Its cool to hear something from Phil Elverum who I havnt listened to since The Microphones Glow, Pt. 2. Listening to this in hindsight makes me feel as if I should go back through and listen to some of the later Microphones albums and try to get a hold of some earlier Mount Erie material although I doubt I will, as I get burned out on even the best after a few listens before I want to move on to the unheard and yet to be listened.

I also havnt heard Julie Doiron since Eric’s Trip’s Forever Again which had a much more indie/punk vibe (along with a serious 90′s vibe) than this current album. The contrast between the two plays well because the even though the feel of Eric’s Trip albums doesnt match exactly with the feel of this Mount Erie album, the subject matter of the lyrical content isnt that far off.

The lyrics tend to all deal with loss in some form another, but with a more refineded post-emotional sadness- more like a nostalgia or reflection once the actual apocolypse is over, if like me, you think of relationships as loading, arming, and flying a nuke into the sky that is thrilling in the preparation, boring by mid flight, and disaster by the end. This album would then be written somewhere in the Fallout 3 phase.

Accordingly, some of the songs are slightly more up lifting in that they dont take seriously the downside and others much more alone and dark. “You Swan Go On” stands out to me as the track I most frequently go back and replay. I’d like to say its because it stands out from the other tracks, but I am not sure how much it truly does.

A better explination would be that I have been listening to The Capstan Shaft’s Erudice Production which has made me more acclimated to brevity in tracks, as each track Erudice Production tends to be under a minute and a half. Dean Wells has managed to reinspire me to listen to music that has a Neutral Milk Hotel sound that I played out to myself too long ago and thought it would never be enjoyable again.

There are some videos on youtube that contain clips of Vetiver performing with Juana Molina, whose album Un Dia I have somewhere around here but havnt bothered to listen to as of yet. There is also a connection between Vetiver and Devendra Banhart but I didnt bother exploring this as I never really got into Banhart’s music.

I’ve also found some interesting hip hop beats in the form of Onra, although I know nothing about them (him? her?). I’ve been on a fairly big hip hop instrumentals kick since I picked up the latest Flying Lotus album and an instrumental version of Oh No’s The Disrupt (I couldn’t take his rhymes any longer, I felt like they were killing his production work), along with the Samarai Champloo soundtrack.

I’ve also found this guy Depakote, his beats are a little amateurish but I think he has promise.

All in all I found a lot of good ideas for things to check out off of Boomkat’s listing of the top 100 for ’08, although I tend to be one to two years behind the new shit on account of the fact that I only dedicate a quarter or so of my music researching time away from soul music, and only a fraction of that away from the 70s and 80s.

I’ve also picked up Glass Candy’s Deep Gems. Its in keeping with the Blondie influenced disco-electro vibe that they left off with on the After Dark compilation. Its the kind of music that makes you want to do coke at a bar with candles that shine through red glass casings while wearing your sun glasses at night. This particular album is a collection of their leftovers (b-sides, rarities, etc.). Lyrically its in keeping with their disco phase material, consisting primarily of non sensical phrases that drum up the appropriate imagery with sensual delivery.

I’d really like to find more of this sound. So far, the only other italo/electro/disco revival group to really catch my attention was the Chromatics (see earlier posts, i’m sure i’ve wrote about them somewhere).

I found a pretty cool blog at Astounding Sounds. It has all the elements of a decent music blog in that he appears to update regularly, throws in appropriate background info to place it in context, and provides the requisite linkage. I wish I had more time to really follow all the good music blogs out there but its hard to find the time when i’m working so much, addicted to halo 3, and slowly developing adult attention deficient disorder. I have a hard time doing all my grocery shopping and laundry on a regular basis let alone follow every interesting amateur blog (although there’s a lot of them).

For a couple last minute loose ends:

The Bamboos – old school soul revival group based out of Australia. Unfortunately they occasionally try to rap, but the rest of the time their making decent sounding soul. Its not blowing me away like when I stumble into a Lamont Dozier song that I cant stop listening to, but its solid in the way that can replicate the desired retro sound much in the way that Saturday Looks Good to Me did for me back in 2004 with Every Night. Kudos to that shit.

