Oscillator

La información y el circo de Wikileaks

2010-12-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks está chido, pero afrontémoslo, los secretos que se guardan los paises no es algo nuevo. Estratégicamente, es importante no hacer público todo lo que se hace o dice para poderse defender de los enemigos mejor y esto es una práctica que se hace desde que existen las formas gubernamentales, por más primitivas. En general, estos secretos se hacen, primeramente para que no lo sepan otros gobiernos.

Ahora Wikileaks ha publicado varios documentos para el uso de cualquier persona bajo un manto de igualdad, enfocada a que el público en general tiene derecho de conocer lo que sus gobiernos planean y su relación con otros paises. Por eso digo que está bien pero no son los únicos que se enteran de estos datos.

Que los hagan públicos no es simplemente "¡¡Conocimiento a la gente!!", no es una causa social ni un cambio de la modernindad donde la música, el cine y los libros son grátis. Esta situación implica un cambio geopolítico con posibles consecuencias bélicas; consecuencias culeras, no para los gobernantes ni los paises en sí, si no a la gente.

Ahora, son públicos estos conocimientos, ya no hay vuelta atrás ¿Qué pretenden hacer con esta información? ¿Nada más decir "nos los chingamos"? ¿Sentirse que le dimos en la madre al gobierno por una sensación juvenil de desprecio a la autoridad, como aventarle un globo de agua a un patrullero? "¡¡¡Pinche Calderon y Obama nos la pelan porque sabemos lo que ustedes no!!!" ¿Eso de qué les sirve? Si sirve para el bien de la gente, chingon, eso sería verdaderamente histórico, que se ocupen estos conocimientos en la vida real (admito, esa sensación de "nos los chingamos" se siente bien pero ¿Cuantos años tienen? ¿14? ¿Con eso se conforman?)

Para empezar ¿No piensan que hay otros documentos, mucho más cabrones, que los de Wikileaks ni idea tienen que existen? Neta que inocentes si lo piensan. Más allá, en el caso de México y otros países, no dijeron nada que no se pueda ver a simple vista, pero claro, la mayoría no lo ve; así que ¿En verdad que peligro existe? ¿Qué revolución?

Por otro lado, pienso que está muy mal que PayPal se haya desafanado de Wikileaks y que les hayan congelado las cuentas de banco. Si apoyan esta causa, no deberían tener broncas para no hacerlo, si alguien no está de acuerdo, pues simplemente que no done, pero esto solo despunta más el dramatismo de la situación, volviéndolo telenovela (abajo expando en esto). Como dijeron, ¿Puedes donar al KKK pero no a Wikileaks? (Por supuesto, PayPal está tomando una decisión de negocios así, y tienen el mismo derecho de negar su servicio que el de ustedes apoyar a Wikileaks).

En segunda ¿Están 100% seguros que los Wikileaks son totalmente verídicos? Porque ya parece circo de medios. Simplemente, les conviene a los gobiernos tener un chivo expiatorio por cualquier razón y Julian Assange dijo "YO!! YO QUIERO!!", aunque no hubiera sido su intención; sin embargo lo hace y se está regocijando en su papel de victima.

Digamos que los cables de Wikileaks son completamente verdaderos, la atención ya no es hacia lo que están dando a conocer; ahora va con Assange y su "causa". Ahora no es una cuestión de informar la verdad a la gente, es de libertad de expresión. Válido, pero no es el punto de Wikileaks, neutraliza cualquier poder e influencia a cambiar las cosas.

Ahora, existe la posibilidad que parte de la información no sea completamente verdadera (no al grado de que sea falsa, pero por lo menos desproporcionada), esto solo nos trae otro ejercicio más del "bueno contra el malo", donde el rebelde se enfrenta al gigante y se vuelve entretenimiento. Se vuelve la telenovela del noticiero y hace un daño más grande: El daño de la desinformación.

Por desgracia, la mayor parte de la gente seguirá viviendo su vida como si nada, el mundo permanecerá igual y la memoria de Wikileaks quedará como una efeméride más que tanto nos vale madres. Si hay un punto positivo, una verdadera revolución aquí, es saber como utilizar la información, al igual que no creerse todo lo que nos dicen. Se debe de informar uno, pero también crearse su propia opinión, cuestionarse y hacer algo al respecto, no nada más ponerle "Like" en Facebook, RT y ponerle estrellita de Favorito. No me refiero a armar una revolución, me refiero a aprender a tener criterio y, buscar como beneficiarnos de lo que sabemos y aprendemos, por más mínimo que se pueda.

El conocimiento es poder, pero si no se hace nada con él, es poder malgastado.

The Impact Of A Full Collapse

2009-01-26T21:21:00.000-08:00

They will never be a cool band, no matter what they do, they will never be seen as innovative artists and favorites.

A few years ago, there was not a band any more scorching in a sentimental way like Thursday, i say “a few years” but it might as well be a lifetime past, in another time and another place it almost seems; sure there were bands that were a lot more scorching with anger and regret (Saetia, Usurp Synapse) and more emotionally sad and desperate (Xiu Xiu for starters), but Thursday was something that was bigger, bolder and more earnest, something that made them both real and at the same time like the ol’ rock bands of yore, full of a mysticism and detachment. They were like few others.

Of course, that was a long time ago.

Thursday will always be the band that tries too hard, the band that are way too brash in their sentimentalism, too poetic in their lyrical approach and just over the top enough not to be considered cool; sometime in 2004 the band became immersed in a lot of pressure for being in a major label, and many of their members mentioned the possibility of breaking up. Then they released City By The Light Divided, an unabashed poppy rock album that chased for a hit single and easy listening, betraying their best assets, making them seem like a dumb band at long last. Not that many people didn’t consider Thursday dumb before, casting them as crybabies who just whinned and whinned through their music that wasn’t savvy enough to be considered truly punk and not arty and pretentious enough to be considered truly indie, people in both sides of the critical frame considered the band another emo bunch who got dumped by their girlfriends and decided to bitch all the way to the bank and Myspace. For the most part, it’s their loss, since their early output is worth at the very least an occasional listen.

If there was a band that underlined the word “post” in their sound, it’s definitely them; the guitar lines and fractured rhythms did reference hardcore but broke through it for grander pastures while they also retained another post, this one with the suffix “punk”, by namechecking “Ian Curtis” in a song and voicechecking Robert Smith in some of the more anguished tones by throater Geoff Rickly, with lyrics full of existentialist quotes and insufferable feelings; hardly anybody mentioned Thursday along with then emo stalwarts Dashboard Confessional or Saves The Day, since their music was more dissonant, more universal and mature.

One of the band’s best talents, it turned out, was the ability to craft well-thought out albums, to the point of almost seeming like concept albums; Full Collapse featured many songs that were not only labyrinth-esque in their arrangments, but also hard hitting and going for the heart. “Understanding In A Car Crash” has poetically charged lyrics, but also parts that make it both a fist pumping hardcore number and a sad narrative to be sung by yourself, at different moments in the same song; “I Am The Killer” screams for most of the song, and confesses that it still hides it’s face in the coming days. But it’s “Paris In Flames” that defines the band and it’s moment in time and space, about intolerance for a big chunk of the song but having a chorus that’s memorable for pointing that “we all sing these songs of separation...”, refering to fellow emotional hardcore and not so hardcore bands that treasured sincerity in their feelings (or faking that) as badges of honor and artistic proclamations; the band looked beyond it’s short comings, while still homaging At The Drive-In in a big way, and created some challenging yet very well written songs about more complex emotions than lost love and nostalgia.

One undeniable thing about them, though, is that they are of their time, reflecting their surroundings in a way that might seem a bit misplaced if heard today as new music by unexperienced ears; and it’s more evidently on their 2003 record, War All The Time, which reflects the time like few albums without addressing world events directly. While it’s easy to write it off a record that uses the backdrop of 9/11 and the wars in the middle east as more universal emotional fodder, that's hardly the case, as most songs don’t really talk about those events, only the opening lines, “Falling from the top floor, your lungs filled like parachutes, windows come rushing by. People inside are dressed for the funeral in black and white...” and the title track point to the sentiments of the people in the U.S., where pride is either needed to save yourself from drowning or enough to be put to sleep, listening to the lullaby. Elsewhere, Rickly uses the metaphor of being “Asleep In The Chapel” for fundamentalist religious thoughts of revenge, taken by both sides of combatants in the “war on terror”, leaving spirituality out of religion to use it as an excuse, and "Signals Over The Air" talks about attraction and seduction; musically, the band leaves their fondness for ATDI a bit to let themselves flourish in their own style, making each song different from one another yet stringing them together so they can complement each other.

Perhaps the problem with Thursday is that they are such an early ’00s band that it’s hard for them to get out of that time period; because now it’s 2009 and they are about to release Common Existance, which seems very confused to me, like they can’t fit anywhere because they don’t know who they want to be. Are they trying to sound like At The Drive In again? Do they want to do an AFI type song? Do they think they need to approach a sort of My Chemical Romance sound? Do they have to chase their audience? It seems like something really insecure from their part, trying on different things so the kids today can like them, instead of doing their own thing, documenting the way they try to relate to an ever collapsing world, but mostly what they achieve is demonstrating how low do you have to be to appreciate the real impact of a full collapse.

Richard Clayderman Is Not Dead/”The Life Of Repo Man Is Always Intense”

2009-01-25T21:20:00.001-08:00

I never in my life though i would be searching in Wikipedia for Richard Clayderman, the patron saint of every annoying bar pianist that dare give us the dullest and blandest versions of the most well known piano pieces in existance.

In an event that turned out to be an urban legend, it was said during the late 90’s that Mr. Clayderman was dead, unable to join Yanni and Kenny G to reap the fruits of supermarket music and yuppie poseuring stardom, which seemed quite odd and out of character for such an artist; then, it’s 2009 and lo and behold, i gaze at a giant billboard on top of a building announcing Mr. Clayderman’s show for February 14, Valentines Day. So i think a ghost will be playing for true and pretend lovebirds, one which takes all the soul out of the piano and gives us back a very well mannered corpse to consume.

And guess what else? The ghost’s name is not even Richard Fucking Clayderman, it’s Philippe Pagès; that doesn’t make him sound like a sensitive wrestler at all!!...by the way, stop acting as if Mickey Rourke just crawled out of his own grave, he was amazing as The Cook in Spun.

Not many people can really brag that they got their title as “Prince Of Romance” from Nancy Reagan, and i never thought RC fans really cared about original pressings and reissues, but thanks to Wiki-wiki-wild i know...isn’t technology great?!

But, to make this post worthwhile, let me tell you about Repo Man; weird, B movie-ish but surreal and at times incredibly hilarious and all around entertaining piece of cinema that you can watch over and over again, also quotable as fuck. Iggy sings the title song, the Circle Jerks play in a bar scene, polyesther suits and everything, a sort of loungy version of “When The Shit Hits The Fan” (and it’s the Earl Liberty & Chuck Biscuit lineup, no less!), dude from the Plugz scores the movie; fucking classic fun weird trip, and i looooooove it.

PS: Does Richard Clayderman have any album cover where he isn’t leaning over his piano and resting his elbow in it? He's like the Immortal of the new age shit, always on the cover of his own records.

Monosodic: Grevecht 3 (Fuzz On, 2008/Dec/26) Pt. II

2009-01-16T20:31:00.000-08:00

Monosodic: Grevecht 3 (Fuzz On, 2008/Dec/26)

2009-01-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

New On Kiddieriot

2009-01-13T22:51:00.000-08:00

KRR035: Robe. - Glacial cd-r
Drone that's dark, melancholic and envolving; inspired by the atmosphere generated by doom bands like Earth, Sunn O))), The Goslings and Asva, yet Robe. avoids distortion and chords mostly to concentrate on the ambience of real doom, of hopelessness.

Comes in half sized slim DVD case with insert (featuring a short story by Marcos Hassan) and discs are stenciled. Edition of 50.
Listen: http://www.last.fm/music/Robe./Glacial

KRR019: Rubbish - ¡Disturbio! cd-r
Frequency abuse, audio collages and harsh as shit noise blasts make up the over-an-hour material that is ¡Disturbio!; yet the way it's cut up and arranged, presents a very particular and quite annoying way of doing sounds that may cause even noise fanatics to turn it off before it's over.

Comes in half sized slim DVD case with insert and discs are stenciled. Edition of 50.
Listen to excerpts and downloads two tracks: (check label site soon for link, solving problem as i type)

KRR037: I/C/O/C - Hammer For My Riches cd-r
First I/C/O/C on KR since the label's first release, I/C/O/C returns with a hardened, merciless assault that's harsh yet trying different things throughout. At 40-plus minutes, one of the project's longest discs.

Comes in half sized slim DVD case and discs are stenciled. Edition of 50.
Listen to excerpts and download a track: http://www.last.fm/music/I%252FC%252FO% ... +My+Riches

PRICES:
MEXICO = $50 pesos mx each (postage paid)
U.S., CANADA & CENTRAL AMERICA = $7 u.s. dollars (postpaid)
EUROPE & SOUTH AMERICA = $8 u.s. dollars (postpaid)
REST OF THE WORLD = $9 u.s. dollars (postpaid)

PAYMENT FORMS: Paypal (bratboy1982[AT]hotmail[DOT]com), Cheques, Money Orders.

Write or PM for trades, wholesale prices and questions.

STILL AVAILABLE (very few copies left):
METEK - 31 cd-r
REVERSE MOUTH - Harsher Fist cd-r
BUZZARDHAWK - Observations Of Your Proportion 3" cd-r
HYBRID FREQUENCY - Transgression Of Human Dignity cd-r

DISTRO found at the KR Store:
*SLOW LISTENER - I Like The Idea Of People, I Just Don't Like People cd-r
*TERRORTANK - Filling Empty Spaces With Nothing CD-R
*ARMENIA - Diez Sangrantes Piezas Metafóricas CD-R
*I/C/O/C - Weesick EP cd-r
*AMNIOSIS - Amniosis 2xCD-R
*I/C/O/C & AMNIOSIS - Doppelganger c-60
*THE NEW PARALLELOGRAMMERS - Series Of Snakes CD-R
*VA - Beauty Of A Dead Dog C-60 (feat: VIKI, BAD PARTY, PISCIS, MONOSODIC, AMNIOSIS, LAPATENTEPENDIENTE, MARIO DE VEGA, and more)
*HYBRID FREQUENCY - Ñ [Hispano Hablante] CD-R
*HYBRID FREQUENCY - A Family Portrait CD-R
*HYBRID FREQUENCY - America: Land Of The Free CD-R
*HYBRID FREQUENCY & MAGGOTRIBE, split CD-R
*TIMBRE MARGINAL fanzine

For more info, Paypal buttons and more details about Distro:kiddieriot(AT)gmail(DOT)com or http://www.freewebs.com/kiddieriot

NEXT: Loopool, Scissor Shock/Bubblegum Octopus split cassette, RedSK, Towering Breaker, BBBlood, Arklight and more.

Soon On Kiddieriot

2009-01-12T22:59:00.001-08:00

Details coming.

Go Fuck Yourself David Keenan! And A Farewell To A Stooge

2009-01-06T21:38:00.000-08:00

Today i got an email from Amazon, a notice on an order i placed but hadn’t shipped yet; i thought “Finally!!! I can’t believe it’s actually coming my way now!!”. For a few seconds while the email opened, i was giddy with thoughts.

Turns out, giddiness can be a fleeting thing.

Upon reading the email i learned they had cancelled my order for David Keenan’s England's Hidden Reverse, the paperback edition of a biography of three of the most inspired and important bands coming from the industrial music revolution, namely Coil, Nurse With Wound and Current 93. The order was placed many months ago when a release date was set but then it disappeared, pushed back until even Amazon gave up on them.

The hardcover version, released some years ago, has been out of print for a long time and second hand copies demand quite a few hundreds of dollars.

Why? Why keep a book out of print? The fact that it’s sold on eBay and the like means there’s an audience for it, so why hold it?

But, considering the subject matter, i bet Mr. Keenan enjoys the fact that it’s out of print and commanding quite the pretty pennies, making his tome worthy of such rarities as C93’s Dogs Blood Rising (Mi-Mort tape version), an original pressing of Coil’s How To Destroy Angels 12” or one of the hand-drawned and signed copies of NWW’s Insect And Individual Silenced. If only...

Or are you a cunt like Julian Cope who, by letting his books become rarer, cultivates a bigger cult figure, subject matter or writing skills be damned? Gawd i hope not, what the world needs is less of the likes of him.

So Mr. “Most Everything I Review For The Wire Is Either Sub-Par Or A Work Of Genius”, release the motherfucking book!! i want to read about John Balance, Steven Stapleton, David Tibet and all the people and places they crossed paths with. Release the paperback edition because i can’t pay 200-or-so dollars for a hardcover version, not only because i don’t have that kind of money at the moment but because i don’t want to be disappointed by it and feeling like an idiot for spending so much on something i might not love.

And once i get my hand on a copy, you better not be a Simon Reynolds or a Julian Cope, i don’t want to read your pretentious opinions, i want to read about the music and the bands!

So, if you have something to do with the delay of your book, go fuck yourself David Keenan!

*********************************

Unrelatedly, Ron Asheton, guitar extraordinaire for not only the amazing Stooges but also collaborator of Destroy All Monsters among other projects, was found dead today.

It’s really sad because he was one of the very greats, the author of the imposibly-simple-yet-orgasmic riffs for “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or “TV Eye”, one of the noisiest and most steady rhythm players in rock (so much that, when the band reformed with James Williamson on guitar, Ron was relegated to bass and he was incredibly solid and forefronting in the sonic excess of the songs...in other words, he wouldn't let himself be in the back, you had to notice his sound and he locked himself up in the rhythm tight as fuck); his solos were wild, free and bluesy, stripping it of it’s past in the hands of black folk players but having as much sentiment; thousands of guitarists still try to blend the recklessness with tradition the way he did.

Sunday i saw a mini-doc about Iggy and also listened to Metallic K.O., not having the slightest idea that something was wrong; it’s a sad day for someone that might not have smeared peanut butter or slashed his chest onstage but delivered something as brutal and exciting as that from his guitar when standing onstage.

Go listen to The Stooges and Fun House like right now, any chance is as good to listen to those immortal records. Farewell Ron.

The 100 or so Best Albums Of 2007 As Enjoyed By Me

2008-12-22T21:45:00.000-08:00

100. Thurston Moore - Trees Outside The Academy
Acoustic over the top freak out rock from Sonic Youth icon.

99. Clockcleaner - Babylon Rules
Garage rock craziness and the best release on Load this year.

98. Religious Knives - Remains
Droning soundscapes from 2 Double Leopards and half of Mouthus.

97. Pig Destroyer - Phantom Limb
Thrash influenced fast grindcore, giving us one of their most dynamic releases.

96. Behemoth - The Apostasy
Experimental tones with unusual elements to their blackened death metal shit.

95. The Bark Haze - Total Joke Era
The Bark Haze
Free guitar improvs that defy expectations.

94. Eluvium - Copia
Ambient tones with just enough dramatic connotations.

93. Weedeater - Godluck And Goodspeed
Slow and filthy metal from these Eyehategod disciples.

92. Burning Star Core - Blood Lightning
Operator Dead...Post Abandoned
Total ambience from albums that experiment with mood and technology.

91. Destroyer Destroyer - Littered With Arrows
A hateful, fast moving and brutal promise.

90. Shellac - Excellent Italian Greyhound
Quieter and varied songs, some of which give more melody to their jerky angular guitar rock.

89. RTX - Western Xterminator
80's hair metal gets treatment from heroin noise heiress.

88. Job For A Cowboy - Genesis
Classic death metal yet with enough of their own take on the genre to make for a good album.

87. Carlos Giffoni - Arrogance
Overdriven synth tones for this reinvented noiser.

86. Orthodox - Gran Poder
Slow and brutally low ended, with unorganized drumming and flamenco-inspired vocals...i know it's 2006 but i had to include it.

85. Astral Social Club - Super Grease
Neon Pibroch
Ambient, droning and electronic from one of the best in the Brit scene.

84. Zozobra - Harmonic Tremors
Ex-Cave In members bring a heavy, sludgy album.

83. The Fall - Reformation Post TLC
Mark E. Smith embraces krautrock more than usual, and entertains the shit out of us.

82. Gallhammer - Ill Innocense
Mixing the crusty overtones of Amebix with the ugly yet far reaching metallic stomp of Celtic Frost, these japanese ladies give us a very charismatic album.

81. Antigama - Resonance
Eastern bloc grincore that's fast and technical and a good example of one of the biggest scenes in the world.

80. Pre - Epic Fits
Spazztic and rocking, girl singer screeches along the band's tight yet chaotic songwriting.

79. Armenia + Cornucopia - Un Infierno Total
Two giants of latinamerican noise collaborate and speaker hell ensues.

78. Jessica Rylan - Interior Design
The Artist Known As Can't takes a stab at sound artistry and results in one of her best releases.

77. 108 - A New Beat From A Dead Heart
One of hardcore's harshest bands returns with an incredibly solid album.

76. BBBlood - Experiment 50
Britain noiser delivering one of his finer releases.

75. Xiu Xiu Larsen - ¿Spicchiology?
Second chapter between both band's collaborations, more soundscapy than before.

74. Meat Puppets - Rise To Your Knees
Country punk's finest return with a calm psychedelic affair with long and really well written songs.

73. Death Ambient - Drunken Forest
Fred Frith, Ikue Mori, et al, improvise a downward, dark but envolving storm of mood music.

72. Battles - Mirrored
Mathy supergroup discover the art of the song and fight with it until both are one.

71. Astro - Astral Orange Sunshine
Galax - Never Ending Space Trackin'
Hiroshi Hasegawa uses his synth to conjure spacey calmness of black holes of pure horrible sound.

70. Watain - Sworn To The Dark
Black metal that stomps with pronounciation on the metal and deliver an album of dark hymns.

69. Prurient - Adam Tied To Stone
Dom Fernow gives way to harsh and ugly noise.

68. Bloody Panda - Pheromone
Combing the snail stomp of Khanate with the drama and melancholy of My Dying Bride, the structures and vocals remain in a land of experimentation while the songs deal with despair.

67. Jimmy Eat World - Chase This Light
Returning to their power pop sound of early in this decade, the band deliver heartfelt songs like only they know.

66. Rubbish - Vexanation, The Great American Outhouse
Awful and punishing, harsh noise that's different yet unforgivable.

65. Mayhem - Ordo Ad Chao
Attila returns to the band and his experimental streak rubs off Hellhammer, Necrobutcher and company for their best post-Euronymous album.

64. Taint - Sex Sick
Real life depravity and extreme frequency manipulation from veteran U.S. P.E.-er Keith Brewer.

63. Circle - Panic
Katapult
Sunburned Circle - The Blaze Game
Pharaoh Overlord - Live In Suomi Finland
Finland's rock alchemists and warriors, Panic gives way to synth explorations and heavy as shit rock, Katapult conjures up a mescaline-soaked Venom, while jamming with Sunburned Hand Of The Man makes them explore their mutual love for krautrock, giving more focus and magic to their improvisation; while side band P.O. starts a motorik rhythm and an hour later, they are destroying the p.a.

62. Boris With Michio Kurihara - Rainbow
The Tokyo Terrible Three roll back their sonic maelstrom, invite White Heaven/Cosmic Invention/Ghost guitar virtuoso of emotion and deliver one of their most daring releases.

61. Sigh - Hangman's Hymn
Thrash metal meets fast paced, pseudo-orchestral elements, reinventing themselves yet again.

60. Vibracathedral Orchestra - Wisdom Thunderbolt
Michael Flower and whoever else was around recorded yet again some of the most trascendental long notes of the year.

59. Silverchair - Young Modern
Van Dyke Parks returns to arrange the strings for Australia's underestimated pop-alchemists, this time extending his influences more to give Daniel Johns' songs a more whimsical feel, and it works.

58. Pan Sonic - Kathodivaihe
Still combining the early Industrial Records sensitivities in sound with IDM-approved beats, Kathodivaihe resonanted like few electronica albums.

57. Bongripper - Hippie Killer
Instrumental metal that's not pussy or a direct rip from Neurosis, not afraid to go to quiet, vulnerable places without sounding corny and playing slow, tuned down riffs like they mean business, noisy and fucked.

56. Darkthrone - F.O.A.D.
Ferniz and Nocturno put on their "Meat Is Murder"-scrawled leather jackets and deliver a love note from black metal to Discharge and the rest of the crust punk nation, with some of the bm's funniest songs, period.

