Running The Voodoo Down

TRAIN SUICIDE - DON'T DO IT

2012-01-08T10:25:00.000-08:00

I spotted this sign yesterday at the Perth Amboy, NJ train station.

Perth Amboy doesn't have an elevated train platform, with a drop down to the tracks; the train comes in right at ground level, and you climb steps up into it to board. Naturally, this makes it somewhat easier for those so inclined to leap in front of oncoming trains. So NJ Transit has apparently seen fit to create a suicide hotline, to prevent just such an occurrence.

BURNING AMBULANCE #5 OUT NOW!

2011-12-24T10:09:00.000-08:00

The latest issue of Burning Ambulance is out. It features a cover story on New York improvising funk/rock/jazz/hip-hop/other music ensemble Burnt Sugar; interviews with saxophonist Marcus Strickland, trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, and Swans founder Michael Gira; a profile of improvising guitarist/composer and former Burnt Sugar member Morgan Craft; a black metal roundtable featuring members of Averse Sefira, Infernal Stronghold, Krallice, Krieg, Lightning Swords of Death, Panopticon, Xibalba, and Yaotl Mictlan; an essay on Cecil Taylor; an essay on the nature of time in music; and a look back at Monte Hellman's movie Two-Lane Blacktop, 40 years later.

As always, the print edition is $10 for a handsome perfect-bound paperback; the ebook version (compatible with Nook and just about every other e-reader on the market) is $5; and the Kindle version is a mere $3.

Why not pick one up today?

A YEAR IN FIVE LISTS

2011-12-23T17:43:00.000-08:00

I submitted year-end album lists to three places: The Wire, my day job, and the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll. Each had different requirements and different emphases, so each list is slightly different, but they have titles in common. Here they are, with discussion to follow.

I sent The Wire a Top Ten albums list, and a Top Ten reissues list, as follows:

TOP 10 RECORDS OF THE YEAR
1. Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967 (Sony, 3CD/1DVD)
2. Defeatist, Tyranny of Decay (Nerve Altar, LP)
3. JD Allen Trio, Victory! (Sunnyside, CD)
4. Amon Amarth, Surtur Rising (Metal Blade, CD)
5. Wormrot, Dirge (Earache, CD)
6. Stacy Dillard, Good and Bad Memories (Criss Cross, CD)
7. Corrupted, Garten der Unbewusstheit (Nostalgia Blackrain, CD)
8. Vader, Welcome to the Morbid Reich (Nuclear Blast, CD)
9. Krisiun, The Great Execution (Century Media, CD)
10. Orthodox, Ba’al (Alone, CD)

TOP 10 REISSUES OF THE YEAR
1. Bill Dixon, Intents & Purposes (International Phonograph, CD)
2. Julius Hemphill, Dogon A.D. (International Phonograph, CD)
3. Alice Coltrane, Universal Consciousness/Lord of Lords (Impulse!/Verve, CD)
4. David Murray Octets, The Complete Remastered Recordings On Black Saint & Soul Note (CAM London, 5CD Box)
5. Pink Floyd, Ummagumma, Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals (Capitol, CD)
6. Stan Getz, Quintets: The Clef & Norgran Studio Albums (Verve, CD)
7. Wes Montgomery, Movin’: The Complete Verve Recordings (Hip-O Select, 5CD Box)
8. Sonora Ponceña, El Gigante Sureño (Fania, 2CD)
9. Howlin’ Wolf, The Howlin’ Wolf Album (Get On Down, CD)
10. Various Artists, Cartagena! Curro Fuentes & the Big Band Cumbia and Descarga Sound of Colombia 1962-72 (Soundway, CD)

Those lists were submitted in early November; if I had it to do over again, I'd dump the Sonora Ponceña compilation and replace it with an Ismael Rivera comp, Maelo, on the same label. But everything else would remain the same.

Here's the list I published on Roadrunner Records' roundup of lists from staff and artists:

1. JD Allen Trio, Victory! (Sunnyside)
2. Amon Amarth, Surtur Rising (Metal Blade)
3. 2NE1, 2nd Mini Album (YG Entertainment)
4. Defeatist, Tyranny of Decay (Nerve Altar)
5. Vader, Welcome to the Morbid Reich (Nuclear Blast)
6. Girl in a Coma, Exits & All the Rest (Blackheart)
7. capsule, World of Fantasy (Contempode/Yamaha)
8. Corrupted, Garten der Unbewusstheit (Nostalgia Blackrain)
9. Wormrot, Dirge (Earache)
10. Boris, Attention Please (Sargent House)

That one was published in early December. Lots of overlap, but acts I'd discovered in the interim - 2NE1 and capsule - were fit in, and I had to make room for San Antonio-based trio Girl in a Coma, who I didn't think Wire readers would care about, and Boris, who on Attention Please let their female guitarist, Wata, sing and went in a generally J-pop direction.

Finally, here are the top 10 albums and - for the first time ever - top 10 singles lists I submitted to the Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll:

2011 ALBUMS
1. Amon Amarth, Surtur Rising (Metal Blade)
2. Motörhead, The Wörld is Yours (Motörhead Music)
3. Perfume, JPN (Tokuma Japan)
4. capsule, World of Fantasy (Contemode/Yamaha)
5. Emmure, Speaker of the Dead (Victory)
6. Mastodon, The Hunter (Reprise)
7. Girl in a Coma, Exits & All the Rest (Blackheart)
8. Wormrot, Dirge (Earache)
9. Vader, Welcome to the Morbid Reich (Nuclear Blast)
10. Morbid Angel, Illud Divinum Insanus (Season of Mist)

2011 SINGLES
1. 2NE1, “I Am the Best” (YG Entertainment)
2. Wonder Girls, “Be My Baby” (JYP Entertainment)
3. Brad Paisley, “A Man Don’t Have to Die” (Arista Nashville)
4. Ronnie Dunn, “Cost of Livin’” (Arista Nashville)
5. The Answer, “Rock ’n’ Roll Outlaw” (Albert)
6. Pitbull, “Bon, Bon” (Mr. 305 Inc./Sony Latino)
7. DJ Shadow feat. Afrikan Boy, “I'm Excited” (Verve)
8. Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears, “Livin’ in the Jungle” (Lost Highway)
9. Wisin & Yandel, “Zun Zun Rompiendo Caderas” (Machete Music/Universal)
10. Britney Spears, “Till the World Ends” (Jive)

A lot of recurring album titles there, again. If you add up all the albums on my three lists (not including reissues), there's 19 - had I chosen a twentieth, it would have been Trivium's In Waves, but obviously there's a conflict of interest there. For similar reasons, I omitted Machine Head's Unto the Locust and Opeth's Heritage, which otherwise would have gotten honorable-mention status somewhere along the line.

If any pick is gonna stick out from my three lists, it's almost certainly gonna be the Morbid Angel album. (Not enough of my peers even know of Emmure's existence to give me crap for listing their album - but trust me, it's based on pure, raw listener pleasure. Speaker of the Dead is a gloriously boneheaded exercise in knuckle-dragging, chest-thumping hawd-kowah. If you liked Judge's Bringin' It Down, well, this is the 21st Century version. And if you didn't like Bringin' It Down, I don't even know why we're friends.) Here's the thing: I've never been a big Morbid Angel fan. Their early albums don't appeal to me nearly as much as contemporaneous work by Cannibal Corpse, Deicide, Napalm Death, etc., etc. But this new one...the death metal songs were pleasingly assaultive, and the industrial/gabber/Danny-Elfman songs were just weird and catchy enough to be fun. It's a fun album, and if you don't like it, that's probably because you weren't expecting to, and can't quite bring yourself to, crack a smile while listening to Morbid Angel.

That sort of attitude is a perfect encapsulation of my biggest problem with metal this year. Over and over, I found myself running up against a small crew of bloggers and (self-described, despite tons of evidence to the contrary) fans who I choose to call the Border Guards. Permanently two-faced from having to simultaneously keep potential fans outside and musicians inside the fences they built in their heads, when the Border Guards weren’t competing to see who could pile more opprobrium on the one guy who had a (slightly) new thought about uses to which black metal’s sonic tropes, long since hardened into laughable cliché, could be put, they were shrugging off the crimes of a racist murderer and the charges against an accused rapist, because then, it was the music and not the rhetoric around it (or the person making it) that mattered. Never willing to discuss a new album unless they were absolutely sure you hadn’t heard it, you fucking poser, the Border Guards did more this year to ensure metal’s continued irrelevance to the larger cultural discussion than anyone outside the genre ever could.

I like uncool metal—the kind you can headbang to, and sometimes even pump your fist and sing along to. I like guitar solos, and choruses. Arty, dissonant noise/sludge/funeral doom records in their black-on-black sleeves don't interest me. (Corrupted being the lone exception, because that record was just beautiful.) I want metal—hell, I want music, period—that's gonna make me say (even if it's just in my head), "Dude, that was awesome!" I want more awesomeness in 2012.

THANKSGIVING PRAYER

2011-11-24T07:54:00.001-08:00

Seems I didn't post this last year. Well, here it is.

Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts.

Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a modicum of challenge and danger.

Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin leaving the carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves and coyotes.

Thanks for the American dream, to vulgarize and to falsify until the bare lies shine through.

Thanks for the KKK.

For nigger-killin' lawmen, feelin' their notches.

For decent church-goin' women, with their mean, pinched, bitter, evil faces.

Thanks for "Kill a Queer for Christ" stickers.

Thanks for laboratory AIDS.

Thanks for Prohibition and the war against drugs.

Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.

Thanks for a nation of finks.

Yes, thanks for all the memories - all right, let's see your arms!

You always were a headache and you always were a bore.

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

TEARS IN RAIN

2011-11-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

Today, someone I follow on Twitter posted, "My music writing bibliography is over 12 pages long." I thought about whether I could even catalog my own writing about music, and soon realized it would be utterly impossible.

I started writing about music for money in 1996. I've written literally hundreds of album reviews, maybe (hell, almost certainly) thousands at this point, for dozens of outlets, both print and online. Several of the websites I've written for (music.com, paperthinwalls.com, metaledgemag.com) are gone now. The metal blog I ran for MSN in 2009 and 2010 (Adrien Begrand runs it now, and does a great job) switched hosts after its first eight or nine months of existence, and in the transition, a lot of posts were lost, permanently deleted. I had a blog before this one which is long gone.

Some of the magazines I've written for don't exist anymore, either. Does anybody remember Oneworld, Russell Simmons' attempt to create his own Vibe? How about the US version of Metal Hammer that only lasted six months? I wrote for both, as well as tiny zines - Carpe Noctem, Subliminal Tattoos - now long dead. And I've got tearsheets of some of that stuff, but not all of it. I don't have copies of anything I wrote for Magnet or Cowbell. And even in the cases of magazines that I currently write for - Alternative Press, The Wire, Jazziz - my archives are far from complete. Not only do I not have tearsheets or moldering stacks of back issues, I can't even access the original manuscripts, as a lot of them were written with WordPerfect and saved to floppy discs which I threw away years ago. Vast swaths of my output - years' worth of work, hundreds of thousands if not millions of words - are totally inaccessible to me.

And yet...I don't care, not really. I'm much more concerned with the next thing I'm going to write than whatever I've already turned in (and been paid for). Even if I could somehow access all the words I've ever typed, I wouldn't re-read them. Sometimes I'll get a press release that includes a quote from a review, un-bylined, and I'll think, "That sounds like something I wrote." But if I can't go back and check, does it even matter?

I put together a collection of longish profiles in 2009. I'm proud of all those pieces, and if you'd buy a copy of the book, I'd be happy. I was even giving some thought to gathering the profiles I've written since, but I don't have anywhere close to a book's worth yet, and I'm writing fewer of them now.

Eric Dolphy famously said, "When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone, in the air. You can never capture it again." That's how I feel about much of what I've written over the last 15 years. I wrote it, and now it's gone. Time to write some more.

I WAS ON THE RADIO AGAIN

2011-11-02T19:12:00.001-07:00

This time, I was paired up with Maura Johnston of the Village Voice and the subject was Lulu. Wanna hear it? Here you go:

BABYMETAL

2011-10-28T07:56:00.001-07:00

PERFECT

2011-10-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

THE YEAH YEAH YEAHS

2011-10-12T14:44:00.000-07:00

How come nobody told me about this awesome video until today?

LOU, LOU

2011-10-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

The steady trickle of information about Lulu, the collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, is kind of wondrous to behold. Stanley Crouch once quoted Nietzsche on Wagner in describing Miles Davis's electric period as "the greatest example of self-violation in the history of art." I think we have a new trophy contender.

I confess a bias. I have never liked Lou Reed's music very much. I have tried, many times, to like it, but it has never sunk in with me. I bought The Velvet Underground & Nico on vinyl when I was in high school, and listened to it over and over. There were one or two songs I sort of liked - "I'm Waiting for the Man" had a piano part that stuck in my head, and "Run Run Run" was sort of catchy. But the bulk of it was, to my ear, extremely poorly played attempts at rock, and little more. The band seemed to be stumbling all over itself just trying to get through the songs, and nobody involved could sing worth a shit. Reed just seemed to be reciting the lyrics, as though they wanted to get rough versions down on tape which they would then provide to the real singer, once he or she turned up.

I have listened to several other Reed and/or Velvet Underground albums over the years: Loaded, White Light/White Heat, Rock 'n' Roll Animal, Lou Reed Live, The Blue Mask, Legendary Hearts, New York, The Raven, Metal Machine Music, and Songs for Drella - oh, and the old RCA Walk On the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed compilation - have all lived in my house at one time or another. Out of all those records, exactly four songs have actually, really worked for me:

"Waves of Fear," from The Blue Mask;
"Nowhere At All," from Walk On the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed;
"Sweet Jane," from Rock 'n' Roll Animal;
"Strawman," from New York.

So no, I am not a fan. And in fact I bear Reed a kind of animus at this point, because as a music critic, I pay attention to artists other critics tell me I should care about, and Lou Reed is fucking worshipped by critics. He invented punk; he's some kind of genius of the electric guitar; his lyrics cut through the flesh and bone to the beating heart of contemporary human existence...blah blah blah. If it wasn't for all the rapturous reviews over the years, I would have given up trying to like Lou Reed years before I did.

With this in mind, I have thoughts about Lulu. Based on the one song I've heard, "The View," I think it's going to be a staggeringly bad album. Reed sounds cranky, tired, and old; Metallica sound like a band recruited to accompany him, like one of the local outfits hired to back Chuck Berry in whatever town he's playing that night. I don't know James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Robert Trujillo or Lars Ulrich. I don't know if they're lifelong Lou Reed fans, or if they're just there because he asked them to be there and they were too intimidated to say no, just like for years I was too intimidated by the reputations of the critics praising Lou Reed to say no, this album (whichever one I was being told to love at the time) is boring, lazy bullshit. But what they're playing behind Reed on "The View" has none of the power of their own most recent studio album, Death Magnetic.

Metallica are a great band. By making this kind of ham-fisted doom-thrash as Lou Reed mutters and shouts (and the song is mixed in such a way that it sounds like he's reciting the lyrics over a tape of the band he's playing on a boombox), they are throwing away their reputation as songwriters, as riff craftsmen...for what? For the chance to have their names next to Lou Reed's on an album cover? They don't need him. The worst-selling Metallica studio album has likely outsold every Lou Reed and/or Velvet Underground album put together. All Reed brings to the equation is near-unanimous critical approbation and the prestige that comes with that. But Metallica have critical respect on their own, hard-won through decades of solid work (minus a bad stretch in the '90s and early '00s) and brutal, breathtaking live shows. I genuinely don't know why they took this project on. And I suspect I'll never have the opportunity to ask. But at least I know better than to listen to the thing when it's shat onto store shelves a little over three weeks from now. I've been burned by Lou Reed enough times already.