Hank Thompson – I picked up a copy of a compilation of his songs called Dance Ranch Songs for Rounders since I heard he died last year and had no idea who he was. Its got a classic country on the honky tonk side feel. Lyrically its full of references to drug abuse, domestic violence, violence to animals, and generally being an out of control hick. It was a good find as it rounds out my heavy rotation of Ray Price’s Night Life and John Prine‘s self titled.

I always feel sad when I listen to old country albums not only because of the content which tends to be on a down note, but also because I feel like its just an outdated form of music that is quickly loosing relevance as the U.S. drifts away further away from a manufacturing (let alone agrarian) based economy and the number of young people going to college for a quick brainwash puts everyone on the same page. Maybe its just that I live in New England the only interaction I had with country music was at town fairs where old white people in identity crisis-es got together with their trashy kids to go one rides operated by equally trashy carnies.

Although I use to work those fairs as a kid, so i’m not totally sure where that places me.

I’m writing in you today (tonight) because I have stumbled into Sonny J’s Disastro, which is such an amazing album that I cant figure out why it doesnt show up on hardly anyone’s radar. 

This is the album I have been looking for in all the wrong places these past couple years. I keep thinking DJ Shadow or Diplo or RJD2 or Boom Bip might have something new and decent- but all i’m left with is some lobster and scrimp mix or an AEIOU, which while good, are far from satisfying.

Disastro is his debut album that was let out going on a month ago. I cant figure out why this isnt taking off like a rocket full of potential. I feel its goofy and cutesy in the way of The Go! Team and upbeat in the way of the Jackson 5. Its an electronic album that isnt afraid to get acoustic and heartfelt like if Holly GoLightly contributed to a more sober version of the last Cut Copy release and the whole thing was dipped in a glaze of pop, thrown in the oven for awhile and served up ironically cold to an internet public that appears to be largely ignoring them.

Better yet- it picks up where The Avalanches Since I Left You left off. As I write this now, its not showing up on pitchfork, metacritic, its listed but not reviewed on allmusic.

And I havnt even finished listening to it yet and I feel this way. 

All a quick google search turned up was one mediocre review on Drowned in Sound. 

If this album doesnt generate some buzz soon, this is going to be my number one under rated album for 2008. I feel the same way about this album as I did The Chromatics‘ IV when that first hit, even though it did eventually come to fruition as Night Drive. 

I thought I had really lucked out because Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals turned out to be better than I have expected. Right as I was starting to figure out the major flaw with Feed the Animals, that while it appears that Girl Talk is coming from a place of abundance on this album (it felt like he was stretching at times on the last one) the formula change from the last album has left this one low on the repeat value. 

Disastro clearly takes its place of the top party album in my itunes for this coming work week. 

It in conjunction with Lindstrom’s Reinterpretations (i’m a little late on this one) are taking over my electronic listening time. Reinterpretations is another great front to back electronic album that I fell into after listening to Prins Thomas’ Prins Thomas Presents Cosmo Galactic Prism and reading that the two were frequent nordic collaborators. 

Speaking of Nords and predictable intro phrases on a paragraph- I went to go see the At The Gates renion tour last night at the Worcester Palladium. I wanted to make it over there again tonight for the P-funk show, but last nights Swedish metal has left my ears still ringing. I suspected that they may have altered the sound of the guys mic to give his voice the quality that it use to have a dozen years ago. 

I dont know why I started going to metal shows again. There is something about metal culture that comes across as living in its own backward bubble, and of being far more superficially ignorant than other genres. I feel like metal music is just no longer relevant in the world and pockets of it like that of Worcester come across as almost time lapses of long hair, a fixation with evil (whatever that is), and tattoos that are meaningless. Maybe i’m getting old. 

I was pissed because the bartender kept passing me by for about 15 minutes until he finally served my friend who bought my beer with his. Why he was obviously ignoring me I had no idea. And I was pissed because we showed up a little late and only saw the very end of Municipal Waste, who happen to have a sound more to my old fashion speed metal taste.

