Category Archives: miscellaneous

2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, news

Record Store Day Releases from Medical Records

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In case you didn’t know, Record Store Day is tomorrow. This is the one day of the year that you are pretty much required to get to your local record store and purchase some music, or to head over to a label’s site and grab some tunes. It’s a day that celebrates music, sure, but it’s also – to me at least – about supporting the independent stores and labels that are releasing music by artists that aren’t getting tons of exposure.

I’m going to help you to do your part tomorrow by presenting to you a few of the albums that Medical Records is going to be releasing tomorrow. The first one up is “Vintage Robotnick,” the early and mainly unreleased work of Maurizio Dami. Listen to the sample video below to hear cuts from each of the tracks. Sleazy synths, electro-beats and sometimes bouncy rhythms permeate. Most of the LP is comprised of tracks recorded from 1982-1984 which have only been released on CD in 2003 on the “Rare Robotnicks” compilation. Check out this celebration of early 1980’s disco synth pop from Italy.

Next up is a collection of ultra-rare 12″ singles – “Electroconvulsive Therapy vol. 2 – Fuzz Dance.” Made up of 12″ singles originally on the legendary Fuzz Dance label, super rare disco, synthwave, Italo crossover, released on striped italian flag vinyl. As you can hear from the sampler below the same krautrock-cum-disco sensibilities as the Robotnick above are present throughout this compilation. This one is packed with a lot more in the way of pop-hooks. They certainly aren’t formed from the same mold as American synth-disco of the same era. Despite any similarities, these Italian artists, to my ear at least, are maintaining a sense of authenticity in their sound. Sure, the studio production is a bit dry, but it still manages to come off as inviting rather than cold. Vintage synths abound. Check out the sampler below.

So there you have it. Keep an eye out for these gems when you are out and about on your record store day shopping spree. If you can’t find them, then of course you should head over to the Medical Records site to pick up some of their other great offerings. Might I suggest Roladex, perhaps?

Of course, you can also find them on Facebook and Twitter.

2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal

In Memoriam Sonic Youth XV: “The Eternal”

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So this is it. This is the final installment. Well, maybe not the final final installment for me, I mean I could easily do a bunch more posts on each of the SYR recordings and some other various things that are out there, but to be completely honest, despite the fact that Sonic You are undoubtedly one of my favorite artists of all time, I am far from a completist. I do have all of the “standard” stuff: studio releases (obviously) a few 45s, tapes of stuff that I recorded off the radio when the local college station in Rochester, NY would play some rare stuff, and so on. And I’m sure that through various people I could find all that there is to find out there. But posting about things like that would lack the authenticity and honesty that these posts have had because I wouldn’t have time to really make a connection with them.

Anyway, speaking of the final installment, this is probably the final proper Sonic Youth release that any of us will ever hear. The only thing, that I’m aware of anyway, that was released after this was the final installment of the SYR series, a set of instrumental pieces used as incidental music for a film. That album is their most accessible SYR release, for sure.

“The Eternal” really showed promise. The band more and more was becoming their youthful selves again. There’s plenty of grit and noise, and it seemed like the head of steam that had been building up since that patch of weaker albums, “A Thousand Leaves” and “NYC Ghosts & Flowers,” was finally ready to pay off. The band was getting back into shape after trying out some more experimental stuff in the later part of their career.

But, as usual, these posts are more about my experiences with the albums than they are about the albums themselves. This album came out only a few weeks after I had finished grad school. I was spending the summer living off of whatever savings I had left over while waiting for my job to begin in September. It was pretty much the laziest few months of my life and I think that I still feel guilt about them. Pretty much all that I did was read and listen to music, but even after all that listening to music I still don’t remember making an immediate connection with the album. It wasn’t until a few years later that I started listening to the album in earnest.

I definitely wasn’t thinking that this was going to be their last album. There I was starting to take them for granted again. I caught them live once more in Toronto which I thought was going to be the best show ever, but was sorely disappointed. Their setlist at that show, at the legendary Massey Hall of all places, was basically just this album with the songs on shuffle. Sure, they trotted out “Death Valley ’69” at the end, but I was just not impressed. That is maybe what makes me the most sad. That I could have such fond memories of them, but the last “interaction” that I had with the band was a disappointing show in an amazing venue.