DR. FEELGOOD

2011-09-24T20:47:00.000-07:00

Someone remind me again what the hell we needed punk rock for?

HEAR ME TALK

2011-09-20T14:28:00.000-07:00

I made what I think was my sixth appearance on the WNYC radio show Soundcheck today, participating in their every-Tuesday "Soundcheck Smackdown," where two critics debate the merits of something or other. I've previously been on to discuss the merits of Metallica when Death Magnetic came out, take the anti-Bruce Springsteen position when his last studio album was released, take the anti-White Stripes position upon their breakup, and defend Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." I was also there once in a non-Smackdown context, when my book Marooned came out.

Today I was there to defend Pearl Jam in a deathmatch with Nirvana (defended by the awesome writer Jeanne Fury), since Ten and Nevermind are both turning 20 this year. I have never liked Nirvana, not ever; when they first got big, I was deep into Napalm Death, Slayer and the Rollins Band, and Nirvana just seemed like whiny bitches compared to any one of those three acts. I was never a big Pearl Jam booster, but they at least had good songs (and guitar solos), and when I dug deep into their catalog in preparation for this debate, I discovered a whole bunch of really solid material. I also came to the conclusion that "Black" is their "Free Bird," and that's a good thing.

Anyway, here's a link to the audio. Somewhere around the 15-minute mark, Vernon Reid(!) calls in to castigate us for not discussing Soundgarden instead. I can't say he's wrong, even if ultimately my favorite Seattle band will always be Tad.

CORDUROY - MOTORHEAD

2011-09-19T17:36:00.000-07:00

This is seriously the worst cover (of anything, by anyone) I've ever heard. Witness the atrocity.

SOMETHING LESS ANNOYING THAN 9/11 ANNIVERSARY COVERAGE

2011-09-11T19:42:00.001-07:00

SURFING IN SLOW MOTION

2011-09-05T16:58:00.001-07:00

HAPPY LABOR DAY

2011-09-05T05:42:00.000-07:00

"Modern technique has made it possible to diminish enormously the amount of labor required to secure the necessaries of life for everyone. This was made obvious during the war. At that time all the men in the armed forces, and all the men and women engaged in the production of munitions, all the men and women engaged in spying, war propaganda, or Government offices connected with the war, were withdrawn from productive occupations. In spite of this, the general level of well-being among unskilled wage-earners on the side of the Allies was higher than before or since. The significance of this fact was concealed by finance: borrowing made it appear as if the future was nourishing the present. But that, of course, would have been impossible; a man cannot eat a loaf of bread that does not yet exist. The war showed conclusively that, by the scientific organization of production, it is possible to keep modern populations in fair comfort on a small part of the working capacity of the modern world. If, at the end of the war, the scientific organization, which had been created in order to liberate men for fighting and munition work, had been preserved, and the hours of the week had been cut down to four, all would have been well. Instead of that the old chaos was restored, those whose work was demanded were made to work long hours, and the rest were left to starve as unemployed. Why? Because work is a duty, and a man should not receive wages in proportion to what he has produced, but in proportion to his virtue as exemplified by his industry.

"This is the morality of the Slave State, applied in circumstances totally unlike those in which it arose. No wonder the result has been disastrous. Let us take an illustration. Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

"The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In England, in the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day's work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. When I was a child, shortly after urban working men had acquired the vote, certain public holidays were established by law, to the great indignation of the upper classes. I remember hearing an old Duchess say: 'What do the poor want with holidays? They ought to work.' People nowadays are less frank, but the sentiment persists, and is the source of much of our economic confusion."

Bertrand Russell, In Praise of Idleness

RONNIE DUNN

2011-08-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

This guy used to be half of Brooks & Dunn, an ultra-cheesy pop-country duo I never had much time for. This is a single from his first solo album, and it's pretty powerful stuff.

F.E.O. (FRIDAY EVENING ORANGUTAN)

2011-08-26T16:15:00.000-07:00

I don't know if Friday Evening Orangutan will become a regular feature or not; I just know that this particular orangutan knows how to keep cool, right down to never sharing your cool-keeping device with anyone else, no matter how much they beg. Get your own washcloth, Junior.

HOW DO YOU SAY "PANTS ON THE GROUND" IN YORUBA?

2011-08-17T08:28:00.000-07:00

This video, for the song "Bling Bling Panda," by Lágbájá, is pretty awesome. It's a hip-hop/Afrobeat track criticizing Nigerian youth for copying their American counterparts with their gold teeth and flat-brim baseball caps and designer jeans and Ed Hardy-lookin' shirts, when what they oughta be doing is hanging out by the fire in brightly colored robes and beating the drum. Why, in the old days...

I don't know if they have lawns in Nigeria, but this dude would surely be telling these kids to get off his if he had one.

Check it out.

I CAN'T EXPLAIN IT

2011-07-31T15:22:00.001-07:00

...but I find this video disturbing, especially with the sound off.

The Village from Pedro Sousa | visuals on Vimeo.

ROCK EN ESPAÑOL - OR NOT

2011-07-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

I wrote this piece for MSN Music back in March, as part of my trip to SXSW, but they never ran it. (They paid me anyway, which was nice of them.) Since Ximena Sariñana's album comes out on Tuesday, I'm putting it here. Enjoy!

The Latin rock scene has produced some of the most vital, exciting music of the last 20 years. But where the first wave of Mexican and South American bands, like Café Tacuba, Maldita Vecindad, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Caifanes insisted on singing in Spanish and thereby establishing the “rock en Español” genre, a new generation of equally impressive Latin acts is writing and performing in English. In some cases, this causes some controversy in their home countries and with older listeners, but in others, it’s seen as a positive sign that cultural barriers are being broken down through the universal language of music. Three such performers appeared at South by Southwest.

CHIKITA VIOLENTA
Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico
Album: Tre3s (Arts & Crafts)
Check out: “Roni”
Mexican indie pop band Chikita Violenta’s songs have strong melodies that are occasionally washed over by waves of sweetened guitar noise. It’s no surprise they worked with Broken Social Scene’s producer, Dave Newfeld, or that they’ve toured the US with Ra Ra Riot and Built To Spill; all of those bands’ anthemic guitar rock can be heard as influences on their sound. The group’s third album, Tre3s, sits comfortably alongside alternative/indie rock from any country.

Indeed, if the average listener heard a Chikita Violenta song without knowing the band’s country of origin, their Mexican-ness would come as a surprise. And this is partly the point. Says guitarist Esteban Suarez, “There’s French bands that sing in English, Swedish bands that sing in English, there’s bands that make up their own language [safe to assume this is a reference to Sigur Rós, not Magma - ed.], and I think we’ve earned our place after 10 years of being a band in Mexico, establishing our scene and sound.”

Vocalist Luis Arce says of their decision to write and perform in English, “Music-wise, it’s a language we feel more comfortable with, even though we’re proudly Mexican and our native tongue is Spanish. But for our music, ever since we started composing and doing our own stuff, it just came naturally. If we ever come across a song and it comes out in Spanish, we’ll do it in Spanish, you know?”

They’ve encountered some resistance from Mexican radio, according to keyboardist Armando Ortigosa. “It’s hard to break their preconceptions about how Mexican bands have to sing in Spanish, because they take it as a sign of disrespect to Mexico.” Fortunately, the fans don’t seem as concerned, and the band feels that their music is succeeding on its own terms—which is all they really want. “With Tre3s, I think we’ve managed to put together all the elements we’ve been looking for for a really long time and say, this is what Chikita Violenta sounds like. For all of us in the band, it’s the first time we’ve listened to a complete album and said that’s what we want to hear. Where we’re going from here, who knows?”

XIMENA SARIÑANA
Hometown: Guadalajara, Mexico
Album: Ximena Sariñana (Warner Bros.)
Check out: “Different”
Ximena Sariñana started out as a child actress, appearing in several movies and telenovelas. She released her debut CD, Mediocre, in 2008, and sang a Spanish-language duet with Jason Mraz on his song “Lucky” (Colbie Caillat sang the English-language version). She’s also been a frequent collaborator with her offstage boyfriend, guitarist Omar Rodriguez Lopez of the Mars Volta; she can be heard on several of his solo CDs, and has toured with his group.

Sariñana’s second solo CD, a self-titled effort, fits more or less into the female singer-songwriter subgenre, as heard on VH1. The lyrics to songs like “Wrong Miracle” and “Different” are introspective, yet quirky, not unlike the work of artists like Sara Bareilles (with whom Sariñana will be touring in 2011) or Feist, and the arrangements are piano-based with additional elements coming from laptops and other instruments as necessary.

“There was a lot of writing and producing at the same time, where on my first record I wrote the songs for piano and voice and we added stuff on them,” says Sariñana about the creative process behind the disc. “There was a lot of writing for different instruments, and production while writing, and I think that changes the way the songs sound. It’s a bigger, more electronic and more produced sound.

“It’s a harder industry in the US, because it’s more competitive than in Mexico,” she continues. “It’s way harder to make a record. For the first record I wrote 15 songs, for this one I had to write 30. The first record took me a month and a half to record, this one took a year and a half.”

POLOCK
Hometown: Valencia, Spain
Album: Getting Down From The Trees (Nacional)
Check out: “Fireworks”
Spanish band Polock (named for painter Jackson Pollock, and yes, the misspelling is deliberate) have just released their first full-length CD, Getting Down From The Trees, following a self-released EP keyboardist Alberto Rodilla describes as the low-budget product of a pure desperation to be heard.

Bands from Spain have it tough; the Latin music market is dominated by acts from Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America, and the country itself is still culturally somewhat conservative, a holdover from Franco’s decades-long rule. But things are looking up; says Rodilla, “It’s not that easy to get into the North American market coming from Spain, because there’s never been bands that have toured the US or England. We’re now beginning to create a movement where bands are getting in, like Delorean or El Guincho, or right now us.”

The band has hints of Television’s arty guitar interplay, mixed with the atmospheric synths of Pink Floyd and Joy Division. Listeners who enjoy Interpol could easily find space for Polock in their iPods. These are the sounds that the bandmembers grew up on, and that’s what influenced their decision to sing in English. “It’s not about the market only,” explains Rodilla. “I mean, it is as well, but if you hear rock music it’s the same in Spain or in the United States, you know. Everybody gets Lou Reed, Television, the Doors, it’s always English music. It’s the language that goes with that kind of style. So we didn’t really think about making it in Spanish.”

POSTED WITHOUT COMMENT

2011-07-25T17:22:00.001-07:00

Almost any guess as to who this is directed at is likely to be correct.

PAINTING ON WATER

2011-07-17T15:08:00.001-07:00

I'll see your Bob Ross and raise you this Turkish guy.

CULTS

2011-07-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

I don't like this song very much. It's catchy; it's sticking in my head. But this kind of shimmery pop doesn't work as a soundtrack to any life experiences I'd enjoy having, and as a lifelong wearer of headphones, that's the primary way I judge music's worth. But I've always been fascinated by Jonestown; I've read a couple of books about Jim Jones, and have considered writing a novel with a Jones-like character at its center. So the video fascinates me, too. It's got a seriously creepy, haunting power, and/but the fact that a major label (Sony) released it says something—about the amorality of corporations or the history-destroying power of irony, I'm not sure which. (Hundreds of people killed in a coerced mass suicide—what an awesome backdrop for our video!) Could Slayer or Cannibal Corpse have gotten away with exploiting tragedy in this way? I don't think so. But when you're a conventionally pretty white girl (and/or white boy) making indie pop, there are no aesthetic or moral boundaries, I guess. Must be nice.
Anyway, here's the video.

Go Outside, by Cults from Boing Boing on Vimeo.

I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER

2011-07-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

Do you feel like it's been too long since you were driven into a red-eyed, slavering homicidal rage?

Here, watch this:

You're welcome.

SADE

2011-07-09T07:43:00.000-07:00

I haven't had time to really delve into her most recent album, Soldier of Love, but it's not like she's gonna make a bad one, right? And I missed the tour when it came through, but I saw her in '93 and she was fantastic.

STUFF WHAT I HAVE WROTE, JULY 2011 EDITION

2011-07-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

First up, remember how I mentioned I wrote a novel, Hard Lessons? Well, it's available now through multiple outlets, including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Smashwords.com. You could also go straight to the publisher's website, where you can read a short piece I wrote about New Jersey in popular culture and how I hope Hard Lessons will expose a different side of my home state. The book is only 99 cents, a price I think makes it an ideal beach read for the holiday weekend. Check it out, and let me know what you think. Thanks!

Now, on to the other stuff. Here are two things I did for MSN Music:

The first was an installment of their recurring Fight Club series, on the pros and cons of music festivals. I took the "anti" side.

The second was an interview with Weird Al Yankovic. This is the second time I've spoken to him, and it went as well as the first. A blast. I may post the full-length version here soon.

Next, two reviews for Alternative Press:

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Take It Or Leave It—A Tribute To The Queens Of Noise: The Runaways (MainMan)

There are several problems with this two-disc tribute to the Runaways. The biggest is that it starts off almost too strong—the first disc opens with the Donnas’ version of “Queens Of Noise,” followed by Shonen Knife’s take on “Black Leather.” Those are followed by a bunch of substandard versions of the half-decent glam-punk songs that padded out the Runaways’ four-album discography. While some are pretty good (Delirium Tremens’ speed-crazed take on “Wasted,” Cali Giraffes’ “You’re Too Possessive” and particularly Tara Elliott & The Red Velvets’ steamy, blues-rock strut through “You Drive Me Wild”), others are just not.

The two biggest disappointments are the Dandy Warhols’ sludgy, zoned-out version of the Runaways’ signature song, “Cherry Bomb,” and the electro-fied duet of “Dead End Justice” by Kathleen Hanna and Peaches, two of the most annoying performers in the history of Western culture. Another puzzling thing about the compilation is that some bands have chosen to cover songs which were already covers: The Runaways recorded versions of the Velvet Underground’s “Rock N’ Roll” and the Troggs’ “Wild Thing,” both of which are redone here. Ultimately, these weak tracks (and the pointless inclusion of snippets of the band members, radio DJs and other musicians of the era talking about them) undermines the whole exercise, making Take It Or Leave It a slog when it should be a blast. (Buy it from the Amazon MP3 store)

HELMS ALEE
Weatherhead (Hydra Head)

This Seattle-based trio fronted by Ben Verellen, formerly of sludgy rumblers Harkonen, can get heavy when they feel like it, but just as often, if not more so, they drift into more psychedelic, shoegazey spaces. Verellen is supported by bassist Dana James and drummer Hozoji Matheson-Margullis, each of whom also sing. In fact, the two women sing more than he does, and not just because he mostly barks and roars. James’ voice has a cool detachment that recalls Kim Gordon’s vocals on Sonic Youth’s “Shadow Of A Doubt,” and the women’s sometimes woozy, sometimes edgy harmonies are crucial to the band’s expansive, dreamy sound. When James and Verellen harmonize, on the other hand, it can be like the second coming of John Doe and Exene Cervenka of X. Ultimately, Weatherhead (the second Helms Alee full-length, following 2008’s Night Terror) sits comfortably somewhere in the neighborhood of Kylesa, Totimoshi, recent Melvins and even (maybe most of all) Baroness. There are riffs and vocal melodies on this album that could have been cribbed straight from Blue Record. This is one of the best heavy alternative rock albums of the year, combining ’90s throb with ’70s stoner riffs and thick coatings of fuzz, swirling it all into something that’s recognizably of a specific subgenre (see the work of all the bands cited above) and yet unique and heartfelt. Highly recommended. (Buy it from Amazon)

And finally, 10 All Music Guide reviews:

Dekapitator, We Will Destroy...You Will Obey! (Amazon link)
Farmers By Nature, Out of This World's Distortions (Amazon link)
Stefon Harris/Christian Scott/David Sánchez, Ninety Miles (Amazon link)
La Vida Boheme, Nuestra (Amazon link)
Joe Morris/Agusti Fernández, Ambrosia (Amazon link)
NYJAZZ Initiative, Mad About Thad (Amazon link)
OvO, Cor Cordium
Devin Townsend Project, Deconstruction (Amazon link)
Devin Townsend Project, Ghost (Amazon link)
Vitruvius, Vitruvius (Amazon link)

Enjoy the holiday weekend.

