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.