Y: The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughn

This pleases my apocalyptic fantasizing. Planes fall from the sky, cars crash, governments collapse, the last images of man are slicked in the blood that spews from their orifices when a  mystery pandemic hits. The world's population falls by half and Yorick is the last man on earth.  He's suddenly left with the mystery of the plague, an existential crisis (why him?), hot girls wanting him, and hot girls wanting him dead. It doesn't really get much deeper than that, even if there are some attempts at gender role exploration. This is pulp territory: he's got a monkey sidekick and a ninja assassin follows him around.  The White House, Israeli soldiers, world class bio-geneticists,  militant feminist cults are all major players in the fast moving labyrinthine plot.  Scattered throughout the intrigue, there are enough spectacles of blood and flesh to satisfy the feverish mind of a sick or bed-ridden person.

The Price of Salt, Patricia Highsmith

I didn't like this much. The main character is bratty, hard to relate to, and uninteresting in her exploits. I felt myself not caring very much, and consequently stuck inside her weak mind for the duration of a book.  God damnit.

Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Letham

Fun and funny and full of near gibberish wordplay. The words bounce around like a pinball in a pinball machine. High energy, scattershot verbal smatterings over an ostensibly grim detective story.

The Woman Warrior, Maxine Hong Kingston

“A remarkable book. . . . As an account of growing up female and Chinese-American in California, in a laundry of course, it is an anti-nostalgic; it burns the fat right out of the mind. As a dream—of the ’female avenger’—it is dizzying, elemental, a poem turned into a sword.” —The New York Times

I identified with the anger, the bitterness, the confusion and amused distance that responded from the lies, half lies, truth of the author's mother.  More often though, I was dazzled by her vivid, earthy prose.

The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins

Like Y: The Last Man, these are great books to read through when bed-ridden. Plot based, they were devoured by me in a fever.

In My Life, Dick Cheney

Satisfying as an account of an insider who's been in 4 or 5 administrations. It provides quite a bit of insight into behind the scenes view of our political machinery. Funny as a memoir because it is so self-congratulatory. There are many, many anecdotes, pulled through out his lifetime, that end with Dick giving someone else a zinger. "Hah!", he must think, "I sure gave him a comeuppance!".  Successful in making me empathize with his heart issues, which previously I've only thought about in late night talk show comedian terms. Curiously unrevealing about his political leanings, while reaffirming his  self-righteousness and extreme conviction. Suspect as a document of history.  Overall, pretty fascinating.

the assassination of jesse james by the coward robert ford
7.8

the bad:
a little long in the tooth at two hours and forty minutes
constant transitional imagery of clouds moving across the sky (annoying and eventually useless)
constant and many times out-of-place repetition of musical themes

the good:
beautiful cinematography
very good performance by brad pitt
fucking amazing performance by casey affleck. subtle and nuanced. the last time i remember a performance having impressed me that much was daniel day lewis in there will be blood (though casey's just a notch below that). regardless, casey's acting is incredible and fascinating. i will definitely be looking forward to any film he's in that makes use of his talent.

Muxtapes I enjoy

http://gregb.muxtape.com
I have been listening to this the most. Favorites: the 3 great Anticon songs in a row (by Why?, Boom Bip & Doseone, and Subtle), the wonderfully exuberant Lonely, Dear track, and the hypnotic, breath-taking folk of Andrew Bird.

http://definiteform.muxtape.com
Electronic with a moody techno edge. Great picks with a perfectly edible mixtape length. Favorites: Detroit Escalator Company, Boards of Canada, September Collective.

http://robu.muxtape.com
Wildly eclectic. Favorites: The second untitled track, Minnie Riperton/Les Fleur (Flug re-edit).

http://dopeman.muxtape.com
Sample-based hip hop of the smoked out and heavy on atmospherics vibe. The whole muxtape is well sequenced and well chosen. Favorites: Handsome Boy Modeling School, Mos Def, Klaxons.

http://dirtyrobot.muxtape.com
Dance rock. Favorites: The Rapture.

James Brown - Night Train Dance

MUXTAPE~!
a new, easy way to share mp3s online in mixform, and sure to be taken down soon because of questionable legality. get it while it's hot: http://negativespace.muxtape.com/

mp3: Tortoise - Seneca

a personal classic. opens with a warm roar, like an orchestra warming up, except this orchestra is genre pioneering, avant everything band that dabbles in jazz, krautrock, and minimalism. usually that kind of mix inspires sort of a lazy reflection, but then these drums come in. a powerful, monster break, like nothing i've heard tortoise do before, pounds its way through a mind melting mix of simple melodies, handclaps, and sine waves.

DMX Interview in XXL Magazine
http://www.xxlmag.com/online/?p=20332

read as DMX displays astounding (and entertaining) ignorance/indifference towards everything from the presidential elections to new rappers.

excerpt:

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

djChairboy - Liberation Drops Vol. 1 - Find Your Spirit
http://djchairboy.selfsustainingsages.com

what it sounds like: really lush, really melodic, many layered electronic music. this is true of all the tracks, and often, there are female vocals and often, the female vocals are lyricless. all of this is operating a generally propulsive tempo. genres would be house and probably trance (not of the cheesy sort).

why it is good: overproduced, highly melodic music can often be cheesy and cloying. see most of trance, or any adult contemporary artist. djchairboy, however, has a great ear for production. the layers in these tracks often have distinctive purpose, making it so that the songs are alive with reverb and interweaving of elements, and not drowned in mush or hazy narcotic like.

listening to such lush music with so many beautiful layers the effect of the mix is often elation, rapture, or drawn-out bliss. it is difficult to describe because temporality is not commonly associated with bliss - but it is an extended bliss. it is a beautiful moment that is stretched out like a plateau, so in effect you are experiencing the same moment over and over. a temporary forever of elation. (production tricks lending to this effect that show up on several different songs are a 1) constant retriggering of samples and 2) rhythmic gating of longer sounds)

another interesting thing about the mix is the prominence of female voices. what it shows is enthrallment with the female, the feminine, and maybe the feminine is associated with beauty to djchairboy, so that in fact beauty is feminine.

also interesting are the inclusion of older tracks such as the ones by FSOL. of course they are beautiful and classic, but why they're interesting to me is that with this mix he is presenting a singular unified vision of music. it's not just a collection of the latest and greatest songs. this is his ideal of music, this is what he thinks good music should be: often complex, highly melodic, soulful and bliss reaching electronic music. luckily for me, that happens to be one of my definitions for good music too.

(full disclosure: i have known djchairboy for many years and one of our common interests has always been music)

mp3: Beirut - A Sunday Smile

it was hard for me to pick a single song from the album to represent beirut. i am not sure even if this does. nonetheless, it is a grand statement of epic trembling voices and swelling folk instrumentation. it is rare when i hear such unapologetic grandeur done uniquely in indie music.

it is an other worldly sound, and with my limited reference points, i am reminded of the brass sections of neutral milk hotel, the folk music collage of jeff mangum's (of nmh) orange twin field works, and the accordions and strings of the amelie soundtrack. looking at allmusic and wikipedia, i am not too far off.

mp3: Clark - Gaskarth/Cyrk Dedication (Tape)

this is a curious track on an EP that is marketed as a dancefloor-friendly release, because there's nothing danceable about it, even though it's the best track. it's all gentle chugging percussion, industrial wheezing here and there, and thin melodic figures. there are no hooks or anthems; nothing easy to catch your mind on to. there's no spectacle. it sort of goes somewhere, but it doesn't, really. it just kind of floats there in space.

a major part of what i find attractive about electronic music i find in this song. gaskarth evokes a druggy feeling of propulsion, like when you're in the car and you're looking through the window down at the road lines flying by, but because of the speed the lines aren't flying by but stationary and floating. quivering white stripes in asphalt. you're going somewhere and it sort of doesn't look like it. it's an illusion, but you're ok with it because it's beautiful.