PUNK'S NOT DEAD

2011-06-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

L-R: Keith Morris, Ian MacKaye, Henry Rollins. Caption from the website I saw this photo on:

“I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now, what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me.”

YOUNG TURKS

2011-06-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, I saw the 2004 movie Head-On, directed by Fatih Akin. If you haven't seen it, do so. Netflix has it streaming. Hell, see everything you can by Akin. In Head-On, Sibel Kekilli plays a young Turkish woman living in Germany with her overbearing family. She's so sick of them (to the point of suicidal despair) that she convinces an older Turkish guy, played by Birol Ünel, to marry her. He's a dirtbag ex-punk rocker who wants little to do with her and less to do with marriage, seeing as how he's in a psychiatric clinic following his own suicide attempt (he drove his car into a wall, despairing over the death of his first wife). They initially lead separate lives, but gradually fall in love. Then things go bad again. I'm not gonna go into all the chaos that ensues, but there's rape, murder, prison, and much more. It's an amazing movie, one that could easily have become a hammering polemic about conservative Muslim thinking and how it conflicts with the more liberal social atmosphere of Western Europe, but chooses instead to focus on individuals who are themselves, and not mere symbols.

I wish the same were true of When We Leave, a 2010 movie, also about German Turks, and also starring Sibel Kekilli, that I saw this week. In this one, Kekilli (who had a nose job between the two movies, so I wasn't sure it was her until her name popped up onscreen at the end) plays a young Turkish woman who flees her abusive husband in Istanbul, taking their son, and attempts to seek refuge with her family in Germany. Her parents are more concerned with maintaining their status and honor within the community than they are with her happiness or safety, and her older brother is a psychotic thug who beats her, attempts to steal the kid and return him to his father, and is basically starring in a Lifetime movie about the evils of Muslim gender politics. The movie is so melodramatic that from the moment I saw the brother glowering at her across the dinner table, the first night she's back under her parents' roof, I knew he was going to attempt to punish her via "honor killing," and the only questions were how long it would take for the movie to get there, and whether he'd be successful or not. But in between, Kekilli's character does pretty much everything she can to lose the audience's sympathy. She repeatedly attempts to gain her family's support, long after it's obvious to everyone else on Earth that it's not coming (doors are literally slammed in her face—this is not a subtle movie), in the process breaking the rules of the women's shelter she's placed in by the German authorities, she disrupts family gatherings with public displays that wind up dishonoring them even further in the eyes of other Turks...I found myself basically shouting "TAKE THE HINT, STUPID" at the screen about a half dozen times.

So yeah, if you're gonna watch a movie about Turkish immigrants to Germany and their problems, Head-On is the one, and When We Leave is a propagandistic crapfest you can safely avoid.

DOSTOEVSKY: "BITCHES, MAN - WHADDYA GONNA DO?"

2011-06-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

I finished reading The Idiot two or three nights ago, after a months-long struggle. There were never any times when I considered just abandoning the thing, but plenty when I thought, "I need to go read something else for a while." I'll admit it; a big part of it was the names. The way Russian names are written out - "Soandso Soandsovich" or "Whatsername Whatsernamova" - really annoys me, but then giving everyone nicknames by which they're also referred to got confusing and irritating at times. Also, because I let long intervals pass during which I'd go read something else, I frequently found myself forgetting who was related to who when I came back to the thing. But that was entirely my fault, and could be easily remedied with a quick trip to Wikipedia.

Another problem I had was just with Dostoevsky's general overwroughtness. How much of this was due to Constance Garnett's translation, and how much of it was due to the book being written in the 19th Century, is hard to say. But people are constantly in what seem to me to be absurdly heightened emotional states—clutching at their hearts, feeling physically ill as a result of some (to my mind) entirely minor social slight or passing remark, etc., etc. It's very weird to submerge yourself in a world like that if, like me, you're someone who tends to ignore all but the most overt conversational/emotional cues.

Ultimately, though, I'm glad I read the book. Not just because of the awesome ending, which I won't spoil but which I totally didn't see coming, but because I feel like Dostoevsky may not have written the book he thought he was writing. It seems to me he set out to satirize social climbers in 19th Century Russia, and he does that ably enough. Whether he successfully created the character of Myshkin is more debatable—the idea that the guy was some sort of innocent, too good for this world, doesn't quite work for me. He really does seem more like someone who's just socially maladjusted, a man who's never been trained in the blithe lies and masquerades that are necessary to navigate any civilized society during any period of human history. But what I think The Idiot is really about, and I'm not sure Dostoevsky meant it to be, is the ways in which bourgeois society drives women insane.

The two primary female characters, Nastassya Filippovna and Aglaia Epanchin, are both out of their minds. They remind me of Jack Nicholson's line from As Good as It Gets about how to write women—"think of a man, and take away reason and accountability." Their capriciousness and weird, ultimately self-destructive displays of pique make me think of an exotic bird bashing its own brains out against the bars of its cage. And the men treat them like alien creatures impossible to comprehend or empathize with, but obsessively loved for reasons that are never quite made clear. I mean, what does Rogozhin even like about Nastassya Filippovna? Does he ever even say? Does Myshkin say why he likes Aglaia? There's so much talking and talking and talking in this book, and yet no one ever lays emotional cards on the table—it's all dancing around social obligations and trying to make sure someone is an acceptable suitor.

It's a weird book. I think I'm gonna have to read it again. In about a decade.

This is the edition I bought, if you want to read it yourself.

STUFF WHAT I HAVE WROTE: JUNE 2011

2011-06-18T18:53:00.000-07:00

This is a long one, so get comfortable.

First up, some things Alternative Press's editors subjected me to:

I SET MY FRIENDS ON FIRE
Astral Rejection (Epitaph)

The second song on I Set My Friends On Fire’s sophomore (and sophomoric) album is called “Infinite Suck.” As they say in Hollywood, the joke writes itself. The duo of Matt Mehana and Nabil Moo is now the duo of Mehana and Chris Lent, with production assistance from Travis Richter of the Human Abstract. The music is as annoying as ever, mixing the worst qualities of Brokencyde, I See Stars and Agoraphobic Nosebleed into one swirling blend of cheesy rave synths, ultra-affected “extreme” vocals, talentless guitar mangling, ultra-primitive drum programming and song titles that probably seemed funny at the time (“My Paralyzed Brother Taps His Foot To This Beat,” “Life Hertz,” “Erectangles”). It’s hard to decide which is the album’s worst quality—Mehana’s scratchy-throated “extreme” vocals or his lame, off-key attempts to sing cleanly. Maybe it’s neither of those things; maybe it’s the lyrics.

At least there aren’t any lame hip-hop covers on Astral Rejection—the group’s debut, 2008’s You Can’t Spell Slaughter Without Laughter, featured their “hilarious” take on Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat.” That’s a tiny, tiny plus. There are one or two moments on Astral Rejection that are briefly and superficially entertaining, in exactly the way drinking a bottle of Jolt Cola instead of eating lunch is temporarily satisfying. But both leave you with an empty, gurgling pain in your guts and the feeling that you made a very poor decision. (Buy it from Amazon)

JELLO BIAFRA AND THE GUANTANAMO SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Enhanced Methods of Questioning (Alternative Tentacles)

It’s not impossible to age gracefully within the confines of punk rock. Ian MacKaye’s done it; so has Henry Rollins. Jello Biafra hasn’t. And it’s too bad, because of the three, he’s probably made the greatest sacrifices for his art and his beliefs. Biafra is a true free-speech icon who spent years in court fighting an obscenity bust for a poster included in the Dead Kennedys’ 1985 album Frankenchrist. But based on what he’s been doing musically in the last few years, it seems like he may have finally lost it completely.

His first album with backing band the Guantanamo School Of Medicine, 2009’s The Audacity Of Hype, had some decent songs and featured a fairly killer lineup that included two guitarists, moving the music out of the realm of hardcore or punk and towards psychedelic hard rock. Unfortunately, the lyrics were a mixed bag—some songs were trenchant critiques of modern society, while others were already-outdated jabs at the George W. Bush administration. This new EP, while it’s still got some quality music on it, travels even further back in time to find things to complain about; “Dot Com Monte Carlo” is a tirade about how yuppies in the high-tech industry have made San Francisco too expensive for Jello and his punk-rock buddies to live in, a subject it’s difficult to imagine anyone in the rest of the country caring about, especially when he starts in on a highly specific list of streets and places that are overly yuppified. And “Miracle Penis Highway” is a seven and a half-minute(!) song about Bob Dole and Viagra, a subject that was already tired a decade ago.

And let’s not even get into the 18-minute closer, “Metamorphosis Exploration On Deviation Street Jam.” Okay, let’s. It’s a dubby, acid-fried, one-riff jam over which Jello relentlessly declaims his own iconoclasm and awesomeness, talking about how going against punk orthodoxy makes him super-duper-ultra-punk, or something. At one point, he talks about how he’s been into rock ’n’ roll since he was seven years old—in 1965. It’s hard to be sure whether he means to come off as punk’s pissed-off grandpa, or he’s just so lacking in self-awareness that he doesn’t take even an instant to question who would want to hear him jabber endlessly about this stuff. He should be admired for battling censorship, but he should have exercised some self-censorship before releasing a record this half-baked and pointless. (Buy it from Amazon)

Next, the latest batch of All Music Guide reviews:

A Life Divided, Passenger (Buy it from Amazon)
Ancestors, Invisible White (Buy it from Amazon)
Behemoth, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat (Buy it from Amazon)
bb&c [Tim Berne/Jim Black/Nels Cline], The Veil (Buy it from Amazon)
Cave In, White Silence (Buy it from Amazon)
Cerebral Bore, Maniacal Miscreation (Buy it from Amazon)
Gigan, Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes (Buy it from Amazon)
HammerFall, Infected (Buy it from Amazon)
Hell, Human Remains (Buy it from Amazon)
Magos Herrera, México Azul (Buy it from Amazon)
Living With Lions, Holy Shit (Buy it from Amazon)
Daniel Menche, Feral (Buy it from Amazon)
Morbid Angel, Illud Divinum Insanus (Buy it from Amazon)
Joe Morris, Traits (Buy it from Amazon)
Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian, Live at Birdland (Buy it from Amazon)
Pitto, Objects in a Mirror are Closer Than They Appear (Buy it from Amazon)
Scar Symmetry, The Unseen Empire (Buy it from Amazon)
Starlicker, Double Demon (Buy it from Amazon)
Trúbrot, Undir Áhrifum (Buy it from Amazon)

I also reviewed Amon Tobin's ISAM for AMG, but they didn't use it, so here's that:

Amon Tobin
ISAM (Ninja Tune)
ISAM is pretty far from the manic breakbeats and jazz appropriations of Amon Tobin’s Ninja Tune debut, 1997’s Bricolage. Dense and complex, it recalls the late ’90s output of Warp Records (particularly the work of Autechre, Squarepusher and Plaid) more than anything else. Synthesizers squelch; programmed drums slam like concrete slabs; voices are reduced to squiggly background noises, only occasionally bursting out of the mix to sing nonsense syllables like “doot-doo-doo”; melodies are ominous and even militaristic at times. It surges and recedes, and the density of the sound is astonishing—although some elements seem like field recordings, in fact nothing is created from samples. Tobin has created an astonishingly focused, multilayered album in ISAM, one that is unlikely to ever find itself part of a DJ mix but which will undoubtedly reward close, attentive listening for years to come. (Buy it from Amazon)

Finally, and most importantly, I've written a new book, which will be available via Amazon's Kindle store on July 1. It's a novel called Hard Lessons, and this is the cover:

Hard Lessons, in two sentences: Freelance writer and part-time ESL tutor Harry Shaw went to a strip club to meet a potential new student. Now he's on the run from Russian gangsters and corrupt cops, trying to solve the murders of six kidnapped girls while saving a dozen more from lives of sexual enslavement.

Hard Lessons takes place in New Jersey. These days, when people think about New Jersey, they think of The Sopranos, or The Real Housewives of New Jersey, or the guido kids of Jersey Shore. But where I live, the stores have signs in Spanish and the streets are filled with Latino immigrants just trying to survive and make their kids into Americans. That's the New Jersey I'm writing about in Hard Lessons. And the problem at the book's center—human trafficking—is very real. At my local train station, the state government has posted flyers, in Spanish, advising people of the signs that someone may be a victim of human trafficking, and who to contact about it.

The book is, I think, a fairly mainstream thriller, the kind of thing that would do well in airports as a mass-market paperback if I'd gotten an agent and/or a major publisher to handle it. Instead, I'm selling it through Xynobooks, a friend's ebook imprint. It's going to be available to you, the consumer, at the very friendly price of 99 cents. Think you can spare a dollar for an exciting story of sex, violence, and political corruption? I think you can, and I thank you in advance. I'm proud of Hard Lessons, and I think you'll like it.

SUFFOCATION

2011-06-16T19:17:00.000-07:00

Why? Because Suffocation are awesome, that's why.

LITURGY

2011-06-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

I've got a longish feature on the Brooklyn-based black metal-ish band Liturgy in the Summer 2011 issue of Signal to Noise. I'm not gonna put the whole thing here; you should buy the magazine. But here are a few paragraphs, to give you some idea of its tone:

Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's core idea, that black metal is fundamentally European in outlook and thus requires philosophical reshuffling in order to be relevant to American life and culture, is certainly defensible. This has been true of other musical movements in the past; contrast, say, the Sex Pistols' declaration of "No Future" with Black Flag's determination to "Rise Above." Compare the fatalistic doom of Black Sabbath when they were 100% English to the heroic mythmaking of their second lineup, with Italian-Americans Ronnie James Dio and Vinny Appice on vocals and drums, respectively. The wintry nihilism of black metal as performed by its Scandinavian creators—Mayhem, Enslaved et al.—is only minimally applicable to American sensibilities. Consequently, US black metal acts like Nachtmystium and Black Anvil add elements of punk, industrial and Goth in order to give the music a rock-star edge it would otherwise lack.

Hunt-Hendrix's use of the word "transcendental" is misleading, though. He seems to be primarily talking about transcending the limitations of black metal as a musical genre and set of philosophical concepts—actual links to Transcendentalism are minimal. The closest thing modern America has to the 19th Century Transcendentalists are the Amish, or maybe some super-committed hippies, militant environmentalists, et cetera. There are black metal musicians who have taken the genre's embrace of paganism and primeval nature in that direction, most notably the Pacific Northwest-based group Wolves in the Throne Room, whose members live on a collective farm in the woods. But Hunt-Hendrix is a city kid, and he wants no part of this kind of rejectionism. "I'm not interested in pre-industrial ideals," he says. "The more technology and science the better."

...