55. Hentai Lacerator - Covered In Fun
40 songs in 14 minutes; fast, unrelentless and with full personality, more than grind, this is a nod to the Gerogerigegege from the gabber/breakcore/harsh noise heart.

54. Angels Of Light - We Are Him
Michael Gira brings his career full circle with these collection of mostly cyclical, repetitive songs, like the devastating dirges of early Swans going to heaven for salvation.

53. Heavy Winged - Feel Inside
A free jazz metal noise demolition course in three movements, few records were as crushing as this one.

52. Wold - Screeching Owl
Black metal without much use of quiet space, bringing guitar noise to a whole new level for these blastbeated nods to the dark.

51. James Blackshaw - The Cloud Of Knowing
American primitive guitar had no better exponent than Mr. Blackshaw, who strums and fingerpicks his 12-string guitar into worlds known and unknown.

50. Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO - Crystal Pyramid Rainbow In The Sky
Nam Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo
Crystal Pyramid... brings the band closer to Gong/Mahavishnu/Bitches Brew with sax explosions of netherworld journeys, Nam Myo... proclaims a new order of monks who vocalize themselves into nirvana.

49. The Angelic Process - Weighting Souls In Sand
Equal parts beautiful and brutal, the duo manage to give us their definitive statement of polar opposites.

48. Om - Pilgrimage
Al and Chris, before breaking one of metal's best rhythm sections, combine equal amounts of the heavy parts of their Variations On A Theme album with the quiter parts of the Conference Of Birds to give us probably the quintessential Om album.

47. Yellow Swans - At All Ends
Gabe and Pete wave goodbye with a psychedelic, free forming mutant sound that goes to electronic to punishing, ending their career in style.

46. Mammal - Lonesome Drifter
One of U.S. noise's best artists, Mammal returns from the drum machine explorations to giving us a more experimental work that succeeds in it's sum.

45. Zoroaster - Dog Magic
Painfully heavy, slow as fuck and violent in it's delivery, the long songs compromising Dog Magic deliver on the promise the band had made.

44. Kenji Siratori - Survival Mind
Prolific? Yes. Spotty? No doubt. Dada/Sci-Fi writer Siratori nonetheless has the ability to really bring a unique perspective to harsh noise when he wants to.

43. Benighted - Icon
Death metal that dares go where it usually doesn't dare to go, following up an incredibly tight album with one even more innovative is no small feat.

42. Boredoms - Super Roots 9
Eye and Yoshimi celebrate Christmas by playing with a full blown professional choir, resulting in music that's 100% Bore.

41. Sir Richard Bishop - While My Guitar Violently Bleeds
Former Sun City Girl Bishop let's his inner Django Reinhardt loose, as seen filtered through the murky, quirky and often scary worldview of the Sir with the undeniable guitar skills and originality of few.

40. Hild Sofie Tafjord - Kama
The quieter half of Fe-Mail demonstrate that she's not so quiet after all, giving us one of the harshest and most inventive noise releases of the year, via electronics and french horn.

39. Stars Of The Lid - And Their Refinement Of The Decline
Droning for 2 and a half hours and 6 sides of vinyl or so, SOTL reminds us of the bliss and fragility of sound.

38. Original Silence - The First Original Silence
Thurston Moore, Paal Nilssen-Love, Mats Gustaffson and members of Zu, among others, bring the skronk punk to free jazz for a much needed electrification the likes of Last Exit once did, giving their own take on it.

37. PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Polly Jean abbandons her guitar and sits on the piano, leaving her blues succubus self for her more delicate side to shine on one of her best albums.

36. Unsane - Visqueen
Noise metal legends return with a bluesier edge to regain their merciless sound.

35. Suishou No Fune - The Light Of Dark Night
Live testament of the dark, melancholic psych duo from Japan, mesmerizing onstage in a slightly different way than they do on record.

34. Baroness - Red Album
Country rock metal meets prog rock tendencies and amazingly well written, epic songs. More than heirs of Mastodon and/or Eyehategod, a whole other way to play Southern heavy shit.

33. Pita - A Bas La Culture Marchande
Peter Rehberg leaves his drum machine home mostly, and decides to explore more sides to his highly experimental and uncontrollable style.

32. Polysics - Karate House
Probably their most varied effort, fractured rhythms, pitch-shifted synth pop singalongs and the expected quirkiness make for a strong effort that makes you go from dancing to jumping to slamming in the most fun you probably could get from an album.

31. LSD Pond - LSD Pond
Alasehir - Sharing The Sacred
Alasehir - The Stone Sentinels
Alumbrados - A Generation Of Vipers
Baikal - Baikal
Bardo Pond as such didn't release anything this year, but these prove how great they are; their collaboration with Tokyo's LSD March gives them a way to quiet improvisation, at moments becoming something otherworldly, the Alasehir trio bring guitar psychedelic while the same line up, as Alumbrados, strip the rock out of it for something more abstract. Finally, Bardo becomes Baikal when they go without Isobel's woman touch for a heavy and fucked jam.

30. Wooden Shjips - Wooden Shjips
Garagey yet psychedelic in song context.

29. Trap Them - Sleepwell Deconstructor
Destructive extreme metal-infused hardcore that one-ups Converge's own excesses with something that approaches death metal brutal riffing and black metal's ultra bleak atmosphere.

28. To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie - The Patron
Quiet and melancholic, the songs on this lo-fi document are as pretty as music can get.

27. Múm - Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy
Their electro-soundscapes adorn songs that are well written and feel complete.

26. Hot Cross - Risk Survival
Screamo without the screaming, Hot Cross had a pedigree of screaming, mathy, Gravity Records-influenced hardcore; for their swan song, the band decides to stop screaming and use melody in unmelodic ways for a set of fulfilling experimental yet well rounded songs.

25. Smegma - 33 1/3
Veterans of noise and free rock or whatever, the band pays tribute to the vinyl album the way they know best, by playing their chaotic, quirky yet messy brand of sound with the occasional skewed garage rave up. Not a whole lot different from their old stuff, but in this case, it's a good thing.

24. Islaja - Ulual Yyy
Merja Kokkonen, a.k.a. Islaja, brings forth a delicate, folky and intimate collection of songs that, while not as out there as those by fellow countrymen Jan Anderzen or Keijo (after all, this is an album that ends in bird song), demonstrate that sentiment and delivery are still powerful tools.

23. Einstürzende Neubauten - Alles Wieder Offen
Almost thirty years after putting hammer to anvil and anguished screaming to jackhammer, the Collapsing New Buildings give way to a powerful yet quieter and well-composed sound, more satisfying than their last couple of long players and not as out there as their private releases, that completes their range of sounds and feels as well laboured as their power tools n' junk metal past.

22. Oxbow - The Narcotic Story
Apocalyptic cabaret rock, as exemplified by the Birthday Party and contemporaries The Jesus Lizard, comes full circle with Oxbow, whose use of decadent rhythms and dissonance comes forth to life via more acoustic instruments on their latest, demonstrating the power emanates from depravity, not distortion; and at the center of it all is Eugene Robinson, whose Bukowski in briefs lyrics and delivery stand second to few in this day and age, which is something much needed.

21. Bad Brains - Build A Nation
HR, Dr. Know, Daryl Jennifer and Earl Hudson reunite for a new album and did the impossible, they recorded a fast, heavy and incredibly inspired album that makes it the right sonic succesor to 1982's s/t a.k.a. as the ROIR Tape. After years and album after album of mediocre shit, the band returns to demonstrate they can still bring the kind of fast fucked up hardcore they originated. That this is their reunion album and first in 12 years, is an admirable feat.

20. Zelienople - His/Hers
Quiet, restrained, yet beautiful; words defy an album so complete.

19. Oren Ambarchi - In The Pendulum's Embrace
Between his formative years as a noise merchant from Australia, to his tenure as stalwart of the Touch label and, ultimately, to his adoption as drone metal's godfather with his darker and heavier releases, not to mention his association with Sunn O))) and Southern Lord, there's no telling what Oren Ambarchi might come up with after all. Pendulum embraces the wide eyed optimistic drones of his Touch releases like Grapes From The Estate but with a pronounced bottom that suggest darker things lurking beneath. Probably Oren's most definitive statement.

18. The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
Funeral brought the attention to Win Butler and company, and the hype surrounding their debut might be hard to follow in these hipper-than-thou ages, but the band has delivered an album twice as ambitious and profound as their previous one, with songs that can be hushed while others are celebrations of life with better arrangements and more feeling. They'll probably be remembered better for Funeral, but Neon Bible is the better record.

17. Wolves In The Throne Room - Two Hunters
Coming from the Northwestern backwoods, these three metalheads have adopted the deep in the ancient woods atmospherics of Scandinavian black metal and injected not only with some well deserved barbaric lumberjack sensitivity but otherwise real sensitivity coming from swirling guitars that give more dimension and complicated emotions than pessimism and misery often associated with bm. At times somber, at times hopeful and never letting itself up for a second, the four extra long tracks on Two Hunters show not only considerable growth since their debut LP but also that bm can be trve even if it steps away from it's usual sounds.

16. Lasse Marhaug - The Great Silence
Member of Jaz(z)kam(m)er, Testicle Hazard, Origami Replika, et al. serial collaborator of the stars and all around noise badass, Lasse Marhaug celebrated a big year, coming off from 2006's enormous Metal Music Machine and starting his new label with a (highly recommended) box set of his solo work released on tape in the 90's. Impecable credentials aside, Lasse's business is noise and he delivers it like few, making destructing wave after wave of frequency abuse but never getting purity get in the way of variety of experimentation, The Great Silence is anything but silent, exploring much of the opposite in a great way.

15. Li Jianhong - San Sheng Shi
China might not be the hot bed for fuck-my-head-in guitarists like Japan is, but as this album is any indication of it, it's has nothing to do with nationality; Jianhong, member of the hard as fuck noise jazz group D!O!D!O!D!, presents here a guitar only concert that takes the listener from familiar sounds to punishing and destructive, having us questioning if a guitar can possibly make that much of a racket. While it does remind one of the work of Les Ralizes Denudes' Mizutani, Keiji Haino and Jutok Kaneko, among others, Mr. Jianhong projects enough personality making his six string explorations sound like coming from no one but himself.

14. Alcest - Souvenir D'un Autre Monde
Coming as a side project from France's black metal scene, Alcest's sound bears more similarities to My Bloody Valentine than Deathspell Omega; while "shoegazer metal" isn't something exactly new (it's actually the sound of '07 probably), Souvenir... stands head and shoulders above most soundalikes by delivering more emotion and well written songs than sonic excess and it works to their favor. Many avant-metallers might have used dream pop sounds, but few, like Alcest, dared to dream and expose those dreams on wax.

13. Ghost - In Stormy Nights
Masaki Batoh and company give us one of their most pastoral releases under the name of his psych collective; while most of the album is devoted to psychedelic and folky sounds with some overreaching sentiments, the song "Hemicyclic Anthelion" balances all by being half as long as the album, as well as being introspective and darker than the other half, evenning all for a very complete listening experience.

12. Los Llamarada - The Exploding Now!
Monterrey, former 90's fertile ground for commercial rock here in Mexico, now gives us a bastard child that attempts to break on through audio; armed with the very rudimentary of instruments and recording equipment, Los Llamarada channel krautrock via The Fall and trascendental enlightment via punk rock's fuck everything except what we're doing; sound and band becomes one and, on the riff cycles played by them, lurks something big, scary and essential.

11. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam
For their latest act, the four acid-washed animals attempted to throw away their lenghty instrumental improvisations and folky singer-songwriter sensibilities, saving just enough writing skills and trippy instrumental experimentation to compose the best batch of pop songs they can, and come out of this act as a fresh, reinvented front without really changing. "For Reverend Green" celebrates something or another while "Fireworks" let's love rule; everywhere in between, the first true song oriented AnCo album presents us a party.

10. Municipal Waste - The Art Of Partying
Of course, if you aren't a fan of old Metallica, Exodus, Slayer, Anthrax, etc (not to mention D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies and the like crossover bands), it's very probable that this album might not sound like top ten material; but for us who still headbang to the old riffs of thrash metal, Municipal Waste played our song; a brash, uncompromising heavy n' fast songfest of vaguely metaphorical references to partying, and a soundtrack (by the way of the "Municipal Waste is gonna fuck-you-up!!" chant) to bashing the hard and heavy way.

9. Descartes A Kant - Paper Dolls
Coming off as the bastard child of Mr Bungle and Deerhoof, Guadalajara's multi-costumed ones didn't succeeded by being original (which they aren't) or by proving they can play many musical styles on the same song (which they can but, then again, others have done it better); the reason Paper Dolls is such an irresistable album is because they prove they can write memorable songs in ever-shifting sounds and still feel like they do what they like, in the styles that they like. While their influences show, most of the songs here are so fun and hard (although the lyrical content might not be as euphoric), one can't deny their skills as songwriters or the energetic delivery they perform them with.

8. Kousokuya - Echoes From Deep Underground
Ray Night 2006.10.18
Jutok Kaneko's passing left a hole within japanese psych no one will fill; and, more than an epitaph, these two concerts showcase Jutok's mastery not only in his instrument, but also as a band leader, guiding his bandmates over free passages, melancholic sections, heavy breaks and music that overall doesn't feel improvised as much as transmitted from somewhere deep in the soul and unto our ears. A testament to a great.

7. Sutcliffe Jügend - This Is The Truth
Power electronics, extreme industrial and harsh noise in general are having some sort of big appreciation period at the moment, as artist old and new are active and fighting for their limited edition runs to sell out first; and while most P.E. performers worships at the altar of Come Org/Broken Flag/Tesco, few really go beyond that altar in their executions. So leave it to these true pioneers and experts in extremism, Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor, to re-draw the map and attempt something else to make p.e. more powerful, by giving silence and whispering as much space as screaming and blasting. This Is The Truth might not become a quintessential document of noise, but it surely will be one of the few to blame for shifting perspectives within it.

6. Melt-Banana - Bambi's Dilemma
Continuing with their more song-oriented material, Melt-Ba decide to use their hyper-fast attack only where it counts on the main songs of this album, resulting in some of their most memorable in their whole career, while still have the balls to give us a whole section of sub-minute songs AND two synth blasting space truckers. Yako, Agata and Rika don't really change approach but evolve into something, making Bambi's not only the great record it is, but an invitation to expect something else whenever these genius chipmunks decide to drop a follow up.

5. Nadja - Radiance Of Shadows
Leah Buckareff and Aidan Baker have made good if not great albums before this one, but Radiance Of Shadows delivers everything the duo has been making since Nadja was a pseudonym for Baker's solo explorations: deep bass rumbling underneat, samples and effects giving wave after wave of light and long pieces that surround the listener with something beautiful yet terrifying that's difficult to put into words. On Radiance..., they deliver all this into some of their best written and arranged pieces to bring us probably their definitive and more rounded album, one whose emotional context is so tidal, one wonders how the speakers don't break to let all those sounds loose in the room.

4. Kemialliset Ystävät - Untitled
Jan Anderzen and associates have many releases, not only as KY but also in many nicknames and configurations, many of those being some of Finland's best avant-whatever artists and groups; still, for this Untitled album, Anderzen and co-conspirators use everything they are known for: random sounds, electric instruments, homemade sound generators, well arranged songs and improvisation to build one of the best, most psychedelic albums ever. Where nothing is what it seems, it could only mean that it invites for multiple listens to be transported somewhere else.

3. Neurosis - Given To The Rising
After wandering out into somber and less metallic regions with their last two albums, the mighty Neurosis probably would be expected to deliver another introspective collection of songs; that they did, but they also returned to playing their brand of heavy, punishing music. That a band can successfully retake their old, signature sound and progress into another with the accumulation of experiments and the atmosphere of their recent albums is something that is not seen everyday, especially when said album is as solid as Through Silver In Blood or Enemy Of The Sun, more than ten years apart, is something only Neurosis could have done.

2. Jesu - Conqueror
Justin Broadrick doesn't have to prove anything to anyone, his latest vehicule Jesu has already demonstrated that it can conjure up sounds both destructive and contemplative, often at the same time; instead of doing just another album of swirling, doomy guitars and face being snobbed over Nadja, Alcest, The Angelic Process, etc. Justin decides to use his sonic powers to perfect his songwriting skills (as left by the last Godflesh album) and give out way for pure emotion to flow through it all. Contemplating life by it's sorrow and it's ecstasy, a song like stand out "Transfigure" explores feeling like crap in such a way that by the time the first verse is repeated, it's more of a celebration instead of a lament, finding hope in loss being a contradiction worthy of the sound within Conqueror.

1. Rhys Chatham - A Crimson Grail (For 400 Electric Guitars)
The composer delivers to Paris a concert like no other could have been done; multi-guitar compositions are nothing new and Glenn Branca can tell you they can be limiting, so when Rhys Chatham, master minimalist, wrote a piece for 400 six stringers, one could only imagining another Guitar Trio or an Ascension Part II even; but, in fact, the sound ended up being something different. While i can only imagine how amazing it would have been to witness the performance live, the recorded version is something that shines on it's own and proves the power of the piece easier; when played at a low volume, A Crimson Grail becomes a meditative ambient piece of sublime and delicate detail, but when the volume is cranked, the weight of so much would and steel wires comes over you and you are crushed by it's intensity; in other words, this work is as ethereal, envolving and profound as any of the very best drone, instrumental/post rock or ambient albums and as pulverizing, dark and challenging as any of the top avant-metal, noise or heavy psych records released this year. A true work of art.

At What Point Is Too Available...Well...Too Available?

2008-12-18T22:43:00.000-08:00

Starting to write this, i feel like i'm 50 billionth...actually, being the person that reaches a round number makes it look like something special so no, i feel like i'm the 56 236 986 581 person to give this but i don't care, i need to say this.

The discussion is always there, the words always repeated; music is way too available to everybody in this day and age on the internet; want an album by a polka band from Russia? Get on Soulseek and you'll find thousands to choose from, Want a promo version of Kreator's next album? Just google it the right way and you'll score, Feeling like listening to Throbbing Gristle's pummeling TG24+ box set, or better yet to the infamous 50 disc behemoth that is the Merzbox? There's probably a well-seeded torrent to download from.

Yet all the geezers and the snobs point out regularly that having so much music made available to the public is making them cherish it less than back in the good ol' days when AIDS didn't ruin unsafe sex and skyscrappers were made of chocolate; everything is so disposable now, how can you love it?

I'll give it my take on all this.

I think it's bollocks that, if something's (relatively) easily available, then it's worthless; i've found many of my very favorite bands and artists, old and new, by downloading albums by them; if it wasn't for the internet, i probably would have never even hear about Loop since most of their shit is out of print, just to give you an example.

Back in the day (yes, i'm saying it with a straight face and can't believe it), if i wanted to check out a band i didn't know that was not on the radio in any form i had two options: a) i'd gamble my way in and buy the album in a store for literally 4 times de normal price (i live in a country where most albums i like aren't domestic) or b) i'd buy a pirate cassette copy of an album. Even buying a bootleg tape was difficult, you couldn't just waltz into a street corner and ask for the new Pavement joint, let alone, say, a Teengenerate record and forget it if you wanted to give Captain Beefheart a listen, it just didn't exist; locating a good pirate tape booth was difficult but not impossible, and once there, you had to make do with what they had; i remember getting an Earache sampler because it had TWO Brutal Truth songs and i desperately wanted Brutal Truth material to listen to, sure the tape also featured Godflesh, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Entombed and Cathedral, but i really didn't like any of them (except for Entombed), i was only interested in Brutal Truth and that's all i could get then (years after, i learned to appreciate and love the other 4 bands in the comp).

Another method was taping shit yourself; a friend had something that you absolutely wanted to hear for yourself, so you asked him/her to borrow the tape/cd and then you'd make your copy, or maybe he/she made the copy for you; i had to actually build a cable, literally build a cable (with help from my mom) to record from my Walkman to the house stereo because it wasn't a double deck thing, i also used to xerox the covers and then color them myself, no matter if it was actual photographs. The only Stone Temple Pilots album i own in my tape collections is a very cartoonesque colored copy of Purple, while my Danzig's 4 booklet has the side lid completely drawn by my unsteady, 13-year old hand and is so black, you can't make of any of the printed lyrics...none more black indeed.

So, you'd think downloading has solved any of our harebrained schemes to actually listen to music that probably might make us orgasm to sleep at night and fuel our dreams in pursuit of everything's that amazing in life for us...but it hasn't. For many many people, downloading an album can be as tricky as freestyle rapping in french with only a beginners lesson under your belt; it's fucking unbelievable but people CAN'T GOOGLE, either they can't type and haven't even looked at how they spell their beloved band's name or they get lazy when looking at 500+ results and the first page of results don't have any direct links (refining a search is an alien concept to these people, it seems). Worse of all, people think they are entitled to have the album they are looking for for free, getting hostile over people and calling them "dix" and "azzzholez" because they dare make their lazy, cheap ass selves look harder for the mp3s they can probably easily buy.

I download a lot, a whole fucking lot in fact, but that doesn't affect my listening experience or my excitement over music; in fact, in a lot of circumstances, i have to look hard and suffer for my downloading. I listen to a lot of noise, improv, drone and such, shit that is released in micro-editions by closet labels that go out of print in seconds; sometimes i look for a release for weeks, and once i find it, i sometimes have to wait forever for it to download completely, not to mention many of these releases are done on tape and vinyl, which makes it not more difficult but a lot more tiring for the kind person who rips the material and uploads for the people; a few months ago, i struggled to find a clip of about 3 minutes of Jason Zeh's music that hardly represents his work, but it had to do to show someone more or less what he did. Currently, it's probably going to take me months to download every disc of SPK's box Vinyl On Demand put out this year, but you bet it will be sweet to finally listen to it once everything's in my hard drive, just as it was sweet to listen to the 10-disc Improvised Music From Japan box i downloaded a few months back, and that didn't take much effort to download, relatively speaking.

So, music is music, more people are listening to it and more people who are predisposed to not really care about it will not care about much, but they'll listen to it; for us who really live for this, things don't change, whether you're awaiting patiently for your mailorder or being queued to download all of Whitehouse's original Aktions, the moment those notes that really mean something to you will sound as sweet as they need to be, the morans and freeloaders be damned.

She's Like A Black Rainbow

2008-11-26T21:32:00.000-08:00

Dead Luke
Box Set
Sacred Bones
OOOo

Gothic-y vocals and notes swarm around a cushony bed of electronics that are sorta dancy and fun; sounds like something that might not be that seemless, but it is, thanks to the overall rhythms that march on a deathrock roll. Very simplistic but it does the trick, like Crystal Castles wanting to play Christian Death’s Only Theater Of Pain and chuffing away all their filler material. A clear highlight is their appropiation of a Rolling Stones classic, converting it to “Jumping Jack Flash Drive”, dressed in bleeping synths and macabre vocal tones. The songs flow somwhere between goth rocking fare and more extended dancy, electronica numbers, mostly on the same songs, flowing in and out of each style, which is interesting and does for good grim dancefloor fodder; but it’s hardly super innovative shit. Tons of fun and danceable.

Dead Luke - Untitled.mp3

The First Star I See...

2008-11-24T20:35:00.000-08:00

Originally, i wanted to write about Jimmy Eat World in general but, seeing as next year will mark the tenth anniversary of this album, i thought i would write more specifically about it; either way, most of the points don’t change if the subject of band and album are traded.

I encountered Jimmy Eat World in the late 90’s, while investigating on the sounds of the then-intriguing tag of “emo” that no one liked and is way more hated today; still, i didn’t listen to Jimmy until the early ‘00s when i downloaded two songs, “Opener” and the demo of “If You Don’t, Don’t” from the then forthcoming Bleed American album. I related to both songs and liked them.

Clarity, i found later on, while investigating further into the band’s career; funny enough, i don’t remember the first time i listened to it, i remember not thinking or feeling anything afterwards, which is odd. Now, it figures as one of my favorite albums ever, not because it’s groundbreaking musically (which isn’t, really) or lyrically, but it’s a collection of songs that are so well arranged, sequenced and played that, most importantly in my book, i can relate and makes me feel something (which is something that happens with most of my favorite albums, no matter if it’s Bardo Pond’s Lapsed, Boredoms’ Super AE, Wigrid’s Die Asche Eines Lebens or Merzbow’s Venereology).

