![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOne of the great things about going out on tour is that wherever you go people thrust new music into your hands. Often it's their own, and sometimes it's unavailable in record stores. What's more, it's targeted towards your tastes much better than any software yet knows how to do, using an algorhythm we might call "mutual elective affinity" -- basically the idea that the music made by people who love what you do will be something you'll probably love too.
Today I'm reviewing the audio material I've been handed on this latest tour, plus stuff I found waiting in my mailbox when I got home. It's fascinating; just as Click Opera commenters tend to fall -- to simplify enormously -- into two broad categories (artistic hipsters and eccentric dandies, the progressive and the charmingly retro), so the music I tend to get given also divides quite neatly into formalist electronic experiment (often ambient) and music hall throwbacks (usually highly narrative) made by quirky oddballs too bright to be understood by the world. Which I suppose is apt, since my own work contains both those elements. I usually justify the "clash" in interviews by saying that it's precisely trad techniques like narrative, chord sequences and so on which can be used to "disorienteer" the audience somewhere formally interesting.
Let's start with the Black Light Orchestra. I became aware of a knot of Japanese girls at the first of my two Brussels concerts, and after the show met the centre of their attention: Yannick, the handsome drummer from Black Light Orchestra. It turned out the girls all came from pretty much the same district of Osaka as Hisae, and the band describes itself on its MySpace page as based in "Bruxelles / Osaka".
From the name, I expected them to be super-trendy electro-disco formalists of some kind, but the reference points that sprang to mind when I played material from their forthcoming album (and a DVD of their appearance on a Japanese TV show called Music Tide) were Brecht and Weill, Noel Coward, Frank Zappa, The Tiger Lilies and The Residents. This is a deranged, wide-ranging theatre music, with song titles like My Life is a Broken Bicycle, Midnight Milkman and A Happy Kangaroo Upon the Moon.
It's far too clever and disturbing and creative for pop or dance or fashion audiences (and in fact visually the group is currently a bit dowdy and over-inclined to gurn, though it obviously hasn't put the Japanese girls off), but I predict that Black Light Orchestra will have great success (on the scale of the Tiger Lilies, I mean) if they can find a literary property (something like "Under Milk Wood") and adapt it for the musical theatre. At the second Brussels concert I met the Black Light mainman, Mr Diagonal, self-described "last living survivor of the great Scottish-Jewish music hall tradition". He's clearly a genius.
Okay, let's switch traditions. Electro-formalism (quiet and noisy) here we come! After my New York show I met Nobuko Hori for the first time (she'd already been a Click Opera superstar). She was taller and more model-like than I'd expected. Before her friends whisked her away, I was handed a copy of her spanking new album, X to Your Milky Hair. How I love that title! Great sleeve too, by Nobuko herself (she's also a designer). Pity she's on Music Related, though, a label run by the most pointlessly pugnacious man since Alastair Campbell (Trevor -- the man in question -- has promised my friend Alin a bop on the nose the next time he sees him, which will be amusing, since Alin is a barrel-chested gigantor who eats mountains for breakfast).
The same tight-knit little group of New York Japanese friends (centred around Hikaru Furuhashi, who took the Monkey Town photo at the top of this entry) contains Sawako, a subtle ambient-electronic artist I know from my Tokyo days back in the early noughties. She's also released a new album, Madoromi (Anticipate 003), and it's quite interesting to compare and contrast the two records, hers and Nobuko's. They're both primarily electronic, they both contain some (but not much) singing, they both bubble away pleasantly in the background, adding a tint to the room (Sawako's tint is peaceful and wise, Nobuko's boisterous and bouncy). As a consumer, this is the kind of music I tend to buy and play over and over. Fujimoto's Mountain Record, for instance, was probably my most-played album of 2006. Madoromi is a slightly-less-ambient, slightly-less-fragmented version of the same thing: a scent that wafts through the room, borne on the drone of an electronic shruti box. Madoromi is destined to be played a lot in my house, but I suspect it won't leave many traces when the delightful scent wafts away. Nobuko's album is more spikey, and in parts reminds me of Hypo (why hasn't she collaborated with Antony yet?) in the aggression of her cut-copy-paste procedures. I think it's probably going to get played less than Sawako's album, but leave perhaps a more profound mark on what I actually do when I make music. At any rate, these are my two favourite albums of the moment.
One of the most exciting things for me, playing Brussels, was to see both Baudoux brothers standing out there in the audience. As Scratch Pet Land fans know, the brothers haven't been getting on too well since the electro-hippy bubble-drone unit split circa 2002 -- rumour was that they only spoke once a year or so at family reunions. It wasn't too disastrous for those of us who loved both Laurent and Nicolas, though: we got albums from their solo incarnations, DJ Elephant Power and Sun OK Papi KO, as well as Fan Club Orchestra productions. I titled a recent blog about them The energy of awkwardness, but on Tuesday night there was no personal awkwardness whatsoever: the two brothers seemed to be chatting away happily, and Laurent (who supported my show with a great set -- funky-clumsy, tactile, absurdist and very "black") even told me that Scratch Pet Land may be working together again soon.
As if to pave the way, Laurent gave me a wonderful artifact, a Scratch Pet Land CD-ROM called Qubo Gas, described as "a semi-randomized and interactive animation where users can interact on graphics and sounds". The multi-layered scribbly semi-transparent artwork is brilliant and the music seems to work the same way, taking the user from layer to layer of funky-crazy bubbly Scratch Pet riffage, as scribbles dance around on your screen. And hey, here it is online! Or do I mean here? Yes.