Of course, it's possible to argue that black metal itself is essentially anti-metal, that the qualities it emphasizes—obscurantism, lack of catharsis (blast beats aside, the guitar riffs seem to hover in place rather than galloping forward), crude sound quality—are precisely the opposite of metal as it's been known since the late 1970s, when bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest were first forging a unique sound out of the ashes of the heavy blues-rock scene. Black metal rejects the strutting godhood of arena-sized metal, and the use of makeup puts them into a weirdly androgynous performative space occupied mostly by, yes, Kiss and the other glam-rockers of the 1970s (from stars like David Bowie and Alice Cooper to also-rans like T.Rex and Jobriath). Is black metal itself androgynous, and is Hunt-Hendrix, with his shrieks that are sometimes more like the yelps of a startled Girl Scout, playing into that?

CHOOSING IGNORANCE

2011-06-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

Why not have dignity today, for ourselves? We don’t need to wait for a Gandhi or Bobby Seale for this. You wake up, regardless of your circumstances, and you have a pretty open book. You can turn on the teevee and have some people yell at you, and then get in the car and have people yell at you, and then feel bad all the time, and then come home and flop on the couch or in front of the computer, and eat fast food that you know is rotting you away, and then go to bed exhausted and depressed and repeat until death...or you could not do any of those things, because you’re going to choose personal dignity instead.

...

We have a remarkable ability to know exactly what things we’re doing are harmful to us...and then we keep doing those things, until we decide to stop.

For anyone who feels this Internet emptiness chewing at them, I would say, do a little test. Go outside and take a 15-minute walk — around the block, through the park, just a short walk. While you’re doing this, clear your mind of work and of home. Just look at things, birds and cars and trees and the clouds and buildings and dumpsters, and when you think of something internal just say “thinking” to yourself and go back to walking and breathing. Then return to your computer. Do the usual things you do on your computer, like check the news and your email and the blogs you read and whatever people post on Facebook and Twitter.

Do this second part, the computer-looking-at, for just 15 minutes. You can set one of those web timers...hang on, I have one in my bookmarks.

When this stopwatch beeps, honestly ask yourself how you feel. Compare this to how you felt at the end of your 15-minute walk. Ask yourself what, if anything, you learned during those 15 minutes of wasting time on the Internet. Did it help you in some way? Are you better off? This is a question often asked by political challengers: Are you better off than __ years ago? Well, are you better off than fifteen minutes ago? If not, don’t re-elect the Internet.

...

[T]he answer is almost certainly going to be No, you’re not better off. But you’re going to be agitated now, both restless and slothful, and you’re either going to feel something negative about somebody you don’t even know or you’re going to want something you don’t need, because you’ve been bombarded with advertising the whole time, even in the corner of your vision while reading your gmail.

The above comes from an interview with now-former Wonkette editor Ken Layne, who has a book out (Kindle-only, apparently) that sounds sort of interesting. But who said it, and in what context, is sort of beside the point.

Recently I wrote about giving up cable, and how it's helped me out mentally - I'm reading a lot more, and writing a lot more (which means I'm making more money, so while cable was an expense, the absence of cable has turned out to be an economic engine). Now I'm thinking about erasing all my bookmarked political sites, too.

I've lately come to the realization that a lot of things are out of ordinary people's control. You can apply for a thousand jobs and never get one, because in 2011 America, jobs are like meteorites - one either falls out of the sky and hits you, or it doesn't. You have no control over it - who you know doesn't help, volume of applications doesn't help, skill levels don't help. You're just out there making your way in the world, and maybe someone steps over and taps you on the shoulder and says, "Hey, I'll pay you to do [x thing]," but more likely than not, no one ever comes.

Politics is similar. We, the governed, have no control over what our leaders do. None. We can vote for them based on what they say when they want us to vote for them, but they're almost certain to be lying. This has been proven time and time again. So what recourse do we have left to us? Why, we have the Internet! We can tell each other how angry we are that our leaders keep lying, and we can even address our angry thoughts directly to the leaders in question, as though Barack Obama or Sarah Palin or Anthony Weiner or whoever is reading the comments on joeispissedaboutpolitics.blogspot.com. We can call each other names and explain in agonizingly minute detail how wrong everybody but us is, or we can clap each other on the back and talk about how smart we are and how dumb and wrong and destructive-to-America everyone else is. And none of it matters.

I used to read some right-wing sites (National Review Online most prominent among them) along with a bunch of putatively left-wing sites and blogs. I felt it was "important" to know what people who disagreed with me thought. Now I don't even care what people who agree with me think. Most of American politics, and all of American political commentary with one or two exceptions whose names I will not cite, is composed of people I don't want on my side of any issue. They're ugly (I mean this in the spiritual/philosophical sense, though Washington, DC is not exactly a hotbed of modeling-agency recruitment), narcissistic people who don't seem to have even fleetingly thought "But what if I'm wrong?" in decades. And that includes the ones in their twenties.

I just don't have time for it. Reading about politics is like studying meteorology. You can know all you want about weather patterns, but it's not going to help you stop it from raining on a day you'd rather it not rain. You can figure out what causes tornadoes, and maybe learn to predict them, but they're coming whether you know about it in advance or not.

I choose to be ignorant. I wish I didn't know who was President, and couldn't name any members of Congress just like I can't name a single baseball, basketball or football player. I for damn sure wish I didn't know the names and faces of political writers and TV talking heads, because they are to a man (and woman) a worthless, debased group of people who should be rounded up and shoved into the Fukushima reactor to prevent further leakage.

The more time I spend thinking about politics, the less time I can spend doing things that make me happy. Like reading stories, and writing them. Listening to music, and thinking about it and writing about it. (Buy Burning Ambulance - issue four just came out this week.) Watching movies (not documentaries, movies - preferably ones where things blow up and people get kicked in the face). Like just hanging out with my wife.

I don't need this shit anymore. I'm done.

NEW STUFF WHAT I HAVE WROTE

2011-05-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Malian guitarist Vieux Farka Toure (son of the late Ali Farka Toure, and godson of Toumani Diabaté; if you know your Malian music, you know this basically makes him the Chosen One) about his new album The Secret. Be warned: the album features guest appearances by John Scofield, Derek Trucks, and (ugh) Dave Matthews. But for the rest of its running time, it's a pretty hard-grooving, and occasionally quite scorching, slab of Afro-rock. VFT is not one of those lilting African guitarists. He likes to step on the pedal and kick some ass. Here's the link.

And here are links to 10 more All Music Guide reviews:

Arch Enemy, Khaos Legions
Autopsy, Macabre Eternal (Amazon MP3 link)
Krallice, Diotima (Amazon MP3 link)
Portrait, Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae (Amazon MP3 link)
Qluster, Fragen (Amazon MP3 link)
Wadada Leo Smith, Heart's Reflections (Amazon link)
A Storm of Light, As the Valley of Death Becomes Us, Our Silver Memories Fade (Amazon MP3 link)
Jeremy Udden, If the Past Seems So Bright (Amazon MP3 link)
Anthony Wilson, Campo Belo (Amazon MP3 link)

I also wrote a review of Hate Eternal's Phoenix Amongst the Ashes that AMG decided not to use, so here's that:

Hate Eternal
Phoenix Amongst the Ashes
Metal Blade
Hate Eternal’s music is death metal, sharpened to a razor’s edge and polished to a blinding gleam. There is almost no subtlety to it—the riffs saw at the listener’s ears, the drums are a relentless double bass machine-gun barrage, the vocals are a harsh, guttural roar. Still, both through his long tenure leading the group and his production work for a variety of other extreme metal outfits, Hate Eternal leader Erik Rutan continues to refine his group’s core sound from album to album. Phoenix Amongst the Ashes doesn’t inject even slight doses of melody, but these songs do somehow seem to function as songs, not mere collections of riffs. The band is very much influenced by Morbid Angel, for whom Rutan played in the ’90s; their songs have the same feeling of huge slabs of concrete being pushed back and forth. There are unexpected sounds here, though, like when a guitar that sounds almost like a horn section comes in at 2:30 into “Haunting Abound,” or the ultra-clean guitar riff that follows it, in the same song. “The Art of Redemption” opens with extremely high-pitched, insanely fast picking by Rutan that sounds like the work of Krallice/Orthrelm guitarist Mick Barr, as drummer Jade Simonetto hammers his kit into submission. So while in some ways this is “just another Hate Eternal album,” the band continues to find new facets of a style that might be easily classifiable—and ignorable—in the hands of lesser players.

Oh, and I reviewed three albums for emusic.com:

Altar of Plagues, Mammal
Jesu, Ascension
Krallice, Diotima

THE MAYANS INVENTED TELEVISION

2011-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

Could this be an alternate theory of the Rapture?

CUT LOOSE

2011-05-20T05:20:00.000-07:00

It's been two weeks since I gave up television. I still own a television, but I cancelled my cable; now it's just a monitor for watching DVDs.

I didn't have a TV for much of my childhood. My mom wanted to encourage my brother and me to read more, and to go outside and play more, so there was no television set in our house between my preschool days and my early teen years. And indeed, I spent a lot of time outside riding my bike or climbing trees or playing football on a local patch of grass (far too small to be called a park) with other kids, or sitting in my room alone reading library books.

As a side note, I didn't hear the word "playdate" until I was in my late 20s or early 30s. My mom used to push my brother and me out the door with the words "Dinner's at six. Be home on time." End of story. There are lots of things not to miss about the '70s and '80s, but the freedom children enjoyed in those years is definitely a major loss.

Anyway, I don't miss TV. I used to watch Morning Joe while eating breakfast, and it made me angry. I used to watch Hardball in the evenings, and it made me angry. Not angry because "dammit, Obama's takin' all our money and givin' it to [insert group I don't belong to]." Angry because journalists are so fucking stupid, myopic and above all narcissistic, because they talk only to each other or to people richer than themselves and then go on television and talk about what "the American people" want, or about how a given policy decision is going to poll, whether or not it's the right thing to do. I don't need to hear that bullshit anymore. I'm out.

And political jabber aside, there aren't any sitcoms or dramas I'm particularly interested in seeing that I can't catch up with a day later on Hulu. And I'm already reading a lot more, and writing a lot more. So this is pretty much a win from every angle. I should have done it years ago.

SUDDENLY I AM FILLED WITH HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

2011-05-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

The yoke of cultural oppression has been thrown off at last. I thought it would never happen in my lifetime.

THINGS WHAT I HAVE WROTE

2011-05-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

From Altpress.com:

SWIMMING WITH DOLPHINS
Water Colours (Tooth & Nail)

This synth-based project from Austin Tofte, formerly affiliated with Owl City, blends a million indie-pop moves in mostly entertaining, occasionally toothache-inducing ways. “Easy” could be a ’90s rave anthem, while “Diplomat” sounds like one of those unfunny nerdy-white-guy covers of hip-hop songs (it’s not). “Jacques Cousteau” is VH1-ready fluff, with piano, drum machine and ’80s keyboard arpeggios adding up to a big cotton-candy ball of nothing—until a buzzing, Discovery-era Daft Punk-style keyboard solo mid-song vaults it into the land of awesomeness. Various female duet partners (Sarah Beintker on “Holiday” and “Sleep To Dream”; Sunsun on “Happiness”) transform already upbeat songs into ideal summer singles. Some might be tempted to blow this album off, fearing that it’s half-assed “chillwave” crap or just disappointed that “Holiday” isn’t a Madonna cover, “Good Times” (which features a guest rap verse by Mod Sun) is neither a Chic cover nor a version of the theme from the ’70s sitcom, and “Sleep To Dream” isn’t a Fiona Apple cover. Those would all be bad reasons to skip this record, which at its best reaches near-Pet Shop Boys levels of synth-pop brilliance (minus Neil Tennant’s heartbreakingly acerbic lyrical genius, of course). (Buy it from Amazon)

IN FEAR & FAITH
Symphonies EP (Rise)

Following the drama surrounding the departure of screamer Cody Anderson last year, In Fear and Faith have been left with only one vocalist: Scott Barnes. Consequently, on this stopgap seven-track EP of orchestral reworkings of old songs, he’s calling in old friends for help. Four tracks feature guest vocalists—Nick Martin of Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows on “Bones,” Tyler “Telle” Smith of The Word Alive on “The Taste Of Regret,” Caleb Shlomo of Attack Attack! on “The Solitary Life” and D.R.U.G.S. frontman Craig Owens on “The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions.” Smith, of course, was the band’s original clean singer, and recorded “The Taste Of Regret” on their debut EP, 2007’s Voyage, while Owens sang on “The Road To Hell…” in its original version, on 2009’s Your World On Fire.

The orchestral arrangements feature drums, keyboards and some subtle electronics, plus lots and lots of surging, swooping strings, and they reshape the songs pretty radically. “The Taste Of Regret” gets reworked most substantially; formerly four minutes and change, it’s now more than six minutes long. Whether this EP will appeal to anyone beyond In Fear And Faith’s most diehard fans is an open question; if these were the only versions of these songs to exist, it would be a downright bizarre stylistic choice. But if you like screamo/metalcore bands’ lyrics even if you think the music all sounds the same, this could help you make your case to skeptics. (Buy it from Amazon)

From Allmusic.com:

JD Allen Trio, Victory! (Buy it from Amazon)
Asking Alexandria, Reckless & Relentless (Buy it from Amazon)
Peter Brötzmann/Joe McPhee/Kent Kessler/Michael Zerang, Guts (Buy it from Amazon)
Gallhammer, The End (Buy it from Amazon)
Art Hirahara, Noble Path (Buy it from Amazon)
Indian, Guiltless (Buy it from Amazon)
Inzinzac, Inzinzac (Buy it from Amazon)
Memphis May Fire, The Hollow (Buy it from Amazon)
Primordial, Redemption at the Puritan's Hand (Buy it from Amazon)
Sylosis, Edge of the Earth (Buy it from Amazon)

THIS IS A THING THAT EXISTS

2011-05-14T08:42:00.000-07:00

THE BEST PHOTO I SHOT FRIDAY NIGHT

2011-05-09T07:05:00.000-07:00

I saw Latin hip-hop group Calle 13 at Irving Plaza on Friday night, and reviewed the show for the Village Voice website. You can read that here. The photos are also by me. But I'm seriously disappointed that they didn't use what both my wife and I believed to be the best shot I got all night. So I'm posting it here.

Calle 13 Make The Wait Worth It At Irving Plaza (Village Voice)

ANOTHER THING TO STARE AT FOR A WHILE

2011-05-01T10:35:00.000-07:00

From here.

THIS WEEK ON ALTPRESS.COM

2011-04-26T11:52:00.000-07:00

TEXAS IN JULY
One Reality (Equal Vision)

On their second album (and Equal Vision debut), these baby-faced Pennsylvanian post-hardcore warriors—two members only recently graduated high school—offer a muscular blend of precision drumming, brutal riffing and vocals that bridge the gap between laryngitis and throat cancer. For the most part, they color within the lines of their genre, only occasionally busting loose, like with the surprising (because of its awesomeness) guitar break on “Dreamer.” The acoustic-guitar-driven instrumental “May,” which comes just after the 33-minute disc’s midpoint, is another pleasant surprise. In a few cases, their insistence on mostly stripping their music to its thick-necked core (no pun intended) does the songs a disservice; the chorus of “Dying World” really would have benefited from clean backing vocals. It’ll sound great when the crowd sings along at shows, though. And for the most part, One Reality offers excellent pit fuel, with a few meditative moments that demonstrate an admirable depth that will hopefully continue to grow on future releases.