Great passage from Simon Reynolds in Generation Ecstasy on the differences between techno and traditional western music:

Sampladelic dance music also confounds standard notions about creativity and authorship in pop music. Not only is the romantic figure of the creator displaced by the less glamorous curator (the DJ-turned-producer), but the lines between art and craft, inspiration and technique, are blurred. Once, it was possible to distinguish between music and its production, between the song and the recording tricks with which it’s embellished. But with dance tracks, the music is the production. Increasingly, the figure of the producer blurs with the engineer, traditionally regarded as a mere technician who facilitates the sonic ideas and aspirations of band and producer. In most dance music, though, it’s the timbre and penetration of a bass tone, the sensuous feel of a sample texture, the gait of a drum loop, that’s the real hook, not the sequence of notes that constitutes “the melody.”

The problems that rock critics have with dance music are reminiscent of the hostile incomprehension with which highbrow cineastes greet certain sorts of genre movie like science fiction and horror. They vainly search these movies for what they valorize: acting, sparkling dialogue, character development, a non-corny plot, and meaning (insight into the human condition, social resonance). Ironically, these are values that pertain more to literary or theatrical drama than to the cinematic per se.

But these elements of narrative and character are present in genre movies as a mere formality, a structural framework for the purely cinematic: the retinal intensities of uftraviolent action, special effects, and, in sci-fi movies, futuristic mise-en-scène and decor. Here, the true filmic poets are set designers like H. R. Giger (Alien) and effects engineers like Douglas Trumbull (2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters, Blade Runner). With their emphasis on the sheerly spectacular and sensational, science-fiction and horror flicks simply are his prose-poem evocations of cyberspace as a techno-sublime, not the hackneyed dialogue.

If techno can be thought of in this way — the track as a framework for the display of special effects and processing — what, then, constitutes the ‘sub- lime” in techno? The answer is sound in itself. “If I can't create a sound that I like, I find it very hard to create a song,” Kevin Saunderson told Music Technology magazine in 1988. “I get inspired by a good sound... it gives me a feeling for a rhythm or a melody. The sound’s the most important thing.” In most music, timbre and “chromatics” are the medium, the pigment as it were, through which the important thing — the melody, the emotional meaning — is expressed. in techno, melody is merely an Implement or ruse for the displaying of texture/timbre/sound matter. This is why most rave music shuns complicated melody lines in favor of rifts, vamps, and ostinatos (short motifs repeated persistently at the same pitch throughout the composition). In the ultraminimalist “tech-house” of the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction labels, simple riffs serve to twist and crinkle the sound fabric in order to best show off its properties; what you thrill to is the scintillating play of “light” as it creases and folds, crumples and kinks.

Basic Channel and Chain Reaction tracks have a curious quality: listening to them is sublime, but afterward it’s hard to retain anything but the faintest flavor of the experience. Bar the odd bass line, there’s nothing you can hum to yourself. This is because the tracks are all percussion and timbre, the two elements of music that are hardest to remember. Gracyk points out that our memory of chromatics (timbre/texture in music, color in painting) fades faster than our memory of pitch and line. Similarly, timbre and space cannot be notated on a score. Yet it’s these ineffable, untranscribable elements in music that are the most intensely pleasurable.

Timbre, rhythm, space: these elements in music are all related to sensuously overwhelming immediacy. They are the now-intensive elements in rock and in techno. Rock began the work that techno completed: accentuating rhythm, elevating timbre (distortion, effects, grain of the voice), opening up dub space. Structurally, rock and techno both fit Andrew Chester’s notion of in tensional music (complexity achieved through modulation and inflection of simple melodic units, as in African music), as opposed to the extensional structures of Western classical music (theme and variations, crisis and resolution).

Techno and house create a subtly different form of heightened immediacy than African music — a sort of future-now. (This is an effect of the music’s reliance on the vamp — originally a brief introductory passage repeated sever& times before a solo or verse in order to whip up anticipation, but in techno sometimes making up the whole body of the track). Timbre-saturated, repetitive but tilted always toward the next now, techno is an immediacy machine, stretching time into a continuous present. Which is where the drug-technology interface comes into play. Not just because techno works well with substances like MOMA, marijuana, LSD, speed, etc., all of which amplify the sensory intensity of the present moment. But because the music itself drugs the listenet, looping consciousness then derailing it, stranding it In a nowhere/nowhen, where there is only sensation, “where now lasts longer.”

2007
the awesome:
animal collective - strawberry jam
battles - mirrored
justice - +
mia - kala
matthew dear - deserter single
optimo - walkabout
modeselektor - happy birthday
burial - untrue
venetian snares - sabbath dubs ep
the first half of devin the dude - waitin to inhale

the very good:
yeah yeah yeahs - is is ep
grizzly bear - friend ep
panda bear - person pitch
stars of the lid - and their refinement of the decline
the field - from here we go sublime
dan deacon - spiderman of the rings
the tuss - rushup edge
caribou - andorra

it was a good year for electronic music, oh yes it was

Electronix

mp3: Amon Tobin - Bloodstone
mp3: Amon Tobin - Esthers

A welcome return for Amon to more organic sounds and expansive compositions rather than his increasingly dense music of recent.

mp3: Duster - Travelogue

Post-rock. This one needs volume. I don't really know how to describe it, except that it sounds like time traveling backwards.

mp3: Gangpol Und Mit - Notre Vie N'est Pas Simple.Vous Ne Devenez Pas Jeune

All the old IDM tricks you've heard before, but he uses them in such a fun way it's pretty much irresistibly good.

mp3: Isolee - Face B

Isolee employs a malfunctioning bassline to wreck you into some sort of hypno-sleep where you forget that anything else but that bassline ever existed.

mp3: Remarc & Lewi - Ricky

Old school jungle. Even today, the Amen break shows why it will always be vital.

mp3: High Contrast - Return Of Forever (Klute Remix)

Klute has something I think few other DNB producers possess - an ear for that kind of chromatic, shifting tone in good reflective/melancholy melodies. Those horns just kill me.

mp3: Matthew Dear - Deserter EP

It took me a while to decide if I liked the original mix or Four Tet's mix better. The Four Tet mix is almost the obvious choice - it's like listening to a bright spray of color fountaining over and over again. It's a very pretty listen. But then I listen to the original mix, and I hear something a lot more subtle - a weariness that pulsates and synths that strain as the melody plops down like light rain. Overall, it's a better fit for the reflective tone of his voice, and the better song.

mp3: Vitalic - Poney Part 1

- this is what house music does best: to somehow be simultaneously crushing and hypnotic; devastating and mesmerizing; visceral and dreamlike.

