Exquisite replicas of Obsession, Eternity, Polo Sport, and Drakkar. Spray. Cup hand over nozzle. Push plunger firmly:

Kool Keith and Tracy Morgan are the same person.

So, the friendly neighborhood SPD just dropped by Comeback at Chop Suey, and told us that it was illegal to have our usual male nude posters up inside the club (they’ll be back later about the noise). Now the posters have little strips of paper that say “censored” over the naughty bits. I’m no expert on municipal code, but that sounds like bullshit to me. Any lawyers out there on Line Out wanna weigh in?

In the meantime, because the pigs can’t censor Line Out (and, yes, NSFW as well as blatant self-promotion):

Jump in my ride…….It’s Friday Night!

Bell & James - Livin’ It Up (Friday Night) (1978)

The Field was denied entry to the US and has had to cancel upcoming dates, including their scheduled Seattle date at Nectar:

It’s with the utmost regret that Axel WIllner aka The Field has been forced to cancel his date at Skidmore College, New York tonight and all West Coast dates including Coachella. All members of his newly formed band were denied entry to the United States by immigration officials upon arrival. As well, his gear and instruments were refused entry into the country. We have no comment at this time as to the reason for why this occurred.

Fans and all involved should know that every option was exhausted to rectify this disastrous situation and on behalf of The Field and his band we are all deeply saddened by the outcome of what has transpired.

Given the months of practice and preparation put in with his band for these dates and the fact that his gear has been sent back to Stockholm, The Field aka Axel Willner is in no position to be able to continue on solo so therefore forced to postpone his west coast dates.

But better said in his own words:

“i´m truly sad to inform that my west coast tour have been cancelled. my band didn´t get in to the country and i feel that i cant perform as interesting as i need to without them. hopefully we´ll be back on the east coast pretty soon without any problems and do the new set up that i hope people will appreciate.

my biggest apology goes out to all the people that were looking forward as much as us to attend the shows that were planned. next time.”
/the field

Too bad, I was really looking forward to seeing how the “live band” thing was going to play out.

Update: From the all-knowing Division list: “word is that immigration “didn’t like their appearance.”” Awesome!

In the comment section of this post, music critic Dave Segal selected Four Tet’s set as the best in the DJ-Kicks series.
My pick is still Kid Loco (which ends with a smooth ode to the Boeing 747), but Four Tet deserves major praise for adding close to the end of his selection Group Home’s “Up Against The Wall (Getaway Car Mix).” Only a few of us know of this Group Home, and those of us who know of this Group Home also know that this particular track, “Up Against The Wall (Getaway Car Mix),” is one of DJ Premier’s highest musical achievements. The sad, slightly echoed piano loop, the dry street beat, the hard machine grind that opens the track—it could not be more or less than this perfection.

(The only person I know who appreciates classic TTK enough.)

I don’t have time right now to say much more than the above about last night’s epic, awesome Simian Mobile Disco show, but Donte Parks has taken some pics that at least give you some idea what the whole spectacle looked like:

So, so rad.

It’s going to be +100 degrees all weekend. In years past I’ve felt that they’ve had the dominant summer festival lineup. This year… not so much. Anyone actually wish they were down there getting sunstroke? I would have liked to have seen Aphex Twin and Portishead, but I’m not sure there’s anything in that desert that’s significantly more compelling than what’s happening in four festivals within a day’s drive of Seattle (that’s Sasquatch!, Block Party, SP20, and Pemberton, if you weren’t keeping track).

Her Space Holiday at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco:

Overheard on the premises: “What day is it today?” Answer, “Today is the 24th.” Response, “Of?”

Her Space soundcheck of “The Year in Review”:

Before the Guitar Hero days, you could pretty much guarantee yourself a shit-wich of a video game if it had anything to do with music. Aerosmith and KISS can attest to ’90s gaming cash-ins of the highest order, and let’s please not talk about those Sega CD games where you had to make videos with footage of C+C Music Factory, Kris Kross and Marky Mark.

But hip-hop stars have a relatively decent record with games. The Wu-Tang Clan whooped each other up in a pretty good fighter on PlayStation 1, while the Def Jam roster has beat the snot out of itself in a few good brawling games as well. 50 Cent, sadly, proved himself to be the motherfucking G-I-M-P in his ego-flaring virtual debut from 2005, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, but the “relive my hustlin’ days with unlimited lives” journey still managed to sell over one million, so where does that put Fitty?

In the Middle East with a rifle, naturally.

Gaming rag EGM “broke” the story in their last issue about the inevitable sequel, 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand (ughhhhh). I can’t believe this preview got published with a straight face; if you’re looking for unintentional comedy, EGM’s preview has you covered.

50 and his buddies fly to some vague Middle Eastern country to play a benefit concert, get stiffed for their payment (a diamond-encrusted skull, no less), and end up embroiled in a massive firefight with several warring factions over the aforementioned bling.

A hip-hop star doesn’t get his precious trinket-skull and starts killing “vague Middle Eastern” guys with bandana-covered faces and automatic weapons? This really exists? The article gets better, explaining that ol’ Curtis himself “really challenged us to create a more compelling setting…he felt like he’d been there, done that already.” You mean, been there done that exploiting the modern minstrelcy of gangsta rap, so now it’s time to cash in on another culture’s stereotypes in the form of a polygonal, megalomania-fueled killing spree? Come gimme a hug! And in case you’re wondering whether the game’s developers are street enough:

“Expect some co-op puzzles,” Blean says. “You will find these locked areas that require you to call over your homey to open up inaccessible areas, boost you up to a higher area, and so on.”

BOYEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Games sites magazines have gotten a lot of flak lately for puffing up awful games, so it’s good to see EGM give this G-Unit merchandising circle-jerk the critical eye it obviously merits: “50’s new game stands poised to outclass his previous effort with ease.” Ouch! Those game critics are hard as fuck.

