8:29 PM
Teo Macero in the Guardian.

10:14 PM
As Brent S. Sirota notes in his Pitchfork review of Oui, the new Sea and Cake album due on October 3rd, the album will be released on the same day as the new Radiohead. What does it say about Radiohead (or TSAC?) that though I've had much more profound listening experiences with their records, I intend to listen to Oui first next Tuesday morning? Even though I've already heard half the SAC album, and am very interested to hear the new Radiohead (even having not bothered downloading it from the net)? Nothing, perhaps. But I find it interesting...

Incidentally, Brent S.'s review reads a million times better, to me, than Brent D.'s overblown Kid A review.

11:54 PM
Tom and Fred may find this interesting.

8:20 PM
Perhaps I've linked to this Dave Holland interview before, but even if so it's more enlightening now.

2:24 AM
Many great things in Lewis Porter's John Coltrane: His Life and Music, but here's just a little one:

Released in 1966, this [Meditations] was the last new album issued while Coltrane was living. As before with Coltrane's controversial music, Down Beat assigned two reviewers for the December 1, 1966 issue: one gave it five stars, the other only one.

12:58 AM
I'm not sure what I can say about this but it sounds terribly wrong.

12:43 AM
Vijay Iyer is an acclaimed and respected "jazz" musician of South Indian extraction. He is also an academic in the musical world, which is less common (those types of musicians usually being mostly irrelevant). But there's more! He's also got a doctorate in physics from MIT, which interests me all the more. See in particular his second Ph. D. thesis, the music one, where he appears to offer a probing analysis of rhythm in music, and uses his analysis to argue, as far as I can tell at this point, that people - and bodies - matter in music. This probably sounds like pointless overanalysis to any pop fans who read this page, but there are definitely still people out there, especially in the academic music community, who regard the action of the mind as the best possible byproduct of listening to music, and classical music as the best possible means of iliciting that action while listening to music. Also, be sure to check out the list of example recordings: Monk, Bird, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Squarepusher... Iyer knows where it's at, that's for sure. Definitely on my read-soon list.

12:20 AM
PSF article on Trout Mask Replica.

12:17 AM
Question for UK readers: is "hooveling" some kind of Britishism? You know where to reach me. (The word is, incidentally, the name of the last track on Holland's Emerald Tears. He's British, and other than that I'm not sure if it's a made-up word, or not.)

12:15 AM
Wondering about the "afro-pop" aspects of TSAC mentioned in many places, I go looking for "afro-pop" - and what do you know, find afropop.org. A nice comparative study would be nice, though.

9:26 PM
Why even bother printing this many different shows, is what I want to know. Link stolen from pearls.

12:32 AM
Whaddaya know - it turns out rapreviews.com is the work of an ISU alumnus - thought I recognized him from somewhere. Small world!

8:04 PM
Not sure if I wasn't paying attention, or what, but Kool Keith dropped another album, Matthew, this past summer. I thought it was odd that I didn't see any talk about it.

Incidentally, I'm liking Dr. Octagonecologyst much better than Black Elvis/Lost in Space.

3:05 AM
Three Pandering Sluts and Their Music-Press Stooge aka a 1993 Chicago newspaper letter-war set off by Steve Albini's response to an article praising the Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, and Urge Overkill.

11:30 PM
Article on / interview with Nurse with Wound that discusses, among other things, the collector mentality and how the obscurity of some of NWW's influences has made them possible, in a sense.

11:13 PM
Article at Resonance magazine about Tortoise circa TNT release. Nothing new, just a pleasant look back.

6:11 PM
The Sea and Cake sure know how to win me over: the inside art to their first, self-titled album as a painting of Charles Mingus inside.

4:26 PM
I finally gave in and replaced my copy of The Best of the Doors today; the old one had something wrong with it that's prevented me from listening to it for almost 2 years now. If I've ever heard it on my good headphones before, then I don't remember it, because there have already been some surprises: the demented whispering on one track, or the enormous synth on "Waiting for the Sun" that makes it even more psychedelic than I remember. Oh, oops - plus I also have it turned up to 9 because I was listening to Godspeed right before this... heh.

Waiting eagerly to be back home so I can play "Riders on the Storm" at home; the sound of the tinkling Rhodes piano backgrounds is marvelous.

Happily, this is all even better than I remember.

4:26 PM
George reviews the forthcoming Godspeed release at Splendid.

1:39 AM
Note to self: new King Crimson Red-era remasters pushed back to later in October.

Other note to self: Labradford.

