Merry Christmas

Was putting together an uber depressing xmas mix, but thought better of it.  So instead, here's this:



God bless us, everyone.

Hypocrite Listener 2010 Music Honors

Carlos D. Memorial Award for Sickest Bass Playing on a Rock Album:  Tame Impala, Innerspeaker

Runner Up:  Ariel Pink, Before Today

Sickest Bass Playing on a Non Rock Album: Cosmogramma

The Steven Ellison Genius Grant for Releasing Not One but Two Mindblowing Next Level Releases in One Year Because He’s Just Like That: Flying Lotus

Ice Cold


Award for Good Album Intractably Marred by Questionable Vocal Affectations:  Baths, Cerulean

Post-Dilla Postal Service
Runner up: Salem, King Knight

Most Rewarding Questionable Vocal Affectation:  Sam Herring, Future Islands

Ryan Adams Award for Free Download That Is Somehow Still a Waste of Money and Space: Girl Talk, All Day

This Asshole...

Best Apotheosis of Self Via Disjointed Paranoid Confessional Ramblings From an Artist Emerging from Self-Imposed Exile After a Previous Full Length’s Lukewarm Critical Reception and Amidst Talk of Said Artist Becoming a Parody of Himself:  Destroyer, Archer on the Beach

A cosmonaut in a breadline, etc.

Runner Up: Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Best Jump to Relative Hifi:  Beach House, Teen Dream

Deep blue pools of sexy melancholy

Worst Jump Back to Relative Lofi: Spoon, Transference

The less said the better

Best Production on a Lofi Release: Tie, Women, Public Strain and Ariel Pink, Before Today

The Wayne Coyne “If I was going to do shrooms, I’d want to do it with this guy” Award:  Dustin Wong

Best Chillwave Album Not Classified As or Affiliated With Chillwave:  Javelin, No Mas

Slept on

Stephen Malkmus Award for Best Song Imbued With a Humble Tossed-Off Perfection That’s Almost Infuriating Because You’re Pretty Sure It Was Written on the Spot:  Kurt Vile, I Got Religion

Best Moment to Be Justin Vernon, Or It Would Be if This Was All Recorded at Once: Monster

Nobody knew I was a muthafuckn monstah, nobody but Ye

Late Fall Mix

This cold weather and early evenings have gotten the best of me and I fear that cabin fever setting in way too soon.  Here's a technicolor mix for these grayscale days.  Sorry for the sloppy mixing.

Hypocrite Listener Fall Mix by nigelharsch

Women (Again)

I haven't been able to write anything better than this on Public Strain: 

"Post-indie rock indie rock is copies of copies of collages of copies; in the hands of Women, however, it’s not that cut ‘n dry. They work the degradation of the process, blow-up the resulting scuzz to canvas their gallery walls, splay melodies into abstractions into new melodies as they zoom in more and more. These aren’t Brooklyn hipsters dancing, it’s their dancing pixels. The subversion of staid indie rock becomes the subversion of a hundred different things, a hundred different roles, and Public Strain envelops all that, highlights all the contrasts and contradictions that are built into indie rock’s origins but have been lost over time through the genre’s maturation into a broad and often dull establishment, into Death Cab and shirt dresses and well-made music calledThe Suburbs. With gumption Public Strain breaks through the static of a moving yet flat image in order to bare the quaking microcosmos beneath. Its tracklist is a unified yet eclectic collection; “Bells” is dark ambient and “China Steps” is motorik with Sonic Youth guitars and “Venice Lockjaw” is aching balladry and “Eyesore” is perfection fucking chaos on top the whole indie canon and much of the rest is, at once, Nuggets (1972) and not Nuggets. Women have no use for indie rock as a market, a lifestyle, or even as a genre—it is merely the substance they break apart and unfurl into a letting of noise, of unseemly chords, of momentary transcendence, of their own identity." more

Bejar on Bejar

The impossible weight of his mythos is imploding on top of him.  I am so fucking excited.

Late thoughts on The Suburbs

AF's new Jonathan Franzen Novel

My pal Win Butler.  I’ll hand it to him, he likes to raise the stakes on himself.  He bemoans our fragmented modern condition in big, bold rock-star gestures so convincingly that it almost serves as a perfunctory answer to the perennial boomer question “what happened to music that meant something?”  And he’s mostly successful at it.  Whereas Neon Bible had some cringe worthy over the top pontifications, The Suburbs is just balanced enough not be an embarrassment, and it certainly had every possibility to be.  This is a capital A Album, it is about us, the kids, the suburbs, downtown.  This is about getting old and shedding off the optimism of youth in a terrifying world.  This is an album about punching the clock by one of the few indie bands that doesn’t have to.

The songwriting is much more mature and nuanced, but like on Neon Bible, Win is still always onstage.  Even his more intimate offerings are still backed up by mile long reverb trails and a full string section.  And he’s never really talking to anyone specific, he’s witnessing to the masses, shouting to the mountaintops, standing self aware in a specific moment of history.  I don’t think the Arcade Fire are ever gonna get away from that, that is what they do after all.  It’s just that Funeral sounded like a shout to the sky, The Suburbs sounds like a polemic.

According to their website, “each of the 16 tracks is mastered to a 12 inch lacquer and then transferred back to digital format so that the CD and digital version of the record sound just like the vinyl.”  Like I said, it’s an “Album” motherfuckers, one that has all the hallmarks of an album of the year if not an album for a generation (or at least a sequel to one depending how you feel).  But those hallmarks may be exactly what hinders it from being either.  At 16 tracks, you’re not really left wanting more.  As bleak as Win’s outlook gets, his lack of brevity steals all the punch of his warnings.  What’s put forth as a grand statement ends up being 16 variations on a single theme, sequenced as if they add up to a coherent narrative.  It doesn’t really come together.  The trick would be to cut redundant exercises like “Month of May” or “City With No Children,” because they really just kill time and add heft to what could be a surprisingly elegant and restrained album with a little editing.

