The Stranger

Monday, November 16, 2009

??!! / Politics Russia's Hiphop Prime Minister

Posted by Charles Mudede on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 2:40 PM

Who's in the house? Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is in the house:

Appearing on Muz-TV, an MTV-style channel, Putin told an audience of young graffiti artists, rappers, MCs and other exponents of hip-hop culture that although rap is "kind of rough, it has a social message dealing with the problems of the young". He congratulated the teenagers there for refining hip-hop with "Russian charm". He also described graffiti as real art, "fine and elegant".

Jokes aside, the Russian hiphop sounds pretty together.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Band / ??!! Band Name Hall of Infamy

Posted by Dave Segal on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:27 PM

Noticed while scanning Other Music’s weekly mailout (the accompanying write-up's below):

SCROTUM POLES
Auchmithie Forever
(Dul-ci-Tone)
Finally! Amazing compilation of unreleased stuff (their sole 7" is not included...huh?) by this British '70s DIY punk/pop band. Essential for fans of TVPs, Homosexuals, Desperate Bicycles, etc. Vinyl only, natch.

Scrotum Poles?! Ouch. My groin flinches just reading that.

As for the music? Eh. It's gray, featherlight, lo-fi pop that won't keep Bob Pollard, Lou Barlow, or Ariel Pink up at night. But, you know, Scrotum Poles. Well, it got me to blog about them 30 years after their "heyday," so respect to them.

Image from Scrotum Poles' MySpace.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

??!! Beard Times, Indeed

Posted by Dave Segal on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 12:31 PM

"Fleet Foxes have turned their chins into miniature Appalachian forests," writes Simon Reynolds in an essay about the ubiquity of beards among "leftfield rock" musicians in the '00s. Read the (literally) hair-brained, stretched-premised piece here.

Reynolds dwells at some length on Seattle's Fleet Foxes, including this passage:

[I]f face-fuzz has become an epoch-defining signifier in leftfield rock, what exactly does it signify? Let's look again at Fleet Foxes' He Doesn't Know Why, where the group sound like angels but look like satyrs. Here, beardedness is tantamount to a visual rhetoric, almost a form of authentication, as though the band are wearing their music on their faces.

What if Fleet Foxes' members decide to shave en masse today, but don't change their musical style in the process? Whither Reynolds' thesis, then?

ht: @1000TimesYes via Twitter

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

??!! / Love / Video Ted Leo's Misfits Cover Band!

Posted by Megan Seling on Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 11:15 AM

Holy FUCK this would've been awesome to see! On Halloween night, in Philadelphia, Ted Leo and Chris Wilson of Ted Leo at the Pharmacists, Atom Goren from Atom and His Package, and some dudes from Paint It Black and Franklin played a Misfits cover set in full make up (and Leo's case, wig). They called themselves TV Casualty, and thank christ there's video of the entire show.

(Parts 2-6 are all lined up and waiting for you on Pitchfork.)

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Monday, November 2, 2009

??!! / Business If You Thought Vampire Weekend Were Privileged...

Posted by Eric Grandy on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Just imagine how rich and connected the scions of Steven Spielberg and Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner must be, and then weep for your future (via Gawker):

(Also, unrelated: VW played out a few new songs over the weekend, and only one of the three, "Run," seems very good from the admittedly low quality videos.)

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Album / ??!! / Business Best Buy Butters Up Hudson Mohawke

Posted by Dave Segal on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 5:38 PM

Turn to page 54 in this week's Stranger. Peruse the Best Buy ad in the upper right corner. Whoa. WTF?

Normally the retail giant spotlights mainstream releases, but this week it includes Hudson Mohawke's glitter-glitch opus Butter CD (the power of a Rihanna recommendation? Or did Warp Records suddenly receive a huge influx of pounds?). I like this bit of ad copy describing HudMo's Polyfolk EP: "hyper melodic drum-and-synth sidewinders." Really honing in on Best Buy's demographic with that sort of talk.

This is all very peculiar... What next—Mike Slott 12s at Wal-Mart?