The Mae Shi, PRE, Past Lives, Midwife, Talbot Tagora
(Vera Project) London noise punks PRE’s debut record, Epic Fits, contains 15 tracks and runs just under 27 minutes. So there’s plenty of spastic, paint-splattering fits, but none of them are especially epic (the longest clocks in at 4:41, and it’s an aberration). The boy/girl vocals recall Huggy Bear minus the legible Riot Grrrl politics or anything approaching the catchiness of “Her Jazz” (“Dude Fuk” comes closest), but the blast beats, garbage-fuzz bass, detuned guitar thrash, and nervous, careening rhythms suggest something entirely more hectic. Smell-y L.A. neon punks the Mae Shi are practically pop by comparison, dressing up nasally chant-along singing with fried guitar and faux lo-fi synths. Fun fact: Former member Ezra Buchla is the son of pioneering analog synth maker Don Buchla. ERIC GRANDY

Bronze Fawn, Lords of the North, Panther Attack!
(King Cobra) Lords of the North sound pretty much like what you’d expect a band called Lords of the North to sound like—their big blasts of distorted guitar are laced with some psychedelic soloing while the eerily monotonous vocals take a cue from the heavy side of stoner rock. The opening track on their self-titled debut EP, “Souls Come Rising,” is a slow, muddy song that finds a place for both classic rock tambourine play and demonic chanted refrain, “We’re the Lords of the North, we’re the Lords of the North.” “Follow the Falcon” is a little more epic—the volume gets turned up on everything and the vocals (about a black winter and “only four hours of light”) scream out from low in the mix. Of the six songs on the CD, only two fall below the six-minute mark and every second is driven by unrelenting heaviness; they’re not so much songs as the anthems you hear while marching to a darker place. MEGAN SELING

You can listen to Lords of the North at their MySpace.

Facts About Funerals, Star Anna, Vanderbuilte, Tailenders
(Comet) A couple weeks ago, Star Anna gave me goose bumps. She was performing an Old 97’s cover at the Round, a monthly music and art series at the Fremont Abbey. The song was the embittered “Wish the Worst for You,” and her strong, country- tinged voice was laced with the crazy passion of a women scorned. It was even better than the original, and Star Anna’s vocals are just as perfectly emotive in her own material. That night she also played a song called “Restless Water,” a haunting and sad story about a serial killer and his prey. Her lyrics balanced precariously between being the sacred victim, the spooky-as-fuck criminal, and the sad narrator—her imagery transported you to the foggy, dark, damp scene of the crime. I can’t recall ever being so scared by a song. MEGAN SELING

Comeback: Dee Jay Jack, Colin Self, DJ Colby B, Porq, FITS
(Chop Suey) Comeback is on with another experiment in the volume of lubricated inducement. Portland’s Dee Jay Jack (Pony alum) sprays out seamless manifold cuts of obscure Italodisco and contemporary hits. Jack will personally see to it that the physical condition and proximity of bodies in the building are wet and banging. Colin Self is a rising star in the electro torch singer genre, reminiscent of classic queer disco pioneers Alison Moyet and Soft Cell’s Marc Almond. DJ Colby B spins the mad mashed fantasy. She will master you and the speakers to the floor. Then all gets told in the Fitsian fold. Comeback in lights, taste your neighbor and get off. TRENT MOORMAN

Peanut Butter Wolf, DJ Spinja
(War Room) L.A.’s Peanut Butter Wolf is the founder of Stone Throw Records, a label that has released important works from three of the underground kings: Madlib, MF Doom, and the late Jay Dee. The hiphop label, which also has subdivisions that reissue rare grooves, has about it the seriousness of a research and development center. The producers who work for STR have grasped the science of funk, know the history of black American music, collect and reformulate jazz, soul, funk, reggae, and hiphop. Peanut Butter Wolf’s mixes on the turntables are all about this understanding, all about exploring and deploying this specific branch of beat knowledge. CHARLES MUDEDE

There’s also Rudy and the Rhetoric at Nectar (which you can read about in My Philosophy), and Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis (which you can read about in The Score).

Believe it or not, there’s even more to be seen—search through our online calendar.

In case you weren’t excited enough by the idea of seeing SMD do their thing live, watch this.

You know The Source Magazine right? Self-styled “Bible Of Hip-Hop Music, Culture & Politics”? Here’s the current issue, maybe you’ve seen it:

In it is obviously a story on the D-O-Double G, as well as a great story on the dangers of Southern hiphop’s favorite beverage: promethazine-laced cough syrup. Also in this issue, as with every issue as long as I can remember, is the Unisgned Hype column- where budding, unsigned talent is showcased every month. This venerable space has showcased the likes of Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, Mobb Deep, DMX, and Common before they became superstars of hiphop (and beyond). I say all that to say this: this months’s Unsigned Hype?

It’s Seatown’s sons Dyme Def!

This is the definition of ‘a good look’. If you want to know what else would be a good look, I’ll tell ya- showing up to the 2nd Edition of The Corner, taking place in the Rendezvous’ Jewel Box Theatre tomorrow night. Charles Mudede had this to say about the first installment:

Where is the true hiphop? One spot that has it regularly is the Jewel Box Theater at the Rendezvous. Here, once a month, there is a gathering of local hiphop heads. This gathering is intimate. Meaning, there is a close relationship between the audience and the performers. This closeness (and smallness) is its truth—a truth because this how it all began, in small spaces, in small rooms, in the small hours of the night. What is documented in the bibles of hiphop—Beat Street and Wild Style—is being practiced at the Jewel Box Theater.