Counterpoint- Women- Public Strain

Nigel's totally right about this. Plus, if you don't have the Bonus 7 inch, I will personally bring it over and we'll listen to it. Because it's pretty fun too.

Women: Public Strain

Like they knew this would dominate my winter

Public Strain is brilliant.  Really really brilliant.  Don't believe me?

Buy it.  But a turntable and buy it again.  Tell everyone you know about it.  Send nasty hate mail to Pitchfork for not BNM'ing that shit to 10.

Hot New Trax from Steve Reich

Not too long a ago I got really into Steve Reich.  I listened to all ten discs of the NPU library's copy of Works while working in the basement in the media department.  I have the Deutsche Gramophone 3LP set of Drumming, I briefly had a portrait of the man as my profile pic, etc.  He was, for a short time in my life, the grand master of all things sonic, a position previously held by The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Brian Eno, and more recently, J Dilla.

Reich's got a new piece out "Double Sextet/2x5" and it's streaming right here.  

Check out the 2x5 tracks, especially the first one.  It's absolutely amazing, which is no particular surprise considering the man is a bona fide genius.  Nor is the "rock instrumentation" surprising, Reich has done this before.  The biggest surprise was the sound of mix, especially the drums.  Those dry, tight drums that cut left and right, the decay of each note seeming to die down unnaturally, almost like they're sampled and triggered.  This doesn't sound like rock instrumentation, it sounds like experimental hip hop.  What's incredible about this is that the Steve Reich is one of the pioneers of sample based music, his innovations are part of the DNA of so much of the music we listen to.  Madlib even gave him a nod.  2x5 sounds like Reich remixed, like Reich chopped and screwed, like a much younger artist.  Good to hear.

Self Truth on the Play Count

Ben's Favorite Beatles Songs Based on iPod Play Count

1. Here Comes the Sun (George)
2. Across the Universe (John)
3. Carry That Weight (Paul)
4. Sun King (John?)
5. Why Don't We Do it in the Road (Paul)

Why: My iPod is full and I was trying to decide what I could live without so I could get this Serge Gainsbourg psychedelic anthology on there. But also, I never know what my favorite anything is. Here's a way of finding my favorites over 3 or 4 years or however long I've had this iPod.
Method: Organizing songs based off play count, and typing in various artists, or just scrolling and seeing which albums are all up in 20s, which artists I don't think of myself as liking that much but go to pretty frequently (I guess I like Simon and Garfunkel), which are only on there for sentimental but not listening reasons (Radiohead, especially Hail to the Thief to the present.), etc.
Critique of Method: Obviously a million different factors play into what songs you play on your iPod (I own the White Album on vinyl, but not Abbey Road or Let it Be, making my affection for Why Don't We.. all the more puzzling and suspicious), but it's an interesting test of which songs you're drawn to, even unconsciously, as you listen to music around town. My affection for Paul, while often difficult to defend, comes through pretty earnestly in a scan of the top 10. The highest Ringo song is "Don't Pass Me By" at 16th most played.

