Saturday, July 30, 2005

Been switching over from NPR more than usual lately, settling on 93.9 THE EDGE or something, which features a really solid mix of hair and heavy metal, proto metal and other classics of the 70s-00s, and found myself completely engulfed in Guns 'n' Roses' "Patience" on the ride home the other night. Be it total bullshit affectation or honest heart on sleeve sap, it works. I simply cannot deny that for a brief period at the end of the 80s, the guy I will now always know as Axl Bloat once had a clue. He also had a guitarist that knew how to play a smoking and/or sweet lead. In light of the rest of Axl's "career," it's hard to take "Patience" seriously on the whole, but if you just ease that bucket seat back a few inches, roll down the window and let the summer breeze rush over, it's a song that's bound to leave its mark. Big Star, Rolling Stones, Zeppelin (in country mode), Cat Stevens (pre muslim) all come to mind and sound better, but at least Axl and the boys once tried to come close.

God willing, I'm going to attend this:

Current 93 & special guests live in San Francisco: 4 & 5 November, 2005

BLACK SHIPS EAT THE SKY: Current 93 will be playing two shows at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall on Friday 4 and Saturday 5 November. Also appearing over this weekend, we are delighted and honoured to announce, will be OM, BABY DEE and SIMON FINN on Friday 4, and OM, SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE, PANTALEIMON and MAJA ELLIOT on Saturday 5. Tickets are $30 and go on sale on Sunday 17 July. They are available online from www.virtuous.com and www.tickets.com.

Friday 4 November

SIMON FINN
BABY DEE
OM
CURRENT 93

Saturday 5 November

MAJA ELLIOTT
SIX ORGANS OF ADMITTANCE
PANTALEIMON
OM
CURRENT 93

Om is basically the best live band on the planet currently...hoozah!

Monday, July 11, 2005

I actually want to like COLDPLAY. If these jokers are in fact this generation's BEATLES, I feel a certain cultural obligation to get down off my high horse, leave bias at the door, and dig on the pop bliss goodness. The cloyingly sentimental piano pop bliss goodness at that. No luck so far. Guess I'll just have to make do with the Radar Brothers until that blessed day.

PLAYLIST #1 (these are songs, mmmkay?):

1. Black Sabbath "Symptom of the Universe"
2. Black Sabbath "Lady Evil"
3. Salamander "Hail"
4. Eisley "Marvelous Things"
5. Carpathian Forest "Fever, Flames and Hell"
6. Deerhoof "Sound the Alarm"
7. Oneida "High Life"
8. Current 93 "A Gothic Love Song"
9. Sleater-Kinney "The Fox"
10. Marissa Nadler "My Little Lark"
11. KaS Product "Tina Town"
12. The Clear Spots "Hawk Wallace Pine"
13. Khanate "Captured"

Friday, July 08, 2005

Hot deals on EBAY...

From My favorite EBAY seller.

Some random item descriptions:

RED FREE SIZE MORGAN ALUMINIUM CHAINMAIL TOP

"IN GOOD ORDER

RED CHAINMAIL

MADE BY MORGAN

COULD DO WITH RESTRAPPING AT BACK 5 MINUTE JOB"

SHINEY BLACK BOOTS SIZE 4 BLACK PATENT SEXY/KINKY/

"USED JUST A FEW TIMES

STILL REALLY LIKE NEW

MADE BY BARRETS

SIZE 4

SEXY"

RUGBY PROTECTIVE HEAD GEAR MADE BY VULKAN SIZE M

"NEW HEAD GEAR FOR PLAYING RUGBY IN

MADE BY VULKAN

BLACK"

Note the second picture.

VIDEO EYES WIDE SHUT CRUISE,,KIDMAN..KUBRICK

"GOOD FILM

PLENTY OF ACTION

RATED 18"
Sad times all around. To all in London and the UK, our thoughts are with you.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

Well, WAR OF THE WORLDS was pretty good I thought, and it basically laid waste to my notion that big studio films are unwilling to subtly point fingers at the powers that be. But it was still a Spielberg flick, so the characters were a tad overly weepy and *sniff* emotionally fragile. Otherwise, awesome pandemoniac science fiction most of the way. I'd call it sci-fi, but there is actually a cult of people who take great offense when you call thematic science fiction scifi. What twats.