Get it from Amazon for $5.00

HERE'S A THING TO STARE AT FOR A WHILE

2011-04-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

MISSING OUT

2011-04-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

This essay on NPR.org is interesting and worth a read, if you've got a moment. It's about the idea that you should accept the fact that you're never going to read, see, hear or experience everything of value. You're going to go to your grave having missed out on hundreds, thousands, of cultural experiences (books, movies, plays, albums, TV shows, etc., etc.) that others—including people whose opinions you trust—swear are awesome, life-changing, sublime, etc., etc. And that's fine.

I know I've made the conscious choice to skip whole swaths of things, mostly by rejecting the opinions of critics. I make almost no effort to keep up with hip-hop, I only encounter mainstream pop by watching videos on MTV or VH1, and while I visit Pitchfork every morning, I generally only read the one-sentence teasers for their reviews—I don't read more than one or two whole reviews per week, and I almost never actually listen to the albums in question, even when a friend of mine has written the review, so indie music is almost completely closed off to me. I don't read any fiction reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, unless it's in the Crime column or one of their rare science fiction roundups. I don't watch movies that win Oscars or festival prizes. I don't go to the theater, though I wouldn't mind checking out an opera at some point, not because I want to become knowledgeable about opera, but because the format itself seems like it would be interesting to experience, one time. Actually, two times; I'd like to see one European-style opera, and one Chinese opera.

What do you not bother with? What do you read, watch or listen to because you're afraid of missing out, or being left out of some perceived culture-wide conversation?

STUFF I'VE SEEN LATELY

2011-04-17T11:47:00.000-07:00

The last 11 movies I saw via Netflix:

Mesrine: A two-part biopic of France's greatest bank robber and prison-break artist, topping out at about four and a half hours. Vincent Cassel is a terrific lead, sporting a hilarious array of hideous '70s couture, not to mention wigs and various facial hair options. His forays into pseudorevolutionary political blather barely seem to convince him, let alone the people he's shouting at; only his rampaging ego seems truly heartfelt. Highly recommended, but take a break between Parts 1 and 2.

No One Knows About Persian Cats: An Iranian movie about two musicians—a boy and a girl—who want to get out of the country so their indie rock band can play some shows in England and Europe. In their search for passports, visas and permits, we get a tour of the Iranian underground music scene, in the process seeing and hearing about a dozen bands playing various styles from jam-band funk to thrash metal. Every single one of these bands is better than the piddly-ass music being made by our putative protagonists, which makes it very hard to root for them to succeed.

Micmacs: I'll watch anything Jean-Pierre Jeunet directs. This one is a little darker than Amelie, but not by much, and the cast (jam-packed with people who look like cartoon characters, as always) is up for just about anything. If you like his stuff, you'll like this.

Animal Kingdom: An inexplicably praised Australian crime drama. It starts in the middle, if not the final third, of the story of a family of brothers and their eeeeevil mom, and proceeds to go nowhere special. The only surprise the movie sprung was killing the most interesting character early, and once that happened, it was all downhill. The guy we're supposed to be rooting for/identifying with is a personality-free meatball, and the criminals are about as exciting as figures on a surveillance feed.

Morning Glory: Seems like a girly-girl romantic comedy on its face; turns out to be a pretty funny workplace comedy. Harrison Ford seems like someone woke him up before turning the camera on, which is a welcome change of pace.

Tron: Legacy: I never saw the original, and now I never will. What could have been 90 minutes of neon chases and laser explosions turns into two hours of father-son bonding. And no, the soundtrack doesn't save it.

Green Zone: Better than I expected. Matt Damon has become extremely reliable for a certain kind of bullheaded, get-the-job-done character, and that's what he plays here. The actors whose characters are standing in for real people (Greg Kinnear as Paul Ryan, Amy Ryan as Judith Miller) are less offensive than they'd have been in the hands of, say, Oliver Stone and/or Sean Penn, and Brendan Gleeson is excellent in the Brendan Gleeson role. Director Paul Greengrass keeps things moving.

All Good Things: Based on a true story. Ryan Gosling is very impressive (he's starting to become a draw for me) and Kirsten Dunst is tolerable, which she hasn't always been in the past. Twisty in an unpredictable way, unless you know a lot about the real case (which I don't, but I think I saw an episode of one of the Law & Orders that was also based on this story).

Tangled: Yes, the Disney Rapunzel movie. Yes, there are songs. No, they don't suck. I enjoyed this quite a bit, actually. Donna Murphy, the woman who plays the villainess, is so good I was a) surprised they didn't have someone more famous in the role, and b) surprised she's not more famous herself. Worth seeing just for the horse.

Ondine: A Neil Jordan movie about fisherman Colin Farrell rescuing a woman from the sea who he and his young daughter decide to believe is a selkie (seal-turned-human). Naturally, all is not what it seems. Some good gags, especially one at the expense of Sigur Rós.

Countdown to Zero: An okay if ultimately ineffectual documentary about nuclear proliferation.

Movies I have recently seen in theaters:

Source Code: Duncan Jones is gonna be another director whose movies I'll see on faith, I think. This is a creepy sci-fi/horror thriller about military callousness, about which I will say no more. Jake Gyllenhaal was a good choice for the lead, as an actor with greater gravitas would have made the plot totally soul-crushing instead of just depressing.

Hanna: A chilly Euro-thriller with a terrific soundtrack and only a few logical leaps getting in the way of its general headlong awesomeness. The lead girl is terrific, and the action sequences are very well-shot.

The Adjustment Bureau: Another Matt Damon movie. He's good, as is John Slattery, but the words "magic hat" will forever induce gales of derisive laughter in me, and should replace "jumps the shark" as pop-culture shorthand for "this book/comic/movie/TV show goes off the rails in a major way."

RECENT WRITINGS

2011-04-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

First, from AltPress.com:

ASKING ALEXANDRIA
Reckless & Relentless (Sumerian)

Reckless & Relentless, the second full-length from U.K. electro-metalcore outfit Asking Alexandria, still features heavy doses of synth on a few tracks, but overall it’s much less rave-driven than their debut, 2009’s Stand Up And Scream. They’re indulging their inner rock ’n’ rollers more this time around; “Closure” may kick off with distorted beats, and a few digital stutters pop up here and there, but the main guitar riff sounds more like Avenged Sevenfold than anything else on Sumerian Records. “The Match” is similarly swaggering, until it becomes almost gabber techno in its final minute. “Someone, Somewhere” is the album’s biggest surprise—a damn catchy song with absolutely no screaming, it could easily find its way onto hard rock radio.

The band haven’t abandoned the downtuned, chugging breakdowns that were so key to their sound, of course; most of Reckless rumbles like a bulldozer in low gear trying to drive up a concrete staircase—when they’re not slowing down for the heartfelt sung parts. The final track, “Morte Et Dabo,” ends with an almost symphonic coda, like they’re auditioning to soundtrack the upcoming Conan movie. Asking Alexandria haven’t radically changed their sound, but there’s enough evolution on Reckless & Relentless to convince any listener that they’re more than metalcore also-rans or one-trick ponies. [Link]

Now, some AMG links:

AGF & Craig Armstrong, Orlando
Artillery, My Blood
Tim Berne, InSOMNIA
Blood Freak, Mindscraper
Buzzov*en, Revelation: Sick Again
Clutch, Blast Tyrant/Basket of Eggs
Despise You/Agoraphobic Nosebleed, And On and On...
Elonkorjuu, Harvest Time
Joe Fiedler Trio, Sacred Chrome Orb [NOT LIVE YET]
GridLink, Orphan
GusGus, Arabian Horse
Power Quest, Blood Alliance
Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Momenti Felici
Klaus Schulze, Big in Japan [NOT LIVE YET]
Sinister, Altered Since Birth 1990-2010
Sonic Liberation Front, Meets Sunny Murray
Winds of Plague, Against the World
Wormrot, Dirge

LA BOMBA FIZZLES

2011-04-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

I'm so disappointed in Bomba Estereo. I really liked their debut album, Blow Up (AMG review) and pre-album singles like "Corinto" and "Huepaje," but their latest single is terrible.

Let's chart their descent.

Here's the video for "Huepaje":

Now here's "Fuego," from Blow Up:

Pretty great, right? A hot mix of cumbia, hip-hop, electronic music and punk rock rawness. Now check out their latest clip, "Ponte Bomb":

The video itself is entertaining enough, if more than a little MIA-damaged, but the song is awful, starting with the fact that it's a bilingual cover of Technotronic's "Pump Up the Jam." And I never thought I'd type the words "doesn't do the original justice" in reference to "Pump Up the Jam," of all things, but seriously, this cover is just weak, from the crappy keyboard sound to the lame lyrics. All it's really got going for it are the muppets and people in furry suits.

MY MUSIC DIARY

2011-04-04T14:05:00.000-07:00

OK, as I mentioned yesterday, I'm gonna be participating in Nick Southall's week-long "Music Diary Project," and this is the post in which I'm gonna update, day by day, what I listen to all day.

Monday, April 4

8:45 AM: Watching videos on VH1. The first one is by The Secret, I think? Terribly boring. Switch to mun2 - Veze Skante, "Die Famous." Daddy Yankee, "La Despedida." Gloria Trevi, "Me Rio de Ti."
9:00 AM: One of mun2's two shows dedicated to regional Mexican music (banda, norteño, duranguese) begins. I watch for about 15 minutes.
10:00 AM: I'm out walking around for about an hour, running errands. I listen to most of Cryptopsy's Whisper Supremacy (six tracks out of eight) and half of Gorguts' Obscura (six tracks out of 12) on my iPod.
11:30 AM: Olde Growth, s/t. A CD that arrived in the mail. I make it about halfway through.
12:30 PM: Victor Griffin, Late for an Early Grave, while preparing questions for an email interview.
1:15 PM: Calle 13, Entren Los Que Quieren.
2:15 PM: Tried to listen to Brain Dance by Carlo de Rosa's Cross-Fade, but gave up after about 30 seconds. Put on Cavalera Conspiracy's Blunt Force Trauma instead.
5:00 PM: Liturgy, Aesthetica.

Tuesday, April 5

9:00 AM: The work day begins—listening to Asking Alexandria's Reckless and Relentless and reviewing it.
10:00 AM: Out on daily walk. Living Colour, Time's Up (tracks 1-5); Fishbone, Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe (tracks 1-3). Time's Up has not held up well. Corey Glover is a lamely overemotive, totally un-soulful vocalist and a terrible lyricist.
11:00 AM: Tried out Indian's Guiltless (which I'm gonna have to review next week), lasted half of one song. Not in a mood for sludgy doom. Switched to Power Quest's Blood Alliance. Screaming, shredtastic power metal—that's more like it.
12:30 PM: Archie Shepp, Kwanza. By the way, I should mention that everything I'm listening to at home is on my laptop (but through Philips noise-canceling headphones, not the laptop speakers). I don't use the stereo much; I'm not alone in the house, and anything that's gonna be broadcast in that way has to be by mutual decision.
1:30 PM: Winds of Plague, Against the World. Sometime next week, I'm gonna have to review this album. Right now, I'm just listening to it for the hell of it.
2:15 PM: Klaus Schulze, La Vie Electronique 2. A three-CD set totaling nearly four hours of 1970s analog synth ooze.
8:00 PM: Endangered Blood, s/t. A jazz album I'm reviewing for BurningAmbulance.com.

Wednesday, April 6

8:00 AM: Two songs from Saint Vitus's Mournful Cries, while walking down the blog to get breakfast.
8:30 AM: Watching videos on mun2. De la Ghetto's "Jala Gatillo" (see above), a couple of other reggaeton acts. I change the channel when Rihanna's "S&M" comes on; I don't like that song or its video.
10:15 AM: Out for a walk. Black Sabbath, The Dio Years (tracks 1-2); Behemoth, Evangelion (tracks 1-3). Behemoth's music is hard to take—it's relentless, the drumming a constant machine-gun barrage, the guitars and vocals a buzzsaw battling a blast furnace. I'm impressed by what they do, but it's a little too unrelieved for me to listen to on a regular basis.
11:00 AM: TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light. The label emailed me a download link for this. I've never listened to a whole album by these guys; I'm gonna try to make it all the way through this one...Nope. I only lasted to track 8 (there are 13 on this "deluxe edition" download, two of which are remixes). They're good at what they do, but it's not for me. I'd have to give a lot more thought to explaining why than I'm willing to give, but at its base, I just don't see how their music fits into my life. Music is a life soundtrack for me, and I'm never in a mood or a social situation where a TV on the Radio song is gonna be the perfect music for that moment. If it was playing at a party, I would know I was in the wrong house.
1:00 PM: Krallice, Diotima. I'm gonna have to review this next week, but I'm getting a head start on it because I think it's gonna require multiple listens to sink in and make sense. I think it'll also give me a different perspective on the new Liturgy album (both bands are from Brooklyn, both are rooted in black metal but go much further out than that term implies), which I'm gonna listen to, again, next.
3:30 PM: Cactus, 'Ot 'n' Sweaty. Half studio, half live, all awesome.
5:30 PM: Does watching Tron: Legacy count if I mostly watched it to hear the Daft Punk score in action? I'm gonna count it.

Thursday, April 7

Off to a slow start today; didn't really feel like watching music videos as I ate breakfast this morning. So:
10:00 AM: Liturgy, Aesthetica (tracks 1-7).
11:00 AM: JD Allen Trio, Victory! Allen is a Detroit-born, NYC-based tenor saxophonist who records with a sax-bass-drums trio; this is the group's third record. It's very compressed music; the longest of the CD's 12 tracks is 5:04, and most of them are under three minutes long. (The whole thing runs 36:46.) The disc will be out in mid-May, and I can already tell it's gonna make my year-end list for the Village Voice jazz critics' poll.
1:00 PM: Liturgy, Aesthetica (tracks 4-12).
1:40 PM: Ayumi Hamasaki, Duty.

Friday, April 8

8:00 AM: Music videos on VH1 and mun2. Jennifer Hudson's terrible new single, Two Door Cinema Club's "What You Know," Jay Sean w/Lil Wayne guesting, and some other stuff I don't remember.
9:00 AM: John Coltrane, Coltrane (the 1957 album on Prestige, not the Impulse! title from 1962) and Coltrane Jazz.
2:00 PM: The Gates of Slumber, The Wretch. Heavy as a really heavy thing doom metal. Coming out in the US on May 10 or thereabouts, already out in the UK. Here's YouTube footage of one of the new songs:

4:45 PM: Morbid Angel, Covenant.
11:00 PM: Klaus Schulze, Moondawn.

Saturday, April 9

Not going to be a lot of music listening today, as I've got an interview to transcribe.
10:00 AM: Wolf, Legions of Bastards (tracks 1-4). The latest album by a...let's say "classicist" instead of "retro" for a change...Swedish metal band. It sounds a lot like Judas Priest circa 1978-80, so for the return trip (this is what I'm listening to while walking to and from the post office) I switch to the originals: Judas Priest, Stained Class, tracks 1-3. Interesting to hear their '70s work, back when they were still playing riffs that could have come off a pre-MTV ZZ Top album ("White Heat, Red Hot" and "Better By You, Better Than Me" are straight boogie).
11:30 AM: JD Allen Trio, "I Am - I Am," "North Star" and "Pagan," from I Am I Am, which inspires me to listen to John Coltrane's Lush Life, the only album he ever recorded with a trio (supposedly only because the pianist booked for the gig didn't show up).
12:45 PM: Kelis on YouTube: "Brave" and "Scream." Flesh Tone is such an underrated, overlooked album.

Sunday, April 10

Not likely to be much (recorded) music listened to today. I'm going to a movie in the morning (Hanna, the score to which is by the Chemical Brothers, so maybe that counts), but I'm not sure I'm gonna be listening to anything else between lunchtime and when I leave in the evening...to go see Rush at Madison Square Garden.
10:30 AM: Howlin' Wolf, The Chess Box, while driving to and from the movie theater (approx. 20 min. each way).
6:00 PM: JD Allen, I Am I Am (on the train into NYC).
8:00 - 11:00 PM: Rush, live. Full review and photos to come on MSN.com.
11:00 PM: Morbid Angel, Domination.

