Another hot shit jazz album. So desperate.
What do I know about jazz? You've got your joggling bass, your sprightly piano, your shuffly brusshed drums and a shitload of nuanced, smooth sax solos. There's nothing entirely adventurous structurally here, you've got your main riff, a bunch of soloing, some time changes, but nothing too batshit. Just a solid jazz album. Cool. 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like jazz?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
#455 Sonic Youth - Sister
Lists!
If I told you I wasn't that big on Daydream Nation* would you lose all faith in me? Sonic Youth has always played with texture and noise, has always endulged in chords without names, configurations of strings that ought not to be played together. If you don't play guitar, try this some time: hold down four strings in some random configuration and strum them; fully half the time you'll think "that sounds like something out of a Sonic Youth song". Daydream Nation was their biggest one, the moment when they seemed to go from art punk to Art punk, aspiring to Velvet Undergound heights, when the song lengths stretched, when every screech seemed Loveless-perfectly placed. There were screeches and squalls and screams, but they seemed designed to impress-via-offending rather than truly offend.
I never did hear this, nor EVOL, their pre-daydream output. The energy is different here, more sincerely bent, the noise intended to actually be confrontational, while Daydream Nation seems comparatively Kid-A-icy. There's the sound of an actual band here, sometimes clumsy and immediate. The highlight is certainly Pacific Coast Highway, with its noise-drenched, Kim-scrawled squalls bookending a floating piece of harmonics.
I can't quite get into Sonic Youth. They are one of the ultimate muso bands, seemingly existing so that guitar players can admire how unusual their approach is, without providing all that much in terms of actual visceral enjoyment. My insane review of Gas notwithstanding, I don't necessarily go in for that kind of just-conceptual nonsense. This is a good crunchy, noisy album, admirable to be sure, but I'm left with little reason to actually listen to it 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like dissonant confrontational underground rock. You want a lesson on how noise found its way into modern rock
*Edit: later today I revisited Daydream Nation and I totally appreciate it more than I ever have. What the fuck do I know anyway?
If I told you I wasn't that big on Daydream Nation* would you lose all faith in me? Sonic Youth has always played with texture and noise, has always endulged in chords without names, configurations of strings that ought not to be played together. If you don't play guitar, try this some time: hold down four strings in some random configuration and strum them; fully half the time you'll think "that sounds like something out of a Sonic Youth song". Daydream Nation was their biggest one, the moment when they seemed to go from art punk to Art punk, aspiring to Velvet Undergound heights, when the song lengths stretched, when every screech seemed Loveless-perfectly placed. There were screeches and squalls and screams, but they seemed designed to impress-via-offending rather than truly offend.
I never did hear this, nor EVOL, their pre-daydream output. The energy is different here, more sincerely bent, the noise intended to actually be confrontational, while Daydream Nation seems comparatively Kid-A-icy. There's the sound of an actual band here, sometimes clumsy and immediate. The highlight is certainly Pacific Coast Highway, with its noise-drenched, Kim-scrawled squalls bookending a floating piece of harmonics.
I can't quite get into Sonic Youth. They are one of the ultimate muso bands, seemingly existing so that guitar players can admire how unusual their approach is, without providing all that much in terms of actual visceral enjoyment. My insane review of Gas notwithstanding, I don't necessarily go in for that kind of just-conceptual nonsense. This is a good crunchy, noisy album, admirable to be sure, but I'm left with little reason to actually listen to it 3.5/5
You might like this if: you like dissonant confrontational underground rock. You want a lesson on how noise found its way into modern rock
*Edit: later today I revisited Daydream Nation and I totally appreciate it more than I ever have. What the fuck do I know anyway?
#454 Spor - Pacifico EP
Still on the hunt for more Feed Me's Big Adventure level stuff, thought I'd try some of his earlier stuff under the Spor monicker.
This is just 5 mixes of the same song, which is more Bassnectar than Feed Me, full of the same kind of groaning bass and dropping synth lines, but with a pretty sheen, soaked in autotuned voice and a ringing synth vibes bridge. A trancy-dancy 4/4 wanders in and out, and then gets bent into slow dubby stutterpulses. It doesn't really quite build, and if you don't listen closely you might be convinced that it doesn't change, but in that sense its a victim of its own smoothness, as the surging lines are bent into sweeping transitions, beats sneak in, and are mutated back into warpy beastly armies, touching travelling salesmanlike across most of the styles that influence the later Feed Me work.
