MIND GRAPES

Originally posted at Disco Horror

Hey guys—do you think the “joke” I make about how Jimmy & I are “famous” “rich” “good-looking” “bloggers” is “over”? Have I used it “too much”? Ha ha, of course not. “Irony”!

Jimmy & I were tandem windsurfing yesterday off the coast of the island from “Lost” (it’s real, and we get to go to it) when two golden-feathered doves landed on our respective shoulders and whispered in our ears: “RVNG is releasing a new mix, curated by Andre Bumrocks and Jason Evans from Hey Convict!, and it will be released simultaneously with a 7″ featuring some highlights from the mix, on purple vinyl.)” And then the birds, which were actually clockwork creations made in the distant past by unknown master Persian craftsmen, turned into MP3 players, and we listened to the mix, and then went back to the shore and made out, with babes.

“Irony”! Actually we got an email from a guy named “Josh,” and because we are a) big RVNG fans and b) suckers for people who make the mistake of thinking this website has any readers besides my girlfriend (hi Ari!), we decided to post a track off the 7″ (it’s a seven-inch because this is the seventh release in the series—also because Andre Bumrock’s favorite band is Avenged Sevenfold).

The mix itself (called “Purple Brain,” a reference to the great 70s rock band Deep Purple and the Steven Martin film The Man with Two Brains; that’s the cover up top) consists of what sounds like three dozen nameless brain-erasing parallel-universe beardo classics; it’s a little all-over-the-place, but if you’ve got a problem with all-over-the-place, you’re reading the wrong blog. Really, the problem is that an hour is way too short to actually get a grip on the ridiculous number of things going on in this mix, and more than once tracks get cut off just when you’re ready for more. Still: better to have listening to thirty seconds, and lost, than to never have listened to even thirty seconds, of a song, at all, right?

I didn’t recognize any of the tracks on my first couple listens, but I was able to recognize many instruments, including:

• The guitar

• The drums

• The flute

• The bass guitar

Bottom line: if you like any of those instruments, I feel confident you’ll enjoy this mix.

“Josh,” who is very nice, asked that we let you know when you can pre-order the fine merchandise listen above, so, please be aware, you can pre-order both Purple Brain and the Purple Brain 7″ on May 26.

The track I’m leaving you with is the B-side to the seven-inch, a happy, apolitical, message-less little ditty by the apartheid-era South African troupe the Bahumutsi Drama Group (founded by activist and playwright Maishe Maponya). I feel confident that when the Drama Group recorded this “joint,” they were hoping it would someday be played in a Bushwick loft to a bunch of drunk, mostly white, out-of-work “artists”/web designers! Enjoy!

A famous movie about a beach where everyone plays ping pong.

HEY!

Y’all: summer is here. Basically. I mean, it’s been a little rainy, a little chilly, but it’s summer where it counts—in my heart. Right? I went back to Jersey this weekend, and, guys, I packed shorts. I didn’t end up wearing them, partly because it was cold, and also because I didn’t end up leaving the house. Also: some of my friends went to the beach. The beach! Obviously, I wasn’t invited. But I bet they had fun!

And as I was sitting in my house on Friday night, re-watching episodes of How I Met Your Mother while my parents had a party, I couldn’t help but think of my friends, at the beach, and wonder what music they were listening to. Probably Lady Gaga! But if I had been there, I would have made sure they were listening to something far more appropriate–something like “Vamos a la Playa” by Righeira.

Here’s the video, starring a young Jake Gyllenhaal:

Now, as I’m sure you know, one of the great things about this blog is that we’re very smart, and we like to teach people. It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that Disco Horror is in many ways a “bilingual” blog (or, “el blog”): both Jimmy and I passed Spanish 102; Jimmy lives in San Francisco, which is a city with a Spanish name; my girlfriend’s last name is sort of vaguely “Latin,” insofar as it ends in a vowel, and has a “z” in it. So we’re eminently qualified to translate the song, which turns out to be kind of a bummer:

We go to the beach
The bomb exploded
The radiation toasts
And blend with blue
We go to the beach
Everyone with hats
The radioactive wind
Dishevels our hair
We go to the beach
At the end the sea is clean
No more dirty fish
Or fluorescent water.

