We are happy to hand a song over to BarackRock, a program that is pairing bands and visual artists to give away “singles” with original artwork by designers.
We chose our Daytrotter session version of “The Loving Sounds of Static.” It’s way different than the original. Providing artwork are our friends in vision, Wyeth Hansen and Ryan Dunn, aka Labour, who also directed both of our videos and are generally awesome.
Also, one of my favorite musicians in the world, Cody ChestnuTT, delivered this awesome song to the site today.
Vote on Tuesday!
Ahh . . . Remember the turn of the century? I do. And DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing was the soundtrack. It holds a Guiness world record for being the first album entirely made up of samples. And it still stands up as an amazingly well conceived and balanced work. If you haven’t listened to this in a while it is worth your time again.
This is a video of a high school percussion ensemble recreating some of Endtroducing. Absolutely awesome! In my high school, we were too busy playing lame jazz and poorly executed movie soundtrack music to do anything half as cool as this.
Also wanted to post this mp3 of the Moroder song Tears, sampled by DJ Shadow on the track Organ Donor.
Classic!
It’s a in-band joke that my goal in life (at least with regards to music) is to like everything by the time I die. I have ecclectic musical taste, and generally add more and more to my playlist as the years roll by. I’ll state my hatred for some artist or genre, and then a few months later extol the virtues to every person I talk to, email, or meet in a gas station bathroom. Well, if you had told adolescent Noam that in his thirties he’d be writing blog posts about his favorite Disco tracks, he would have said, ” What the fuck is blog posts?!?”
Well… anyways….. I got into circuit bending…. I got into synthesizers…. I got into disco. So here I am, talking about a few of my favorite Electro-Disco Tracks. Take that, “Noam-Practicing-For-His-Bar-Mitzvah” (by the way, you love country music too, dipshit)
Paul Simon - I never get sick of the guy. (more…)
On the heels of Todd Haynes’ very odd and affecting Dylan film, we find another example of rock with the volume turned way down.
“Idiot Wind” is the most brutal song on Dylan’s famously rough “divorce record,” Blood On The Tracks. As an album, I’m not sure there’s a more concise example of the pathetic mourning, rose-tinted nostalgia and bitter anger that goes along with (per Pete Hamill’s liner notes) the “inevitable farewell.”
The “Idiot Wind” on Blood is paranoid, ugly, and unrelenting. On a relatively subdued and mournful album, it is a gigantic, neon exclamation point. Dylan’s voice sounds more pinched and nasal than usual - it shakes and cracks, often on the verge of shouting. (The live take on Hard Rain, befitting that records fever pitch, is even more hardcore.)
What I only learned last year, though, is that Dylan’s originally recording of the song (half of the album was re-recorded just before its release) was as a mournful, hushed ballad that virtually upends the songs received interpretation as the biggest fuck-off in history. A few lines were changed by the time of the louder recording, in a uniformly angrier direction, but otherwise it’s the exact same song, albeit rendered with as different an emotion as possible for a lyric which repeated envisions the bloody death of its female lead.
The songs famously harsh barbs sound provisional here, as if he’s trying them on for size but would take them back in an instant if given a reason. One key line jettisoned from the final version finds him surprised and oddly hurt that he’d “have to come up with some excuse” just to speak with the unnamed “idiot” anymore, a perfect encapsulation of the back and forth of romantic dissolution: I need you, I don’t need you, etc.
In great contrast to the toxic final version, here he sounds full of regret - angry as hell and probably ready to take it some more. By the final, louder version, vulnerability had been replaced by a seething, righteous anger (”I can’t feel you anymore / I can’t even touch the books you’ve read”). It’s a testament to the mighty B.D. that the song works just as well either way.
On account of being a bit of an idiot myself, I can’t figure out how to upload a song this big to our server, so check out one of the two “acoustic” versions here.
Bruce Haack made some of the most insane music I’ve ever heard. Dense and buzzing with homemade drum machines and synths. Most people wouldn’t be able to take more than a few moments of the sounds from his twisted imagination. Unless most people are children.
Upside Down (mp3) from the “Electronic Record for Children” (1969)
What makes these electronic music pioneers to decide that the target audience for their swirling psychedelic music are people who can’t tie their shoes yet?