The songs are all delivered with such sincerity without too much vagueness or too much specification, the music and imagery is balanced in such a way that they evoke something personal to you, while making you sing along to their songs; it’s a great album to wallow in your own misery or to scream along in excitement.

One of my favorite parts of the album is the continuity throughout, especially during the first part; “Believe In What You Want” could be a new section for “Your New Aesthetic” while “Crush”’s verse vocal melody is not that different from some found on the previous song, “A Sunday”, to the point where “Crush” seems like a more aggressive coda to the other song. Another thing that strikes me about this album is the use of strings that is so common to disposable pop these days, but it doesn’t sound cheap or corny, sounds like something that fills the sound, gives it something extra it might lack.

The rocking parts are passionate and loud, the quiet parts are melancholic and earnest, but nothing is what it seems; the aforementioned “Crush” might sound violent (by their standards) but it’s actually an euphoric number about feeling good and happy, while the sadder “A Sunday” talks about losing someone over bad decisions and drugs. Of course, the choruses of “Like a breath” and “As the haze clears from your eyes, on a sunday” might have a different interpretation for every listener, and that’s part of this album’s greatness, in a big way.

Undeniably, there’s a centerpiece in this album in the form of “Just Watch The Fireworks”, a song that begins fairly straight, both lyrically and musically, with arpeggios adorning the verses, a simple drum beat propelling the song and the lyrics all describing...well...watching fireworks, a promise of seeing them again with “you”; strings enter the picture but they are fairly unintrusive, as they have been on the album so far; the real meat of the song, comes on the bridge when Jim Adkins “said said said out loud over and over”, while the strings add to the song without making it a dumb power ballad moment, just giving the music enough strenght without relying on distortion to give it a more noble feeling, one which is reflected on the part where Jim sings after the aforementioned “loud over and over” part that he’ll “stop now, just enough so i can hear you; i’ll stay up as long as it takes” It turns the lyrics from a lonely person’s lament on missing an actual human into someone that might not be with us anymore, it comes from something completely specific (wishing a certain someone was watching the fireworks with you) to something more ambiguous, stopping now to hear a person there or someone in your memory? The way the rest of the song unfolds, it becomes both an emotional confession and a chant of celebration, “as long as it takes” is both a lament of sorrow to hold onto someone and a shout out of happiness to, somehow untangibly, be with that person and share the moment the fireworks go off. It’s not bittersweet, it’s bitter (or more like sad) and sweet.

My favorite line in the whole album is “The first star i see, may not be, a star”, a song that probably means the most to me now right now, “For Me This Is Heaven” contains some of the band’s most ambitious music compressed into a palatable song format, while it asks big questions for small people, it talks about the end of the time we have now, about how if he doesn’t let himself be happy, then when? And about still feeling the butterflies AND the last goodbye. Is this really heaven? Is it “the comfort of being sad” or is it about still feeling a sublime way about times gone and cherishing them, since we don’t know when our time will end? While i ask myself these questions (after all, i don’t care if it’s about something specific to Jim or anybody in the band; the song is about stuff i relate, that’s why they are important to me), i can’t stop feeling like there’s no need to answer these questions because i already feel what it is about. Whenever i listen to this song, i feel like it’s not only something i know and understand, but something about me.

I love all the songs in this album, but “Goodbye Sky Harbour” has a special place for me, because it proves how great artists Jimmy Eat World are; lyrically, it’s the shortest song on the album but musically, it’s the longest; the lyrics are far from under-realized, they are in fact, as good and expressive as the rest of the album, relying in simplier images and more ambiguity. The music continues with the rockier, Dischord-like angularity the mightier side of Clarity possess, but soon leaves it away for an odd timed, layered and repetitive instrumental, recalling a bit of Slint, Tortoise, Tristeza and early Mogwai, after which Jim adds layer after layer of non-wordly vocals, accumulating a big mass of them, with the band leaving and an IDM piece takes over, a track of dancey yet challenging electronica noodling that reminds of Autechre and the gentler side of Aphex Twin. An epic finish for an epic album.

This album is a very personal thing for me, i can't think about objectively much, but i guess it could be that way for everyone who likes it, by design. There's something oddly melancholic and warm about their songs, especially here, that makes it feel like something to play on a gloomy day during your teenage years, or whenever you think about someone you're not with, for a reason or another; perhaps if you turn the volume down for a bit, perhaps you'll hear her/him with you, perhaps all it takes to hear her/him is listening to these songs.

===============================================

Jimmy Eat World - Lucky Denver Mint.mp3
Jimmy Eat World - Crush.mp3
Jimmy Eat World - For Me This Is Heaven (live at La Scala, London 2002).mp3
Jimmy Eat World - Goodbye Sky Harbour (live al La Scala, London 2002).mp3

===============================================

Millions Now Living Will Feel Like Singing Along

2008-11-20T20:59:00.000-08:00

Windsor For The Derby
How We Lost
Secrectly Canadian
OOO

Shoegazer indie pop has been all the rage for the past couple of years on semi-underground circles, but what about indie pop with tendencies towards atmospheric instrumental music? Sure, there’s tons of Mogwai lites everywhere, but they are hardly the stuff to sing along, is it? While Windsor For Derby’s music is obviously ambicious instrumentally, it’s not mathy enough to gain comparisons to Unwound and their ilk, and not minimalistic enough to gather some pompous name or place in the “heady, easily liked hipster headphone buzzer” category. Windsor remind me at their most profound of bands like Tortoise, Seefeel and the Kranky roster yet they are not afraid to have melodic vocals that make you sing along but are restrained enough to be cool about it, which isn’t that surprising considering they have released albums on both Trance Syndicate and Young God. The band also has the bravery to include a bunch of simplier, catchier and rockier songs to make you want to dance or jump or something in between; how to balance such desperate camps of direct reaction songwriting with the more cerebral stuff? Take a page from Stereolab’s approach, of course, making it fun and using a few tricks learned from Neu! albums; and, while the stuff is hardly as awesome as the ‘lab’s own material, and you can hear a sort of schism going around between the two camps of songs, write songs well enough not to give them such a hard time about it. More than anything, a fun, harmless listen.

Windsor For The Derby - Maladies.mp3
Windsor For The Derby - Good Things.mp3

Who Watches Them Indeed

2008-11-20T20:30:00.000-08:00

Here's the trailer for the Watchmen movie:

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/watchmen/

I think it looks promising, especially since i thought 300 looked like crap and it's the same director and all, still this one looks like it could be a great movie, aside from some details. I'm also not sure if, since i know and love the story already, there's some sort of bias of my part towards this trailer; anyway, i do think it's good.

I read the graphic novel a few months ago and instantly turned me into a comic book fan, it's completely mindblowing; the story is amazing and merciless.

In fact, i was going to be Rorschach for Halloween, but didn't pan out.

Cathedral Of Devastating Wait

2008-11-17T21:35:00.000-08:00

Sunn O)))
Dømkirke
Southern Lord
OOOO

It must be scary for the Grimmrobed ones to dare give a master to a pressing plant, or so is the way they are acting; after the almost unanimous acclaim they received for 2005´s (yes, three years ago, kids) Black One, attempting a new album that’s not twice as mindblowing would be considered shit in the eyes of the all knowing, all seeing dronefanhood, so they keep releasing stop gap records while they can. While last year’s Oracle was patchy at best, this year’s Dømkirke is a bit more flourished and developed, continuing to experiment with the drone metal formula borrowed from Earth but adding and substracting many elements, their m.o. for most of their career; opening with a grand organ dirge accompanied by Mayhem’s Attila Csihar’s pseudo-gregorian vocalizations, the band (playing here inside a massive Norwegian cathedral) goes to familiar, if quieter ground on the second side of the offering, with a trombone adding colour to the sustained guitar chords (yep, they have been listening to Robe.) while Attila and the organ re-enter the picture around halfway through. Side three, meanwhile continues with a little calmness over more sustained notes and feedback tones (and some sound processing thanks to noise wizard Lasse Marhaug) to scale into a murkier patch of sound that continues to the next side, letting go only to find Attila calming everything with his humming voice accompanied just by the organ to lull the visitors into it’s drone. With a journey that ebbs and flows like this, i’m not sure if it’s good or bad that Sunn O))) keep pushing expectations for their next studio album, considering the high quality of material like this

Sunn O))) - Cannon.mp3

"I Said 'Em-E-Aitch'"

2008-11-17T21:02:00.000-08:00

So big fucking news, "meh", the popular demi-word that expresses apathetic reaction to situations or exclamations, is already a word by itself.

I can't remember but perhaps there was a time when including a word on the dictionary was something relevant and even exciting to some; on the pre-internet ages, language, no matter what language, was something completely serious and erudite even, learning the correct uses and spellings of words was a matter that separated the boys from the men, the men from the animals and so on; it was something very strict and even pompous to many. Now, and this has to do with my first reaction to this "news" item, nobody gives a crap about language, as long as a word is accepted massively, it's not only well viewed but also accepted. This is the case with "meh".

I'm not here to preach about the days of old (the ones i wasn't yet born to have witnessed) or to say how shitty people speak and write today, but rather about how easy it is for words to become not only part of our daily lives but also part of our sciences and practices. Like i said, i can't remember when and if it was actual news that a word got included in the dictionary, but it seems now that if a TV character or an internet fad (that may be taken by a TV character later on) gives us a misspelled, misappropiated or plainly a brand new vocalization of a sense or emotion into a word, then a year or two later it's in the dictionary. Why? Is this really progress? Is it the way to go?

On the one hand, words are nothing other than things that allow us to communicate with one another in the easiest way possible, if by using a word we explain ourselves better, be it gramatically correct or not or existant even, then it's probably a good thing; and if many people use the word (with, exponentially, more people receiving and using said word) and you can universally express something with less effort, then that's the use of language in itself, right there.

On the other hand, this reeks of catering to the masses, having a dictionary being sold with words the common man can digest and understand, that he/she can relate because he uses them on a regular basis. "New Improve DICTIONARY!!! Now, with 'Meh' and many other of your favorite words!!! Only $19.99". I'm not saying this is something of grave offense or anything, but not because something is popular means it's something good.

I think words, mostly, are irrelevant to communication; as long as the message is clear, words, grammar and all that can take a back seat. But ignorance is bad and can be very dangerous, and giving license to be ignorant to people is just not right. As i said, communication should be clear.

I use 'meh' a lot, but i think the power of the word (a very strong power, might i add) has been losing itself; i'm not sure if it's good or bad, that remains to be seen (although, if less people have the power of using words, then it's possible that the few who still know the art and use of it might use them to their own advantages and get better results). All i know is that the addition of words to the dictionary is nothing to get excited about anymore; or, simply put, M-E-H.

Selling Out A Heart Full Of Soul

2008-11-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

The Yardbirds, or so do the almighty critics tell us, was the band that gave us the talent of some of the first guitar “virtuosos” in rock music, spawning no less than Eric Clapton (he of Cream, Derek and The Dominos and solo fame), Jeff Beck (he of...uh, the Jeff Beck Group fame and the main inspiration for Spinal Tap’s Nigel Tufnel) and Jimmy Page (he of Led Zeppelin fame). Yet they are wrong if they think that’s all the Yardbirds were about.

Just listening to their music you get a feeling of exhilaration that few bands from that era gave, they possessed a sense of desperation and energy that made you smash your head to the wall or dance like a lunatic; sure, they had a very refined perfection to their playing but that counts for squat if it wasn’t for the way they played, like they meant it and with everything they had. No wonder most garage took upon their sound and it wasn’t until the slash-and-burn excesses of Blue Cheer, the Stooges and the MC5 that those levels of energy were exceded.

Not only were the guitar players excellent in this band, they were all a classic case of the “sum is better than the individual parts” that most great bands have; one of their greatest achievements was the so called rave up part of their songs, a section where they would concentrate into playing harder and more intense until the sound exploded just to go back to where they left off and finish the song (almost 30 years before Daydream Nation), Keith Relf sang with such bravado and intensity but hardly ever letting his voice get out of control, he was not just making the blues standards they used to cover jump, he made them scream! I call bollocks on the reason why Clapton left the Yardbirds, he wasn’t offended by them abandoning their purist roots since they would inject those pure blues numbers with so much adrenaline that they turned them into something else, something that was almost beyond rock back then, something original and all their fucking own.

But yes, the Yardbirds sold out.

Clapton, then nicknamed “Slow Hand” and a little later being the subject of many a “Eric Clapton Is God” graffittis, quit the band as they hit the charts with “For Your Love”. The reason i think Clapton quit is because of this song, namely a) the song’s lead instrument is not the guitar and b) it was a smash hit, unlike all the blues songs Clapton favored; but “For Your Love” is anything but a poppy bland attempt at mass comercial success; in fact, it’s one of the best damn songs to ever be recorded in this Earth; seriously, from the first chords of the harpsichord to the backing vocals to Relf’s delivery to the impossibly heavy breakdown in the middle to the grand last chorus, it retained the rave up quality of their blues adaptations but did it in a picture perfect song format.

Replacing Clapton wasn’t hard, since he recommended a friend of his, Jimmy Page who was then, a studio session player who enjoyed his job and had good pay so he preferred not to join them, instead telling them about his friend Jeff Beck, who had played in minor garage bands in which he experimented with feedback, noise and distortion, something that expanded the band’s sonic palette tenfold coupled with their new found song oriented material, gave the world such blazing recordings such as “Shape Of Things”, “You’re a Better Man Than I” and “Heart Full Of Soul” (the later’s riff originally intended to be played by a sitar), as well as more blues versions like the absolute expressway to their skulls climax of “I’m A Man” that always gives me the chills.

Bassist Paul Samwell-Smith left the band some time after, giving them an opportunity to invite Page again to the band, with the extremely underrated talents of Chris Dreja leaving the rhythm guitar for the four string to have room for Jeff and Jimmy to really let loose. Problem was, there was almost no time since Beck fell sick and was soon after being falsely diagnosed, he was fired while on the road, ending a truly magical era of music when rumours would fly about him slashing his speakers or loosening the tubes in his amp to get his distortion and when bands, sometimes spearheaded by the very own Yardbirds, would experiment with raga forms or gregorian chants.

The band went on to have minor hits with Page but they mostly exploited their experimental side, extending their songs and obliterating them to noise onstage, using the studio as an instrument and not caring about the results or having fear; Jimmy introduced the band to his freak folkish song “White Summer” and the prog noise metal of “Dazed & Confused”, developed by Relf and the rest of the band, although they wouldn’t last very long after.

Today i listen to this band with immortal melodies, daring ideas and incredibly exciting executions and i wonder about what would it have been to be around when they were around and perhaps watching them live with anyone of their brilliant lineups. Often, people look at me funny when i talk about Clapton and Beck and Page and assure them i positively despise Cream, don’t feel like listening to Led Zeppelin most of the time or that i’m not terribly excited to look into the instrumental work of Beck, rather i refer to their early to mid-60’s selves, as much as Bob Dylan felt old newspapers were more relevant in the sixties than the rags of the day; those were the days when a simple blues standard could make you want to slamdance before you could even think about stuff like that, it was music that makes you feel alive over under sideways down, i’m not sure if then but i’m completely positive that they do now, to me at the very least, with a sip of muddy waters, a fuzzed out sitar line and a heartful of soul to make me feel alive.

=====================================================

The Yardbirds - Too Much Monkey Business (Five Live Yardbirds).mp3
The Yardbirds - For Your Love.mp3
The Yardbirds - Heart Full Of Soul.mp3
The Yardbirds - The Train Kept A-Rollin'.mp3
The Yardbirds - I'm A Man (live 1968-Mar-30 Anderson Theater, NYC).mp3
The Yardbirds - Jeff's Boogie.mp3
The Yardbirds - Over Under Sideways Down (live 1968-Mar-30 Anderson Theater, NYC).mp3
The Yardbirds - Happening Ten Years Time Ago.mp3

======================================================

Gevecht #2

2008-10-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

Denied

2008-09-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

The Toluca gig got cancelled because of an issue not concerning the bands. Monosodic apologizes to everyone who was going to the gig and we hope to play Toluca some time soon.

Linsay Lohan Is Gay and Some Real News

2008-09-25T10:15:00.000-07:00

Like most current celebrities, i don't find Lindsay Lohan attractive; she's mildly interesting though.

Now, something that's real news (she's a lesbian? NO SHIT!!!); here's a new track by Monosodic that will be part of the GNO EP which, in case you haven't heard, will be released in three separate installments (two as part of netlabel compilations) with an extra song appearing on an other compilation; all the song titles are inspired by Miley Cyrus. Here's the first song from the set available for everyone to listen:

Monosodic - In The Shower With Her Clothes On.mp3 (right click-Save as)

This Month's Nocturna

2008-09-24T15:49:00.000-07:00

I wrote articles about Acid Mothers Temple and Cannabis Corpse (Municipal Waste member's death metal side project, in case you don't know) for this issue.

There's tons more that's worth reading (if you can read spanish), you can find out about that here: www.myspace.com/revista_nocturna

Monosodic Thingy October

2008-09-23T00:04:00.000-07:00

Friday October 10.
El Área Chica.
Villada and Gomez Farías
Centro, Toluca

Monosodic (DF): www.myspace.com/monosodic
Blindaje (Morelia): www.myspace.com/blindaje
Onirismo Automata (DF): www.myspace.com/onorismoautomata
Familia Eskeleto: www.myspace.com/familia_eskeleto

Presale: $35

Don't Go Away Mad, Gerard Cosloy

2008-09-22T22:44:00.000-07:00

So the other day at the Sonic Youth Message Board, the discussion of the band signing to Matador started; now, i'm not really for or against any label, but i'm not into label worship or (undeserving) label hatred; that is, i don't love or hate labels, i like and dislike bands left and right, plus there's good years for any label and years that are not that good. People who automatically are into an artist because they are signed to a certain label seems myopic to me and it's something that gets on my nerves.

After someone pointed out that the label had released stuff by Cat Power, Bardo Pond, Cornelius, Guitar Wolf, Guided By Voices, Mission Of Burma, Pavement and Pussy Galore among others (pretty much all of which i agree are most excellent, i would also add Yo La Tengo and Belle & Sebastian), not to mention all the distro they do for smaller and/or international labels; i made the following remark:

Yeah, but they also have Love Of Diagrams, Lavender Diamond (granted, they only had an amazing EP i love dearly but the full lenght was awful), Mogwai who have gone pretty much downhill in my opinion since Rock Action, Brightback Smelly Hippie or whatever they're called, the New Pornographers, and i mean bands who are active.

The only one right now you mentioned that's still in the label is Cat Power (*of course, then i forgot to mention YLT, B&S, as well as Times New Viking).

Fuckers also dropped Bardo Pond (They didn't sell records, eh? NO SHIT!! You should have known that ever since you first listened to them!).

Anyhoo, independently of my personal feelings towards Matador, no label is god. Matador, Geffen, same shit for Sonic Youth.

(And don't get me the 'creative freedom' thing, Thurston is just goofing around as always...having released A Thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts & Flowers and Murray Street on a major is pretty much the most freedom any band has enjoyed in a major since the 70's).

Now, this item was brought to my attention recently, and so to pinpoint it's relevance, i'll quote the part that concerns us:

We’ve been chit-chatting for a while now about adding a feature to the Matablog specifically devoted to a former Matador band and/or old moment from the label’s history, and such a move is long overdue. It just so happens this notion came up again a day or two after some rocket scientist posted on the Sonic Youth.com message board that Matador was a big heap o’ crud because we “dropped Bardo Pond.” Listen pal, unless your name is Darren Mock or Barry Hogan, you can fuck off. We put out 4 Bardo Pond albums and did the very best we could. Seriously, the web is Blame The Label Central. How about blaming some of the fans who aren’t interesting, attractive, charismatic or funny enough to get anyone to check out their favorite bands?*
...
(* - we do genuinely believe the majority of Matador record buyers are extremely interesting, attractive, charismatic and funny. Especially when they are giving us money. Even when they’re griping on message boards)

I never said that Matador was a crap label and that Sonic Youth shouldn’t sign with them, nor did i ever said that the big meanie label was destroying artists; that’s besides the point even.

Any full time label does decisions, good and bad, for it’s own sake of business survival, that’s a fact; that’s why, to the eyes of artists and fans, sometimes they make “bad choices” we don’t agree with, and there’s periods when rosters change and staff gets drafted and the label gets re-structured, and some feel the “sound” of said label is lost or that the quality of the bands has dropped (all relative as taste is personal), that’s why no label is perfect. Not SST, not Atlantic, not Motown, not Drag City.

Labels bring the business side to the music, they are the ones putting the money to produce the records and they are the ones who take them to the shops (or to another company that takes them to the shops); a label isn’t a creative entity by nature unless they actually participate in the creative process of the writing and recording of the sound material and, more often than not, when the label actually gets their hands in the way of this process, the results are bad. A label head could be an artist, but then he’s being creative as an artist, not as a label; artwork and graphic design is also not a function of the label but a part of it.

I’m not decrying “sellout” or indie/punk purity, labels have a very important purpose and, yes, it has to do with money, which is a good thing when done right. Yet labels aren’t to be followed or admired just as bands since they are a mean and not an end, that’s why i think label worship is stupid. I might admire the conviction of a label (Crass, Industrial and Dischord, to name a few), their business strategies and their rosters, but never to the point of buying a shirt or favour them over a band since it’s not a creative entity giving us feelings and sounds like artists do; labels are the way in which we receive those feelings and sounds.

Trying to do “the very best you could” to “help” Bardo Pond (or any band like that) is a defeating point for an independent label, since the whole point of independent and underground music is about having a way other than that of big business and mass culture. Artists like that are made to stay underground since they are not built for everyone to like; if not, i’m sure Bardo would be playing something more palatable and not long psychedelic dirges. There’s, of course, other artists who are playing music that can be liked by more people if they get a fair push, like you know quite well having Interpol, The New Pornographers and Cat Power on your label, to name a few. Making a band “as big as Interpol” isn’t the only meaning of “success” (by the way, why are you referring to Bardo Pond in past tense?).

So, i want to clarify:

1) I don't think Matador is "a big heap o’ crud", i also don't believe it is the absolute paradise of labels; no label is either, at least not forever if it's a real label and not a one-off part time operation or a boutique kind of deal.

2) Concerning Bardo Pond, it was great that you released four albums by them and backed them all the while they were on the label; my point was, they are not a radio band, not a singles band, not a band that sells tons of records; they weren't when you signed them and they didn't become one by their fourth album with you, you should have realized that. I (myself personally) think that a band like BP are more a band that has their fans who support them but won't become the next big indie craze leaders; i feel like Bardo Pond benefits from a label that supports them while not expecting sky-rocketing sales. Of course, businesswise, that might not have been possible and some decisions had to be made.

Gerard, while you invited me to "fuck off"; i, in turn, would like to interview you so you can explain to me and others how you have handled two very successful labels (i write for about four music publications here in Mexico plus another one from the UK, i'm sure any of them would be delighted to print the interview). You can contact me by sending me a private message through the SY Board if you like to or through here.

Sincerely,

Marcos Hassan.

Radio Oscillator #16

2008-09-17T18:50:00.000-07:00

01. Motörhead - Rock Out
02. Thank You - Embryo Imbroglio
03. Tsuyama Atsushi - Rock N' Roll White House
04. Sonny Sharrock - Blind Willie
05. Vivian Girls - Going Insane
06. Carcass - Cadaveric Encubator Of Endoparasites (Peel Session)
07. Original Silence - A Sweeping Parade Of Optimism - Blood Streak (excerpt)
08. Gal Costa - Cinema Olympia
09. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See A Darkness
10. Usurp Synapse - When Good Pets Go Bad
11. Hank Williams - Your Cheatin' Heart
12. U.S. Girls - Mutate Machine
13. Nachtmystium - Your True Enemy
14. Ice Cube - Endangered Species (Tales From The Darkside) [Remix]
15. Los Llamarada - The Very Next Moment
16. Keith Fullerton Whitman - 21:30 For Acoustic Guitar, Part 2 (excerpt)
17. Mad River - Amphetamine Gazelle
18. Upsidedown Cross - Batallion Of Rats
19. Growing - Lens Around
20. Joy Division - She's Lost Control (Peel Session)

Download, subscribe, etc: http://oscillator.podomatic.com/ or on the player to your right.

Onscreen Autopsies And A Packed Meatlocker

2008-09-17T18:32:00.000-07:00

Gig Review:
Carcass
September 16
Circo Volador

For starters, the venue was sold out, and this is a big place, mind you; totally amazing how packed it was. And Carcass hardly disappointed.