And that's the week!

APRIL AMG UPDATE

2011-04-03T17:57:00.000-07:00

Here are 10 new reviews from All Music Guide:

Ben Allison, Action-Refraction
Los Amigos Invisibles, Not So Commercial
Amon Amarth, Surtur Rising
The Cookers, Cast the First Stone
Graveyard, Hisingen Blues
KEN Mode, Venerable
The Resurrection Sorrow, Hour of the Wolf
Scale the Summit, The Collective
Alex Skolnick Trio, Veritas
Subrosa, No Help for the Mighty Ones

THIS WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-04-03T17:43:00.000-07:00

Here's what popped up at BurningAmbulance.com this week:

March 28: a review of Britney Spears' Femme Fatale
March 30: a review of two albums by under-recognized free jazz saxophonist Arthur Jones
April 1: a review of the second album by Dubai-based death metal band Nervecell

WHAT AM I, A NIELSEN HOUSE NOW?

2011-04-03T05:42:00.000-07:00

Writer Nick Southall is asking people to participate in the "Music Diary Project" from Monday, April 4 through Sunday, April 10. Here's his summary:

The idea is simple. For seven days this April, from Monday the 4th to Sunday the 10th, anyone who wants to take part will keep a diary of everything they listen to, and publish it online somewhere. How detailed that diary is, is up to the individual participants to decide. It may be an annotated list drawn from last.fm scrobbles and chucked up onto a Tumblr; it may take the form of a Tweet or a Facebook status update every time you select a new song on your iPod; or you may keep a detailed spreadsheet of your listening and post it, with notes, on your blog at the end of the week. It’s up to you. If you could tag however you decide to publish your list with “musicdiaryproject” so we can find each other’s entries, that would be awesome.

I’ll be producing an Excel spreadsheet at some point within the next couple of weeks which I’ll make available to download from somewhere, and which you can use to log your listening if you don’t use a scrobbling service or want to concoct your own solution to keeping track. I may also put together some kind of online survey, which I’ll make available for any participants to fill in after the week is done, to gauge how people felt about joining in.

Obviously the act of listing everything you listen to will, by the simple act of doing it, change the way you listen; don’t ignore this fact, but equally, try and keep to as usual a pattern of listening as you would normally have. This experiment isn’t about seeing who listens to the most music or the coolest music or the most diverse selection of music; it’s just about understanding all the different ways we listen to music.

I'll be participating here, or maybe on Twitter; if you're interested, feel free to join in.

RECENTLY AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-03-27T15:16:00.000-07:00

Here's the last two weeks' worth of content from BurningAmbulance.com:

March 14: a review of the latest Orthodox CD, Ba'al
March 15: an interesting half-hour documentary on Milford Graves and David Murray from German TV
March 21: a review of Woodcuts, a 2010 duo CD by Peter Brötzmann and Paal Nilssen-Love
March 23: a review of Cursed, the latest CD by Finnish grindcore band Rotten Sound
March 25: an interview with "rockjazz" pianist Eric Lewis, aka ELEW

HERBIE HANCOCK

2011-03-27T15:08:00.000-07:00

From Man-Child.

BRUCE LAMONT

2011-03-24T12:20:00.000-07:00

Yakuza vocalist/saxophonist Bruce Lamont released his first solo album, Feral Songs for the Epic Decline, on the At A Loss label in January. That's the cover art above. He did some killer performances to promote it at South by Southwest this past week, and Mike Williams of Eyehategod showed up to help out:

I wrote the liner notes to the CD. Here they are:

Those of you who’ve picked this album up because it’s the solo debut by the frontman for Chicago avant-rock band Yakuza should be aware that you are not holding a metal record in your hands. Of course, if you think Yakuza, Bruce Lamont’s primary creative outlet, is just a metal band, well, I don’t know what to tell you about that. Yakuza makes some of the most absorbing ultra-heavy psychedelic post-rock around, but calling it “metal” would be awfully reductive. You’ve got the Tibetan-style chants, the drone interludes, the saxophone…Yakuza’s got more in common with Hawkwind than High On Fire, is the point here. And apparently, Bruce Lamont is the kind of guy who finds even Yakuza’s expansive musical vision just a little bit constricting.

Most folks who know his work know Lamont has one foot in out-jazz (he’s performed and recorded with saxophonist Ken Vandermark, and stood up to the full hurricane force of upstate New York sax-sax-guitar trio Borbetomagus) and another in out-rock (in addition to Yakuza, he’s been an in-studio guest with fellow Chicago bands Nachtmystium and Minsk). But now they’re gonna get to know Bruce Lamont, singer-songwriter. He wrote all the songs on this disc, and played every instrument: guitar, saxophone, keyboards, percussion, all of it. And as recorded by Sanford Parker in Chicago’s Semaphore Studio, it’s got all the warmth and humanity of the best music to come from that city in recent years.

The first track, “One Who Stands On The Earth,” is also the longest by a good five minutes, and it’s like a buffet, laying out every sound you’re gonna hear for the rest of the album’s 43-minute running time. Acoustic guitar, saxophone, hypnotic tribal percussion, rhythm loops, bursts of static, and Lamont’s own trance-like vocal chants…imagine if Peter Gabriel had invited Michael Gira to collaborate on Passion, his soundtrack album for The Last Temptation Of Christ, and you’re getting there. There’s a strong desert vibe to tracks like “The Epic Decline” and “Disgruntled Employer.” Other pieces, like “The Book Of The Law” and “Deconstructing Self-Destruction,” blast from the speakers full of industrial/black metal fury, while the detuned guitar of “Year Without Summer” could be a nod to the Texas-based outsider-folk recluse Jandek. Feral Songs For The Epic Decline is multifaceted, is what I’m saying. Like its creator. Come in with open ears, and they will be filled in a very pleasing manner.

Buy Feral Songs for the Epic Decline from Amazon

HOPE THIS HELPS

2011-03-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

Click image to see at full size.

RECENTLY ON ALTPRESS.COM

2011-03-23T08:57:00.000-07:00

These are my latest album reviews for AP's website. Click the titles to buy them from Amazon.

THE NAKED AND FAMOUS
Passive Me, Aggressive You (Universal Republic)

This New Zealand-based group mix glitchy, dreamy electronic pop and occasional outbursts of static-ridden noise with male-female duet vocals from Alisa Xayalith and Thom Powers that sound like Radiohead’s Thom Yorke whispering back and forth with Natasha Bedingfield. Many songs have a steady drum-machine thump to keep the listener’s attention focused, even as the low-key vocals nudge toward narcosis. The best of these is the album-closing “Girls Like You,” which manages to meld Hi-NRG synths, a dubby post-punk bassline, some guitar fuzz and murmurs from Powers that lead into anthemic howling, with oohs and aahs from Xayalith in the background.

On some tracks, like “Eyes” and “Young Blood,” the band up the emotional content a little in an attempt to get ’80s-style epic and modernize the weeping-androids sound the Human League perfected back then. They never quite make it, though, and just wind up sounding like some half-forgotten song from midway through the second side of the Breakfast Club soundtrack. A few others overstay their welcome, like the nearly six-minute “No Way,” which transitions from sub-Coldplay piano pounding to fuzzy acoustic guitar strumming, all with gently shimmery female vocals (part shoegaze, part Primal Scream circa 1991) on top. It’s nice, but would have been nicer at three minutes. But when the Naked And Famous get noisy, as on “Spank,” “Jilted Lovers” and “A Wolf In Geek’s Clothing,” they successfully meld the Ting Tings and Sleigh Bells.

CIVET
Love & War (Hellcat)

The second Hellcat release from Civet is a raging dose of rockin’ punk that will appeal to Social Distortion and Joan Jett fans alike. Frontwoman Liza Graves roars like Jett with a migraine, and her three bandmates—guitarist Suzy Homewrecker, bassist Jacqui Valentine and drummer Roxie Darling—keep the music driving forward with plenty of pick slides, Bad Religion-esque backing vocals and occasional handclaps. “L.A. Nights” and “Sunset Strip” are paeans to their hometown; the former could be a theme song for L.A. Ink. Other tracks evoke a particularly streetwise version of sisterhood, gang fights, and romantic disillusionment. “It’s The Truth” and “Reap What You Sow” are too long at nearly five minutes each; the band’s strength lies in hard-charging tracks like the two-minute “Deadbeat.”

THIS WEEK IN CLEVELAND

2011-03-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

From the Cleveland Scene:

Huge in Germany (and Here)
Manowar's U.S. tour is a short one, but we got lucky

The upstate New York metal band Manowar has led a strangely split existence for almost three decades. Though they perform before massive, adoring crowds in Europe, they've never been more than a cult act in their home country. The disconnect has gotten so extreme that bassist and bandleader Joey DeMaio said a couple of years ago that they may never play America again. But when they do play the States, they've shown a particular affection for Northeast Ohio.

The band performed exactly one U.S. show in support of 1992's The Triumph of Steel: at the defunct Flash's here in Cleveland. Four years later, following the release of 1996's Louder Than Hell, they played the Machine in Massillon and filmed a video for their song "Return of the Warlord" at the club.

Given all this, it's a bit surprising that Manowar are playing three U.S. shows this year. It's less surprising that two of them are in Cleveland. The band comes to the Agora this weekend for a two-night stand that will include a complete performance of their debut album, 1982's Battle Hymns, and a greatest-hits set.

And since Manowar have released a series of live DVDs over the years, it's totally possible that the two Agora shows will be filmed for release. (Though, for the record, DeMaio says he's "not sure at this point.")

Even within the metal scene, Manowar's music can be polarizing. Their best songs are pure metal, with anthemic power conveyed through thundering rhythms, screaming guitar leads, Eric Adams' powerful Halford/Plant-style vocals, and DeMaio's prominent and melodic bass lines.

They make no concessions to radio or trends, but if you grew up on classic metal by Dio and Judas Priest, there's plenty to love about Manowar albums like Sign of the Hammer, The Triumph of Steel, and especially Battle Hymns. (If you want a single starting point, their 2007 album Gods of War Live covers almost their entire career.)

On recent albums Warriors of the World and Gods of War, they've balanced headbanging anthems with symphonic interludes and some unexpected covers (check out their take on Elvis' patriotic "An American Trilogy" medley). But late last year, following the return of original drummer Donnie Hamzik, the group scrapped Hammer of the Gods, a concept album they had been working on with German fantasy novelist Wolfgang Hohlbein, and rerecorded their debut, releasing it as Battle Hymns MMXI.

"We didn't go into this thinking we were going to improve Battle Hymns," says DeMaio. "What we did want to do was take advantage of the technology that allows one to make a record today with a lot more power and dynamic range than we were able to back then."

Indeed, the new versions of these songs aren't radical departures from the originals — the mix is slightly different, with more space for DeMaio's virtuosic bass lines and a few '80s-style vocal effects omitted, which lets Adams display the power he's retained (and at times increased) over 30 years of concerts.

There are two major differences between the original and rerecorded versions of Battle Hymns. Orson Welles' original narration on "Dark Avenger" is replaced by a newly recorded one by Christopher Lee. And the title track gained three whole minutes, bringing its total running time to nine minutes on the new CD.

That's merely a result of playing the song onstage for so many years, says DeMaio. "One of the nice things about making a record and being able to perform live is that you have the chance to interpret and reinterpret the songs over the course of years," he says. "And the little things you do sometimes yield interesting and great results."

That may be the first time the words "little things" have been used when talking about Manowar's music. The live show will be as epic as anything in metal, even if they're playing in front of just a few thousand very patient U.S. fans, rather than the 50,000-plus they typically draw in Germany.

RECENTLY AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-03-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

Here's what's been up the last couple of weeks:

• March 2: a review of saxophonist Ralph Bowen's Power Play
• March 7: a review of Warriors and Cast the First Stone by hard bop revival group The Cookers
• March 8: a link to an excellent post on being a working musician, by trumpeter Jason Parker
• March 9: a review of Wynton Marsalis's Black Codes (From the Underground)
• March 11: a review of the Flow Trio (saxophonist Louie Belogenis, bassist Joe Morris and drummer Charles Downs) CD Set Theory: Live at the Stone

LONG OVERDUE AMG UPDATE

2011-03-11T20:04:00.000-08:00

I haven't done of these since the end of January, so brace yourself. Note the Amazon links after each review; if anything intrigues you, please click through and help keep this blog flying.

Abysmal Dawn, Leveling the Plane of Existence (Amazon link)
Årabrot, Revenge (Amazon link)
Battlelore, Doombound (Amazon link)
Blood Ceremony, Living With the Ancients (Amazon link)
The Bronx Casket Co., AntiHero (Amazon link)
Darkest Hour, The Human Romance (Amazon link)
Mike DiRubbo, Chronos (Amazon link)
Dying Fetus, Killing On Adrenaline (Amazon link)
Dying Fetus, Grotesque Impalement (Amazon link)
Falkenbach, Tiurida (Amazon link)
The Human Abstract, Digital Veil (Amazon link)
I See Stars, The End of the World Party (Amazon link)
Nicolas Jaar, Space Is Only Noise (Amazon link)
Lazarus A.D., Black Rivers Flow (Amazon link)
Macabre, Grim Scary Tales (Amazon link)
Manowar, Battle Hymns MMXI (Amazon link)
Maruta, Forward Into Regression (Amazon link)
Noisear, Subvert the Dominant Paradigm (Amazon link)
Ulcerate, The Destroyers of All (Amazon link)
Volture, Shocking Its Prey (Amazon link)

IT'S PRONOUNCED "IKE," NOT "ICKY"

2011-02-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

RIVERDALE

2011-02-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

Awesome...

INTERVIEW: CLARE AMORY (EXCEPTER)

2011-02-25T11:13:00.000-08:00

Last year, I profiled New York-based experimental electronic sextet Excepter for The Wire. I interviewed three of their members—John Fell "Jeff" Ryan, Lala Ryan, and Jon Nicholson—in person, and sent questions to two other members, Clare Amory and Nathan Corbin, by email. Today it was announced that Amory has died of cancer at age 35. In a spirit of remembrance, here are her answers to my emailed questions, in full.

How long have you been in Excepter?
I even tried to google and figure out if my first show was at Tonic or Suoni Per Il Popolo festival in Montreal, and I just couldn't remember or figure it out. I had been to every show for so long before and felt part of it. It was 2006-7 I think. Before I had been in FEAST which played traditionally structured songs and practiced 2 hrs. at a time 3 times a week. I loved FEAST especially at the end when we were playing Stoner Sludge Metal and had finally figured out how to record. After that band ended I was playing with Nathan and friends at home and didn't want to do anything else. It took a while for my brain to want to play Excepter. Now it's good to be truly free and with the other weirds. You are an Excepter or you're not an Excepter whether you started playing yet or not and really we're all Excepters.

Were you and Nathan a couple when you joined?
Yes and we had already been playing together as LAKE for a while before, also as eyelasher. We can play loud at home whenever we want which is great.

How were you each recruited?
I think Jeff told me a bunch of times I could play when I wanted, then at some point I just did and now I always do.

The music is improvised, and then edited later by Jeff - are the rest of you consulted on edits, or do you hear the album when it's done?
It's true that Jeff has the final say. That makes everything so easy. I can vary my participation in different processes in the band as it suits me and nobody's ever given me grief. After being a dancer and in heavily rehearsed and composed projects for years, the space is IT brother. I don't care about winning I just want to be free. Sometimes we talk about the feeling of the record or specific parts of it, we get the cuts he's worked out in advance so we can talk about it if we want.

