September 16, 2009

Agustin Barrios - The Complete Guitar Recordings 1913-1942

As beautiful as a butterfly in a meat grinder.

Most discussions of this CD will weigh the importance of Agustin Barrios’s performances of his own pieces against the static, noise, and downright degradation present on a recording from a different time and place.

Although that conversation is valid, I would offer that this sound can be enjoyed purely on its own terms. Barrios writes music which is often particularly suited to being distorted and mangled, and at many points in the CD his repetitive passages, filtered by the ravages of time, are downright haunting. Jim O’Rourke or Thurston Moore would be proud to release a CD as compelling as this one at its peaks.

Of course, not everyone will expect a CD subtitled “Augustin Barrios plays his own and other compositions” to be an ambient grinding drone, and that mistake in packaging is likely the reason this collection has passed out of print. Still, even so, it is recommended if you like the Pablo Casals disc on EMI in which he plays the Bach Cello Suites (the original CD master, not the “restored” version).


I often think about making an edit of this music, wherein the grindy parts are emphasized.

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Tags: Jim O'Rourke distortion sonic youth classical guitar classical
June 27, 2009

Sonic Youth - The Eternal

Sonic Youth throws another one on the pile.

Scenario: a band can consistently create really good albums in the vein of this one, Murray Street or A Thousand Leaves, or for that matter, EVOL, Sister, and Washing Machine.

Question: do they have a duty (to themselves, to God, to me) to do anything else?  Should they risk it all on a colossal mistake?

Consider The Whitey Album, from “Ciccone Youth,” the stunted Madonna-wallowing alternative path they took in 85 or so.  It is huge fun to listen to.  Thurston Moore’s folk-rocky solo album Trees Outside the Academy, featuring Steve Shelley, was a great follow up to Rather Ripped, which itself was a revelation that SY could successfully drop the distorted tone-clusters, edited freakout jams, and sucker-punch vocals in favor of beauty, structure, and really excellent singing from the usually murky Kim Gordon.

Is it dictated by the popular music market?  Look at Beck, whose innate appeal to frat boys and hippies (to the extent there’s a difference anymore) means his core audience is much larger.  He took pretty much the opposite approach, creating a unique sound-world for each of his albums, at least up until Guero.  Even if this was an artistically worthy choice, with Odelay and “Loser” looming in his discography, every move he made was considered not on its own but in terms of what that crazy Beck was going to do next.  Since Guero, he has relied more or less on his old formula.

Why can’t Sonic Youth do something like Trees Outside the Academy? More to the point, why don’t they make something that will really clean clocks and take out the trash?  They may be unable as a group to cooperate in any other endeavor.  Perhaps it’s a business choice, to create a consistent brand.  Maybe they are imitating modern artists who make an endless string of “Untitled #” paintings, all the same sampling of colors and shapes.

Tied with Bill Callahan’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle for best sounding record of 2009.

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Tags: beck iterations popular idiom production singing society sonic youth folk-rock
November 30, 2008
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Times New Viking - Live at Modified in Phoenix 29 November 2008

Times New Viking is my new favorite band.  They wallop such enormous ass it’s like they are friends with the class clown in a school for fat kids.  “Kick me” signs printed on Kinko’s’s full assortment of paper colors pour out of their amplifiers like rainbows of blood.  Don’t worry, it’s actually ketchup, made from heirloom tomatoes and sea salt.

The band is completely in the moment but executing very well prepared ideas.  They come out of chaos on a dime and switch gears at will.  They have real songs, and can play their instruments.

The crowd was super-excited.  Right in front of me, a few cool kids straight out of the cool-kid catalog (hair scragged, goofy smiles, talking full of ideas) were ready to mosh, but only ironically.  They waited a couple of songs, then began jostling each other.  Then they “moshed”, disappearing briefly into a mess of bodies - then they were just standing again, having referred to a known quantity to a satisfying degree while staying far enough removed for coolth.

Modified exemplifies what I look for in a venue.  There’s nothing precious about it, there’s plenty of places to be, and it’s easy to get in and out of.  You can escape in two directions, because the main area is shaped like a donut - the bathroom is in the middle, which is a little smelly, but whatever it’s ***k rock.  I suspect this shape, combined with the plywood floor, is what leads to the decent acoustics.

In a rare case of actually having my head in the right place at the right time, I recorded this show.  Here is a .zip with mp3s all nicely edited for you.  Use it wisely.

http://www.mediafire.com/?wxjhjnzkmzk

Deerhunter also played.  It felt like watching the Beatles and Pink Floyd play back to back, or Sonic Youth and Joy Division.  Deerhunter was way too loud, though.

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Tags: Kick acoustics deerhunter live songwriting sonic youth times new viking I recorded this
November 24, 2008
Parts & Labor - Mapmaker

My sister is pretty happy about this band.

Emily introduced me to Sonic Youth, King Missile, Killdozer, The Skatalites, and basically everything beyond The Police and They Might Be Giants.

Because of Sonic Youth, I learned of Glenn Branca.  Because of King Missile, I learned of Kramer and Shimmy Disc Records, on which label was also Eugene Chadbourne, who I witnessed (on VHS) playing the rake and the cow skull in about 1990, much sooner than I would have otherwise.  Because of Killdozer, I knew why Nirvana sounded so awesome - Butch Vig’s production does something pretty similar on the Killdozer albums, but of course Killdozer’s songs and performances are pretty awesome too.  Because of the Skatalites, I can never be unhappy involuntarily.

Parts & Labor sounds like a frenetic collaboration between Richard Thompson and Jeff “Neutral Milk Hotel” Mangum.  They have Thompson’s British folk thing happening, and Mangum’s dedication to the outside edge of the song, all while trying to get a terrified cow out of a burning barn.  It’s good stuff.

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Tags: Emily Brock Eugene Chadbourne Parts and Labor Richard Thompson Sonic Youth folk glenn branca killdozer king missile neutral milk hotel the police the skatalites they might be giants folk-rock
November 6, 2008
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Free Kitten - Inherit (listen to “Seasick”)

Albums are difficult. You have to have it all in one place, at a bare minimum. You have to know what order the tracks go in.

If you are serious, you listen to a CD. You have to have a specific object which maps only to the one album, the specific intent of people in time. You can’t let it get scratched, you break the case, the booklet gets little half-circles imprinted in its sides if you don’t reinsert it into the case correctly. There’s not enough information in the booklet, and you can’t just look it up in Wikipedia, because your CD player doesn’t have Wikipedia, it doesn’t even tell you what track is playing any more, not since the light burnt out two years ago. You have to imagine what instruments made the sound, who played it, where they recorded it.

An LP makes things a little more complicated, because you have to be in one place, the place where your record player lives. Then at some point you have to get up, turn over the record.

It’s like a puppy, reminding you it likes to eat, to walk, to play.  Focus.

Well the main question about something as cool and hip as this, is if it would be as cool if it weren’t as hip. In other words, without Kim Gordon or at least the mark of Sonic Youth, would this sound have the same effect? Am I listening to music, or to culture? I can imagine a sort of self-congratulatory mode in which the local mode love of the unknown is combined with the mass mode imprimatur of a taste maker.

I wanted to post “Help Me”, because it’s funny and awesome, but mundane problems arose.  Listen to it above, if you want.

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Tags: album cd difficult free kitten kim gordon lp wikipedia Sonic Youth