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Album / Song / ??!! / Upcoming Pa-Rum-Pa-Pum-Pum (Extended Disco Version)

Posted by Eric Grandy on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 10:48 AM

Pitchfork reports today that Norwegian disco auteur Lindstrøm will be releasing a 40 minute long version of "Little Drummer Boy" to be sold as a bonus disc via Rough Trade for his forthcoming collaboration with singer Christabelle, Real Life is No Cool. Lindstrøm's longest track previously was the title cut of his Where You Go I Go Too EP, which clocked in at just shy of 29 minutes.

??!! Face the Music (Literally)

Posted by Dave Segal on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 8:26 AM

Man makes music by moving facial muscles, creates new genre: twitchtronica (which sounds a helluva lot like the severe electronic needlepoint of Ryoji Ikeda and Alva Noto).

ht: DJ Messiah via Division

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

??!! / History Do You Remember the First Time?

Posted by Eric Grandy on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 2:14 PM

I was just reminded that Pulp released their debut album before the Smiths did theirs. WTF?! Doesn't that seem just historically impossible? But Wikipedia insists it's true.

??!! / Zzzzzzzzzzzzz He Loved "He Loved Him Madly" Madly

Posted by Dave Segal on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 11:13 AM

There's a surprising revelation contained within the Invisible Jukebox interview with Lou Reed in The Wire's October issue. The interviewer, Alan Licht, plays Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly," and Reed, seemingly hearing the 32-minute threnody for Duke Ellington for the first time, nearly has a heart attack over how fantastic it is, comparing the lead-off track from Miles' Get Up With It to his own Metal Machine Music—no, really. (Reed later relates a brief meeting with Miles in which the legendary trumpeter/keyboardist complimented his snakeskin shirt. I am absurdly happy to know this encounter happened.)

The funniest part of the piece, though, occurs when Licht tells Reed the LP title, and Reed asks his "assistant" to write it down. Lou Reed has an assistant?

I encourage you to read the whole interview (I don't think it's online, so find a hard copy; Broadcast are on the cover). Lou Reed is a curmudgeon, but an eminently lovable, brilliant curmudgeon who's still voraciously curious about music at the age of 67. Plus, he's written more immortal songs than most mortals have. Recognize.

Monday, October 26, 2009

??!! / Media / Teh Internets Das...Surprisingly Intelligent

Posted by Eric Grandy on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 9:22 AM

Who would've thought that these guys:

...would've read this Sasha Frere-Jones piece in the New Yorker about how hiphop is dead vis-a-vis Jay-Z:

Weighing in early on what academics call “periodization” is a dicey proposition. If you try to locate the moment of a major paradigm shift, in the moment, perhaps by calling your album “Hip Hop Is Dead,” as Nas did in 2006, you’re slipping into weatherman territory. Will it rain tomorrow? Will another great rap album pop up? The life spans of genres and art forms are best perceived from the distance of ten or twenty years, if not more. With that in mind, I still suspect that Nas—along with a thousand bloggers—was not fretting needlessly.

If I had to pick a year for hip-hop’s demise, though, I would choose 2009, not 2006. Jay-Z’s new album, “The Blueprint 3,” and some self-released mixtapes by Freddie Gibbs are demonstrating, in almost opposite ways, that hip-hop is no longer the avant-garde, or even the timekeeper, for pop music.

...and fired back at it with this:

Sasha Frere-Jones opens his article by admitting that “weighing in early on what academics call ‘periodization’ is a dicey proposition,” as a nominal caveat before launching into doing just that. This is a rhetorical approach that he’s used before (namely in “Whiter Shade of Pale”) and is basically just another flavor of the age old “Now, I don’t mean to be racist but [insert something racist here]” Kool-Aid.

SFJ is savvy enough to know that before pulling a “white man speaks authoritatively on black culture” move, he needs to first establish an acceptable precedent for his argument by locating it in the ideology of a credible black artist (in this case Nas’s 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead). But notice how SFJ then immediately undermines that credibility: while he could just say “Nas called it three years ago,” he instead claims that while Nas’s sentiment was correct, the proclamation was three years premature, as if to say “Nice try, Nas, but leave it to the professional (white, college-educated) music journalist to make sweeping statements about (black, ghetto-originated) music.”

Oh, Das Racist, you so ~~crazy~~ educated at Wesleyan!