I came across a band called The Gaslight Anthem and picked up The ’59 Sound recently. I cant tell if they have a lot of promise or if i’ve been brained washed due to my own peculiar life experience of having parents to subjected me to some much Bruce Springsteen at an early age that, combined with coming of age with a childhood girlfriend who shared in Gin Blossoms in the background car drives, and when I went to go see the Murphy’s on St. Patricks day 2000 right after Sing Loud Sing Proud hit but before we all realized it was the first album of a slippery slope to sell-outdom, and my college days of pounding beers while listening to The Replacements a decade after their last major album. 

I read that they are on joining up on the Warp Tour. This information alone makes me want to never read or hear another thing about who they are personally. I’ve had too many bands that i’ve stumbled into with high hopes only to find out the band members are tools by which point I can never listen to their music again due to the negative mental associations. 

Other notable picks up are Yusef Lateef’s The Blue, a great jazzy bluesy album roughly in the manner of the Cowboy Bebop Soundtrack (how bad is it that I have such a low comprehension of jazz music that this best comparison I can come up with). 

The Yusef Lateef fits well with my current Bert Jansch phase. I have had his self titled apparently famous folk album from 1965 for a couple weeks. I had never heard of him until scanning some forums. It was a well worthy find, he at times reminds me of Gary Higgens or at least makes me sentimental for his Red Hash album.

Sorry for the lack of images on this post, I have some photos of at the gates in my cell phone, maybe i’ll stop being lazy eventually.

The gentleman who stands upon the speaker while playing the melody to popular tunes on his sax-a-ma-phone has come back out for the summer. 

I remember him for routinely being in the Copley area at approximately 5pm on a regular basis last year during June and July. Luckily he wasnt doing “You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman” which was his old standby and always got the most response out of black folks passing by. I seem to remember him setting up more on the other side of the street over by the Trinity Church. 

His name is Nicholas Arons, and apparently someone else had taken notice as I found a short clip of him breaking it down on GooTube:

And Boston is getting warmer. Both in general celebratory “spring is here” attitude and in fahrenheit degrees.

Its the time of year where only half the week is still cool enough to wear a sweater, when you start to feel emasculated for working an office job where you actually wear sweaters, and when when you wear a sweater to work on a day that you misjudged the day’s high only to find yourself pulling the sleaves up your forearm which then stretches out the cuff and prevents them from staying up, as you walk around with flared out cuffs and sweat on your face wondering why you couldn’t just grow up to be an alcoholic like you always dreamed- taking the Night Train to work.

Aside from that, Viga has some new spring wraps that contain spinach and feta. One is named Pollo Sarno and was damn good. 

Matt Taibbi was recently at the BU Barnes and Noble in Kenmore. I thought about going but then I thought of all the Rolling Stone articles I had read by him and how much he does slob Hunter S. Thompson’s knob like its corn on the cob.

Its not that his writing is bad, but I feel like he still has yet to carve his own unique style- or maybe its that Hunter has too much of a shadow. Or maybe I went through too big of a Hunter phase to appreciate Taibbi for what he’s trying to do and have unreasonable expectations. Maybe I’m getting old and nothing seems worth a damn outside of feta wraps.  

He gets to write for a living and live in New York. I work a job I hate, write things even I won’t even attempt to publish, and live in this backwater. Being second rate is at least being something. I’m honestly surprised that a quick wordpress search didn’t yield any bloggers who wrote about the event.

It makes me wonder the size of the Taibbi ego (for the sake of quick talk, we’ll call it the “Taibego”), is the Taibego a demure animal, lazily writing articles at its leisure? Or is it an active beast, out on the move finding roots and sticks with which to prod it to the larger primates of the right wing jungle, the D.C. based junta. Or is it insecure, checking wordpress at 3 a.m. to see if anyone took note of his B Town appearance? If your reading this now Matt, leave a comment to give me some legitimacy. Does Jesus Christ ever smile?

