Fun Stuff > BAND
The "wink wink" Thread 2010: This Time It's Personal
KvP:
Venetian Snares - Filth
--- Quote ---Filth is a record that I have a complicated relationship with. When I was invited to apply for a job reviewing music for my local paper, I wrote this review as a test:
Before churning out two highly acclaimed, relatively accessible records in 2005’s classical-meets-breakcore masterpiece Rossz csillag alatt született and 2008’s hardcore jungle throwback Detrimentalist, Venetian Snares (né Aaron Funk of Winnipeg, Manitoba) was well-known for off-putting and confrontational music. Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Funk has decided to capitalize on his growing critical cache with an album that practically dares the listener to try and enjoy it.
Filth, as the name might suggest, is a porno-themed album. There has always been a sickly sentiment coursing through Venetian Snares’ music but on this release every second seems to ooze perversion. For this we can blame the TB-303, famed “acid” bass synthesizer extraordinaire. The synth’s signature “squelch” sound is thrown into overdrive by Funk, and together with booming bass drums a queasy, oppressive mood is established in nearly every song. Tracks like “Deep Dicking” and “Kimberly Clark” are nearly unlistenable hodgepodges of sampled porno sound clips, squeaking bass and frenetic drumming. If this music had a color, it would be a gangrenous green.
Normally, one could rely on Funk’s virtuosic drum programming skill to elevate the music above mere din, but songs like “Mongoloid Alien” and “Kakarookee Hates Me” are all punishing 4/4 slamming. Perhaps the only bright spot on the album is the final track, the cavernous acid opus “Pussy Skull”, which resembles Detrimentalist’s slower moments. When the end of the song nears and someone says “Hours and hours of two giraffes fucking” you suspect this might all be a big joke. Too bad the joke is on the listener.
1.5 stars of 5
But while none of that is strictly untrue, for some reason I just cannot get this record out of my head. When Aaron Funk was first gaining a lot of attention around 2004 I found that I had a pretty strong aversion to his music due to Venetian Snares' outright antagonism towards his audience (funny story though, I paid close enough attention to pick out a heavily distorted sample of dialogue from Fallout 2's Sulik in "Befriend a Childkiller" off the horror/serial killer themed album Doll Doll Doll) and it wasn't until the one-two punch of Rossz and Detrimentalist that I came to accept how much of a genius Funk is, even if he is absolutely clown-shoes mental. For certain sorts of people, repeatedly listening to Venetian Snares changes you. It's like being drugged through your ears.
So even though I find very little actual enjoyment in Filth, I just can't bring myself to get rid of it, and I go back to it on a semi-regular basis for reasons that I can't really explain. In a nutshell, I feel like even though it seems like Funk has very little in the way of self-editing impulse, the revulsion and the confusion you feel when you listen to the music is just a surface, a challenge that Funk puts to the listener - over time you can chip away at it, and the breakneck pace of output, the shotgun-splatter of samples and tempos, the sheer auditory aggression that seemed slapdash at one point reveal an undeniable craft, and a demented auteurism that seems unique to the best of IDM artists. In Venetian Snares you can identify a true anti-cultural posture not seen since the earliest days of Throbbing Gristle. He just doesn't give a fuck.
But that I'm even saying these things is apparent proof that I have imbibed the kool-aid, so to speak. Make no mistake, this is varsity-level shit, and it will make you crazy, if you let it. Just listen to this freak from TMT - not even I would claim that this is Venetian Snares' "most accessible release". For some of you, this album will be a challenge that yields worthy rewards. For most of you it will be noise. Have some aspirin and a bible on hand. Keep kids as far from earshot as possible. This stuff is wrong.
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Yuzo Koshiro - Streets of Rage 2 Soundtrack
--- Quote ---Where to start with this one? Streets of Rage 2 (or as it's known in Japan, Bare Knuckle 2) is one of the all-time classic Sega Genesis games. It's a memorable game certainly by gameplay standards, but it's perhaps best known for its incredible soundtrack. I first played it when I must have been around 6 or 7 years old, and it's quite likely that playing this game sparked what would become my great love for electronic music.
There's not a lot that I can actually say about this soundtrack that isn't tightly wrapped around my childhood memories. I remember not even playing the game some days, but just sitting with the "Options" menu up, where Sega had (to their eternal credit) put up a music player. I thought it was so odd that there were 2 songs that weren't even in the game, and several different versions of songs that were in the game.