It was just too much to take in at once. That isn’t what I want in a live show, and their energy was just not there at all. Kim’s dancing was reduced to what seemed like going through the motions, with little to no emotion. It was just a downer, and I would have been even sadder about the show had I not been in Canada where the beer is like moonshine.

Listening now, I think that this is a really good album. Maybe not the strongest way to go out, but still strong. It’s certainly better than anything we have gotten from Thurston as a solo artist since then. Out of nowhere it seems Lee Ranaldo has become the savior with his most recent two solo albums being the complete polar opposite to the boring dad-rock that Thurston churned out on “Demolished Thoughts.” And that “The Eternal” has TWO Lee Ranaldo tracks probably should have clued us all in to the fact that the usual song writing forces were not working to full effect in the year or so leading up to it.

Anyway, that is about it with these posts. I’m probably going to periodically talk about some of the SYR recordings, as those are currently a little more in line with the music that I have been studying lately and there is some really interesting stuff going on in those, but whatever it is that I might write about them will be from a more analytical standpoint.

Thanks for reading my un-edited and rambling remembrances.

2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth XIV: “Rather Ripped”

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The release of “Rather Ripped” really came as a surprise to me, and it was such perfect timing. I was finishing up my undergrad, and I remember that the weather was getting warmer when I was introduced to it, or when I learned that the album existed and everything was just perfect. When I think about it, and when I hear the first few notes of “Reena” all of that comes rushing back. And as I sit here in Oregon, where it hasn’t stopped raining for at least the past several days and the sun hasn’t been out for more than 5 minutes at a time since September, I am still able to feel like I did when I first started listening to the album.

This is definitely a poppier album than maybe any other that they have ever released. The closest thing you get to experimental on here is maybe “Do You Believe in Rapture?” with its endlessly ringing harmonics that create all sorts of complex clusters of pitches behind Thurston’s breathy vocals. But for the most part the album just sounds like the band is happier, like they are energized, and very happy to be doing what they were doing. Maybe I’m projecting, or maybe they were projecting onto me.

More importantly to me, is that this is the album that Sonic Youth was touring on when I saw them live for the first time. After being a fan since about 1993 I finally had an opportunity to see them in Toronto on August 8, 2006. Got to spend the day wandering around Toronto with a fellow die-hard SY fan (and all around awesome person who was also seeing SY for the first time that night), which in and of itself is pretty awesome, but then when they came to the stage things got all sorts of awesome.

I’m trying to remember as much as I can from that night, but I think that it would be best summed up by saying that they opened their set with “Teen Age Riot.” They tore through stuff from almost every era  all the way back to Confusion is Sex, playing “World Looks Red” toward the end of their set (for the first time since 1995). The venue was kind of weird and echo-y, but I don’t think I remember really caring at all.

All of those things come to mind when I listen to the album now, and I still think of it as their “latest,” blurring out all the releases that surround it, making “The Eternal” feel more like a coda than a follow-up release.

As for some of the songs specifically, I am wondering right now what the impetus behind “Sleeping Around” was. Like I mentioned in the last post, I wonder how far back one could go to hear lyrics that would point us to Thurston and Kim’s inevitable break-up. However, it is interesting that “Sleeping Around” is followed by “What a Waste.”

Anyway, none of that is really of any importance at all.

The song that I really connected to was “Pink Steam.” I can’t think of any other song in the Sonic Youth catalog that focuses so much on an intro. I could go back and listen to the opening few minutes over and over again, and I’m sure that I have at least a few times. Sometimes they are really surprising in their structures like that. On an album full of verse-chorus-verse songs they go and stick an extended instrumental track that ends up having some lyrics at the end after all.

Overall the standout tracks belong to Kim, this is really kind of her album. Besides “Reena,” setting the tone for the entire album, there is “What a Waste,” “Jams Run Free,” and “The Neutral,” and all of them have the typical Kim breeziness to them, and she moves away from her usual breathy rasp an really sings passionately on every track. It doesn’t sound as forced as her voice could sometime come off previously.

If I had hopes of Sonic Youth going on forever, they got stronger after I became obsessed with this album. Listening to it right now is making me feel all sorts of nostalgic and obsessive again. I prefer not to remember that in six years it would be over.

