Shut Music

Speaking of...

2011-09-27T00:22:00.003-05:00

Animals As Leaders' lead track and promo video "Isolated Incidents" from the upcoming album "Weightless" is here for your scrutiny.

While I'm pushing instrumental metal on you, Shlohmo has two hypnotic videos for "Just Us" and "Places" that should calm you right down, you spaz.

I'm so sorry!

2011-09-26T23:51:00.002-05:00

But a new Cloudkicker song "It's inside me, and I'm inside it." came out via his Tumblr, and this unexpected slow jam from Ben Sharp flew totally under my radar. Mr. Sharp claims that there isn't going to be a new EP or album anytime soon, so in the meantime I can only hope for more one offs like this. It's nice to see Cloudkicker broadening it's palate.

Anticon Expansion and fresh videos.

2011-09-11T09:04:00.002-05:00

Raleigh Moncrief recently debuted his woozy stomp "Lament for Morning" from his twitter account, followed close behind by this video that I've been staring at in a daze since I came across it. Moncrief, known previously for some production and other behind the scenes work and a for string of EPs, is bringing his debut full-length Watered Lawn out into the world on October 25 via Anticon Records. Sounds dope, hot shit, can't wait.

Don't Sleep: Emo's August 23, DNTEL w/ Geotic

2011-08-17T12:45:00.004-05:00

This Tuesday, Emo's welcomes electronic mainstay Dntel to the inside stage, bringing along with him The One AM Radio and Geotic, another of Will Wiesenfeld's alter-egos. Expect a lot of the best kind of staring and swaying, and probably a heat induced vision quest or two. To tide me over until then, Geotic's gorgeous ambient albums are posted for free on Weisenfeld's Angelfire page. Trust on this, see you next week.

The Poor Man's Music Review.

2011-07-20T19:36:00.004-05:00

We all have our excuses. One thing or another always gets put off, for reasons we convince ourselves make perfect sense. We either wait until these issues resolve themselves (at which point another convenient roadblock always pops up) or we make these excuses no longer applicable, screwing ourselves into doing what needs doing. So here I am trying to eliminate some of my shittier excuses. It's easy for me to put off writing by saying I don't have anything to talk about, and I'm tired of that. Maybe nothing new and interesting has come out (bullshit) or I'm too poor to make it out to noteworthy shows (more true, but similarly weak).

Something something economy, something something tough times. Whatever.

So all this brings me to my newest column, the Poor Man's Music Review, with the simple premise that I put my 8000+ songs on random, and brilliantly muse on whatever happens to come up, in real time, off the fucking DOME, suckers. This guarantees both some awful songs, and some great music that I haven't talked about, because who reviews old music? I do now, and those opposed can suck an object of their choice. I hope this is fun for you, and I know it will be fun for me. End of intro, let's go.

#1: Genghis Tron- City on a Hill, from Board Up the House

The best metal band I've found in the past few years, from their last album before their unfortunate hiatus. City is typical of the juxtaposition Genghis Tron has mastered, swerving between breakneck thrash and heavy electronic beats. another one of those bands that disappeared after showing me how brilliant they can get, this shit is the jam.

#2: El-P- No Kings, from I'll Sleep When You're Dead

One of the bosses of early '00s indipendent hip-hop, spitting his usual shit about being the underground boss that's cooler and doper than his mainstream peers. El-P brings some of the heavier beats in the underground, but he's always been one of those guys who has individual songs I dig more than his whole albums. I gotta find some El-P instrumentals.

#3: Thom Yorke- Harrowdown Hill, from The Eraser

From the album that everyone accuses The King of Limbs of sounding like. Comparisons aside, Yorke has a way with his minimal arrangements and shifty beats, creating the same uncomfortable vibe that he does with Radiohead. I came to the Radiohead party shortly before this came out, and it played nonstop in my early 20s, right when I realized I thought Thom Yorke and co were brilliant. Maybe this is why I don't buy into any unfavorable comparisons of new Radiohead.

#4: Pedestrian- The Toss & Turn (A Capella Revision), From The Toss & Turn.

