Summer music for wintery people.
We made it to 700 episodes. While it's not a special episode per se—commemorating this milestone—you can pretty much assume that every episode is special. This one features Mark Spybey & Graham Lewis, Brian Gibson, Sote, Scanner and Neil Leonard, Susumu Yokota, Eleven Pond, Frédéric D. Oberland / Grégory Dargent / Tony Elieh / Wassim Halal, Yellow Swans, Dental waste in Saigon photo by Krisztian. Get involved: subscribe, review, rate, share with your friends, send images!
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Let me just say this one thing to our entire British audience before I get started with this review: Just because you guys import our urban music by the barrel doesn't mean we Americans should have to put up with any quantity of yours. Sure, we'll take the occasional Craig David track and play the video on M2, but we have no interest in your "So Solid" UK Garage (save for the R&B-like MJ Cole and Artful Dodger). That being said, my heart is filled with nothing but the purest of pity for the poor A&R over at Vice Records who's going to lose his or her job in the crash and burn effort to attain some level of crossover success with The Streets. Sole member Mike Skinner may speak directly to the British youth in the same way that Eminem speaks to suburban white teenagers, but he's speaking an entirely different language than what this market speaks. The lyric sheet that came with this promo CD is essential for any attempt to understand the heavy slang here, although some translations would be even more useful (birds = bitches; geezers = UK garage wiggers). While I could waste far too much of my time slagging The Streets' total lack of lyrical flow, I'll just say that it really takes away from the mediocre tracks underneath. The peppy single "Has It Come To This?" sounds like a radio spot where the hyper-caffeinated disc jockey babbles on, unable to oblige the listeners by shutting the fuck up and go back to the music they actually tuned in for. Sadly, this song stands among the few-and-far-between decent moments of the album. Tracks like "Sharp Darts," "Don't Mug Yourself," and "Too Much Brandy" are so ridiculously bad that I am stunned that a reputable music magazine like NME praised 'Original Pirate Material' as a "landmark record." Still, a handful of the songs would have worked as instrumentals, namely the moody two-step lurch of "Geezers Need Excitement" and the string washes of "It's Too Late." Though I'll take another twelve Damon Albarn side-projects before I listen to anything like this again, 'Original Pirate Material' does manage to come out sounding better than that last Vincent Gallo compilation, destined to be the worst CD of the year no matter how many more British MCs release albums in 2002.
The peculiarity of Pavement's music to me has always been its indifference. A song like "Loretta's Scars" is at once dreary as well as rousing. Stephen Malkmus's slackeristic vocals contribute to the indifference, but I think it has more to do with the unconventional composition of Pavement's songs. On the one hand, at the time 'Slanted and Enchanted' was recorded, you had a bunch of fellows who, at best, had moderate skill with their instruments, yet a fairly intimate connection with them. On the other hand, part of the band was living outside NYC, while the other part was back in Stockton, California, and so the result is a sort of bicoastal composition which successfully hybridized a bunch of antagonistic pairs: Malkmus's melody craft with Kannberg's explosiveness; menacing snarls with mournful croons; an East Coast melancholy with a west coast optimism.
Terrastock 5 was an outrageous weekend-long nostalgia fest. By the evening of Sunday I'd really had enough of musty old psychedelic rock. The day had been disappointing. I was mostly hanging out at the bar, happy for any distraction from the music that came my way when suddenly, in the middle of it all, SubArachnoid Space made my day. They punched through all the dross, chatter, space and bodies and captivated my attention. At last, here was the prog rock aesthetic demonstrating its superior durability by sweeping away all the psych cobwebs of the weekend. Despite some technical issues, their sound was excellent—very loud but tight, punchy and clear. The first rate drumming, which reminded me of Police-era Stuart Copeland and of Trans Am's second album, combined with massive wedges of bass (sufficient to cause a perceptible draft) to lay down the groove while ingenious guitar figures and washes filled out the well delineated compositions. This was so good that, in a guilty, devil-may-care frame of mind, I broke the terms of my unemployment and bought a couple of their CDs. The first, "These Things Take Time" on Release was recorded live at KFJC in Silicon Valley in 1999 and the second "Play Nice" is a self-released 2002 tour CDR comprising bootleg-quality recordings from rehearsals and concerts. To be candid, if SubArachnoid had played like they did on these CDs in their T5 set, I wouldn't have bought any CDs. "Play Nice" holds some of live set's powers (check the samples) but overall the material is, unfortunately, much more psych than it is prog. While SubArachnoid's set at T5 was (blessedly) on the fringes, the music on these CDs would have been right in the middle of the T5 spectrum, almost definitive: lugubrious noodling jams with lashings of space echo on the guitar — pleasant enough in their own right, sometimes breaking the barrier into interesting, a long way from being enthralling and almost memorable. The good news is that SubArachnoid Space are working on a new album.