2014, EP, miscellaneous, music, news, thoughts

Video: Squarepusher w/Z-Machines – “Music For Robots”

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I had this thought pop into my head for no reason at all this afternoon. I was imagining myself as teaching a one-on-one music composition lesson, just like the ones that I used to have on a weekly basis when I was an undergrad. I was thinking about what the first thing that I would say to a first-time student would be, as I still remember my first lesson, and there are some things that I know now that I wish I had known then, that I wish someone would have told me long ago.

What I came up with was, “Ok, the first thing that you have to realize is this: everything has been done already.” I do believe this is true, and I think that for someone that is just starting out writing music that is an important thing to hear. Just practice and get better, develop your voice and everything will fall into place, don’t spend all your time (or any time for that matter) trying to convince people of how brilliant you are.

Then I happened upon an email from Warp Records touting the forthcoming Squarepusher EP. Of course I was excited. I love Squarepusher, even being lucky enough to have seen him perform live this past Summer. The man is a genius, and a virtuoso instrumentalist. His sound is recognizable  from only a few pitches.

According to the man himself:
“In this project the main question I’ve tried to answer is ‘can these robots play music that is emotionally engaging?’

I have long admired the player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow and Gyorgy Ligeti. Part of the appeal of that music has to do with hearing a familiar instrument being ‘played’ in an unfamiliar fashion. For me there has always been something fascinating about the encounter of the unfamiliar with the familiar. I have long been an advocate of taking fresh approaches to existing instrumentation as much as I am an advocate of trying to develop new instruments, and being able to rethink the way in which, for example, an electric guitar can be used is very exciting.

Each of the robotic devices involved in the performance of this music has its own specification which permits certain possibilities and excludes others – the robot guitar player for example can play much faster than a human ever could, but there is no amplitude control. In the same way that you do when you write music for a human performer, these attributes have to be borne in mind – and a particular range of musical possibilities corresponds to those attributes. Consequently, in this project familiar instruments are used in ways which till now have been impossible.”
Sure, that’s all well and good, but while I was listening to the track my question of “why?” just never went away. The composition is undoubtedly Squarepusher. Everything about it has his voice all over it. But, it’s just off. It just doesn’t sound quite right. Sure his character is in those notes, but the personality is gone. The personality and delicate shading of timbres that, yes, are still possible (and noticeable!) in electronic music, are replaced with rigidity and coldness. Sure, robots can play anything, absolutely anything. I would argue the “emotionally engaging” part though. How can music engage someone emotionally if all of those subtle shadings, the things that are impossible to notate, and impossible to mimic verbatim, and utterly, unmistakably human have been extracted?

Sure, they are playing live instruments. The human, emotional element doesn’t lie in the instruments. Even someone that composes pure, fixed media electronic music, needs to finesse that music so that there is a human connection. They take the machines, and the computers and they sand down (so to speak) what makes them sound like machines. The human element is inserted, it’s not something that just comes out through notes and rhythms.

Yes, it is fun to hear (and watch) music be performed by robots. It’s not an original idea though. The simple answer to the question is, I don’t think that the music created by these robots is emotionally engaging at all. Intellectually engaging, sure, but after about 30 seconds of the stolid, precise rhythms and the wind-up music box timbres, I was done.

Why bother with the robots if you can pull the stuff off yourself?

“Music for Robots” will be released April 8th digitally, on CD and vinyl. Pre-orders from Bleep and iTunes will come with a download of “Sad Robot Goes Funny.”

2014, Bandcamp, EP, miscellaneous, music, news

Stream: Fuzz/CCR Headcleaner 7″

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First of all let’s just get out of the way that the opening guitar chords that jerkily shift up and down the fretboard sound an awful lot like (read: exactly like) those of “Bubblegum,” the Kim Fowley track that I, and I’m sure many others, came to know through the Sonic Youth cover that appeared as a bonus track on the CD version of their 1986 release, “Evol.” Well, this is a cover too. Ty & Co. are offering up “Till The End of the Day,” originally by The Kinks. Ty and crew definitely do their best to soup it up as much as possible.

I’m glad that Ty is continuing to release more stuff with Fuzz. He’s really been tearing it up lately, and I think this incarnation of his writing process is his best yet. Similar garage rock sound, but Fuzz moves more toward the stoner-ish, jammy end of the spectrum due to Charlie Moothart’s virtuosic interjections, than his solo stuff (which has been more on the sad-bastard side of things lately). “Till The End of the Day” is a two minute barn-burner blasting through your speakers at light speed and never stopping to rest.