I went to the Brookline Booksmith the other morning and found that James Frey is coming to the Coolidge Corner Theater ($5), so get out all your old half taken prescriptions to throw at him.

Like rice on a wedding day for a three time divorcee. Pigeons on adderall, squirrel’s on meperidine (cue the investigative report background track). 

Originally I had gone there to pick up a copy of John Powers’ Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. So far its been a pretty good read although i’m only a hundred or so pages in. I thought it would be an appropriate time to learn about some Vajrayana with all the recent Lhasa riots and the most ridiculous accusations by the People’s Republic against the Dali Lama. 

Its the biggest missing-the-point characterization I’ve comes across since Cat Stevens was denied entry into the country. 

Or at least it appears so on the surface. If the Dali Lama and Cat Stevens are both harboring secrets I wouldn’t know it.

Since he’s going to be in yet another Indiana Jones film (at least its not done by Michael Bay) – I think its fitting to mention that while I’ve never seen Blade Runner, I read Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (inspiration for Blade Runner) about a month ago. Blade Runner.

It was the first sci-fi novel I’ve read since one of the most influential authors of my childhood, Arthur C. Clark died. By chance I was able to get a copy of both Valis and The Divine Invasion from Cheap Chic in Allston. I’m a little ways into Valis and it seems alright, I like that it doesn’t appear to be sci-fi and is more a straight up lit novel. 

They have price stickers on them from a store called Kinokuniya with a price of RM 44.24. Seeing as they came from an asian book store chain and the original price was in Ringgits they must have come from Malaysia.

Consider the implications here- 

B rate novels no one wants from a deceased genre based author that have traveled all the way across the world to end up in a second hand shop I wandered into one weekend and they only cost a fucking dollar each!

And I write about them in blog no one reads!

Taste the excrement excitement. (it taste like old books feta wrap matt taibbi self referential humor corn on the cob)

I was finally able to finish listening to the Alan Watts lecture series Out of Your Mind. 

I even went back and listen to a couple of the CDs twice, especially the parts on Hindiuism, Buddhism, and Zen. 

The collection of lectures helps put things in perspective when you have no starting point for reference, it would have been a large help earlier on when I was reading the Bhagavad-Gita, the Dhammapada and some books on Theravada. 

Some of the terms he throws around are a bit out of date. He relates some eastern concepts to things like Jazz, compares the usefulness of having hermits and shamans in human society to the beatniks of the time, and talks about people “digging” on different things. 

This isn’t too much of a hindrance for anyone who has gone through a beat phase in their life, and by this point I think anyone who took the time to acquire an Alan Watt’s series of audio lectures has possibly even had a second beat revival in their bedroom notebook or on their livejournal.

The main gist is that all of our understanding is based on relevance. We don’t sincerely know one thing from another without having something to compare it to. This carries over to our personalities, as we interpret a string of events occurring in the now as actually being a cohesive motion that goes from past, to present, to future. Akin to how watching a reel to reel movie gives the impression of motion, when in actuality your just seeing still frame after still frame. 

Through this we get the impression that the thoughts in our brain are more than just thoughts, that there is an actual thinker behind those thoughts- when in reality there is no thinker, just an empty void.

He goes into Hinduism in explaining how Brahman/Atman are connected and gives a good analogy of people’s connection to the Self as similar to the nerves in your body. Should the nerve cells in different locations of your body be personified, they would only know their one limited experience, and never put together that they were all part of the same body (i.e. without your brain your hand would never know it was part of the same body as your foot). We are all then in turn manifestations of one God/Brahman/Atman/The Self/Shiva whatever you want to call it playing with itself by creating drama and trying on different roles, this play is known as Lila. 

Watts describes this as being the hiding phase of the big game of hide and seek. The seeking phase is when you try to look inward through contemplation/meditation to find this Self, and enlightenment occurs when you actually find it as you become the universe knowing itself.

His description of the universe as a peopling universe had never occurred to me- that we as humans are created out of the all the same elements found in the universe and are therefore the universe becoming conscious of itself. 