Charles couldn’t be more correct- that basement flavor was in full effect last time, and it was positively intoxicating to go to a top-tier local rap show in such intimate quarters. And I’m not just saying that because my crew played last time, or because I’m hosting tomorrow’s edition; that’s just how it was.

If you’d like to see the Unsigned Hype that is Dyme Def, the authoritative voice of the streets D. Black, or Seattle’s dusted-savant clown prince Sonny Bonoho, you’re just gonna have to make sure you don’t miss The Corner tomorrow night. See you then.

The Sun UK says:

The junkie singer, 24, is to be quizzed by police after claims she HEADBUTTED a Good Samaritan who hailed her a cab outside a bar.

Rehab star Amy, said to have PUNCHED a second victim in the face, sank to a horrific new low while high on Class A drugs.

Onlookers told how the married singer also SNOGGED a mystery fella at a nightspot and shocked punters by overturning tables and drinks.

She was later seen smoking drugs in the street, walked into a lamppost, and riled a cabbie by paying only HALF her promised fare home.

An onlooker said: “She was off her face, throwing drinks around and turning over tables. Amy screamed, ‘I am a legend, get these people out. I want to take drugs’.”

You go, girl.

15-year-old Miley Cyrus is writing her memoirs, for somewhere between one and nine million dollars. Who wants to review it for me?

Dub in slow motion. Dub in dream motion. Dub is the examination of existence not in its complete state but its broken states. Dub is broken music. And the greatest broken album is the Scientist’s Scientist Encounters Pac-Man. With dub, “oppression a shatter.”

Radiohead is so green they can use it as an excuse to not have to fly to New York to play Late Night with Conan O’Brien. Clever dudes. When Conan introduces them he picks up an LP instead of a CD. I don’t know if I’ve seen that before. Paradigm shifts all around…

Foals will play Sub Pop’s 20th Anniversary Party at Marymoor Park July 12-13.

Every generation has its way to dispose of old, unwanted albums. Vinyl: fill a crate and drag it to a garage sale. Cassettes: get some Scotch tape out and record your new faves on the old tapes (NKOTB transforms into Alice in Chains’ Dirt). CDs: cover a wall with their flipsides, breaking a few on occasion to make the dorm room look “tough” (or, as an engineer pal taught me so many years ago, sit in a passenger’s seat while a friend drives really slowly, then hold CDs against the moving pavement until they melt).

Nowadays, the delete key isn’t nearly as dramatic a farewell to the music we eventually tire of, but the disposability of MP3s has its own quirks. I’m not sure how everyone else here downloads music, but I tend to hit MP3 and torrent sites like I’ve just won a Toys ‘R Us Shopping Spree from the ’80s, only my cart isn’t weighed down by oversized My Pet Monsters. I’ll download stuff from sites’ “most active” lists just for the hell of it, then pile on all matter of other recommended tunes, to the point where half of what I grab, I don’t listen to more than once. I’ll occasionally clear out obvious junk from my “recent downloads” catalog, but this week, I’ve been doing some deep cleaning. Everybody has their fair share of outdated or embarrassing albums, though I guess it’s interesting what piles up when everything is free—Keane, Jonathan Fireeater, a really bad J Dilla/Pet Sounds mashup, that Redman/Method Man album, the William Shatner record from a few years ago, the most recent Foo Fighters records … When these musical whims and crapshoots collect dust, they become sad mirror images of your darker musical side, as if you owned a ragged puppy that you didn’t feed or bathe on a regular basis.

But what really struck me were the number of decent-sounding records that I am never, ever, ever going to listen to in their entirety. Even after deleting the most obvious stuff, I’m still sitting on 130 GB of music—and there is no sensible reason to have this much on here, on top of the CDs and records I already have. Who’s to say I’m ever going to listen to these three Califone albums on repeat when their folder is just five away from Buffalo Tom’s Let Me Come Over? I see the latter, get a rush of My So-Called Life nostalgia, and bust out “Taillights Fade” like a damn fool. Do I really need the second Dead Boys album—as if I don’t ignore Young Loud and Snotty enough? I’ve never gotten through Disintegration Loops I and felt immediately eager to put parts II, III and IV on the stereo. I no longer give a shit about the Russian Futurists. I never actually play these Bloc Party songs. And so on and so forth, until I run into… Ryan Adams? Maybe I should delete everything with the words “Ryan” and “Adams” today.

It hasn’t all been shame and crap—Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci is currently reminding me how they long to feel that summer in their heart. After that album cheered me up, I started queuing up some other dusty gems—the bedroom pop of Suburban Kids with Household Names, an old Morphine bootleg, the dark-wave of Memphis’ Lost Sounds—but then my dumb ass had to go and do a daily torrent site check. Whoop! The Tim & Eric comedy CD is out! And this band name, The Child Readers, that sounds pretty cool, so I’m gonna grab that, too.

It begins…

Via Reuters:

One of last year’s most infamous Internet sensations, the “Don’t tase me, bro!” arrest of an excitable college student, is getting a new lease of life from former Clash rocker Mick Jones.

He told Reuters on Wednesday that he has written a song by that name for his second album with Carbon/Silicon, the band he formed with fellow punk veteran Tony James.

“It’s gonna go like this, dun-dun-dun … Aaaargh!” Jones said backstage at the inaugural NME Awards in Los Angeles, after he received a special honor for his inspirational work and then played two songs with Carbon/Silicon.

Umm…

Here’s his new song/video “Hairbraider”:

Lyrically, it’s got nothin’ on “Real Talk.” But at least he doesn’t mention bodily fluids…

Yes, that’s absolutely the cover, it’s what they chose. They looked at a bunch of mockups, and that’s the one they decided to go with. It’s not a joke.

See the artwork here.

My friend: “Megan, have you heard the Beautiful Clarks?”