Billed to start at 7:30 (which i didn't know until way after the show) i arrived to the venue to find tons of people outside and inside already packing it on the ground floor which made me go to the top seated area where i found a place where i could see the stage and everything very well; the stage had two cloth-screens in each side in front of some amps with drawings of a slashed human torso, on top of the drums there was a screen that had the image of their third album, Necroticism. The crowd was conformed by tons of people representing the old guard as well as your usual metalheads.

At about 7:45, the lights went out, the screen changed it's image and an intro tape was played, a narration of some sorts after which a droning note started to fade into it; after a few minutes of this, the band came onstage and started things with "Inpropagation" followed by another album opener, "Buried Dreams" from their Heartwork album which informed most of the set. The crowd on the floor weren't moving too much on the accounts of there not being much space to move but there was some crowd surfing; the crowd's response, however, was enormous. On the third song, "Corporal Jigsore Quandary", one of the most well received ones of the set, the projection of the screen showed various body parts being dissected and ending with an eye being implanted on a brain.

The band looked good and dominated the stage with a balance of calm coolness and rocking still intensity with some movement to here and there, Jeff Walker was handling his Les Paul-like hollow-bodied bass with authority and a bit of struggle wearing a Rotten Sound shirt, while Michael Amott was playing a very big Dean Flying V, possing around the stage for a bit; at the other side of the stage, Bill Steer stood there like a guitarist straight out of the 70's, with slightly bell bottomed jeans, a tight brown shirt and his long blonde hair, extracting impossibly low ended heavy riffs of his very vintage looking Les Paul. The band sounded tight and clear (except for the vocals, the microphones were a bit muddy, soundwise), pretty much like the records and like if they never broke up or if they had a different drummer now.

The band played most of Heartwork and about half of Necroticism, they deviated from these albums to play "Reek Of Putrefaction" from their masterpiece (or one of their many masterpieces, anyway) Symphonies Of Sickness to follow it with "Keep On Rotting In The Free World" (complete with various symbols of many faiths on the screen) from their suicide attempt Swan Song, after which they went back to the very beginning of their career, playing "Genital Grinder" and "Psyosisified (Rotten To The Gore)" jointly to make it like one decent lenght song. I was pleasantly surprised to hear them switch from playing the more sophisticated side of their career to the more barebones and unpolished era with even more brutality, it was also great listening to Michael and Bill do some grunting live. After these, they left the stage, not an hour after they started their set.

When they came back, they played "Death Certificate" then the monstrous "Exhume To Consume" and left again; before they came back, Juan Brujo of Brujería came out to yell "Viva México Cabrones!!!" (on account that since the night before, we were celebrating the Independence Day) after which Jeff made a crack about him being his father, he then made a crack about them going backstage to inhale oxygen like Axl Rose or something; he actually made several jokes during the show but most were inaudible thanks to some microphone problems. He then introduced each member of the band, pointing out that Daniel Erlandsson was replacing their original drummer Ken Owen (i heard a section of the crowd chant "Owen, Owen!" earlier during the set) after which he made another joke, this time saying Erlansson owned eBay or something similar, right after which Daniel started pounding a slow beat which gave away the entrance of "Rupture In Purulence", Walker followed with the ultra heavy bassline and then the guitars kicked in, Jeff stood in front of the stage, past his mic stand and played a bit of the song without singing it after which a galloping twin guitar riff started and gave to a fast beat, that of the song "Heartwork"; easily the highlight for many people. The band finished the song, started a riff as a coda to it and ended it all, the screen started to show an autopsy from the first cuts to the body, while the band said their goodbyes to the crowd, throwing picks and drumsticks, with Jeff walking along the space between the barricade and the stage.

Personally, i have two complains, the first being that the show was very short, considering their back catalogue and that they hardly touched anything from their first two records, which brings me to complain number two, namely why the denial of most of Reek and Symphonies? To me and many others, this was the highlight of their career, their golden years and best albums; granted, i love Necroticism and Heartwork and i know those two are much more popular but come on!!! There's tons of amazing songs in both first records.

Thinking about what i am complaining, i seriously don't feel like it was a waste by any chance, it was more than a great concert, and i'm immensly happy for witnessing one of metal's best bands in action, as if they had never had any major lineup changes or had broken up. Everything was crushing, inspired and amazing; after all it's said and done, i can't complain.

Some pictures: http://flickr.com/photos/metaldragon/sets/72157607349083403/

Is It Progress When You Go From ‘Awful’ To ‘OK’? Or Initial Thoughts On Death Magnetic By Metallica.

2008-09-17T18:14:00.000-07:00

I think this album is kinda good or ok, but, this being Metallica who haven't released a good album in 12 years (if we're generous and count Load as one), then this is fantastic news for fans.

The fact is that the album sounds like Metallica, like where they left off in between ...And Justice For All and the Black Album, but the fact is that it just sounds like them, it's not like the material is as good as anything they did in their first decade as a band; the main problem being the lack of memorable songs; the sounds might bring you back to the eighties but, in terms of pure songwriting skills, i think Load still edges Death Magnetic; whatever you think about their "grunge" sound or their haircuts or their lack of truly metal elements in there, Load has very well written and well put together songs.

Of course, i'd be an idiot if i expected anything of the quality of KillRideMasterJustice, that era is gone and years have passed since then, but i just want a good Metallica album all around, with good songs and good riffs. Perhaps a record similar to the Black Album, but of them right now.

I do feel, though, that perhaps this is the beginning of something new, perhaps they have learned to be themselves soundwise and, for their next album, maybe they can apply these riffs to better written, more memorable songs; songs you can scream along while blasting either at home or at concert, after which i would be more than happy to let them be and not care what they do afterwards.

I know they have a good album left in them, i just hope they get to record it and release it soon.

Nothing Is Cooler Than Old Men Headbanging

2008-09-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

Niwemang (Half Moon)
2006, Iran

Haunted (as in cursed for most of it), funny when you’re not supposed to laugh and, ultimately, some heavy doom shit. Plus the music rules.

Grant Morrison is awesome

2008-09-09T15:43:00.000-07:00

Radio Oscillator 11

2007-04-01T10:52:00.000-07:00

After so long, it's finally here! A new episode!!

1. Devo - Mongoloid
2. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Colleen
3. Yoko Ono - Greenfield Morning I Pushed An EMpty Baby Carriage All Over The City
4. Caspar Brötzmann Massaker - Tempelhof
5. Dream/Aktion Unit - (Track 3)
6. Rotten Sound - Burden
7. Andrew Bird - Heretics
8. White Zombie - Shack Of Hate
9. Borbetomagus - One For Tram
10. Jazkamer - Friends Of Satan
11. King Crimson - 21th Century Schizoid Man (live bootleg 1969)
12. Reagan Youth - USA
13. Xasthur - The Eerie Bliss And Torture (Of Solitude)
14. Neurosis - Water Is Not Enough

Radio Oscillator 11.mp3

Subscribe, etc.: http://oscillator.podomatic.com/

Or listen to it on the player to your right

XBXRX, February 1, Centro Cultural Español.

2007-02-02T21:55:00.000-08:00

First of all, i would like to take this opportunity and thank the promoters and organizers of this show for daring to take a risk and bring a band with virtually no presence in Mexico and have them play a free show, just doing it because the band is awesome. Everybody give a big round of applause to them.

One of my favorite things about gigs hosted on the Centro Cultural Español, besides that it's a nice place with art and fine architecture instead of the ratholes that usually host rock shows (which also have their charms, but i do think that the occasional change in setting is actually a good thing), it's that it has such a casual vibe that you can come early, hang around for the soundcheck and no one tells you anything: i arrived just as XBXRX were doing their soundcheck and saw that they were having some problems, like not having a proper drum stool and trying to fix it by having a chair with some bags on it so that the height could be compensated. The band were in their civilian clothes, with the vocalist wearing a blazer and a scarf and drummer Weasel Walter wearing an Immortal long sleeve shirt. The place was getting crammed with people (almost literally) and, actually, kind of started thinking that the people who actually attend shows at the Español are some kind of hybrid between hipster and emo kid, maybe some mutation going on although not everybody present was a poseur; when people started to arrived, they started to play Supergrass' greatest hits thru the P.A.which seemed weird, i would have thought that it would be more appropriate to put something like the Locust or the Blood Brothers or some Load or Skin Graft release, then a DJ got up and started to put a mixture of indie pop stuff that contrasted even more than Supergrass (i still think the idea was to contrast and not because they didn't know what kind of band XBXRX are...or perhaps they just judged them because of their hairstyles?). The DJ played everything from bossanova to i don't know what to call it anymore but very light and bland stuff, of which i only recognized a song from the new Of Montreal album, afterwards they started to play old but still lighter punk shit like the Clash's "Spanish Bombs" and the Undertones' "Teenage Kicks" to give way to the more predictable Joy Division and Smiths selections; the song i liked the most that got played was, without a doubt, "No Fun" by the Stooges, i'm beginning to think that the new super cool classic if you don't pretend to like them you're a tool and, therefore, they are going to get overburned by people (kinda like with the Ramones and the Misfits) are the Stooges, what with them releasing a new album in April; if that does happen, i'm willing to do a test to find true fans as opposed to poseurs by having them listen to "L.A. Blues" and see how they get horrified, without telling them who plays the song.

The first band to play were X=R7 who are from Mexicalli and, i understand, are a side project of Maniqui Lazer, who are pretty cool. X=R7 (i can't stop thinking how derivative their name is) are a drums n' synths duo, they played a really long set (or so it seemed to me) which consisted of monotonous riffs with simple drumming being repeted for 2 minutes at a time, i also can't stop thinking they sounded like if the drummer and the keyboardist from the Locust decided to come up with riffs one at a time and being incredibly lazy in the process; the band was enthusiastic but, throughout their set i kept wondering how many spazztic bands does it take before they all start to sound the same. I love Plague Soundscapes a hella lot too but you have to try and add something new to the mix and not just try to approximate that sound just because it's so crazy.

The next band to play were the much awaited XBXRX, already in uniform with pastel blue bowling-like shirts, who right from the beginning started to do as they usually do, with the singer dude and the guitarist going into the slam dancing with the crowd, without missing a note in any of their instruments; at around the fourth or the fifth song, they did the one where they ask the crowd to get down which title i'm forgetting at the moment, the crowd in front of the stage kind started to follow suit but were still not very convinced, even the singer got off the stage to pull people to the floor; the fact that there was so many hipsters trying as hard as they can to look uninterested didn't help, but, eventually, most of the crowd on the front of the stage (including me) was on the floor, the vocalist said that when he said thrice, he wanted everyone to jump up and down and scream but Weasel signaled him to count to four with his hand and corrected; when he counted to four, the pit exploded to all sides, i even got into the slam action (which i haven't gotten into for a long time now) and the truth is that it was pure classic slamdancing, no Kung Fu-like kicking or any of that shit, it was chaos, it was, like Exodus used to say, "good, friendly, violent fun"; i got into the floor until i got tired and returned to the calm flank (i did return to the pit towards the end). Their set successfully combined material from their latest Sixth In Sixes with their older songs, displaying a slight sofistication on their most recent stuff as opposed to their rawer, earlier shit, even though the difference was just a hair. The band, after hurling themselves to the Mexican crowd, getting on the bass drum, striking the structures over the stage with their guitars and spazz around onstage in general, ended their performance after some 25 minutes since they started, they didn't do like on videos i've seen of them from past shows, destroying drums and guitars in an orgy like the Who on crank, they just finished playing, high fiving and smiling to the crowd who congratulated them for a brilliant, if very brief, set.

In between XBXRX and the next band, my editor Marcelo pointed me to a celebrity among us, it was Chino Moreno from the Deftones (ED: as i was typing "Deftones" i started typing it as "Deer" and i made me think, what if there was a tribute band called Deertones? or how about Defhoof? they would play something like "Dog on the DRIIIIIIIVE/Away/I don't care where just on the sidewalk" or "COOOOOOOOOOME!!/PANDA PANDA PANDA!!!"), Most likely trying to score himself some indie points with his attendance, although he wasn't on a rockstar trip or anything, he was really laidback, talking to people and stuff. He's also lost tons of weight recently, so much so that he can't get confused with the guitar player anymore; well, that's the celebrity gossip part of this review.

Afterwards, Roc & Robots got up onstage, some dudes wearing garbage bags, angular haircuts and keytars (you know, those synths you strap on like guitars); they played a mixture between Wire or Magazine-style post punk and Devo-like new wave, with songs ranging from faithful renditions to the style to stupid shite. Listening to them, i couldn't stop thinking how this was a free show and that it was a good soundtrack for drinking a beer, but they didn't really offer anything, the had nothing going as far as a show was concerned and, had the band gotten together 28 years ago, they most likely would be afraid to try to play this style of music, it's just that now it's fashionable and retro; we actually walked out from the place before they finished playing, we then got to listen to the time-defining classic Ass Cobra by Turbonegro, on the way back home.

Bands like XBXRX don't come play here every other day and it's even better that there's support for gigs like these and we hope to see more of these, that XBXRX come back soon to play a longer show and that, fingers crossed, Weasel Walters decides to bring the Flying Luttenbachers here to give some lessons, because people here need to learn.

Alice Coltrane (1937-2007)

2007-01-15T21:11:00.000-08:00

I still think it's the complete opposite of rock n' roll

2007-01-09T16:31:00.000-08:00

But the new inductees to the Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame have been announced, i reserve my comments about rock n' roll , being something that breaks with dumb traditions, eliminates barriers between audience and performer and in general, takes no bullshit has to have a museum and ceremonies to make it overblown like some kind of crap ass sport.

The artists who will enter the biggest joke in music history since MTV will be a selected group of very different from one another groups and it only makes me ask myself, and i redirect the question to you, dear reader, can you imagine a jam between all of them?

The Ronettes

They haven't gotten the Ronettes in until now?! This is an even bigger and stupidier joke!!!! If this garbage of Hall of Fame thing meant anything in reality, then Ronnie Spector would have helped cut the ribbon the day they opened the place.

Patti Smith

Totally deserved (actually, i don't have much complains whether people were worthy of recognition or not this year, in general) Lenny Kay should have been induced years ago seperately, just for compiling Nuggets.

R.E.M.

Do i think they are that good? No, but there was a time where they could write a mean tune and later on, used this skill in bursts (like with that song "Lotus"), some good tunes nonetheless, they are totally overrated. I picked one of their few songs i like.

Van Halen

Fuck yeah!!!! I only ask myself how they will attend the ceremony. 10 bucks say Alex Van Halen and Michael Anthony will be the only ones present; can you imagine a conversation between David Lee Roth and Patti Smith? Ten more bucks say he calls her "bearded lady" within 5 minutes.

Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five

Of course yes, he only needs to get up and do a super turntable solo with his feet and everything.

Now here are the songs:

Van Halen - Unchained.mp3 from Fair Warning, 1981
R.E.M. - Driver 8.mp3 from Fables Of Reconstruction, 1985
The Ronettes - Be My Baby.mp3, 1963
Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five - The Message.mp3 from The Message, 1982
Patti Smith Group - Pale Blue Eyes/Louie Louie.mp3 some CBGBs comp, 1976(?)

Their name is god (We hate ourselves)

2007-01-09T15:26:00.000-08:00

I've been forgetting to post about it but i have had it in mind ever since i heard about it, coming out on March 20 thru Emetic Records will be For The Sick: A Tribute To Eyehategod; yes, a very deserving tribute to Eyehategod. This New Orleans' band's music resonates today more than anything, combining hardcore punk with crust and doom to birth some of the most oppresive sounds ever comitted to magnetic tape and whatever other media; this sound is everywhere today, in bands who demonstrate it straight up like Khanate (RIP), Corrupted and Kylesa, and on pretty much the whole avant-garde doom metal scene of late (everyone from Boris to Mastodon to Jesu to you know); more so that the band has just gotten over some of their worst moments, what with the huracan Katrina leaving vocalist Mike Williams homeless and landing him in jail; but now they are reunited, out of prison and (allegedly) rehabed from their legendarious heroin addictions.

My fascination with Eyehategod goes beyong simply liking their music, it's not possible for me to just headbang to their stonerific riffs and be done with it; for starters and just like black metal, the band is negative to the extreme, i mean you just have to look at their name! But it's not just simple negativity what draws me to this band either, it's more like their sense of hate, it's their sense of things being wrong and that they will get worse no matter what; maybe it's the heroin thing, since it's something i haven't experienced and don't plan to, it's something completely alien to me and watching it's effects has some kind of exploratory quality to me like so many things in life, you can say it's a socioanthropological thing (like people who observe the homeless). Overall, it's because their hate is not monochromatic, it's both inner and outer, it's outer in execution mostly, but it's inner in any other way; even giving titles to their songs like "I Am The Gestapo" and "White Nigger", these are not fingerpointing declarations or prejudicism aiming to harm third parties, these are screams for external hatred, since hating ourselves (and we all do, at different levels) has a limit, you are just one person and feeling disgusted of oneself only leaves us to feeling bad; but hatred rises, so much that it can no longer be contained in our own thoughts and this urges to burst out, that's when we start to long for the spit of a stranger on our cheeks or someone else's boot in our groins, we want to inform them that they are better than us but we don't want them to feel good about it, we want to bring them to our level, so they can have a first-hand look at it, a first row sit to feeling like crap and we want them to feel what it's like to stab oneself from the inside; also, we want to remind them that they are no better than us, they are just as bad and they also can't really stand themselves. This happens every day and closer than we would like to think, but we seldom hear about it, except on certain European films and with certain existentialist writers (and taken to overpretentious plains in most cases); that's why Eyehategod are as important as any folky singer-songwriter denouncing the horrors of war and totalitarian governments, they're as important as whoever is currently topping the charts singing about uncorresponded love, as important as anyone who are documenting the time they are living in, etc. it's because someone, or more like many someones, feel like that and are so caught up in their own situations that they can't express themselves as much as they would like to, that's why there's someone to put a beat over it and some chords in the back to be able to memorize them and be set free from deep within the soul; it's because it exists and denying it won't make it disappear, it only makes it grow larger, they are not pathetic like Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park or Eminem, because they are not asking for sympathy and are not looking to be accepted; more so, they demand rejection and won't stop until they find it, they don't have an agenda, they don't manipulate people into their hidden plans, they are brutal and straight up. Eyehategod are not positive at all but they are vital, more than anything for their own well being because their hatred can't let them consume themselves, they need to submerge themselves in it and feel it as much as possible, feel it from someone else to validate themselves, secure their places in the world as scum, to vent (spew?) it from the stage with screeching voices and incredibly thick, southern fried riffs; Eyehategod are vital for us because they talk about our own little inner intolerant beings that eat us from the inside out, but by experiencing hatred from the outside in, we give them a little window for them to spit their vile and let them back into the attic where they spend their time they are not spending in our ears telling us how perfect we're not, because of course we're not, it's because of error that there's learning and learning is the reason there's practice and practice lead us into doing things again and again for enjoyment in part (and it also makes perfect). It's peace thru war thru peace and war, but it's just that it's my war.

My only fear is that this will end up like the Melvins tribute, with lots of promising bands and (in the case of the Melvs one) collaborations but having, in the end more copies than real covers.

So here's the tracklisting with some comentary by myself where i felt like commenting:

Disc one:

01 - Dot(.) - Man is Too Ignorant to Exist (This band is good, i have their 12" EP, and this is an amazing song)
02 - Unearthly Trance - Shinobi (I have been hearing a lot about this band lately but i'm yet to listen to them, "Shinobi" is also an amazing song.)
03 - Cable - Pigs (No idea)
04 - Bowel - Run it Into the Ground (No idea)
05 - Alabama Thunderpussy - Godsong (ATP are good but i'm not fully into them for some reason, Jeff Gilbert (Metal Detector is still sadly missed) described them as Saint Vitus with coveralls and he's pretty spot on there.)
06 - Deadbird - Children of God (No idea)
07 - Kylesa - Left to Starve (This band is awesome and EHG's influence can be seen in their music, their records are nuts..)
08 - Rue - Blank (No idea)
09 - Brutal Truth - Sister Fucker (FU-Ckin-A; Brutal Truth is the shit!!!)
10 - Byzantine - Shop Lift (Never heard them but their on Kylesa's and Lamb Of God's label)
11 - Buried At Sea w/ Kevin Sharp - White Nigger (I haven't heard BAS yet but if Kevin Sharp is in it, it's probably great)
12 - Raging Speedhorn - 30$ Bag (These guys are Kerrang! darlings or something, the song is a classic though)
13 - The Unholy 3 - Take As Needed for Pain (No idea)
14 - The Esoteric - Crimes Against Skin (I have the feeling i have heard this band before)
15 - Total Fucking Destruction - Kill Your Boss (No idea)
16 - Triac - My Name is God (I Hate You) (n.i.)
17 - One Dead Three Wounded - Dog's Holy Life (I was going to say n.i. but the name rings a bell)
18 - Halo of Locusts - Dixie Whisky (Awesome song!!!)

Disc two

01 - Minsk - Ruptured Heart Theory (I need ginseng or something for my memory)
02 - Ramesses - Lack of Almost Everything (Fuck yeah!!!!! this is what's his face and what's his face from Electric Wizard!!!!!)
03 - The Mighty Nimbus - Zero Nowhere (n.i.)
04 - Lair Of The Minotaur - Peace thru war (Fuck yeah!!!! Thrash band with strong Venom/Bathory/Celtic Frost influences and one dude from Pelican plays here)
05 - Sourvein - Broken Down But Not Locked Up (Lady Sovereign? cool!!)
06 - Bloody Panda - Anxiety Hangover (Great name but n.i.)
07 - Mouth Of The Architect - Story of the Eye (Well known or something, i'm yet to hear them)
08 - Left In Ruin - Southern Discomfort (n.i.)
09 - Watch Them Die - Serving Time In The Middle of Nowhere (They got a spot in here because these used to be the dudes in Buzz*oven)
10 - Ozenza - Revelation/Revolution (n-i-)
11 - Swarm Of The Lotus - Blood Money (n.i.)
12 - Ichabod - Jack Ass In The Will Of God (n.i. although i think they are black metal)
13 - Kill The Client - The Confusion Machine Process
14 - Sow Belly - 99 Miles of Bad Road
15 - If He Dies, He Dies - Age of Bootcamp
16 - The Nain Rouge - I am the Gestapo
17 - The Unholy 3 - Torn Between Suicide And Breakfast

Now here's some songs for the band that's being paid respects:

Eyehategod - Masters Of Legalized Confusion.mp3 from the classic Dopesick, 1996
Eyehategod - Shinobi.mp3 from their live demo, 1989
Eyehategod - 30$ Bag.mp3 from 2000-???-?? somewhere in Europe.

For The Sick in MySpace (it has 4 songs from the tribute for listening): http://www.myspace.com/forthesick

I just can't say no to Depeche Mode

2006-12-22T20:32:00.000-08:00

Last (and beginnings of this) year was Depeche Mode's the way it hasn't been since 1990, when they released Violator and became the world's biggest band for a very special 12 month cycle; the band issued Playing The Angel to the masses, who responded with fervor by putting it on the best selling charts and all, they went on tour even to Uranus, they came to Mexico, selling the whole damn stadium of the Foro Sol in less than an hour, obliging them to schedule a second date which sold out even faster!!!! It was Depeche Mode's year so much that it made me step back as far as i could from them, i was sick of them; it wasn't that i didn't like Playing The Angel, in fact, it was one of my favorite albums of the year, or that i thought that finally, after twenty-something years of fame it finally went over their heads (i think they are physically incapable of that), it's just that it was too much Depeche Mode, i couldn't get away from them, you could hear them everywhere, people who normally wear U2 t-shirts all of a sudden were wearing DM shirts. i had never in the time i've liked the Depeche Mode, experienced something like this; since, for the most part, they have been more like a cult band, although all their singles and videos have always had heavy rotation, but never in the level of seeing EVERY-FUCKING-BODY BECOMING A FAN, people with not the faintest idea of music; it gets on my nerves.