Thats how he covers some of the large macro topics. He gets down to the nitty gritty in going on about Zen Masters and Guru’s by discussing the ways in which different traditions will help a person to reach enlightenment. 

The Zen stuff was new to me, as I had only read very little on Zen previously (only Suzuki‘s famous book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind). His goes over in details the method by which students were traditionally accepted into a Zen school and the means by which the master would give them an unsolvable problem (koan) to dwell on while practicing mediation (zazen).

The idea is to drive the student into a double-bind as a means of forcing them into mental liberation. They crank up the pressure to solve the problem until the student realizes there is nothing left to realize, that the problem was not real to start with, that the whole game of trying is absurd as there is no where to go and nothing to get to being with.

He goes on to discuss how Guru’s work in a similar manner. The Guru will wait till a student comes, will tell the student that they can reach liberation by just letting go. When the student does not get what that means, the Guru will then create elaborate practices and hoops for the student to jump through until they finally can convince their self that they have earned it because people feel they need to suffer for things before they can arrive at the place they already are.

I found it to opened up Mahayana to me more than before. I had only been focusing on reading up on Theravada under the auspice that it was closer to the original teachings of Siddartha Gotama. A bias on my part with no real basis, although I had read in Huston Smith’s World Religions that Mahayana in a way was Buddhism going back on everything it tried to hard to avoid being (i.e. superficially God like). 

He is able to do a lot of linguistic comparisons as well. Showing the connection between words like Yogi which are derives from the same sanskrit word (Yug) as the english Yoke or Junction that help to make it more clear through a straight connection to western society. 

My big flaw is that all I do is read about it without practicing. At the same time Watts notes that trying to achieve enlightenment or liberation is itself a hindrance out of the attachment to the practice. That the harder you try the more you are unable to get it because you need to stop trying and just realize it.

Watts is the best I’ve stumbled into in the way of eastern thought translated into common parlance. Nothing I can write here would honestly do his metaphors, bad jokes and ability to convey his knowledge base the justice they deserve. 

He also makes some interesting references to others, namely Krishnamurti. I’m hoping this will prove worth at least some further reading. I was able to find a copy of A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of Sankara translated by Sengaku Mayeda at the Brookline Booksmith. 

I feel that all of this is of interest to me only because it serves to reaffirm my preconceived notions about life. That God doesnt exist in any personified sense, that there is no point to life in that the only point there is would be one you made up, and that we all live in the sense that only thing that dies when we die is a bunch of trivial memories that none of us can keep straight and a few inclinations towards meaningless things- or that we are all human and anyone of us is potentially the other so what difference does it make. 

Eastern thought kind of codifies this and fills in the gaps. It lets me know that its alright to think the world is a large amount of bullshit and that feeling like things are meaningless and pointless isn’t depressing but is realistic and actually the way it is for those who aren’t locked into the massive multiplayer game called spouse, house, kids and career.  

My trouble is that I can understand it intellectually till I’m blue in the face while being entirely unable to feel it and live it. I need to do my homework to find a good Buddhist center in the Boston area. 

Further Reading:

What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula (academic overview of Buddhist concepts)

Mindfulness in Plain English by Henepola Gunaratana (instructions for starting basic mindfulness meditation)

Bhagavad-Gita Eknath Easwaran Translation (basic translation and explanation for westerns)

-Aurgasm had done a post a few months back on Lefties Soul Connection. I had first heard of them about a year ago when I had picked up Fabric Live Vol. 26, which included their song “Welly Wanging” in the mix. This lead me to Skimming the Skum. While it had a strong funk sound it felt far too generic and lacked enough character to keep me interested (or even allow me to remember much about it) which was a real shame since I liked its brief appearance in the fabric mix.

-I came across the Risco Connection‘s Sitting in the Park and have been addicted to the title track. It was originally released back in ’79 as a 12″. I was surprised to see Discogs doesn’t show “Sitting in the Park” as appearing on any compilations, since the great tracks are usually pulled and slapped together with like minded things. They do appear to have been included on a couple of the numerous Loft Classics compilations (see previous entry for more on Loft Classics).