Me: “I’ve heard the name, I think I’ve heard a couple songs. I can’t remember…”

My friend: “You should check them out. At the last couple shows the singer wore a dress and army helmet onstage. He’s kind of crazy. But they’re good.”

Me: “What do they sound like? And why was he wearing a dress?”

My friend: “I dunno, I think he just wanted too. But they’re like… alt country/folk stuff maybe?”

Me: “And why the dress?”

My friend: “I have no idea.”

Here’s the Beautiful Clarks’ Billy Hatcher in that dress and army hat:

And here are some of their songs, that are good, but still don’t explain where the dress and/or army helmet come in:

“Sweet Gravel”

“What Kinda Fool”

“Laid Up”

Photo by Josh for soundonthesound.

In this week’s Bug in the Bassin, Donte Parks tells you why you should not miss Simian Mobile Disco tonight at Neumo’s:

Seemingly taking a cue from both camps, Simian Mobile Disco’s live setup strikes a balance between spectacle and practical, placing the duo onstage around a circular table with a laptop, MIDI controller, drum machine, and synths, surrounded by a series of upright “intelligent” LED towers for the synchronized “ooh shiny” effect. The table contains an entire studio in compact form, giving the duo freedom to reconstruct their tracks on the fly, with enough inherent variability in their analog gear that it will never sound (or look) exactly the same way twice. It’s the full realization of the term “mobile disco,” appealing to gear heads as well as those who demand showmanship in a live performance.

And in this week’s Underage, Casey Catherwood talks to BARR’s Brendan Fowler:

The guy simply holds nothing back. In a recent conversation, he was candid about a recent point of controversy in his life. BARR was asked to play a couple of shows with the bands AIDS Wolf and Jay Reatard, but Fowler simply couldn’t roll with those band names.

“It would be like calling your band Jay Faggot,” he says. “No one would let you call it that, but you can get away with calling it Jay Reatard.” He canceled his performances at both concerts and put together an art show to challenge artists with inappropriate monikers and call for social accountability. It is currently hanging at Rivington Arms, a contemporary art gallery in New York. “I’m not coming at them from any sort of personal thing, but those band names are just supposed to stress you out,” he says.

BARR headlines tonight’s Club Pop at Chop Suey.

And finally, last week’s installment of The Score highlighted some of the best of this year’s Jazz Festival, including tonight’s Brotherhood of the Drum performance:

Brotherhood of the Drum (Wed April 23 and Thurs April 24, 8 pm) showcases a singular species in music, the drummer-led band: Michael Shrieve, Byron Vannoy, D’Vonne Lewis, and Ben Smith, as well as festival honchos Matt Jorgensen and John Bishop present their various ensembles.

There’s plenty more, check out our online calendar for everything else happening around town.

A loop is a sample or section of music that repeats seamlessly when played end to end. Loops can made and edited through the use of delay effects, looping based software, pedals, tapes, and record players. Looping is used, featured, and heard so much these days that it has practically become its own genre. Creating and playing with loops live is a beast. You have to be able to play, hear, execute the parameters, start, and stop the loop in time with what you’re playing.

Seattle cellist Gretchen Yanover (Built to Spill, KD Lang, KJ Sawka, Northwest Sinfonietta) uses a Line 6 Loop Sampler. She steps on the looper for a starting point, plucks a melody or staccato feel on her cello, and steps on the looper again for the stopping point of the loop phrase. Once that loop is going, she modulates down a third or a fifth, plucks the same melody in harmony, and loops that. Then she bows the original phrase legato, loops that, then bows the third or fifth that was modulated to, and loops that as well. There are four cello’s going at this point. Then she plays freely over the quadra-loop for twenty seconds and loops that for a fifth loop. Finally, she puts the bow down and plucks freeform notes and rhythms. It’s aquatic, layered, scenic, and incredibly beautiful. She can go ten loops deep and make her own symphony right before your eyes. Seeing her construct the loops live is like watching Edward Scissor hands trim the hedges. You’re like, “How is she doing that?” But she’s doing it right in front of you, so you see exactly how she’s doing it.

There is one Dan Paulus who is looking for a looper. I asked him which one he was thinking of going with:
Paulus: Seems the Red Boss unit and the green Line 6 are the loopers of choice.

What will you be looping?
I’ll mainly be running guitar in, but also synths, toys, drum machine, vox, whatever. Expanding the parameters.

Yes. Parameters. And toys. Expand them.
I saw Katharine Hepburn’s Voice at the Blue Moon and their bassist/drummer was using an Akai Headrush. Talked to him a bit about it after. Looked pretty solid and easy. Maybe not as many bells and whistles as some of the others. Researched it online. Some reviewers loved it, some hated it.

Another Dan, Dan Rapport (Blue Scholars, Red Eye Flight) is a loop master. I asked him to talk loopers:
Rapport: Loopers are cool! I’ve been doing a lot of stuff down at the Triple Door just with and acoustic and a looper. They definitely take some practice to use (getting the loop to work in time) and I think it’s a lot easier to get a short loop that works over a longer loop. Long loops have more of a chance to get out of synch. I use the Line 6 Delay, which only has 12 seconds or so of loop time but it works well enough for me. I did notice when I saw Battles (who’s entire sound is based on looping) that they all used the Echoplex Digital Pro which apparently is the best and it’s midi synchable so there’s no way to get off on your timing.

No way to get off? Get off, Dan, get off on your bad self.