Noise remix from anticon. founder The Pedestrian's first 12", circa 2004. Vocals obscured in favor of glitches and washes of mangled sound, letting phrases slip in with no context and echo into the distance. Way to be weird, hip hop, I'm so into you. Fades into squelched beat.

#5: Animals as Leaders- Behaving Badly, from Animals as Leaders.

My favorite kind of metal. Emotionally intelligent, musically brilliant without being masturbatory, and just fucking different, with a depth that metal often gets away with overlooking. Can't wait for a new album from these fools. If you're not into it I'm sorry, because this guy speaks to me in a way that I just want to share with people.

Wow that went surprisingly well. Umm I mean I have nothing but amazing songs on my computer, so how would anything less than great come up? Duh.

13&God- Own Your Ghost

2011-05-10T05:48:00.004-05:00

If you thought you'd live forever, 13&God would like to remind you otherwise. On their second record together, and their first as 13&God in six years, the first thing you notice is how much Own Your Ghost dwells on the ticking clock. The whole album (which is still streaming for free here) covers a wide stance sonically, owing equally to The Notwist's multi-intrumentalism and Themselves' gritty sampling, but these sounds all revolve around recurrent tropes on death and old age that read like proverbs, from Marcus Acher's "These are troubled times, and so dip your scarves in armor.", to Adam 'Doseone" Drucker's "Fools like us will go nameless to death, bet.". But if Own Your Ghost is a reminder that we're all bound to a short timeline, it also shows us a group of people who recognize this, and answer it by living, exploring shamelessly while they are here.

Both bands can still sound familiar, but they benefit from each others' influence, and it's when their styles meet in the middle that makes this collaboration more than it's parts' sum. The Notwist can lean a little darker in front of Jel's MPC work and Doseone's nervous rapping, and Dose gets to stretch his singing voice out more in the context of a full band. "Armored Scarves" shows off the range afforded by this personnel bump, but Own Your Ghost constantly reaches into odd new places, shifting momentum and mood both between and within songs like fast standout tracks "Sure As Debt" and "Beat On Us".

Since 13&God's self-titled debut, Themselves released a fantastic mixtape, LP, and remix album. The Notwist has kept busy too, with their own LP The Devil, You + Me, a film soundtrack, and other side projects' releases. Despite this considerable output of energy from all it's component members, Own Your Ghost shows that there's plenty left. To call 13&God anyone's side project betrays how unique it is.

Own Your Ghost is out May 17th on Anticon records.

Yoni and Josiah Wolf (of Why?) at St. David's Episcopal Church

2011-05-08T00:03:00.011-05:00

	So Yoni Wolf sits at a grand piano and starts dryly rapping, his brother Josiah backing him up on a bass drum made of a guitar case with a tambourine taped to it. They start things out with a verse from their yet-to-be-recorded Why? album.

"Oh, to be born as anything but this...

...fruitless in the holster...

...it's scary how we always end up...

...it yields only drops like an unripe lemon...

...is your love but a ploy, like Bugs Bunny in drag?"

Soon the song veers from kick and rhyme into piano and croon, and a cozy group of a couple hundred people settled in for the last show from the Wolf brothers before they and the rest of the band that's a question go into the studio to record the follow up to 2009's Eskimo Snow.

"And he will always thirst like that. Yeah, he will thirst like that always."

New material was all over the hour-long set, but songs showed up from as early as 2005's Sanddollars EP, all performed in stripped down piano and homemade percussion arrangements, with Josiah picking up bass or guitar from song to song. The new stuff sounds new, but still fits into the Why? canon, equal parts dry wit and personal revelation (or narrative fiction), hip-hop cadence over acoustic guitar and beatboxing over piano making strange but intimate bedfellows.

It's got to be mentioned that the space at St. David's was visually and acoustically gorgeous, so definite thanks go to them for offering up their room for the evening. Also, the biggest ups to Transmission Austin, for putting the whole thing together. And of course thanks to the brothers Wolf, and the rest of the Why? clan. Thanks for a beautiful evening, and best of luck in the studio. Now I can't wait.

13&God streams Own Your Ghost. In full. For free.