On to more pressing concerns; here is a hilariously informative one question interview with the great Sufjan Stevens, nicked from Foxy Digitalis. It's actually more like a three pronged interrogative paragraph, yet it still gives me a new appreciation for the man, THE MYTH that is Sufjan:

Q: Noise and drone often make cameos in your recordings. You have released what can only be described (at least by myself) as an unabashedly verbose experimental electronic record (Enjoy Your Rabbit). You have dabbled in the avant-improv. And yet you are now a folk sweetheart on the verge of international high-mall culture crossover appeal. So Sufjan Stevens, answer me this...are you about to completely sell-out to the quaintity (state of being charmingly old-fashioned and inoffensive) of Simon and Garfunkel nicetude, or do you still court a love of the subterranean squalor of things other and foreign to year-end lists and teen tele-drama? And how do you balance these loves/styles/sensibilities and get them to sit and eat a meal at the same table? Do you have any intentions of throwing such dinner parties again?

A. I think mall-culture and television and Simon & Garfunkel are environments for a special kind of noise. Sure, there is organized commerce and bad music at the mall, but consider the constant din of shuffling shoes and gossip, conversation, children screaming, dads groaning, sneaker soles squealing on varnished floors. It's a noisy place. Television is noisy as well, especially channel surfing, static, bad reception, mixed with the noise of the living room, music videos. It's a mash-up, in different keys, using different tones. Many of the performances on old Simon & Garfunkel records have intonation problems. This is widely known. For popular folk music, it suffers greatly from being out of tune. I think Art Garfunkel's performance on Bridge Over Troubled Waters is transcendent partly because it fumbles desperately for the pitch. Listen carefully here, I'm not kidding. My point: even these environments of popular culture celebrate their own kind of disorder; I think John Cage would have made field recordings in the mall.

In terms of my own writing, I don't think it's entirely necessary to qualify distinctions between what is noisy and what sounds nice. Sometimes the best way to understand noise is to concentrate on the organization of noise through conventional musical systems. The 12-tone scale is really just one prevailing method for organizing dissonance, in terms of sine and cosine, the laws of physics. Because all sound is particle waves, it almost always can be reduced and/or explained through similar systems, using the same laws of physics. In this respect, I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between what is commonly termed "cacophony" and what is often maligned as Western "equal temperament." Maybe you could explain it in terms of moderation or variation. Indian ragas use different tones in a different scale, sometimes pentatonic or hexatonic, depending on the method, but they are no more or less noisy. In fact, ragas are often meditative. Atonal music, while sounding flustered and muddy to our ears, is still reasonably tame, in that it can easily be charted on staff paper. But why is feedback and computer static considered noisy when even its tones and rhythms can fall under a particular chart, if not on Western notation, then at least using the visual representation of sound waves? To me, all sound, whether tonal or noisy, is demystified by its conventional and observable nature. Light, on the other hand, is the enigma to be reckoned with. Is it a particle or a wave?

Ok, so maybe the crux of the issue lies not in my novice assessment of music theory, but in my decision to produce music that is easily approachable, listen-able, and immediately satisfying. I'll be the first to admit I've fallen under this category, of gorgeous, gratifying, symphonic songwriting. It's a crutch. So why haven't I invested suitable time and space for noise and improvisation? The truth is, I have. For every ten songwriting sessions I coordinate (with guitars tuned, microphones carefully angled, ear tuned to middle C, instruments warmed and resting), I often instigate a freak-out session as well, in which drum heads are thrown about, amps are buzzing, guitar strings are bent and de-tuned, in which curtain rods and swivel chairs and cloth napkins are solicited for instrumentation, in which the singing is unevenly pitched, in which agitated monkey yelps and hand claps on pants and finger snaps and uncertain whistling takes center stage. Much of this is done in private, behind closed doors, with close friends, in isolation, sometimes on tape, sometimes just for fun. I have hours of this noise transferred to my computer. One session has me klutzing with the abominable trumpet, my friend Joe hammering drumsticks on the battered banjo, my other friend Matt making chicken noises with his pick-ups. It's wonderful and terrible. In one session, at a rehearsal space on Ludlow street, we were kicked out for playing too loud, for too long, intoxicated, smoking cigarettes, breaking things, beating our heads, all the clang and clatter of youth ushering insurmountable meaning to our musical mess. We had a brief confrontation with Simone, the owner: "Last time you come here," he waved a finger at us. "Get out now." If you really want to hear the result, send a self-addressed stamped envelope. I can assure you, you will be disappointed. But it stands as secret proof, however detrimental, to the fact that I consistently invest serious time and energy in the superstitions of disorder, in improvisation, in noise, in not knowing what note to play next, in savoring the unexpected, in yielding to the unnatural sounds of an unnatural instrument: the window pane, the light shade, the air conditioner, the enamel of my teeth. I have great respect and awe for the element of surprise. I love noise. I just don't feel the need to share this love with the public. It's my own private love, the love of doorbells and jackhammers and bus engines and plastic bags caught in trees. It's not X-rated, it's not unlawful, but for now, for my own particular reasons, I'd like to keep this love under covers.