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.