2011-04-20T01:38:00.000-05:00

Like I just said, 13&God is streaming their new album, Own Your Ghost, right here. Don't say I didn't tell you.

Newish Music: Cloudkicker

2011-04-19T21:54:00.004-05:00

They said the death of the record industry would be a bad thing. We were asked who would possibly want to release music without record sales propped up by major label distribution. And yet, the world hasn't fallen silent. I know because I listened to Cloudkicker's "We're goin' in. We're going down." all day today. I'm not sure, but I don't think the world has ended yet.

Cloudkicker is made of Ben Sharp and his computer. Mr. Sharp has a day job, and he self-produces and distributes his instrumental metal releases from Columbus, Ohio. Sharp offers CDs and vinyl, but also gives away downloads of his albums for free. So, you can't tell him what to do. You can buy a shirt from him, but he won't play your town. He's not playing concerts at all, and seems fine with that. Cloudkicker looks like just another thing that Ben Sharp is working on, which is becoming a part of the business model these days (Buck 65 called it in November 2009, and here we are). You'd better have more than one job, and you might as well give your shit away for free, because people will just steal it if they want to. Make it good enough that people want to buy it, and then make it worth the money in some tangible way.

But I rant. I'm happy that we have an artistic climate and an information infrastructure that lets people make art for themselves, and put it out there, just in case want it. I'm happy to live at a time when I can find new favorite artists out of practically infinite options, instead of choosing from the small selection provided by people I've never met, who presume to know what I like. That system created an illusion of artistic scarcity, and taught us falsely that only special people can make meaningful things. That terrible outlook is being challenged by a growing army of folks making headlines and becoming part of people's lives, and doing it without much besides a laptop and a Tumblr account. I'm happy about that.

Cloudkicker is over this way.

2011-04-15T18:52:00.001-05:00

http://www.cmj.com/features/2011/03/video-premierqa-13-and-god/

SXSW 2011 Highlights

2011-03-21T16:07:00.016-05:00

Aaaaand we're back, what a week. The dust has settled, the tourists have mostly left, and downtown smells like pee, even in the parts that don't ALWAYS smell like pee. Shows were seen, and a few shows were missed, for reasons ranging from exhaustion to canine ocular trauma to gorgeous weather. I won't bore you, but here's some broad strokes.

Wednesday: Sumerian Records Showcase

This was the first actual show I sought out, mostly to see Tosin Abasi's outfit Animals as Leaders, but I'll get to that. Opening the show up was New York's Ultrageist, a forward thinking act specializing in idiosyncratic breakdowns and bizarre vocal textures. Vocalist Gabriel Perez at first brings to mind Glassjaw's Daryl Palumbo, but strikes out into his own sonic territory by using an array of delays, distortions, and octave pedals to warp his voice on stage in real time. Interesting stuff, I'm looking forward to more. These guys were followed by Tamworth, England's Structures, leaning both melodic and death metal, but rarely at the same time, making dynamic songs out of crushing verses and the occasionally merciful break.

And then, Animals as Leaders. I was impressed by AAL's self-titled debut when it came to my attention last year, for a few reasons. Despite being something of a 'virtuoso' album, Abasi actually writes songs that have their own merit, instead of just being a framework for his shredding. There's long been a battle in heavy music over who can tune lower, and while AAL's low-E tuned 8 string guitars are certainly front runners in this, it's the way Tosin Abasi manhandles the damn things that really sets him apart. Rather than just relying on competitively low notes, he really stretches out into the space an instrument like this affords, utilizing broadly spaced intervals and chord voicings, and occasionally being his own bass player, using his low string for percussive patterns and slapped lines, while his right hand taps melodic runs on the tree trunk of a neck his guitar has. On AAL's self-titled debut, all strings were played by Abasi, with drum and synth programming handled by Misha Mansoor (guitarist with fellow djent O.G.s Periphery), but the album's striking elements translate well live, and rhythm guitarist Javier Reyes and drummer Navene Koperweis (who is an absolute monster on his kit) enhance the sonic landscape, rather than dilute it. Tosin Abasi and company make music that is more than just skillful or interesting, it really is beautiful. This right here is Mr. Abasi solo, playing "Wave of Babies", a digital single released shortly after AAL's eponymous debut.