Has this process evolved over time, or was this the arrangement when you joined the group?
It evolves with changes in instrumentation; a new instrument can become the leader and tell the group what to do. The lasting effects of various tour vibes; usually great! We tour in high style with giant burgers and become a freedom force. There's nothing like it and it makes the music enormous. The number of shows in a time period effects how tight our web is woven.

Can you describe the negotiations (spoken and unspoken) that determine the course of a live set?
Sometimes Nathan and I listen to each other's beats at home before a show. We're also listening to the same records at home before we leave. Sometimes the band works out a technical component like Porkchop [Jon Nicholson] and Nathan synching for the night. Sometimes Lala says that she's worked out some special spell. Jeff often has excited and explosive arm gestures followed by shyness that communicate his vibe for the night. I am always happy when I get to the club and I can tell what everybody is like, then we play. We listen to each other, I feel like we get along. I wait for openings. I try not to play or do anything unneccesary.

What was the experience of playing the 17-hour set on Election Day 2008 like? How do you prepare for, and "come down" from, something like that?
To prepare I chose my instruments. I voted in Pennsylvania at 6 am and then drove 4 hours to the club so I was a little late. The drive was amazing, I have video somewhere. I always know it's going to be dreamlike, the longer I play like this the less the number of hours matter. We could play from now until we die I think, we would just sleep and eat right there while the others kept it going. When you pause to eat you get really good ideas.

THIS WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-02-19T07:19:00.000-08:00

Here's what happened at BurningAmbulance.com this week:

• On Monday, a review of two CDs (an album and a remix album) by new Bill Laswell/Justin Broadrick project The Blood of Heroes;
• On Tuesday, a review of the latest album by Florida death metal legends Deicide;
• On Friday, an interview with Chilean-American electronic musician/producer Nicolas Jaar (pictured above)

AYUMI HAMASAKI LIVE

2011-02-16T18:02:00.000-08:00

Rammstein did a one-off show at Madison Square Garden and sold it out, now they're doing a North American tour—Ayumi Hamasaki could totally do the same thing.

TROUBLE FUNK

2011-02-13T10:42:00.001-08:00

Live in the UK, 1986:

THIS WEEK ON BURNINGAMBULANCE.COM

2011-02-12T06:50:00.000-08:00

Here's what you may have missed:

• Monday, a review of Bongripper's Satan Worshipping Doom
• Tuesday, a review of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew Live
• Thursday, a review of Mostly Other People Do the Killing's The Coimbra Concert
• Friday, a review of Hans-Joachim Roedelius's Geschenk des Augenblicks

GLORIA TREVI

2011-02-12T05:44:00.000-08:00

This video came on mun2, the bilingual cable channel, while I was - no joke - listening to LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" on headphones. Bear in mind as you watch that Gloria Trevi - who is attempting a comeback after serving jail time for some seriously unsavory, creepy shit - is 42 years old. She could literally be a parent to pretty much everyone else on screen. I guess she's going for that Cher-esque "old lady still at the party" thing?

DEV

2011-02-11T14:38:00.000-08:00

So...here's something I like. Dev is a female rapper who based on only two songs, I very much prefer to Ke$ha (her closest analogue). Here's "Bass Down Low"...

And here's "Booty Bounce"...

You may notice that a section of the lyrics to "Booty Bounce" was sampled for the chorus of the Far East Movement single "Like a G6"...

This has been today's edition of What People Younger Than You Are Listening To.

I MISSED JUSTIFIED FOR THIS

2011-02-10T07:50:00.000-08:00

(Well, not really; I caught the 11 PM re-airing.)

I went out last night and saw the Wayne Shorter Quartet at Town Hall. I took some pictures, and reviewed it for the Village Voice.

Here are the pictures:

THIS WEEK ON ALTPRESS.COM

2011-02-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

DR. ACULA
Slander (Victory)

Long Island sextet Dr. Acula have come a long way since the “party grind” of Below Me and The Social Event of the Century. Their music is slower and heavier now, moving into the chest-beating deathcore territory of Emmure, The Acacia Strain and Chelsea Grin. The movie and TV dialogue samples that have riddled all their releases are still there, of course, spicing things up and adding an additional layer of satirical bite—as though an album with a song called “Cocaine Avalanche” needs more jokes. It doesn’t, not when it’s got riffs this potent. Slander is more than just a parade of sludgy breakdowns—the party synths add some texture, but so do the occasional bursts of pop-punk and even melodic death-metal riffage on tracks like “Pure And Immature Goon” and “Who You Gonna Call?!” There’s a passage toward the end of the latter track that could have come from a Black Dahlia Murder album. With Slander, Dr. Acula have grown from a joke band into a group worth attention and respect, without losing their sense of humor. [Link]

THE FAMINE
The Architects of Guilt (Solid State)

It seems pretty clear that Texas-based death-metal band The Famine like The Black Dahlia Murder a lot. That’s fine; lots of people do. But there are a few moves cribbed straight from the BDM playbook on The Architects of Guilt, including but not limited to the screech-and-growl vocals, the melodic solos tucked into death-metal riff-storms and the ability to write songs that are damn close to catchy while staying extreme. Oh, and then there’s the fact that The Famine use the exact same font as The Black Dahlia Murder for their name. But don’t blow this album off just because it has some superficial similarities to the work of another (excellent) band; The Architects of Guilt is the work of an assured and talented group of musicians. Drummer Mark Garza’s playing is particularly impressive, adding unexpected subtlety to “Bigger Cages, Longer Chains!” while jackhammering the listener into submission on “The Crown And The Holy See” and “Ad Mortem.” Bassist-turned-vocalist Nick Nowell’s upper-register delivery is more powerful and unnerving than his death-metal roars, but he’s always a compelling presence, and guitarist Andrew Godwin offers catchy riffs and squiggly solos, as well as chugging breakdowns reminiscent of Demiricous’ excellent, overlooked Two (Poverty). This is the album you want to play for anyone who thinks Texas metal died with Dimebag Darrell. [Link]

PLUS ÇA CHANGE

2011-02-08T18:09:00.000-08:00

How a revolution erupts from a commonplace event—tidal wave from a ripple—is cause for endless astonishment...

First, a piece of news about something said or done travels quickly, more so than usual, because it is uniquely apt; it fits a half-conscious mood or caps a situation... The fact and the challenger's name generate rumor, exaggeration, misunderstanding, falsehood. People ask each other what is true and what it means. The atmosphere becomes electric, the sense of time changes, grows rapid; a vague future seems nearer.

On impulse, perhaps to snap the tension, somebody shouts in church, throws a stone through a window, which provokes a fight...and clearly it is no ordinary breach of the peace. Another unknown harangues a crowd, urging it to stay calm—or not to stand there gaping but do something. As further news spreads, various types of people become aroused for or against the thing now upsetting everybody's daily life. But what is that thing? Concretely: ardent youths full of hope as they catch the drift of the idea, rowdies looking for fun, and characters with a grudge. Cranks and tolerated lunatics come out of houses, criminals out of hideouts, and all assert themselves.

Manners are flouted and customs broken. Foul language and direct insult become normal, in keeping with the rest of the excitement, buildings are defaced, images destroyed, shops looted. Printed sheets pass from hand to hand and are read with delight or outrage—Listen to this! Angry debates multiply about things long since settled: talk of free love, of priests marrying and monks breaking their vows, of property and wives in common, of sweeping out all evils, all corruption, all at once—all things new for a blissful life on earth.

A curious leveling takes place: the common people learn words and ideas hitherto not familiar and not interesting and discuss them like intellectuals, while others neglect their usual concerns—art, philosophy, scholarship—because there is only one compelling topic, the revolutionary Idea. The well-to-do and the "right-thinking," full of fear, come together to defend their possessions and habits. But counsels are divided and many see their young "taking the wrong side." The powers that be wonder and keep watch, with fleeting thoughts of advantage to be had from the confusion. Leaders of opinion try to put together some of the ideas afloat into a position which they mean to fight for. They will reassure others, or preach boldness, and anyhow head the movement.

Voices grow shrill, parties form and adopt names or are tagged with them in derision and contempt. Again and again comes the shock of broken friendships, broken families. As time goes on, "betraying the cause" is an incessant charge, and there are indeed turncoats. Authorities are bewildered, heads of institutions try threats and concessions by turns, hoping the surge of subversion will collapse like previous ones. But none of this holds back that transfer of power and property which is the mark of revolution and which in the end establishes the Idea.

—Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (HarperCollins, 2000)

Truly we live in times such as man has never before seen.

No, really.

THIS IS ENGLAND

2011-02-07T16:53:00.000-08:00

I was in England recently, traveling with a rock band I shall not name for a magazine I shall not name. You'll find out soon enough, believe me. Here are some photos.

A street in Bristol. No, you could not own a Cadillac here even if you wanted to.

Also Bristol. Self-explanatory, really.

A row of taxis in Bristol. Note weird reflection in shop window. A ghost, perhaps?

Painting by Banksy, splattered with blue and yellow paint by pissed-off local soccer fans (apparently he insulted them or the team at some point). This painting is 3 or 4 stories off the ground, and nobody knows how he got up there to do it; it just appeared one morning.

Standing on Brighton "beach," which is actually the British national rock collection. Kinda looks like Asbury Park, NJ, plus rocks.

Me standing on Brighton "beach." I walked up and down this ground for the equivalent of about three blocks, and afterward, my feet were seriously aching.

Inside Brighton Dome, a really cool concert hall. The guy with his back to the camera is the drummer for the band I was following around.

The stage at London's Brixton Academy, shot from the balcony (which is several stories above floor level). This place is huge and scary, originally a movie theater built in the 1920s. The floor (where the seats used to be) slopes downward toward the stage, and there are several big metal barricades erected in the middle of the floor which can really hurt you if you bounce off them.

LAST WEEK ON BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-01-30T11:24:00.000-08:00

Some really good stuff over at BurningAmbulance.com last week...

Monday: A rundown of the too-slim discography of saxophonist Ike Quebec, and an optical illusion by Kokichi Sugihara
Tuesday: A review of L.A.-based thrash band Tormenter's Pulse of Terror
Wednesday: A review of drummer Gerald Cleaver's Be It As I See It, by R. Emmet Sweeney
Thursday: A review of Gang of Four's Content
Friday: A review of the album The Frozen Tears of Angels and the EP The Cold Embrace of Fear, by Italian symphonic power metal group Rhapsody of Fire

Also, please note that between now and February 15, you can get 15% off the print edition of Burning Ambulance by using the checkout promo code FIRESIDE305. So why not pick up an issue or two?

FINAL JANUARY AMG UPDATE

2011-01-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

Here are 10 more All Music Guide reviews...

Anthony Brown, India & Africa: A Tribute to John Coltrane
Cauldron, Burning Fortune
Miles Davis, Perfect Way: The Miles Davis Anthology - The Warner Bros. Years
Destruction, Day of Reckoning
Full Blown Chaos, Full Blown Chaos
Neuraxis, Asylon
Primal Fear, New Religion
Primal Fear, 16.6: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Trap Them, Sleepwell Deconstructor
Trap Them, Seizures in Barren Praise

TODAY ON ALTPRESS.COM

2011-01-26T08:59:00.000-08:00

I AM EMPIRE
Kings (Tooth & Nail)

This San Jose, California-based quintet have the lyrical self-pity necessary to make it big in the contemporary screamo/alt-rock scene, which is all about mixing introspection and tantrum throwing; but musically, they’re much better than that. On “Heart Attack” and “Saints & Sinners,” guitarists Andrew Stanton and Dan Otis crank out arena-ready riffs reminiscent of vintage Mötley Crüe and other hair-metal acts (on “To The Moon,” they get deep into Junkyard/early Guns N’ Roses territory, and “The Elevator” offers a short but fairly shredtastic guitar solo), while bassist Joshua Case and drummer Eric Martin keep the machine driving forward. Frontman Austin Lyons, despite being so busy gazing into his own navel he’s probably cross-eyed by now, is a more traditionally melodic vocalist than most young screamers, which means I Am Empire have a better than average chance of breaking through to the rock mainstream, and that would be a good thing. Kings offers much more than cock-rock strutting; “Love & Despair” features a 30 Seconds To Mars-worthy “whoa-oh” break that’s sure to get crowds waving their hands in the air and singing along, and “Brain Damage” and “Hammers & Anvils” are moody, slightly psychedelic ballads. Overall, this is a very solid debut from a multifaceted, frequently quite rocking band.

LAST WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-01-22T11:39:00.000-08:00

Here's what I wrote for BurningAmbulance.com this past week:

• Monday, a live review and photos (also by me) of the Matthew Shipp Trio
• Tuesday, a review of Fela Kuti's Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense
• Wednesday, a review of The Bug's Infected EP
• Friday, a review of Hugo Antunes' Roll Call
• also on Friday, this photo:

BLUR-GH

2011-01-22T11:26:00.000-08:00

Here are some paintings by Alexandra Pacula. More can be seen here.

PAZZ AND JOP STAT BREAKDOWN

2011-01-18T18:01:00.000-08:00

Here's the link to the poll itself, and all the affiliated essays 'n' whatnot.

Here are the 10 albums I voted for, with their placement on the final list:

1. Ayumi Hamasaki, Rock 'N' Roll Circus (#1001)
2. High on Fire, Snakes for the Divine (#162)
3. Rick Ross, Teflon Don (#34)
4. Iron Maiden, The Final Frontier (#273)
5. The Sword, Warp Riders (#179)
6. Kylesa, Spiral Shadow (#86)
7. Ratt, Infestation (#407)
8. Yakuza, Of Seismic Consequence (#673)
9. Flesh Consumed, Ecliptic Dimensions of Suffering (#1023)
10. Kill the Client, Set for Extinction (#1151)

Of those, I was the only voter for Ayumi Hamasaki, Flesh Consumed and Kill the Client.

I also sent in a long-ass comment, as follows (the parts they actually used are in bold):

Though I’m proud to vote in Pazz & Jop every year, it always ends up exacerbating my feelings of alienation from my so-called peers. I’ve never heard 80-plus percent of the music that winds up filling out the year-end lists published on Pitchfork, the AV Club and here at the Voice. (This year, I heard seven of Pitchfork’s Top 50, and two of the AV Club’s Top 25; I fully expect to have heard no more than two of the top 10 Pazz & Jop albums, and a maximum of five of the top 20.)

I’d like to offer my peers a deal: If you listen to Rotting Christ’s AEALO or Decrepit Birth’s Polarity (#s 7 and 9 on my year-end Top Ten for MSN Music) and find something thoughtful to say about either one, I’ll try and do the same for Kanye West or the Arcade Fire. If you listen to Ayumi Hamasaki’s Rock ’n’ Roll Circus, I’ll try my damnedest to make it through a whole Robyn song.

At one point, I was accused by a friend and colleague of “always us[ing] your ignorance of pop music as a pole to raise your flag upon. Like, I can't fault anyone for not caring about Adam Lambert, I'm faulting you because you constantly think it’s grounds for bragging rights. And yeah, you are def right about the music audience getting more stratified and retreating to more insular worlds, but I generally see this as a BAD THING and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around not wanting to see these walls topple.” And I admit that 2010 really sent my snarky D-bag side into overdrive, to the point where I was commenting on Facebook about how glad I am that I don’t get paid to care about Taylor Swift. But here’s the thing: My so-called peers don’t get paid to care about what I listen to or write about, either, with one or two exceptions, and they’re fine with that. So why am I expected to care about what I’m supposedly “missing”?