Jeez, Righeira, way to bum everyone out! Still, it’s better than the Notorious B.I.G.’s song about disliking beaches, “Playa Hata”—plus, how many people actually speak Spanish. Can’t be that many, right? Please enjoy!

Photo of Staten Island

So: the reason I bring this up is that last weekend Jimmy and I got an email from a band called Paragraph, a band from, of all places, Staten Island. And as shocked as I was that there were “musicians” from “Staten Island,” I was probably even more shocked that they have email. Technology! And in this Staten Island email, this band, Paragraph, was an MP3.

Now—as famous, wealthy bloggers, we get a lot of emails, many from doctors offering us experimental sex procedures or jewelers who, recognizing our wealth, offer us Rolex watches. Also, publicists, and, sometimes, Nigerians, many of whom have lost their family fortunes. And because we are often having “sex” with “models,” we’re not always able to check our jewel-encrusted jPhones (next-gen iPhones) to see what emails we get. But when bands send us MP3s, and those MP3s end up being pretty good, well, we don’t do much but post ‘em.

So here it is: an MP3 from noted Staten Island band Paragraph. I’ve only heard four songs from these guys, I think, and this one is the best—less like a short-pocketed Gang of Four tribute band, the way their MySpace YouTube videos sound (not bad but, uh, it’s not 2003 anymore, let alone 1983) and more like a tightly-wound R&B group with a very, very serious talent for grooves (the track is basically begging to be edited/remixed for the floor). The only hesitation is this weird little autotune bit at the end, which sounds kind of out of place, if not from an entirely different planet (it sort of reminds me of rap-rock favorites Crazytown); everything else I fully endorse (Jimmy hates the autotune part, deeply, with what I can sense is every fiber of his body). The song on their MySpace isn’t quite as good as this, but its own WTF element (a sweet summery guest rap from a young lady named “Star’s Da Limit”) sounds way more natural (and good). And you know—I kind of can’t be down on a band that’s putting weird little bits of other planets in their songs. Especially because, you know, what else are you going to do on Staten Island?

Cross-posted at Disco Horror

Well, we are basically just, like, best friends with Lindstrøm and Prins Thomas, and when we’re not going out on double dates and playing Settlers of Catan together sometimes they’ll just, like, send us some music that they’re working on, because that’s the kind of relationship we have. Well—I mean—their publicist sends us the music. And, I guess, it’s not really, like, a lot of music. Just one edit. But: it’s a good edit! Straight from their new record, II, we’ve got the “Groove Edit” of “Rothaus,” which is track 2 on the album and a highlight for me.

The thing about II that you need to be warned about, going in, is that it’s, um, a jam record. Not Phish, haters, but, you know, second cousins. And—and this is hard for me to say—I’m OK with that. Really. On first listen, this edit doesn’t do much: tightens the track a little bit, makes it easier to take in—and probably easier to dance to, in a sort of obtuse way—but it’s hard to take something this “jammy” and straighten it out. So what you get is a lot of cautiously sloppy live instrumentation and synth noodling, which is what we in the biz call “rad.” Perfect to listen to while cooking, jogging, throwing a coke-fueled week-long orgy, going to space (literally), going to space (figuratively), cleaning your house, etc.

And, you know, there was a time in my life when “jammy” shit like this would have received a derisive sneer and possibly an exaggerated roll of the eyes. I am no longer that small-minded person. In my old age, I think I can say—I think we all should say: I welcome the jam. And: guys: “Rothaus” is the jam. Enjoy.

NOTE: Founding partner Ash Williams is on a trip to THE FOURTH DIMENSION for the next couple weeks—he’s going to try and post some from the road, but till then it’s all me. Expect some Steely Dan, Pat Metheny, MP3s of me making fart noises, etc.