Friday, October 23, 2009

News / ??!! Oh, Manfred! Villalobos to Remix ECM Back Catalog

Posted by Dave Segal on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 4:46 PM

One of my favorite techno producers of all time, Ricardo Villalobos, is slated to remix the catalog of one of my favorite jazz labels, ECM. The combination of the former's studio inventiveness and rhythmic dexterity with the latter's incredibly rich tapestry of innovative, atmospheric jazz is inducing an ecstatic vertigo in me. Further elaboration, I hope, after I recover from this shocking development. Read more about it here and here.

Below is one track (by guitarist Terje Rydal) that I hope comes under Villalobos' knob-twiddling/fader-sliding fingers.

ht: @waysidemusic and @thedailyswarm via Twitter

Last Night / ??!! / Zzzzzzzzzzzzz One More Thing About Craig Finn...

Posted by Megan Seling on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 1:16 PM

I realized last night that Craig Finn is the adult version of the hyperactive weirdo/rad kid from the movie Spellbound. He moves like him and twitches like him and I bet if he ever talked in a robot voice, he'd sound like him too.

Right?

It makes me love them both just a little bit more.

(Photo of Craig Finn by Shawn Hinojosa, via Flickr's Creative Commons.)

??!! / Teh Internets It Can't Be More Annoying Than Eminem's Stupid Fake Pakistani Accent

Posted by David Schmader on Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 11:50 AM

Klenginem, aka the man who would rap Eminem songs in Klingon. Here's "SuvwI'pu' qan tu'lu'be," better known as "Without Me."

Thanks for the heads-up, Metafilter.

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Thursday, October 22, 2009

??!! Important Question

Posted by Dave Segal on Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 4:32 PM

Has anyone ever had sex to a They Might Be Giants album? I mean, anyone who would admit it?

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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

??!! It Happens Every Year

Posted by Brendan Kiley on Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 11:54 AM

During the summer, I forget Roger Miller exists. As soon as the rains come, I suddenly remember and can't think about any other musician for a couple of days. Every year. It's a mystery.

I have no idea who that kid is. But I like his understated chicken dance.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

??!! / Zzzzzzzzzzzzz Clowncore?

Posted by Kelly O on Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 1:33 PM

Who would win in a fight? Hardcore clowncore...

...the rave-accordian "hardcordian" stylings of Ed Cox? Or juggalo kings ICP*?

*On a related note, ICP has a new album and tour. The tour does NOT include Seattle.

James Mercer + Danger Mouse:

Thursday, October 8, 2009

??!! / Video It Was Creepy Enough When Performed by a 22-Year-Old Britney Spears

Posted by David Schmader on Thu, Oct 8, 2009 at 12:54 PM

But it's 50 million times creepier when (extravagantly) recreated by a 9-year-old.

I hope this is some high-art spoof on the sexualization of children, and not just, you know, sexualized children.

Thank you, Line Out tipper Brian.

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Wednesday, October 7, 2009

??!! / History / Zzzzzzzzzzzzz Feedback to the Future: Chicago Transit Authority's "Free Form Guitar"

Posted by Dave Segal on Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 5:09 PM

I've been meaning to tell you this for a while, but it slipped my mind. Perhaps some of you know about it already, but what the hell, here goes: Over a decade before Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo sculpted their first feedback symphony, Chicago Transit Authority's Terry Kath beat them to the idea with "Free Form Guitar" off 1969's Chicago Transit Authority (I just scored the vinyl for a buck, which is why it's fresh in my mind).

Yeah, the same group that went on to record such dentist-office fluff as "If You Leave Me Now" and "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" were on some proto-Sonic Youth (hell, proto-Glenn Branca and proto-Rhys Chatham, too) shit. Even Jimi Hendrix, whom Kath was homaging with "Free Form Guitar," reportedly thought the CTA axe master was better than he was.

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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

??!! Today in Ca-razy Musical Collaborations

Posted by Eric Grandy on Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 2:30 PM

Lil Wayne + Weezer:

"Any other rapper would've just done, 'Yay, we're partying! Let's drink and have fun,' but he gave it the edge I was looking for. You can hear in his voice, it sounds so dark, like he was gonna get shot or something when he walks out of the studio. So I was real happy that everyone involved got what we were going for."