I feel they have a good disco-with-hints-of-dub vibe going with some commonly used beeps and tweets in the background, as if the spirit of King Tubby was lurking in the studio. 

Discogs showed the release as being under the Black Rose Music label. When I checked on the label itself to see if there were other artists of similar nature it appeared as only the Risco Connection and for some reason David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane?

I’m thinking this must either be an error or a different label with the same name. I can’t imagine there would have been any plausible connection between Risco Connection and David Bowie. I was dismayed because I would like to try and find some more disco/dub. Allmusic had no leads either.

I never thought of the two as mixing this way and I am now convinced it can make an killer under explored combo, especially when its disco in the front- dub in the back. 

-While on Allmusic I noticed an ad something related to Kanye West that I dont care about. The art in the ad looks really familiar and I can’t place where I’ve seen something very similar to it before. 

I want to say its almost identical to the cover of an old Mandre album but I don’t think that’s accurate. I thought it might be similar to a Gino Soccio cover (see right) but that doesn’t quite fit either. I could just be dreaming all this up because if you’ve seen one bugged out cyber funk face you’ve probably seen them all. More likely than not the artist who did the art in the ad just pulled a hodgepodge of outer space imagery from the period- but I still feel that the emerald face looks almost identitcal to a specific album I’ve seen.

I guess that’s something to keep in mind for this weekend’s trip to In Your Ear and Nuggets.

1.) The American Boogie Down: America’s Lost Disco, Funk, & Boogie

This compilation consists of both a mixed track and a collection of separate full tracks. The mix begins strong and funky smooth and spacey with Galaxy‘s “Visions of Tomorrow” and continues into the Destiney in Time Band‘s “You Bring Out The Best In Me” for what I think compose the best two tracks on the whole thing. 

The rest gets increasingly disco centric, but retains that full and solid disco feel, never getting too lightly, flowery or fluffy by ensuring a constant feed of funk with intermittent bursts of background synth or some horns. It had all the expected disco themes going down, moving, grooving, making heat. It manages to keep good flow and I didn’t ever feel like it had many weak points after a few listens.

Best of all, to me this truly was a compilation of “lost” songs. Too often I find compilations of supposedly lost material that is either familiar or should have stayed lost in the first place. This album contains neither.

2.) Disco Not Disco

I think the idea behind this was to create an album of questionably disco tracks from the around the time period by taking tracks from various post punk, new wave, italo, early synth/electronic, etc. that appeared to at least influenced by the disco/club culture of the early 80s.

It had a number of good tracks, including Maximum Joy‘s “Silent Street/Silent Dub” (you can hear the track from the other side of the original 45 here), James White and The Blacks “Contort Yourself” (you can find a rough live version here- apparently he’s still going?), and Vivien Goldman‘s “Launderette” about a listless laundry based love affair. 

It contained some other interesting tracks, including Six Sed Red‘s “Shake it Right“, Gina X Performance‘s “Kaddish” (you can see a more famous track by them here) or A Number of Names‘ “Sharevari” (you can watch an old school detroit vintage ’82 breakdown of Sharevari here, or a more recent canadian college student here).

For further reference:

DiscoStyle.com review of American Boogie Down

I was over a friends place the other weekend, in one of his roommate’s bedroom/attic spaces watching videos by Gunther. 

I had only become aware of him once before when I was over there. But out of sheer chance it turns out that Boston is the city that is tentatively being considered for the first ever Gunther-Palozza on May 20th (which is ironically my friend’s birthday..)

I feel confident that going would consist of me wading through a sea of gay men and college girls whipped up into a Gunther-fervor.

Since i’m entirely out of the loop on popular music I have no idea if Gunther is a social meme for anyone in the 18-22 demograph. While I have a fetish for obscure electronic music centered around out of date image identities from the 80s, I find Gunther to be too far pop for me to actually listen to (even if done for the sake of comedy).