Pavement - Things Get Old

  I love Pavement, I grew up with their records, I idolized them. My friend once said it best, “What I like about Pavement is that they seem to know me better than I know myself.” As silly as that seems given SM’s obtuse lyrics, that ambiguous Pavement energy, a mixture of cocksmanship, pranksterism, nostalgia, and even a bit of darkness, seemed to resonate with my youth more than most of the bands out at the time. Whereas the Strokes and the White Stripes served straight up retro revival for us too young to remember their forebearers, Pavement was smarter, more nuanced. I felt like they were actually like us, full of anarchic energy as well as a smart-ass knowing. They were too cool to be cool, too smart to be hip, but in the margins they could be incredibly affecting.
  I first heard heard Slanted and Enchanted around 2001, only months after they’d broken up. They were my first introduction to the concept of indie rock and remain my ideal of the form, so much so that I internalized their failures as successes. I even had the notion that me and my smart-ass rock friends could make it just by being our smart ass selves, even while living in the middle of nowhere Indiana, hanging on the idea that someone out there (possibly Thurston Moore) would inexplicably find us and launch us into semi-stardom. A decade of fandom later I’ve become older and wiser. I’ve read Perfect Sound forever, watched the Slow Century, watched my contemporaries rise and fall, played in bands of my own and been thoroughly demystified of the glamour of independent music, or hell, the glamour of music in general. No love lost really, in fact in the place of my youthful idealism is a real love (I hope) for the music that sountracked my maturation and a more nuanced perspective on how bands and the music industry in general work. And after all these year, I still love SM, Spiral Stairs, Nast, Ibold, Westy and Young. But at the ripe old age of 24, and even though I never saw them the first time around, I am getting my first dose of reunion tour blues.
  Malkmus has been openly ambivalent about this reunion. First there was the GQ piece with Chuck Klosterman who, like Malkmus, cares more about sports than music these days and is about just as uninterested in Pavement. Then there was a more exploitative piece in Mojo featuring the whole band, another non plussed SM, and some sad moments when Kannenberg lets on how much more the band means to him than Malkmus. Put together with Perfect Sound Foerever and you can pretty much get the picture: Malkmus is kinda a dick and kinda aware of that, the rest of the band are kinda not dicks but maybe kinda not as talented and no one in the band really wants to talk about it. So my expectations for this Pitchfork performance were kinda secretly not so high, despite my really wanting them to be.
  I only went to one day of the festival this year, for money reasons and due to my work schedule. So many of my old pitchfork pals didn’t go at all, having either moved away, moved on, or completely lost interest. Whereas in the past the fest had always seemed like a sort of like a homecoming or gathering of a disparate community, this year everyone looked unfamiliar. I tried to summon the spirit, but it was hot, the sound was often shitty, there was no 312, and everyone looked if not young than childish, as if some shift into real adulthood had occurred unnoticed in my life this past year and I was just now realizing it. I wasn’t hating on anyone, my worst criticism of the day was launched Washed Out, saying they were a little boring. Beach House put on a great set, Major Lazer made me dance, Big Boi sounded good while I waited for Pavement in the setting sun. I was having a reasonably good time. And then the sun went down and Pavement sauntered on.
  And the set was, well actually quite good. The sound was awful for half the songs (the lighter half), the guys were so completely unenthused to be there it hurt, there were about 5 false starts, and the crowd was exhausted as fuck and pretty sick of standing face to armpit in the hot sun waiting for them to play. And yet, somehow, it was worth it. When the band was on, they delivered. There were several moments were I thought they’d fall apart but they’d swing back into cohesion, making the high points matter so much more. They played the songs faithfully but changed them up enough to make them sound if not new, then at least like living songs. It wasn’t slike the Slint show, where they played note for note but with no energy or spontaneity. It was by all metrics a real Pavement show. Compared to the footage from their last show before their breakup, maybe even a really good Pavement show. And since this will probably be the only Pavement show I ever see, I’m glad for that much.
  Perhaps it was disappointing for some. To be honest, I didn’t walk away in a blissful haze, and I don’t think Pitchfork fest has ever had such an anticlimactic end: no encore, no announcement, everyone just slowly walked out a little puzzled. And maybe I am so prematurely old, so jaded, expectations so low and so willing to forgive that I couldn't actually be disappointed. But Silence Kit killed, and it killed in that sad longing way it did when I first heard it. And when Malkmus replaced “shitty-life” for city-life the second time, instead of feeling sapped or slighted I kinda felt on the same page with him. It was unexpected and cathartic, and it revealed something I love about Pavement that no one talks about that much, that they’re a kinda dark, depressing little act when you get down to it. So many of their best songs are colored with loneliness, misanthropy, loss, anger, bitterness. It’s by far not what this band is about, but it’s all there. There were definitely more uplifting highlights of the show: Conduit for Sale, Trigger Cut, Frontwards, Spiral Stairs’ songs actually sounding really good to me for the first time maybe ever. But for all their attempts and all their thank-yous and all their practice (really, they sounded pretty tight), they couldn’t put on a convincing face of gratitude, they couldn't fool any of us into thinking that they were at all as excited to be there as we were to see them. Whatever wasn’t working for them before is still not working. But they were themselves, they played well together, and there were enough moments where they looked like they might actually be really enjoying the music they were playing, if not the people they were playing it with.
  And I think it was all very fitting. The era that birthed Pavement is clearly over, Pavement as a living entity is clearly over. They sounded out of context, out of place, and out of style at the fest. They aren’t some returning heroes getting their long lost due from a generation that finally “get’s them.” Although, I would have loved for them to say “hey kids, you Pavement fans are alright, I’m glad you still exist” But they did their job and they tried hard for us, for the kids who weren’t there the first time around, or maybe it was for our money. Who cares? I got to see Pavement, the real deal, in all their hapless glory. They gave me an unrepeatable performance, they surprised me, and I still feel like those songs I’d heard a million times meant as much to me now as they did ten years ago.

An Album Like This:

    I was initially confused and borderline disappointed with Cosmogramma when I first put it on.  After pouring into his back catalog and remixes I came to expect a certain feeling from Flylo tracks, something dark and simmering with a sinister sense of humor, music made by the dude grinning ear to ear in his promo shots ala Richard D James or the Joker.  His earlier more hip hop inflected work lumbered along in a narco haze, an already textured and gritty sound that would end up going into hyperspeed and endless grooves on Los Angeles.  With Los Angeles, there are beats on top of beats fighting other beats through thick smoky static, like so many bass bombed cadillacs passing each other on L.A.'s smoggy highway night.
   On Cosmogramma, Flying Lotus is equally comfortable delivering what listeners have come to expect from him (sick beats, tactile textures, an ADD predilection for 8 bit blips and beeps) and blowing those expectations wide open.  You hear it right away on Clockcatcher, first unleashing an unholy manic onslaught of space invaders artillery that has you thinking "too much too soon" right before it spins out in all directions leaving behind a field of sonic debris.  Much of the album's first half has an equally disorienting soundscape.  Sounds and melodies collide and fracture only to coalesce moments later into a cohesive groove.  It's disorienting but more than worth it.  This is how you know an album is going to be a grower, when you get halfway in and you already want to back track to get a closer listen.  It delivers the goods, but in such idiosyncratic and surprising ways that you're not sure how to take it at first.  You let in unravel and open up and discover a new way of listening until your more or less hooked.  Like, I really wasn't down with all the bit crunched bass solos at first, now I can't imagine the songs with out them.

    Although this wasn't the album I was expecting, it's actually the kind of album I've been waiting for all year.  Don't get me wrong, Teen Dream still makes my heart do swan dives into a sea of dark blue melancholy, but there's only so much of that I can take in my life.  Teen Dream is something to be careful with, to dole out with care or save for a rainy day.  Cosmogramma is an album to get lost in, to dwell upon and discover as well as (at times) something to play at a BBQ or a midsummer's dance party.  It's daring and inventive as well as warm and inviting, much like the man himself was when I saw him rocking a packed Double Door crowd, the wizard himself tearing it apart and grinning for days in sheer enthusiasm.