Pardon, but have you noticed who’s in the music section this week? It’s kind of ridiculous: Charles Mudede, Laura Albert/JT Leroy, Miranda July, Chris Weeg, Paul Constant, Marya Sea Kaminski, Grant Cogswell, Gary Shteyngart, Donte Parks, Stephen Elliot, Brangien Davis, Brendan Kiley, and Sherman Alexie

Damn! And what the hell are they all doing here? Making out to Portishead. From Mudede’s introduction:

Let’s think about this. Why the need to make out to Portishead? What is it about the trio’s music that makes it the ideal background for the experience of eyes meeting eyes, lips meeting lips, organs meeting organs? We have been there, you and I. That moment of desire. We need it to be perfect. The city lights, the booze in the blood, the smell of flesh. What shall we play on the stereo? Whatever it is, it must enhance the mood. If the music is too angry, too happy, or too heavy, it will ruin the moment. Let’s not expose, dampen, or evaporate our desire. We need this madness of lust to be complicated by greater obscurity, more mystery. And Portishead’s music does just this.

From Laura Albert’s entry:

There was a time when we were at it like bunnies. The “modern rock” station played Portishead nonstop. It was the time of roommates and thin walls, and radios turned up to mask. And Portishead were more to mood than the Sundays (too cute) or My Bloody Valentine (too noisy) or Blur (charming beat and accents become annoying during sex, like someone playing with your nipple post orgasm).

Right? (In last week’s New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones notes that Portishead is sometimes dismissed as “dinner music,” but I think that’s just the classy, New Yorker way of saying “make-out music,” which they are, and which isn’t really a dismissal.) All this, of course, is to dance around the release of the band’s latest album and first after some ten years, Third. So far, no one we know has tried getting it on to that album.

Even though we’ve already seen the winner of Eurovision (Belgium, obviously), I might as well go on with the (p)reviewing. After all, Eurovision is about more than just the winner. I’d even say the other competitors are much more important: the ones who sing offkey, the tragic dance routines, the clothes changes gone wrong. Those are just as important a reason to watch Eurovision as finding out who the winner is.

And here’s a real Eurovision beauty (a soon to be classic): Azerbaijan, who are taking part for the very first time. But they don’t come unprepared, oh no, they have learnt the Eurovision Guidelines by heart, and boy does it show. Elnur & Samir sing Day after Day, a song/operette/piece of musical theatre/future piece of Eurovision history. It starts off with an angel singing opera (as angels do, after all) only to evolve in hysterical screams. Oh no!! What happened?! The camera moves away and we see… the devil! Sitting on his throne with a slutty girl draped over him. The angel and devil start singing a duet in what appears to be English, but it’s hard to be sure. Were they lovers? Has one betrayed the other? Oh, the pathos! Oh the pain and heartache! The devil pours wine (or blood?) over his slutty assistant and our beloved angel is joined by two other angels who appear to be doing aerobics (again, as angels do) before they drop dead at the end of the song. I don’t know about you guys, but as far as I’m concerned this deserves a standing ovation!
You can read Elnur’s interpretation of the lyrics here (and strangely enough it doesn’t include the words “I haven’t got a clue, I was drunk”). Unfortunately the article also states the song is to undergo changes. Don’t mess with this example of Eurovision Perfection, I beg of you! This has to be my favourite song of the contest so far.

Right… I’ll try to calm down and move on to Slovenia’s Rebeka Dremelj with Vrag Naj Vzame. Slovenia is –in Eurovisionland at least- the black sheep of the balkan in recent years. They’ve sent fabulous Eurodisco and a cute boy with a blow-up sexdoll singing a haunting ballad (the sexdoll lady isn’t till the end, so you’ll have to sit through the song in case you’re curious), complete with a sexy accent or a sexy language, all to little effect. Only last year did they get a decent score with a soft-opera-discobeat with built-in lighting, and let’s not forget they’re the first Balkan country to embrace the true spirit of Eurovision by sending a bunch of drag queens back in 2002. Right. Why the long introduction? Because I generally like Slovenian entries, I love the underdog, and frankly there’s little or nothing interesting to say about this year’s entry. A quirky girl with huge earrings sings a poppy song about the devil (erm.. yeah, again with the devil) while her cousins (again with the cousins) sing backing and a weird dance routine takes place behind her. At one point she gets angry (probably at the devil or at one of her cousins), and then she calms down again. That’s it.

Norway sends Maria with “Hold on, be strong”. A ballad, or what else did you expect with a title like that? Only it’s not your typical Eurovision ballad, it sounds suspiciously like a piece of actual music sung by an actual singer. At Eurovision?! The horror! I think this would actually be good enough to play on any given radiostation. Well, in Norway at least. The prize for most philosophical lyrics so far goes to the fantastic quote “if it ain’t right, it’s wrong”. Well, yes. Thank you.
Which brings me to the realisation that unless I’m very much mistaken, I’ve not yet heard a single “Fire/Desire” rhyme in the contest so far. Fire/Desire rhymes are essential to Eurovision, just think about 2005’s winner Helena Paparizou (“you’re my fire and desire”), or Konstantinos Christoforou (Cyprus 2005) “Feel around me the desire, search my body, reach the fire” (incidentally both Konstantinos and Helena provide us with some nice eyecandy for those who like men) and countless others. But this year? Not a single one so far… weird. Practically a case for Torchwood I’d say.

Next up: Poland, Ireland and Andorra.

You know how certain clubs in Seattle are forced to divide up the room with those barriers only really appropriate for manipulating cattle, those low walls that designate a side of the room for people who are allowed to be holding beverages containing alcohol (wheee!) and a side for people who are not allowed to be holding beverages containing alcohol (tsk! tsk!) and a weird, wide space in between—it’s gotta be wide enough to keep you from, like, reaching across the divide, because god forbid someone hand a 19-year-old a beer (can you imagine!?)—and at a show where you want to dance and drink you invariably can’t both dance and drink, unless you want to dance in back where no one is dancing, which is depressing and wrong? Well, it’s something to note that things are no different in Portland. Even here, where people are constantly undressing in front of others, the 21+/not-21+ divide is very, very serious, and they’re perfectly willing—McMenamins is—to divide up an old beautiful room being filled with the joyous sounds of a band from an old beautiful continent and to administer that divide with individuals who could barely find the stamp they’d already stamped on my hand, to say nothing of the UK on a map.