That said, its a little too smooth, lacking that riffy energy of the Big Adventure. Also, its perhaps a bad sign that the instrumental version is my favorite of the lot; that vocal delivery just doesn't move me, its vague bittersweet existentialism reading like a dubstep Good Riddance. That leaves, in order of decreasing goodness
#2 Chasing Shadows Remix: which applies ghostly areodynamism and extra layers of buzzsaw repetition that provide a bit more menace
#3 Original Mix: (see above)
#4 Accousti Version: which even more overtly calls out the sappy indie-pop-moper angle, but is kind of a fun trick
#5 Kito and Reija Remix: which adds vocal lines that are even more distractingly cloying than the original's
Still doesn't scratch the itch, not my favorite track of Gooch's 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like the softer Bassnectar tracks, wish LCD soundsystem sounded more watery and dubsteppy, or just want a super smooth piece of (slighty) genre bending techno. In the latter case, stick with the instrumental version.
This is just 5 mixes of the same song, which is more Bassnectar than Feed Me, full of the same kind of groaning bass and dropping synth lines, but with a pretty sheen, soaked in autotuned voice and a ringing synth vibes bridge. A trancy-dancy 4/4 wanders in and out, and then gets bent into slow dubby stutterpulses. It doesn't really quite build, and if you don't listen closely you might be convinced that it doesn't change, but in that sense its a victim of its own smoothness, as the surging lines are bent into sweeping transitions, beats sneak in, and are mutated back into warpy beastly armies, touching travelling salesmanlike across most of the styles that influence the later Feed Me work.
That said, its a little too smooth, lacking that riffy energy of the Big Adventure. Also, its perhaps a bad sign that the instrumental version is my favorite of the lot; that vocal delivery just doesn't move me, its vague bittersweet existentialism reading like a dubstep Good Riddance. That leaves, in order of decreasing goodness
#2 Chasing Shadows Remix: which applies ghostly areodynamism and extra layers of buzzsaw repetition that provide a bit more menace
#3 Original Mix: (see above)
#4 Accousti Version: which even more overtly calls out the sappy indie-pop-moper angle, but is kind of a fun trick
#5 Kito and Reija Remix: which adds vocal lines that are even more distractingly cloying than the original's
Still doesn't scratch the itch, not my favorite track of Gooch's 2.5/5
You might like this if: you like the softer Bassnectar tracks, wish LCD soundsystem sounded more watery and dubsteppy, or just want a super smooth piece of (slighty) genre bending techno. In the latter case, stick with the instrumental version.
#453 Dave Brubeck - Time Out
I'm getting desperate, even hitting the jazz, which I have no ability to review.
The rap on this one is its experimentations in time signature, especially the classic Take Five. The thing that got me was how sprightly it is, there's nothing ponderous or difficult about it, no bracing silences, to spastic bursts, to noise or aggressive assertion of its avantness. It's downright listenable, perfectly cool, agile without being smooth. Effortless. Let's leave it at that 4/5
You might like this if: shit I don't know. You like jazz? You want something inventive without all the effort that inventive jazz implies.
The rap on this one is its experimentations in time signature, especially the classic Take Five. The thing that got me was how sprightly it is, there's nothing ponderous or difficult about it, no bracing silences, to spastic bursts, to noise or aggressive assertion of its avantness. It's downright listenable, perfectly cool, agile without being smooth. Effortless. Let's leave it at that 4/5
You might like this if: shit I don't know. You like jazz? You want something inventive without all the effort that inventive jazz implies.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
#452 Mudhoney - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge
Again, this was on some list. I'm legitimately getting desperate for places to find new stuff. I mean, there's a million albums I haven't heard, but which ones? The obvious choices are running thin.
If you only galnced the most mainstream end of the grunge story you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nirvana was the hardest thing to come out of the whole movement, the only real rockers. Pearl Jam muddled in core classic rock, Stone Temple Pilots were a touch nasty for an album and then weirded up while mellowing out, and various followers stuck to the same blueprint. Only Nirvana, among the really heavy popular hitters, seemed to have legitimate rage, legitimate unhinged energy.
