Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
virtual crowdsurfing
Monday, September 21, 2009
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Sunday, September 6, 2009
The Thrill Of It All
The thrill of it all
Nick Hornby used to find record shops scarily intimidating (remember High Fidelity?), but the advent of MP3 blogs has liberated music fans everywhere. Writing exclusively for OMM, the author reveals why ...
My first novel, High Fidelity, was published in 1995, and shortly afterwards, I embarked upon my first American book tour. I took with me a Discman, and 15 or 20 carefully chosen CDs in a wallet, although I bought lots of others while I was there – CDs by bands I'd never heard of, and wouldn't have been able to buy at home, recommended to me by people who came to readings, or by journalists at the end of interviews. There was always a thriving, intimidating independent music store just a short walk from my hotel, in whichever city I was visiting. At signings, people gave me lovingly made compilation tapes, occasionally demo tapes of their bands, or their friends' bands, and sometimes bootleg tapes of shows by artists they thought I'd like. Towards the end of the tour I no longer had room for it all, and I had to leave little piles of cassette boxes next to the waste-bins in my hotel rooms. (I couldn't bear to put them in the bins. I wasn't throwing them away; I was leaving them behind. There was a difference.) If you look at the above picture carefully, and compare it to your average 2009 book tour, you should be able to spot the differences. Even spoken-word recommendations look quaint now.
Back then, the future of music didn't look particularly interesting to me. I don't mean that music itself seemed boring, although I was 38 years old, and I felt like I'd heard a lot of the mid-90s before. I mean that neither I nor anybody else I knew spent any time thinking about how our consumption of music might change. How could it? There wasn't much to it, surely? OK, someone might come up with another format, something that might sweep away the compact disc just as the CD had replaced vinyl. But whatever it was, all you could do was buy it – which meant walking down to Our Price, or a local independent store staffed by people who looked as though they'd rather have their heads stuck inside Thurston Moore's amp than speak to you. I certainly couldn't have imagined writing a novel which is in part about how we relate to music in the 21st century. Like most of us, I believed that this relationship would be a version of the relationship we all knew and loved, with a couple of extra volume knobs on.
In the year that High Fidelity was published, a new CD shop opened in my neighbourhood and rejuvenated my listening habits. The shop did well, initially, and I spent a lot of time in there, buying pretty much whatever the owners told me to buy; they were very clever, it seemed to me, in targeting the ageing (or perhaps, more precisely, ex-) hipsters of north London, people who were growing sick of their REM albums but didn't know what else to buy. They sold hundreds of copies of Buena Vista Social Club, and a lot of tasteful trip-hop – which, as Simon Reynolds pointed out, was "merely a form of gentrification". But then, what are you supposed to do if you're becoming gentrified? Pretend it isn't happening? Yes, Portishead sold a lot of albums to people who wanted to listen to music that meant something without waking up their children, but that's not necessarily a desire that deserves a sneer. Keeping in touch with the things that help us feel alive – music, books, movies, even the theatre, if, mysteriously, you are that way inclined – becomes a battle, and one that many of us lose, as we get older; I don't think enough of our cultural pundits, people who write about that stuff for a living, fully understand this. It's one thing to have an opinion on Little Boots remixes if you earn your living hanging about in cyberspace; quite another if you're a full-time teacher with three kids. My friend's CD shop performed a valuable service to those whose shopping and browsing and listening time was rationed by circumstance, people who had the occasional five minutes on a Saturday morning to check out, and sometimes even buy, what everyone else was listening to.
You'll know what happened to the shop, because it happened to everyone else's shop, too. Illegal downloading wouldn't have been a factor here – the punters were too old and, for the most part, too well-heeled for all that. But Amazon started selling CDs for less than my friends could buy them for, and eventually even north London's late adopters worked out that one-clicking didn't take much effort. The trouble with this, of course, is that you're shopping in a vacuum, however many times you're told by some robot you don't know that if you like this then you'll love that. You're feeding off nothing, apart from recommendations in broadsheet newspapers and magazines such as this one – and we've all been burned like that. After my local CD shop closed down, I was getting ready for a musical life that turned in on itself, before dying slowly from malnutrition. Any piece of music becomes drained of meaning and excitement if you listen too much to it, but a three-minute pop song isn't going to last you a lifetime. Popular music needs to keep flowing. If the fresh supplies stop, it's you that becomes stagnant.