When Mineral disbanded following the completion of their second record, 'EndSerending,' many fans of their brand of plaintive and emotional rock were stunned and dismayed. In just a short time, Mineral had not only amassed a loyal following and had been courted by a number of major labels—even signing with Virgin but calling it quits before they could record anything—but they had also nearly changed their sound completely. Once a punk-laced energetic emo band like Sunny Day Real Estate, they were now fans of sprawling melodic structures with even more soaring vocals. Founding members Chris Simpson and Jeremy Gomez decided to continue making music together under the moniker The Gloria Record, and released several EPs and singles on Crank!. With this, their first full-length, the Gloria Record accomplishes the same growth in sound Mineral showed from their first LP to 'Endserenading.'
For their second release, this Montreal-based drum, bass, and tape trio has mellowed out their punk-influenced musical assault, and have somewhat filled the space with a wider variety of sounds and techniques. The result is a diverse collage of musique concrete- and beatbox-inspired instrumentals. Throughout the album, the musicians stay true to their rock roots. Even when bits of DSP are employed, the overall sound is stripped-down and unpretentious. "Gauss" opens the album with some low bass and brooding bass clarinet, establishing the album's stark and gloomy mood. Most of the songs combine a slow, moaning, three- or four-note bassline with some solid mid-tempo breakbeat drumming and noisy tape and computer processing. "Voiceboxed" is an excellent track; it is propelled forward by a repeating one-note guitar part (played by Mike Moya of Hrsta) and reel-to-reel tape manipulations, while some well-crafted digital effects shift in and out. "Ice Storm" starts as a semi-interesting medley of instrument cable buzzes and intermittent static; a downtempo beat and some clarinet emerge for a while but then the piece gets quiet and abstract again for the last minute. "My Country Is Winter" has an almost hip-hop beat and one of the better bass melodies as all manners of tape noises and strange electronic sounds whirl about. Exhaust have used the studio effectively in constructing this album; at various points the drums cut out and are seamlessly replaced or augmented by filtered and machine-produced rhythms. The reel-to-reel tapes were my favorite part of Exhaust's debut, and that element isn't as high-profile as I would have liked this time around, but there's so much more detail and variety of sound on this album that it definitely deserves a closer listen than its predecessor. The mixing of organic rock instrumentation with more abstract electronic elements makes 'Enregistreur' an entertaining and interesting release.
Upon first listen, the latest full length release from the sunshine state's The Mercury Program comes across as an homage to Tortoise's 'Millions Now Living...' due in part to the liberal use of vibraphone, hypnotic arrangements and a firmly rooted rhythm section. After putting aside the fact that the vibraphone had been around for quite some time before 1996, and several more listens, it's apparent that these guys are more at home with prog rock than say, post rock, for lack of a better term. Guitarist Tom Reno perfectly blends the Fripp/Belew sound of 80s King Crimson with the style of Will Sergeant. The multi-faceted drumming of Dave Lebleu is made melodic through Sander Travisano's solid, yet understated bassline translations. For me, what makes this disc is the electric piano provided by newest member Whit Travisano. You just can't go wrong with a Fender Rhodes these days. There being raised level of musicianship, the tunes can be somewhat lengthy with a fair bit of repetition in order for the exchange between the players to gel. This leads to some clever compositions which push their own boundaries. With all the elements that personally make for a satisfying listen, the unfortunate thing is that I don't find myself being too emotionally involved in what should otherwise be a great disc. Perhaps it's more of a live thing.