It sort of reminds me of the era when i got to learn of the existance of the band...yes, this is another of those stories where i originally hated a certain band just to finally get how awesome they really are in the end. I distinctly remember a conversation i had with someone in which i was defending the artistic and musical merits of Pearl Jam (people who know me will find this very amusing) and this person questioned me if i was a Depeche Mode fan, accusation which i denied or, more like, since i was around 12 years old at the time, pronounced them being "horrible faggots that are afraid of guitars" (come to think of it, i express myself in very similar terms now as i did then) and that their music was disgusting, the other person replied that it was impossible for me to like Pearl Jam but not Depeche Mode at the same time which seemed completely idiotic, since neither band sounds anything alike, like comparing Westlife to the Velvet Underground (even if two bands sound very similar, people might like one and dislike the other, since it's most probably that one of the two inspired the other, therefore one band being appreciated as unoriginal and lacking in inspiration, unlike the other more influential one), i had a strong repulsion towards them, probably because of their image, their lack of guitars and distortion (i had a saying back then that said "if it doesn't have distortion, it sucks") and their popularity, even though this was during the Songs Of Faith and Devotion era. It wasn't until Ultra was released and i listened to "Barrel Of A Gun" that i heard and, most importantly, felt who good they could be and, in part, helped me get into electronica; in that sense, that single was the perfect crossover song for me, with it's strong drum machines, background wah guitar and it's atmosphere of imminent aggressiveness, How could i say no? Especially since i was coming from being into Nine Inch Nails and Ministry.

It's strange for a band like this to become one of my very favorites, someone incredibly popular with songs on the radio; on the DVD that comes with their recent Best Of compilation, which has been aired recently on VH1 here, Martin Gore or Alan Wilder or someone else said that, early on, the band was undecided whether they wanted to be a cult band or unabashedly commercial and, the truth which anyone can conclude with a simple gaze upon their career is that they have achieved both; their music is not shallow and dumb, au contraire, it's a texturized dark minimalist style that can give them a way to experiment, incorporating everything from pure country blues ("Personal Jesus", "I Feel You") to it's most adventurous strain (the acoustic licks plus IDM-like shifting beat of "Dream On"). But what really hooks me is the vocals, i'm a person who doesn't like ultra polished voices and doesn't really pay attention to the lyrics, yet i have a strong liking of well done vocal melodies (which explains why i like so much pop music); with Depeche Mode, the vocal melody is so much a part of the arrangement and instrumention that, without them, the songs would sound half-assed; the melodies and words on the lyrics are mashed up so well that it's impossible not to pay attention to either, with the lyrics tending from perfect rhymes ("Promises me i'm as safe as houses/As long as i remember who's wearing the trousers") to well detailed stories and reflections ("Blasphemous Rumours"), screaming for you to scream along with them, all delivered with amazing power by Dave Gahan (and sometimes, chief songwriter Martin Gore), who is probably the only guy who can sing "well" without getting tiresome. More than anything, though, Depeche Mode are, thematically, not just on the lyrics but on their instrumentation, arrangements, voices, feelings, etc. about the passion one can have for obsession, from the most simple of concepts as accepting someone else or putting a two note guitar riff in the back of a wall of synths to the most profound relationships humans can get, about love and sex, the interest and stress of wanting somebody so much for what that person can fill us, to the point of feeling internal redemption that reaches the farthest point of the soul in which the most tender kiss or the wildest of orgasms has a spot that defines us and it makes us feel part of the universe and absolves us from the march of time at once; no wonder most of the girls i have been interested in have a predilaction for Violator as much as i have.

I've been so tired of Depeche Mode that i haven't heard them in a long while (i'm still a little hurt that i couldn't go see them live), it's been like a year since i've heard Playing The Angel; but, after watching the aforementioned documentary on VH1 (crap channel, although they show great movies in it here and their Classic segment sometimes has good stuff, like when i saw the Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly" video), i couldn't resist and decided to listen to them again and, to be honest, i just can't say no to Depeche Mode, i simply can't deny their music.

That's why i'm sharing with you a mini mix i did of the songs i've been diggin on this Depeche Mode week.

Depeche Mode - Pop Obsessed

01. Useless
02. Strangelove
03. Blasphemous Rumours
04. Walking In My Shoes
05. Halo
06. People Are People
07. When The Body Speaks
08. Enjoy The Silence

Depeche Mode - Pop Obsessed.zip

Interview: Discordance Axis

2006-11-16T19:57:00.000-08:00

I'm going to start this the most pretentious way that i can: Discordance Axis are the most important grindcore band since Napalm Death and nobody knows it.

I'm generally not like that and i don't do such grandiose declarations of even my most beloved bands, that doesn't mean i don't think about, it's just that i don't usually share those thoughts because there's a big distance between the real world and the Fairy World that is my imagination; i also don't want to put DA in an awkward situation, making them seem like if they were bigger than they really were when they were together. The point about my opening statement is that i, like many others, feel that Discordance Axis did more for the genre than what 99% of the bands that are lumped into the same musical category have done collectively; stripping it off from it's more generic tendencies that many bands possess, the band injected their sound with angularity and austerity to add even more force to their hyperfast and short songs, making them add such then-unexplored languages to the genre like like odd-time signatures, for example. More so, the band connected grindcore out of leftist politics and political incorrectness to a more cyberpunk stream in the lyrical, conceptual and aesthetic senses; with themes belonging to classical sci-fi literature being screeched by vocalist Jon Chang, ambitiously packaged in DVD cases for the most part with artwork that oscillated from the futurist to the typical in a minimalist ambient (a style which was brought to a bigger crowd than grindcore fans when Studio Grey did an edition of movie posters for the film Resident Evil) and, in general, giving it a sense of unlimited posteriority that would plug grindcore out of it's established formulas to transform it into a genre ideal for experimentation, paving the way for such bands as the Dillinger Escape Plan and the Locust to more contemporary artists like Genghis Tron, Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck and Gånglîå.

The band was formed around the year 1992 in New Jersey in an unusual way for a band to start, without much live gigs and sporadic recording sessions that would spring out in different labels as EPs, full lenght albums or splits, the later which they did with such bands as Melt Banana and Corrupted; the band always had a connection with the Japanese scene, taking them to play there live, release splits with bands from there and even share band members. The band ended in 2001, a little after the release of their most popular and, probably, most cohesive album in their time together, The Inalienable Dreamless; the band found more recognition after breaking up, thanks in no small part to their mysticism, to the rising popularity of Hydrahead Records, the label which has released or re-released the bulk of their discography, to drummer Dave Witte's high profile, whose resumé includes Melt Banana (because of their ties with DA), Burnt By The Sun, Alec Empire, Municipal Waste and Human Remains, among a shitload of others; and their crescent direct or indirect influence on this type of music; a curious effect of the later happened in the form of Our Last Day, a posthumous album that features an unreleased song, a remix, their collaboration with Merzbow and a song by Jon's post-DA band Gridlink, but among all of this, there's a tribute paid to the band in the form of covers by bands such as Melt Banana, Gate and Mortalized; even more surprising is the Cide Projekt side of the album who reinterprete various Axis songs as MIDI versions which are brutal, funny and curious at the same time.

Oscillator recently talked to Jon Chang about the life and times of Discordance Axis and his more recent projects, chief among them his return to the musical front with Gridlink; emoticons courtesy of Jon himself.

Marcos Hassan (Oscillator): Please introduce yourself.

Jon Chang (Discordance Axis): Jon Chang. Former singer of Discordance Axis and current singer in the band GridLink. Writer/Co-Creator of the TV series Scratch Trigger Era and TF-134. Presently working on 2 video games KETM and Black Powder, Red Earth with Studio Grey.

Who or what inspired you to start playing this kind of music?

My first exposure to grind specifically was Napalm Death's From Enslavement To Obliteration, it was one of my favorite records for many years. I liked music from an early age though: The Who, Kiss, Motörhead, Maiden, AC/DC, Slayer, etc.

Do you consider the music you did with Discordance Axis "grindcore"?

Yes, that was the idea ;-)

What artists influenced you the most?

Philip K. Dick's books and Neon Genesis Evangelion probably had the largest impacts.

What are the differences between Discordance Axis and Gridlink, musically?

Rob and Matsubara are totally different in terms of their play style so the music is very different. It's hard to quantify ;-)

How was the whole scene back then as compared to right now?

Have no idea. I was never one to go and hang out and make friends.

Who did you consider Discordance Axis' peers? How about Gridlink's?

Never really thought about it...still not really thinking about it ^o^;

Why did you start out putting out splits with other bands?

Honestly, split EPs are all about marketing; getting your stuff out to a broad audience that hasn't heard you before...thanks lists operated much in the same way, people like a band, so they read their thanks list and find other similar bands. But these days, with bandwidth being so cheap, I feel split EPs have outlived their usefulness...

Can you talk a little about the progression from your releases?

Well, we started out more by the seat of our pants operation and got better playing together as time went on. ^_-

Our Last Day is not something most bands would do; how did it come about? What's your favorite song in there?

Honestly, the remix of "Ikaruga", seems a little more savage than the original; in regards to the covers, I like them all. Cide Projekt was probably the most creative of them all. The entire idea of Our Last Day came about after we heard his covers.

Can you tell us a little something about your bandmates and their contributions to the music?

Rob Marton wrote 99% of the guitar, Dave did all the drums. In GridLink, Matsu writes all the guitar, Okada works on the rhythm and mixing; Ikeda and Terada just smoke like crazy haha.

Why did you feel more affinity with bands from Japan and how so? How about now?

In the past yes. We were much more influenced by the Japanese bands than the US ones, they were faster with less cop-out mosh/slow parts; these days I really don't keep up with it all. I like a lot of Japanese bands though.

Did you conciously tried to push the boundaries of grindcore with stuff like your collaboration with Merzbow?

DA was essentially 3 very strong personalities clashing constantly haha. A lot of GridLink is designed like a painting, I suppose it's an unusual way of writing but everyone has their own particular methodology.

The band -actually your bands- sort of had a mysterious image and never gave up too much away, why?

Why not? :-P

Hahahahaha, the perfect answer strikes again. How important was the live show for you? can you describe what a Discordance Axis show was?

Rob hated them, Dave loved them, I fall somewhere in between; sometimes they are cool, other times they are exhausting. A show for us meant 2-3 months of rehearsal 4-5 days a week blasting through the set twice with no breaks, by the time we played we were tired of all the songs but we could play them without pause and that was the effect we wanted ^_^

Discordance Axis' artwork is very distinctive and original, how did it come about? What's Gridlink's artwork going to be like?

Hard to say where things come from exactly, sometimes it's planned and sometimes it spontaneous.

GridLink is going to be very different; we're not giving anything away yet, but we're building a lot of costumes and elaborate stage props for the art on the CD.

Did you ever consider doing Discordance Axis full time?

No.

What's your favorite or proudest moment in D.A.'s career?

To be honest, what stands out most is the post mortem. It's D-Day plus 5 years and people still like us.

When we were started, we couldn't even sell 500 copies of most of our EPs; 99% of our US shows had less than 20 people at them.

We got some good reviews but we mostly got crappy ones, people said we were pretentious and elitist. They were more interested in bands who had breakdowns and mosh parts. Oh well...

It's always surreal to read people talking about you on message boards who've never met you, especially when they have deep seated beliefs that we were either awesome or jerk offs.

What do you feel are your contributions to extreme music?

I have no idea, I am always surprised to find anyone remembers/likes us at all.

What's going on with Gridlink? When is your album coming out? Can you expand a little on the band?

We're hoping to finish recording/mixing by late ‘06 so the LP will probably come out sometime in ‘07. Only a year late! LOL

Honestly though, it's better we took a little longer; the whole piece is shaping up nicely. 10 songs, 14 minutes. No break twitch ^_-

What's the weirdest thing or best time you ever happened/had onstage?

Most of our live shows are a blur, I remember little to nothing about specific shows.

If you could recommend a few bands for people to check out, who would they be?

Well, it depends on what they are looking for; the best grind stuff I've heard in a long time is Mortalized.

What have you been listening to lately?

EQ8OR, Merri, X Japan, Slayer, Sex Machineguns, Patric Catani, United 93 (OST), SOB, Mortalized, Cave In.

What's next for you?

GridLink, Amber Grey, the CD; KETM and Black Powder, Red Earth.

DA with Melt Banana
-----------------------------------------

Discordance Axis - Ruin Trajectory.mp3 from the album Ulterior, 1995.
Discordance Axis - Tokyo.mp3 from split with Melt Banana, 1995.
Discordance Axis - Castration Rite.mp3 from the album The Inalienable Dreamless, 2001
Discordance Axis - Sega Bass Fishing.mp3 from the album Our Last Days, 2005

Discordance Axis: http://www.studio-grey.com/da/
DA in MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/discordanceaxiss
Studio Grey: http://www.studio-grey.com/
Dave Witte: http://blog.davewitte.com/
Dave Witte in MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/davewitte
Hydrahead Records: http://www.hydrahead.com/

Another Screeching Saxophone Silenced.

2006-11-16T16:47:00.000-08:00

The screeching cries of a saxophone have been silenced again; no, it's not another Jazz giant who died or anything like that, it's actually a neo-no wave band who'll stop to spazz around, a post modern band known as Coughs which was only beginning to annoy people y won't have the chance to do so to more.

Or that's the rumor going around lately, even though there's talk of a lot of disagreements within the band, especially on their current UK tour, so much so that they can't seem to define a compensatory show for the one they can't do in Ireland. It's sad because we'd love for our favorite bands to always get along and be BFFs or at least fight enough so to generate some creative friction without going overboard so they can write kickass songs; we'd also love that our bands would never mature and that their member would never grow old or die so we can all see them at the top of their career always, but that's almost always impossible.

Heirs to late 70's New York's no wave scene, the band, especially on both their Load albums Fright Makes Right (2005) and this year's Secret Passage, played with a minimum of notes but never with a minimum of effort; dissonant but never losing a sense of composition and with a saxophone much austere and a lot more insane than James Chance's, which has been in an insane asylum for years where it gets a steady diet of electroshocks just to get it grounded and for it to function normally on the real world, but this one makes it sound like a nice school band instrument in comparison; with wild screaming pushing everything forward and the guitars and bass making an envolving racket for ambience the same way a paint bucket with no brush or a sledgehammer make ambience to a room. Melody would have gotten in the way for a band like this.

Coughs are still scheduled for a show on November 26 in Chicago opening for the Slits, reuniting teachers with students, although if rumors are true then this would not happen; i really hope this i'm writing is for more people to know of a truly great band instead of lamenting their loss; anyway, they deserve the tribute.
-------------------------------

Coughs - I'm Just A Bill.mp3 from the Fright Makes Right album, Load 2005.
Coughs - Penal Colony.mp3 from the Fright Makes Right album, Load 2005.
Coughs - Tyrannosaurus Reads.mp3 from the Bent Babies EP cd-r, self released 2006.
Coughs - Pacemaker.mp3 from the Bent Babies EP cd-r, self released 2006.
Coughs - Motherfuckers.mp3 from the Bant Babies EP cd-r, self released 2006.
Coughs - Air-conditioned Nightmare.mp3 from the Bent Babies EP cd-r, self released 2006.
Coughs - Dark Powers.mp3 from the Secret Passage album, Load 2006

Coughs in MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/coughsbitch
Load Records: http://www.loadrecords.com/

Arab Strap (1995-2006)

2006-11-10T21:07:00.000-08:00

It's All Static After All

2006-10-31T07:14:00.000-08:00

Jawbox
Novelty
1992, Dischord

The band was charged by twin frenetic guitars that go from here to there, with a clear relative in the works of Guy Piccioto and Eddie Janney with Rites Of Spring, the bass propelled everything from underneat, with a sense of it's own that at the same time completed what the guitars were commanding, with simple and strong drumming, supporting the three previously mentioned elements so they wouldn't shatter and end up in three different bands, and a static voice that narrated everything that was happening with the music. That how Jawbox was, finding themselves almost on the exact point in between Helmet and Fugazi, withg an added melodic sense that neither band would find until very late into their original careers. Novelty, their second album, showcased a confident band in all corners, without worries that at that time it was probable getting signed by a major label just for the fact of being a Dischord band, even though that's what happened in the end.

It's impossible to talk about the band without especially mentioning J Robbins who, by his own merit, deserves a star on the Georgetown Walk Of Fame or a picture on the walls of Yesterday & Today (if that existed, of course), before the formation of Jawbox, J had once filled the role of bass player for the incredible and incredibly important HarDCore band Government Issue; after Jawbox, J formed Burning Airlines, a less heavy yet very ultramelodic and rocking band, not to mention his work as a respected producer. Jawbox are sometimes referred to as an emo band (if your definition of emo is Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco then you probably won't understand the following, it has nothing to do with fashion and crap like that) and i can see why, the music has an inherited sense of nostalgia in itself and, also, the production and sounds used today sound kinda "early 90's" which, if you lived those days, invariably will bring memories back; but those are only touches, little frictions of time lost, worn laughter and misplaced cigarrette lighters, the songs are stellar, wrapping all that was doing rock outside the mainstream, unleashed and free but with a secret code book and a model to follow, and what it is to make a song that answers in an immediate way to poetic thinking, those thoughts that you often don't understand and sometimes you wished they quieted down. Jawbox is hard rock that likes to the headbang from the inside out instead of from the outside out like normal, it's atmosphere but so are rhythms, it's texture but so are riffs, it's you but also that guy over there.

Photo: Christian Lantry

After this album, Jawbox signed to Atlantic, recorded two albums, opened for Stone Temple Pilots on tour, Beavis & Butthead made fun of their video, never got to meet their target sales, got dropped, broke up, lost the rights to their major label albums and recently got them back. J Robbins now plays in a band called Channels that have an album on Dischord, an EP on DeSoto and lack arterial hypertension. For now, i enjoy the spaces between the notes which seem to be filled with thorns and ex-girlfriend's sisters you're forced to sit next to, it's all static after all.

------------------------

Jawbox - Linkwork.mp3
Jawbox - Static.mp3
Jawbox - Send Down.mp3

Band's page on Southern: http://www.southern.com/southern/band/JAWBO/
J Robbins: http://www.jrobbins.net/
Dischord: http://www.dischord.com/
DeSoto: http://www.desotorecords.com/

Radio Oscillator #7

2006-10-29T21:21:00.000-08:00

I uploaded this one over a week ago but couldn't link it until now; anyhoo, this edition of the show marks a new phase since i've started to use Podomatic for hosting and stuff and, if you prefer listening to me ramble silly about music instead of reading me ramble silly about music, then now you can check my page (or better yet, subscribe via RSS) at the Podomatic site for the radio show.

Anyway, hopefully i'll have a new episode for this week we are entering.

1. Ani DiFranco - Superhero
2. Satyricon - The Pentagram Burns
3. Gang Wizard - KQ Means Let Me In
4. TV On The Radio - Playhouses
5. Isis - In Fiction
6. Angel'in Heavy Syrup - A Series Of Water Mind/Rubens And The Cathedral
7. The Jesus & Mary Chain - Just Like Honey
8. Elf Power - King Of Earth
9. Wolf Eyes - Human Animal
10. Eric Dolphy - Eclipse
11. Hang On The Box - Asshole, I'm Not Your Baby
12. Sunburned Hand Of The Man - Unless You Confess
13. X-Ray Specs - Oh Bondage Up Yours!
14. Smegma - Ladies Nite At The 'Ortho Lounge'
15. Fennesz - Nebenraum

Radio Oscillator 7.mp3

Oscillator at Podomatic: http://oscillator.podomatic.com/
(I'll be having a link on the sidebar which needs some serious maintenance)

The New Godfathers Of Modern Indie Rock

2006-10-27T22:23:00.000-07:00

Yes
Fragile
1972, Atlantic

How the hell do i become a fan of a 70's progressive rock band thru indie pop music? Even though it might sound stupid, that's what happened to me recently.

A few months ago i listened to At War With The Mystics by the Flaming Lips for the very first time and it being the first time, i pretty much hated the album on impact, but i listened to it again later on, this time my opinion had changed but at the same time something came out in my mind. On that second listen i gave to the album by Wayne Coyne and co., the only two songs i wasn't entirely convinced of were "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "Free Radicals" but from "Sound Of Failure..." on, the music sounded better as it went along yet strangely familiar. At first, the music seemed to me to be a little Pink Floydian , but that wasn't exactly it, what it really reminded me of was of Yes, some of those riffs where the guitar and bass interlock with each other, some keyboard moments and even Wayne's voice sometimes would have a very Jon Anderson quality, not to mention the vocal harmonies; it was such the influence from the 70's band i was hearing from my speakers that i ended up downloading Fragile on the spot just to be sure about the comparison and, of course, the elemental parts were there, with enough retention of characteristics from both bands to remain original. That and i fell in love with Fragile.

Case number two, i recently listened to the Crane Wife by the Decemberists; it's first song didn't impress me much, sounding like pirate R.E.M. or something, but the second song, which is 12 minutes long and it's the best song i ever hear this band play and would you believe it's because it sounds like a mixture of the classic Decemeberists audio mixed with, yep, Yes. The phantom returns thru this very album.

But, why the hell Yes? They are supposed rock dinosaurs that were terminated by punk in the 70's and was more than dead, weren't they? How do you go from Rick Wakeman's capes to Colin Meloy and Wayne Coyne? what does it bring to them? How the hell do i become a fan of a 70's progressive rock band thru indie pop music? To answer that, we need to understand Yes.

Yes' music has always been a collision of odd time signatures, strange and extended arrangement and complex pop melodies and harmonies, influenced by everybody from the Beatles and the Beach Boys to Simon & Garfunkel (who they covered thru a 10 minute version of their "America"). It's creativity and musical inconformity meeting the art of songwriting and pop arrangements; while their contemporaries were more concerned with improvisation (King Crimson), the art of performance (Genesis) or standing in one leg while playing 3 hour flute solos and guessing how many people are you boring and how ridiculous you look at the same time (Jethro Tull); if you fast forward 30 years on, we see that the attitude towards instruments has changed and it's commonly accepted by a lot of people the fact that it doesn't make you punker not knowing how to play instead of knowing how to play and that, if the attitude and the songs are good, technical ability can actually contribute into making good music. If you gather all these elements with the timeless appeal of a well written song then welcome to the year 2006.

Yes was formed in the 60's and went thru some lineup changes until they more or less settled for Jon Anderson (vocals), Chris Squire (bass), Steve Howe (guitar), Rick Wakeman (Keyboards) and Bill Bruford (drums); the band was just coming out of obscurity thanks to their previous album, The Yes Album, having spawned a hit single with "I've Seen All Good People", but the band hurried right back to the studio, with just a few songs, so they decided to record what they had so far and that each of the members of the band will contribute a song to fill the album up. What could have turned into a complete disaster turned into a very cohesive album, with the solo contributions working as interludes that bridged one song into another, binging on the mood swings in between them; the main songs are far from bad, "Heart Of Sunrise" it's the only song in the album you can truly call "prog rock" since it combines dextreous musical passages with an epic song mode, "South Side Of The Sky" is heavier and more focused, just as "Long Distance Runaround) as well, both of which thread the record in the middle; but what hooked me to this record is "Roundabout", a song that manages to be frenetic, multipart, without a lot of technique, well done vocal arrangements and keyboards that add, don't substract.

Maybe Yes is not for everyone and maybe you won't like it, but i wanted to talk about a band i have been listening a lot lately and that resonates on the grooves of the Crane Wife and the War With The Mystics, and they are celestial.

Yes - Roundabout.mp3
Yes - South Side Of The Sky.mp3
Yes - The Fish (Shindleria Preamaturus).mp3

----------------------------------------------------------

Official website: http://www.yesworld.com/

The Last Great Concert Before the Year Ends?

2006-10-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Is

2006-10-26T21:00:00.000-07:00

Radio Oscillator #6

2006-10-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

This week's show got delayed because of some uploading troubles but, just like Wayne's World, it comes out Friday night to "party!!!!". Tributes to Atari Teenage Riot, Khanate and Dissection in the form of songs and a varied show in general.