Of course, in the earlier and/or undergroundier days there were all manner of scuzzbuckets, from Dinosaur Jr. to The Jesus Lizard. And these guys, apparently, who I never really heard.
I've already set it up, some scummy rock, all sneering vocals, dischordant post-velvets chords, and even some sickly organss, sounding a bit like Black Sabbath and Iron Butterfly had a baby and this was his snotty shit of a cousin. I mean that in the best possible way.
It works best when it kicks off the mud and engages in some actual angular, proto-Dismemberment Plan repetitive punk, as on Something so Clear, or just outright garagey thrash, as on Fuzzgun '91. But then there's the 6 minute Broken Hands that starts off by quoting a Neil Young song's opening riffs and then proceeds to ape his 6 minute song structures, without any of the pathos or riffage. Everything else falls roughly in between.
What ever happened to Mudhoney? The signed to Sub Pop, started touring with Sonic Youth, put this album out, by all accounts were on trajectory to indie rock greatness. And then 2 months later, Nevermind came out and shaped the face of grunge's path to the mainstream. There's some similarities between the albums, a similar dissonance and seething disinterest, but this is comparatively thin, too unwilling to please, too restrained in its disgust to grab the world by the face. Guess they'll have to settle for indie cred.
An interesting piece of history, some clever riffage, but, to my ear, see above:simultaneously not tuneful enough and not arty enough, outshined by bands that came after and learned from their blueprint 3/5
You might like this if: if you haven't heard this by now you might have missed your window to love it, but you still might like it: it's dissonant and hooky, impassioned and dispassionate, a classic slice of sludgy, punky grunge
If you only galnced the most mainstream end of the grunge story you'd be forgiven for thinking that Nirvana was the hardest thing to come out of the whole movement, the only real rockers. Pearl Jam muddled in core classic rock, Stone Temple Pilots were a touch nasty for an album and then weirded up while mellowing out, and various followers stuck to the same blueprint. Only Nirvana, among the really heavy popular hitters, seemed to have legitimate rage, legitimate unhinged energy.
Of course, in the earlier and/or undergroundier days there were all manner of scuzzbuckets, from Dinosaur Jr. to The Jesus Lizard. And these guys, apparently, who I never really heard.
I've already set it up, some scummy rock, all sneering vocals, dischordant post-velvets chords, and even some sickly organss, sounding a bit like Black Sabbath and Iron Butterfly had a baby and this was his snotty shit of a cousin. I mean that in the best possible way.
It works best when it kicks off the mud and engages in some actual angular, proto-Dismemberment Plan repetitive punk, as on Something so Clear, or just outright garagey thrash, as on Fuzzgun '91. But then there's the 6 minute Broken Hands that starts off by quoting a Neil Young song's opening riffs and then proceeds to ape his 6 minute song structures, without any of the pathos or riffage. Everything else falls roughly in between.
What ever happened to Mudhoney? The signed to Sub Pop, started touring with Sonic Youth, put this album out, by all accounts were on trajectory to indie rock greatness. And then 2 months later, Nevermind came out and shaped the face of grunge's path to the mainstream. There's some similarities between the albums, a similar dissonance and seething disinterest, but this is comparatively thin, too unwilling to please, too restrained in its disgust to grab the world by the face. Guess they'll have to settle for indie cred.
An interesting piece of history, some clever riffage, but, to my ear, see above:simultaneously not tuneful enough and not arty enough, outshined by bands that came after and learned from their blueprint 3/5
You might like this if: if you haven't heard this by now you might have missed your window to love it, but you still might like it: it's dissonant and hooky, impassioned and dispassionate, a classic slice of sludgy, punky grunge
#451 Gas - Pop
This might have been on some top albums of the aughts list?
Wolfgang Voight makes some experimental music, and this is no exception. 7 tracks, averaging nearly 10 minutes each, highly repetitive. Not just repetitive unto themselves, but across the whole album. Think Eno at his most ambient, or The Disintegration Loops, with less disintegration.
I don't think I could have reviewed this album, or even appreciated it, without a conversation I had a few months ago with John, a friend who's been studying music for years and years. I don't remember the details, but he introduced me to a musical composition concept whereby one starts with a melodic line and then enacts a series of transformations on it, reversing it, nudging it this way or that, according to some pretty specific rules. My first reaction was to interrogate whether this produced particularly compelling music to listen to: John seemed to dodge the issue a bit, redirecting to its conceptual value. I pressed. Was it more likely to lead you to more compelling music than more traditional methods? John seemed unwilling to commit to that level of endorsement. What's the point then, if it doesn't make better music?