- with this song i realize i really enjoy hyper distorted melodies drowned in both volume and texture.

Another Beautiful Passage by John Cage

When a composer feels a responsibility to make, rather than accept, he eliminates from the area of possibility all those events that do not suggest the at that point in time vogue of profundity. For he takes himself seriously, wishes to be considered great, and he thereby diminishes his love and increases his fear and concern about what people will think. There are many serious problems confronting such an individual. He must do it better, more impressively, more beautifully, etc. than anybody else. And what, precisely, does this, this beautiful profound object, this masterpiece, have to do with Life? It has this to do with Life: we are separate from it. Now we see it and now we don't. When we see it we feel better, and when we are away from it, we don't feel so good. Life seems shabby and chaotic, disordered, ugly in contrast.

[…]

The important question is what is it that is not just beautiful but also ugly, not just good, but also evil, not just true, but also an illusion.

[…]

Someone may object that the sounds that happened were not interesting. Let him. Next time he hears the piece, it will be different, perhaps less interesting, perhaps suddenly exciting. Perhaps disastrous. A disaster for whom? For him, not [the composer]. And life the same: always different, sometimes exciting, sometimes boring, sometimes gently pleasing and so on; and what other important questions are there? Than that we live and how to do it in a state of accord with Life.

- John Cage

Palindromes

This is a movie I've been wanting to see since before it came out, but I haven't really had a chance to. I've always passed this DVD at the video store. The cover would always catch my eye - it's a cartoonish illustration of a large black girl walking in the woods. As someone who's into design of any sort, I wondered, "Why a cartoon?" It's not particularly beautiful, or captivating, or even that well-rendered.

After watching the movie, the illustration makes sense. All of the characters in the movie are cartoonish. Exaggerated, extreme, and in most cases hysterical, the characters act out people types from real life. This is what makes the movie confounding. The whole time I'm watching the movie I'm thinking - what is he trying to say? Gross exaggerations are usually not without purpose.

The funny thing is - he presents everyone as a cartoon, yet he also manages to portray the humanity in the midst of their absurdity. It's a mindblowing feat that he manages to do over and over in every movie of his that I've seen. I really want to say it's on the level of genius. Who else manages so easily and so regularly to place his characters in that precarious position between empathy and ridicule?

There is abortion, pedophilia, and rape in this movie. There are characters on every side of every issue, but even in the end you still don't know where Todd Solondz stands. Who is he for? What does he want us to take away?

A monologue from the characters towards the end of the movie - and one that is presumably Todd's point of view - may provide a clue. The character believes no one changes. We may believe we do, but we enter the same as we leave. We are the same person as 10 as we are 50. There is no choice, it's all genes and randomness. We are all stuck in situations beyond our control. And maybe that's what Todd's philosophy in art is. He shows us the absurdity of human life. It affects everyone, and therefore everyone in his films comes from this same exaggeration of humanity. Maybe he is not for or against abortion. Maybe he just wants to show how ridiculous it can be, on both sides, and how there's not really one stance that can or should be taken. If there's no political stance taken, then what's left but mere human observation? He is saying with his characters - this is who we are. We are all ridiculous and absurd, yet we are all human. We act from our past, we make mistakes, we live on, yet despite all of that, we don't change. That we all do this, regardless of what extreme stance we take on issues, is what makes us human.

This is a powerful film. I don't know if I can fully believe the cynicism, but Solondz's message is potent regardless. I was provoked, and my mind engaged. (This movie is definitely not for everybody).

MP3: N. Larson - Aviva Pastoral

Mogwai (from Mr. Beast)
1 MP3: Glasgow Mega-Snake
2 MP3: Friend of the Night

I'm a bit late to the gravy train of this climaxinghugesound sort of post-rock but it doesn't surprise me that I like it at all. If anything, I am surprised by how familiar it sounds. Almost easy listening for the avant garde set - familiar structures and sonic details, but instantly rewarding. Glasgow Mega-Snake is a huge, crushing track that I play loud as fuck in my car while other drivers think about how obnoxious I am. Friend of the Night is slower, but more gorgeous in its stride. If you share any of my musical tastes at all, you will love both of these songs.

Great Interview with Maynard of Tool

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/55757

Some choice excerpts:

AVC: Do you feel out of touch with your audience?

MJK: For the most part, I have no idea who those people are—especially when we're traveling through Europe. And it's not all our fault; it's a whole series of events. [You play] heavy music, and your record company, which has never owned an album anything like what you're doing, immediately markets you to the obvious stinky kid with the dreadlocks and the B.O. and the urine on his shoes because he's been sleeping in his own filth in a festival in the middle of the rain. They basically market right to that guy. And then you realize the only people showing up to your shows are those primates—these weird, cretin people… Then, let's say you're at a coffee shop, and you've got a friend sitting next to you, and you've been reading some Noam Chomsky, or you're reading The Onion, and you look over and see a bunch of kids [who] look like they could be made of cheese, because there are flies everywhere. And you go, "Hey, you want to go where they're going?" and everybody goes, "Fuck no." And they're wearing Tool shirts. Why would you want to go there? Why would anybody other than those kids wanna go see Tool if that's our representative in that area?

AVC: Given how little press you do, fans mostly just have these weird, disconnected snapshots of you: Maynard choking a fan; Maynard onstage in kabuki drag; Maynard performing as an evangelical preacher. Is the real Maynard somewhere between all these? You can break out the incense again if you want…

MJK: I'm just going to get in the lotus position for this one—got a little New Age crystal enema going here… Mmm. [Laughs.] But it's all slices—I mean, who the fuck is Christian Bale, really? Does it matter? I think in order for us to be entertainers—and let's face it: We're entertainers; we're not philosophers in any way—we're just basically clowns. That's what we are. So you dress up like a clown, and it makes it easier to be a clown. It allows you to express yourself freely, to step out of your own body and just have fun with the character. Hopefully, somebody gets something out of it.

"Here we are. Let us say Yes to our presence together in Chaos." - John Cage

mp3: Autechre - Acroyear

This is one of my favorite songs ever. The track starts off with a skittering, untrackable beat with only a threadbare melody to guide us through. It's chaotic and schizoid, but that melody somehow is just enough to tie things together. Somewhere in the madness is a logic, even if buried. Another melodic theme arises, as thin as the first. They bob and weave through the chaos, as it gets more intense, then, as it crystallizes into something recognizable. A mess becomes a pattern. The themes have led us. Nirvana?

1/30 Addendum: I think I was being a bit of a coward with this description. What I was getting at and didn't come out and say is that the way these songs are constructed, it's as if Autechre are presenting a life philosophy (without lyrics, nonetheless). Life is messy and fucking chaotic and there's shit flying everywhere, and is there really any constant in your life other than yourself (the melody - the human aspect in a world or song that seems inhuman) except the melody and you are also changing, so what does that leave us with except the recognition that there's beauty in change, in people, in melody, in rhythm (that never stopping propulsion that allows us to see change), in chaos, in pattern.

MP3: Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You In The End

off key, amateur chords strumming in the dark
a weird little man in the distance trying to tell me how it is
and oddly enough, it makes sense

moved to: http://duonginjapan.blogspot.com/

The Clipse and Folk Music
So I've been listening The Clipse and folk music lately, and not much else. Since it's easier to point out the differences rather than the similarities, let's do similarities!