The B-side to this limited 7″ release features the slow, enveloping sound of CCR Headcleaner. Their track “Free the Freaks” stomps through with a mix of distorted guitars with clean steel strings in equal measure; with requisite vocals buried below the surface and left to echo in the distance.

The 7″ is available for order now for $6.60, while the 2 tracks are available as a download for “name your own price.” Don’t be cheap, and here is why:
100% of the digital proceeds going to the Ariel Panero Memorial Fund at VH1 Save the Music – a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring instrumental music education in America’s public schools.
Bandcamp//
2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth XIII: “Sonic Nurse”

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I have Sonic Nurse on vinyl. Not that this is something that is particularly novel, it isn’t by any means. The truth is I have a ton of SY vinyl, early stuff, rare stuff, the SYR recordings etc. The reason that I think of Sonic Nurse as an album that I have on vinyl is because the digital copy that I have I recorded directly from that vinyl to my computer, and I am reminded of that every time that I listen to it.

In 2004 the common practice of “download code inside” that we all take for granted now, was not the case so much back then. And by “not so much the case” I mean that it wasn’t at all the case. So this was maybe one of the first times that I had bought an album brand new, without having heard it first, on vinyl. Anyway, the sound of my digital files is pretty bad. It’s tinny, thin, nasal, too quiet. Basically I didn’t know what I was doing when I ripped it to my computer. I still listen to it this way though. I’ve gotten used to it and I kind of like it this way now.

But the truth is, I didn’t actually buy this album until a few years after it came out. I got Rather Ripped and then went back to Sonic Nurse after I realized that there was an album out there that I didn’t have. I’m glad that I did because there are a lot of great tracks on here. “Pattern Recognition” starting it off, with its lengthy noise freak-out at the end is so great to hear after not getting too much of it in the past couple of albums.

Of course Jim O’Rourke was still in the band at this time, which means there was some more interesting guitar interplay throughout the album. Things really take off with songs like “Stones” and “New Hampshire,” though. Dense layers of melodic interplay that more closely resemble some sort of free-jazz improv session than they do anything else that Sonic Youth has attempted before. Sure, their stuff has always had an element of noise and experimentation to it (that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?) but when 3 different guitarists start attacking the same patch of silence all at once, coming at it from completely different angles, all spreading out and crossing over top of each other, well that sounds different than the usual blasts of noise and feedback that we’ve been getting.

Interludes that feature melodies that closely resemble real-life actual guitar solos like in “Unmade Bed” start to appear, and really add an interesting dynamic to the staid gestures that the band has been adhering to for the past couple of decades.

What’s funny about writing this is that my memories of getting to know this album are continuing to this day. It wasn’t really all that long ago that the album came out, barely 10 years now, and I’m pretty much still continuing on down the same path that I was starting out on when this album came out in 2004. Back then I was in the 2nd year of my undergraduate program, and now I’m in the 3rd year of a doctoral program, with only a little break in between. So in a way I’m still coming to know this album little by little. Sadly I know that I tend to neglect it in favor of Rather Ripped or some of the classic stuff.

I have been thinking though, as I listen to this and the albums that come after it, about Kim and Thurston. Now that it is 2014, and they have been separated or divorced or whatever for a few years now, how far back did what lead to that start? And what lyrics or songs would indicate that a separation was in the works? Does it go all the way back to Murray Street? Does it start here, or on Rather Ripped? There may have to be some pretty detailed lyrical analysis to figure it all out.

Either way, listening to this album I’m just thankful that the band decided to continue on the path that they returned to on Murray Street.

Lots of things were starting to come to an end, not only Kim and Thurston’s marriage, but also the band itself. They would leave DGC after releasing Rather Ripped two years after Sonic Nurse, and only one more non-SYR album in 2009. At this point in their career, and at this point in my being a fan, Sonic Youth was just a given. I thought that it was a pretty safe bet that we would be getting albums from them well into the next decade, that they would never stop, and it would just be something that went on in perpetuity.

I guess I was wrong.

2014, albums, miscellaneous, music, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth XII: “Murray Street”

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“Murray Street,” to me, feels like a resurrection of sorts for Sonic Youth. This undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that after several years away from the band, completely missing out on “A Thousand Leaves” and “NYC Ghosts & Flowers,” I got this album from my brother for my birthday and started listening to them again in earnest. It was like starting to talk to an old friend again after having a huge fight.