It took me longer than it should have done to work out that the internet is one giant independent record shop – thousands and thousands of cute little independent record shops, anyway – and they don't actually charge you for the music they stock. The MP3 blogs that stretch for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see, down that stretch of the net that isn't reserved for pornography, are staffed by enthusiastic and likable young men and women who absolutely don't want to rip the artists off: they are always careful to post links to iTunes and Amazon, and the songs they put on their sites are for sampling purposes only. (For the most part, they are encouraged to do so by the artists and their labels, who take out adverts on the more popular sites, and are clearly sending advance copies of albums to the bloggers.) It works for me. I listen, and then I buy what I like, because owning music is still important to me. If the music I like stays out there in cyberspace, as it does on Spotify, then somehow it cannot indicate character and taste in the same way, although I doubt that younger generations will feel like this, and good luck to them.
But it's easy. Look at Hype Machine (hypem.com) to begin with: in the top right-hand corner of the site, you'll see a list of the top five most-blogged artists, so you will get a sense of what's going on out there (or in there, if you are a literal-minded soul). The search engine will offer you a chance to listen to these artists, and, in the process, you'll get the chance to discover your favourite virtual record store, because every single one of those links you see will take you to a different MP3 blog. My favourites are I Am Fuel, You Are Friends, Largehearted Boy, Aquarium Drunkard, When You Awake, and Funky16Corners. (Some of those names are indicative of a generosity of spirit that one doesn't always associate with the internet.) And some of these post songs from new bands, and some post scratched old vinyl funk records, and if you spend an hour messing about you'll find 20 or 30 great songs you never knew before. In other words: there's no excuse.
Juliet, Naked is in part about how a middle-aged man devotes a large chunk of his life to keeping alive the work of a long-forgotten 80s singer-songwriter; he runs a messageboard, posts essays online, and virtually lives in a virtual world, talking to people he wouldn't ever have met 10 years ago. Perhaps one of the paradoxes of music on the internet is that it's perfect for the old folks. If you need to find set lists for every show Rory Gallagher ever played, I'm sure there's some chap with nothing better to do who is taking care of it right now. But more importantly, you need never again feel as though the pop life is drifting away from you – indeed, the anonymity and user-friendliness of the MP3 blogs mean that one feels emboldened to walk into even the scariest-looking website in the full confidence that nobody will laugh at you.
I'll be off on a US book tour again soon, to promote a novel that is, in part, about how the world has changed since 1995. I'll be taking with me a small black box, no bigger than a packet of cigarettes, containing every piece of music I've ever loved. And a lot of that music – more than I could possibly have imagined five years ago, when I was prepared, reluctantly, to pull up the drawbridge – was made very recently. And no, I don't know how it will all pan out, who will pay the artists to make their lovely or ugly or scary music in a world that's increasingly beginning to expect everything for free. (My best guess is that being in a band will become a version of national service or the Peace Corps; something you do for a couple of years before knuckling down to a proper job. And the London Symphony Orchestra won't appear on as many rock albums as they used to.) All I know is that if you love music, and you have a curious mind, there has never been a better time to be alive.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Bill Hicks - Rant in E-Minor
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era [Disk 1]
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - From Below
Delta Spirit - Ode To Sunshine
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Builders and The Butchers - Salvation Is A Deep Dark Well
From Paste Mag, who have named the B&B's their band of the week:
The Builders And The Butchers' musical output is something of a Pentecostal throw-down—the musical underpinnings are reminiscent of bluegrass, but the performances are raw and unschooled, with Sollee in particular throwing off a maniacally ecclesiastical sort of energy. Imagine the Violent Femmes with all the goofy irony cast aside, and you’ll get a sense of the dark, sparkling, Leadbelly-like terrain covered by death-fixated epics such as “Bottom of the Lake” and “The Gallows.” Thick with characters who bear more in common with Steinbeck’s dustbowl downtrodden than their contemporary counterparts, the band's songwriting is almost entirely instinctive.
Friday, July 17, 2009
i ain't no bad apple
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Together Through Life - Bob Dylan
Monday, July 13, 2009
sometimes weezer is fantastic
this shit is awesome.
kids & poker face, y'all:
Friday, July 10, 2009
here's the deal, y'all
BUT
starting tuesday, we will have high-speed-like-the-rest-of-the-world internet. this is the most exciting news EVER, you understand.
so
next week, expect a lot of posts to make up for the lack of posts this month.
peace.