Thursday: Friends of Friends Showcase

I was at this thing all damn day. Thankfully not an official SXSW event, but a free party hosted by Friends of Friends Records, Barcelona on 6th evolved from a sparse early afternoon gathering to a heaving molasses of bass over six short hours. A varied set from DJ Sodapop (aka Anticon label manager Shaun Koplow) opened things, followed by a brief set by Baths. After Non Projects labelmates Asura and Anenon, Shlohmo took the stage and delivered a set with an energy his albums don't really indicate, making good use of Barcelona's impressive system. The next big highlight was Ernest Gonzales' masked luchador alter-ego Mexicans With Guns (pictured below left), a throbbing ghettotech Hyde to Gonzales' shimmery Jekyll.

Closing the party was beat scene lifer Daedelus (pictured right), whose recent shows have been seamless club sets, fully of glitched highs and huge modulating basses. Definitely one of my favorite days of last week.

Saturday: Buck 65 @ M for Montreal Party

I've waited to see Buck 65 for a long time, and after a handful of badge-only shows through the week, he played at the free M for Montreal party, accompanied by the talented vocalist Jenn Grant. Combining Grant's sweet voice with Buck 65(aka Ricardo Terfry)'s gravelly but thoughtful raps and live turntable work, the duo offered reworkings of oldies like Roses and Bluejays, and new songs (such as Paper Airplane, shown here in an early incarnation circa 2009) from this year's 20 Odd Years, touted as "The most beautiful hip hop album ever made". Terfry is a pleasure live, as interesting on stage as on his numerous records. Check out the album version of Paper Airplane and other new songs at Buck65.com.

And that was the gist of things. Not by any means a full list, but a few high points from SXSW 2011. So here I am, sore and sunburned, exhausted in the best way possible. Back to work everyone.

New Songs from 2/3 of The Nevermen, The Cool Kids

2011-02-23T21:36:00.005-06:00

Lex Records is edging closer to the unveiling of The Nevermen, the mysterious vocal supergroup of TV on the Radio's Tunde Adebimpe, Themselves/Subtle/13&God frontman Doseone, and Faith No More/Ipecac Records' Mike Patton, but two of the three have releases in the meantime. TV on the Radio has a new album out April 12th called Nine Types of Light, and Will Do is the first track available off of it, listen to it here. It's still a few weeks until 13&God releases Own Your Ghost, but the string of leaks continues with Old Age, free for your ears via Pitchfork

It's been three years since The Cool Kids announced that their debut LP, When Fish Ride Bicycles, was definitely coming out in 2008, and a handful of EPs and mixtapes later, we're still waiting. So the word is that Spring 2011 will actually see the group release their first full length album, and an actual first single, Bundle Up, makes it a little more believable.

RECAP: Baths @ Mohawk, Austin TX

2011-02-06T01:24:00.006-06:00

I like Baths. I could tell you I like him as a part of the beat scene I've been fixated on lately, or because he's a part of one of my favorite labels, or because he injects a personality and heart into the often sterile world of electronic music. But watching him tonight, I realized that boiled down to it's base, I like Baths because he's so unashamed. His music is brave and expository, and it's comforting to see public experimentation this bold. I've seen Will Weisenfeld perform three times since the release of Cerulean on Anticon Records, and even with one album under his newest moniker's belt, each performance is fresh. Experiments happen, and new songs are tested out each time I've seen a Baths show. Even his beat manipulation gets a little more tweaked out, adventurous, and glitchy. On top of that, he always seems genuinely excited and blessed to be doing what he does, and people respond to that. Definite highlights included a few new songs, including "The Nothing" from his new 7" on Anticon, and selections from his tour-only B-side collection. Not new, but he also slipped in a Shlohmo remix that I love, and which can be yours here, at Potholes in My Blog

Darkest Hour announces new album, The Human Romance, offers preview

2011-02-02T14:54:00.005-06:00

Washington D.C.'s Darkest Hour have been putting out albums for over a decade, but particularly since 2005's Undoing Ruin, they've been reinventing and refining themselves in ways acclaimed both critically, and by their fans, including yours truly. Earlier this month, they debuted the surprisingly melodic skull-basher Savor the Kill, the first new track from The Human Romance, on the street February 22nd through E1 music.