Cross-posted at Disco Horror

As I like to remind people who I know or meet on busses, my alma mater—Occidental College—was at one point home to literally thousands of important celebrities, including Barack Obama, Ben Affleck, Luke Wilson, The Guy From The Scissor Sisters, Jack Kemp, Terry Gilliam, and Jimmy’s Cousin. None of them seem to have actually graduated from Oxy, except for Jimmy’s cousin, but, you know, who cares. Here’s a question—how many current Presidents of the United States went to “Yale”? None. How many went to Oxy? All of them.

Anyway I’m just BRAGGIN to bring up Los Angeles recording artist NITE JEWEL, aka Ramona Gonzalez, Oxy class of ’09. I had a chance to talk with Ramona a couple weeks ago when she was in New York—she’s really nice and working on a thesis about HEIDEGGER, who is a famous “philosopher”—and wrote it up for Anthem (it’s not up yet, but I’ll link when it’s live).

I think Jimmy & I discovered Nite Jewel via our ongoing Italians Do It Better standom (Ramona’s put out a couple 12”s there after getting in touch with Johnny Jewel on MySpace), and she’s definitely got that IDIB bedroom disco feel—late-night music, a little woozy, a little dark. But even more than disco what I hear in her music is Freestyle, or “Latin Hip Hop,” the disco-electro-rap-whatever that was all over urban radio for a few years in the mid-80s. Obviously not exactly (she’s not, like, a Lisa Lisa)—but maybe her music bears the same relationship to Freestyle that Johnny Jewel’s does to Italo—a dusty shadow of a once-popular sound, now consigned to budget bins and collectors’ crates and hard drives and sad little blogs. It’s a terrific, evocative sound, and Ramona does an incredible job of maintaining that sort of bittersweet nostalgia across the entire album.

I was going to say that today (in New York, where it’s raining), is the perfect kind of day to listen to Nite Jewel, but I’m not sure that’s quite right—there’s something specifically and intensely sort of Angeleno about her music, something I’m not sure I can put my finger on, but something that means despite its dusty memory-geared wistfulness, it’s not a rainy-day album: I would argue, instead, that it’s a smoggy-day album, music for carbon monoxide haze.

In any event, I’m not a freestyle expert by any means (for that you should check out this great blog, which is where I probably got the tracks I’m posting!), but I am going to declare today “Freestyle Friday” on Disco Horror, and leave you with a couple jams to help you greet the weekend. I don’t know enough about the acts or the music to properly introduce them to you—and yet somehow I think they’ll speak for themselves.

Cross-posted at Disco Horror

Hey y’all—apologies for not posting for a month! Been busy—but OMG have I got some shit for you. I livetweeted the first five joints on Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas’s new album, imaginatively titled II, but I didn’t get a chance to give my 140-character reviews of the rest of the tracks—luckily my reaction to those tracks, and the album as a whole, can basically be summed up with this picture:

Yes, doggs, it’s that good. I’ve only had it for about 48 hours now but I’ve listened to it a dozen times and I’m sort of floored. I don’t expect everyone to love it like me (though I do expect people to love it)—it’s just that, it’s like they made it for me: everything I’ve ever liked about the two whacky Scandos packaged together in a beautiful little box. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more to write about it later. But what is killin me—and I mean, really, killin me, like, I am dead from this fuckin song, is the first track, “Cisco,” and if I can be more specific, the synths that roll in at around 3:00. The whole thing is a really beautiful example of the power of layering, and it spends a lot of time building itself up—bass line, congas, guitar here, guitar there—but that synth drop (so quiet! So sinister! Like gathering clouds! Landing spaceships!) is like +1000XP—level up.

Cross-posted at Disco Horror

OK, so, it’s just like Romeo & Juliet, except, instead of the Montagues and the Capulets, it’s, like, beachy stoners and techno goths, and Olof is Tybalt, and Rasmus is Mercutio and in the climax—filmed by Andreas Nilsson, duh—Olof straight up stabs Rasmus and Karin kills herself and peace will never be brought to Sweden, and the Prince (Benny Andersson) is all sad but hey, at least we will always have Dan’s “When I Grow Up” remix to play to our children and teach them about tolerance and being a good person.