Like all great game soundtracks of its era, the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack is highly melodic, so much it's intoxicating at times. Yuzo Koshiro, the composer, found inspiration in the club music he heard, and what resulted was a collection of high-energy MIDI dance songs, most of the 4/4 breakbeat variety (that is to say, lots of delectable syncopated rhythms). It's very difficult for me to choose favorites, but the ones I always listen to first are "Round 5 (Slow Moon)", "Round 6, Part 1 (Wave 131)", and especially the criminally short "Round 7, Part 1 (Back to the Industry)". Like I said, I can't bring myself to levy any sort of critical analysis on this music. I just love it too much. But I hear all the time from people who love it just as much as I do.
And if you own a console or (hopefully) an internet-capable PC, do track down the actual Streets of Rage 2 game. It's out as a downloadable arcade game for the Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii (you can even catch the first and third games in the series on the Wii) and there is no shortage of emulators on the PC capable of running the ROM.
*Credit to my friend Cathy for providing a resupply (I was missing a few tracks before)
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Skweee Tooth
--- Quote ---I've written a bit about the "Skweee" movement before while reviewing Eero Johannes' debut album and a Harmonia compilation, and here we have yet another Skweee compilation curated by veteran scene label Flogsta Danshall on Ramp recordings, a label famous for, among other things, releasing early singles by DJs like Slugabed and FaltyDL.
This compilation is a little more consistent than that Harmonia one, and it makes a good case for the legitimacy and potency of the unfortunately named analog synth-funk movement. While some skweee stuff can fall a little too hard into the realm minimalistic 8-bit music, the best of it displays an uncommon tunefulness. The beats are plenty hard, no doubt, but these songs live or die on their melodies and basslines. Tracks like "Rek Johnny Rek" (by Beatbully) and "Tough Guy Music" (by scene godfather Daniel Savio) show no shortage of prowess in that regard. Other tracks, like "Liikutuksia" (by the wonderfully named Mrs Qaeda) hew closer to original chiptune tropes while still sounding fresh, and still more get by solely on rhythmic swagger ("La Moulette Enchantee" by Wankers United). It's a pretty excellent entry into the genre, but unfortunately a good many of the artists on display don't have material out beyond compilations (that or their music is intentionally difficult to find). If you like hard 80's funk, this comes highly recommended.
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Computer Jay - Maintain
--- Quote ---From Ramp Recordings comes this new single from Computer Jay, replete with 3 remixes from white-hot dubstep / future garage DJs. I don't know much of anything about Computer Jay (all I know is that he's a part of the LA beatmaking scene that's been really fertile for the last few years), but I know Ramp Recordings and they're pretty legit. The eponymous song is a prime example of what they're calling "wonky" these days (though living so far outside the vital culture as I do, it's likely that term has fallen into disfavor and I just don't know it), with rhythms that seem just a tad off. Heavy hip hop beats underlay a weirdly attitude-heavy speak'n'spell rap (itself underlayed with a vocoder, by the sound of it) and dreamy, floating synth. It all sounds like a slightly less headphone-oriented FaltyDL track.
Oddly enough, FaltyDL's remix of the song speeds things up and rearranges the rhythm to match Andrew Lustman's signature clap-heavy sound, which is easily identifiable even at the infant stage of his career. Lustman cuts up the rap to an unintelligible syllable soup and ladles it back onto the track with formant-filtered bass stabs, creating an uncharacteristically floor-ready track.
Mike Slott gives the track an expansive treatment reminiscent of Warp's recent forays into thick hip hop instrumentalism (Hudson Mohawke, etc.) with a muggy tropical feel and just a bit of cowbell. It's comparitively short at just under 3 minutes but it makes a distinct impression.
Ikonika's edit retools the song into what sounds like a frantic rave-house anthem before abruptly switching gears to heavy duty bass-centric dubstep, with the vocoded speak'n'spell kept around for color and the central melodic motif of the song slowed down and stretched out. Just 4 songs, but every one is distinct and excellent in its own right.
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The Internal Tulips - Mislead Into a Field By a Deformed Deer
--- Quote ---These last few years have seen Planet Mu releasing albums from new signs that were in actuality new projects from old Planet Mu artists, ones who never seemed to gather the acclaim of the label's more well-known artists, like Vex'd or Venetian Snares. They tended to not be "side projects" but new identities, and to go along with those new identities came newer, almost invariably more interesting sounds - Legion of Two (formerly Decal) went from IDM to dark, bombastic post-rock, Sunken Foal (formerly Ambulance) went from IDM to shambling electro-acoustic folk. And now Alex Graham (Lexaunculpt) and Brad Laner (Electric Company), both former Planet Mu solo artists, have collaborated and released this album as the Internal Tulips.