13 & God offers first peek at new album

2011-02-02T14:03:00.005-06:00

13 & God, the ocean spanning collaboration between Oakland CA's hip-hop explorers Themselves and the stoic chill of Munich's The Notwist, offered the first official look at the upcoming Own Your Ghost, their second official LP, and the first in six years. Here we see a glimpse of one of the more pastoral Notwist tinged songs, Armored Scarves. Pitchfork has the release info and official tracklisting, Some of these songs have been years in the works, including Sure as Debt, which they first broke out at 2005's MELT! Festival in Ferropolis, Germany. See video proof below.

Own Your Ghost drops May 17th.

Oh, and The White Stripes broke up.

Free music, that is all.

2010-11-06T23:32:00.009-05:00

Buck 65- Dirtbike 1-3

Richard Terfry has been making bedroom hip-hop for well over a decade at this point, and he describes 2008's Dirtbike project as coming from his compulsion to "act creatively without any consideration for money or press or anything other than art". Dirtbike has been free as long as it's been available, and he says it always will be.

The three albums that compose the Dirtbike project run just over three hours and feature left-field hip-hop contemporaries from fellow Canadian Cadence Weapon to the Oakland-based Anticon label's Themselves.

It's low-fi, it's free, and it's got a songs about having sex with mannequins and being awesome at bowling, among other similar gems.

The Armed- These Are Lights

- Common Enemies EP

The Armed are giving away, for fucking FREE, 2009's These Are Lights (produced by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou) andandAND this year's Common Enemies EP, also for sale as a physical album here. The Armed is a frantic hardcore pummel from Detroit.

Shlohmo- The Shlo-fi EP

I've posted this here before, but I've been listening to it ever since I found it. Couch-ready ambient textures and delicate instrumentals over stuttering beats, from what The Siren Sound blog calls "a dope young producer from outer space currently living in California".

Enjoy.

ALBUM REVIEW: El Ten Eleven, It's Still Like a Secret

2010-09-07T20:06:00.005-05:00

I love this modern profusion of loop pedals. It's opened up a lot of sonic possibilities, and it allows one or two guys pull pull of thick arrangements that would be impossible live. The loop pedal has become an instrument in it's own right, and a handful of acts these days revolve around it, even depend on it. More emotional than Ratatat and partying harder than Dosh, fitting somewhere less neon than the former and less wooden than the latter (who joins their current tour for most of this month), L.A.'s El Ten Eleven are not the first band of their kind, but they are bringing their own thing to the table. ETE kicked off their tour at the Mohawk in Austin last night to a full house crammed into the indoor venue, sweating it's collective ass off and fending off heat stroke with nothing but cheap tallboys and hope. Their enthusiasm was rewarded by a wash of guitar driven dance-rock, a duo sounding like a dozen.

El Ten Eleven's latest spinning plastic disc, It's Still Like a Secret, could be a dance record, but it's not unrelentingly blissful. It could be a power rock record if you're in the mood. If it spun slower it would be a fine rainy day record. It's dance music with depth, or it's post-rock with a sense of humor, but it defies easy labels and that's just another thing that's great about it. Because It's Still Like a Secret is almost a lot of different things, it's any of them when you want it to be. Guitarist Kristian Dunn and drummer Tim Fogarty have crafted a multifaceted style that suggests itself for many moods, and reaches in enough directions to be interesting without losing cohesion.

El Ten Eleven continues their U.S. tour until the end of October, supported by Anticon joysmith Baths. It's Still Like a Secret sees it's official release November 9th.

NEWS: Underoath lineup changes, Peter Wichers gets more production credits.