Thome Yorke + Flea:

hi
in the past couple of weeks i've been getting a band together for fun to play the eraser stuff live and the new songs etc.. to see if it could work!
here's a photo.. its me, joey waronker, mauro refosco, flea and nigel godrich.

at the beginning of october the 4th and 5th we are going to do a couple of shows at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles.
we don't really have a name and the set will not be very long cuz ..well ...we haven't got that much material yet!
but come and check it out if you are in the area. we've also got locals Lucky Dragons playing.
all the best

Mercer has teamed up with producer extraordinaire/one half of Gnarls Barkley Danger Mouse to form a new band. The band's name is still up in the air, but they're going with Broken Bells for the time being. The debut from Broken Bells (or whichever name they decide to go with, I guess) is due early next year on Columbia.

To be clear, this is not just a "produced by Danger Mouse" one-off thing. Mercer and the Mouse are apparently in it for the long haul and already have plans extending past their first album.

(Also.)

So, of course...

Sunday, September 27, 2009

??!! / Love Good Morning!

Posted by Adrian Ryan on Sun, Sep 27, 2009 at 7:40 AM

Holy mother of God. Tear your eyes away. Go on. I defy you.

Offered without further comment, for indeed, words are useless. (Except these: Alice is a yellow duck! RIP TAYLOR! Cindy's quite the little porkchop! Yes! That's fucking Rerun! And, YES! EVERYONE in the '70s was coked to the tits. EVERYONE.)

Thursday, September 24, 2009

??!! The Lowdown on Warming Up a Crowd

Posted by Dave Segal on Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 5:37 AM

Every non-headlining DJ should read this piece on "The Esoteric Art of the Opening DJ" published by Resident Advisor.

Here's a fine passage:

In many ways, the warm-up DJ faces more challenges than the headliner. Consider this: The opener must start with a fairly empty room that slowly fills with generally sober people who aren't there to see them. The DJ must create an atmosphere out of thin air and at the same time set the stage for the musical narrative of the headliner's set.

ht: J-Justice

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Album / ??!! / Media Today in AWKWTF?!

Posted by Eric Grandy on Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 11:21 AM

Oh, Andrew W.K., what the holy fuck are you talking about? A-dubs recently recorded an album of short improvised piano pieces about a car, called 55CADILAC; here he is discussing it on the Guardian UK's music blog:

Over the past 10 years, I've had personal and professional issues with several people involved in my career, and due to formal agreements, I'm partially forbidden from going into detail regarding certain aspects of my recent work and, as a result, the making of the 55 CADILLAC album.

Here's what I am able to say: At the end of 2004, an old friend of mind got in some business trouble and basically decided to take it out on me. To cut a long story short, this person is someone I worked very closely with and had a formal and family business relationship with. Due to various complaints this person had with me, they were able to turn my life and career upside down. I wasn't allowed to use my own name within certain areas of the US entertainment industry and we were in a debate about who owned the rights to my image, and who should get credit for "inventing" it. This made my life complicated and intense for a few years, but I kept working and doing whatever I could to keep moving forward.

You'll recall Andrew WK (OR WAS IT?1?!) caught Line Out's attention a couple years ago thanks to a really bizarre performance at Chop Suey and some dispute as to whether or not he had hired an impersonator to perform in his stead. Unravel that whole mess here, here, here, and here.

Friday, September 11, 2009

??!! Damn, That DJ (Allegedly) Made My Day Off With My Pal's Laptop

Posted by Dave Segal on Fri, Sep 11, 2009 at 5:31 PM

Dear Line Out readers: Can you help this woman? I don't know anyone who fits this description; perhaps you do.

I know this is an odd request, but does anyone in the music dept at the Stranger know a DJ whose real name is Spencer? I met him on the street in front of my house in the U District as I was in the process of moving out. After he kindly offered to help me, I'm fairly positive he ripped off my roommate's laptop. He said he was 27, he was from Tacoma, and he'd been DJ-ing in Seattle for about 10 years. He was tall, slender, muscular, and drove a black bike. He was white, and had golden brown hair.

Any idea who he is?

christine.wilson38 (at) gmail (dot) com