ARTISTS: Brainfeeder and Modern Beatcraft

People are increasingly fascinated with the L.A. beat scene... no wait, I mean the L.A. beat scene is increasingly fascinating to ME. Names from this small but growing circle of regulars are getting dropped with increasing frequency. Flying Lotus' 2010 release Cosmogramma (on Warp Records) features a visit from Thom Yorke amidst it's 17 track space jazz beatdown, and Low End Theory, Brainfeeder (Flying Lotus' label), Dublab Radio, and other keywords are showing up just often enough from different enough angles for my brain to sonar together a fuzzy picture of the amoebic form of whatever the "L.A. beat scene" even actually is. I'm sure natives will tell me I just have to be there, but it's been interesting and ambitious enough to reach it's tendrils through the internet and reach lil' ol' me, half a country away from the rooms that hold this movement, just digesting all the free podcasts I can with my borrowed wireless connection. Any artist I find turns up two more, and the unifying element of 'their' sound is elusive, even within a single entity like the Brainfeeder collective. Flying Lotus' bass bounces between jazz noodles and waterfall drops over the edge, while label-hopper Daedelus' albums brim with island guitar, woozy bass clarinet, and his deftness with the futuristic monome (pictured above with his weird weapon of choice, his 2010 release is his first with Brainfeeder). Shlohmo and Dr. Strangeloop are almost polar opposites within electronic music; Strangeloop (Brainfeeder) brings twitchy schizophrenic blasts, and WEDIDIT Records' Shlohmo's (aka Henry Laufer's) beats often skirt the middle ground between beatbuilding and ambient music. Strangeloop often lends his VJ talents to his contemporaries' live performances, and his own sets are long movements of audio/visual sensory drills, deeply symbolic and decidedly pushing away conventions of mainstream film.

The easy route is to say that this is all experimental music, but what does that ever tell you? Sure people dance to it, but these are songs that sink you into your couch as easily as electrify your limbs. A common thread, if there is one, is the willingness of most of these artists to stutter out of lock step into very human feeling, unquantized pace. But this rhythmic wandering takes place in many different contexts. These dudes all make sense together, but aren't pushing identical sonic agendas, except that the beats move people, and they've got quality control on lockdown.

From it's west coast origins, it looks like the L.A. beatsmiths are pushing outward, but mostly they're being pulled, as more ears tune to the sounds at the borders of beatcraft and electronic music. A local force teasing some of these fine folks our way is Austin's Ron Strong Productions (the brainchild of Aaron Miller and Emily Strong), whose Hot Sh!t series has had guests including Dr. Strangeloop and Take, and Anticon newbie, the beat-minded Baths (whom I reviewed here) and also showcases similar local talents like Butcher Bear & Charlie, Deejay ChickenGeorge , and the spellbinding Ernest Gonzales, giving a common stage for local heroes to mingle ideas with like-minded visitors. Keep your ear to the ground for the Hot Sh!t summer finale, with Mono/Poly (from Brainfeeder), in late August.

Watch Brainfeeder Ras G cobble a song out of records from Austin's own Top Drawer here.

Download a free Shlohmo EP from Error Broadcast here.

July 22 2010 Points of Some Interest

Every Time I Die guitarist Keith Buckley hates "glow-pop" and he wants you to know it.

Comic legend Alan Moore teams up with Anticon cofounder Adam "Doseone" Drucker, multi-instrumental Fog frontman Andrew Broder, and photographer Mitch Jenkins for the massive Unearthing, on Lex records.

HATE: BrokeNCYDE. They suck.

Okay I've discussed a lot of things that I'm pretty fond of here. So how happy was I when I found a band that I can unashamedly hate on? I wasn't happy damn it, not this time. I wasn't happy at all, because this band is the fucking perfect storm of everything that makes a music act worthless. It's as if they're a band from an episode of some tween show on Nickelodeon, and in a godless experiment they became real, and then in an even more godless society they were somehow launched from being small-potatoes douchebags to being slightly-larger-small-potatoes, semi-professional douchebags. I want to barf so hard that I die. This particular horrible piece of turd is called BrokeNCYDE. I will now stop stylizing their name, out of disrespect. Brokencyde looks like this:They vogue from time to time, apparently. They have names like Phat J and Se7en (Get it? There's totally a 7 in there).