The music here is quite strange. Internal Tulips are, at their core, a piano pop band. On nearly every song, the most prominently featured elements are the sounds of a grand piano and Laner's oft-multitracked voice. It's hard for me to pin down what exactly the exact inspirations for this kind of music - if it makes any sense to say so, the melding of classic pop vocal harmonies and electronics have been in vogue since Animal Collective hit the big time. Suffice to say that the only things keeping this music recognizably contemporary are the slick production and the numerous and meticulous electronic touches to the music - in songs like album highlights "Arlie" and "Mr. Baby", disparate elements of the music are separated and "placed" to different pan settings. This along with the relative quiet of the music creates an exceptional sense of location.
The album only really suffers when it strays from the piano pop format. The weird early 90's saccharine R&B of "Parasol" and the electro-folk of "We Breathe" and "Long Thin Heart" just barely work or fall flat. Overall the mood of the album is remote and melancholy (a common reference when listening was the later work of Julian Fane) and the laptop-fueled glitch-hop touches sometimes date the music, but overall this is a strong "debut", and a new wild card in the already eclectic Planet Mu deck. For fans of Sunken Foal and classic pop.
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Geoff Mullen and Keith Fullerton Whitman - November 28 2009
--- Quote ---Once upon a time, in the heyday of the breakcore explosion of the early-to-mid aughts, Keith Fullerton Whitman recorded and performed as Hrvatski, releasing a handful of really smashing records on Planet Mu. But there was another side to Whitman that expressed itself in the realm of ambient drone composition, and this music, released under Whitman's given name, was what made his reputation. Whitman is nothing if not accomplished - he studied at Berklee and I seem to recall reading an article stating that he held an official position at Harvard in his mid-30's (though given that his official website lists his location as lovely Cambridge, MA, it's possible that he actually has some sort of residency at MIT instead), and his past releases have won plaudits from the likes of Pitchfork, who give his Playthroughs album an exceedingly high mark of 9.7. Much of his recent work is relatively difficult to track down, but I managed to grab ahold of his most recent release, a collaboration with Geoff Mullen (who I can't seem to find any information on. Anybody have input?) called November 28 2009.
I've always had misgivings about the composition style labeled "drone". As a catch-all term I find it too pejorative and esoteric - your average person probably wouldn't even give an album labeled "ambient drone" a fair shot in the first place. While this album (as well as Whitman's output under his own name as a whole) might technically fit into that particular category of composition, when I listen to this album I don't feel the same way I do when I listen to, say, a William Basinski piece. It's repetitive, sure, but it's not drone-loop music in that sense. Rather, for me November 28 2009 hearkens back to the old kosmische performers that are the forebears of much of the current experimental electronic music scene, particularly Emmanuel Gottsching and Ash Ra Tempel. The two expansive ambient tracks that bookend the album, "#01.3" and "#02", feel like a sort of synthesis of Selected Ambient Works Vol. II Aphex Twin, Basinski's loop music, and the spacey proto-techno of Gottsching. "#02" in particular contains scattered melodic synth elements that set it apart from most of the drone music I hear.
The other three tracks on the album hew closer to the sort of rough, ominous ambience that the second disc of SAW V.II traded in. "#01.1.5"'s scraping, rhythmic bass static and echoing tones recall "Shiny Metal Rods" while two short tracks, "#??.??" and "#04", are reminiscent of "White Blur 1", with menacing white noise and barely audible "found sound" samples.
Drone composers tend to be thick on the ground these days, and what really sets November 28 2009 apart, aside from its pedigree, is the fidelity to which it adheres to the skewed "pop ambient" style that was so prevalent in 90's IDM. Not to beat the drum too hard, but if you enjoyed SAW V.II, I think you'll really enjoy this as well. At times I lament the fact that Whitman has seemingly put the Hrvatski moniker to pasture permanently, but when he releases stuff like this, I wonder if ambient composition wasn't what he was destined to pursue.
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http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/7867/333ge.jpg
--- Quote ---French duo dDamage come back for their first proper release in 3 years (at least, if Discogs is to be believed) with The Truth, an 8-track EP (2 originals plus remixes) with some fetching cover art aping that most classic of John Carpenter films, The Thing. It's what drew my eye to this release in the first place.
But if you're expecting Carpenter-esque music, you're going to be disappointed. The Truth is a conflation of breakcore, hip hop and electro. If you've read this blog for any period of time you'd know that Planet Mu is my favorite label, and briefly, during the zenith of its breakcore period, dDamage got signed, and today they still retain some of that breakcore-ish glitch-hop feel, with quick tempos and 16th note rhythms.