1:28 AM
Brief notes:

Heard The Sea and Cake's forthcoming (on October 3, same day as the new Radiohead, not that anyone would notice) album Oui tonight, or at least a good portion of it. I generally enjoy the one TSAC album I own, The Fawn, more each time I listen, but it's been slow going - I like it and all, but it's so unassuming that it's easy to move on to something else instead of focusing on it for any length of time. Also, at times I get the impression that the electronic tendencies were barely overplayed. Hearing Oui helped me make more sense out of this; it seems they do have a definitely less-synthy/drum-machiny side, and it's wonderful. This has led me to seek out their older LPs, which are by all accounts nifty.

Also, wanted to mention again how the more I listen to Amon Tobin's Permutation and Photek's Modus Operandi, the more surprising and engaging they become, as the myriad subtleties become more apparent. The best parallel I can think of is that of warming up to jazz - even after you enjoy jazz, you can still become much better at picking up on the subtle rhythmic interplay, etc., that goes into it. (Thinking here too that some music is just generally more subtle than other music.)

Which reminds me, especially on the new TSAC tracks I heard tonight, McEntire's drumming is amazing. Superhuman. Up there with say the most planned-out Photek track, but done live and by a guy with (I assume) just two arms. Amazing not only in a technical sense, though (that's so rock fan of me, right?) - amazing because his insanely timed beats and fills fit in perfectly, despite obviously being derived from drum n bass.

11:25 PM
Slight correction: the essay I linked to below (3:23 AM) had the wrong link.

9:08 PM
Avant-skronk guitarist Henry Kaiser's website has a very cool feature, a bunch of recommendations where HK picks favorites. The result is perhaps more interesting than say a page of Damon Albarn picks, or something, because HK's music is generally thought to be more difficult, and thus it's nice to have some more clues about where his head is.

3:27 AM
And along those lines, check out this academic article about the Five Percent Nation of Islam in rap music.

3:23 AM
Hmmm, maybe there is something to that overview below; but I think it jumbles the issues. See this essay about the ambiguous relationship between the Planets' second album, Blowout Comb, and the leftist politics they reference.

3:10 AM
Interview with the Planets' Doodlebug.

3:01 AM
I'm not quite sure of the purpose of this overview of Reachin' - its main argument (and it is making an argument) seems to be that the album is anti-white, pro-drug, pro-violence, etc. etc. That is, it tries to argue that the album is not very different from its contemporary gangsta rap. I think. Why one would want to do this, I'm not sure, because it also seems to be completely off-base. Still listening to the lyrics, but as far as I can tell they're uniformly positive, and violence is never advocated.

2:59 AM
The Planets like Herbie Hancock... "Escapism (Gettin' Free)" also samples from Hancock, again uncredited - the main bass sample is from is from the Headhunters version of "Watermelon Man", and the beginning has samples "African" funk-whistle section from that song.

10:40 PM
There's an impressive new paean to Game Theory's Lolita Nation up on the front page at Dancing About Architecture.

8:46 PM
Digable Planets' Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) opens with an uncredited sample from Herbie Hancock's Sextant. The message: these insects, like Herbie's Mwandishi trilogy, are from another world.

1:16 PM
Jon has more to say:

Koko Taylor sings it as "Wang Dang Doodle".

That's all I'm saying.

10:48 AM
Observation about the final Morphine album, The Night:

The sound is subdued, compressed. Sandman plays more low, slowly thumping notes and fewer swaggering slides - in fact, there are fewer riffs all around. Dana Colley seems relegated to a minor role, compared to past albums. But he fills his role, when he appears, tastefully, often showing appreciable restraint (for example, in the title track).

The tension here seems to be due to a few things. Morphine's best songs have always walked a line between noirish, slinky "low rock" that used those qualities to hint at something seductive, possibly even seedy; and graceful, simple sketches. (When I say "sketches," I do it cautiously: there's something of the imagist poets' "image" as a complex of experience here, and something of the "haiku moment" to be found in good haiku, where an image simply presented and allowed to resonate with the viewer - in this case, listener.)

The best songs on this album seem to me to be the ones where they present those sketches. On the whole album, the sound seems to get at, or at least try to sometimes, contrary to what the songs call for, the same kind of emotional state that past great Morphine songs have, only, taken down a notch - more subdued, more resigned, more numb. But some songs are still songs in the tales-of-modern-urban-noir mold, and I can almost hear them straining against this new sound.

(And about the sound: many critics have described it as expanded, etc. etc. because of the cellos, other extra instruments, but their roles are minor; in fact the sound sounds smaller everywhere, and everyone plays less, except that Sandman's bass sounds lower than ever.)

I'm still undecided on the lyrics, but again, the "sketch" songs seem to work better. Though there are troubling lyrics here and there - "surrounded by the sounds of saxophones," "666th time," talk of no thirteenth floor, etc. I'm not sure if these really are banal, or if I'm just noticing them extra because of, well, I don't know.