Skip All the Lou's: Part II, The Mask of Blue

Which is what brought me to The Blue Mask- often regarded as one of Lou Reed’s best solo albums, what he should have made in 1972, instead of Transformer (which isn’t terrible). It seems like taking Lou Reed solo albums as whole entities is a disappointing and embarrassing endeavor, so let’s go song by song and see if we can find more Lou Reed Greatness.

The Blue Mask: A quest for Greatness
1. My House-
a. Arrangement: Bass is a little cheesy, but the build at the end is cool.
b. Worst Lyric: “I've really got a lucky life
my writing, my motorcycle and my wife
And to top it all off a spirit of pure poetry
is living in this stone and wood house with me” Ugh. Wow. That first part of the verse sounds like someone’s overly earnest dad, which would be bad, but becomes unforgivable with his spirit of pure poetry shit.
c. Overall: Well, the build and repetition of “Our house is very beautiful at night” is pretty good. Can it overlook Lou Reed getting out the ouiji board and letting a spirit soar across the room? Maybe. And maybe this album isn’t so bad...

2. Women
a. Arrangement: These guitars are dripping in some lame effect, but their minimalism and chiming conversation is nice. The bass moans like it belongs in the background of the Little Mermaid’s Kiss the Girl though.
b. Worst Lyric: “A woman's love can lift you up,
and women can inspire
I feel like buying flowers and
hiring a celestial choir”
c. Overall: That worst lyric only won by a hair. The whole thing is embarrassing and terrible. A stanza about how Lou Reed used to look at women in magazines when he was in his teens. Maybe the worst Lou Reed song. Maybe the world’s worst song. My opitimisim takes a hit.

3. Under the Bottle
a. Arrangement: Kind of a bar band-lite. Does he need to borrow a distortion pedal?
b. Worst Lyric: Ooh woo weee son of a b.
c. Overall: Something about the concise quality of this song (and being next to the black hole of “Women”) make it seem okay. It’s forgettable, like bad radio rock. And it’s neatly composed if a little lazy. Not about to join “Heroin” in the substance abuse pantheon of rock and roll.

4. The Gun
a. Arrangement: Cool. The guitars are reminiscent of Galaxie 500, the bass is out of the way. Good groove all the way through.
b. Worst Lyric: This one’s got some of Lou’s good economical writing. I won’t pick out a lyric. I love when he says “I wouldn’t want you to miss a second.”
c. Overall: Yeah, alright. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but hey, neither do debates about the right to bear arms. Let’s keep going, with hope.

5. The Blue Mask
a. Arrangement: Sweet! It’s a little cheesy, but there’s a whole minute and a half of guitars squealing and stuff at beginning.
b. Worst Lyric: I’m not going to nit-pick. The delivery of muscle-rock isn’t the cool I go to Lou for, but this song is sweet and at this point I’m not complaining.
c. Overall: Yes! Yes! This has a sick ending. I’m on board, taking from the Station to Station playbook never paid off so well.

6. Average Guy
a. Arrangement: The distortion pedals are glowing, and even though this progression is nothing new (most of Coney Island Baby comes to mind), it’s still got a Bowie sheen that keeps it from veering into forgetablitly.
b. Worst Lyric: Um. So the whole thing is a little... inconsequential. Let’s go with “I worry about my health and bowels”
c. Overall: Things are taking a turn. This is about on par with Under the Bottle, in that it’s traditional grounding keeps it from being too hateful or likeable.

7. The Heroine
a. Arrangement: Just a great sounding electric guitar and vocals.
b. Interpretation: Um, so the love of a good woman will keep you together?
c. Overall: Another in the catalog of forgettable attempts at love songs I think. Something about the plaintive melody gets undercut by the repetition and overt self-seriousness.

8. Waves of Fear
a. Arrangement: Awesome. The ending is sweet. Two stallions trading leads and rhythm. Thundering along. Well done everyone. The bass is given something constructive to do as opposed to just ruining everything like it did for the first half of the album.
b. Best Lyric: “I curse at my tremors I jump at my own step!” The mic is maxing out and stuff. The whole part is awesome. And bizarre. Also “What’s that on the floor?”
c. Overall: This song is the most triumphant tribute to freaking out I’ve ever heard. I love it, and it makes no sense. Why is this song about being afraid of everything around you? Drugs, I would assume. Anyway, for what it is, with a skidding shuddering left channel guitar making the case, it’s more than passable. It’s funny though.

9. The Day John Kennedy Died
a. Arrangement: Ugh, the world’s most annoying bass sound is back to rule the middle of your mind. And who’s the lady back-up singer in here. Like these little cymbals clipping along though.
b. Baby Boomer Unbearablitiy: Big Time. I understand this was a monumental event, but this song is more insult than homage.
c. Overall: If we’re to believe this moment meant that much to LR, then we’re allowed to wonder if there’s a better way to phrase it than “I dreamed that I could somehow comprehend that someone
shot him in the face.”

10. Heavenly Arms
a. Arrangement: Big and broad. Great melody. Perhaps the only Lou Reed song that could use more instrumentation.
b. Does the delivery live up to its ambition: Well, he says “Heavenly Arms” a lot. But the melody holds up where the writing’s weak. It’s a really pretty song.
c. Overall: A fitting send off to an album of songs with narrow and specific concepts, that, if broadened, could’ve been a lot better.