1) concern with being perceived as genuine
keepin' it real/being a common person

2) primarily lyric based music
(which is funny to me, as someone who doesn't listen to lyrics anyways)

3) spare arrangements

4) music of the plebes* (*see next item)

5) deviation of original genre's values
rap: focus moved away from party music to bling/street life
folk: "folk music" is hardly folk music in the sense that it is experts (and not the actual common man) that play the folk music we listen to. it's also mass distributed as a commodity - thus being popular music rather than music you go out and hear performed on the street.

6) sonic grittiness
distorted synths/staccato rhythms in Clipse and raw voices/lo-fi audio in folk

Lady Sovereign - Love Me or Hate Me

File Under:
obnoxious
hair like the girl from Napoleon Dynamite
low class
completely likeable

maybe this blog is too self-indulgent. i'm fascinated by my own peculiarities in taste and love thinking about them to no end. with that being said, one of my weaknesses is folk music. i'm a sucker for an interesting voice and an acoustic guitar. is that criteria sufficient enough to be considered good music? i don't know. but i can't get enough of it.

MP3: Lindsey Buckingham - Shut Us Down

on another tangent, i have to confess i am still relatively new to love. and experiencing love means experiencing all the complications that come with it. 90% of all the songs ever written are about love, and now they all oddly resonate with me in a way that they never did before. what were empty words before are now capable of casting a hypnotic spell over me, holding me in a bittersweet grip. or in other words, just make me really fucking sad.

maybe i'm fitting lyrics to my experience instead of taking them for what they are. maybe i'm completely misinterpreting what the writer is trying to say. well... chalk up another one for the distortive nature of love. i'm fine with that. let me take my pleasure in knowing that i'm not alone, let me pretend that what i'm experiencing is universal, let me know that someone else has gone through this too... and is able to make something beautiful out of it.

I was online looking for that hidden link between Timbaland and Pharrell. Did you know that they knew each other since middle school? Their parents knew each other, their grandparents knew each other, they wuz tite.

Anyways, what caught my eye was this:
On the ABC show "Nightline" Pharrell said, "I could always visualize what I was hearing" and "It was always like weird colors," suggesting he may have synesthesia.

Maybe that's why I like his production so much, it's oddly visual. In fact, I think that's why I like what I like at all - good music, to me, is inseparable from a strong image. I don't think I'm like other synesthesiacs though. I don't see color, I see shapes and textures. If it's a real instrument, I see the instrument. If it's an abstract noise, it's a waveform, clearly defined in a three-dimensional space. Voices tend to fall in the latter category, which is why it's so easy for me to tune out lyrics.

MP3: Joanna Newsom - Three Little Babes

How often do you smile every time you hear a song?

Her voice tears into my head with the brittleness of a siren. And I enjoy it.

Joanna belongs to the group of singers you either love or hate, and as with most singers of that ilk, I love her. There is a rawness of sound there, a very visceral sonic characteristic that reaches out with it's tendrils and pushes itself into the folds of your brain. I've heard her voice in this song likened to a wailing cat or a diseased woman, and it's hard for me to disagree. Is that truly a negative thing though? I'd argue that it's a sensation so compelling, so ugly, that it cuts through all the bullshit, that forces you to listen to it... well, I think that's something quite beautiful and rare.

Dabrye
1 MP3: Bloop
2 MP3: Game Over

8bit melodies rocking amidst unsure hip hop

MP3: Broadcast - Lunch Hour Pops

Broadcast is now officially the top of my Last FM list. They have toppled the mighty Aphex Twin, who's influence loomed so large in my mind that first listening to him was a formative experience that set the stage for how I listen to music. So, what makes Broadcast so good?

At times, such as this, it is simple, beguiling pop. Trish Keenan's cool, unaffected delivery has such a distance to it that it seems to just to hover somewhere between the horizon and sky. And when her voice sings such pretty melodies, it dances around the harp like some child's plaything gone wild. It's a very romantic view of music, complete with high pitched electronic flourishes and a merry-go-round melody.

MP3: Johann Sebastian Bach (Yo-Yo Ma) - Suite No.1, S. 1007 in G Major - I. Prelude

I asked my coworker if he could identify a classical song and he smirked, "I know classical songs, but I don't know any classical song names... they're all like 'Suite in C B A' and 'Concerto in A Minor Plus Plus'". Funny... but it also got me thinking. Isn't this what Autechre also does with their song titles? Garbagemx36, 6Ie.cr, VI Scose Poise - it's a way of avoiding labels. Nondescript, faceless, an indication that it's the music that matters, stupid. It's nice to know that a common attitude is shared throughout the history of abstract instrumental music.

Sufjan Stevens 9/16 - Paramount Theater, Austin

I like Sufjan Stevens. It's pleasant music, full of nice harmony and pop. A guy with a guitar and sickly-sweet double tracked vocals, what's not to like? It's the type of music you could play for a girl at random from the street and she'd probably love it and love you for it.

But I don't love his music by any stretch. The words "sugary" and "overproduced" come to mind. It's like the trap that some of Elliott Smith's music falls into - layers and layers of harmony actually begin to detract from the sincerity of the music. Grandeur is great to aim for, but there are different, and more affecting, ways to reach elation other than typical choral arrangements and movie soundtrack orchestration. It doesn't quite reach cheesy, but it smells all too familiar.

This is the mindset I went into the show with, but I was open to having my opinion changed. The live show is, afterall, a gateway to a religious experience. Bands that are merely good on record become powerful and god-like on stage. An explosive sound can blow your mind into sensual ecstasy. Hopefully, my image of him as indie-pop lite would gain something of a bit more substance.

Sufjan's band then all walked out with butterfly wings. My opinion was not changed. The show was good though, I enjoyed it overall. The stage was full - there was a horn section, back up singers, and the standard guitar/bass/drums. They played head-nodders and attractive melodies, appealing stuff through and through. There were songs I didn't recognize, but at the same time, there was also nothing that surprised me. During climaxes, the theater hummed thick with harmonic layers, but musically, it was like eating vanilla creme cookies for an hour. Pleasant, at worst. Or, at best, whichever you prefer.

Near the beginning of the show Sufjan stated that he would play songs that aimed at "transcendence". I suppose I just have a differing view of how to accomplish that.

It's funny whenever I tell someone I don't listen to lyrics. They just kind of nod their head, accepting the fact as if I just told them that I clip my toenails on Tuesdays. It's a matter of choice, they would think to themselves, it's not as if he can't really hear the lyrics. But I can't.

My co-worker was getting pissed off because he was pointing out lyrics that he wanted me to hear. He kept rewinding and rewinding to the phrase, and asking me about the 'little girl'. I just thought he was a pedophile. "LITTLE GIRL, LITTLE GIRL!! " he would scream hysterically, "IT'S RIGHT THERE!!" Eventually I made him sing it for me, because I had no idea what he was talking about. In a short magical phrase, the song I had been listening to for 5 years suddenly became a pederass's anthem. ...He says little girl??!