And: the title track "The Night" is one of the most beautiful, haunting songs they've done.

1:09 AM
Interesting link stolen from Tim - jungle fans discuss the state of the music.

9:50 AM
Keith Jarrett talks in a radio interview about his CSS illness, among other things.

7:04 PM
Old article about hip-hop's place at the top of pop music, about its "ownership", and plenty of other things. The author himself veers toward some of the academic-speak he talks about (cf. rap albums, from his list, as "texts"), but for the most part it's interesting.

5:36 PM
On Morphine - what happened? It seems to me that there's been an enormous dearth of Morphine-influenced bands. Admittedly, this might not be a bad thing - look at what happens in the wake of most "influential" bands: fusion (mostly early electric Miles), trip-hop (Massive Attack and Portishead), grunge (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden)... most of the followers turn out to be at best interesting though ultimately lacking shadows of their influences, and at worst, crap (cf. most of non-nu-metal modern rock radio). So if it's Morphine-influenced bands I want, it's not for the "new" music I would get to hear. I have more selfish reasons than that.

Once bands are thought to have influenced others, they seem to pick up more critical cachet as a result. I don't necessarily think that's right, but hey, sometimes cachet is cachet. I think Morphine's sound has mostly remained their own because they tread a fine line between being gimmicky, and idiosyncratic. Personally I think they fall on the latter side of the line, but I can see how easy it would be to see them as gimmicky. No more or less so than any other style of rock music, though - it's just that some are more widely adopted than others, and thus seem less limited.

So maybe Morphine were too idiosyncratic. I think it's fair to say that progenitors of some of the styles mentioned above were also "too" idiosyncratic, enough so that simply borrowing or adopting their styles proved to be easier said than done (otherwise, the results would have been better). But in Morphine's case, maybe their sound seems so specific to most people (musicians here I mean), that it seems pointless to even try.

All this aside, some album thoughts: on their first, Good, first drummer Jerome Dupree's time is much more metronomic than later (and then only, though Dupree guested on all of final album The Night) drummer Billy Conway's. Conway seems to let the sax, bass, and vocal lines push the music, while he adds rhythmic commentary.

Yes is their "rock" album, relatively speaking. And Dana Colley relies a lot on his double-sax trick to bulk up the sound, make it seem more frantic.

The bass harmonica on "I Know You (Part I)" from Good is great - I wonder why I've not heard this instrument more elsewhere.

Unless it's done on the fly with some kind of processor, Sandman uses vocal overdubs sometimes. So it's unclear whether they use them for other parts as well. In particular, do they use them in their more psychedelic moments? My guess is no, which makes the amount of sound, and kind of sound, they're able to get out of their limited instrumentation all the more impressive. Sure, a guitar-drums-bass rock trio can be plenty psychedelic, but it's generally guitar psychedelia - has a different feel to it than this, where the bass (typically played with a slide) has more presence and the sax (baritone) already has an easily-obtainable, distinctive growl, before Colley takes advantage of overtones, skronks, wah-wah pedals (!) and the like.

2:42 PM
A couple - 1 2 - of ATN pieces about Morphine.

2:16 AM
Also: the version of Snoop's "Murder Was the Case" from the movie soundtrack is miles better than the album version (can't remember if it's on Doggystyle or The Chronic, but big difference). Super-ominous, more psychedelic - and the g-funk synths are completely out of tune, it's like something out of avant-garde classical.

1:51 AM
Note to self: played the "Liberation" single from Outkast's Aquemeni tonight, liked it a lot.

Gang Starr's "Words I Manifest (remix)" from the Full Clip anthology also nice, but less so. Actually prefer Guru's Jazzmatazz Vol. 1 more - have been listening to it last few days and it subtleties are growing on me. Still think the jazz parts feel tacked on most of the time - liner notes say Guru wrote lyrics while the jazz musicians were laying down their parts, so presumably all they had to work with were beats and minimal basslines. Also explains the soul-jazz feel - no attempt to create more complicated (i.e. more comfortable to jazz) harmonic structures.

On the other hand, also listening to Tribe's Low End Theory a lot lately. Ron Carter's guest spot is even better when really really loud - and shows what can be done in working toward a better jazz/rap fusion. Structure is still simple, but Carter uses it more effectively - embellishes the main bassline, seems to be playing off Tip and Fife. I love the rest of the songs plenty but I still wish they could've done more like this - maybe pull Carter in for an entire album.

1:43 PM
What? Since when were Kraftwerk records not taken seriously, like this guy says? Has he not been around the past 10 years?

8:28 PM
Courtney Love is filing suit against Universal in order to get her share of their settlement with mp3.com, which Universal argued that they were pursuing for their artists. They'll probably find a way to not pay her, but just think... if they do, they'll have to pay everyone else! How do you suppose they'll decide who gets how much?