And so many of the elements of Sonic Youth’s songwriting that were missing from the (what I thought at the time were) way-too-high concept of the previous two albums, return here on “Murray Street” in full force. It’s a return to structure, or as much song-structure as Sonic Youth could ever return to; there’s more of a focus on filling the space with guitar driven harmony and melody; more of a focus on all of the band’s strengths, basically. One could Listen to “Washing Machine,” skip over the next two albums and go straight to “Murray Street” and not really have missed much in the way of an evolution. The two albums in between have their strengths and their weakness, of course, but aside from that they just sound as though the band had veered off course for a bit. Again, the insertion of the SYR recordings probably have a lot to do with that.

 


We’re picking up right where we left off now. In that time away the band had added Jim O’Rourke to the official lineup, which brought in some more complex compositional forethought to the writing process, and if I’m remembering my Sonic Youth trivia correctly this was something that drove Thurston a little crazy because it slowed the whole writing and recording process down. Anyway, that’s something to consider I guess, but it really has nothing to do with my experience of the album.

I just remember that when I got this album it was during my first year away at college, it had come out only a few months before I started. At the same time that I was re-acquainting myself with Sonic Youth I was discovering an entire world of music that I had never even heard of before. This was around the time that I discovered the music of Charles Ives, John Cage, Stravinsky and so many others that are staples in my regular listening now. Everything was starting to make a little more sense to me now. I was starting to be able to put together where all of these ideas and sounds were coming from. At the time I didn’t realize just how many gaps existed in my knowledge of music in general.

Listening to “Murray Street” again now I can clearly hear the beginnings of ideas that turn up in slightly varied form on “Rather Ripped,” which would come out 4 years later. The one thing that jumps out at me right now is the tuning of “Rain on Tin” sounds to be the same as the tuning used on “Pink Steam.” There are a lot of similarities in those two songs.

The album is definitely more subdued than material found on “Experimental, Jet Set, Trash & No Star,” and there certainly isn’t anything as cacophonous (nor as epic and brilliant) as “The Diamond Sea.” It’s a new phase of Sonic Youth. They seem less focused on creating as much noise as possible, and more interested in carving out interesting and dare I say it catchy melodies.

I still enjoy “Murray Street,” and when I listen to it now all sorts of memories of my first years away at college come flooding back, which was a good time for me. For maybe the first time in a decades I felt as though I was succeeding in something, and feeling comfortable doing it. It’s similar to how I think I was feeling when I first started listening to Sonic Youth. I guess that at this point it was good to welcome them back. And now that we were becoming re-acquainted I was learning to listen to music in an entirely new way. Neither one of us needed non-stop action, aggression and noise to hold our interest any more. And this is the reason that I started writing these entries, is because that connection of growing up with the band holds true all the way through to the end.

Up next I continue through to the final phase of the band with their final 3 proper releases.

2014, miscellaneous, personal, thoughts, writing

Some thoughts on the state of music blogging

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This post was originally going to veer into a discussion of a particular group of songs that I thought were worth talking about, but ended up developing into something completely different and I think that it works better as a stand alone piece. These are some of the things that I have been thinking about lately, perhaps spurred by my frustration with music blogs in general. I have read so many negative reviews (which are pointless for all involved) as well as many very poorly written reviews and other pieces about music that attempt to cover up the author’s lack of musical knowledge through convoluted verbiage. There are specific things that I could cite, and I will do so at a later time, but for right now I think that I am just going to let this stand as is and get back to the actual music tomorrow.

 

There are pretty much only two ways to get my attention music-wise. Despite sounding like the completely opposing ideas of beauty and aggression, I think that the best way to wrap these things up together would be under the umbrella of “visceral.” Something that is quiet can be visceral, though it seems people typically use the word to refer to something that is unusually aggressive, or overbearing in general. But really it’s about feeling something either way.

Leave cerebral music to those that don’t know any better; leave it to those that can’t figure out how to say anything other than “look how smart we are and how complicated our songs are.” Even early Genesis, the most proggy of the prog, had some deep emotion running through a lot of their songs (though not all of them, I mean they did write an entire song about a giant hogweed after all.