It's often I think the music I listen to isn't well known (sometimes it very much is though). It always makes me happy to find a fellow soul who likes what I do, especially the stuff that I would consider obscure. I'm gonna list some albums that I have yet to find others who enjoy them as much as I do (that I haven't introduced the albums to in the first place).

snd - Tender Love
Asa-Chang & Junray - Jun Ray Song Chang
Manitoba - Up In Flames
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Playthroughs
Vashti Bunyan - Just Another Diamond Day
Triple R - Friends
Susumu Yokota - Grinning Cat

ok, I know of others who enjoy these, but mainly because I introduced the music to them. I guess I feel like these are more like private discoveries than anything else, as if I had turned the corner while on a walk and happened onto a secret garden I could spend the rest of my life in.

As I'm looking over the list I notice these themes: minimalism, odd juxtapositions of sounds, and prettiness. And I know with snd, Asa-Chung & Junray, and Susumu Yokota, I could very easily imagine myself creating this type of music. Shit, you know what I just realized? Those themes are very Buddhist-centric. Perhaps not as far Zen as John Cage's ideals are, but they lean towards that. An affirmative reflection of life. Positive heady analysis of the world around you. That is my goal, that is what drives me. It's an introvert's position to believe that the act of reflection in itself is good, and I tend to apply that to art. The most profound art makes you reconsider, reevaluate, and reexamine.

Here's a counter-intuitive nugget from John Cage :

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, try it for eight, sixteen, thirty-two, and so on. Eventually one discovers that it's not boring at all but very interesting."

While I don't think it's always correct, there's something to that.

John Cage represents an extremism. He fights to let sound be sound, thus his fight is also against any sort of artist intervention or created symbolism. It's a bit paradoxical isn't it? Even if he were to set a tape recorder in a forest and then play it back to an audience, it would still represent a conscious artistic choice.

His extreme stance when it comes to music making is perhaps why I've heard people say, "Read and love Cage, but listen to his music only out of curiosity".

It makes me wonder how John Cage would see the modern electronic music I listen to - it's a genre not as restrictive as other genres, indeed, it's the most free. From the organic-electronic fusions of early Amon Tobin to the hyper synthetic glitches of Oval, the genre follows Cage's sound first worship. BUT, the genre is also about highly personal expressions, an extension of the ego Cage might say. Sound first, but manipulated to the creator's desires. It might be instructive to look at how Cage views Varese, a composer who manipulated interesting sounds to his own end. Varese is important as a predecessor, Cage goes on, but he remains distinctly a figure of the past because "rather than dealing with sounds as sounds, he deals with them as Varese." Cage might view the same way someone such as Aphex Twin, who's intensely weird abstractions are an extension of his personality, even while pushing sound to the forefront.

Another "Silence" Excerpt

There are people who say, "If music's that easy to write, I could do it." Of course they could, but they don't. I find [Morton] Feldman's own statement more affirmative. We were driving back from some place in New England where a concert had been given. He is a large man and falls asleep easily. Out of a sound sleep, he awoke to say, "Now that things are so simple, there's so much to do." And then he went back to sleep.

One thing that has always pissed me off is when someone says, "Even I could do that." But they don't. And that's the point. Art is not about technical ability - and that goes over the layman's head. The layman calls the artist pretentious, but the true pretension lies in the layman. Should artists restrict themselves to what the layman thinks is art, or should everyone just let art be?

'Silence' by John Cage

"As the unchallenged father figure of American experimental music, Mr. Cage wields an influence that extends far beyond sound alone....Indeed, the entire American avant-garde would be unthinkable without Mr. Cage's music, writings, and genially patriarchical personality."

From what I understand, this nigga did more than anyone else to free sound to be -just- sound. I'm not that far into the book yet, but even already his ideas impress me in their profundity.

It is the sheer pleasure of hearing sound that is at the crux of all his ideas. To Cage, experimental music is merely a method to release sound to be sound. Chance operations, improvisation, and undefined variables all function in the same way - to produce a new and unique listening experience every time. Part of his framework that allows for this is the division of composition, performance, and listening into seperate and distinct activities, so much so that he laughs, "What do they have to do with each other at all?" What happens then is unrestricted freedom in creativity: a composer may make a piece last 639 years, or have a pianist play nothing for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. Cage calls it "meaningless play", but the focus is clearly on the act of creation. It's a new product of sound every performance, but most importantly, it's also unique for the composer. He's definitely an artist's artist.

In the activity of listening, Cage contends that there is always something to hear, you just have to open your ears. Using an anecdote relating his experience in a room designed to be completely silent, Cage theorizes that there isn't really silence at all. As he sat in this room that was desigend to be silent, he heard two tones, one low and one high. He was informed that the low was his circulation system and that the high was his nervous system. "Try as we may to make a silence, we cannot." It's a bit philosophical I think - it's really about changing your definition of what constitutes sound, or maybe even more broadly, about being receptive to the world around you.

How I think his Zen buddhism figures into that:
Zen makes use of koans, anecdotes that are paradoxical or seemingly nonsensical, but are stepping stones to enlightment. They shut you up and make you go 'Whuh?'. A moment of perplexion follows, and rational thought ceases. Then, your mind is free. Cage's compositional methods function similar to koans. They slap you upside the head and make you go 'Whuh?'. But then you listen. Then, you are in a state of 'be here now'. You begin to hear sounds unencumbered by your notion of what music is or should be. You just hear. It's really a kind of a beautiful and life-affirming approach: take in the world as it is, rather than what you think it is.

Here's a story that he tells that I like. It may be predictable, but it illustrates his thoughts on sound perfectly:

Several men, three as a matter of fact, were out walking one day, and as they were walking along and talking one of them noticed another man standing on a hill ahead of them. He turned to his friends and said, "Why do you think that man is standing up there on that hill?" One said, "He must be up there because it's cooler there and he's enjoying the breeze." He turned to another and repeeated the question, "Why do you think that man's standing up there on that hill?" The second said, "Since the hill is elevated above the rest of the land, he must be up there in order to see something in the distance." And the third said, "He must have lost his friend and that is why he is standing there alone on that hill." After some time walking along, the men came up on the hill and the one who had been standing there was still there: standing there. They asked him to say which one was right concerning his reason for standing where he was standing.

"What reasons do you have for my standing here?" he asked. "We have three," they answered. "First, you are standing up here because it's cooler here and you are enjoying the breeze. Second, since the hill is elevated above the rest of the land, you are up here in order to see something in the distance. Third, you have lost your friend and that is why you are standing here alone on this hill. We have walked this way; we never meant to climb this hill; now we want an answer: Which one of us is right?"

The man answered."I just stand."

WHAT DID I DO??? I just uninstalled Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike. Man, I feel ... less dirty.

AGENDA

1) Do things you are afraid of.
2) Dance!

Brave New World

Good, but flawed. It worked for me all the way up to the end, where the believability starts spiralling away into the clouds. The hero whips his own back in religious fervor to punish himself for lusting after a woman. His whip til he bleeds, and he curses himself for even thinking about her. It is outrageous, for the simple fact that you just can't relate. His earlier doe-eyed astonishment of a world of extreme brings initially you into his character. When he asks why things are the way they are, we ask with him. When he criticizes some of their ways, he merely speaks for us. When he cries for his dying mother, we feel his rage and sorrow. Then he starts RAPING HIS OWN BACK!!!! It just comes out of nowhere. But, Aldous Huxley admits as much, saying that to bring it to such an absurd end was amusing to him at the time. Well fuck that.