12:38 AM
Another link from DJ Martian: news of an upcoming ("late September") release from Recommended Records (Chris Cutler's "megacorp", home to Henry Cow and other fine avant-skronk products) of... a Faust boxed set including their early albums and some other junk. I only have IV (their fourth album would you believe it) but definitely need more. The word is that IV, while it's charming in its own little way, has nothing on the seas of sound to be found on e.g. the first album.

1:21 AM
Yields link stolen from DJ Martian. Experimental music links links links.

1:51 AM
Because I, uh, tend to pick up music quickly sometimes, it takes me a while to get back to some things, even ones I liked a bunch at first. So after being reminded how much I loved a newer record (newer to me, at least) tonight, I thought I'd do something kind of like slashdot's "slashback" stories, where they revisit old posts and give updates, the idea being that these updates are small and tend to slip through the cracks otherwise. In my case, the idea is that this will help me (and you, dear reader, should you wish it) keep a broader perspective on what exactly I've been doing.

With that in mind... here's a quick rundown of things, new to me this year (i.e. new and old releases), that I really enjoyed. I wholeheartedly recommend that you try any of these out, though a little discretion might be in order if you're unfamiliar with the broader genres they occupy.

In particular, I recommend any of these to Jon, who I haven't recommended anything to in a while.

I will see about commenting further on these in the near future.

Autechre, Incunabula
John Coltrane, Stellar Regions
Herbie Hancock, Mwandishi
Uri Caine Ensemble, Mahler in Toblach
Thelonious Monk, Straight No Chaser
Einsturzende Neubauten, Silence is Sexy
Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro
Stuart Dempster, Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel
Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One
Mr. Bungle, California
John Zorn, The Circle Maker
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Sonic Youth, A Thousand Leaves

This goes back to some nebulous time in the mid spring.

I enjoyed other things, some very much so, but looking back at the moment these are the ones that stick out most.

12:01 AM
Is it sales losses due to people happy to subsist on freely procured copies that they're concerned about? Or is it the huge loss they could take on early-hype sales, when people find out beforehand that they don't really want an album after all?

9:43 PM
One DJ Martian has plugged his Diverse Music Positive Weblog to me, so go check it out and see what you think.

I have something to say about Martian's rant/campaign concerning xfm, but no time now. Must write proofs.

8:13 PM
Something I am thinking about, will discuss later: is the insane genre-hopping and -mixing and -juxtaposing in Mr. Bungle ironic? Or how much so, or not? My suspicion is that largely, no, it's not ironic. Maybe some of it, but for the most part everything they appropriate seems to be used just because they thought it was so fucking cool and, well, why not use 10 different genres in a song and have the singer switch from crooning to something like a Balinese Monkey Chant?

Maybe Fred, Tom, Otis, Mike, or any other readers of this page who like the Magnetic Fields could think about this in relation to them. Because from what I've heard/read, a lot of the genre-hopping on 69 Love Songs is sort of needless and (here comes a favorite word of Tom's and Mike's) artificial. Not even in the "they're not REALLY playing REAL jazz/punk/country/etc/" sense - more like "they don't even care, they just wanted to reference this particular style/genre." I'm curious what the aesthetic effect of this is supposed to be, especially on something a big as 69LS. It is just supposed to reinforce the sense of sprawl?

8:05 PM
Analysis of Gnutella network scalability not for the non-scientifically-inclined music fans who usually read this page, but it has some interesting things to say about the feasibility of Gnutella's form of peer-to-peer file sharing, without centralized servers, expanding significantly. Which in turn has significance for the possibility of peer-to-peer sharing networks replacing things like Napster - which would be a plus because there are no corporations to prosecute and put the SMACK down on.

The short of it: too many modem users makes growing Gnutella networks too slow to be very cool. Not because of the downloading per se, just the intra-network connections. I.e. sort of a basic component of a Gnutella network.

?
get me out of this air-conditioned nightmare
you will hate life more than life hates you
...
from a skyscraper
down to the submarines
where's my rainbow?
where's my halo?
there's my halo.

Sounds like RADIOHEAD lyrics, right? Well they're NOT. They're Mr. Bungle lyrics! Rendered completely non-Radiohead-esque, I think, by the insane surf music cutting to doo-wop vocals. And, uh, all the other stuff. In that one song. I love Mr. Bungle.

September 11, 2000

10:17 PM
Opinion piece at Motley Fool about the balance (or imbalance) between consumer and legal input to the economy.

12:33 AM
Grim news for the Napster case: the current administration, in form of the Department of Justice, the Patent and Trademark Office, and the Copyright Office, has submitted / signed off on an amicus curae brief claiming that the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992 can't be relief on in Napster's defense.

