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summer hiatus
For the next three weeks or so I'm going to be up and down the east coast, trying to, you know, build utopia and stuff, which means that there won't be too many updates here during that time. I'm working on a review of the most recent Hwyl Nofio release (6/3 Update: this review is now up, at Thaumaturgy) but after that I've got no real big blog-plans until I get back, around June 21st. See you then. Labels: meta |
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
7:41 PM
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counterpoint and ironies
Although most Western music for the past, oh, I don't know, roughly four hundred years or so has been written with a focus on harmony as its predominant structural element, you could make an argument that turntablism, by its very nature, marks a return to the musical principle of counterpoint: viewed in a certain light, the way turntablism takes rhythmic or melodic fragments and juxtaposes them with other fragments or with duplicate versions of itself could be said to be almost round-like or fugue-like.
The contrapuntal effect of musical irony could be said to apply to much turntable material:
"Counterpoint is one of the most essential means, in musical composition, for the generation of musical ironies; a melodic fragment, heard alone, may make a particular impression, but when it is heard simultaneously with other melodic ideas, or combined in unexpected ways with itself, as in canon or fugue, surprising new facets of meaning are revealed."
(from Wikipedia)
A nice example comes to us in the form of this week's Friday MP3, "Jukebox Capriccio," a piece made by turntablist Christian Marclay in 1985, which jumbles together big band horns, skating-rink organ, tinny New Wave beats, sundry bits of exotica, and scrawls of white noise into something that "means" something far more complicated than any of the records might manage individually. (This piece, along with many other pieces of radical counterpoint, are available on the wonderful 1997 Marclay anthology Records 1981-1989, on Atavistic.)
Listen: "Jukebox Capriccio" Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, May 27, 2005
10:29 AM
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star wars and plot arcs
I haven't yet seen Revenge of the Sith, but I've read a lot of reviews of it.
Probably the best one I've read is over at the superlative MP3 blog Fluxblog. (Scroll down past the terrible title and the two MP3s offered earlier in the post (although I'd say that both of the MP3s are also worth your time)).
Anyway, in this review, Matthew P. identifies the basic strengths and weaknesses of the film, but it gets especially interesting when he hints at what might have been a more satisfying plot arc for Episodes One, Two, and Three. Matthew imagines an alternate-universe version of the prequel trilogy wherein they map explicitly to the arc of Episodes Four, Five, and Six: where each corruptive sequence exactly mirrors a redemptive sequence in 1/2/3. (This would involve, for instance, having Anakin train with Palpatine in the second movie, as counterpoint to Luke's training with Yoda in the fifth.)
The critique of the treatment of the Jedi in the mew films is also, for my money, spot-on. |
Thursday, May 26, 2005
8:22 PM
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chicago drone
Lovers of the Chicago drone, take note: tomorrow night, at Sonotheque, there will be a performance by Goldblood, Dreamweapon, the Zoo Wheel, and Rebis recording artists White/Light.
Stop by and say hello~ |
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
1:28 PM
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brief notes
1) Last night's show was fantastic. East Coast readers, I implore you to make it to the NYC Boredoms show happening in another couple of days.
2) Today's the last day to bid on a bunch of CDs I'm selling through eBay.
3) Most excitingly: the new Number None album, Urmerica, is back from the pressing plant and now available for sale. You can download an MP3, "Suggestion For A New National Anthem," from the Rebis sounds page. Labels: number_none, personal |
Sunday, May 22, 2005
12:19 PM
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super bore
"The Boredoms are like a moon on a lake. Only there is no moon and no lake. Only Boredoms." —Yamatsuka Eye
The Boredoms are coming and playing in Chicago tomorrow night, which, for me at least, is great news: ever since 2001's masterpiece Vision Creation New Sun the Boredoms have topped my list of acts that I've wanted to see live. The Boredoms are especially interesting to me because over the last ten years or so they've managed to enact a transformation from brilliant, juvenile spazz-punks to psychedelic mystics, releasing stunning albums at every step in the process. For my money, this ranks as an artistic development that rivals any in the history of popular music. (The best comparison I can think of would be The Beatles' shift from brilliant, juvenile moptops to, well, psychedelic mystics.)
