out. I remember when I was but a stripling in the early 1980s, discovering oldskool doo-wop, The Rolling Stones, Elvis Presley, and Marvin Gaye via MTV, 3WS (a Pittsburgh-based oldies radio station), and my mom’s old LP collection. Today, the Internet makes it easier than ever for people to discover both new jams and classic works—and I’m greatly looking forward to spreading the joy of music through We♥Music as well as my current efforts!
Prince, You Are A Class-A Asshole
June 26th, 2008
So. Let’s say that you’re a very well-known musician and songwriter who shot to prominence in the 1980s because of your amazing ability to write extremely funky, catchy music that appealed to listeners all across the musical spectrum of taste. Come the early ‘90s, though, you’d prettymuch run out of steam…so, to give your career a boost and protest the draconian contract you stupidly signed with one of the worst record labels in history, you changed your name to a symbol and spent a few years producing extremely sub-par records that virtually nobody gave a shit about. Then, several years later…well, what have we here? You reassumed your name and actually began to make something of a comeback, putting out a number of very good albums that hearkened back to your seminal ‘80s work. These albums were so good, in fact, that your name began to be bandied about in public again by a whole new generation of fans and your place in the History of Rock was prettymuch assured.
Now, let’s say that you’re turning 50 this year. In honor of your June 7th birthday, a Norwegian label brought together a number of artists to produce a tribute album: a massive five-disc set of 81 covers of your music. The record label then contacted you to offer you a free copy of the album out of good faith. What do you do?
Do you:
A. Graciously accept the album and tell the label that you’re extremely flattered.
B. Accept the album, but explain to the record label that by law you should’ve been reimbursed the compulsory license fee of ~10cents per song, which the label did not pay, citing that “they didn’t think they owed Prince anything except maybe a free copy.” Oh well, it’s no big deal, ultimately, because you’re already fabulously wealthy and, hey, it’s nice to be appreciated.
C. Whine like a bitch and file lawsuits against every artist who participated in the album AND demand that all copies of the tribute album be destroyed.
If you’re a petulant little asshole named Prince, you choose C.
Prince is no stranger to suing anyone and everyone who does something with his music that he does not like. Admittedly, it’s his music, after all, and ultimately it should be his right to decide what’s done with it—but that kind of thing only goes so far, especially today in the first true blossoming of the Information Age.
Before I rip him a new purple anus for being a complete tool, let me pause to reaffirm something already mentioned: the Norwegian label, C+C Records (not C+C Music Factory) was clearly in the wrong by not paying the licensing fee for the songs that were covered for the tribute. However, to quote the above-linked Wired article,
To sell their five-disc set of 81 Prince cover songs, they would have to remit around $8 per unit sold to Prince, under a compulsory mechanical license.
OK, so the label owed Prince a bit fat $8 for each copy of the album sold. They did not pay that, which means that Prince has a perfectly legal basis for suing the label.
But…why the hell would he even bother?
First of all, Princey, you’re already rolling in money. You really are not going to starve anytime soon if you don’t get the approximately $40,000 owed to you by C+C Records. I’m sorry that you won’t be able to buy another SUV this year with all the cash C+C owes you, but, really…by this point in your life, $40K is chump-change.
Second, this label and the fifty artists who participated in the tribute created the album to honor you, because they love your material and they wanted to say, “Hey, Prince…you’re Totally Awesome and we want to give you props for being a Major League artist.”
So congratulations, bucko: you’ve just alienated even more fans. Do you or do you not realize that the only reason you’re swimming in money and playing Half-Time at the Super Bowl is because of your fanbase? You do understand, too, that you have fans in other countries, right? Yes, fans buying your albums have made you richer than I could ever hope to be…but those fans have given you something much more valuable and longlasting than money: reputation.
You are a titan of musical talent, even if you barely come up to my shoulder. You are an amazing songwriter, and amazing musician, and just an amazing person. But guess what? Turning into Mr. Lawsuit Frenzy is also making you out to be an amazing asshole.
People do not like artists with egos so big they believe they can attack their fans and their fans will still lick up everything they produce.
Money can last forever. But once you’re branded a Major Dick—like a certain has-been metal band—you’ll find that the reputation that you’ve spent decades working on has gone. And once your posterity’s gone, all you’ve got left is a few million dollars to pay for a lavish funeral once you croak. After which, you will be promptly forgotten.