Whatever—I danced anyway. I jumped around (that Crystal Ballroom floor is jumptastic) in a green necktie and a bike helmet. No coat check. I didn’t want someone to take it. I don’t care what people thought. I don’t think it looked quite as crazy as the red-and-white-striped I-just-stole-this-from-someone-who-works-at-a-carnival shirt that Alexis Taylor, Hot Chip’s lead singer, wore onstage. Same one he wore in Seattle. I had no idea what a dork Taylor is, which is to say, I had no idea how much I’m in love with him.

Setlist was the same. As in Seattle, it didn’t include “Keep Fallin’,” although at one point early on, between songs, there was a quiet moment into which someone in the crowd shouted “KEEP FALLIN’!” and Taylor and another guy heard and said something to each other, seemed to be taking it into consideration. Then, like, half an hour later, there was another beat between songs and the same guy—OK, it was me—shouted “KEEP FALLIN’!” Yeah, it’s weird to ask twice for a song off an album from 2005, but what can I say? I really wanted to hear it. And I wasn’t the only one: a total stranger came up to me and told me that if they weren’t gonna play my song I should ask them to play “the Stevie Wonder song.” He didn’t realize that that song is called “Keep Fallin’.”

Then Hot Chip finished their set, having not performed “Keep Fallin’,” and left the stage, and then came back, and did four or so songs, and guess what song was not among them? During the part where the guy was saying, “This is going to be our last song,” I was still holding out hope, but then Taylor started singing something else and—all my love for him having evaporated, especially since he’d traded the red-and-white stripes for a band t-shirt—I thought: Fuck you, Hot Chip, fuck you. I got on my bike and cued up “Keep Fallin’” and listened to it as I pedaled over the river; my iPod does “Keep Fallin’” perfectly.

(Hat tip The Red Room)

I can’t stop (won’t stop) talking about Hot Chip. You know how to scroll if you’re over it. Some critics were pretty harsh on the song “Wrestlers” off of Made In The Dark; I thought it was kind of insubstantial but wouldn’t skip past it or anything. But last night, I realized that “Wrestlers” grapples with (sorry) one of the things that I find so engaging about Hot Chip, which is the way they examine culture and cultural distance and authenticity and appropriation. The song, with its litany of wrestling moves veering into Willie Nelson namecheck, is a jokey macho boast, along the lines of “I’ve got an M-16” or “Hot Chip will break your legs.” And it acknowledges its own absurdity, when Alexis Taylor plaintively sings, “I learned all I know from watching wrestling,” it’s extra funny because, of course (sorry, Nathaniel), wrestling is itself a fake fight. Hot Chip are wrestlers. Hot Chip can rap. Hot Chip have soul. Hot Chip are for real.

Today Idolator linked to James Montgomery’s article about what it’s like to be a music journalist in the day and age when mainstream music writing is more about chasing down stories about rumored sex tapes and “monitoring baby bumps”:

For a solid hour on Tuesday afternoon, I basically should’ve gotten fired from my job. This is not because I was drinking in the office again or harassing my (sorta) co-worker Heidi Montag or even stealing boxes from the supply closet to complete my awesome fort (that was Monday).

No, it was because I was furiously Googling photos of Miley Cyrus in her bra.

OK, now before Human Resources contacts me (or my wife leaves me), please know that I was doing said Googling for a story I was working on — a follow-up to a 300-word blurb we ran on Monday that was read by 71,000 people (!) in less than 24 hours. (By comparison, last week’s Bigger Than the Sound is currently sitting at just more than 2,400 clicks.) Please know that I am not some sort of crazy pervert and that — to borrow perhaps the most overused excuse of all time — I was just doing my job (honest).

I’m not exactly sure what the rest of you were doing, though. Because for most of Tuesday, “Miley Cyrus Bra” was the most-searched term on Google, ahead of “Pennsylvania Exit Polls,” “Kijana Carter” and “Earth Day.” Phrases like “Racy Miley Cyrus Photos” and “Miley Cyrus Underwear Pictures” also logged time in Google Trends’ Top 100, as did pretty much any possible combination of the words “leaked,” “pics” and “Net” you could think of (also, nice to see “Vanessa Hudgens Pics” making a comeback).

Basically, for an entire day, people were more interested in seeking out semi-nude — and possibly fake? — photos of a 15-year-old pop star than they were in reading about the death of soul singer Al Wilson (which is sad), potential Jeep Liberty recalls (which is terrifying) and “Alligator in Kitchen” (which is puzzling). And while all of that should probably make me want to curl up and die — or at least weep for the state of humanity — it doesn’t. Because this has basically become my entire life.

Read the funny, thoughtful, sad but true article here.

Did you ever want to know what a ‘Flute Salad’ tasted like? Well maybe not. Regardless, here is the rare funky jazz classic by Ju-Par Universal Orchestra. “Flute Salade” is just one of the many classic cuts off the groups remarkable Moods And Grooves LP which was released back in 1976. Moods And Grooves is definitely one of my favorite jazz records, with it’s heavy afro-funky and soul influenced grooves. It’s a great record to put on during that late night lounge hour. I recently saw this LP in a local record store going for eighty dollars and I kinda wished I would of splurged. Oh well, maybe next time.

Download an MP3 of Ju-Par Universal Orchestra’s “Flute Salad” and more by clicking here.