1. Animal Collective - Loch Raven-Haverford PA
2. Atari Teenage Riot - Sick To Death
3. Last Exit - Discharge
4. Afrirampo - ONIPIKA hearts
5. The Dirty Three - This Night
6. Sword Heaven - Cults Of New Jersey
7. Fairport Convention - Percy's Song
8. Dissection - Unhallowed
9. Khanate - Torching Koraviev
10. Bastard Noise - The Only Menace Is Man (Skin Graft)
11. Cows - Koyaanisqats
12. The Kills - At The Back Of The Shell
13. Suishou No Fune - A Rose Bloomed
14. Redd Kross - Linda Blair

Radio Oscillator #6.mp3

High Pitched Screams Of A Drying Cock

2006-10-04T22:03:00.000-07:00

Prick Decay

Ahhh wonderful, undefied noise, all glowing in the dark but glowing in a black light so thick it's darker than darkness itself which makes it heavier than your own surroundings, which are tainted and fucked; that warmt of the tape, the hiss that indicates there's noise around the noise, around the fucked up frequencies that pummel my eardrum to submission but i'm a masochist baby, i really am. The hiss that makes it seem so oddly familiar and so nostalgic to the days when i used to tape my favorite Meat Loaf songs off the radio ("I Would Do Anything For Love", i'm not that old!!!), there's an almost snail pace and there's almost influences somewhere, i can almost hear Genesis P Orridge's tits smacking on a steel plate and something rumbling while hollering incomprehensible; it's also that sort of odd tempo that's not fast or slow enough but fucked that tapes recorded on crappy equipment have, it's not forward going, it's more like resisting the marching of time but getting dragged by it, being slowed by the weight of the world and your girlfriend's issues too, don't complain now; it's all so familiar yet unnatural. High pitched screams of a drying cock, all grinding in a slow and torturous howl of night time tapings, of refrigerator humming being amplified tenfold, is it Dylan Nyoukis fetish or poetic voice? is he decrying the beauty of a world invisible to the naked bureaucrat eye? or is he just puking over the magnetic fields just because it's kick ass to make annoying noises? If i had to answer that with the elements at my disposal, i'd say "who the hell cares?" this noise is absolutely marvelous, it's just something so cool to have up your ear, better than a pencil or Clap Your Hands Say Yeah by miles of smiles, it's almost not noise as much as they are sounds, sounds out of their natural elements and rearranged, manipulated, backwards, by the side and tucked in, it's a matter of etiquette. It's just things you hear everyday alterated and presented to you in a different and exciting way, sometimes incredibly loud, sometimes quiet and isolated, sometimes evoking something and then taking it away far until you forgot what you were remembering about, it's all about the memories and it's all about whoever else feels like it. I feel fine.

This thing is supposedly by Prick Decay from the UK (from Brigton specifically), their genius lies in their lyricism, their arrangement of sounds that, without notes even, make evocative, narrative pieces of abstract mind theater that can make a play of whatever is in your head, making it into a story of bravery and horror, of perversion and lust, of cats shitting and old men smelling, or whatever floats your boat; it's almost performance art made difficult music, without the performance or the art or the rock or the music. It's sound on sound action, the best kind.

(i downloaded this album and have no idea what the songs are called or nothing, all my research has been in vain...the things are tagged as "Prick Decay. Fuck Gong", if anyone can help me identify this stuff, i would really appreciate it)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Prick Decay.Fuck Gong - Track 1.mp3
Prick Decay.Fuck Gong - Track 6.mp3

Decaer Pinga: http://www.pinktoes.net/decaer_pinga.htm
Chocolate Monk Records: http://www.pinktoes.net/chocolate_monk.htm

Interview: Xiu Xiu

2006-10-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

First of all, i would like to apologize to Jamie Stewart; the problem is that Jamie sent me the answers to this interview back in December 2005 and i have finished transcribing, spell checking and writing an intro until now. So, i hope you're not too mad at me.

A ripping despaired sound from the bottom of a wounded soul, an art stundent's soul or a soul of an artist studying his enviroment or his past, of ancestral sounds from other cultures or from other generations or other genres, of pop and noise, of ambiguity or direct stuff, of simple or complicated, of acoustic guitars or computer compositions; all of these is Xiu Xiu (named after a chinese movie many people considered the most depressing film ever made) who, even though it seems they wouldn't have any structure or sense, make some of the most well thought out and memorable songs from this last couple of years while defying conventional everything all the time. Formed from the ashes of IBOPA and Ten In The Swear Jar (who inherited "I Luv The Valley Oh!" and "Helsabot" to Xiu2), Jamie remains as the only original member, but it would be completely unfair to call the band a "solo project" since every person present in any of their release contributes to the final sound of each one ; that's why their albums and EPs (Knife Play, Chapel Of Chimes EP, A Promise, Fag Patrol EP, Fabulous Muscles, La Forêt, Life And Live, Tu Mi Piaci EP and their most recent The Air Force, among others) manage to sound different from each other yet retain the same feeling the music of XX produces for the legions of ultra-passionate fans they have. Some of the characteristic elements that make their music are pop, electronica, noise, post punk (especially The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division), folk, modern avant garde classical, gamelan (typical Indonesian music), Black Sabbath, pain, broken hearts, suicide, politics.

Xiu Xiu have played twice in Mexico (once in the City and once in Guadalajara, i've missed both times) and i hope they play here soon. Here, Stewart talked to Oscillator about their modus operandi, their influences and more.

Marcos Hassan (Oscillator): Introduce yourself

Jamie Stewart (Xiu Xiu): Jamie Cyrus Stewart

What are the main difference between your past work and La Forêt?

The title is the main thing, and there are different songs on this record than on the other records.

Were you surprised that Fabulous Muscles earned so much praise? Do you think people now are expecting your records to be Fabulous Muscles II?

Yes and yes, but Fabulous Muscles II would be pointless calculation and anti art. We do make records to recieve praise, we make them to try and add something to life for better or worse.

Was there a model you thought about when starting Xiu Xiu? What was the plan for the project?

Sort of, we did know that we wanted to always write about real life, ours and those around us in clear ways and we knew what genres we wanted to take from, 80's pop goth, dance, asian percussion music, modern classical and noise music.

How do you write and arrange sounds? is it more traditional like a band or is it more like studio collages?

It is a bit of both. We do alot of improvisations built around very very basic rhythms or chords and then shape the improvisations into songs on the computer. On the sparser songs, they are written in more traditional ways like sitting with a guitar and note book looking out the window feeling anxious.

Was the lo-fi movement of the early-90's and artists like Lou Barlow with his projects Sebadoh and Sentridoh big influences to you?

No, not so much. Any lo-finess we have comes from lack of money, which i think it came from for Lou as well.

What's so special to you about sharing your secrets and fears and vulnerabilities with a 4 track recorder or similar devices? Is the hiss of the tape something warm for you to open up?

We actually use a computer. i do not know why sharing these things is special to me or if it is even special, it just seems right for us, i am not sure why.

Is it easy for you to pour your emotions out thru music?

No but it is essential, does that make me sound like a dick?

Of course not, i actually agree. Do you think that by (almost) eliminating traditional notes and timbres and focusing more on textures, you are closer to deliver a more accurate representation of what you want to express in your songs?

We do without too much thinking about it, try to make sounds that reflect the subject matter of the songs, but sometimes traditional sounds are perfect too. We do put alot of time and effort into sounds for their own expressive sake for certain.

Is the acoutic guitar side of the music a way to balance things out with the more atonal expressions, or does it serve the same porpuse in a different way?

As i said above, some songs seem to need particular sounds.

How does noise fit into your whole sound? what's so appealing about it to you and your compositions?

That it is both violent and non specific but also intense and uncontrolable.

Do you think you're playing pop music?

Yes, very much so. The songs have words you usually can hear clearly and most of them have verses and choruses.

Do you think your music is filled with a sense of "death"?

At the risk of being too cheesy, what is not filled with a sense of death?

Do you think that your music is a collision of intellect and emotion?

All music is a collision of intellect and emotion, more purely than any other way of making art

How does it make you feel that you inspire such an extreme response in people?

Mostly i have to ignore responses or i get too self conscious and freaked out but it is certainly better than being considered boring.

Why is it so important to address politics in your music?

It is impossible to ignore, it is important to address politics to in everything right now

How do you do to reproduce all the experimentation you do on record live? Do you resort to improvisation in concert at all? do you pull a Queen and rearrange the songs for stage performance?

Maybe somewhere in the middle, we do play to a drum machine so we have practice somethings to a tee but other things we do differently every night or parts of songs are devoted to improvisation.

So what's the craziest or funniest thing that ever happened to you onstage? How about the best?

Craziest was AGHHHHHHH!!!!!! So dumb, not in this band but in a previous band getting the classic and retarded blow job on stage, but it was from a drag queen i had been obsessed with since i was 18. the best? i think playing to kind and supportive audiences and doing the best we can that night is the best.

What was your experience of playing Mexico like?

Insane and the most fun 24 hours i ever had in my life.

What do you think about the musical climate these days?

Don't ask, i 'll just start talking shit. Ugh.

Where and why does the fascination with Black Sabbath come from?

Have you ever heard them? If so you would not need to ask.

Ouch!! Checkmate. If someone wanted to get into gamelan, what you would say to them and what would you recommend them to listen to?

Any records by the Smithsonian Institute recorded in the 1950's but there are not bad gamelan records, it is an inherently flawless music. Just make sure it is not played by white hippie college students.

What have you been listening to lately?

Weirdly the Blue Album by Weezer, i have no good explanation for this.

What’s next for you?

More touring and we are half done with our next record that i think will be called Boy Soprano (ED: It will be called The Air Force). We have a few split 7" coming out soon as well with Paper Chase, Kill Me Tomorrow and Dead Science, as well as music for a film by Robert Reis and a play by Ken Urban.

---------------------------------------------------------

I Broke Up (SJ).mp3 from Knife Play
Sad Pony Guerilla Girl.mp3 from A Promise
Clowne Towne.mp3 from Fabulous Muscles
Bog People.mp3 from La Forêt
Boy Soprano.mp3 from The Air Force

Website: http://www.xiuxiu.org/
Main label: http://www.5rc.com/

Here's Where The Republicans Come In

2006-09-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

It's incredible but the Daily Show just turned 10, for those who don't know, the Daily Show is a comedic newscast hosted by Jon Stewart where the day's political happenings get aboarded with a humorist spin; what makes them stand out is that they manage to be incredibly spot on on their reflections and stomach-cramping funny at the same time, without shoving a personal political agenda on people's faces (unlike, say, Michael Moore) managing to entertain, inform and make people think about the every day occurrences in this chaotic day in which we live. Ever since, the show has becomed one of Comedy Central's most viewed, a summarized version is broadcasted worldwide thru CNN International (Global Edition) and has launched a spinoff (The Colbert Report), it's one of those shows i'd watch if they showed them here (even though we get the Global Edition).

So what do they do to celebrate a decade of presidential mockery and exposing of stupidity in general? A concert of course! The weird thing is that the band they chose to headline is Superchunk, the semi-retired Chapel Hill, NC band that's somehow is still synonymous with Merge Records (Neutral Milk Hotel, Spoon, The Arcade Fire). The band hasn't released any new studio albums since 2001 and has played sporadically, with it's members focusing on their other projects (like Mac McCaughan's Portastatic), even though it seems a natural choice for the Daily Show team, since many people there are fans and it seems Jon Stewart "has this thing -- if a band has "super" in their name he thinks they're somehow better. It came down to you guys and Supertramp."

I don't have much by Superchunk but they always seemed to me like a decent band, energetic and melodic punk with just a whiff of melancholy in their sound; somehow, they get mentioned as heirs of later Hüsker Dü and you can see why; even though they don't share the rage or frustration with the Düs, they do have that sense of reflective punk, might be a more frenetic Replacements? Superchunk are a little like bigger brothers to the Promise Ring, Jimmy Eat World, the Get Up Kids and bands like that.

The concert will take place Novemeber 16 at Irving Plaza in NYC and also playing will be the Mountain Goats, Clem Snide and the Upper Crust (who, if they are who i think they are, are a band that dress up like dandies, with powdered wigs and everything). Congratulations on being one of the best political shows on tv!

Hyper Enough.mp3
Seed Toss.mp3
Sidewalk.mp3

Radio Oscillator #5

2006-09-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

Here's the show, enjoy!

I haven't finished the fanzine but i'm getting closer; last week i wwent to see Cat Power and Slayer and they wewre both amazing for different reasons.

1. Silversun Pickups - Well Thought Out Twinkles
2. Acid Mothers Temple SWR - Fenomenologia
3. Rah Bras - Scoop Toe Pump Girls
4. Arab On Radar - Birth Control Blues
5. Zero Point - untitled
6. Six Organs Of Admittance - Eight Cognition/All You've Left
7. Adolescents - Amoeba
8. Converge - Downpour
9. The Mean Reds - Ci-Clops Of 42nd
10. Stillborn Christians - Aggression
11. Cat Power - Who Knows Where The Time Goes (live)
12. Darkthrone - Skald Av Satans Sol
13. Guitar Wolf - Jet Generation
14. Yellow Swans - High On The Mountain Of Love
15. Pink Fairies - Ten Thousand Words In A Cardboard Box
16. Slayer - Evil Has No Boundaries (live)

Radio Oscillator #5.mp3

Radio Oscillator #4

2006-08-26T10:07:00.000-07:00

I know it's been a long time since i've done a radio show...hell!! it's been a long time since i've updated this thing, but that doesn't mean i've been slacking off or anything. Actually, i've been working on the fanzine so i can get it ready for publishing; so far, i have interviews with Melt-Banana, Discordance Axis, Hella and Rah Bras, concerts by Yo La Tengo and the Sounds Of The Underground festival tour. There's still stuff to do but i'm getting there.

I apologize for finishing and uploading this show so late, the reason for this is that, i started working on this particular show like a month ago but that week i got very sick and only got a chance to finish the spanish version, and right after that week, i went on vacations; in fact, i finished this show just a couple of days ago. But anyway, the show is up and i hope to get back to work on the radio podcast thingy every week.

About the show, it has less songs than last show (that one had 19 songs?!) but that doesn't mean the show is shorter, in fact, you always get a solid hour of music and any time i use past the hour is to give space for my witty, expert comentary. A lot of 2006 music on this one for the crowds, some of it soon to be released, some of it just released and some of it released for a couple of months now, there's also stuff from other years too. Enjoy:

1. Boris - Woman On The Screen
2. Danielson - Two Sitting Ducks
3. Comets On Fire - The Swallow's Eye
4. Teenage Jesus & The Jerks - Race Mixing
5. OOIOO - Uja
6. Peter Brötzmann Octet - Responsible
7. D.R.I. - Violent Pacification
8. The Skaters - Mister Cabin
9. Xiu Xiu - Vulture Piano
10. Bardo Pond - Lost Word
11. Belle & Sebastian - The Blues Are Still Blue
12. Jack Rose - Crossing The Great Waters

Radio Oscillator #4.mp3

News And Rants

2006-07-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

If you give a crap about drummer magazines then congratulations!!!! You belong to a very exclusive world of suckers who are making money for a couple of people who don’t deserve it. But on the new issue of Modern Drummer, the one with The Police’s Stewart Copeland on the cover, has an article on Damon Che of Don Caballero, so you know to go to your favorite magazine shop, read the article and put the mag back on the rack (i got mad skillz yo!). Seriously, what good comes of drummer magazines?

Who’s coming to the Touch & Go Records 25th Anniversary? It’s going to slay!!! If you still don’t know who’s playing, check the list below. By the way BIG BLACK REUNITES!!! Yes! Albini, Durango and Pezzati (still no word if Roland will be the drummer or if there’s still issues and lawsuits pending) are gonna get up and do a couple of songs, it’s not a complete set but it’s enough. Here’s the other bands to get you giddy, the show will happen September 8-10 at the Tenth Annual Hideout Block Party:

!!!
3 Mile Pilot
Arcwelder
The Black Heart Procession
Calexico
CocoRosie
Didjits (all original members)
Enon
The EX
Girls Against Boys (all original members)
Killdozer (all original members)
Ted Leo + Pharmacists
Man or Astroman? (all original members)
Negative Approach (featuring John Brannon and OP Moore, Can you believe it?! NEGATIVE-tupa-tupa-tu-APPROACH!!)
The New Year
Pegboy
Pinback
Quasi
Scratch Acid (all original members)
Seam
Shellac
The Shipping News
Supersystem
Uzeda
...and they still have one more band to anounce (pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease Jesus Lizard! Jesus Lizard!...well, i’ll settle for Die Kreuzen)

Check out the new Mecca Normal animated video, it’s funny (not ha ha funny, just funny) here.

Snakes? Booty? Breakdancers? C+C Music Factory? The end credits video for Snakes On A Plane is going to go off!!! Officially, it has become the most bizarre movie in the history of filmmaking.

Converge have the new album’s title!!! It will be called No Heroes!! In short, they say that these days there aren’t a lot of people who’d suffer or are passionate about art and life...except for the ‘Verge!!! The cd will be put out by Epitaph.

Voivod posted a mp3 of a new song from their album Katorz, which comes out on July 25. The song, called “The X-Stream” sounds like Rocket From The Crypt but a teeny bit more metal. Weird.

Voivod – The X-Stream.mp3

Dischord is gonna release a crapload of new stuff on the second half of this present year, of which the most prominent are: Channels, with J Robbins (ex-Goverment Issue, Jawbox and Burning Airlines, in case you didn’t know) will issue their debut full lenght album on August 28. So far, they have only released an EP thru DeSoto called Open, the bands sounds cool; here, i leave you with an mp3 from the EP courtesy of DeSoto:

Channels – Chivaree.mp3

Also thru Dischord in October will be made available There To Here, the debut solo album by Joe Lally produced by the kickass tag team of Ian MacKaye and Don Zientara at Inner Ear Studios. The album has stellar guest spots by Ian, Guy Picciotto, Wino, Amy Farina, Eddie Janney, Jason Kourkounis, Jerry Busher, Danny Frankel and Antonia Tricarico. Now you know at least 75% of Fugazi are still getting along, so stop your whinning kids.

Also from Fugazi, Brendan Canty has produced the new album by Dischorders French Toast.

And to end with the Fugazi related news, The Evens are recording their next album and are hoping to release it during Fall of this year.

I thought i was done but i’m not. 10 new shows have been added to Fugazi’s live series; to browse and buy that stuff, click here.

On August 15 comes Thunder Down Under by HOT MUTHAFUCKIN’ SNAKES.

Unless it contains the words “break up” and “reform At The Drive-In”, any other Mars Volta news is a waste of time, especially after their last album Frances Of An Exhibition.

So they are gonna do a movie about Jeff Buckley...

And if you live in Portland, Sleater-Kinney has scheduled their real last show there.

If there would be just one good compilation all year, Suicide Squeeze’s 10th Anniversary one would be it; and with a tracklisting like this, who can’t it be? By the way, don’t blow it and really buy it if you want it because it’ll be limited to 6000 copies (which is a lot i know, but that means records won’t last for long). It comes out July 25th:

Disc 1
1. 764-Hero "Now You're Swimming"
2. Modest Mouse "A Life of Arctic Sounds"
3. The Scenic Vermont "Elementary" #
4. Elliott Smith "Division Day"
5. Modest Mouse / 764-Hero "Whenever You See Fit (DJ Dynomite D REMIX)
6. Pennsy's Electric Workhorses Songs "Cycle Suitor" * #
7. Pedro the Lion "June 18, 1976"
8. The Black Heart Procession "After the Ladder" #
9. Aspera "Bird's Fly" #
10. Constantines "Dirty Business" #
11. The Magic Magicians "Cascade Express"
12. The Black Keys "Yearnin' (live)"
13. Iron and Wine / Six Parts Seven "Sleeping Diagonally"
14. The Melvins "With Teeth (live)" #
15. Les Savy Fav "We'll Make a Lover of You" #
16. Hint Hint "Natural Collegiate"
17. We Ragazzi "Making You Queens Tonight"
18. The Unicorns "2014"
19. S "5 Dollars"
20. Goon Moon "Rock Weird (Weird Rock)"

Disc 2
1. Minus the Bear "The Game Needed Me (Dalek REMIX)" *
2. The Aislers Set "What Fades First (demo)" *
3. Headphones "Gas and Matches (acoustic)" *
4. Crystal Skulls "Baby Boy (demo)" *
5. Six Parts Seven "Afternoon Bed" *
6. Metal Hearts "Jean Baptiste" *
7. Of Montreal "Voltaic Crusher/Undrum to Muted Da" +
8. Chin Up Chin Up "Trophy's for Hire" *
9. Earlimart "Caruthers Boy" *
10. Red Stars Theory "Evergreen and Ivorbean" *
11. Black Mountain "Voices" +
12. Russian Circles "Upper Ninety" *
13. These Arms Are Snakes "Old Paradise" *
14. Hella "Meth Leper" *

* - Previously Unreleased
+ - First time on CD
# - Out of Print

And now a “Good” and “Bad” lesson. Good: Declining an invitation to be part of the Family Values tour with faded and pathetic people like Korn and Deftones. Bad: Releasing an album featuring a collaboration with Nora Jones.

Now you can really say you can die because of Aerosmith.

Check this video out, it’s what’s probably Megadeth’s first ever gig with Kerry King on second guitar. Headbang to “Teh Mechanix”

Check out Unexpect, they sound like a power metal version of Magma or Koenjihyakkei; yes, that’s how awesome they sound!!! But that’s not all, their bass player plays a 9 string bass and they come from Montreal, eh!!! Skin Graft are probably kicking themselves for not signing them in the first place, it’s the kind of stuff they wet their pants for. Anyway, their album which comes out August 22 is called In A Flesh Aquarium and it will come out thru The End Records.

Unexpect – Megalomaniac Trees.mp3

Radio Oscillator #3

2006-06-28T17:23:00.000-07:00

Another week, another show. This week, i programmed a lot of songs, mostly because i didn't put many long one (like last week with Don Cab and Virus) so more songs fit in there...it wasn't something i planned, it's just happened that way. Enjoy the show anyway:

1. T Rex - 20th Century Boy
2. Be your Own Pet - Fuuuuun
3. Boxes - Bad Blood
4. Xtatika - Immolation
5. Arthur Brown - Fire
6. Islands - Rough Gem
7. 3 Inches Of Blood - Dominion Of Deceit
8. Flaming Lips - Pompeii Am Göterdämmerung
9. Misfits - Hybrid Moments
10. Gauze - Kane Kaese
11. Camera Obscura - Tears For Affairs
12. Swell Maps - Big Maz In The Country
13. Gånglîå - Copycat Ripoff
14. The Vaselines - Dying For It
15. The Screamers - In A Better World
16. Hüsker Dü - Iron Man
17. Masonna - untitled track 6 (Frequency LSD)
18. Charalambides - Dormant Love
19. Sham 69 - If The Kids Are United

Radio Oscillator #3.mp3

News And Rants

2006-06-28T14:21:00.000-07:00

If you buy mp3s from iTunes i have some good news for you: You, sir/ma’am are an idiot, consider that you are paying for a shitty compressed file (meaning the waveform of the music gets taken elements from it to make it smaller) and then get charged like if it was actually full sounding song, biggest ripoff of the century!. So if you do that, stop; also, you can download a new EP by Deicide.

Sleater-Kinney are breaking up!!! People are sad!!!! It sucks that i never got to see them live but they were never my favorite band or anything; still a good band indeed. They are going on indefinite hiatus and have no plans to tour or record in the future; after their 5 scheduled shows this summer (Louisville, Philly, Washington DC, NY and Chicagopalooza), they kaput. Feminists, lesbians and Spin staffers are bummed.

And speaking of Spin, what’s with them turning into Blender? I mean, Spin was shitty, but turn the suck factor to pukatronic? Is the money better?

The Arcade Fire haven’t found enough instruments and ways of recording stuff for their next album. They have recorded 15 songs and are not done yet, they want to record in their living room, they have added a pipe organ and they want to record with an orchestra in Budapest. Just make sure to mix the thing properly, maybe you should try mixing it in Dobly.