The Friday Fivehead: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, U2, Thompson Twins, Barry White, Huang Chung
June 13th, 2008
Aaaaaaaand…we’re back. That’s right—after two weeks’ hiatus, The Friday Fivehead is back with some phat jams to stuff in ya ears! Sorry I’ve been gone for a bit, folks: I was too busy fixing my other website, Footnotes to the Human Species, to really spend the time necessary to crank out a batch of music reviews. Well, that project’s done now, and it’s time to get back to the task at hand. Okay?
This week’s going to be another “theme week,” of sorts. It’s a bit of a “ripper’s delight," as it were, because recently I spent a few hours ripping a mess of old CDs that I haven’t listened to in quite some time…so in many ways, this Friday Fivehead is going to be somewhat of an all-retro edition—because some of these CDs date back to the early ’80s! I haven’t listened to any of them in quite some time—their jewelcases were all dusty and one of ‘em even had a dead bug in it—so the question is: how have these particular records stood the test of time? Well, let’s see….
To start with, here’s a name you don’t hear much anymore: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Oh, they’re still around—in fact, they just released a new album, Strength & Loyalty, last year that’s full of pretty big-name guests like Mariah Carey and Akon—but after Bizzy Bone’s departure, the group’s name just hasn’t been dropped as often as it was in the past. I’d picked up their double-disc Greatest Hits collection prettymuch just for "Tha Crossroads" and "1st Of Tha Month," and haven’t listened to it since I got it…mainly because I lost it in my car and just recently rediscovered it. The two discs are packed with great tracks, though, all of which naturally feature the Cleveland crew’s distinctive, lovely harmonies and rapidfire lyrics over laid-back beats. As a "Greatest Hits" compilation, it’s kind of weird, because some of these tracks a really obscure—but as a collection of superior tracks from all of their previous albums, Greatest Hits is an excellent summary of their career up to 2004. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony have always been a unique voice in the world of gangsta rap and hip-hop in general: though their lyrics deal with the usual thuggin’, druggin’ and whatnot, their delivery of those lyrics is completely unique, combining lightning-fast rhymes and soulful harmonizing straight out of the best of Motown. Even songs glamourizing the rough, razoredged thug life such as "Thug Mentality" and their breakout jam, "Thuggish Ruggish Bone," sound like silky ’70s soul. Weed odes such as "Buddah Lovaz" and "Blaze It" are so plush and smokey (as in Robinson) you’ll literally get a buzz just listening to them. Despite their gangsta orientation, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony make beautiful music that exemplifies all the best that hip-hop and contemporary soul can be. This is a must-have collection for fans and a great start for Bone Thugs virgins. Just be prepared to get a lot of strange looks if you’re a skinny white guy like me singing along in the car to "1st Of Tha Month" when you’re stopped at a light.
Now. U2. Yeah, you know them. The band that produced international spokesjerk Bono and somehow managed to transform from one of the ’80s best rock bands into some kind of overblown megapop group that shits out crappy music that goes platinum even though it can’t hold a candle to their earlier work. And the album War is the best of that earlier work. Best known for its incredible singles "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Years Day," War is an album that it damnear perfect from track one to track ten. Back in the day, U2 was a political post-punk rock band whose memorable lyrics and striking melodies drew warranted international acclaim. Hum the piano line to "New Years Day" and chances are anyone my age or thereabout—mid-30s—will immediately recognize the song. Yes, it’s that iconic. "New Years Day" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" were bloody ubiquitous on college radio in the mid-’80s, but no matter how many times you heard the songs, you never grew tired of them…because they were just such great damn jams. The Edge’s lead guitar work was not exceptional, but it was masterful, and Bono’s lyrics were sharp and his voice powerful. This was a New Wave album that crossed over to become a no-holds-barred rock n’ roll hit…and it deserved the reputation, not only for calling international attention to the horrors happening in northern Ireland but for being an exemplary example of music that can have a message but still be eminently danceable. "Protest music" usually doesn’t aim to get people stomping and pumping their fists in the air, but "Sunday Bloody Sunday" does just that. "Seconds" is a thoroughly bouncy little number whose prominent bassline never fails to get my booty moving. "Drowning Man" is simply a gorgeous song whose guitars shimmer like golden rain falling on the grave of Cuchulain. Once, U2’s music was powerful and poignant, both lyrically and musically. What the hell happened to them? Success. The success of this album and, later, The Joshua Tree. I’m usually not one to turn my back on a band just because suddenly they become "popular"—hell, I love to see obscure backwater bands break through to the mainstream!—but if the success goes to their heads and destroys their music, well…."I can’t close my eyes and make it go away" prettymuch says it all, sadly.