The videos on the other hand are fucking hilarious. I must have watched his videos at least 6 times each since saturday night. Close inspection shows whoever did them has a good hand for pausing on picturesque frames that amplify the cheese as some mock drama goes down, such as two men fighting for the rights to neck a girl.

If Gunther-Palozza actually happens I dont think I can afford to miss it. I’m already missing Cut Copy and I feel that this has the potential to be absolutely horrid. I always have a begrudging respect for those who really lay it all out there to lampoon life as nothing more than the lila that it is, whether its Gunther doing euro-club culture or someone like Electric Six poking fun at David Lee Roth style cock rock.   

A quick wikipedia run through notes that he is actually a model and club owner from Sweden named Mats Soderlund. He portrays himself as a swinger and claims to be 29 on the Gunther website but according to other sources he is actually closer to 40 and has two kids.  

Further References:

Gunther post at oddculture.com 

Irish Times was an your average sports bar, although I was told it had a second floor that I didnt bother to explore. The house brew there was 2 dollars and I got one since I always like to try things I havnt had, even if they’re cheap. I strongly suspect that the tap for their house brew leads straight into a keg of Bush.

I was able to obtain evening only tickets straight from the box office, so I got in around 7ish. 

I’ve been out of the metal scene for so long that the only bands playing that day that I recognized were Siolent Green, Overkill, and Shadows Fall. 

For the most part I felt entirely out of place. I’m not sure that I get metal any longer. I keep looking for some deeper meaning or cohesive message but nothing comes up. Its not like street punk where its clearly straight up rebellious against popular society (at least in theory, or it use to be) and often political, but instead seems to just focus on being dark and evil for the sake of being dark and evil- but not legitimately evil, almost more corny evil. 

And I could stop question every phrase I heard to see if it sounded like a probable metal band name.

Shaved Ice.

Or instead make up metal band names out of phrase I just heard. Evil Cornievl. 

There’s part of me that wants metal to be more anti capitalist too. I never understood why metal would focus so much on things like nuclear war and demonic hell beings but never said straight up fuck it to the system. 

I had a hard time trying to figure out who I was a decade ago that this kind of music appealed to in such a strong degree and appears so superficial at this age. I think my initial draw had more to do with the fast paced guitar, as I was more into the 80s trash and speed metal. 

Here though, I felt as if everyone was buying into the same ideal of cool but that there was no clear reason or source of why, maybe outside of a more fantasy based rebelliousness. 

I still think a large portion of the people over 20 who still attend these shows are more locked into a self image they dove head first into during their formative years, and pulling out now would lead to an identity crisis that they dont ever think about- there by going through the motions even when they would otherwise not quite click. 

Either way, this was the way I felt early on in the show when I first got there and watch a couple of bands play. It wasnt until Bohemoth took the stage at around 8:30 (I think?) that I began to feel the vibe a little more. 

I had only passingly heard of Bohemoth from a friend of mine who was at the show with me. It consisted of four Polish guys who get decked out in the metal war gear with white face paint and a growl. The stage show was fairly impressive, but I couldn’t figure out why the bassist kept going in back between songs to put some kind of powder in his mouth that he would then hold and eventually stomp his foot with a spit into the air about 40 seconds into each song. It was a cool unexpected gimmick the first time but seemed odd to repetitively. 

After that Shadows Fall took stage and were about what I had expected. They were well received and originally from the area- although their stage show seem to rely on the guys dreads and constantly bouncing between a red and green throw light.

At the very end this came out Dimmu Borgir who put the most done up show of the night. They had these swiveling strobe lights that shot out every which way, the usual satanic imagery, some mock crusades like footage rolling in the background the whole time, and a pretty good stage presence. They appeared to be the most heavily bankrolled of the bunch. 

The guys came out with the war armor gear on, white face paint, and the like- similar to Bohemoth in look but subtly different in sound and intensity.