So, it’s not Loaded Part II, but it was unfair to expect that. Safe to say Mr. Reed doesn’t really know what he does best, and at this point thought furrow-brow seriousness and earnesty was the way to go. And for... like 3, maybe 4 songs the instruments do what his writing does erratically at best, and we’re with him. For the rest, it kind of feels like someone’s cleaned up former biker-dad bashing it out on a Friday in Rockford. And I guess that has a place.

Skip All the Lou's: A Quest for a Decent Solo Album pt. 1

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of Lou Reed to our musical landscape, and larger culture. Those Velvet Underground albums are the bedrock upon which the ideals of avant-garde rock were lovingly placed, and it would be hard to think of a worthwhile band (from, say, 1970 onward) that isn’t largely indebted to them. Just as Jonathan Richman predicted in 1970, in a way the Velvets have become as important as The Beatles. I have a simple test to prove this to be true: Name a year both bands released an album: Go ahead. 1967? Okay The Beatles- Sgt. Pepper’s. Whoa, hard to top right? Bam! Velvet Underground and Nico! How do you like them bananas? To even argue their importance seems redundant. Let’s move on.

The only real problem is that there are only those 4 VU albums (let’s disregard the Lou-Reedless and unavailable fifth album, as I haven’t heard it, and this is mostly about Lou Reed). Where does one go after she or he has shredded with the Black Angel, eagerly waited with Waldo in the box, closed the door, and watched that train go ‘round the bend? I, myself, will still have periods where I’ll listen to one of these albums, and even though I’ve heard it many times, I’m still impressed, I still enjoy it. But there’s less than 40 songs.

Here is the interesting thing about both the VU and The Beatles. After you’ve really listened to their canons, and really made them something you know, you should probably switch to listening to Bowie. He’ll safely get you through to the 80’s and then it’s time for American Indie to come and save your bloated soul. I know there are solo albums from all of these songwriters (hell, both Moe Tucker and Ringo Starr have albums. God help us all), but I’m increasingly convinced that try as you may, the solo albums merely tarnish the image of the songwriter, especially the further you get from their seminal band.

And for no one is this more true than Lou Reed (well maybe George, certainly Paul, and of course John...well Lou Reed for now). Listening to his solo work turns him from brilliant writer, to likely idiot savant, who merely was around an era we now think is awesome, and happened to write shit down, probably on accident. The arrangements, which seemed so sweet as dark and shrill, all turn into Las Vegas schmaltz with such a swiftness and consistency you can’t help but wonder if maybe Sterling Morrison doesn’t get enough credit (this suspicion is confirmed if you ever hear John Cale’s Paris 1919).

But there are still green shoots. One gives up on Lou Reed only to hear “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Street Hassle” and “Berlin” and wonder if maybe there’s still more Reed-brilliance out there. And you want to believe! You want your mind blown again! You want a brilliant beat-poet-avant-garde-leather-rock-hero! Of course you do! We all do!

Coming Soon! A track by track break down of The Blue Mask, an album that is known as the heir to the Velvet's sound!

Hello Internet, long time...

Jobs right? Either you can't get one, you hate the one you have and can't get anything else, or maybe you like your job but it isn't paying you shit. Or maybe it's just a control thing, the work's not that bad, they pay is more than enough but damn, will I ever have a say in how shit get's done around here?
So, I have several 'jobs.' I have my day job at the MCA. It's great, really can't complain. I love the museum, I really like my coworkers, the day to day responsibilities aren't very taxing, and I usually feel pretty good about life at work. The rub: it's three days a week and I make let's just call it not-a-whole-lot an hour. Then there's a paid gig with my alma matter doing sound design work for theatrical shows. Again, wow, what a great gig. I can work mostly off my laptop using some of my more technical and creative skills, I get paid, get to help put together a piece of collaborative art every semester. The rub: it's emotionally draining, and I don't know why. I get throw-shit-against-a-wall temperamental during the last two weeks of rehearsal no matter the show (usually not at rehearsal, although I'm afraid that one day I will just snap). And a career in sound design would probably mean a career in theatre, which is for better or worse, a world that still feels foreign to me. Long story.
Then there are two internships, one with Gallery 400 and one with Thrill Jockey. Again, wow, what the fuck right? Both are fantastic. At the Gallery, I'm learning and developing a skill set, I'm meeting so many incredibly talented people, I get to be intellectually engaged with work. Fucking fantastic, not getting paid. And Thrill Jockey, let's put it this way, if I was independently wealthy and never had to work again I would still come in on Monday to put records together at the office. The rub: neither pays, and at this point anything resembling a personal life has been obliterated. This has lead to some awkward over sharing, TMI, and just dicking around at my jobs because, well, I barely have any personal time.
Now, don't get me wrong, the last six months of my life have been incredible. I took on more than I could handle and I've handled it. Maybe not A+ handled it, but much better than my usual average. I feel much more capable than before, much more aware of myself and my limitations. But my schizophrenic schedule has left me with the same question, what do I actually want to do with my life. And my answer is still, well, everything.
Or be a musician. That's always the real answer, be a musician. I'm not going to get into the bloody details of why I am one but don't really consider myself one although I've always kinda been one no matter how hard I try to be one or not. It's really like saying to myself, I want to be a Christian. I am one, but I'm not really one you know, don't go to church enough, am too critical of the church at large, feel uneasy with how it makes others feel, etc. But like, I am one, sorta kinda. I just really don't feel good about calling myself one and then having to take on all the responsibilities of being one. With music, it's more like, I don't thing I'll ever be able to pull it off, like I'm staring down a series of failures and panic attacks and puzzled looks and yeah, not a whole lotta bread.
You know that slow moaning thing some people can do with their voice where it almost sounds like they're purring. Like a square wave slowed down so much that all you hear is clicks. I've caught myself making that sound a lot without realizing how long I've been at it. It's like the sound of an old hard drive when it was processing too fast. But I'm processing nothing, just making sound to soothe my own brain. I've started dancing and head bobbing a little too emphatically when listening to music in public lately. I'm doing that half assed literary speak thing where I pick up little idioms and poetic expressions that don't fit me at all and carelessly toss them around until they lose their intended effect. I wonder how far off I am from catching myself singing "Turtle Island" in a broken falsetto at work while staring blankly off into space. It's then when I think, man, I'm never gonna make it. Adults with responsibilities don't do that shit. Who am I trying to fool?