While our May-June issue will be our last in bimonthly-magazine form, we’re very happy to announce that we will be teaming up with University of Texas Press to present a semiannual “bookazine.” Envisioned as a sort of hybrid between a book and a magazine, this new No Depression creation will make its debut in the fall. Look for 1 (or “76”, as we’ll dub it, in deference to the magazine’s precedence) in the music-books section of your local bookstore — and also watch this space for upcoming details about ordering subscriptions. (If you’re a current subscriber to the magazine, we’ll soon be sending you a note in the mail regarding the transition.

Some of the details will become clearer as we get further into the process of creating the first edition. Generally speaking, what we envision is that the bookazine will continue to provide a home for our long-form pieces which have less chance of transitioning to the website, where the editorial focus will be on more timely elements such as live reviews, record reviews, and news reports.

Read the full letter after the jump.

Continue reading "No Depression Update" »

This came out yesterday, via local mom’n’pop record shop Sub Pop:

To add to the chorus: It’s funny. And cute. It’s also lovingly faithful to the musical genres it parodies. It’s all songs that you may have seen on their HBO show of the same name—”Bowie,” “Business Time,” “Inner City Pressure,” etc. The packaging is nice.

This is possibly the only Sub Pop act beloved by my girlfriend’s mom (sorry, No Age). Will I listen to this album while washing the dishes or walking to work? Probably not. Will I watch old episodes of the show at my girlfriend’s mom’s house on DVD? Probably.

Like this:

Wired reports today that anyone who bought DRM-protected MP3s from Microsoft’s now-defunct digital music store, MSN Music, is basically screwed:

Music fans who purchased music from Microsoft’s MSN Music service are in for another cruel awakening about the harsh realities of digital rights management. As of September 1, it will become impossible to reauthorize songs purchased from the MSN Music store, which Microsoft shuttered to make way for Zune.

Music purchased from MSN Music will still play on authorized machines, but users only have five operating systems left in their entire lifetimes on which to play the music. I say “operating systems” instead of “computers” because even when a user upgrades, say from XP to Vista, songs need to be reauthorized.

What should you do if you want to keep your music? As Sony advised its users to do when it closed down Sony Connect, you can burn CDs of your purchased tracks and re-rip them. Of course, this degrades sound quality because it forces the music through the encoding process twice.

In related news: Did you know Zune has a radio built in?! You kids still like your FM radio, right?

The Sword, Slough Feg and Children @ Neumos

I missed seeing any of New York act Children because I wasn’t allowed to take my camera into the show even though I was reviewing it. “No Professional (removable lens) Cameras.” I had to walk my SLR all the way back to my car. What a stupid rule. Whoever made that rule is stupid.

Slough Feg, though I had never heard of them before this show (nor had anyone else I was with) has been a band for 18 years. They are the perfect example of a band that has great chops but horrible taste. Imagine metal music parallels science fiction: this band is original programming on the Sci-Fi network. My first, and continued reaction to Slough Feg was: “Are you fucking kidding me?” They sounded like mixing Joe Satriani’s Surfing with the Alien and speed metal. The singer looks exactly like the extra from the Kids In the Hall who had a dark, thinning mullet and always played a total cheeseball. You might remember him as the juggling street performer in a flying pig skit, or Mark McKinney’s coworker in the one about killing a mouse. It’s a random association, I know, but they are doppelgangers. He was wearing black swirl body paint all over his torso covered by a vest, his curly, thinning mullet bobbing with his intense head thrusts. He was very into his own shit - which was pretty fun to watch. I couldn’t tell which was harder to take seriously, the way the band looked or the choices they made musically, but I can say that after sitting down upstairs after about five songs their music sounded a little less ridiculous with the band out of sight. I decided it was probably these guys that set the rule about no professional cameras being allowed in the building.

It’s not too hard to find baseline similarities between Slough Feg and the Sword. Both deal with fantasy metal, but the fantasy Slough Feg encapsulates is just so… nerdy. So nerdy in fact it’s almost come full circle to the point where it’s funny. Here is one of the t-shirts they sold. It has some sort of a large dog-man in a space suit, holding a laser gun. Very Star Fox. On the back of the shirt is a wicked spaceship. You can just imagine that laser dog man blasting around space, fighting aliens, listening to this band.

Normally there’s a sense of anger when you realize you’re never going to see a band you love in an intimate setting again. For some reason seeing the Sword in a completely packed Neumos, people chanting along and banging their heads in unison, I had the exact opposite reaction. I don’t want to see the Sword play a small venue like the Croc again (though I am glad I got to see it), I want this band to dominate the metal world. I want this band to be like Dethklok is on Metalocalypse. The Sword are the perfect example of a band that has great chops and impeccable taste, whose live performance is fast and heavy and awesome on every front. They are the almost impossible combination of interesting, original and accessible – there is no reason that anyone who likes metal shouldn’t be able to get into their live show. Any misgivings I had about Gods of the Earth were remedied last night. Their newest single “Maiden, Mother and Crone” is the lame duck on the album (and has a terrible video) but doesn’t suffer the same fate live. Their set is a nonstop barrage of epic, galloping metal. They’re not the most talented metal band on the planet, or the fastest, or the most original. But they may be the smartest. They’re maxing out their stats in all the right areas. They are appealing to both the metal masses and the metal snobs. The Sword are the real fucking deal.

Star Chef News: Madonna’s cook in LA couldn’t take it. He quit. She’s manipulative and issue filled. He was going to go on the upcoming tour, but no. She over-worked him for twenty-eight straight days and that was the last straw. Now he’s working for a grand a day cooking for another rich elderly woman.

Other than that, LA is nice. It’s Spring down here. You can smell the night blooming jasmine. All these stars and their chef problems. My chef is fine. Le Taco Belle. Drive through-riche. Rice and beans won’t ever quit.