Raymond Scott has “Soothing Sound for Baby”, one of the least soothing albums I’ve ever heard. This electronic minimalist masterpiece would pummel a toddler quickly into insanity with its repetitive ultra-high frequency chirping sounds. In fact, the updated cover of the CD releases show a baby being skewered through the ear by a jagged sound wave. Being impaled through the head - very soothing.
I’ve scientifically tested this album on actual babies and the results can only be classified as highly dubious.
Bruce Haack is another electronic genius who geared the bulk of his work towards kids. He studied at Juliard in the 60’s, then began teaching children’s dance classes in New York with a dance instructor named Esther Nelson. They started Dimension 5 Records and began to put out children’s records starting with “Dance, Sing, and Listen” in 1963.
Bruce’s interaction with the creative and open minds of children gave him the perfect arena to utilize his obsession with building electronic instruments, his eclectic blend of classical, folk, rock, klezmer, tin pan alley and soul music with highly evocative storytelling to create a body of truly unique music. Not to mention his funky homemade vocoders for that special “robot voice” flavor.
Bruce and Esther never talk down to children, but engage them intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. And they manage to keep the whole experience fun. Which is why their music is still so engaging for imaginative adults as well as kids.
Walking Eagle (mp3) from “Captain Entropy” (1973) - could you put out a kids record like this today? “Take a puff from a peace pipe and pass it . . . if you feel it, act out the scene ” Oh, to hear this through the ears of a child, though preferably not the bleeding, punctured ears of the child from “Soothing Sounds”
But Bruce didn’t feel content just jazzin’ up the kiddies. He recorded the amazing psychedelic rock/electronic records “Electric Lucifer”(1970) and “Electric Lucifer Book II” (1978-9?). Incredibly vague metaphysics, somewhat strange biblical references, definitely crazy lyrics . . . these albums have all the trappings of outsider music masterpiece. Throw in a healthy dose of homemade electronics and vocoder and this shit is right up my alley.
After a lifetime of being ignored by the mainstream music industry, Bruce’s mood turned more and more bitter. His last two records got darker and weirder. Increasingly filled with sexual imagery and frustrated yearnings for an acceptance he never found outside of the world of children. Musically, they are some of my favorites. “Haackula” (1978 - never released) and “Bite” (1981) are definitely for mature audiences only.
Track 4 - Haackula (mp3) - Here Bruce let’s the critics know what he thinks - hint, it’s not friendly.
The version of Haackula I have, contains a copy of his last known work, a hip-hop collaboration with Russell Simmons called “Party Machine”.
Party Machine (mp3) - pure old school funk bliss. “Can you just imagine, buttons for eyes, numbers for names, life with no lies?”
Check out the documentary “Haack:King of Techno”. This isn’t the greatest film, but its lots of fun with rare clips of a under appreciated genius, including a clip of him on a very early “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” episode.
Robert Plant is rightfully known for many grand talents but subtlety isn’t one of them.
I admit that I lost track of Plant after Led Zeppelin imploded, but apparently in the interim Mr Hey Hey Ma got older and wiser and made some world music-ish records and sampled himself on a weird 1988 hit and got enough sleep and didn’t destroy his voice and recently decided to do an adult-contemporary record with a mainstream bluegrass singer. Confusing.
More confusing still, on Raising Sand he and Alison Krauss cover a song by Chris Isaak’s bass player called “Killing The Blues” that is the most beautiful thing you’ve heard in a long time, I promise. This is Robert Plant - he who needeth his lemon squeezed, who required a piece of your custard pie and was working from 7 to 11 every night. He’ll be 60 next year and sounds like he’s fronting a narcoticized Everly Brothers at the gates of heaven - apparently he survived his long seasons of rock and roll just fine.The song is slower and softer than anything I’ve ever heard, like it was produced by the most comfortable pillow known to man. Imagine Mr. Pillow at the mixing desk at 4 A.M. with a cigar and jelly donut and crushed top hat - Alright boys, lets try another take… but this time EVEN SOFTER. (more…)
Last night in Atlanta was a blast. JJ, our new best friend, responded to Ben’s request for spicy Hot V8 by bringing what looked like a gallon jug of the stuff. We played for a great group of very spirited folks. Off to Athens today to hang with friends on a day off before heading down to Florida.
And what better time to drop a little shout out to Cinemechanica. (more…)