Other thoughts

- Huxley knows what being truly alone feels like. There are alot of outsider type heroes in popular culture, but Huxley deftly expresses the pure despair of being alone. There is at once both anger and yearning, to intentionally rebel and to still feel somehow you have to fit in somewhere. You search and you search, and you may find some like-minded individuals, but you still feel alone. It becomes a spiritual journey, and you feel forever in darkness. Eventually and maybe suddenly, it reaches a point of pure terror, when you realize that nobody in the fucking universe can help you. You are stuck there in the darkness, and it's fresh and immediate and alarming. Then you realize: it's just you.

The main hero feels this despair. When he is introduced as person stuck between two cultures I was immediately hooked. The book then became something more than just a sci-fi exploration of a future technological path. Y'know, maybe it became rather an exploration of outsider status to identity. Too bad it went off the goofy side.

- This man's vocabulary is fucking amazing. I'm studying for the GRE and it's like Huxley was given an assignment to write a book with every single GRE word in there. No wonder they assign it in highschools.

- Huxley also admits another fault: instead of having to choose between a cold, clinical modern world and the brutal, violent reservation, Huxley would've included a third option that fit somewhere inbetween those two. He considers the book in it's current state philosophically incomplete, and I agree. It bothered me for a bit, because what the book as written is saying if you aren't living your emotions and desires to their complete end, you aren't living as an adult. The people of the book's modern world are genetically programmed and environmentally conditioned to be 24/7 satiated so that no strong desires arise. That state of being is related as being a child, or maybe immature. It's funny, the whole time they're talking shit about being content, I'm wondering if Huxley has an anti-Buddhist agenda. Anyways, he sets up that world as the diametric opposite of the reservation life, and clearly it's the reservation life that he champions. The reservation life with disease, mob violence, substance abuse, and an extreme in-group mentality. The reservation life that causes the hero so much misery and self-conflict that he starts whipping himself. And you read on and on til the end and you wonder why, with all these evils, is it being championed. And you read the foreword and you find that it's for no good reason, other than it's amusing. Sorry, I'd agree with Huxley himself, I'd change it. I felt too much for this guy for him to descend into some half-assed cartoon.

markmaking in drawing is a good analogy for sound in music. some use both as a means to an end, and some use both as an end in theirselves. i think you can get fucking gloriously lost in just sound with the aid of repetition. melody and structure are present, but they fall to the wayside. the same with markmaking: in figure drawing i saw pieces by other students where the figure was discernible, but it wasn't really the point. charred up, fucked up, fat and thin lines criss-crossed subject matter into oblivion, we're not dealing with representation anymore. get lost in the details, get lost in the moment.

inductive logic seems to be the cause of most of humanity's misunderstandings. ex: if A of group 2 is bad, then all of group 2 is bad.

happens with music all the time. it's easy to stereotype music, because labels give a convenient organizational method. ex: if Aceyalone is hip-hop and you hate hip-hop, you must hate Aceyalone. the end result is you're missing out on a fuckload of good music. it's necessary to generalize, but to generalize negatively in a broad absolute way means you miss out on life.

i hate conversations where you go "my experience is x," then as soon as you stop and maybe a little bit before they go "my experience is y which is only tangently related but i'll say it anyways because i have nothing to add and only heard words coming out of your mouth and not any actual ideas conveyed and i might as well be listening to a frog croaking because really i just want to talk about myself and avoid conversational dead space because then i have to actually think about what you're saying". happens all the time, especially with super-social people and even more when i was younger.

sometimes it's nice hearing someone just spill about themselves though, it's sorta confessional and voyeuristic to experience it and tells you another aspect of their personality besides the actual content of the conversation. also easy to tune out because they dont expect any real response.

i think it happens alot with good friends because you don't really need that 'connecting with' follow-up questioning portion, you already know you're connected and usually you understand where the other person is coming from. it's like saying 'oh, i understand' is implicitly said because you're already close. you don't have to ask what they mean, or the context, because you already know.

another exception to the rule is when you're drunk. god damn can you go on and on about the stupidest bullshit when you're drunk.

i guess i'm on a run of attacking commonly used words. slut is one i've been meaning to write on for a while. i don't have anything exciting to say that hasn't been said before - it's a double-standard, sexist word, socially constructed idea, yadda yadda yadda. despite it's disgusting meaning to some, it's disgusting to ME to hear it used the way it oftenly is. WHY is there a negative stigma attached to someone enjoying themselves? that's really what it comes down to.

admittedly that negative stigma can be very intense. i think it takes a bit of logic, to realize someone else is dictating what you should enjoy, and a lot of self-confidence, to stand up to the pressure of conformity, to be free of negative stigma.

i wasn't supposed to like rap. i wasn't supposed to like rock. i wasn't supposed to like idm. i'm still not even supposed to like girly shit or pop. growing up and being very impressionable, i often succumbed to these pressures. as someone who was very into alternative rock, i was ashamed for even thinking rap was listenable. even now, i love listening to mainstream hiphop, but i get disapproval from friends who are supposedly above that. and on the other side of the coin, as an asian who's supposed to like techno and rap, i felt inadequately asian for listening to rock. and as a 'normal person', why the fuck would i want to listen to weird atonal shit with no vocals? as a guy, there are times even now when i feel less 'manly' for listening to ultra-effeminate music. that is one strong ass stigma to fight.

in the end though, one of the greatest epiphanies in my life was when i stopped letting what i was supposed to like affect what i genuinely liked. i'll form my own criteria for what's good. others think who you are should guide what you like. i think what i like guides who i am.

thumpd
it never ceases to amaze me the thing thats we choose to remember, the things that we respond to, the things we are stimulated by. what's the process of 'hey, i think this is interesting'? the things that impact me, i have this huge urge to take a step back and consider 'why?'. many times it's conditioning, but equally many times i have just no fucking idea. just no fucking idea. we all are saturated with so much media in our daily lives, why do the things that do pop out from the deluge pop out in the first place? i guess what i'm trying to do with this blog is articulate the why's that i do find. i see it as a challenge. often in writing you'll see 'this is something that words can not describe'. that's just laziness.