So I imagine that the aforementioned experiment goes like this: you basically kidnap the girls from Millionaires and convince them that they are thirteen year-old boys. Then, you teach them how to objectify women and worship every brainless trend that they themselves will be used to aggressively market to middleschool scenesters everywhere. Don't worry about writing songs right now, it's really easy. Right now you need to get a LOT of flourescent shirts and sneakers, and a couple hair stylists on retainer. For continuity, your hair should also be flourescent. Your wepages too.
So to write a "song" for these guys, you take an intro to a Lil' Jon song and you repeat it. Over and over again. Hell, keep some of the original lyrics too, just turn the stupid on them way up. Yeah, have them talk about getting crunk and fucking a lot... No, sure it's not creepy that they all look almost pre-sexual, go right ahead. Anytime one of you isn't autotuning yourself to fuck and back, have half of your band scream the same lyrics. No, have them scream lamer than that, like a Miley Cyrus superfan/housewife doing an impression of "that music you like, can't even understand". Better. Okay now to put a beat together real quick, you got some fake scratch sounds? Sweet.

This band is accused of being part of what I fervently hope is the short-lived genre of crunkcore. That this kind of shit is common enough to be named with a genre is nothing but a tragedy. So here I am, telling all of you, don't tell anyone about this horrible band. No more people need to know about them. This is a shell of art, empty of meaning and of such warped irony that it wraps all the way around again to taking itself seriously.

It's bad, you guys. It's just bad.

ALBUM: Dangermouse and Sparklehorse present: Dark Night of the Soul

Mentioned in bits and pieces for years, and from seeds planted as early as 2005, Dangermouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul is a wide-reaching collaboration a long time coming. Tracks crafted as early as four years ago by Dangermouse (Brian Burton) and Sparklehorse (Mark Linkous) were sent out to a slew of high profile collaborators who lent their talents, most of them appearing on several songs playing various instruments, popping up for background vocals, and aiding in production. Just a few of these names are Grandaddy's Jason Lytle, The Pixies' Frank Black, and Iggy Pop. Dangermouse, keeping up with his controlled mating of the film and music realms, includes among DNotS' laundry list of guests some guy named David Lynch (he directs movies or something?), who contributed a 100-page book of photography as a visual companion to the LP. Oh and he also wrote lyrics and sings on no less than two tracks, including the dusty, eponymous closing track. The album's completion in 2008 was followed by hazy disputes between Dangermouse and label EMI that delayed and even threatened it's release. In 2009 a hardcover, limited edition of David Lynch's photography book quickly sold out. With the music still under wraps legally, but in fact already floating around the internet, the book included a printed, but blank and recordable cd-r with a note to "use it as you will". Sadly, guest artist Vic Chestnutt passed away in December '09, followed by the suicide of Mark Linkous in May '10. July 12th saw the official release of the audio portion of Dangermouse and Sparklehorse Present: Dark Night of the Soul.

Merging Burton's cinematic production with Linkous' melancholy tone, DNotS is a detailed affair, skirting genres from grimy bar tunes to fragile pop, and generally playing in movements pulling you from one scene to another. Starting with the plodding, mournful tone of "Revenge" featuring The Flaming Lips and the pastoral twang meets bass stomp of "Just War" with Gruff Rhys, the being now known and SparkleMouse ventures far from these beginnings, planting firmly in the surf guitar jam of "Little Girl" before dropping into a slow, growling fuzz for "Angel's Harp" with Frank Black. Iggy Pop closes out the first half of DNotS with "Pain", his baritone thick among one of the more sonically raw tracks to be found here.

Computer blips and synth-tweaked vocals over a heavy pulsing bass brings us to the blissed-out "Star Eyes (I Can't Catch It)", the first sign of Lynch for everyone except the 5000 owners of the DNotS photobook, then Jason Lytle brings the grime back with "Everytime I'm With You", asking "What the hell else are we supposed to do?" in a nihilistic love-hate song about getting fucked up repeatedly. In an album wild with Dangermouse's production flourishes, "Insane Lullaby" is particularly interesting, with James Mercer's voice hovering over a bed of instruments that are largely obscured by a boiling 16th note pummel of distorted drums. Nina Persson of the Cardigans and Suzanne Vega lend the album it's most upbeat tone yet with their respective tracks, "Daddy's Gone" and "The Man Who Played God", before turning on it's heel to the morbid "Grim Augury", with Vic Chesnutt's vividly dark imagery both disturbing and engaging the listener. David Lynch shows up again for the closing track "Dark Night of the Soul", pulling the curtains on the album with an echo-drenched disappearing scrawl.