Eventually, though, I did an end-around past that entire angle and came to see the approach's value, even if that value wasn't in its ability to create enjoyable music. What I eventually decided was this: when you hear music, it isn't necessarily about the experience of the hearing, not necessarily. You can express ideas through music, and what you mean to create may not the experience of hearing the notes themselves, but the experience of understanding the ideas behind the notes as they emerge and settle in your mind. Restrictions in structure bolster music's ability to bear super-sonic conceptual payloads, much as some poetry is aided by the imposition of structure. A long boring film may be a way of saying something about boredom, even as it fails to be a film.
This is all very possibly pseudointellectual hokum, or maybe the expression of larger ideas in the guise of a music review.. meta-hokum! And its about to get worse. How can you describe an object that does not exist? You can describe it, you can draw it, you can make a 3d animation of it, you can simulate its qualities in dance, and, yep, you can make music of it. Not about it, but of it, music that represents a thing.
This album, which I found underwhelming musically, was nonetheless compelling in its ability to create, fully formed in my mind, a notion of a slowly rotating crystal octahedron, as wide as t is deep, taller than it is wide, turning in a cave, spilling forth with light and tendrils of light. This stems, perhaps, from my notion of Acid Casual's signature synth surge as the turning of a lighthouse over the coast, repetitive sound as circular motion, sine waves as sine waves.
The crystal is realized through music, and is rendered in a way more real than if we could see it, as it plays out in dreamlike overload. It changes cyclically like the nights and days, and slowly over the course of the album like the seasons, the repetition again and again cementing its contours, much like frames make up comic motion, much like repeating events become habit, much like jokes become catchphrases, much like seeing a loved on every day makes up your notion of who they are and what they are capable of and what they are not. The color of the light changes, the tone of the place changes, tension creeps in, a sense of dying or exploding or being reborn emerges, like the end of Akira or Princess Mononoke or Metropolis or any anime when the world is rent and we learn that all of man is wrong. This album is a thing. It is not the experience of listening to beat or melody, though those are fleetingly present, it is the experience of knowing that thing 4/5
You might like this if: you finished reading that whole review. It demonstrates the requisite ability to tolerate bullshit.
Wolfgang Voight makes some experimental music, and this is no exception. 7 tracks, averaging nearly 10 minutes each, highly repetitive. Not just repetitive unto themselves, but across the whole album. Think Eno at his most ambient, or The Disintegration Loops, with less disintegration.
I don't think I could have reviewed this album, or even appreciated it, without a conversation I had a few months ago with John, a friend who's been studying music for years and years. I don't remember the details, but he introduced me to a musical composition concept whereby one starts with a melodic line and then enacts a series of transformations on it, reversing it, nudging it this way or that, according to some pretty specific rules. My first reaction was to interrogate whether this produced particularly compelling music to listen to: John seemed to dodge the issue a bit, redirecting to its conceptual value. I pressed. Was it more likely to lead you to more compelling music than more traditional methods? John seemed unwilling to commit to that level of endorsement. What's the point then, if it doesn't make better music?
Eventually, though, I did an end-around past that entire angle and came to see the approach's value, even if that value wasn't in its ability to create enjoyable music. What I eventually decided was this: when you hear music, it isn't necessarily about the experience of the hearing, not necessarily. You can express ideas through music, and what you mean to create may not the experience of hearing the notes themselves, but the experience of understanding the ideas behind the notes as they emerge and settle in your mind. Restrictions in structure bolster music's ability to bear super-sonic conceptual payloads, much as some poetry is aided by the imposition of structure. A long boring film may be a way of saying something about boredom, even as it fails to be a film.
This is all very possibly pseudointellectual hokum, or maybe the expression of larger ideas in the guise of a music review.. meta-hokum! And its about to get worse. How can you describe an object that does not exist? You can describe it, you can draw it, you can make a 3d animation of it, you can simulate its qualities in dance, and, yep, you can make music of it. Not about it, but of it, music that represents a thing.