(not to say that reading text about something is the same as experiencing it. of course not. but to say 'this is something that words can not describe', is to say 'i cant find the words to describe this". it's evading fault.)

a common liberal standpoint
is "don't legislate morality". it is always pointed at conservative lawmakers. my teacher even said this in class about gay marriage laws. but... when the fuck is legislation NOT morally-defined? it's ridiculous to think that liberal lawmakers are completely unbiased and not guided by a sense of what's right and what's wrong. it's more like saying hey, "don't legislate YOUR morality. mine's ok though". just plain hypocritical.

relating it to music...
"dont legislate morality" is like saying "dance music sucks". music has different functions, and when people say things like "dance music sucks" they are invalidating the type of music. their music can serve a function for themselves, but if music that serves a different function for others, then it sucks. like "dont legislate morality", it's speaks of more than just personal preference. it's saying what i listen to is more legitimate than what you listen to, or in the case of 'legislating morality', what i legislate is more legitimate than what you legislate.

sitting here at my house with a decent 3 speaker set up, a thought just occured to me. the way i listen to music now at my apartment is a 2 speaker boombox system that sits way up high above my head. i still love music as ever, but the images that go through my head now are pretty different than what it was when i was living at home.

the way i used to visualize music was very layered, the bass sounds occupying the lower ground and mid and treble sounds occupying higher ground. very much affected by the 3 speaker setup with the sub on the floor. the funny thing is, this is the way i visualized music for a long ass time, to the point to where i often thought, 'how the hell else could you visualize music, it just makes sense!!'. bass sounds below other sounds. how more common sense can you get. but now, with this other setup, i dont visualize the sounds in music containing such distinctiveness in layering. there's depth, but not to the level it was before. like one of those magic eye illusions depths.

i think i prefer this 3 speaker setup, even though i'm 100 percent sure the 2 speaker boombox has higher fidelity.

child sexuality
one of the most mysterious, provocative, and taboo subjects. i read an enlightening essay on it one of my sociology books of which the following points struck me most: 1) child sexuality is definitely normal, 2) the aim of most normal child sexuality is self-stimulation, 3) child sexuality is not erotic (aiming for the goal of sex and or orgasm) but rather sensual (merely pleasurable) 4) children's sexual expressions are oftened misinterpreted as adult sexual expressions.

anyways, related enough for me to write on, my mom was babysitting a three year old when i was visiting home. he's hilarious, a cute and funny little man who's always talking and laughing. We took him to the t-mobile store with us. this very pretty woman came in, about mid 20s, dressed nice, nice hair, just well presented. the normally rambunctious kid didn't say a single word the whole time. he couldn't take his eyes off of her, to the point to where when she left he contorted his body around just to stare behind him at her as she walked out the door. it was almost like watching a guy my age stare down a girl. it's not like I took this as sign of his sexuality, but it could easily be interpreted as such. either way, it was fascinating to witness because i wouldn't think the power of attraction/beauty could have such a hold on a kid.

rules (and reminders) for life 6-17

Life isn't supposed to be comfortable.

Just accept yourself as you are and live as you are supposed to. That is freedom.

Don't ever say no to a reasonable invitation to do something that might be fun. This is a WASP rule, and one of the reasons why rich white people rule the planet.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

Be unwavering and uncompromising. Be willing to make huge mistakes, but make them because they're on your back.

You have to honor failure, because failure is just the negative space around success.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive: to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

The point of life is to be fully aware of it.

I am not young enough to know everything.

All meetings are once in a life time. That you have met them and are traveling with them, that is fate. No matter what happens hereafter.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Life is what happens to you while your busy making other plans.

If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

For there is nothing hid which shall not be manifest; neither was anything kept secret but that it should come abroad.

The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon.

I can argue any stupid position if I redefine all the terms that are relevant to the discussion to mean completely different things than they actually mean.

All talent defines is where you start, not where you end.

I stand in the way of the things I can be.

an expansion on music as spirituality
excerpt from an article about tantric sex discussing a full body orgasm:

"Instead of a localized genital release, you experience a prolonged series of subtle, continuous wavelike pulsations that spread through the body, resulting in the impression that you are melting in your partner."

it sounds extremely similar to what i have experienced with just music. everyone knows that you can get pleasure from music, but this is on another level - a spiritual orgasm?
(laying down on a cosmic beach at the edge of the ocean, eyes closed, tide repeatedly flowing over my body)

on another note: a friend giving constructive criticism of my writing said that i needed to write more about how the music ties in with my personal experiences (such as, this track reminds me of when my dog died, or whatever). the problem is, i just dont experience music that way. music (usually) occupies a totally abstract plane of existence. i theorize about it because only intellectual discussion can disect it. it happens that it's not that the music takes me to a time and place in MY life, but that the music pushes me to reach out towards something else.

all music isnt like this for me, but for the most part (even pop music) it is. not to say there aren't certain types of music that facilitate this mental reaching out, such as electronic music. that abstract alien quality that electronic music can do so well is definitely why i hold electronic music in the highest regard.

5 shows in 3 weeks, fucking ridiculous. pinback, caribou, autechre, prefuse 73, melt banana. i became addicted to the live show this month. i rediscovered the power of volume - how mere loudness can shake my consciousness into experiencing something higher.

or more primal, because it's a sensory experience with the thinnest layer of interpretation possible. the volume is so loud, the music is so engaging, i don't think, i just feel. maybe primal and transcendent are interchangeable though, cutting through the bullshit so you can just exist at that very moment. be here now, and stuff. the live show seems to me the best way to experience sound as revelation. i guess the purpose that religion serves for most people, i use music for - it's very much intensely spiritual. it's not uncommon for me to get chills, or rushes of physical and mental euphoria when listening to music. it literally feels like a warm wave of positive fluid that slowly envelops me. i feel connected to the very basic feelings of humanity, experiencing the universal strands that connect us all. at once both humbling and empowering.

caribou was the best show that represented music as religion. there were great twinkly melodies and chugging basslines that noodled along, then huge orgasmic technicolor explosions of sound that would blast any semblance of thinking consciousness away, leaving me to melt in the vibrations of rainbow frequencies operating at independent speeds. there times i felt as if i had to push against the cascades of noise because i was being so overwhelmed, like a lone tree in the path of a tremendous river.

music as religion, or sound as revelation, was best shown by caribou's show, but the capacity for that was in the other shows too. i hadn't even heard melt banana before, but just the allure of some really fucking loud noise drew me in. overall i think each show was pretty unique, each one emphasizing a different function that music can fulfill.

pinback showed me the awesomeness of a live band. it was very much in a technical way in which i was wow-ed, the precision of the playing and the clarity of his voice. the way they played against each other, it was like watching gears rotate in mechanized machinery. on a side note, the main singer looked nothing like i imagined. stocky and bearded as opposed to skinny and gaunt.

oh yeah, and i rediscovered dancing at this show. i think being physically moved is an integral part of live shows, whether merely nodding your head and tapping your toes or full out limb flailing spazzing out. what does it mean? it means that the power of sound has fucking infiltrated you in such a way that it breaks down social constraints/mental inhibitions that stop you from a very natural physical response. fuck art, let's dance. let's be here now and forget how goofy i might possibly look, what the world thinks of me, i just want to love and appreciate this music and be moved by it.

five shows, lots of dancing. the least though was at autechre. while i enjoyed their show, which seemed to focus on more danceable material than i would have normally expected, i don't think it was up to par as the other shows ive seen. maybe it was lack of familiarity, as i have fallen out of listening to any of their newer stuff. the venue/crowd response might've also had something to do with it. compared to haileys (which i saw the other shows at), trees seems almost subterranean, dark and cave-like. lots of empty space, with the performers way up and distant from the crowd. people wandered around, by their expressionless faces you couldn't tell if people were enjoying the show or not. the music itself actually seemed like ep7ish, heavy thuddish beats with fantastic digital strangulations of sound. i think in the right venue and with the right crowd it wouldve been a more energetic show.