7:04 PM
Publishing royalties primer.

5:19 PM
Tom "interviews" Jessica Simpson in an article about pop music at Freaky Trigger.

1:41 AM
Sly Stone samples.

12:36 AM
And before someone corrects me: "Family Affair" actually hit number 1 on the R+B and pop charts. Very surprising, then.

12:01 AM
Another copyright violation case goes to The Man. (Follow the link to the cnet story - I'm too lazy to fix my screen so I can see the whole damn thing right now.)

Note especially the end. I don't see why it matters that the new software had to circumvent Real's copy-protection scheme - what that means is just that Real wanted security through technical means. The material would still be copyrighted if it wasn't protected algorithmically. So why is the case not, as implied by the defendants, directly analagous to the Betamax decision, where TV producers (among others) were concerned about the ability VCRs brought to record TV programs which were previously completely (technologically, note) under control of the broadcasters?

10:45 PM
Received a nice surprise in my mailbox today, a copy of Sly and the Family Stone's There's a Riot Goin' On, from my wishlist. And more importantly, from Fred - thank you. I hope you enjoy the Salinger as much as I do this. Well, at least as much. :)

Not even one listen through yet I am enjoying myself, and I can definitely see why this was not nearly as popular as Sly's other albums. Which makes me wonder how it became one of Fred's favorites. ;) Even "Family Affair", the biggest single from it (and it didn't do as well as Sly's earlier singles), is surprising in its blatant unpopularity - it sounds as if it's just a little segment of funk, few concessions to pop song structure etc.

I first became interested in getting this record because I came across a bunch of reviews, which either I'd never seen previously or never caught on to before, and which claimed Tricky's Maxinquaye to be something of a direct descendant of Riot. That interested me because the connection was supposed to be in the claustrophobic, dark sound, and I really wanted to hear how that would sound with funk rather than hip-hop and ol Mr. Thaws (whose voice and "personality" certainly help make, for me, anything of his that I like).

So am I satisfied, in this respect? Sort of - I think so, will know better after more listening. I think that in part, this could stand to be remastered and issued anew on CD - the pressing appears to be old enough that there would probably be a sound quality difference. But a lot of it is obviously the sound: the bass is up in the mix, and basically everything else is buried. Usually when people say "buried in the mix" it's sort of a bad thing, but not here, I think. It just contributes to the mood, and the dominance of the FUNK. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Tom didn't care for this, since it's dirty and gritty (compare to his preferred mode of funk, the MAN-MACHINE variety). But above when I joked about Fred and Riot's unpopularity, I really meant that typically something of this sort - thick, defiantly uncommercial, songless stuff - is what Fred claims to be the kind of dreck that only I like. :)

10:43 PM
Gareth of Surface vs. Depth offers some thoughts on techno in his log. No comment at the moment but thanks, Gareth, and you, dear reader, should see what he has to say.

2:00 AM
Currently feeling out Underworld's dubnobasswithmyheadman. Things are proceeding slowly, but not suspiciously, which I regard as about as good as I could do without actually liking the damn thing right off. More to follow in the future, maybe.

Also, I have nothing to say about the reviews proper in this week's TWAS (except to say that I bought Misplaced Childhood once and fuck, did I not like it) - however, if there's one way to get me to at least read the beginning of your record review, it's to start it with a discussion of anything in relation to epistemology, ontology, and teleology. Kickass.

Finally: I really entered this at 1:59 but I wrote "2:00" to make it go nicely with the times below, which were "real" entry times. Apparently this was very aesthetically important to me because I normally would balk at the idea of typing the wrong time when I could just as easily type the right one. Just thought you should know. ;)

2:30 AM
Review of the new Aaliyah on motion is on the surface an unusual thing to cover for them, given their usual fare. But if you're a Freaky Trigger head then all this Timbaland-is-the-shit talk will be nothing new.

2:15 AM
The Library of Congress was requried by the DMCA (upon its passage) to conduct three studies - the page doesn't get specific, but presumably, into the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of digital copyright. Intellectual property buffs might be interested in the new replies, including many from the big copyright holding companies' laywers. The ones I've read seem to touch on the DeCSS case (involving the legality of passing around - or even linking to!! - software which will decrypt the encryption used to forced consumers to only play DVDs on licensed players (and thus, not be able to copy them on their non-licensed DVD-ROM drives)), but the issues are immediately germane to the free music debate (things like point of first sale, etc.).

2:00 AM
Beware if you buy DVDs from amazon.com. I hope they don't do this with books or CDs, though I've never noticed it. What the hell kind of "test" is that supposed to be, anyway?