2010-08-29T12:54:00.006-05:00

Aaron Gillespie announced earlier this year that he was leaving Underoath, which leaves the band with no original members. With Gillespie's unique sound absent, both on drums and his half of the band's dueling vocals, it will be interesting to see what their next album turns out to be. Daniel Davison, formerly of Norma Jean, has signed on for the upcoming Underoath album and tour, but hasn't been confirmed as an official replacement. Davison contributed drums to the track "Desperate Times, Desperate Measures", on Underoath's 2008 album Lost in the Sound of Separation, the band's darkest offering to date. Jeremy Griffith, who brought us Norma Jean's latest album, Meridional, is signed on to produce. You can't see it, but I look very excited.

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In keeping with their Swedish melodeath influenced sound, Washington D.C. giants Darkest Hour have tapped prodigal Soilwork guitarist Peter Wichers to produce their upcoming album, set for an early 2011 release. Previous albums have been produced by the likes of fellow Swede Fredrick Nordstrom and Canadian metal auteur Devin Townsend

WEEKLY TIDBITS: It's 100 degrees out, but there's free Baths and Soilwork.

2010-08-03T20:09:00.003-05:00

I won't stop talking about Baths. Deal with it, there are free sounds in it for you. Last week Mr. Wiesenfeld recorded a Sprout Session for Dublab. It's available for free through itunes and you can check it out here. Baths returns to Austin soon, opening for El Ten Eleven, another artist well worth admission. It's all going down September 6th at the Mohawk.

On the angrier side of things, Swedish melodic-metal veterans Soilwork will be at Emo's Thursday night, in support of The Panic Broadcast, their 8th album, which sees the return of founding guitarist Peter Wichers, and has inspired many people to my favorite overused phrase...wait for it... Soilwork have RETURNED TO FORM! They're back to their roots you guys! Hype aside, this is a sweet band, the new material seems pretty cool, and Soilwork shows kick you in the teeth. I'll be there. Then I'll be blabbing about it here, so stay awake.

TECH/NERDRANT: Overcompression and "The Loudness Wars", or: Why People's Impulsive Short-Sightedness is Fucking Up the Way We Hear Music.

2010-08-01T01:10:00.004-05:00

So the record industry has been "dying" for a long time. Napster was going to do it, but didn't, thanks to Metallica's selfless(?) efforts. Mp3 players were going to do it, sending us back to an era of singles, but again, artists still made long-playing albums and people still buy them. But an often overlooked contributor to declining record sales is the so-called (by nerds) "loudness wars", which through the history of recorded music have pushed subsequent recordings to literally be louder than everything before it, pissing off these audio and music nerds and subconsciously annoying the general public. This has been happening for decades, but we are reaching a real, tangible threshold, and you almost can't blame people for not buying albums, because they are fulfilling hater's prophecies by becoming ACTUALLY unlistenable. And you know what? It's our own damn fault, because we're all asking for it. It's the equivalent of painting the Mona Lisa fluorescent yellow, and saying "It's better because you can see it better now", and we're all saying it's okay.

To understand all this you have to understand a couple of rudimentary characteristics of sound. This is about as nerdy as I get so bear with me. Anything that holds recorded music, whether it's a digital file or physical media like tape or vinyl, has a limited capacity, a volume level it can't exceed. On a record, this is the width of the groove. Digitally it gets stranger, but there is still a real limit to how much sound it can process. When something hits or tries to pass this limit, the audio signal peaks (that's a vocabulary word). Peaking is the sound of your signal breaking up, and by and large it's a bad thing. You are hearing the loudest part of a signal exceed it's threshold, break up, and distort. There are actually tasteful, SUBTLE uses of this in the analog world. Driving your tubes or hitting your tape a little hard can yield pleasing results, and it's widely agreed that some analog distortion can be a good thing. If you have audio nerd friends, impress them today by commenting on music with words like 'warm' or 'crunchy'. Say 'tape compression' or 'you're so lucky to have this on vinyl' and watch them droolingly ingratiate themselves to you with totally rare Shellac demo tapes. ANYWAY, these exceptions are applied during recording, not in the final stages of pressing an album. In vinyl you can't exceed your limit because it won't physically work; the needle will skip. In the digital world, your sound will crackle and break up, called clipping, above the limit: 0 decibels RMS (which is defined as blah blah blah).