Now for a band whose success didn’t ruin them: Thompson Twins! Into the Gap was the band’s seventh album. Got that? Seventh. From 1981 through 1991, they released eleven albums, more than one a year! But this particular album is the one that always comes to mind whenever anyone mentions the Thompsons, and for good reason: it’s by far their best, most ambitious, and most creative work. The album not only features the iconic, “Doctor, Doctor” and “Hold Me Now,” two of the most iconic songs of the ‘80s, but is bursting with incredible material that mixes synths with “real” instruments—particularly percussion—to create songs that are catchy, fun, and clever…but, at the same time, dark and brooding. For every light-drenched “Hold Me Now” there’s a "No Peace For The Wicked," which is one of my alltime favorite songs for its ominous themes and its wave-your-hands-in-the-air breakdowns. For every "You Take Me Up" there’s a "Sister of Mercy," a beautiful synthpop ballad dedicated to a woman who kills her abusive husband. The title track, however, is the album’s highpoint—yes, higher even than "Hold Me Now"—with its fierce Eastern melody and industrial electronics. "Into The Gap" sounds like a more pop-friendly Cabaret Voltaire, or a lightweight Front Line Assembly. Its message of borderless globalism is expressed perfectly in its exotic rhythms and scales, but at no point does the song stray from its solid dancefloor ethic. This is the kind of jam that gets people grooving at goth clubs, ’80s nights, and raves alike. There’s only one thing that could make this album better than it is: a good contemporary remastering. Like many albums that were recorded before 1988 or ‘89, the tracks sound thin and quiet on CD—you’ve really gotta crank up your speakers to let ‘em pound with this record as they would with Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. But, hey, it’s only inevitable. A remaster could hit the shelves or the Internet at any time…but don’t wait. If you haven’t heard this album yet, get it, even if you have to do some speaker-tweakage to get the full effect of it. You will be blown away regardless.
OK, now take a moment and look at the cover art to Mister Barry White’s 1973 masterpiece Stone Gon’. What the hell is going on there? I see Barry White sitting at a white piano and there is, of course, a lady sitting on it, along with a rose…but in the background…is that the planet from Enemy Mine? Could Barry White be crooning to a Drac? The world…will never know. But there’s one thing you will know: this album is a dream come true—an explosion of soulful sensuality so intense it’s actually better than sex. Yeah, I said it. Man or woman, if you don’t spontaneously get off while listening to this album, you must be an asexual paramecium. What makes this particular album so grand is that it is at once spontaneous and immediate, yet also meticulous and oh-so-carefully-crafted. The songs are long—"You’re My Baby" clocking in at almost ten minutes—but never boring, because of White’s extended, sensual monologues that preface the lyrics and sound as though White is right there talking to someone he loves. NOBODY is smoother than Barry White, vocally and musically. Though the vocals are obviously the most prominent element on any track, the music behind them is so deftly arranged and orchestrated that it envelopes White’s voice like flowing, rippling satin sheets. And somehow—somehow—Barry White manages to be both soft and loving and stank n’ funkay at the exact same time on the album closer, the explosive "Never Never Gonna Give You Up," a song whose introduction builds…and builds…and builds, the tension growing tighter and hotter and sweatier until—UH!—the jam explodes in your face with the drums and the harpsichord and the slippin’, slidin’ bass. *Whew* Damn. This is ’70s soul at its absolute finest—but it’s also a scorching chunk of that nasty funk, as well: aimed to get your booty moving on the floor and in the boudoir. Whereas contemporary "soul" artists like Akon attempt to make music that can get your body moving in public and in private, Barry White just does it. The man is so stone gon’ in his alternate dimension of pure love and sensuality (and gritty, blasted volcanic rock) that if you let his music into your ears it will transport you to another world, too. Hopefully one with plenty of ladies in it, and not so many volcanic rocks.