10:09 AM
A slashdot posting suggests that the world's third-largest media company is behind plans in Germany to place a royalty tax on all computer equipment that could be used to copy copyrighted materials - CD burners and the like, but also hard drives (?). As one of the discussion posters notes: how do they decide who to give the money to? Oh, right - the artists see almost none of that. US music companies have wanted a tax like this for years but at the moment can only tax the appropriate audio-specific hardware.

2:20 AM
I listened to Wilco's Being There again last night, and still my thoughts echo Glenn McDonald's (just at the end of the review) - to wit, why is it a double album? And I don't mean the physical doubleness, the fact that the music is split onto two CDs when one, with a tiny bit of editing, would do. I mean, why is it so long? Because while the second disc seems decent, it just never seems as good to me as the first.

So I decided to do a little research, and see what the band thought. From this interview with Jeff Tweedy I gleaned:

That's OK, they can think that I'm being totally ungrateful first thing on the record. If they don't want a double record they can use one as a coaster or something.

He certainly seems to think it stood to be a double.

So, there are other possibilities: in the same interview Tweedy says

Cool! They're hard to find already, you know. What's a double record if it doesn't come out on vinyl? I sequenced it like vinyl. I wanted every five or six songs to complete a thought, or like a mini set. I think it's easier to listen to. That's why I think double records were easier to listen to in the past than a double CD is today.

This implies that he was definitely thinking about suite-like structure for the album. It's a small step from there to thinking of the discs as being in some sort of relationship with one another - say, the second one commenting on the first one (cf. for example the goofier version of "Outtasite (Outta Mind)", or whichever one it's called, on disc two).

Or it could be, as McDonald suggests, that the second disc is just deliberately more insular, making fewer concessions (if that's the right word - those things on the first disc aren't concessions, they're just plain wonderful pop songs, albeit in some non-pop genres) to pop? If so that seems like a poor choice for a double album, for most listeners. It's just harder to appreciate the second disc as much if you're not drawn to it as frequently, in my opinion. And this from me, who likes to listen to ten-minute sax and drums skronk duets.

I know I've discussed this before. Maybe this time I'll work on it a little more and come up with a Theory.

11:27 PM
I'm not sure how meaningful they are, but here are some more musings related to my nemesis, house music:

I've hit upon the idea that maybe something that made that Underworld mix of Massive Attack's "Risingson" (see below for more gory details) more enjoyable for me was how ignorable the omnipresent standard 4/4 house thump was. On the Underworld track it seems sort of obscured, partially by the breathlike (in that they have rhythms similar to long, slow breaths - not in that they are wispy or airy, etc.) synth chords flowing up and down at the base of the song's sonic stage. And also, partially by the higher-level details, various synth noodlings and spacy noises and such.

I got this idea not directly from the Underworld track but from an Autechre track off of LP5 (around track 5 or so, can't remember). Now, I don't find myself hoping to be able to ignore the core beats in Autechre tracks - they're altogether different kinds of beats from the kind of house beats I despise, and I rather enjoy them. In this particular Autechre track there was a very noticeable and very regular beat. But I found myself sort of oblivious to its presence, and focusing very intently on everything else in the track. This isn't to say that the beat had nothing to do with my enjoyment of the track; on the contrary, it probably structured it very extensively (recall a few months back when I talked about how difficult it seemed to sing/play some melodies out of the original rhythm, like "'Round Midnight"). But it didn't override my experience of the other parts of the track. I hate to use phrases like this, but it felt as if it were more part of an integrated whole.

Compare to what little trance I've heard, where I can't find much else to focus on but the beat (in part because of its prominence, in part because of the lack of anything else interesting). This is more extreme than most (e.g.) house mixes, but it makes the point clearer: I like the music better when it all goes together somehow, than when it sounds like someone wanted a beat plus other stuff (you know, whatever was lying around).

Examples welcome of music that I do in fact like which sounds like the kind of thing (the bad one) I'm describing above - it would help me to figure out if I'm actually valuing some other quality that I'm not thinking of at the moment. This is not to say I don't like my chaos, or my illogical juxtapositions. Hmmm.

11:23 PM
A plus to the arrangements on Of Montreal's "songles" album: xylophone (or is it marimba?). I like xylophones.

10:59 PM
Josh at Fanatic was kind enough to send me a gratis copy of Of Montreal's new "songles" disc (a compilation of off-album tracks and assorted stuff), and I have been unkind enough to sit on the disc for a few weeks. Not out of any malice toward Josh (free stuff rocks) or Of Montreal - actually, just the opposite. Since I'd had a bad (not pleasant, at least) experience with the first Of Montreal I heard, I thought I'd do my usual thing and just wait until I felt the time was right to listen again.