All of my inability to figure out the point of it lead me to wonder what the point of taste in any variety of music really is. It all comes down to whatever you buy into, and the reasons you buy into it could be anything- social standing among a peer group, desire to be better by feeling “more (insert random scene as an adjective)” than others, or maybe even just shock value as a means to prove your ability to run yourself or get attention. 

I would like to say that wearing all black, getting some pointy piercing below the middle of your lip and tattooing pictures of hell spawn on yourself is retarded in that its thinking illusory images are real and that its silly in that the only reason half the people who do it are any different from anyone else is because they try so hard at intentionally appearing that way, that buying into a subgroup and stereotype is only caused by insecurities and the laziness of those who dont want to create a unique self identity by taking in the entirety of their lives influences thereby becoming walking contradictions who forget the golden rule- the harder you try the lamer you are.

Thats what I would like to think, but really what’s the difference between that image and any other image anyone chooses to buy into or try on. Thinking of yourself as a metalhead is no more valid than thinking of yourself as american, a pet owner, a Northface jacket wearer or a bike riding delivery guy; they are all equally pointless and are only made real out of everyone’s collective imagination that their life even has a meaning. 

And I can never understand the lyrics, so who knows what I missed.

According to this website Loft Classics is a mix of songs frequently played at exclusive parties thrown by a guy named David Mancuso that went on to influence many a DJ. The Wikipedia article on him gives some insight into who he was and ironically mentions that he played his parties on a pair of Klipsch speakers which is the same brand that I recently purchased after reading they were the best for use on a macbook and noticed that Amazon is pricing them so low that they couldn’t legally advertise them at the price they were selling..

I found Loft Classics to be a decent collection of disco tracks with a few notable names on the album like Dennis Coffey, Lonnie Liston Smith, and War that perked my interest. War pulls through with “The Chase” that feels like disco in the vein of Sun Ra or Cedric “Im” Brooks, with a smooth primal sound with some great flute and keyboard breakdowns that evoke images of a bengal tiger weaving through a party jungle- at least in my own head.

Dennis Coffey’s “Wings of Fire” had a eerily familiar guitar riff that I couldn’t seem to place, while I was actually disappointed with Lonnie Liston Smith’s “Space Princess” which I felt had some horrible lyrics even by the standards of the era and genre, and was generally a disappointment since I tend to associate him with one of my favorite all time funky songs “Afrodesia“.

Miroslav Vitous’ “New York City” was a face paced female funk track.

All of the album was good, but for the most part outside of the War track I found it to be not all that memorable a collection. Nothing on this really blew me away or made me want to go out and find volumes 2-15.

In all fairness though, i’ve had a serious problem with listening to Cut Copy’s newest In Ghost Colours.

When I first heard this album I thought it was good but only “Lights and Music” stood out (which I later found out was their first single off the album- good choice since its the easily accessible) but since giving it two or three listens its totally exploded into my head. It feels like a large departure from their previous album, with this one being much more guitar orientated, busy, and party driven. I felt that Bright Like Neon Love was much more sober and grounded and in the vein of the kind of shit some hipster turned young urban marketing professional would throw in a VW, Intel or Gieko commercial.

My favorite point thus far is probably the mini-peak at “Too Far” and then the sudden drop into “Strangers in the Wind”. I’d like to say that there’s a few other great tracks like “Feel the Love”, “Unforgettable Season”, “Hearts on Fire” or “So Haunted”. Yet, the more I list the more I realize they are all great tracks and I like the whole flow the album. Each one manages to balance the album’s sound and its own uniqueness, keeping it from ever feeling formulaic or predictable yet giving it a distinct voice as a whole work when compared to other electronic-og-dance hitting the scene today.

While I know that Cut Copy will never have the world wide influence that Daft Punk has had on so many young people with an ear to listen, I do feel that Bright Like Neon Love and In Ghost Colours could easily be another generation’s Discovery and Homework in inspiring otherwise generic pop fans to seek out how exactly this could be made.

For any local readers, they are coming to Boston on May 12th at The Paradise- but its done sold out.

Further Reference:

Cut Copy’s So Cosmic Mix (off of their blog)