Songs:
Beach House-Gila


Gives me the shivers, that little two note guitar line just kills me. My Beach House obsession is not waning.

Round and Round-Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti


So, I never was really into Ariel Pink. I saw a disastrous set at U of C years ago where we dubbed his band Tears for Suck. But hey, he's still going isn't he, and apparently improving. I guess it's a sin to diss his earlier material now that his aesthetic has taken off in certain circles, but fuck that aesthetic. I like the self assured production values Arthur Russel cribbing way more.

Flying Lotus-Robo Tussin/A Milli Remix


This has been around for a while, but I felt like posting after seeing Flylo at the Double Door, which was absolutely amazing. He's a consumate performer who knows how to get a crowd moving with sheer enthusiasm. He dropped this one and everyone went crazy.

Sorry for the mixed up embed formats, the internet is being a pain in my ass, and I'm too lazy to find a solution.

Your Sound Design Questions Answered

    I haven't been writing much lately as I've been busy with sound design, band, day jobs, etc.  However, I did write a little something during some rehearsal downtime.  It started out as something like "letters to a young sound designer" but I thought it might be interesting to those who don't really know what I mean when I say sound designer.
    A sound designer finds, creates, or otherwise wrangles sound effects and music together for a performance, and makes sure those sounds are played at the right time for the right length of time and at the right volume.  Beyond that, the definition get's sticky.  In a larger theater you might have a music director, a composer, a sound designer, a sound technician, and a sound board operator.  In smaller "store front" theaters, a sound designer might (frequently) have to do all the above jobs.  Sound Design doesn't require a standardized technical knowledge, just enough proficiency to justify getting paid for it.  The vague job requirements and varying job description will lead to a lot of ass busting to learn to do something you have no previous experience doing or (more likely) lead to a lot of embarrassing moments where you have to tell a director that either his expectations are unreasonable or totally reasonable but he hired the wrong guy, so, sorry about that.
    What the job always requires is the ability to think and learn quickly, to be articulate and specific about a very abstract and temporal phenomenon in more or less plain language, and of course, the ability to be creative in a collaborative setting, all of which require trial and error.
    If I could offer some on the job advice to anyone starting out in Sound Design, it would go something like this:

Equipment matters more than you ever want it to.  This pretty much runs against every bit of punk ethos left in me but it's unavoidable.  The purpose of a sound design is to help transport the audience into the world of the play, either the physical (diegetic) world or the emotional/psychological (non-diegetic) world, and to do that, you don't want a shitty lofi system coloring and distorting that sound unless the play is in a shitty lofi world.  Those plays sadly don't exist.  Learn what equipment is meant to do, what it can do, and what it will never do. 

Yes you can do it, but do you have time?  The quicker you learn this lesson, the better.  It's always tempting to say yes to complex and time consuming design choices during the beginning stages of a production when you have weeks to get everything done.  But when you run out of time and fall short of your grand promises, you're going to look like a lazy flake.  On that note, be organized, save everything twice and create more than one draft for each big moment.

You can say no to the director, and you definitely should learn when and how, which is never in front of actors and extremely delicately.  Also, never use the word "no."

Music is universal, musical tastes aren't.  This is without a doubt the most frustrating aspect of the job. 

Listen to hip hop.  Reason 1, hip hop producers largely use the same tools as you.  Reason 2, hip hop producers (and sample based musicians in general) tend to think of what a sound as a mutable material, they listen for what it can be rather than what it is.  Being able to make completely new music out of say, two or three records requires a clever ear and deft technical proficiency, both of which are paramount to sound design.  Reason 3, nothing sounds better after being stuck inside a theater all fucking day.

Be a geek, or at least be comfortable being called a geek.  You're working in theater after all. 
If you think you're too cool for the job, you're right, so don't do it.

Have a personal creative outlet, realize that this job is not that.  Remember that scene in Charlie Brown Christmas where Lucy asks Schroeder to play Jingle Bells over and over again until he frustrated plunks it out note by note?  It's gonna be like that sometimes.

Think about how the sound feels.  If the design is good, no one will be paying attention to it but they'll be subtly affected by it.  One director said it best, "With gunshots, it's not about how real they sound, it's about the emotional impact of the shot."

Unlike other design elements (staging, scenic, lighting), when you make a mistake it will be big and obvious and it will piss people off.  Don't take it personally.

Always shroud your techniques in secrecy.  So you spent a whole week figuring out how to power a remote speaker in the back of the house so that marching band effect can sound like it's slowly coming closer and filling the space?  No one fucking cares.  Not to say it wasn't a good choice, but no one is going to pat you on the back for an effect that could have been adequately accomplished by clever fading and panning.  But when a director wants something to sound like it's underwater and all you do is put a tremolo and reverb on it (which takes 15 seconds) and she looks at you like your a wizard, just let her be mystified.  