Had I not had that bit of background on dDamage I probably wouldn't have picked this up, as the sort of mainline hip-hop that the guests on the title track (Young Jeezy, Agallah & Sin) practice is not really my kind of thing at all. But the production of the track is actually quite excellent, a propulsive, pinballing clubby hip-hop tune in the Modeselektor vein. Thank God they included an instrumental version, is all I'll say. Elsewhere, Humanleft provides an 8-bit remix (also with an instrumental dub), Kid606 slows down the vox for a more minimalistic bass-oriented remix, and Komori offers a funky IDM-style remix.
Electro influence is apparent on "Can of Worms", the second original track, with a chopped up vox sample (sounds more like "cannonball" to me, but whatever) and bristly, almost whistling synths. Magnum 38 turns in a thumping club remix with bass that reminds of the bassline to "Blue Monday", for some reason.
Overall, I think the title track is by far the weakest of the set, but that's likely just my personal preference. The instrumentals and both renditions of "Can of Worms" are pretty great, though.
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Rossi B & Luca - E10 Riddim
--- Quote ---It seems like Planet Mu is cultivating a small stable of formidable grime producers, and to that end we see yet another 12" from the label, this time from veteran Garage DJs Rossi B & Luca. Interestingly enough, the a-side of "E10 Riddim" is a dub of the b-side track "Police Ar Come Run", where traditionally dubs are b-sides of singles. Presumably this is indicative of Planet Mu's tendency towards a "producer first" orientation (the long-unsung grime producer Terror Danjah made a pretty big splash last year with a collection of instrumentals and dubs released via the label, for example).
As for the song itself, it's a lively, shuffling number with a muscular drum loop anchoring the track. While the b-side adds dancehall reggae vox, the 16-bit synth leads and horns are all grime. I'm pretty lukewarm on dancehall, so I could take or leave "Police Ar Come Run", but the dub is warm and vital in all the right ways. Definitely not an achingly morose Bug record. Give it a listen, yeah?
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KvP:
Venetian Snares - Detrimentalist
--- Quote ---Aaron Funk can be a hard man to appreciate, sometimes. I've already covered the madness of his latest record, so I felt as though it would be a good idea to backtrack a bit to the album that, for me at least, is the most accessible entry in Funk's discography as Venetian Snares.
Detrimentalist is the Venetian Snares tribute to hardcore jungle, and while the tempos and the time signatures are sheer lunacy (this uncommonly trenchant review of this album at Cokemachineglow points out that Venetian Snares usually composes songs in 7/4 time, sometimes in weirder signatures like 19/11) there is a surprising lack of the palpable menace that Funk usually brings to bear in his albums. Detrimentalist, for all its hyperactivity, is a pretty straightforward dance music album, full of songs it's probably terribly difficult to dance to.
It starts off with the 7/4 drill'n'bass (so named for the prominent pitch-shifted snare rolls) of "Gentleman", a song that has become a staple of my workout playlist over the past few months, with snare rushes tumbling over one another and movie / hip hop samples getting chopped and stretched. "Koonut-Kaliffee" brings a weird Lovecraftian twist to jungle rave, while "Satjban" and "Eurocore MVP" recalls some of Venetian Snares' earlier madcap adventures in sampling (particularly "Einstein-Rosenbridge"). "Kyokushin" and "Flashforward" provide a taste of the punishing acid-breakcore of the next year's Filth. The album really picks up in its last few tracks, with "Circle Pit" proving to be perhaps the most dancefloor-friendly song Funk has ever produced, complete with left-field Saturday morning cartoon samples. "Bebikukorica Nigiri" puts Funk's incredible talent for composition on full display, with the sophisticated interplay of synth elements taking on an almost classical feel. It's my favorite track on the record.
Then there's "Miss Balaton", the closer. The similarities to Squarepusher's "Tundra 4" are hard to dismiss - I'm not sure you can really track Venetian Snares' particular madness to any one forebear, but Squarepusher's probably a good start. Yet even if the track is some sort of an homage, it stands by itself as an incredible song (the nearly 10-minute song couldn't fit on the LP release of the album and thus it was packaged as its own 12" - one wonders if it was initially meant for the album at all), and a complete detour from Venetian Snares' established style (there's even use of silence, for fuck's sake).
Most people will probably tell you that Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett is Funk's best album, and they might be right from a purely aesthetic point of view, but if we're talking about an album your average unacquainted electronic music fan can enjoy (I'm not sure someone not already into electronic music could ever enjoy Venetian Snares) I think Detrimentalist is the best possible means of acclimating oneself to the eccentricities and sensibilities of breakcore's mad king.