Look out!!! For soon the Toribox shall be upon us. How much Tori can it get, it’s None More Tori Amos. Here’s what you get when you buy A Piano on September 26:

Disc 1:
"Leather" (Alternate Mix)
"Precious Things" (Alternate Mix)
"Silent All These Years"
"Upside Down"
"Crucify" (Unedited Single Version)
"Happy Phantom"
"Me and a Gun"
"Flying Dutchman" (Alternate Mix)
"Girl"
"Winter"
"Take to the Sky (Russia)"
"Tear in Your Hand"
"China"
"Sweet Dreams"
"Mother" (Alternate Mix)
"Little Earthquakes"

Disc 2:
"Cornflake Girl"
"Honey"
"Take Me With You"
"Baker Baker" (Alternate Mix)
"The Waitress" (Alternate Mix)
"Pretty Good Year"
"God"
"Cloud on My Tongue"
"Past the Mission" (Alternate Mix)
"Bells For Her"
"Yes, Anastasia" (Alternate Mix)
"Blood Roses"
"Mr Zebra"
"Caught a Lite Sneeze" (Alternate Mix)
"Professional Widow" (Merry Widow Version - Live)
"Beauty Queen/Horses"
"Father Lucifer"
"Marianne"

Disc 3:
"Walk to Dublin" (Sucker Reprise)
"Hey Jupiter" (Dakota Version)
"Professional Widow" (Armand"s Star Trunk Funkin" Mix)
"Putting the Damage On"
"Bliss" (Remixed Version)
"Suede"
"Glory of the 80's"
"1000 Oceans"
"Concertina" (Single Remix Version)
"Lust"
"Datura"
"Sugar" (Soundcheck)
"The Waitress" (Live)
"Snow Cherries From France"
"Doughnut Song" (Remixed Version)

Disc 4:
"A Sorta Fairytale"
"Not David Bowie"
"Amber Waves"
"Iieee" (Remixed Version)
"Playboy Mommy" (Remixed Version)
"The Beekeeper"
"Jackie's Strength"
"Zero Point"
"Sweet the Sting"
"Ode to My Clothes"
"Spark"
"Intro Jam"/"Marys of the Sea"
"Cruel" (Remixed Version)
"Dolphin Song"
"Gold Dust"

Disc 5:
"The Pool"
"Never Seen Blue"
"Daisy Dead Petals"
"Beulah Land"
"Sugar"
"Cooling"
"Bachelorette"
"Black Swan"
"Mary" (Tales Version)
"Peeping Tommi"
"Toodles Mr. Jim"

Demo Medley:
"Fire-Eater's Wife/Beauty Queen" (Demo)
"Playboy Mommy" (Demo)
"A Sorta Fairytale" (Demo)
"This Old Man"
"Purple People"
"Here. In My Head"
"Hungarian Wedding Song"
"Merman"
"Sister Janet"
"Home on the Range" (Cherokee Edition)
"Frog on my Toe"

OHHH this rules!!! Top Of The Pops gets cancelled!!! Damn! Now where will i be reminded what is the current Robbie Willaims, Pussycat Dolls or whoever was in the Spice Girls single?

Today is the release date for Flying Luttenbachers brand new fucking cd called Cataclysm, and you can only order it from their website. The bad news, they only pressed 500 copies, bummer is right.

Portishead has broken their silence and have post two, count them, TWO new songs for an album with a “?” for a title so far that will be released in 2006 by Island Records. Well, they are not really new songs, they are more like instrumental working things, if they are final songs, then i think it’s the end of the P-Head. Hear them here.

Alright, whoever is shocked to know Axl Rose was arrested for biting the leg of a security guard in Stockholm then that person is an ignorant bastard who knows squat about the Axl man; that’s normal, everyday behavior to him and us GN’FN’R fans.

Hella are releasing an EP called Acoustics on September 12 where they...well...play some of their songs in acoustic form. While for most bands that means a giant YAWN!, for Hella that’s a big challenge considering most of their stuff is based on the power of electric guitar; seems like the axe has been drawn and war has been declared, wonder if and/or how Lightning Bolt and Orthrelm will react to it. Here’s teh tracklisting:

01 1-800-Ghost Dance
02 Hella - Women of the 90's.mp3
03 Cafeteria Bananas
04 Biblical Violence
05 Welcome to the Jungle Baby, Your Gunna Live!
06 The Devil Isn't Red

Xiu Xiu are not only dropping another weirdo elctro noisy Gamelan Sabbath lamentation of pain and suffering in the form of The Air Force, due out in September 12, but will also release a lead-in single as a limited edition 7” picture disc of the songs “Boy Soprano”/”San Pedro Glue Stick”; the thing is already available for preorder thru the label releasing it DoggPony but it doesn’t ship until July 11. The 7” is limited to 500 copies.

Big Big Big Big Big Slayer update:1) Christ Illusion’s Release Date: August 8 2) Christ Illusion’s Cover Artwork made by the dude who did the cover for Reign In Blood, South Of Heaven and Seasons In The Abyss: click here 3) If you are willing to convert money to Euros, you can buy the new “Eternal Pyre” 7” picture disc single limited to a 1000 copies here and wait until June 30 to get yours shipped (when you do a pressing of one thousand discs it’s NOT a limited run, ok?) 4) if you live in the U.S. and are brave enough to venture to that underworld of decay and suffering that is Hot Topic, you can actually score a cd copy of the “Electric Pyre” single and 5) You can stream 3 Christ Illusion songs, “Cult”, “Eyes Of The Insane” and “Jihad”, here (they rule in a total “It’s Slayer and they hardly change their style” way)

On October 6, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead will either embarrass themselves further or will return to their glory of past because on that day they will release their next studio album.It also looks like Dr. Dre is going to help mix the album.

Atari Teenage Riot goes mainstream, it seems they use their song “Speed” on that Fast And The Furious movie.

Click here to watch Cat Power’s gangsta christian track & field video for “Living Proof”

September 12 again, appearantly the day music will live and take us away from our money, will be the day Yo La Tengo will unleash I’m Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass; yes that’s the name and you bet your ass it will deliver it’s title when we finally get to listen to it. For now take a look at the coverart (by Gary Panter) here and download a preview song here:

Yo La Tengo – Beanbag Chair.mp3

Hey, MP3.com: FUCK YOU YOU RACIST FUCKS!!!! Just because i’m in Mexico doesn’t mean i can’t watch the new Sonic Youth video for “Incinerate” does it? Well bitches, go fuck yourselves and your corporate crap. I’m not even linking the stream so if you want to see the Yoof get all glossy for MTV2’s Subterrenean, get it on a Bittorrent site or on Soulseek. Fuck MP3.com, let me see you drown next time your site closes down.

And speaking of Hüsker Youth, lookie lookie!!! Ecstatic Peace website now sells stuff, it actually looks like a real record label website; but you can’t download the videos anymore? C’mon!!! well, they were a waste of space anyway. Check out the kickass videos of Be Your Own Pet.

Go to Narnack’s MySpace page to listen to Iran, they are pretty cool, and also check out a new song by Lee “Scratch” Perry.

September 26 sees the release of Wolf Eyes Sub Pop follow up to Burned Mind called Human Animal, this will be their 27th release this year so far, look for the remaining 84 recordings later on in the year.

So it seems the vinyl edition of Genghis Tron’s album is sold out...

Animal Collective is shooting for a late October release of their genius debut Hollindagain. That album along with the Prospect Hummer EP are my fave AC albums, everything they have done pales in comparisson. Speaking of Paw Tracks stuff, check out First Nation, they have an mp3 that sounds pretty cool, you can also check out the song at their MySpace page.

First Nation – Female Trance.mp3

So yes, Terrorizer kinda reunited and they recorded a new album called Darker Days Ahead...no, seriously, it comes out August 22; the band has Jesse Pintado on guitar and Pete Sandoval on drums plus Tony Norman (a.k.a. the dude who is slaying on guitar with Morbid Angel) and vocalist Anthony Rezhawk; they recorded 11 new songs for the thing plus a new version of “Dead Shall Rise”...i might seem like a jerk here but why don’t you release the original Terrorizer demos and get over with all of this, ok?

Jack Rose is semi-on tour, catch the man if you can, the dude slays!

OOIOO will have a new album out on September 12 and it will be called Samba Pa’ Ti...i mean Taiga; this is like the most tropical Japanese noisers will ever get; i have it and it rules with capital Z; for those of you who like your mouths to get more watery click here.

More new records news: These Arms Are Snakes have just finished recording their latest album which is called Easter, the cd on Jade Tree will be out October 10, the vinyl on Second Nature will be out on September 26, but that doesn’t mean you can’t preorder it (the cd at least). Sneak preview in the form of a compressed audio file will follow at the end of this sentence:

These Arms Are Snakes – Horse Girl.mp3

Load Records are pimping us new mp3s for the new albums by Coughs (out September 19), Teh USA Is A Monster (September 5) and Vampire Can’t (no date yet, Fall of ’06 appearantly) but as of right now, you can’t download them, you get an HTTP 404. Check back until they fix that crap.

If you have $75 dollars to spend and don’t know what will you spend them on, get the new RRR/Groundfault/Troniks 10LP boxset featuring each of these fine artists playing a side each: Amps For Christ, Cherry Point, Joe Colley, Control, Gerritt, GX Jupiter-Larsen, Moth Drakula, Open City, Oscillating Innards, Damion Romero, Rubber O Cement, Sixes, Skaters, Solid Eye, Spastic Colon, Tralphaz, John Weise, Xome, RHY Yau, Yellow Swans.

Antiopic will release an album by Tetuzi Akiyama/Oren Ambarchi/Alan Licht called Willow Weep And Moan For Me as part of their live series, the thing is labeled as “Coming Soon” but it sounds too good to hold back for a long time.

Radio Oscillator #2

2006-06-20T22:54:00.000-07:00

So here i give you show number 2, i apologize for not upping it sooner, the reason why is because i was (actually, i still am) experimenting with other ways of making these available to you, so right now i'm using Badongo and sticking with it for a little while longer, actually, Badongo has been kickass so far; also, i had some throat problems so you can laugh if you want to. Anyway, by popular demand, here's the playlist:

1. The Fall - Rouche Rumble
2. Animetal Lady - Theme From Candy Candy(?)
3. Death Sentence: PANDA! - Boomer
4. Antioch Arrow - The Fixed Orbit
5. Double Leopards - Druid Spectre
6. Cannibal Corpse - Psychotic Precision
7. Raccoo-oo-oon - Stick Eaters
8. Sneaker Pimps - Spin Spin Sugar
9. Don Caballero - The Peter Criss Jazz
10. The Germs - Sugar Sugar
11. Virus - Endless Game
12. Shonen Knife - Twist Barbie
13. Daemien Frost - You've Changed
14. The Gerogerigegege - Golden Shower
15. We Versus The Shark - Ten Uh Clock Heart Uh Tack

Radio Oscillator #2.mp3

I'll appreciate all your comments

For It's Only A Melody That Can Save Us From Ourselves

2006-06-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

TV On The Radio
Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes
2004, Touch & Go

This boogie woogie album of distorted bass, vocal harmonies and ambient from hell or anywhere 4:00 am was released 2 years ago and it wasn’t a sleeper at all, no sir, it wasn’t; it was one of the top albums of the year, made several best of the year lists and so on; a year before they had issued their EP Young Liars to some good reception but this was the album that took everyone by surprise, in an era of post punk revivalists and persons of less moral value, it was a breath of fresh air, something so original and alive coming out of this amazing album, with such songs so complex and simple at the same time, in odd rock n’ roll instrumentation, it was a blessed thing, i tell you, or i might not have to tell you since you probably already know about it, hipster boy.

This band is based on the bass but they have little or nothing to do with funk or reggae, the basic of bass based musics, there’s not slap at all, no melodically rhythmic low end riffs, there’s plenty of bass riffs alright but not dancy ones; to add to the insult, they also use a drum machine and their music is not dancy at all, it might seem weird to you, throw you out a bit but, believe me, that’s part of the deal here. So let’s check here: bass, not funky not dancy, but brutal as the melodic motif of the music, as the basis of their collages, distorted sometimes, commanding always; just brutal. Drum machine, almost never dancy, almost always blending with the background, in camouflage clothing and with the face painted green and brown; in fact the beat is really kept by the bass more than the beatbox, while the d-machine adds little changes over it’s lines; note that i say the bass “keeps” the beat and it doesn’t create rhythms, since rhythms are few steps from dancing and jerkying around, and that’s not happening here, not on the surface at least. This is the mold where the other instrumentations and vocal harmonies are springled over, weird ass keyboards lurk everywhere, tracks one and nine have a honking sax, guitars sometimes squeal some notes just to make it weirder and more textured, like a velvet covered rock; the voices are the real characters in this soundscapes, more than one, like the ones in your head, even thought they never scream or are raised that much, most of the time they are singing, intercepting each other in the audio field, trying to encounter the end of one and complementing the other, maybe denying the first one, or rejecting the last, coming over everywhere, unexpecting to when will they fall back and leave just one, or when will they attack, or if they would stop attacking, agreeing on disagreeing and getting to saying the same thing at the same time, reinforcing the idea, the truth: The Melody, for it’s only a melody that can save us from ourselves, from the voices in our head, from the rain and the tape hiss; it’s allied or divide and conquer and the record is the warfield, waging for all to end...and does it end? I can’t really tell from here, but then again, who can win if the subjects fighting are one and the same? This is the explosions and lights of a battlefield made music...and it’s damn great music, i might add.

PS: They will be releasing a new album soon.

mp3:

Staring At The Sun.mp3
Poppy.mp3

Flashy, Ridiculous and Self-Serving: A Progressive Rock Ode By A Brit Punk Band

2006-06-16T21:53:00.000-07:00

The Damned
“Curtain Call”
The Black Album
1980, Chiswick

Ahh The Damned, you know them, maybe you don’t know them; they were probably the funnest of the 1977 UK punk bands, certainly more so than the media hogging Sex Pistols or the self righteous Clash. The Dam-Ned had made a name for themselves playing fun, fast odes to...who knows, and beginning with their now classic Machine Gun Etiquette, the band had started to become more experimental with their music, but really being experimental; the band had adopted many sounds, past and present, and had incorporated them to their sound while at the same time, tossing their characteristic Damned Damned Damned style to the side, leaving just their approach and humour in, which was all it was needed to be honest.

So after 11 songs of macabre death rock that constitute the Black Album, what does a band that has gone up and down in the matter of minutes go? They wrap it up with a 17 minute prog rock epic of course. And it’s not just a prog rock epic, it’s one of the things the Damned had ever done.

It’s understandable that it’s a little understood song, since, when compared to “New Rose” or “Neat Neat Neat” or “Smash It Up”, it’s pretty opposite to what the band had been all about, or at least what they had been best at; but then again, people who think that are probably inventing genres and listening just to that, they might even believe the Sex Pistols invented punk and ended with them breaking up which always makes me laugh; so, listening with an open mind is a must, not just for the Damned, but for everything really, but let’s just leave at listening to the Damned. The song starts innocently enough as one of those summons of the deadly depressed feelings so common in goth rock (the kind which rocks, not the one which is just dumb and ridiculous) with keyboards and everything and Dave Vanian’s ghastly baritone all over it, then the pace goes up and the band starts to rock, then a few minutes later the band goes into Beach Boys vocal harmonies. The Fiends!!!!! It’s all good and games when the keyboards leave on droning and the piano plucking for the Phantom of the Opera, mask and shame to be seen and everything, stay to give place to something that sounds nothing like British punk at all and that’s where the genius of this piece lies, it’s nothing like what you expect, not the vocal harmonies, not the piano plucking, not the Yes references, not the droning, not the guitar solos, not anything. I mean i can certainly picture the band coming up with this song going “le’s do a 17 minute sung!!!” then, the band would wonder what would they fill it with, and then they would just brainstorm thru the whole thing, the influences, the instrumentals, the pretentiousness and the laughter, for those are perfect ingredients when it comes to vaudevillian music which is what the Dam-Ned did best, it’s also at the core of punk, Johnny Rotten said it on camera on The Filth And The Fury, the Ramones were all about laughs, they were a band for fun times, whether the fun times were as innocent as having a girlfriend or hanging at Rockaway Beach or as fucked up as sniffing glue, the New York Dolls were one big joke, i mean, you can tell it to friends, tell the story of the Dolls and it’s just laughs after laughs; and where can you take that when you’ve gone back and forth with the three chords and the dresses and the offenses? The real joke that is the Black Album was on the punks, but more than on the punks, it’s on the people who care about punk superficially, that category whose members include teh spiky haired possers and the rock critics, who to this day trash this album and consider it “sub-par” to their previous stuff. And when those people don’t like it, then the joke hits the fan, that’s when you know it works, that’s when music becomes punk, or punker compared to other music. The musicianship in this song is superb, no doubt about it, but it’s the song that shines, even if it’s designed to be flashy, ridiculous and self-serving, for that is a FUCK YOU to all who expected another brand new rose in town.

mp3:

Curtain Call.mp3

Radio Show #1

2006-06-08T08:27:00.000-07:00

Here i give you the first show of this site's radio program/podcast. The bandas i played on this program are Sonic Youth, The Arcade Fire, No-Neck Blues Band, Karp, Loop, M83, Yo La Tengo, Sonny Sharrock, Acid Mothers Temple, Agnostic Front and Ruins; some of those songs are live or rare. Listen up:

Radio Show #1.mp3

Leave a comment after listening.

New things

2006-06-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Alright, so it's been a while since i posted, well, that's probably about to change, since i have many things in store.

First of all, i'm going to branch out start doing a paper, physical fanzine called, you guessed it, Oscillator. I still don't know when the first issue will be finished or how much it's going to cost or whatever, but rest assure, you'll know and (more importantly) i'll know for sure soon. And don't worry, it won't be boring, it will be more essay based instead of record reviews, yadda yadda.

Also, in the works is the radio show/podcast, show number 1 will be uploaded soon and show number 2 is in the works. I hope to do it as a weekly thing, and the show will have a wide range of artists, as is to be expected.

I'll keep you posted on what will happen next.

When Critics And Pretentiousness Screw Music Up

2006-03-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground & Nico
1967, Verve

Yesterday i was reading some stuff at Mark Prindle's website, where he reviews a shitload of bands' entire discographies (actually, i have it listed on my Links thing to your right, you'll fall out of your chair laughing when reading about Lady Terminator on the Dinosaur Jr reviews and his very apt comparison of Jarboe on Neurosis' discography) and i was reading the Velvet Underground's, because coincidentially enough, i've been listening to the band's debut album; surprisingly, Mark doesn't like the Velvet Underground (which i understand once you pick up, after casually reading some of his writings that he is all about pissing on sacred cows and being an irreverent wiseass in the process), and i started to read the comments people leave after each entry/disc, a lot of people agreed with Mark and said the Velvet was shit and others, predictably, were defending theband's work. What ticked me off wasn't the people against the album or the band but that everyone who tried to defend the album, why? you may ask, well, the reason is because each one of these persons that tried to clarify why this band deserved such reverence made it look like the most pretentious, snobby and dogmatic thing in the history of arts, all they wanted to rationalize why this band SHOULD be considered the best of the best, couting reasons, dates, influences, influencees, etc etc. A person in particular, who wrote his response in spanish, pissed me off; all he was trying to explain was that he somehow felt they were grading him for his Spelling and Written Composition course, like if it was an example on how to write a poem following predetermined structures and putting a certain number of metaphors and comparisons to pass the class without having to do a final exam. NOBODY talked about the emotions found on the recording, about the power the music had or some other stupidity that doesn't require a scholar analisis by idiots that feel like they are authorities just to feel superior to someone else. And the most stupid thing about everything is that this band and this album have all of these intangible and awesome things galore.

Conceptions like thos have kept me away for some time from a lot of bands/artists that rule because of the contexts where someone else puts them and make me feel despised by them, something i want nothing to do with it because i'm not like that at all, i don't need reasons to like stuff (especially music) i want sensations that make me wanna experience something, but if they put it like it's an obligation doing, making or saying something then i automatically do the opposite and, because of that, i've missed out on a lot of stuff (and thankfully have put my prejudgments aside long enough to discover some of my current favorites like Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo and Pavement, among many others). Critics are to blame that intentions get confused, that maybe a band just wants to make music, there's people that make it seem that it's our duty to recognize that there's some deep indulgent motive or something and that, because of that very same reason, and not because of the emotional "reasons", is the reason to bow down before their recent discovery of some jerk with a dictionary and a hell of a lotta free time (and for your information, i DO have a dictionary, but i never use it!).

So Velvet Underground & Nico...first of all, when i bought this record, i fucking hated it, it let me down, i was promised a dissonant explossion of nopise and feedback and all i got were these useless hippie/lounge ballads with Lou Reed singing like bootleg Bob Dylan (NOTE: i know and i knew that VU were against everything hippie and that is the same reason it let me down, it sounded to much like flower power shittyness for people who claimed to be so repulsed by it). Even "The Black Angel's Death Song" seemed surprisingly crappy, because it's almost impossible to have a song about Satan to suck (except if it's a band who sing nothing but about Satan, then it's possible that only a few songs won't suck), i couldn't stand it! but this is one of those records that grow on you little by little until one day, a divine light fell from the heavens to my forehead and right then, friends and acquantances of mine, everything fits and every sound you hear sounds as essential as walking or washing the dog. That's right, i'm not sure how many listens after happened but it happened and it has become one of my favorites.

So i'm not going to talk to you about how the Velvet Underground basically created the concept of underground and alternative rock or how they were one of the first bands to expand the sonic barriers of rock n' roll BLAH BLAH. I'll talk to you about MY Velvet Underground and why i think they are one of the best. First of all, in the band you find a troubador with a small case of Charles Bukowski, a female drummer who (almost always) played without a snare, cymbals or drum sticks, just mallets and toms that once she replaced with garbage cans, a guy who told contemporary classical music to shove it to play viola in a rock band, a model/actress/singer who told fame to shove it to sing three songs in a rock band and a guitar player who didn't have to do much to be icy chill (which reminds me, i'll take this opportunity to say, yes, Nico doesn't sing nice; infact, she sounds more manly than Lou Reed in the whole record, but that's the way she sings, if you want soft and pretty voices, look for them elsewhere). They all wore black turtleneck sweaters and sunglasses, they used noise in their songs and basically all they wanted was scare the shit out of the entire planet playing in a rock band. All of this in 1967, mind you; almost all of their songs are mellow but they have a palpable menace that is difficult to overlook. What you hear are rock songs that, somehow, blend folk, noise, 20th century experimental symphonic music, rockabilly, the Beatles, free jazz, garage and for some strange reason, it sounds like the most natural thing in the world.

Once i read a critic of this very same album that said that the songs in it are more like long verses and it's true, don't expect choruses or dynamics, these are pop rock chants surrounded by an atmosphere that hints us what lies whithin these or give us a false sense and fool us. Listening to these classic songs, folkloric in the sense of how natural and ancestral yet relevant and demanding, is like fighting with someone while you cuddle with them at the same time and you feel comfortable and soft, even if your guts are twisting inside from being with that person. It's like being digusted by life but feeling like there's no other way to fly. And you know that with this album, there's no other way.

So i'm uploading my 4 current favorite songs from the record...well, that's not true, actually i would swap "Venus In Furs" with "There She Goes Again" and "Heroin" with either "Black Angel's Death Song" or "European Son", but i had to put a couple for the novice and the truth is that they sort of are the stock favorites anyway...yet i love each song in the album. Listen to those songs a lot and listen loud!!!

mp3:
Venus In Furs.mp3
Heroin.mp3
All Tomorrow's Parties.mp3
Run Run Run.mp3
---------

Velvet Underground website: http://www.velvetunderground.com/
Buy The Velvet Underground & Nico in Amazon
Buy The Velvet Underground & Nico (Deluxe Edition) in Amazon

Scotland Is This Week's Japan

2006-02-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

Arab Strap
Monday At The Hug And Pint
2003, Chemikal Underground/Matador

So, thanks to my good friend Paul B., i discovered another gem of an album, another band to look for discographies and such; yeah, you know how it is when something grabs you by the first listen and WHAM!!! you are in the floor crying to all, but wait...why am i crying about here? it's not from the pure physical crazed agonizing pain of crippling proportions gotten from pushing play on my Winamp too hard, oh no sir-e, it might be because of an unhealed wound, one i knew i had once before but totally forgot about, thought it had healed and all, like most wounds do...well, almost all wounds, you know which ones stay there for a big while and hurt like pulling your pubic hair, not to get too emo here, but yeah, emotional wounds are what the subject might be called for, you know how it is: things happen, you feel like crap...things get worse and you feel...well...worse, sometimes it's like if you are getting dismembered yet you keep your fingers and toes and senses, still, you get to die a little. So we've all been there, how it is to feel like that, but then time comes and time heals it's pressumed by the common knowledge and you go around, living your life like it's none of your business only to find the truth and nothing but the truth in some cases and by certain circumstances: TIME HEALS NOTHING!!!, yeah, time may pass and the pain might disappear but sometimes it takes almost nothing to collapse, choke and spazz; BAM welcome to miseryville. Miss Misery as you said, you don't see it coming, you don't see the waiter come and salt your dish, your main course: The Wound, and it takes just a little wind or a couple of songs to get there. Wounds might be cathartic, but they can also open us to new amazing songs, even if they give us no clue as to what's wrong with us

So the subject here is Arab Strap, band from Scotland, also the homecountry of Belle & Sebastian and Mogwai who in various points in time and depending on where and why you are listening, rule. The headline comes from me listening to a lot of Mogwai lately (it helps they are coming to Mexico soon) and me being a recent B&S convert, so instead of finding the next Boredoms side project to worship, i've been revealing in the sounds of the land of the Loch Ness monster. Arab consists of two guys: Aidan Moffett (who sings and writes what he sings) and Malcolm Middleton (he of the music), and like many good duos, they create a hell of a soundtrack with so few people involved. They have been around since 1995, the have a newish album called The Last Romance and have been either called the best band ever or completely ignored by the world. I pity those fools.