Have a huge collection of music, listen to it all the time.  Always good to have jazz, classical, and ambient on hand (anything "moody" or textural and or rhythmic, without words). 

Have the cast send you their favorite party jams and play them during preshow warmups.  You will be their hero forever.

Pitch in to help someone else when you have some downtime.  Again, everyone will love you.

Avoid Tom Waits, run, fly, flee.  Delete it from your hard drive.  When directors mention his name (trust me, this happens with staggering frequency) feign ignorance and change the subject.

At the end of the day, realize that you're working behind the scenes and there's not a lot of credit or awards being handed out.  Sometimes the only way to tell you've done a good job is when no one complains and you get asked to do it again.

White/Light @ MCA=Totally Sick

Everywhere that I work is cooler than everywhere that you work.  Don't believe me?
Do you wanna see John McEntire, Steve Shelley or Lucky Dragons play at the MCA?  Of course you do. I could not be more chuffed.

Take off those clothes, you're one of them.

    I'm excited to see that the Nitsuh Abebe has his own column over at p4k.  I've been following his excellent and always thoughtful blog, A Grammar for a couple weeks now so I'm excited to see  his missives in a more well trafficked site. (Although, are p4k columns really read that often?)  On his first outing he compares Lady Gaga and Joanna Newsome while taking on the neurotic self conscious politics of cool in the indiesphere.  Definitely worth a read if you even remotely care about any of the above topics.  I'm still very interested in this debate about the politics of who we find clever or innovative and who we find trite or escapist, but it's personally losing it's relevancy in my day to day life.  Maybe my circles have changed but it's not often I find myself in a place where I'm actually embarassed to admit my fondness for something because of hip politics.  Interning at Thrill Jockey certainly presents those moments, but the mocking tone there is more like dudes at a bar talking about basketball players than some deleted scene from High Fidelity.

    It's hard to really spot a time or place in my life where I ever really felt threatened by other people's tastes.  High School had it's moments, but the cool-indie-rock-kid crowd was small and pretty self consciously not very hip and most of them were my friends and bandmates.  I felt the war for what's cool was always being fought online or in New York or some other place where I had no voice.  Even if I really cared (and I did) about the micro trends of New York, it was  so beyond my control or influence, a world that only meant something because I decided it did.  And in small ways it still does, but the ground level arguments about what's hot and what's not never seemed to be as crucial or as mean spirited as they did online.  Actually watching people get riled up and pissy with each other over personal tastes is not usually all that fun or productive.  As much as I like a good spirited debate, once someone get's smug or self important or just plain condescending, I'm usually out.  And living in a place as fractured and contentious as Chicago, I feel like it's more beneficial to be open minded and curious than to have an entrenched viewpoint.  If there's something dilettantish about that, I don't see why that's a particular problem, what's a scene without enough people who are willing or naive enough to try to walk in as many circles as they can?  As long as your interest is genuine, what do you have to worry about?
    I'm not saying this just because I want everyone to be friendly and pat each other on the back.  No, if anything we need to expect more from performers than to just pick a sound and stick to it.  If bands want to narrow their focus and dig deep into a sound (The Walkmen) that's totally credible, enjoyable and rewarding.  But bands who tap into more material, who are taking more risks and seeking out different ways of making music are essential to "the fringe" or whatever you want to call it.  This is why very good bands who make very enjoyable and impressive albums (Surfer Blood, Real Estate, Smith Westerns) can ultimately be a letdown when compared to their influences.  They don't seem to mean much?  I'm on the fence here.  Not every band should straddle themselves with the expectations of recreating music or being utter visionaries and I'm willing to look for originality and fresh ideas from bands who don't tout themselves as THE NEXT THING.  But I agree with Abebe, if you're going to wear your tastes as a merit badge of adventurousness, then I don't see the point in mocking bands for their misadventures. 
    If that makes a lick of sense.  There's also a refreshing Liars interview up and it's good to hear these guys in in top form once again.  A HL review is in the pipeline.

  

Perfecting Sound Forever

   So I just finished reading a fantastic little piece of nonfiction called Perfecting Sound Forever and I highly recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in recorded sound.  Greg Milner follows the history of recorded sound and the contentious debates that continue to surround it.  On the way he touches on critical theory, psychoacoustics, war profiteering, music criticism, media theory, a little bit of Adorno, and some old fashioned fanboy gushing (Pavement get's mentioned a couple times).  I think this book is actually every one of my geeky interests rolled up into one single serving.  Milner is not so secretly an analog enthusiast but he's quick to point out the wild eyed doomsdaying and magical thinking endemic to certain analog purists.  

    One of the most important things I've taken away from the book is the idea that the trajectory of musical technology was not preordained.  There has always been a push towards high fidelity, having the purest representation of a sonic event, as well as a push for innovation, for creating new sounds with new technology.  It's a classic example of a tool built for observation having irrevocable effects on what it observes.  It's also always been a contentious subject, every new technology having it's utopian boosters and dystopian naysayers.  This ongoing battle hit a fever pitch with the advent of CDs.  What's most depressing about the CD chapter of the book isn't that so many people thought digital audio sounded terrible (a lot of people still feel this way) but that it was spurred by an industry desire for a format change.  Neither artists/producers nor consumers were clamoring for a better format, and many of them thought it was a useless ploy.  I always assumed that analog purism was something that came later, an old guy nostalgia but also a punk rock fuck you to a once very expensive medium.  I didn't realize that digital audio was a contentious subject from day one.  Also, the technical standards of CDs (bit depth, sampling rate) were sort of rushed into use.  That is, CDs could have been more hi-def given a couple more months in development.  And of course the greatest irony of all, that digitizing music would eventually be the industry's undoing.