But, the point is, and I do have a point, is that when I hear a song I almost instantly know whether I am going to like it or not. I’m not saying that I make snap judgements that are completely biased one way or the other, but I have listened to enough music to be able to tell when something is not going to have anything to offer me. At a certain point you just have to figure out how to do it and how to do it fast. Better that than sit through something for an hour just because you feel like you have to. A lot of times I can tell just from the ambiance around the first second or two of a song, especially if there are some drumstick clicks to count off. It’s easy to hear if something is going to be overproduced from that sound alone. If something is overproduced, and by that I mean surgically recorded, hermetically protected from any environmental sounds, then I am almost positive that I am going to have no interest in listening to it no matter how good the “song” is. Because, and bands need to figure this out, there is a lot more to writing a good song than the chord progression and the melody. As soon as you think about those things too much you are sunk.

Recording something in a deadened studio is like telling someone that you love them for the first time via text. There’s no emotion. The music needs to express something, and not through the use of overwrought bad teenage poetry. Make a connection, a real human connection. That is what music is all about.

And maybe this all sounds too heavy handed, and maybe you haven’t even read this far down, but if I get another email from another band that is trying way too hard, well, I don’t know what I am going to do. I can tell you what I am not going to do though, I am not going to pollute the rest of the internet with it. A lot of filtering happens, and I’m not ashamed of it.

There’s actually another thing that I am not going to do, and that is spend an evening writing about how much a specific album is terrible, detailing the ways in which it is. Sure, I could do that (and there are plenty of sites that do) but what would be the point? Throwing stones is easy. It’s easy because it takes very little knowledge and makes the writer sound like they know a whole lot more than they actually do. Why not just say nothing? Listen to as much of the song or album as you need to make a decision on whether or not it is worth listening to and if it is then you should happily share it with everyone. On the other hand, if you just can’t get through the song or the album, simply stop playing it and don’t listen to it anymore. That’s what everyone should do. Why waste your time and the time of others?

2014, miscellaneous, music, songs

Stream: Belzebong – “Dungeon Vultures,” Green & Wood – “Blind Seer”

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I’ll admit that I tend to get a little bit bogged down in the details from time to time. It’s part of my job, and part of who I am, so sometimes I can’t help it. As a music theorist I’m always trying to dig deeper into the function of every single note and looking for patterns and so on and so forth.

Sometimes, though, it’s just good to listen to some instrumental sludge/doom/stoner metal to really take my mind off of all the other music that I should be thinking about. I think that part of what allows me to do this is the kraut-rock-ish plodding of the low, droning, open strings, that sort of lulls me into a calmer state of being. One wouldn’t normally think of doom metal as being particularly relaxing, but then again I’m not exactly the gold standard of normativity either.

That timbre, the thick crunch of a guitar’s wound strings processed through about 10 Marshall stacks with the bass doubling everything an octave below, that’s what it’s all about with this music. That and the riffs. Something about it, and even after years of trying I’m still not able to figure out exactly what it is that does this, but it feels as though not just the music is going in slow motion, but all life around the music is going in slow motion. That definitely makes the genre worthy of the label.

The way I see it, all stoner metal/riff rock starts with Black Sabbath.  It’s basically proto-metal, but it started out nearly fully formed. Take a riff, smother it in thick distortion and play it until your fingers bleed. Over and over and over again. Poland’s stoner/doom metal Belzebong has that thick crunch down. I think the guitars are tuned down to what sounds like a C, though to be honest it is kind of difficult to discern pitch when things get so low, and then put on top of that the distortion and the fact that the chords are all root-fifth-octave. Things get muddy. The track, “Dungeon Vultures,” doesn’t cover too much territory across its 14 minutes, but I’m definitely not complaining. Some artists make 5 minutes seem like an eternity, but this 14 minutes goes by, I wouldn’t say quickly, but it certainly doesn’t feel like nearly an entire album side. “Dungeon Vultures” was recorded last year, and is limited to only 500 copies, there are still some available Check out the track below.

Green & Wood - "Devil's Plan"
Green & Wood – “Devil’s Plan”

After enjoying your 14 minutes of dirge and distortion, you can pick yourself up again with the closer-to-standard-tuning, comparatively swinging and bluesy riff-rocker “Blind Seer” by Green & Wood. This one’s a little more in the realm of a standard tune: under 5 minutes and with sneering vocals. I still can’t shake the feeling that, though not as sludgy, or doom-y, that an air of kraut-rock sensibility still exists. We’re reminded of the Black Sabbath connection at about the 2:40 mark, as the song chugs into a very Tony Iommi-esque breakdown. You can check that one out below.