This album, which I found underwhelming musically, was nonetheless compelling in its ability to create, fully formed in my mind, a notion of a slowly rotating crystal octahedron, as wide as t is deep, taller than it is wide, turning in a cave, spilling forth with light and tendrils of light. This stems, perhaps, from my notion of Acid Casual's signature synth surge as the turning of a lighthouse over the coast, repetitive sound as circular motion, sine waves as sine waves.
The crystal is realized through music, and is rendered in a way more real than if we could see it, as it plays out in dreamlike overload. It changes cyclically like the nights and days, and slowly over the course of the album like the seasons, the repetition again and again cementing its contours, much like frames make up comic motion, much like repeating events become habit, much like jokes become catchphrases, much like seeing a loved on every day makes up your notion of who they are and what they are capable of and what they are not. The color of the light changes, the tone of the place changes, tension creeps in, a sense of dying or exploding or being reborn emerges, like the end of Akira or Princess Mononoke or Metropolis or any anime when the world is rent and we learn that all of man is wrong. This album is a thing. It is not the experience of listening to beat or melody, though those are fleetingly present, it is the experience of knowing that thing 4/5
You might like this if: you finished reading that whole review. It demonstrates the requisite ability to tolerate bullshit.
#450 Tom Ze - Tom Ze (1968)
More early tropicalia self-titled albums! (edit, though this is apparently also known as Grande Liquidaçao)
The simplest way to explain this album is that it's somewhere halfway between Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso; a watered down version of the former's eclecticism washed with a slightly rougher version of the latter's crooning. Everything here is in watercolor, with broad, lush strokes of horns and organs in place of complex runs, with choruses of vocals in places of Gil's pointed yelping, but with that rock and roll edge. The result isn't loungey, nor particularly garagey, eschewing two of the main tropicalia touchstones; its more readily in line with the slightly slower-tempoed British bands of the 60's, say The Small Faces, The Zombies, and Nirvana.
As an American listener in 2012, it makes it a bit less exciting, less exotic, but this isn't to undermine the album's considerable inventiveness. First of all, those bands are among the best of the decade, not a bad place to start. Secondly, this is only loosely comparable to those bands, and only closely akin to them by comparison to other tropicalia acts of the era. Taken on its own, this is still a skittering, sprawling mess of intruments, rhythms and vocals, soaring like a proto-polyphonic spree on tracks like Gloria and Sem Entrada E Sem Mais Nada.
I think because of this scatteredness, the album is harder to classify and harder to appreciate, dense colored noise read as brown. But listen to the interlocks of drums, vocals, organs, jangled guitars, and trumpets on Quero Sambar Meu Bem closely and watch the patterns swirl. A victim of my short-turnaround structure, worth your listen, though I think that its a bit mushy for me. Gil is still the winner of the three so far 3.5/5
You might like this if: you liked slightly sleepy, slightly psychadelic 60's rock and want a funky, inventive, Portuguese-language twist
The simplest way to explain this album is that it's somewhere halfway between Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso; a watered down version of the former's eclecticism washed with a slightly rougher version of the latter's crooning. Everything here is in watercolor, with broad, lush strokes of horns and organs in place of complex runs, with choruses of vocals in places of Gil's pointed yelping, but with that rock and roll edge. The result isn't loungey, nor particularly garagey, eschewing two of the main tropicalia touchstones; its more readily in line with the slightly slower-tempoed British bands of the 60's, say The Small Faces, The Zombies, and Nirvana.
As an American listener in 2012, it makes it a bit less exciting, less exotic, but this isn't to undermine the album's considerable inventiveness. First of all, those bands are among the best of the decade, not a bad place to start. Secondly, this is only loosely comparable to those bands, and only closely akin to them by comparison to other tropicalia acts of the era. Taken on its own, this is still a skittering, sprawling mess of intruments, rhythms and vocals, soaring like a proto-polyphonic spree on tracks like Gloria and Sem Entrada E Sem Mais Nada.
I think because of this scatteredness, the album is harder to classify and harder to appreciate, dense colored noise read as brown. But listen to the interlocks of drums, vocals, organs, jangled guitars, and trumpets on Quero Sambar Meu Bem closely and watch the patterns swirl. A victim of my short-turnaround structure, worth your listen, though I think that its a bit mushy for me. Gil is still the winner of the three so far 3.5/5
You might like this if: you liked slightly sleepy, slightly psychadelic 60's rock and want a funky, inventive, Portuguese-language twist
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)