    This got me thinking about the current Tape/Vinyl revivalism.  I'll admit that the most annoying trait about format fetishism is the built in nostalgia.  You kinda wanna shake these people and scream "Get with it, things change, stop trying to escape into the past.  The future is..."  you get the point.  But, there's actually a foward looking element in all this nostalgia.  Becuase you don't have to listen to records and you don't have to put them out, doing either is a conscious act, a rebellion against the norm.  It can seem like a pointless rebellion but it's not just empty posturing.  It's also not an anti-social behavior.  It creates spaces of cultural exchange where there are alternatives to the convenient and disposable (or just fickle) nature of pop culture.  Although it smacks of a fad, I think it really stems from a desire for community, the very same same desire that fuels webforums and blogs.  

    The debate for me isn't just about sound quality.  Yes, I think records sound more musical and therefore better.  But it's also about having the artifact, the fetish object.  Yes, it's conspicuous consumption, no it's not very "green," it's more expensive/not free (This debate could go in circles though.  How much energy does it take to make an Ipod?  How much did that Ipod cost?  Who get's that money?).  But I buy a record, the band makes some money, the label that put out their album makes some money, the record store makes some money, I get something permanent and usually desirable in exchange.  It seems so quaint doesn't it?  Consumerism that doesn't feel like consumerism.

    Far be it from me to say this is the only way to listen or to be actively engaged with music.  But it is effective and actually quite rewarding.  And it's thriving, which is something the industry as a whole is certainly not doing.  Polemics aside, it's a continually interesting phenomenon, especially as it consistently confounds so many people who try to shrug it off.

New/Old Flylo tracks

Check them out.

Required Quarterly Destroyer Love

"Even on bad days, you know you can’t feel that much worse than Dan Bejar typically does. Sometimes his guitar solos sound exactly like your soul crying out: full of pathos, longing, frustration, and a touch of mania, they whine and flail, but eventually relent back into the fold of the melody, momentarily satiated.” 

--Anna P (Daftpop)

   Don’t mean to over-quote this site’s internet BFF but this is exactly what’s so endearing about Bejar’s work.  Some critics are quick to point out that Dan’s serpentine lyrics and reoccurring characters don’t yield much insight over repeated listens.  Some people think he’s full of shit and maybe every once in a while he is.  But the man is a self proclaimed maximalist and he’s more of a performer than he’s given credit for.  His ability to inject real emotion into his baroque styling is by far his greatest talent.  They call it “moments of unexpected sweetness” in the Destroyer Drinking Game, and although it’s not his most reoccurring trope, it’s the one I’ll drink most heartily to.  Example:

Cause when a breeze is blowing,
it’s just Crystal Country showing us
that everything must break to be beautiful
and, honey, that’s what I meant when I called and said -
“This is fucked”…

   If you’ve heard the man deliver this line, you know what I’m talking about.  This is why I stand by This Night so firmly, it’s his most overtly romantic album and while possibly being his most guarded and cryptic work.  And even if This Night isn’t your favorite, you’re still not really a true Destroyer fan unless you can name a moment where you were unexpectedly hit right in the gut by one of his songs.  It’s why his fans will listen to the 12 minutes of “ambient disco” and the intentionally clunky opening passages of Bay of Pigs.  It’s because you know there’s gonna be a payoff at some point.  For me, it’s when the handclaps come in and “You were on the side of good” and suddenly you go from doing the awkward shoulders only dance to full on getting down in your living room.  Alone.

And you say something like “Fuck you Dan Bejar, fuck you indeed.”  And some how, I think that’s exactly what you wants me to say.


reblogged from http://hypocritelistener.tumblr.com/

A New Home (Possibly)

Hey peeps,
I'm testing out a move from blogger to tumblr.  Tumblr has a lot of things going for it including a more flexible interface and most importantly, the ability to upload tracks without using a 3rd party site.  My hope is that I can get more music and other non-rant posts out more quickly and open this thing up a bit.
I've had no probs with blogger and I'm going to keep the blogspot running for now.  Maybe we can have an open relationship.  Let's hope.  Here's the new girl:

hypocritelistener.tumblr.com

Right now it's just the old posts but soon there will be more content than you ever hoped for or even wanted.  Stay tuned.
-Nigel

Valentine's Day Mix

First, some more Spoon rumination via Cokemachineglow:

http://www.cokemachineglow.com/record_review/5118/spoon-transferenceCP-2010

I really love that CMG does counterpoint articles, especially when it's about an artist I really love like Destroyer or Spoon.  Alan and Calum make some good points here, but I still think Spoon have their heads up their asses.  But for sure, I'm glad the album is something different (even though that difference highlights what is still unfortunately very much the same).  And also, I don't know Britt (I did meet him once after a show, he was a perfect gentleman) so I'll back off a bit with the personal for now.  Also, sorry for the John Mayer rant, it won't happen again.

Oh, and a mix!

I got Chicago's finest sons The Clams here with an AMAZING new song, some Beach House, my favorite Sea and Cake track and some other songs for a lonely Valentine's Day.  Or maybe even a romantic Valentine's Day, or maybe just for killing time while you're on the internet.  Much luv...

 Hypocrite Valentine  by  nigelharsch

Closer to the Clams-The Clams
Silver Soul-Beach House
Parasol-The Sea and Cake
We Could Walk Together-The Clientele
The Letter-The Box Tops
Sun Was High (So Was I)-Best Coast
Oh How I Miss You-Broadcast
Type Slowly-Pavement
September Gurls-Big Star
Little Dreamer-Future Islands