The album is lush with instrumentation and drum machines that sparkle the moods of loneliness, emotional distress and longing for that sweet taste of poisonous love...that said, the music is hardly sappy, it all goes from either subtle and somber in it's stark presentation to full blown chaotic and frenetic, yet keeping a calm underneat that really tells how it's not ok to feel so much and play that loud but have this ground which is stable, it's wrong to be here and it's wrong that it's now but that's the way it is and that's the feeling you get from hearing the 808 collapsing with the bowed string instruments while the feedback still rings throughtout the sorrow, the wetness of the tears just picked up by the edge of your index finger and that desire to have THAT person come and tell you: "Everything is going to be ok", while you still sit and stay and expect a ghost to waltz you thru the last dance on the ballroom; but instead, you reach into your pocket to call somebody, could be your friends, your mom or the suicide hotline and just talk, and listen to your voice complain back to you. The Wound should feel like a cello in a somber room

mp3:
Fucking Little Bastards.mp3
Who Named The Days.mp3
Act of War.mp3
--------------

Arab Strap website: http://www.arabstrap.co.uk/
Matador Records: http://www.matadorrecords.com/
Buy Monday At The Hug And Pint at Amazon

New And Rants

2006-01-31T20:10:00.000-08:00

McLusky will release a "greatest hits" both available for n00b (as a one cd deal) or for experts (as a montruos 3 cd set with a-sides b-sides and no-sides). Both will have their last song known as "McLuskyism". Look for it February 27 on Too Pure, mark the calendar right the fuck right now!!!

The Rogers Sisters will be jerking and herking around in March, first with the single "Never Learn To Cry" and then with their full lenght next album The Invisible Deck. Get into the groove

Stereolab freaks will have a busy day on March 7, they will release 3 7-inch/a double 10"/ single cd/ whatever you fancy set of new songs known as Fab Four Suture.

The AIDS Wolf album, Lovvers LP fucking rocks!!! Don't let the dumbers at Spin fool you!! if you are perverted, go to the Skin Graft website to watch the band get, get nekkid

Do People know that the new augmented rhythm section of the Melvins is Big Business? Is this the raddest fusion of bands ever? is the earth more prone to earthquakes now?

Britt Daniels will be kicking it old school like Nancy Drew on that Veronica Mars show

JR Connors, formerly of Cave In, is now in Doomriders

Rose For Bohdan rock, check them out; dance and noise and pop, but not like when people make you believe stuff like that then it's nothing at all like that, this is the real deal. Buy their album from Deathbomb Arc.

-> Peter And The Rabbit And The Wolf.mp3

Coachella is looking like slaying this year; so far the bands anounced are: DEPECHE MODE and TOOL as headliners and Paul Oakenfold, Franz Ferdinand, My Morning Jacket, Bloc Party, TV On The Radio, Sigur Ros, Scissor Sisters, Cat Power, Damian Marley, Tricky, Nine Black Alps, Hard-Fi, Editors, the Zutons, Art Brut, the Magic Numbers and the Subways, the Walkmen, the Dears, Carl Cox, Wolf Parade, Metric, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Phoenix, Deerhoof, Derrick Carter, Devendra Banhart, the Like, Sleater-Kinney, Mogwai, Dungen, Animal Collective, Coheed & Cambria, Mylo, Jamie Lidell, the Go! Team, Tosca and Coldcut.

Radiohead is playing Bonnaroo with Tom Petty, talk about rad, right?!

Melissa Auf der Maur is now an A&R for EMI Canada. Cool.

The Arctic Monkeys are the new saviour of rock n' roll and will be loved by every tonedeaf poseur in Mexico and Latin America for the months to come

Julien Temple will be making a documentary about the life and times of Joe Strummer. Cooler

Opeth is getting ridiculous, the are now going to be playing with a ballet

Megadeth will release the mother of thrash metal dvds before Get Thrashed gets released. Arsenal Of Megadeth will be out March 21 and it will feature everything from Peace Sells... era shit until their fake selves of today

KRS are releasing a comp with new Sufjan song

Orthrelm are touring for the first time in like a million years. They will be also releasing a split with Behold The Arctopus (with artwork by Away from VOI-muthafuckin'-VOD no less!!!!) on March 29 on Crucial Blast

Livewire Records will release a grunge retrospective album with the very inventive name of Sleepless In Seatle. To balance out the lameness, it will include Mr Epp And The Calculations' monster anthem "Mohawk Man"

Xiu Xiu is releasing and rereleasing a shitload of stuff, but that's hardly news. Go to Deathbomb Arc

INSTANT COMPOSER HOMAGE

2006-01-04T20:47:00.000-08:00

Derek Bailey (1932-2005)
-A tribute to a man whose music i recently heard too late-

I’m not going to lie to any of you, i’m not going to posse as some big expert on the matter at hand, nothing could be further from the truth for me, in fact i’m constantly asking myself over and over again why am i trying to write this piece, i’m not sure, but i have to do it, i have to go and type something because it’s important, more important than ignorance and bigger than this. The purpose of this piece is to remember a man who has released great music and indeed changed the way we perceived it, even if it’s possible that we (and i really do mean WE, it’s all of you plus me, because franckly and on the wise words of Wayne Campbell: “I was not aware of this”) don’t know about it, we are not concious of it at all in all of our brain, yet it’s true as all the facts in history we don’t have and all the things in the world we can believe or not, but we assume exist; in this case, it’s more like the history thing, some of us didn’t see it happen, yet it happened and boy those it mark the way we live and do stuff, meaning music, the music we breathe and the music we dream, the music we eat and the music we fuck, it’s the music, man. And yet for it, we’re still ignorant and do shit about it, because that’s the way you do with music, you know shit, then time passes and you start discovering new things, new sounds, new names and new hostages, new recoveries as well as uncoverings, we do and that’s how, after ringing around the rosy for a while we stumble upon it, the pink white yellow orange truth, the truth of ourselves and the truth of unclearing your eyes after a nap, of focus and yawning to get back online at 100% and the excitement that follows, usually it’s excitement. And that’s a moment we cherish forever, yet we also curse it, because it’s when after, tumbling backwards a rock to uncover these sonic wonders we also unearth something else that can bother your very own conciousness: WHY DIDN’T I HEARD THIS BEFORE?!!, why could i be so late to the party?, i mean i had my invitation and all but i just felt like not showing up until now; in here, you can always enjoy it because the party never ends, it lives in grooves and binomial lossless data transfers; yet sometimes we miss out on the people you could have swapped knowledge or spit with. The only comfort is on the clichéd lines: better late than never.

So yes, i was late to it, and no it wasn’t for that long, in fact i just missed it for a few minutes, and that’s how the mortality game is, always by seconds, then minutes then hours then days then months, then years then decades then you lose count (not always, sometimes you dust out the abacus). Who i was late for? The same man i’m driven to write about the same way i was driven to finally giving a good, hard honest listen just hours after he died. Of course i’m talking about Derek Bailey, who passed away on December 25 05, just as i was, for the first time, enjoying his magnificent long player Ballads; just as i sat here, in this very same computer to appreciate the completely free, amorphous guitar solos the speakers were spewing when i found out online about it.

I thought it was sad, not so much for the reasons of his passing, but because it happened again, over and over what has happened before and most probably will happen again and again, over and over, i missed out on a genius while he was still getting tanked on oxygen on this very same grounds and this very same salty seas which surround ‘em, it shouldn’t be that way, it shouldn’t be that you don’t get to enjoy somebody’s heart and soul and not having them there to...i don’t know!!...you never know what to do when someone is alive and well and giving us wonderful music, you just feel more secure, i guess. Yet it shouldn’t be that way, it should be a given’take, it should be about being the closest you are to the persons responsable for great music, and having them know that you are A-ok with their stuff and that they should keep doing it, so they realize that their music is something beyond them and beyond you and beyond Beverly Hills or beyond name-your-legendary-music-holy-land. it’s fucking something else, and something else is enormous and glorious and divine, someone knows it. I guess we all do.

So Derek Bailey passed and i just heard the very first notes i could truly appreciate for the first time hours after his passing which sucks. It also means i don’t have the slightest idea of what the hell am i trying to write here, all i know is that i’m writing; i first thought about doing some thorough research on him, trying to put a nice and tidy good tribute to a man of innovation. Yet i decided to do something different that, at the same time, has more to do with Bailey himself than some retrospective: As of right now i’m listening to his album Daedal and typing this, getting the sound worked to where i could just join Derek and start giving off some of what i got, i’m improvising along with him yet my instrument is the lettered and numbered keyboard hooked to my computer so i can write this piece, no guidelines, no beats, no scales no grammatical corrections, no spell check (well, i little spell check) and no technique. Just freedom.

But first, some background is needed; you see, Derek was a pioneer in the whole sense of improvised music, in the way you can not know anything about an instrument yet feel comfortable enough to not let it intimidate you and go away with it, to whateverland or endlesspossibilityville; his approach is totally primal and instinctive, with some notes and mostly they are accidental anyway. Derek had played with everyone who’s been remotely called avant guard from John Zorn to Peter Brotzman to Ruins; he is also a huge influence in people like Sonic Youth, Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice, No Neck Blues Band and Sunburned Hand Of The Man, just to name a few. He had no sense of swing and no sense of bop, yet he is totally jazz in the way John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Sonny Sharrock at their most extreme and free were. He was the jazz in fact, the jazz for the beat deficient.

And so i go along to the plinks and skronks of his music to write the best tribute i can in probably the way he would most like to, just by going off, not looking back, not knowing anything just being and expressing; expressing all of which torture us or joy us and keeps us going and keep us back, back way bakc. Rises and falls to the sound of the drum rolls and the pick scrapes. Complete denial could be something, or nothing not mixed but stirred at the same time or at no time; time signature to the core seven 15ths to the left and a hundred myles away. Improvise. Improvise, keep on going, keep that bang coming, keep the strum, hold the mustard. Turn around and find something else, a harmonic perhaps or just count the tempo and name a song, go a head, you pick, pick a song, pick a chronometre. Ring it and take it away from and from us, for you to us and from here to you. It’s your choice

I hope you like it, i certainly felt better to let go.

Concerts Of The Year, Attended By Me

2005-12-28T20:15:00.000-08:00

In no particular order:

Anthrax, Circo Volador: Before they once again became the metal Journey, i’m glad i got to see them with John Bush as their vocalist, and even though Scott Ian was not feeling well, they gave classes. Bonus to hear amazing versions of “Walk” and “Fucking Hostile”

Peter Murphy, Salón 21: Demonstrating that he’s still the best frontman in black, Murphy gave a hard rock concert like few solo artists can, in fact, he didn’t need to reunite with Bauhaus and still showed that there’s a big gap for all the H.I.M.s and My Chemical Romances

Nine Inch Nails, Palacio de los Deportes: They might have become new wave on their last record, but live, they became a truly good arena rock band

THC, Papa Bear: Crimson, Can and Lightning Bolt came out of their amps, before a steakhead metal crowd in a place that looked like a play room with a pool table. Feeling how the volume of the music incresed in mass was impressive

Tristeza/Austin TV/Hummersqueal/Sad Breakfast, Club Vintage: Sad Breakfast served screams laced with interstellar delays, Austin gave me hope for rock in my country with mellanchollic, kinetic post rock (and that instrumental music can inspire brutal slam dancing and screams), and Tristeza sent us into one circular, very intense trance

Dinosaur Jr/Broken Social Scene/Radio 4/Magik Markers, Central Park (NY): Definitely, it was not the right stage for Magik Markers and it bummed me out that Bardo Pond opened on other dates of their tour and Broken Social Scene are ok and Radio 4 are horrible, but none of this mattered after after listening to the roar of J Mascis’ amps and the energy of a band that appearantly found that the edge doesn’t have to come from hate. A show with lots of smiles.

Judas Priest/Whitesnake, Palacio De los Deportes: Because sometimes a show (especially Whitesnake) can be so bad and funny that it becomes a great concert experience. Spinal Tap is still alive and knows how to play for sure

Orquesta de Animales, Tysha Club: A very jump cut&paste improvisation, but still covering more ground than most bands’ entire careers

Morbid Angel, Hard Rock Live: This band is getting closer to facing Slayer mano a mano and giving them a hell of a fight. Still one of the raddest live bands.

Dillinger Escape Plan, Salón 21: After the ultra shitty multinational emo freakshow, DEP took the stage by the balls and smashed it to the floor the whole time. It’s amazing how crazy they can get and still play their Mahavishnu psychotic metal note for note perfectly

Oscillator in MySpace

2005-12-24T11:25:00.000-08:00

Oscillator now has a page in MySpace, add us to be your friends

www.myspace.com/oscillatorzine

Still Living

2005-12-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

So it's been two months with no postings and already most of the blog is spammed, yep, that's the way it's been here lately. Finishing college can take some time you know, but now that's over so is the year, almost, so yeah, i do have some reviews sitting plus an excellent interview with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart, and above all, i'll, sometime early next month, be posting my best of the year list. Don't worry i'm back and it'll be cool

yarraw

PS: I'm thinking of changing the name of the blog
PPS: Check out the new song i upload to Myspace by I/C/O/C: www.myspace.com/icoc

Interview: Hair Police

2005-10-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Harsh, abrupt glitches of thundering humming and car factory rhythms or long and droning soundscapes of evil and bad trips, Hair Police are masters of both. Their albums like Blow Out Your Blood, Obedience Cuts, more recent offerings like Constantly Terrified and Drawn Dead plus splits with Viki and Dead Machines are punishing, brain-bashing concrete banging slabs that can either be long and painful or ADD-short painful. But we all know the pain that comes with enjoying quality noise is a good one. I spoke with Mike Connelly (who’s currently replacing Aaron Dilloway in Wolf Eyes) about the finer points of enjoing noise, his thoughts on rock n’ roll and the new punk.

Marcos Hassan (Sweet Disonancia...): Please introduce yourself

Mike Connelly (Hair Police): I am Mike Connelly and I play guitar, tapes and vocals in Hair Police.

Could you give us a little history of Hair Police?

Hair Police started in 2001, it was 5 of us at that time, we were all in different bands, and one day decided to combine them all together and make one; we have since slimed down to 3 members: Myself, Tervor Tremaine and Robert Beatty.

What makes Hair Police stand out from other bands doing what you do, in your opinion?

Fuck...can’t really answer that one without sounding weird, huh?

Do you consider what you're playing as "rock n' roll"?

Nah...i wouldn’t say that. There is certainly rock elements and energy, but when i think of rock n’ roll I think of the Cramps and AC/DC, not really us. But you can call us whatever, i don't mind.

Do you think your albums or releases are conceptual pieces?

No, not really. i mean, like any album, a lot of thought goes into the order and flow of the thing, but thats just basic shit. No, we dont really have overriding conceptual agendas.

What impresses me a lot about your music is how you can play very short and consistent stuff or longer, looser pieces; do you have to change gears, physically and/or mentally, to do so or does it come naturally?

Recently, we have been doing only songs off Constantly Terrified which are all pretty long; I think its just because we’re more patient these days. Before, we were spazzes, we just wanted to freak out, I think we could balance the two nicely nowadays, so we'll see. We haven't talked about doing shorter songs again, but who knows.

What aspect of noise do you find the most fascinating?

I know this may be like "duh!!", but for me the whole fucking sound of it is what gets me. To throw on Macronympha Pittsburgh, PA and just lay on the couch and let the thing slam into your brain and take over for the duration--there's really is nothing like it.

How important is the specific gear you use in your music?

Robert is the main gear modifier in the band. I’m too stupid.

You're a very physical band onstage, are you playing angry music?

No, I never think of the music we play as angry. I think the whole thing is just a fucking insane gathering, so everyone can just flip out; get what you want out of it. Maybe you want it to be angry, thats cool; it’s release, however you want it to be. Anger, sexual, or just plain drunken release, that’s all fine with us.

Do you have many cases of people not "getting it"? like hearing them say stuff like "this is the worst music i've ever heard!"?

Sure, but i could really give a shit.

Would you ever work melody into your music, even as an experiment?

No, not in Hair Police. Trevor and Robert are both very interested in melody in compostion, and they have another band Eyes And Arms Of Smoke that partly explores that. I love music with melody, but not for me to play. I have zero interest in that.

How important is improvisation to you?

Very important, and it can be very killer as long as the people playing are fucking in tune with each other, you know. You have to be comfortable and listen to everyone else. That is why i hate sets when people who have never played or talked get together and have a big ol' freak out jam. That to me is very boring...i'd rather it be people who are really fucking listening, not just freaking out. The Carlos Giffoni Death Unit at No Fun this year was a very good big ol' jam thing. But i've seen pleny of that shit go awry, all in the name of improv.

If someone wants to get into your music, but they're totally unprepared for it, what are the artists and records you recommend to listen so they understand where you're coming from?

Nothing that we checked up pre-Hair Police up until now is really any easier! When we started, we were really into bands like Macro, Prick Decay, To Live and Shave in LA, shit like that. Now we still like all those bands, but throw in some Prurient, Pengo, C Spencer Yeh, Corsano/Flahery, Sick Llama and we're pretty good. There's a million more bands of course.

Spin did an article about "noise punk" and you were in it, how do you think it came out to be? do you think the bands covered in it are really THE bands, all contemporaries? have you seen a backlash or a boost in sales/concert attendance?

I don’t think that article did a damn thing, I forgot about it until now actually! They listed a lot of bands that are definitely down, but some I had never heard of, like Mars Volta?! Who are these people? But i dont really thing people got into the music through that article. Maybe though, who am i to say?. The article itself was pretty funny i thought.

Is there really a noise movement or does the media, meaning the internet, make it out to be more than it really is?

I always say its just a huge fucking crew of friends who are into and play fucked up music, It’s really great. Every state, every country you go to, you can find a few of these freaks hiding somewhere. I was talking to a dude who used to tour manage a huge modern "hardcore" band, and he was saying how noise now is so much like early days of hardcore. Friends setting up shows, letting anyone stay at your house 'cause you know those people are gonna respect it and shit. He says "hardcore" now is a rock star jock infested scene. The noise scene is just a lot of people who wanna get together, get messed up and check out some fucked up tunes. That rules.

Do you think noise or whatever you want to call it that you do is really the new punk?

I would never make such a statement, but i do see what we are doing to be very related to early 80’s hardcore, much more than any current "punk" bands. Our approach, attitude, they way we do things are very much in line with all the early hardcore shit. But really, isn’t like Green Day the new punk??!! I think Gwen Stephani is the real new NEW punk.

How important is playing shows for you?

Extremely, though HP have been on a little show break, due to me being in Wolf Eyes now and Trevor and Rob working really hard on Eyes And Arms Of Smoke, who are so great. You gotta hear them. Playing live is the best part of being in a band i think.

What can we expect from your live shows? Ever had any weird/funny/great experience while playing?

Every show is a great experience, or that’s the goal at least. The best one recently was our set at the 2005 No Fun. The thing turned into such a fucking riot. So many people came up to me after the set showing me their injuries...it was great! The whole crowd was onstage by the end of the set. Truly what I love to see happen live. People just let go and flipped out...fucking brilliant.

If you could collaborate with anyone, who would that be?

We've gotten to collab with a lot of great people, with HP and for me with Wolf Eyes... i am talking to Joe from Macronympha about jamming with him, which obvoiusly excites me to no end. We love playing with other people...what’s better than making fucked up music with your friends?

Do you think that somewhere along the line in time, this kind of music you play will crossover to the mainstream?

Fuck...i can’t imagine it, but why the fuck not? This is the music that i love to hear and play, why shouldn’t a million people feel the same way? oh yeah...because those people are fucking lame.

What have you been listening to lately?

Dude, i listen to so much shit, i can barely think on it. Actually, i listened to Donovan a lot yesterday. And i also listened to Big Joey, MSBR (RIP), Music Emporium, Christopher "What'cha Gonna Do?", Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center LP, the new Caroliner LP, All of Thus, a lot of black metal too like Watain, Black Witchery, Xasthur. And a shitload more LPs I cant think of at this time.

What's next for you?

Wolf Eyes is hitting the road for a while in Sept/Oct, then Hair Police will record a record for Eclipse Records and do some shows in the area. Right now, i am going to the pool 'cause its fucking hot.

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That's Not Blood.mp3 from Blow Out Your Blood (2002)
Not Raft, But Cage.mp3 from split with Viki (2003)
Let's See Who's Here And Who's Not.mp3 from Obedience Cuts (2004)
My Skull Is My Face.mp3 (excerpt) from Constantly Terrified (2005)

Hair Police: http://www.freedom-from.com/hairpolice
Load Records: www.loadrecords.com
Freedom Form Records: www.freedom-form.com
Gods Of Tundra Records: http://www.geocities.com/godsoftundra/
Trobleman Unlimited Records: www.troublemanunlimited.com
Eclipse Records: http://www.eclipse-records.com/
Buy Hair Police cds at Amazon
Photo credits (from top to bottom): first and third by Nuuj courtesy of Carbon Records, the rest by Bill T. Miller: http://billtmiller.com

September 6 de Septiembre Releases/Lanzamientos

2005-09-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

*Bellini – Small Stones
*Between The Buried And Me – Alaska
*Black Dice – Broken Ear Record
*John Coltrane – Love Supreme Live In Concert
*Miles Davis – Miles Tone (reissue)
*Deep Purple – Who Do We Think We Are (reissue)
*Earth/KK Null – Tour split
*The Exploited – Beat The Bastards (reissue)
*Frantic Mantis – Data Is Not Information
*M83 s/t
*Bob Marley – Lively Up Yourself
*New Model Army - Carnival
*Pere Ubu – Pennsylvania (reissue)
*Pere Ubu – Ray Gun Suitcase (reissue)
*Ruins – Pallaschtom
*Sloan – Navy Blues (reissue)
*Sloan – One Chord To Another (reissue)
*Vibracathedral Orchestra – Tuning To The Rooster
*Muddy Waters – Muddy’s Blues
DVD:
*Punk: Attitude
*Saturday Night Live – The Best Of Dan Aykroyd
*Saturday Night Live – The Best Of John Belushi

August 30 de Agosto Lanzamientos/Releases

2005-08-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

*Alabama Thunderpussy – River City Revival
*Daniel Ash – Come Alive
*Biohazard – Means To An End
*Johnny Cash – 32 Original Classics
*Johnny Cash – At Folsom Prison/At San Quentin/America
*Cold – Different Kind Of Pain
*Brian Eno and John Cale – Wrong Way Up (reissue)
*Brian Eno – Music For Films, Vol 3 (reissue)
*Enthroned – Black Goat Ritual: Live In The Flesh
*John Fahey – On Air
*Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow (reissue Internacional)
*Mad Proffesor – Method To The Madness (reissue)
*Mercyful Fate – Melissa (25th Anniversary reissue)
*Nuclear Assault – Third World Genocide
*Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Free To Be Dirty: Live!
*Opeth – Ghost Reveries
*Lou Reed – Coney Island Baby (reissue International)
*Lou Reed – Live In Italy (reissue International)
*Patti Smith – Horses (reissue International)
*Sodom – In The Sign Of Evil/Obsessed By Cruelty (reissues)
*Soulfly s/t (25th Anniversary reissue)
*Spiritual Beggars – Demons (UK)
*Wu-Tang Clan – Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (reissue International)
DVD:
*ABBA – Waterloo
*Blues Brothers (25th Anniversary Edition)
*Great Women Singers Of The 20th Century – Chaka Khan
*Clueless (Whatever Edition)
*Curb Your Enthusiasm – Complete Four Season
*Devo – Complete Truth About De-Evolution/Devo Live
*Devo – Live 1980
*Garfield And Friends Vol 4
*20th Century Masters – The Best Of Joe Jackson
*Shaft/Shaft’s Big Score
*Tommy Boy (Holy Schnike Edition)
*Great Women Singers Of The 20th Century – Nancy Wilson