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Bonobo - Black Sands
--- Quote ---Sure enough, after the very pleasant surprise that was the "Eyesdown" single (my review is here) Bonobo has released his latest album, 4 years after his last. As my review of "Eyesdown" mentioned, I was only really aware of Bonobo through his 2000 album Animal Magic, which was sent to me by a friend around 5 or 6 years ago. It didn't hit me too hard back then, as aside from a few key tracks I found it to be relatively tasteful but sleepy electronic jazz. It was West Coast music. So I picked out my favorite tracks from that album and let Bonobo slide into the cloud of bands that only really come up in a shuffle.
Well, God bless Floating Points because without him I probably never would have given Bonobo a second thought. This new Black Sands album is really good, possessed of musculature that 10-year old album sorely lacked. I'm starting to wonder if I should go back and revisit Animal Magic and the other releases that Bonobo's put out in the last decade.
The first track, "Prelude" establishes the production aesthetic that permeates throughout the album - live instrumentation augmented by electronic flourishes. The intro seamlessly segues into "Kiara" where we first encounter one of the many UK Garage-influenced rhythms on Black Sands. It's a change that serves Bonobo well, as no one would ever accuse this music of being "sleepy". There's a vitality to the songs that I didn't hear from Animal Magic. This is dance music that is at once both identifiably electronic but not wholly artificial.
The percussion / organ / guitar / female vox of "Kong" make it reminiscent of Zero 7's instrumental affairs, though the drum sound here is immeasurably better than that band's. I've already covered "Eyesdown", but suffice to say it seamlessly fits into the blue-green tapestry of the album as a whole. "El Toro" is lush exotica, sounding more like straight-up jazz than any of the tracks preceding it. The boogie of "We Could Forever" makes it perhaps the most arresting, propulsive track on the album (I don't know if any of you have Audiosurf, but this is definitely a track to try out in that game). "1009" is overtly electronic-sounding and strongly reminiscent of FaltyDL's soul-tinged Garage. "All in Forms" uses a descending guitar line and a washed-out vox sample to great effect. "The Keeper" and "The Same", two other tracks featuring Andreya Triana (other than "Eyesdown") send the album briefly into lounge jazz territory, and the two last tracks "Animals" and "Black Sands" close out the album with the lush, live jazz feel felt earlier in the album, with live drums, horns and woodwinds.
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Four Tet - Sing Remixes
--- Quote ---It's probably apparent by now that I will buy just about anything with "Floating Points" emblazoned on it. The man's only been around for a little over a year and he's already released some of my favorite tracks of the last several. So naturally I snagged this pair of remixes for the Four Tet single "Sing", which is an alright enough song (I believe I have already expressed my boredom with Four Tet elsewhere on this blog, somewhere). The two remixes are an extended atmospheric house edit of the track, and Floating Points' spin on it. The extended version is what it says on the label, and if you liked the original track you'll probably dig that as well, but my main concern was and is the Floating Points edit.
The track takes its sweet time starting up, as is the case with a lot of FP's recent songs. Gentle atmospherics abound until about 3 and a half minutes into the song, when a great, floor-ready garage rhythm starts to slowly assert itself. The track really starts to hit its stride around the 6 minute mark, at which point more elements of the original song can be heard, chopped up and re-purposed in the signature wonky/jazz style of Floating Points. Soon after the song retreats a bit, only to start building back up again, leading to a bubbling sci-fi outro. It's a really great remix, and keeping with the high standard of quality that Floating Points has set over the last year. Long, but rewarding.
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KvP:
ONE MORE
The Capitol Steps - Liberal Shop of Horrors
Basically, it's a theater / musical group formed by Republican congressional staffers in 1981. This is their most recent album.
--- Quote ---Track Listings
1. Return to Spenders
2. Taxicab Driver
3. Cash for Codgers
4. Strangers on This Flight
5. Fly of the Tiger
6. Going Green
7. Don't Cry, I'm in Argentina
8. You Can't Hide That Nobel Prize
9. Officer Crowley
10. Obamamania
11. Everything's Coming Up Roguey
12. We Arrrr the World
13. The Great Health Care Trial Balloon
14. The Twitter
15. Swine Fever
16. Secret Kenyan Man
17. In the Nude
18. A Detective´s Story The Iranian Candidate
19. We´ve Got a Lot of Livers to Do
20. Battle Hymn of the Tea Public
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onewheelwizzard:
Bonobo + FaltyDL + Starkey + Fabriclive 50 = so much love
real talk
amok:
^ second that. nice work
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