Now that you have a head full of jargon, I can really start ranting. Since the dawn of recorded music, people have been figuring out tricks to make their songs louder, for many reasons. One of the big ones is that when given the same audio played at two different volumes, your brain will usually tell you that the louder one sounds better. From this fact, it's not a stretch for a record company A&R guy to push for his record to be mastered louder than average, and if the engineer has the capability to do this then why not? If the radio DJ likes your loud song better, he'll give it more airtime, leading to more sales. This used to not be a big issue, but problems are arising as "louder" turns into "too loud". Average sound levels of records when I was born were often as low as -18 dB RMS. Some records today are put out at close to -4 dB on average. Decibels work on a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one, so this is much louder. These are average levels: records in the 80's got loud too, but they also got quiet, and that's important. Dynamically compressing audio doesn't just make everything louder, it also makes that loudness consistent, trading away dynamic changes for the sake of being louder than the song on the radio before you. When recordings aren't allowed this natural breathing and every note and drum hit is the same volume, your music is left with all the nuance of an air horn, and it fatigues your ears in a real way. Your ears are not built for sustained listening at a constant volume, and whether you like it or not they will get tired of it.

So how sinister does that sound? Even songs you enjoy by artists you like, you can't listen to over long periods of time, because your ears get tired of the constant beating they take. But why do people keep pushing these limits, even as we sacrifice physical comfort for loudness-over-all? Part of the blame rests on the aforementioned A&R folks. Radio disc jockeys are also a culprit. A fair amount of blame rests on modernity in general. Music is everywhere, but I'll wager that recreational music listening is waning. It's become a must for music to be playing in grocery stores, cars, and really anywhere that it's possible, and this heavily compressed (but noisy and irritating) music cuts through the noise of traffic, and sounds louder through the less-than-great speakers in most of these places, not to mention crappy computer speakers and tiny earbuds. Again, this is all at the cost of listenability, and to me that isn't worth it. Naysayers please refer back to my Mona Lisa analogy.

The good news is that people are becoming more aware of this. I am not the first person to write about it by a long shot , and artists from Los Lonely Boys to Bob Dylan have spoken out against it. The bad news is that it's still happening. When I first heard about the scourge of overcompression, the Red Hot Chili Pepper's Californication was the album everyone name-checked for being needlessly loud. Recent years have brought us Metallica's Death Magnetic, an album that literally sounds better on Guitar Hero than on cd. Produced by name-among-names Rick Rubin, Metallica's ninth studio release clips all over the place. It's also a double-platinum album, produced by people whose careers are all decades long. Given that, we can assume this was intentional. Metallica and Rick Rubin, to some degree of cooperation, decided to make an entire album that above all else is just loud, and putting aside arguments about how good or bad their songs are, these guys made an album with the sonic variety of a chainsaw, on purpose. Artistic statement or not, it's a sign of the times, and it's kind of annoying. A petition was started, lobbying to get the album remastered and rereleased, and at last count there were 21,000 signatures on it.

But enough about Metallica already, we have bigger problems on our hands. People wouldn't be making music louder, louder, louder if there wasn't a demand for it. Musicians recording at studios are customers, and if you're engineering an album and a band is over your shoulder demanding you turn 'everything' up 'a lot', at some point you're going to throw up your hands and do it. You gets paid, and one more band has a crappy sounding album that sounds like all the other loud-ass albums out there, and the kicker is that even if people out there like it, they can't enjoy the band as much as they could, because their new favorite song bashes their eardrums in. If I'm appealing to people to do anything with all this, it's just to listen to music. It can be an experience if you want it to be, but it gets cheapened as an art form in a lot of ways, and doesn't have to. In this whole situation, no one loses more than the music listener, so don't sell yourself short.

ARTISTS: Brainfeeder and Modern Beatcraft

2010-07-26T12:30:00.025-05:00

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

2010-07-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

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.

2010-07-22T18:55:00.001-05:00

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

2010-07-20T19:30:00.001-05:00

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

2010-07-14T04:06:00.002-05:00

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

2010-07-10T11:28:00.001-05:00

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

2010-07-08T18:30:00.000-05:00

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

2010-07-07T12:25:00.000-05:00

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

2010-07-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

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

2010-07-05T20:45:00.000-05:00

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.