Real talk, though—I’m not going to front like this is a great remix; it’s probably not even top five that Lissvik has worked on in his life. It’s not that the track is too Studio-by-the-numbers, though it is (10 ADD “Spanish Guitars” 20 ADD “Hand Drums” 30 GOTO 10)—the fact is I straight-up love Studio-by-the-numbers—it’s that no matter which way you slice it, Karin’s voice is never going to be “Balearic” or “mellow” or “beachy” in that classic stoned-fuzz way, and no matter how many kids’ voices you add in the background, she still sounds spooky as shit. The best Studio remixes find the summery within the songs they’re remixing—sometimes it’s already there at the surface (like in “Morning Tide”); sometimes they need to draw it out (“Turn the Radio Off,” which isn’t without its own creepiness!)—and amplify it until you feel like you’re vacationing on a beach made out of crushed vicodin pills. I gotta say, I don’t think there’s any summer in Fever Ray.

 Cross-posted at Disco Horror

You know what the best kind of morning is? (This is a secret, by the way). The best kind of morning is the one where you get up before 9am, with enough time to have a cup of coffee and do the crossword. It’s a Sunday morning, usually, but if you play your cards right you can do it on Saturday, too, or really any day you’re not too hung over and don’t have anything to do till mid-afternoon at the earliest. You know, the kind where you make yourself a breakfast burrito, with tomato chutney and home-cured bacon, and a little bit of melted Asiago, and your chick (or your dude, depending) is chilling in the bed in her (or his) underwear, and you whip out Tusk, Side 4, and blow the dust off the needle and put on “Honey Hi,” and when it’s over you go put on again, because of those close harmonies, and the phrasing on Lindsey Buckingham’s guitar, and, come on, the sky is clear and you’ve got a beautiful day just waiting for you, and you know you’re going to have a mellow-ass day if you’ve this fucking song stuck in your head, and what, tell me what, is sweeter than that.

Cross-posted at Disco Horror

Here are some pretty easy jokes to make about Sting: he has tantric sex. He does not make music that would be considered “cutting-edge.” He has a healthy amount of self-regard. His music appears, sometimes, in playlists of “easy listening” music, for example, in dentists’ offices. How hilarious these jokes are! How cutting of us, to insult Sting, and those people who listen to him! What better way to demonstrate our own, personal, hipness!

LOL. As part of my ongoing effort to be mellow as fuck and also ahead of the hipster reclamation curve, I now love Sting. Hating Sting is about as boring as hating Bono, anyway (really, hating anyone is played out at this point). Why bother? The dude is soft, like butter; and the thing is, no one is even claiming that he’s, what, on the cutting edge of music, or whatever. He writes these beautiful, crisp melodies, brines them in the most impeccable production you could imagine, and serves them up like fucking Christmas hams. Some of the songs have robotically good crypto-Spanish guitar; more still have that “fairy dust sprinkle” sound that I imagine is made by some ridiculous bell-based instrument where you string up a bunch of wind chimes and stroke them with a feather. All of them are about as MOR vanilla as charged. Only, fuck it, who cares? I’m probably railing against an imaginary enemy at this point, but—I can’t think of a better dude to listen to if you are rich as fuck and coming down off some designer-only-rich-people-have-heard-of-it drug, kicking it in your austere penthouse in Dubai or wherever, sweating your ass off in your Eames chair in the dark. Plus, face it, you know this guy is next on the rediscovery tip, so get in while the getting’s good, because all of Pitchfork’s Best New Music in 2010 is going to be “Sting-influenced.”

Here’s some Sting 101 to help get you on your feet. I recommend stealing the lyrics from this one next time you hit on a chick at a bar.

And as a bonus, a song about racism (?).