So tonight was the night. And I am proud to say that I came out of the experience with something good, despite really being painfully tempted to stop listening near the beginning of the album. Why? Not sure... but if it helps any, despite this being nominally an Elephant 6 release (remember, the Of Montreal guys don't put much stock in their "membership"), it sounds more to me like Guided By Voices' Alien Lanes than any of the other Elephant 6 stuff I've heard (that being the Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Elf Power). Therein lies the problem - I really can't stand Guided by Voices. Not that I've tried very hard to stand them - I think I've pulled out Alien Lanes 2 or 3 times in the past 5 years. They always seem to cross a line, for me, from being lo-fi as a matter of fact ("well... we're poor, we don't have enough money for fancy equipment... but this sounds just fine" - that sort of thing) to being perversely, needlessly lo-fi, lo-fi as an aesthetic category in and of itself. But anyway. This entry isn't about Guided By Voices - really, it isn't.

So I am slightly put off by Of Montreal because they seem to me to have more affinities with GBV than any Elephant 6 bands, and accordingly, with any sort of Beatlesque or Beach-Boy-esque pop (and I know, GBV have been linked to the Beatles too, but I don't buy it). Their pop elements seem to be just sort of accidental - as in, they could have just as easily been a low-fi punk band or whatever, but they felt like writing pop songs. (On the flip side, someone like OTC sound to me like they felt writing pop songs plus mind-expanding noisescapes, and then used lo-fidelity toward that end.)

That said, the songs I liked best were the ones where I was most taken in by the songs, and thus where I paid the least attention to the production. (It could also be that these songs were less lo-fi - I'll have to investigate futher.) My favorite being "Scenes from my Funeral," where the narrator (and it does have a narrative of sorts) describes, well, scenes from his funeral. I think the end is a bit of a cop-out (corpse jumps up, starts dancing), but how are you supposed to end a song about your own funeral?

Reviews elsewhere make much of the conceptual unity and scope of the group's albums proper, and I still think that would be what would really do it for me. At least, barring my becoming a major fan of pop songs overflowing with sometimes-naive, sometimes-wise childlike wonderment.

One TP Uschanov, who I've been corresponding with recently, called me a "fan" of Pet Sounds, noting when I corrected him that a "fan" is someone enthusiastic about something or other, and that I certainly pursued my experiences with Pet Sounds with some enthusiasm. If that's so then I suppose the same can be said for me and Of Montreal; this is only a preliminary report, and I plan to listen again (as in, repeatedly, not as in, at least one more time) to see what comes of the whole thing.

That's better than can be said for the CD with scary-looking lyrics from Lunar Chateau that I recently received, also gratis, as part of (apparently, from the talk on rec.music.progressive) a widespread campaign to spam r.m.p. readers and unload unsold albums in the hopes of whetting interest in the forthcoming album. I'm, uh, thinking of listening to it someday if I don't have any other CDs I want to listen to more (which should be pretty soon, right?).

9:51 AM
As has been pointed out to me, Placebo played with David Bowie - not just live, but on a limited-edition release of "Without You I'm Nothing." So there's your Placebo -> Bill Bruford link (just follow as for Veruca Salt).

4:23 PM
From pearls comes a link to a promising-looking site, Sample This - dedicated to sample-based music and, more generally, issues surrounding it (such as the legality of sampling, or the free music debate).

Though apparently many pitas pages contain some odd HTML, as Sample This is yet another that I can't view with my browser. Oh well.

4:00 PM
Perfect Sound Forever interview with Richard Meltzer. Philosophy content!

Also at PSF, A Reasonable Guide to Rock Critics - can you spot our buddies Greil, Lester, and Simon? Sure you can.

And again at PSF: Steve Reich talks about early tape pieces. And mentions being influenced by William Carlos Williams!

3:47 PM
Interview with John Fraim, author of Spirit Catcher: The Life and Art of John Coltrane.

More interesting for his comments on the book, than for the standard answers he gives to the uninspired interview questions.

3:43 PM
Cleansing the Mirror: on understanding Coltrane's legacy

12:40 PM
"On a side note: They had to quit selling ICP tickets online because of so much confusion by people thinking they were indeed buying tickets to see the Insane Clown Posse."

- quote from a zorn-list poster about the cancelled Instant Composers Pool Orchestra show at the new LA Knitting Factory location

2:06 AM
An article on Harry Smitth's Anthology of American Folk Music.

1:54 AM
American Folklife

I find it oh so incredibly helpful how every page on the LOC's web server is awash with bureaucratic information about the particular sponsoring agencies, mission statements, fair use restrictions, and statements about what is and isn't available (before actually letting you at the content).

1:43 AM
A collection of William Gottlieb's photos (and some related articles) of the "golden age" of jazz, part of the Library of Congress' "American Memory" project (no, not an American counterpart to Mass-Observation, but I'm still looking).

