(Press release after the cut.)

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

ht: DJ Messiah via Division

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.

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!

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

Right?

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

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

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.

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

...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.

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.

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.

"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

James Mercer + Danger Mouse:

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...

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.)

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

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.

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