snd who opened for autechre actually put on the better show. i'm just fascinated with their aesthetic. it's a limited palette of glitchy very synthetic crystalline pads and techy minimal breakbeats. it seems they've been working with this for a while - the music they played couldve easily came from 'tender love', which came out in 2002. minimalism really appeals to me though because the end effect it creates is an emphasis on the sounds used and the composition of space. when you listen to minimal music, you become very aware of arrangement. i think what i find fascinating about snd in particular is that they make this funky. you can dance to this stuff! it's like dancing to a stop motion video of lego architecture.


prefuse 73 was utterly fantastic. i recognized about 85% of the stuff he played, which i think really helps with losing yourself in the music. hearing my favorite songs played live, it was bliss. so i guess i learned recognition of songs can be a key (although not necessary) ingredient in a fantastic live show. not having to listen to a song for the first time seems like one less obstacle to have to break through, because when first listening to something there's seems to be alot of mental thought in expectation and anticipating structure changes.

melt banana, who i never heard before, but heard of, was very fun. i guess this was the show that proved to me the importance of the visual aspect. at all the shows i always push myself to near the front, i have to see the performers. i need that visual stimulation. and when the performers are as energetic and charismatic melt banana, it makes the show that much better. they were almost like cartoons, exagerrated poses and almost too ridiculous clothing, with gunfire paced freakouts and thirty second songs.

there were many times at all the shows where i didnt look at the performers, just closed my eyes and danced. but when i did open them, i expected to see visual confirmation that hey, they really ARE playing this music. in reality though they could all be lip synching, or like snd and autechre just sitting behind a laptop, me having no idea if they were doing this shit live or checking their email. it's all an illusion really, the visual aspect of a live performance, because i think what really matters in the end is the huge gi-normous sound. this is why i think raves work so well, barely anyone's looking at the dj, they're just into the music for the music's sake. the visual aspect is an illusion, but i think it's necessary. if i were to truly find out that say, hey, i'm not watching pinback really play, their instruments aren't even plugged in, that would become one more obstacle, one more mental layer to have to peel away, to enjoy the music for music's sake.

another thing i learned overall was that i definitely prefer smaller clubs. it's just plain more intimate. comparing autechres's show at trees to the rest at hailey's, it's amazing to see how much the performance space can influence crowd reaction. the energy is more contained and explosive in a smaller area. hailey's has cemented as my favorite live venue. i've seen many live shows over the years at different venues, and hailey's stands out above them all.

Frost - Endless Love (Analogue Euromix by Royksopp)
not a perfect song by any means, there's some very mediocre sung melodies here, but what makes this track stand out is the true dancefloor euphoria that hits when the singer stops and royksopp slathers on the instruments in ridiculously lush layers into starry eyed propulsion like they know how to do best. slithering flying floating lines of melody compete and bob.

Radiohead - "Skttrbrain" (Four Tet remix)
"The song is a perfect match for Four Tet, first of all. The original is stretched-out and whinsome, Yorke's voice like a piano playing gently in an empty room. Four Tet adds in jumbles of percussion, a more flickering guitar, bells and steampunk sounds. All of a sudden, Radiohead's barren, boring tune has this thick inner life: it's like we're hearing the thump and ooze of Yorke's lovesick robot heart. Organic and fascinating and a much, much better track than the original."

Music of the Moment
Radiohead - 2+2=5
Madonna - Hollywood (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix)
Jill Sobule - Nothing Natural
Kylie Minogue - Slow
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts

Madonna - La Isla Bonita
throughout my childhood i was only occasionally exposed to mainstream american music. i do however remember a tape of madonna videos. this was fantastic, alien music. i liked it, but i was at an age where i wasn't really sure why, i couldn't express it in words. i just sat there entranced by my senses, in a thoughtless reverie. it's exotic, it's groovy, it's melodic. there's a very vivid brightness about it, and that "transportation to another place" quality. i also felt an intense attraction towards madonna, though at that age (elementary school), i had no idea what it was. i just felt burning and heated, my thoughts a mush. so, i sat there enveloped in these sensations, being not anywhere near comprehension, but just feeling. it was an exquisite experience, sitting there watching these videos, my senses whirling around burning themselves into me, in a complete daze.

what makes this memory completely fucking awesome, is that i go through day to day with such worded out constructions. they come in almost completely formed sentences, clumsy and inelegant, but still formed. pure sensation without thought seems very rare to me, to the point where when it does happen i glorify it. live shows, blissed out songs, when it happens, it's music as transcendence. madonna happens to be one of the first artists that i associate this experience with.

listening to it now, it's almost as good as when i first heard it. the absolute catchiness of the chorus, the transcendent "aAaahhhh"s of the harmony, the funky latin backing track. most of all, madonna's totally fucking sexy voice. and i cant listen to this song without her dancing around in this smoking red outfit in my head.

but it sound's only almost as good -- my ear is much more finely tuned no. the 80s production is weak, apparenty very early in the song, like it isn't eq-ed right or something. the bassline is lackluster, and many of the sounds are just dinky. but all that becomes secondary once she starts singing.

Kings of Convenience - The Weight of My Words (Four Tet Remix)
loping thoughts musing over a string quartet recording shattered into glistening drops

LFO - 'Premacy
here i am procrastinating on my essay for finals. fuck it, i'm listening to this.

Come Into My World (Fischerspooner remix)
fat pulsating throb throb throb. a bath of unapologetically electronic textures stairstepping to sex.

Bubbles - Bidibodi Bidibu (Super Troopers Mix)
tantalizingly catchy and simple hooks and hypnotic repetiveness. this is what i thought all electronic music sounded like before i had really heard any. what little i did hear was boomed out of car stereos and funked in short snippets on tv, absolutely compelling me to hear more.

µ-ziq - Lunatic Harness
getting stoned out of my mind, sinking into aaron's massive comfy bed, listening to manic drums rain down on me from outerspace

ok, no more middleschool poetry and overwrought prose! just songs/albums and short thoughts, if i can be bothered.

Air - All I Need
aaron: is this madonna?
fred: no.

(on a separate occasion)
aaron: i love madonna.

Air - La Femme D'Argent
better than sexy boy (off the same album). works the same mercury floating through space territory, except less poppy and more heady.

Jeffy Buckley - So Real
this is the song i played so i could cry. i remember the jack, i remember the pain of trying to will up the emotion to squeeze out some tears, i remember the depressing agony of having to use outside aids to help me cry because i felt so fucking dead to the world.

Chris Clark - Empty the Bones of You
crumbling sod walls closing in
trapping light, forever spinning
underground moistly dirt mouth scream muffled

Typical Cats - Snake Oil
it completely encapsulates this romanticized construct of austin i've built in my mind -- an arteest paradise where there's an anything happens vibe.

the song is infuriatingly effortless. i can't help but love that jazzy bohemian air that it conjures up in my mind. all slouched figures and smiles seen through cigarette smoke, united by communal head nodding. for me the song is about the type of environment that just breeds the creative process.

infuriating though, because it's something that just wasn't within my grasp. i think of austin when i listen to this song... not the austin i lived in though, but the austin of the achingly hip artist/musician/trendwhore. i saw flashes of this austin, but it wasn't the austin i lived in. my suffocating depression and social anxiety held me back, had me looking in from the outside. which ironically sucked because, it IS the quintessential outsider community. i should've belonged, but i didn't.