1:22 AM
Frith talks some in chapter 3 about Mass-Observation, a research organization founded in the 1930s with the goal of recording British daily life. And what do you know, it's got a website and since 1980 has been collecting new information. I think this is a great idea and hope to find an American counterpart.

8:30 PM
Russian Independent Music

Not sure if it's a translation problem, or the page author's personal preference, or if Russian indie music is just funny all the time. Surely there are lovelorn Russian indie kids?

7:28 PM
Hmmm, how about that - Tim just linked to The Manual the other day, only a different version than I did. So no, I wasn't remiss in attributing my link source, but you should visit sink anyway.

7:09 PM
There are 3 (yes that's three) AC/DC covers on Mark Kozelek's "first" solo album (the last Red House Painters album being an arguably better candidate for the first real solo album from him). That's almost half the album.

2:57 AM
For your reading pleasure, the almost-complete text of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty's The Manual - guide by the KLF masterminds on how to get a number one single. (This electronic copy, of dubious legality - note the ironically prominent copyright notices - doesn't include the introduction or Drummond's afterword included in currently-published editions.)

8:46 PM
Pet Sounds: Don't Believe the Hype? [from pearl]

8:38 PM
Warning, butterfly collecting ahead.

At In Review Sterling says the following of the claim in this Feed essay that the Elephant 6 bands are 90s representatives of progressive rock: "I'm wanting to disagree, but I can't think why I would."

It's simple: the only things most E6 bands have in common with canonical prog (early King Crimson, Yes, Genesis, ELP) is that they've put out albums of music that are supposed to be thematically unified somehow, like Elf Power's A Dream in Sound or OTC's Dusk at Cubist Castle. But it's more complicated than that: for one thing, there are few "concept albums" (because that's what we're talking about here) in canonical prog. Rather, people equate the two because of some occasional concept albums by the canonical bands, and then stuff like Pink Floyd's The Wall (Pink Floyd barely ever being prog to begin with, and most people picking Wish You Were Here as the best example of their prog output) or Rush's 2112 (which contained a sidelong suite about a futuristic, fascistic society - or something or other - set free by the power of music, and which was Ayn Rand -influenced and thus earned Rush and prog in general, by sloppy generalization, the permanent association with one of the worst, most popular "philosophies" of our century) - concept albums by bands that weren't ever all that prog, and became less so.

The reason this association took place is that early canonical prog was pursuing various non-rock things like incorporation of outside idioms (jazz, but mostly romantic-period classical), greater structural complexity (in the classical music sense of the word, usually), and a "serious" rock music not about getting the girl, etc. (which has let one writer, and I forget who, to note - and I misquote, at that - "prog music was skilled musicians getting tired of three-minute songs about love and instead writing twenty-minute songs about nothing in particular"). At a quick glance, technical ability, longer songs, and a few overarching metaphors and references to wizards or futuristic societies are a quick stand-in for these musical changes - thus, "concept album" as prog.

Compare now to the E6 bands. Some, like the Apples in Stereo, really have little to do with even the concept album end of things (a bit on Her Wallpaper Reverie maybe, but keep reading). Some, like Elf Power, seem to have a larger-than-normal stock of recurring themes, lyrical references, some kind of developed iconography - but they still tend to have short psychedelic rock-pop songs that don't attempt any of the idiomatic or structural changes that prog did. Olivia Tremor Control have the backing story, the characters, the references (cf. the recurring "California demise"), and, arguably, are attempting to do something with the form and idiom of the music, using the studio to achieve a high level of internal musical reference (cf. the Black Foliage liner notes where they talk about recording the title "animation", then chopping it up and distorting it and then using it elsewhere, in other songs, or just between songs, etc.), and to blend their base material (psychedelic Beatlesque/Beach Boy esque pop songs) with something else (spacy musique concrete?).

So have we finally found prog? Well, yes and no. It's a funny word. Something like Black Foliage might count as "prog" in the sense that it attempts something of the "progression" (huge can of worms here) that the original prog did. However, soon after prog was named, the name broke: now I am not inclined to use it to describe what OTC do because it's not specific enough. The original prog bands drew specifically on classical and jazz, and notably, were usually extremely technically proficient (again in the classical/jazz sense - standards of proficiency differ). Neither of these seems to be true of OTC - so while they might be "progressive" they aren't "prog", because the term now has only a historical usage.

Anyway - I think that in an important sense, the Feed author was wrong. One can debate the progness of various new music acts based on other criteria (for instance, a lot of the same kind of earnest white young adults listen to the E6 bands, as listened to prog, etc.), but I think that misses the point. The musical elements were the primary thing separating the initial prog bands from their contemporaries.

i'm never gonna see you again... you're gone for good