While Dark Night of the Soul has it's weak moments, even for them it's a beautiful assembly of an ambitious project, pulling together different art forms into a multi-sensory landscape, with a general clarity of vision that's surprising, given the broad range of talent involved. If this is the modern equivalent of the supergroup album, I'm in.

4 / 5

ALBUM: Taproot, Plead the Fifth

I first heard Taproot in my friends attic bedroom, so late at night that it was early morning. Taproot has been insisting for a while now that they're a rock band, but that album was metal. I loved Gift for it's balance of emotion, heaviness and melody, and I've always thought their vocal harmonies were impressively well chosen. I saw them at Stubb's while they were touring for their second album Welcome, and singer Stephen Richards jumped off the inside balcony and busted ASS when he landed on the stage. I really wish I remembered during what song. It took me years to realize that lots of people who've heard Taproot haven't heard Gift, and often they've only heard "Poem" on the radio. I still like the band's first three major releases, but they have more rock and less metal every time they come around. They're still good at what they're doing, but it's not my cup of tea a lot the time. 2010 offering Plead the Fifth is the band's "getting back to our roots" album, a claim that always worries me. What's surprising is that at times it actually does.

Taproot's newest album came out in May of this year. I missed it's release, because honestly 2008's Our Long Road Home wasn't what I wanted to hear from them. In interviews about OLRH the band acknowledged that the album would gain them some fans at the cost of losing some fans, and I fell into column B, but I can't fault the band for going their own way; even material I don't like from Taproot sounds pretty genuine. But enough about that. Taproot's latest release Plead the Fifth isn't so much a full step back, but it will likely remind people that they know where they stepped forward from. The angry churn of 2000's "mentobe" and 2010's album opener "Now Rise" are indeed cut from a similar cloth. Part of this is Mike DeWolf and Phil Lipscomb's return to the low A tuning of their earlier days. Stephen Richards' scream has always sounded tight and well controlled, but on this opening track, and surprisingly often through the whole album, he's letting loose in ways unprecedented. Two and a half minutes into "Now Rise" Richards rips his lowest bellow and highest shriek that I can remember, in the space of four seconds. The equally aggressive verse of "Game Over" follows, finally letting up into a chorus that characterizes the other, softer side of Taproot's dynamic coin . The more upbeat tone of long-titled single "Fractured (Everything I Said Was True)" sets the tone for much of the rest of Plead the Fifth, but the more guttural riffs do show up from time to time. Fans always accuse heavy bands of getting less heavy over time, and that's because they usually do, but that kind of energy takes focus, and you know, entropy. Taproot, as a rock band, has long focused on making their songs distinct from each other, and through their career they've used an increasing assortment of tools to do this. That they are still adding to that toolbox is the most compelling thing about this album, and that they can still reach the intense end of their spectrum should be refreshing even for old fans not fond of their new direction. But except for informed retrospective moments, this album is in keeping with the direction they're music has been taking all along. If fans of Taproot's heavier style drop off because of Plead the Fifth, it will at least be a harder decision this time. Who knows, this renewed aggression might even bring some back.

2 / 5

Baths @ Club Deville RECAP & Cerulean

I'm often a cynical fuck. It's true. Perhaps partly because of this, I enjoy a fair number of artists with a similarly dim outlook. It's easy for people to relate to each other through shared negativity, because it is easy to say something is stupid, and hard to boldly say something is good. This is because it hurts when people say what you think is good is, in fact, bad. So Baths has a new album out titled Cerulean, and this pale blue plastic disc has been making me happy since I got it. It's good. I've laughed out loud several times while playing this album and I like it. The debut album of Will Weisenfeld's newest moniker has got me singing along with samples of grade school cheerleaders, and little kids offering valuable information about animals ("We're elephants, we LOVE giraffes!"). Cerulean's beats stomp at times and race at others, but all carry a pop-minded lean and a general happiness and optimism. Amidst all this, all but his most relaxed tracks hit HARD. Live, Baths performs his vocals while manipulating his beats in a stage show that translates the giddy energy of his songs into a seamless live set that invites both head-nodders, and any dance move you can think of. VJ David Wexler aka Dr. Strangeloop was in attendance at Deville to provide his video interpretation against the club's limestone backdrop, romancing the crowd's retinas as well as their eardrums. My shitty camera cannot do his visual performance justice, but you can see his work here. The next day Strangeloop played his own headlining audiovisual set at Deville, which was a twitching lunatic next to Baths' bounding youth, drilling the crowd with feverish compositions that brought to mind Venetian Snares. My taste for dark music was more than appeased. Even so, I thank Baths for making the music he does. Cerulean's going to keep spinning over here, I'm not yet ready to be pissed off again. I... I want to sing about giraffes for a while longer.