“Blind Seer” appears on Green & Wood’s 2011 release “Devil’s Plan.” It seems like it’s a bit hard to find, but there are a couple copies floating around if you want them.

Belzebong is on tour throughout Europe right now. Dates can be found at their bandcamp.

2014, miscellaneous, music, personal, thoughts

In Memoriam Sonic Youth XI: “NYC Ghosts & Flowers”

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Well, this is the first time that I have had to actually listen to a Sonic Youth album for one of these posts so that I could actually talk about some of the music in detail. If you’ve been reading the previous posts from this series then you’ve read about how it was around the time of A Thousand Leaves where Sonic Youth and I were going through a separation. Well, during that separation this album came out and when I finally got it I had no idea what the hell to even do with it.

My memories of this album were buying it much later, I think in about 2003 or so, because I had been listening to “Murray Street” a lot by the time I finally heard any of these songs. But other than that I don’t have any particularly vivid memories about the album. I just remember over the years trying to get into it. I remember putting it in the CD player in my car and just leaving it in there, hoping that something would jump out at me and stick, something that would give me a foothold. But, after listening and listening I just cast it aside. For some reason, and this doesn’t happen that often, or hardly ever, really, but the only parts of the album that stuck with me were the “awful” parts. I mean, they aren’t objectively awful, they are just things that make me cringe kind of. Maybe I’m cringing because I’ve practically grown up with this band and I felt like I didn’t even know them anymore; maybe I was starting to question if I should have ever really loved them in the first place. I’m not sure, but that is definitely what kept me away from this album for pretty much a decade. Until this evening, listening to it in anticipation of having to write this post and realizing that I didn’t think that I was going to have anything to say about it.

You’ve probably read the “famous” review of this album on Pitchfork. I won’t link to it, you can find it on your own if you really want to, but they gave the album a o.o rating. Now, that’s different from a 0.0, you see? It’s less. Basically they were saying that not only was this the worst Sonic Youth album, but it’s maybe one of the worst albums that they had ever heard, which I fail to believe. I also think that back then (and continuing to this day) Pitchfork survives partially on sensationalist stunts like this to help bring in people that may not normally go to their site (like their review, also famous, of that Jet album. Did they really need to do that? People don’t come to Pitchfork to read reviews of bands like Jet. Was that them simultaneously trying to show their diversity and acceptance of all forms of music, while still allowing themselves to be pretentious assholes? I think so, yes).

After listening to this album, I mean really giving it a deep and thoughtful listen so that I could write something un-biased or inflammatory for the sake of being inflammatory, I realized that it really isn’t as bad as I (or Pitchfork) previously thought it was. Considering what it is that they were doing at the time (another 2 SYR albums, nos. 4 and 5, had been released between “A Thousand Leaves” and “NYC Ghosts & Flowers”) and where they were in their career, I think that this was a pretty reasonable way to go. Now, of course, I can only speak for myself. I can’t imagine what anyone hearing Sonic Youth for the first time with this album would think. I can’t even imagine what someone that happened to get into Sonic Youth only since they signed to DGC, someone that hadn’t dug into their back catalog, what would they think? It’s insane to think that this came out on a major label, and not only that, it is insane to think that this came out on a major label and that that label didn’t drop them immediately afterward. Let’s be honest, this isn’t the kind of music that is really going to be getting a lot of radio play, none of these songs would be able to be used for commercials or anything like that. There is no “Bull in the Heather” on this album.

There are, however, some pretty good moments on the album. Lee’s sole track, sharing its name with the album, is definitely a highlight, and the noisiest point on the album. To be fair though, Thurston’s “Small Flowers Crack Concrete” is a tough one to get through. I mean, this also isn’t the best review of the album. The most that I can muster is that this album is “ok.” But really what I’m saying is that this album really isn’t as bad as everyone thinks that it is. It’s a grower. You have to listen to it several times, maybe over the course of 14 years just periodically trying it out, in order to find things that are worth checking out.

Although, putting on “Murray Street,” one can immediately realize what it was that this album was missing after all…