I write about what people are willing to pay me to write about. That’s mostly metal, with some side trips into jazz and Latin music. That takes up enough of my time that I listen almost exclusively to what people are willing to pay me to write about, with one or two exceptions, notably Japanese pop. In this way, I have been the beneficiary of cultural balkanization. Since most of the other critics filling out Pazz & Jop ballots are all busy listening to the same three dozen records, I can keep my calendar pretty damn full just by writing about stuff that sells as well as or better than the music reviewed on Pitchfork, stuff with a very real fan base that buys CDs (I know, right?) and T-shirts and tickets to shows, but that isn’t remotely cool in Voice/Pitchfork/Brooklyn Vegan/AV Club circles.

I’m far from unaware of pop music. I really liked the Diddy-Dirty Money and Rick Ross albums. I like Kelis and Kylie Minogue and Pink (though to my ear she’s never topped her third album, Try This, the one nobody else liked). M.I.A. isn’t pop music (she’d have to be popular—as in, sell some records—for that to be the case), but I’ve listened to every one of her half-baked, jabbering records at least twice. Outside of R&B-based pop music, I like Brad Paisley, and I liked Jamey Johnson’s The Guitar Song, though That Lonesome Song, from 2008, was clearly the better, more cohesive album. But for the most part, when I keep up with the so-called mainstream, it’s through videos. I don’t listen to the radio (terrestrial or online), but I watch MTV, VH1, Fuse and mun2 (the latter of which offers a killer hour-long show of norteño/Tejano videos everyone reading this should check out), and I’ll click links to videos on YouTube when I spot them on Twitter or message boards.

That kind of casual, semi-passive osmosis is how I know I haven’t missed anything by never listening to a whole Kanye West album. He’s a pop artist, so presumably his singles represent the best of his work, the stuff he’s presenting as the bait to lure listeners in. But I’ve seen the videos for every one of his singles, all the way back to “Through the Wire,” and not one of them has ever done a thing for me. I’ve had the same reaction to Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Ke$ha and just about everyone else who sold what passes for a lot of records in 2010, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to state that if I can’t make it a full minute into your video without switching the channel, I’m not gonna listen to your album.

Here’s the real problem, though. The Big Lie of generalist pop criticism (people who claim to cover “everything”) is actually two lies bound together. The first is that when you write about Kanye West, or whoever his equivalent will be in 2011, you’re writing about “mainstream” music. West, like every other musician on earth, is a niche artist—he may have millions of listeners, but there are untold millions more who have never heard him, may indeed have never heard of him. There is no mainstream. Critical consensus is built through publicity campaigns—writers (still, mostly) get records for free, and then they talk to each other about those records on Twitter, on Facebook, via email, and sometimes in person. And gradually a collective verdict emerges, with the token dissenters oftentimes anticipated and always genially taken into account, all under the unquestioned assumption that this is a record which Must Be Discussed. Which leads to the second lie, which is that the three dozen or so records that become The Sound Of [Year] cover all the bases. That outside the small pasture in which the pop critical community is carefully fed, tended and groomed by the labels and the publicists (and the musicians themselves, now), nothing of importance is happening. If the few dozen critics who write for the ever-shrinking roster of magazines and websites that cover “mainstream” music (including the “indie” division) don’t know about it, it must not be worth knowing about, basically.

But that’s absurd, and my own career path proves it. I write about metal five days a week for MSN Music. In mid-December, I posted a list of the 40 best metal albums of 2010. Mainstream and indie-minded critics, who consider themselves conversant in music, have probably heard as few of them as I’ve heard albums on their year-end lists. The music I spent all of 2010 listening to barely exists, as far as my so-called peers are concerned. And yet, I’m the one who’s considered ignorant when—if—these matters are discussed. The idea that metal (to pick only one) is a specialized genre, but “pop” is the mainstream, the baseline from which all other deviations are calculated, is utterly wrong. I’ll close with my response to the accusation quoted above, which could serve as advice to next year’s crop of eager children looking to break into the writing-about-music-for-money racket:

“Generalist, buffet-table pop criticism is dead. Specialist genre criticism is all that matters anymore, because listener communities are atomized, self-sealing and frequently hostile to outside input. I know who I'm writing for, and more importantly, I know who I'm not writing for. And I'm not gonna pretend to give a flying fuck about Taylor Swift or Kanye West just because all the other writers on my Twitter feed still think platinum-selling records ‘say’ ‘something’ ‘about’ ‘the culture.’ There is no monoculture. Pick a niche and grind it out.”

LAST WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-01-16T11:46:00.000-08:00

Last week was pretty busy in BA-land. Here are the relevant links:

Monday: Mike DiRubbo, Chronos
Tuesday: Kenny Cox, Introducing Kenny Cox and the Contemporary Jazz Quintet
Wednesday: Earth, Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1 by Ioannis Sotirchos
Thursday: Grave Desecrator, Insult
Friday: a live review of Winter Jazzfest 2011, by R. Emmet Sweeney

MID-JANUARY AMG UPDATE

2011-01-16T11:39:00.000-08:00

Here are my 10 newest All Music Guide reviews.

The Absence, From Your Grave
Borbetomagus, Both Noises End Burning
Gerald Cleaver, Be It As I See It
Crystal Viper, Legends
Ehnahre, The Man Closing Up
Ehnahre, Taming the Cannibals
Fushitsusha, Live
Fushitsusha, I Saw It! That Which Before I Could Only Sense
Hour of 13, The Ritualist
Praxis, Profanation (Preparation for a Coming Darkness)

RECENTLY AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2011-01-09T12:54:00.000-08:00

There was a bunch of content posted at BurningAmbulance.com during December, and the beginning of January. Here's the rundown:

Nov. 30: Luis Lopes' Humanization 4tet, Electricity
Dec. 1: Endless Boogie, Full House Head
Dec. 3: Ivo Perelman, Mind Games/The Stream of Life
Dec. 8: Nicki Minaj, Pink Friday
Dec. 13: Knut, Wonder
Dec. 14: Thomas Köner, Knut•Teimo•Permafrost

Dec. 15: our third issue came out, with stories on Anthony Braxton, Jon Irabagon, David Weiss, the Moritz von Oswald Trio, 1960s Hollywood, and composing for orchestra, and an excerpt from Jeff Wagner's book on progressive metal, Mean Deviation. Buy it!
Dec. 16: Seijaku, Mail from Fushitsusha/You Should Prepare to Survive Through Even Anything Happens
Dec. 18: a tribute to Captain Beefheart
Dec. 21: Henry Threadgill Zooid, This Brings Us To, Volume II
Dec. 22: Miles Davis live circa 1982 (video)
Jan. 3: Rodrigo Amado, Searching for Adam
Jan. 4: Kings Destroy, And the Rest Will Surely Perish
Jan. 5: Diddy-Dirty Money, Last Train to Paris
Jan. 7: Rich Halley Quartet Featuring Bobby Bradford, Live at the Penofin Jazz Festival

FIRST AMG UPDATE OF 2011

2011-01-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

New year, same deal. Here are links to 20 recent All Music Guide reviews. Enjoy!

Children of Technology, It's Time to Face the Doomsday
Marty Ehrlich Quartet, Hear You Say
Mark Fell, Multistability
Rikki Ililonga/Musi-O-Tunya, Dark Sunrise
La Lupe, Puro Teatro: A Lady and Her Music
Tony Malaby, Tamarindo Live
Monareta, Fried Speakers
Ivo Perelman, The Apple in the Dark
Powerworld, Human Parasite
Profanatica, Disgusting Blasphemies Against God
Marcus Schmickler, Palace of Marvels (Queered Pitch)
Scorch Trio, Melaza
Times of Grace, The Hymn of a Broken Man
Ultralyd, Inertiadrome
Utada, Best
Various Artists, Tribute to Os Mutantes: El Justiciero, Cha Cha Cha
Various Artists, Whom the Moon a Nightsong Sings
Wino, Adrift
Yelawolf, Trunk Muzik 0-60

10 THINGS I HAVE DONE...

2010-12-19T15:21:00.000-08:00

...that you probably have not. (Inspired by this list.)

1) Eaten chocolate cake with Ornette Coleman in his apartment.
2) Interviewed Lemmy in front of a live audience. (Video.)
3) Had my picture taken with Ozzy Osbourne backstage at Madison Square Garden.
4) Been a guest on live radio with Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and host Jim Breuer.
5) Received a phone call at home from Tony Iommi.
6) Nearly been thrown out of a Manhattan deli with Abel Ferrara.
7) Lived with a weird eco-militant/hippie cult.
8) Written liner notes for two CDs (one of which hasn't been released as of this writing).
9) Been flown to Stockholm to hear the last Opeth studio album and interview the band.
10) Self-published a book, and (as of this writing) three issues of a magazine.

DECEMBER AMG UPDATE

2010-12-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

After the Burial, In Dreams
Aux 88, Black Tokyo
Embryonic Devourment, Vivid Interpretations of the Void
Furze, Reaper Subconscious Guide
Grave, Burial Ground
haarp, The Filth
Killing Joke, Absolute Dissent
Phobia, Unrelenting
Various Artists, Bimexicano: Nuestros Clasicos Hechos Rock
Various Artists, Worth the Weight: Bristol Dubstep Classics

LAST WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2010-11-29T05:51:00.000-08:00

Only four days' worth of new content at BurningAmbulance.com last week, because of Thanksgiving. Here are the links.

Monday: an interview with Secret Society bandleader Darcy James Argue
Tuesday: Dan Tepfer Trio, Five Pedals Deep (by new BA contributor R. Emmet Sweeney)
Wednesday: Ghost, Opus Eponymous
Thursday: William S. Burroughs' "Thanksgiving Prayer," plus video of W.C. Fields and Ricky Jay

I LIKE COLDPLAY

2010-11-26T18:38:00.000-08:00

From the Guardian:

Coldplay's next album will apparently be influenced by New York graffiti artists and the anti-Nazi resistance. According to Chris Martin, these different sets of non-conformists have inspired songs about "[being] free to yourself" and "[following] your passion".

Despite two charity gigs booked for next month, Coldplay are still hard at work in their London studio, preparing the follow-up to Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. No release date has been set, but the end seems to be in sight – in a new interview with Q magazine, Martin speculated about a possible album title. "It will probably begin with an M," he revealed. "Two words."

Ten quick guesses:

More Coldplay
Mmmmm Pizza
Mrs. Paltrow
Mmmkay Computer
Mandatory Disclaimer
Mediafire Link
'Member "Clocks"?
Motion, Lateral
Minor Chords
Motörhead Rules

THANKSGIVING AMG UPDATE

2010-11-25T07:00:00.000-08:00

Here's something for you to be thankful for: I've reviewed 10 more albums for All Music Guide! (Yay?) Here are the links:

Atheist, Jupiter
Chord, Progression
Crimson Glory, In Dark Places...1986-2000
Deathspell Omega, Paracletus
Evil Survives, Powerkiller
Place of Skulls, As a Dog Returns
Salome, Terminal
Sargeist, Let the Devil In
Supersilent, 10
War from a Harlots Mouth, MMX

THIS WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2010-11-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

Lots of activity on BurningAmbulance.com this week:

• The first two issues are now available digitally on Scribd.com for $5 each
• You can get 20% off the print or digital version at Lulu.com through Nov. 21, using the promo code DONE305

Also, online-only reviews of the following ran:

Monday: Autechre, Oversteps and Move of Ten
Tuesday: Don Omar, Meet the Orphans
Wednesday: Crystal Viper, Legends (that's the cover above)
Thursday: The Fania All-Stars, Ponte Duro: The Fania All-Stars Story
Friday: Ehnahre, Taming the Cannibals

TODAY ON VILLAGEVOICE.COM

2010-11-15T06:05:00.000-08:00

Strictly for the online edition, I review Friday night's Monarch/Tinsel Teeth (I left before the final band, Bloody Panda, came onstage) show at New York's Cake Shop. Here's a link.

I met Monarch vocalist Emilie Bresson (that's her in the crappy photo—also by me—above) running the group's merch table, and bought two CDs from her: Mer Morte (out now on Crucial Blast) and Sabbat Noir (out now on Heathen Skulls). Each is a single long track, heavy on feedback and atmosphere, and each is highly recommended.

WE'RE ALL DOOMED

2010-11-12T12:19:00.000-08:00

Now that's a sinkhole:

THIS WEEK AT BURNING AMBULANCE

2010-11-11T16:16:00.000-08:00

No particular theme this week, just five more reviews:

Monday: Motorpsycho, Timothy's Monster
Tuesday: Wadada Leo Smith and Ed Blackwell, The Blue Mountain's Sun Drummer
Wednesday: Voltax, Fugitive State of Mind
Thursday: Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley, Ailanthus/Altissima (Bilateral Dimensions of 2 Root Songs)
Friday: Jerome Sabbagh/Ben Monder/Daniel Humair, I Will Follow You

Like the website? Buy the magazine!

NOVEMBER AMG UPDATE

2010-11-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

Another fortnight, another ten AMG reviews...

Nik Bärtsch's Ronin, Llyria
Circle II Circle, Consequence of Power
The Ocean, Anthropocentric
Oceano, Contagion
Powerglove, Saturday Morning Apocalypse
Ross the Boss, Hailstorm
Shadows Fall, Madness in Manila: Shadows Fall Live in the Philippines 2009
Stargazer, A Great Work of Ages
Tank, War Machine
UnSun, Clinic for Dolls

TALKIN' LOUD & SAYIN' NOTHIN'

2010-11-10T09:39:00.001-08:00

I was on the radio yesterday, jabbering about Led Zeppelin (and, briefly, Manowar). If you want to listen to that (and really, why would you?), here's a link.

BURNING AMBULANCE UPDATE

2010-11-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

This was Metal Week at BurningAmbulance.com: I reviewed five recent metal releases, covering exceptional work in various subgenres. Here are the links:

Monday: Blind Guardian, At the Edge of Time
Tuesday: Electric Wizard, Black Masses
Wednesday: Kill the Client, Set for Extinction
Thursday: Grand Magus, Hammer of the North
Friday: Interment, Into the Crypts of Blasphemy

The third issue of Burning Ambulance is progressing rapidly toward the finish line, so now's a perfect time to pick up issues 1 and 2. You can do that here.

PRE-HALLOWEEN AMG UPDATE

2010-10-30T08:42:00.000-07:00

Here's my latest batch of All Music Guide reviews. In keeping with the Halloween season, there's a bunch of metal, and some people in masks (the Girl in a Coma covers album). Enjoy!

Arson Anthem, Insecurity Notoriety
Autopsy, The Tomb Within
Conducting from the Grave, Revenants
The Crown, Doomsday King
Dimmu Borgir, Abrahadabra
Exploding Star Orchestra, Stars Have Shapes
Firewind, Days of Defiance
Girl in a Coma, Adventures in Coverland
Holy Grail, Crisis in Utopia
Kill the Client, Set for Extinction

PULLED FROM THE FLAMES

2010-10-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

I posted a bunch of stuff on Burning Ambulance this week. Here's the rundown:

Monday: review of Joe Morris's Camera
Tuesday: review of William Parker's Uncle Joe's Spirit House
Wednesday: interview with drummer Barry Altschul, by Hank Shteamer
Thursday: review of Many Arms' Missing Time
Friday: review of the Ornette Coleman Quartet's Reunion 1990

I hope you enjoy all this stuff, and I hope it'll convince you to buy issues of Burning Ambulance, the third of which will be coming out very soon.

POSTED WITHOUT COMMENT

2010-10-28T19:08:00.001-07:00

Okay, one comment: AWESOME.