This Friday's MP3, "Super Are," is taken from 1998's Super AE, which I love because it's something of a transition album, fulfilling roughly the same sort of function in their catalog as Revolver does for the Beatles: it's that perfect blend of a developing psychedelic sound (which isn't yet in full bloom) and a pop-mania past (which isn't yet fully behind them). This track is pretty representative: it begins with gentle electronic drones, meditative chants, and a fucking drum-circle jam before lurching into the realm of the death-metal freak-out.
Listen: "Super Are"
Related: Loads of Boredoms links over at the Boredoms Temple of Worship; MP3 blog the of mirror eye has a good post featuring two tracks from Vision Creation New Sun. Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, May 20, 2005
2:18 PM
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DKG Sleep Trio, self-titled
The newest zone appearing on the big map of musical microclimates is the teenage wasteland of college-town Indiana, where an unlikely assortment of post-everything bands have group-identified as the Fuck Me Stupid Princess Mountain Recording Collective, which may be my favorite name for anything, ever. The first disc I got my hands on from these folks is a self-titled release from the DKG Sleep Trio, which contains six pieces of bad-trip improv assembled with a loose DIY basement aesthetic.
If forced to place them into a context, I'd say that the trio, at its most fundamental, is playing rock—although it's the grey, reptillian rock of Slint, Mick Turner, and the Dead C, more in love with the empty blasted landscape of amp hum and distorted crunch than with anything that resembles rhythm and blues. Although most of the untitled pieces here are dominated by this rangy, strung-out guitar work (contributed by Mike Dixon and Carlos Gonzales), they're rounded out with percussive spatter, cracked electronics, and wounded ululations that seem to have risen from the lower echelons of emo. (The album's vocal approach is maybe best exemplified by the second track, featuring an I'm-off-my-meds rant to a beloved fog machine ("Foggy")—a rant which goes from schizophrenic mumble to howling tantrum, with brief stops at all the various waystations inbetween.)
Occasionally the pieces establish a structure: the guitar and percussion establish temporarily residence around some pattern of scummed-up electronic arpeggiations, and all the stochastic noise suddenly seems like it's in place. More commonly, however, the elements cohere briefly and then dissolve again, giving the whole affair an air of junk-sick doom, which is almost certainly the aim.
Self-released by the Fuck Me Stupid Mountain Princess Recording Collective.
Listen: "Untitled [Track 4]"
(Note: this is part of an occasional feature where we'll post MP3s of bands we review for as long as the review remains on the front page of the blog. Once the review goes into the archives, the MP3s will be removed. Special thanks to Jeremy for his kind permission.)
This review cross-posted to Thaumaturgy |
Thursday, May 19, 2005
11:45 PM
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used CDs for sale
If you want to help support Raccoon and also get something out of the deal (other than an intangible sense of well-being), you should check out the CDs I'm selling over at eBay. It's mostly indie-rock and/or experimental electronica; exactly the sort of thing that most people who read this blog might enjoy. Faun Fables, Scanner, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Janek Schaefer, etc. |
Sunday, May 15, 2005
6:54 PM
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pastoral circuses of the future
I don't think Nobukazu Takemura's album Child and Magic, released in 1997 by Warner Japan, has ever been released domestically, and more's the pity, since this disc is one of the odder ones in Takemura's catalog. He's mainly known stateside as a purveyor of fragmented, crystalline electronica, and that, indeed, is one facet of Child and Magic, but the disc also contains pieces more akin to affable J-pop, Reichian minimalism, or the gentle sort of electroacoustic music offered up by Lucky Kitchen.
This Friday's MP3, "Clown and Crown," is representative of the hybridity and scope of the album: it functions as a fantasy terrarium wherein stately violin, children's voices, electronic bloops and bleeps, circus-band horns, bird twitter, and gravelly noise can all come together to form a completely natural and balanced whole.
Listen:"Clown and Crown" Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, May 13, 2005
3:22 PM
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white rock, tarpit
When this quartet of Brooklyn noise luminaries uses the phrase "White Rock," I don't think they intend for us to think of the area of the record store where you'd shelve the Skrewdriver discs (or the Lynryd Skynrd). I think that they'd hope for us to instead think literally, to imagine an actual piece of colored stone, something prehistoric and suffused with cryptic meaning. That might be the right visual for listening to these tracks, which sound, indeed, like something that might emerge from some heavy chunk of prehistoric matter coated in ash or bat-shit.