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Bibio - Ambivilance Avenue
pitchfork:
The title track weaves bouncing vocals through crisp guitar licks and bouncy flutes; "All the Flowers" is a fey folk gem; the dreamy "Haikuesque (When She Laughs)" is better indie-rock than many indie-rockers are making these days. Summery anthem "Lovers' Carvings" coasts on crunchy, gleaming riffs and upbeat woodblocks, and the autumnal "The Palm of Your Wave" is simply haunting. "Jealous of Roses" sets lustrous funk riffs dancing between the stereo channels as Bibio belts out a surprisingly effective Sly-Stone-in-falsetto impersonation. "Fire Ant" spikes the loping soul of J Dilla with the stroboscopic vocal morsels of the Field; "Sugarette" wheezes and fumes like a Flying Lotus contraption. The music feels both spontaneous and precise, winding in complex syncopation around the one-beat, with subtle filter and tempo tweaks, and careful juxtapositions of texture (see the arid, throttled voices scraping against the sopping-wet chimes of "S'vive"). Many songs taper off into ambient passages that have actual gravity, gluing the far-flung genres together. It's the kind of seamless variety, heady but visceral, that few electronic musicians who aren't Four Tet have achieved.
this is not just electronica stuff, y'all. it's almost unclassifiable. some people have dubbed it folktronica. ch-ch-check it out.
Flake - Spork EP
you know what's fun about this, without even listening to the first note? two things. one: this ep is entitled spork. c'mon guys, that's just genius. i love sporks. and second, james mercer, singer of The Shins, is in this band. rad! this stuff is good though... perhaps somewhat akin to the lo-fi guitars of guided by voices. regardless, this sounds like 90s alt post-grunge. which is good, because that's what it is.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Spoon - Got Nuffin EP
Thursday, June 25, 2009
R.I.P., Michael.
we'll miss you, mj.
Portugal. The Man - The Satanic Satanist
from equalvision records:
For The Satanic Satanist, Gourley and his bandmates - Zachary Scott Carothers/bass, and Ryan Neighbors/keyboards, and the drummer for the album, Garrett Lunceford - flew to Boston’s Camp Street Studios to work with Paul Q. Kolderie, whose previous clients include both the Pixies and Radiohead, with additional production help from Adam Taylor (The Lemonheads, The Dresdon Dolls) and Cornershop sitarist/keyboardist Anthony Saffery.
"People Say," the lead-off track, finds Gourley speaking out against the human cost of war. On “Lovers in Love,” the band works the groove like Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield in their blaxploitation days, while “Work All Day” could pass for questlove slowing down the beat to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise).” The Satanic Satanist also finds them working more with loops and samples than they have since their 2006 debut.
this album is SO GOOD you guys. i feel kind of douchey posting this a month before it's officially released, but i'm pretty excited about it and want you to listen asap.side note: the album has only 10 tracks, not 11. so when the tenth track "Morning" comes up as "Track 11", just relabel it track 10.
Elvis Costello - This Years Model
released in 1978, This Years Model has managed to remain extremely contemporary. this album quickly become my favorite to put on while i'm driving in the car, especially now that i can roll the windows down and crank the volume up. its so high energy and fun, probably my favorite costello record. check out tracks Pump It Up, The Beat, Chelsea (I Don't Want to Go) ((which can definitely be seen as an Arctic Monkeys influence)), and No Action. But really, all tracks here are worth a listen, or 20.
Discovery - LP
Featuring guest appearances by Vampire Weekend's Ezra Koenig and Dirty Projectors' Angel Deradoorian, and a cover of Jackson 5's "I Want You Back".
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Jeff Beck - Truth
from last.fm
Jeff Beck isn’t your typical guitar legend. His goal, in fact, is to make you forget that he plays guitar.
“I don’t understand why some people will only accept a guitar if it has an instantly recognizable guitar sound,” says Beck. “Finding ways to use the same guitar people have been using for 50 years to make sounds that no one has heard before is truly what gets me off. I love it when people hear my music but can’t figure out what instrument I’m playing. What a cool compliment.”
Like few guitarists before him, Beck plays the entire guitar. Using his fingers instead of a guitar pick for greater speed and control over the fretboard, Beck adds deft twists of the volume and tone knobs to shape the notes as he’s playing them and further bends sounds into a rubbery tangle with his controlled cruelty on the whammy bar.
Artists featured on this album include Rod Stewart, Ron Wood, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Nicky Hopkins, and John Paul Jones.
Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
from pitchfork:
Neko Case is a force of nature. Her voice can knock you over-- it's one of the strongest in any genre. She has immense control and surprising physical and stylistic range, able to jump from cowgirl honkytonk to pop muse to Americana banshee with ease and grace. However, on her fifth studio album, Middle Cyclone , she literally becomes a force of nature: Case sings opener "This Tornado Loves You" from the point of view of an actual tornado, tearing up trailer parks and cutting a 65-mile swath in search for its beloved: "I carved your name across three counties," she sings defiantly as the guitars whip around her and the snare patters frantically, suggesting destruction can be a demonstration of love. Later she's a cyclone, an elephant, a killer whale, a dove, a magpie, and possibly a mollusk. Middle Cyclone features the same core group she's been playing with for years-- including guitarist Paul Rigby, bass player Tom V. Ray, multi-instrumentalist Jon Rauhouse, and back-up singer Kelly Hogan-- along with a supporting cast that includes regulars Garth Hudson of the Band, M. Ward, Sarah Harmer, and members of Calexico, the Sadies, and Giant Sand. With an increasing familiarity between them, this cast finds new ways to sell her songs and couch Case's vocals in unpredictable arrangements.
side note: neko case is actually opening a recording studio at the old catamount arts buliding in my town, saint johnsbury. which, obviously, is awesome.
link crappage
so i've had a slight fall out with mediafire this morning and currently all of the links to music are down. this will be fixed by the afternoon. sorry for any inconvenience.
to maybe tie you over a bit until then, here's a taste of what i'll be posting later this afternoon. from her new album middle cyclone, this is neko case with the song "people got a lotta nerve".
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Robert Randolph & The Family Band - Live at the Wetlands
this stuff is siiiick blues jamming. your entire body will be moving to this album. all members of the band possess a talent hard to come by in any genre. i dare you not to dance.
Beirut - Live at The Music Hall of Williamsburg
if, however, you ARE a beirut fan, i'd suggest scooping this album up. beirut's shows are full of energy and passion, and the crowd totally eats it up. there's a wonderful cover of Brazil here, as well as a few b-side tunes that to my knowledge haven't been formally released.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Murder by Death & Amanda Palmer - Split
Say Hi - Oohs and Aahs
The Mars Volta - Octahedron
Octahedron is the fifth studio record in six years from the Mars Volta and sees the group eschew grand concept albums and instead focus on channelling their creativity into eight bluesy numbers which all stay on the right side of the ten-minute mark. Not only does the album title mirror the number of tracks, but there is a discernible method to this madness, which is more than can be said for some of the band’s previous indulgences. There is enough flamboyance to appease hardcore fans, but newcomers will be drawn in by the lilting melodies of With Twilight As My Guide and the swaggering rock of Teflon.
"These eight tracks make up the Mars Volta's most consistently compelling slab since 2005's salsafied Frances the Mute. But make no mistake: Rodriguez-Lopez still favours 12 solos where one will do." - Spin
"As intoxicating as they are infuriating, the Mars Volta flow between Latin flavoured jazz-fusion and tight, muscular rock." - Guardian
Against Me! (is) Reinventing Axl Rose
favorite tracks: Pints Of Guinness Make You Strong, We Laugh At Danger (And Break All The Rules), Reinventing Axl Rose, Baby, I'm An Anarchist!
The Tallest Man On Earth - Shallow Grave
Matsson is an adept fingerpicker, and his guitar is easily as central as his voice, which is high, crackling, and rich. Much like Dylan himself, Matsson has mined the American south for inspiration, and his frantic strumming and front-porch poetry recall everyone from the Carter Family to Lead Belly to, most noticeably, country bluesman Mississippi John Hurt.
Matsson's melodies are remarkably pliant, and while it's understandable to be skeptical of another skinny dude with a mustache, a guitar, and a worn-out copy of The Anthology of American Folk Music, the more time you invest in Shallow Grave, the more you'll realize how unusually memorable it is. Ultimately, Shallow Grave transcends comparison-- which is saying an awful lot, given the popularity of its prototype-- and Matsson is a natural-born folksinger, earnest, clever, and comforting.
thanks to eric for the recommendation.
CocoRosie - Coconuts, Plenty of Junk Food EP
i've only listened to the first track, but i'm already digging on this album pretty hard
there she goes again
i know i'm supposed to post some sort of disclaimer letting you know that piracy is bad and that the riaa is king. but i'm of the opinion that the riaa can suck my cock. sooo...fuck you, riaa. i'm going to post music. all you people out there can do as you please with it. though i WILL say... if you do happen to fancy a record, or an artist, please go see them on tour. that is, in my opinion, the number one way artists receive payment, unless of course they're self-funded, in which case... buy their music (i'm lookin' at you, AFP).
freddie mercury looks rather crooked up there and i'm having technical difficulties... but he's sexy so hopefully that'll blindside the lack of centeredness. wordz.
and i dont know how i feel about the font colors. meh. i'll probably change them soon.
now i'm thinkin...i'mma go post some musics.