4.5 / 5 stars

ALBUM: Norma Jean, Meridional

Okay, I didn't get into Norma Jean for a long time. Every time I listened to them over the years, I've liked them a little more, and they've been one of those bands that I wanted to like more than I actually did. I knew they were pretty cool, and obviously talented, but some intangible something held me from being a real 'fan'.

I think Meridional finally got through to me though. Damn. Well, I like Norma Jean now. You never know when something like this is going to happen, but such is life. Nothing left but to sit my friends and family down and break the news. What's important is that I'm happy.

Decibel dubs Norma Jean's latest work "Career Defining", and Alternative Press claims it to be "Norma Jean's first true masterpiece", and they've earned this praise. From the first track, 'Leaderless and Self Enlisted' (available for free here) Norma Jean is confident through the whole of Meridional, both in sonic attitude, and in decidedly adventurous and sophisticated songwriting. Tracks like "Blood Burner" still bring the pain, but neckbreakers like this are tempered by long-fused bombs like "A Media Friendly Turn for the Worse" and "Falling From the Sky: Day Seven", which crescendo slowly, their bee-swarm guitars slowing into creeping melodies. Five albums into their career, the band doesn't have to prove much, and they know their strengths but don't lean on them. That said, the album covers a lot of ground, and in fact is among their longest playing releases. The songs are varied both among and within themselves, in a way that builds momentum rather than sounding scatterbrained. Among the heave and jerk of tempo in Meridional, the bands use the abrupt time changes they have been so good at in the past, but build and release tension with them in a way that's elegant and not flashy. Jeremy Griffith brings a beautiful production to Meridional (recorded over February of this year), making the full album a rich, dramatic experience, with the band coloring passages with instruments from keyboards and organs to pedal steel, and Griffith providing some piano and backing vocals himself. The bass shifts around between clank and boom, and holds the bottom end down while occasionally being melodically surprising. The drums are powerful and precise, and the guitars are thick as they wash over you. Rather than put out a half-hour of facemelters, Norma Jean has brought an album that unfolds as it plays out, and rewards repeat listening.

Forgive me, Norma Jean? I'm sorry about before, there I said it.

4.5 / 5 stars

Cage at The Mohawk, July 6th RECAP

I only just recently came around to Cage. After years of hearing his name across other Definitive Jux releases, I sat down and listened to his albums not three days before seeing him live, and I'm feeling it. Hearing Cage really makes you wish that it was him you heard on the radio all these years ago and not Eminem, who upon hearing both sounds like the former's whiny kid brother, copying his style but doing it wrong. Comparisons between the two are not new, and both specialize in an angry brand of horror rap, brimming with blood and sometimes-wild, often-tragic drug use, but simply put, Cage's kung-fu is better than Eminem's. While he definitely is an album-over-performance artist, Cage's live set puts the personal intensity of his songs right in your face, which makes for a great show. Cage is supported on this tour, for last years LP Depart From Me..., by Timmy Wiggins, Kill City, and roster oddball, hardcore four-piece Hate Your Guts.

Wiggins opened things up with stripped-down blunt-smoking gutter beats courtesy of Chauncey (who rocked Cage's beats later that night), topped with heady hustle-and-grind rhymes. Kill City brought a warped ghettotech to the table that was pretty awesome, despite a third of their band showing up late thanks to a flight delay. Big props to whoever had the idea to get Hate Your Guts on this tour. First, a hardcore band was a cool change of pace before the headliner, and second because it was hilarious (and always is) to see kids at a show looking genuinely scared by heavy music. And third, because they were actually very good. Bravo to all, and thanks to the Mohawk for hosting, and for the cheap beers.

UPCOMING: Baths at Club Deville, Friday July 9th

Newest signee to Anticon records Will Wiesenfeld, aka Baths, is playing the first out-of-town show of his first tour in support of Baths' first album Cerulean this Friday at Club Deville on Red River. Anticon's website has been buzzing with news and leaked tracks since the news broke of his signing.

UPCOMING: Cage at The Mohawk, July 6th

Definitive Jux artist Cage (connected to Swedish melodic-metallers In Flames by cover-artist Alex Pardee, who lists The Used among his bigger clients) is bringing his personal style of soul-bearing hip-hop to the Mohawk, in support of 2009's album Depart From Me. Opening things up are Hate Your Guts, Kill City and Timmy Wiggins.