A kind little genius bird fed me Zeppelin 3 by Philadelphia’s Pink Skull before I left Seattle. I listened to it for the last five hours of the drive. It now owns me and my ear-brain. I, state your name, do hereby take this Pink Skull to be my lawful wedded psychedelaptop analog-Aztec space-wife. Zeppelin 3 is a masterpiece. Mouse on Mars-ish? Futuristic Aztecs don’t fuck around when they party. (Eric’s review - here.) Heavy waylaying dance beats are wound around 130 bpm’s then go schizoid to quietly abstract Gregorian refrains. There’s a back and forth. Beats evolve, samples rip in, delays feed back. 808 pads stutter under a deranged Caribbean riff. Rusting mongoloid creatures dance around a tiki torch soldering their skin to processors. Platelets drip plasma and scar. Mitochondria in eardrum cells become supra and ears are able hear outside our round planet. They hear tectonics beneath the craters in the moon shift. It sounds like an old man murmuring. It’s not a basic noise, but it is. Your vehicle moves through dunes and the desert orbit presses play again. A hundred miles left to go.

Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon did not make it on the Billboard 200 after spending a record 741 consecutive weeks on the chart.

Hot Chip, Free Blood @ the Showbox

When I saw Free Blood in Austin at SXSW, the NYC duo (featuring John Pugh of !!!) had a few things going for them: a small but stoked, first-night-of-the-festival-giddy crowd; having things warmed up for them by the maniacal electronics of Extreme Animals; a small, kind of divey room where their bass bursts sounded like they might seriously hurt the sound system. Last night at the Showbox, things were stacked rather against them: a half-full Showbox crowd, neither giddy nor warmed up, mostly hanging back in the bars; a big, cavernous room that made them look a little like, as a friend put it, enthusiastic kids in a summer camp talent show down on the big stage; a sound system that made their beats seem less dangerous than just pre-recorded.

Still, I think they sounded better last night than they did in Austin. What I then mistook for sultry, stoned monotones turned out to be rather tuneful, expressive singing, especially on one song’s hook of “Sounds good to me” and another’s petulantly whined refrain of “I want.” The bass was deep, and it even buzzed in the speakers a bit on one later song. Al Doyle of Hot Chip (and LCD Soundsystem) came out to help out on live bass and guitar for a couple songs, so there were no human mic stands needed and Pugh was free to get on down with his bandmate, Madeleine. Not everyone was feeling it, though—towards the end of their set, some loud gentleman in the bar hollered, “No more!” between songs. Or maybe he was saying, “No, more!” Maybe he really liked them.

I tried to run to the restroom just as Hot Chip was set to go on, so I then wouldn’t miss any of their set, but I found the men’s room (which is behind the stage, between it and the green rooms) blocked by security, with a handful of guys penned into the bathroom waiting to get out, presumably so Hot Chip could rush the stage unaccosted. Maybe that’s something they do at a lot of shows, and I just never noticed, but security overall seemed a little stressed last night, barking, “You here for Hot Chip?!” at everyone at the front door (were some people there for the ambience?), and I wondered if maybe they were getting a lot of people trying to sneak in.

Anyway, “Shake a Fist” playing as I get back in the crowd, and it sounds great, the beat rattling off-time and then being nudged back in to place, sounding a little live despite coming off a drum machine and sampler. They played the achingly sweet “Boy From School” next, and it just felt really good to see a big, sold-out crowd in Seattle dancing to honestly great music. On “Hold On,” Joe Goddard, the burlier of the band’s two vocalists, fell off the beat a bit on his part, but again it just felt satisfyingly live; “Hold On” isn’t one of my favorite songs from Made in the Dark, but it worked well live, with its extended rhythmic outro. “Bendable Posable” sounded a little weak at first, mostly just a spare beat under the vocals, but it got the crowds hand up by the end. They played “Over & Over” with an extended intro, and it was, of course, a massive dance floor mover.

Lead vocalist Alexis Taylor introduced “Wrestlers” by saying, “Joe does a pretty good rap on this one,” to which Goddard replied, “It’s not a rap, it’s more of a chant.” Regardless, Goddard’s bit was brilliant, delivered with a kind of campiness not really apparent on record, and he even did the backwards-masked part to the crowd’s audible delight. I saw a couple making out to the melancholy strains of “Crap Kraft Dinner” and felt a little jealous at not being young and silly enough to make out at shows anymore. Free Blood joined the band for the fantastic “One Pure Thought,” increasingly my favorite jam off of Made in the Dark. They ended their set with “Ready For the Floor,” extending some parts, jilting between the verses and the choruses.

For the encore, they played the straight-soul ballad “Made in the Dark,” then “Don’t Dance,” which—I’m certain—they kicked off with a synth riff lifted from some ’80s electro nugget that I couldn’t seem to trainspot. (Anybody know what that was? Or am I tripping?) They played a rousing version of “No Fit State,” interpolating the chorus of New Order’s “Temptation into their song’s layered refrain—totally skin-crawling, pogoing, singing-along awesome. The closed by leading into “The Privacy of Our Love” with the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U” (they are so down).

Yelle @ War Room

I thought after the sold-out Showbox, Yelle at the War Room was going to be kind of a let down. How many kids in Seattle really give a shit about some French electro-pop feuds anyway, right? Apparently a lot. The War Room was packed, and the crowd was totally in Yelle’s thrall, bouncing to the beat, clapping along, snapping camera phone pics, the works. I also figured Yelle would be karaoke-ing along to an iPod or something, but instead she had a two-piece backing band on live drums and (synth? guitar? keytar? I couldn’t see), and they sounded sick—thick, totally synced beats; gnarly, simple synths. It doesn’t hurt that Yelle is basically like an adorable French cartoon of a pop star, all big eyes and bizarre neon couture and sharp-bobbed hair that she kept flipping up with her hand for emphasis. She may have play