And finally, Huang Chung. Wait a sec, don’t you mean Wang Chung? Yeah. Same band. No, honestly—they started out as Huang Chung, but changed their name to Wang Chung after this, their really hard-to-find debut album, because stupid-ass people kept calling ‘em "HUNG Chung." Anyway, this is their debut album, so how does the band primarily known for their soundtrack to To Live and Die in LA and their monumental international hit Mosaic sound fresh out the gate? Honestly…exactly as they do on Mosaic. WangHuang Chung is a remarkably consistent band—which does not, in any sense, mean that everything they do sounds alike. They have a very definite sound…a sort-of cross between post-punk/New Wave and light rock. Their stuff is all very melodic, very high on the hook factor: they build their songs, even on their first album, around the choruses, which is, of course, how most pop-rock bands work. On their debut album, you can already find the compositional seeds of their later Big Hits: "Ti Na Na" (which has the most ridiculous chorus I’ve ever heard in any song other than the Police’s "De Doo Doo Doo, De Da Da Da") sounds like an early version of "Dance Hall Days" and "Hold Back the Tears" sounds a great deal like a draft of "To Live and Die in LA"—but these songs all still have identities of their own. The interesting thing about this album is that it doesn’t sound like a debut album. Wang Chung’s tracks all have a very polished sheen to them, with very little roughness (or, some would say, edginess), even their very first. They sound extremely professional and extremely suave right out the gate, and this album, more than just a historical artifact, is actually a very slick "light New Wave" rock album that will definitely have your head bobbin’ if you’re in a retro kind of mood. But do check out Wang Chung’s MySpace page for some new material, including their rather good cover of Nelly’s "Hot in Herre" (yes, that "I wanna take my clothes off" song) as well as the rather odd "Abducted by the ’80s," which has a very stiff, angular Flying Lizards kind of feel to it. Could the band be getting back to their very unpolished post-punk days? Hell, if they put out a new album, I sure as hell will buy it!
Aaaaand, that’s it. We’re done. Yeah, it’s almost 10pm on Friday, but hey, I was job hunting all day. And by the looks of it, I’ll be unemployed for another week, so I won’t have anything better to do than listen to music and review it. Yay. Catch you next week, anyway!
Technorati Tags: music,music reviews,bone thugs-n-harmony,greatest hits,u2,war,thompson twins,into the gap,barry white,stone gon’,huang chung
Buggles Bonanza!
June 8th, 2008
Yeah, I know—I’ve missed to Friday Fiveheads in the past two weeks. I’ve been so busy trying to fix my fiction site, Footnotes to the Human Species, that I haven’t even thought about music…other than as a soundtrack to my endless hours of trying to debug PHP code and MySQL functions. However, all of my problems with Footnotes just disappeared yesterday—don’t ask me how, because I haven’t a clue: they just stopped, and I’m not gonna jinx myself by enquiring too deeply.
Anyway, YouTube. YouTube is the greatest thing in the world for old New Wavers like myself: just about every obscure old Gary Numan, Tenpole Tudor, Landscape, etc. video in the world has been posted to YouTube for crabby old post-punks like myself to watch and wistfully mourn the days when MTV actually played music videos…and the videos were good (if cheesy and oftimes ridiculous). YouTube, in fact, has even provided me with access to videos I’ve never seen before—videos that I’ve heard rumours about but did not think I would ever actually see…such as The Buggles’ video for “I Am A Camera.”
Well, just the other day, I went looking for Buggles videos…and lo! Witness the awesomeness!
Dear gods, how I love that song. The video somewhat cheapens it—I mean, what’s up with Trevor Horn just lying on the floor and taking his glasses off and putting them back on?—but isn’t it great to finally see the video from one of your alltime favorite songs?
I still regard The Age of Plastic as one of the most perfect albums of all time. There simply isn’t one track on the album that isn’t epic and incredible. Whereas the video for “I Am A Camera,” just doesn’t seem to fit the song, the video for “Living in the Plastic Age” is just perfect: it complements the song’s frantic, plasticine futurism so well I can’t now listen to the song without envisioning the video. I simply must get a plastic jumpsuit now. You know…to go with my Hammer pants.
“Clean, Clean” is one of my favorite Buggles tracks, and seeing them playing it live on British TV is an interesting experience, even if the audio and the video don’t quite sync up. Ohwell, it’s still the Buggles, and they’re still live! While we’re at it…here’s another live video, featuring the band playing their greatest hit, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” again for the BBC:
And finally…this is just amazing. In 2004, for a charity show in Britain, Trevor Horn assembled the entire original crew with whom he’d recorded “Video Killed the Radio Star” and performed this incredible live version of the song. It’s the closest I believe I will ever get to seeing The Buggles live—but, of course, everytime I’ve said that about a band, they reassemble and go on tour within a year or two, so let’s hope my mojo is still working on that front. Anyway, here’s the video:
Damn. Them Buggles were just such a great band, weren’t they?
Technorati Tags: buggles,music,videos,the age of plastic,living in the plastic age,video killed the radio star,clean clean,adventures in modern recording,i am a camera
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
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.