The layers of animistic heaviness unearthed here will come as no surprise to those familiar with the other work of the personnel on hand—Brian and Nate from noise-rock act Mouthus, and Maya and Mike from the electronic drone ensemble Double Leopards. Individually, each of these groups have been digging tunnels through the loamy silt of the psychedelic unconscious, and Tarpit takes us on two long dungeon crawls through the weird riddled nexus where those tunnels meet.
Built from thick pileups of unidentifiable groans, vocal mutterings, electical hum, and Neolithic beats, these tracks embody the most lofty Cageian ideas about sound being liberated from instruments and ego, while simultaneously living out the scuzziest punk fantasies about the complete destruction of song structures. And yet, for all its abrasive edges and strange angles, the soundworld established here is strangely welcoming and embracing. Sink into its warm womblike depths and you might not want to leave. Each time Tarpit ends, vomiting me abruptly back into the silence of my apartment, I feel, unmistakably, a pang of disappointment.
On Troubleman, limited to an edition of 1,000.
This review cross-posted to Thaumaturgy |
Thursday, May 12, 2005
8:27 PM
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superheroes and icons
It's been years since I've closely followed superhero comics—I haven't even been able to get around to looking at the trade paperbacks collecting Grant Morrison's highly-lauded and conceptually-interesting work on New X-Men and Justice League.
That said, I'm looking forward to Paul Pope's upcoming Batman: Year 100, if only because Pope does one of the best versions of Robin I've ever seen—
from Solo #3
Actually, it's more than that: as much as I like Pope's art, I'm especially interested in his whole kooky theoretical take on how comics work as an iconographic language (developed spottily through the years in strange little essays which have popped up here and there). I'm not sure I grasp the exact particulars of the theory, but I'm certain that Pope is nothing if not alert to the storied weight that superheroes carry as visual icons: this knowledge all but guarantees that he'll do something interesting now that he has one of the most famous icons from all of comics (arguably one of the most famous visual icons of the entire 20th century) to play with. Labels: comics |
Tuesday, May 10, 2005
3:12 PM
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princesses with nice figures
A few years ago, feeling glum and only finding depressing music in my home library, I asked around for some "life-affirming" music. No one at the time suggested Mighty Spoiler's 1953 tune "Bedbug," but I think it's a great example of what I was looking for: although Spoiler is singing here about dying and being reincarnated as an insect, an initially unpleasant-seeming prospect, he manages to spin it into an irrepresible vision of parasite heaven, in which he'll be spending his days in fat women's beds, pleasuring himself by biting on their flesh.
Of this song, sleevenote writer Alvin C. Daniell remarks: it's "a textbook example of how a master calypsonian can transform potential pornography into a charming smut, and add a bit of social satire in the process."
From the joyous, ribald 1995 collection Unspoilt; thanks to Darren D. for turning me on to it.
Listen: Mighty Spoiler (1926-1960): "Bedbug" Labels: audio, mp3s, music_commentary |
Friday, May 06, 2005
2:32 PM
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mirroring
It may interest LiveJournal users to know that I'm beginning to mirror Raccoon posts over at my LiveJournal page, instead of just using it as a sporadically-updated dump of poems and dreamwork.
That said, I'll probably still post the occasional poem over there, for instance here's today's, "No Excremental Digit." |
Tuesday, May 03, 2005
11:25 PM
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perils of the mystic life
So last month Li-Young Lee apparently had some kind of nervous breakdown onstage while trying to grapple with ideas about God, humanity, sex, and death. Firsthand accounts can be read here and here.
I post this reluctantly, for I admire Lee as a poet and as a spiritual thinker, and I'm not particularly interested in gawking at a public meltdown just for the sake of gawking. In fact I'm quite sympathetic to everything that Lee says in these accounts: he seems to be trying to puzzle out the basic foundation for a philosophy of spiritual erotics (a project which is both necessary and overdue).
Lee's larger project, I believe, is to use poetry as a means of attaining a state of gnosis, a difficult process at best. He also seems to have an even larger project, which is to attempt to help all of humanity to attain that state as well, a process which seems to leap the boundary that separates the challenging from the impossible. And yet, if you're a person with an enormous (religious) empathy, as Lee is, it must seem, at times, like the only possible response to this impossibility is grief. You don't want to read poems. You don't want to sign books. You want to grieve.
"I want to go home. Kathy, I'm done, I need to go home."
Yeah. Yeah, I think I get it. Labels: empathy |
Monday, May 02, 2005
2:18 PM
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