In London I went to an exhibition on Redchurch Street called Kill Matthew Barney. The title was painter Jock McFadyen's idea of a joke, or an attempt to bring the art world back to his kind of street-level (paintings of people carrying plastic carrier bags, coming home from the shops). Looking after the show was Glaswegian poet Gerry Mitchell, who I met at Tate Britain when I played there in January. Gerry gave me a copy of his new album The Ragged Garden (Fire CD105) and it's a mellow, surprisingly warming listen, like a swallow of good whisky. Over sentimental, lush, slightly plodding folk backing tracks by Little Sparta, Gerry mumbles his poetry (quite Joycean sometimes) in his warm Glaswegian twang, sounding a bit like an older, wiser, drunker version of Arab Strap. Nae bad at a'! He sounds more reconciled with life than he did on his last one.
I wasn't too taken with the Winsome Griffles album "Meet the Griffles". It's quite close to what Black Light Orchestra are doing (neo-cabaret), but with less genius, less quirk, and an American accent. So I'll pass directly to...
...HYPO 1995. Yes, Hypo sent me his (unreleased?) first album, and it's rather wonderful. Here be roughly-recorded indie guitars, girl singers, strategically-skewed riffs which always sound like they're just on the verge of turning into a Cure or New Order song. It's all rough-edged and deliberately clumsy, but somehow that "wrongness" gets centred, highlighted, and turned into brilliance. Definitely something I'm going to be playing a lot, and taking ideas from. Because I advance by appetite.
Oh, and Brian Szente's Brooklyn Werewolf Diaries -- what is that? I think it's this brilliant polymath reading his short stories. I'm going to put it on right now and find out.
Today I'm reviewing the audio material I've been handed on this latest tour, plus stuff I found waiting in my mailbox when I got home. It's fascinating; just as Click Opera commenters tend to fall -- to simplify enormously -- into two broad categories (artistic hipsters and eccentric dandies, the progressive and the charmingly retro), so the music I tend to get given also divides quite neatly into formalist electronic experiment (often ambient) and music hall throwbacks (usually highly narrative) made by quirky oddballs too bright to be understood by the world. Which I suppose is apt, since my own work contains both those elements. I usually justify the "clash" in interviews by saying that it's precisely trad techniques like narrative, chord sequences and so on which can be used to "disorienteer" the audience somewhere formally interesting.
Let's start with the Black Light Orchestra. I became aware of a knot of Japanese girls at the first of my two Brussels concerts, and after the show met the centre of their attention: Yannick, the handsome drummer from Black Light Orchestra. It turned out the girls all came from pretty much the same district of Osaka as Hisae, and the band describes itself on its MySpace page as based in "Bruxelles / Osaka".
From the name, I expected them to be super-trendy electro-disco formalists of some kind, but the reference points that sprang to mind when I played material from their forthcoming album (and a DVD of their appearance on a Japanese TV show called Music Tide) were Brecht and Weill, Noel Coward, Frank Zappa, The Tiger Lilies and The Residents. This is a deranged, wide-ranging theatre music, with song titles like My Life is a Broken Bicycle, Midnight Milkman and A Happy Kangaroo Upon the Moon.
It's far too clever and disturbing and creative for pop or dance or fashion audiences (and in fact visually the group is currently a bit dowdy and over-inclined to gurn, though it obviously hasn't put the Japanese girls off), but I predict that Black Light Orchestra will have great success (on the scale of the Tiger Lilies, I mean) if they can find a literary property (something like "Under Milk Wood") and adapt it for the musical theatre. At the second Brussels concert I met the Black Light mainman, Mr Diagonal, self-described "last living survivor of the great Scottish-Jewish music hall tradition". He's clearly a genius.
Okay, let's switch traditions. Electro-formalism (quiet and noisy) here we come! After my New York show I met Nobuko Hori for the first time (she'd already been a Click Opera superstar). She was taller and more model-like than I'd expected. Before her friends whisked her away, I was handed a copy of her spanking new album, X to Your Milky Hair. How I love that title! Great sleeve too, by Nobuko herself (she's also a designer). Pity she's on Music Related, though, a label run by the most pointlessly pugnacious man since Alastair Campbell (Trevor -- the man in question -- has promised my friend Alin a bop on the nose the next time he sees him, which will be amusing, since Alin is a barrel-chested gigantor who eats mountains for breakfast).
The same tight-knit little group of New York Japanese friends (centred around Hikaru Furuhashi, who took the Monkey Town photo at the top of this entry) contains Sawako, a subtle ambient-electronic artist I know from my Tokyo days back in the early noughties. She's also released a new album, Madoromi (Anticipate 003), and it's quite interesting to compare and contrast the two records, hers and Nobuko's. They're both primarily electronic, they both contain some (but not much) singing, they both bubble away pleasantly in the background, adding a tint to the room (Sawako's tint is peaceful and wise, Nobuko's boisterous and bouncy). As a consumer, this is the kind of music I tend to buy and play over and over. Fujimoto's Mountain Record, for instance, was probably my most-played album of 2006. Madoromi is a slightly-less-ambient, slightly-less-fragmented version of the same thing: a scent that wafts through the room, borne on the drone of an electronic shruti box. Madoromi is destined to be played a lot in my house, but I suspect it won't leave many traces when the delightful scent wafts away. Nobuko's album is more spikey, and in parts reminds me of Hypo (why hasn't she collaborated with Antony yet?) in the aggression of her cut-copy-paste procedures. I think it's probably going to get played less than Sawako's album, but leave perhaps a more profound mark on what I actually do when I make music. At any rate, these are my two favourite albums of the moment.
One of the most exciting things for me, playing Brussels, was to see both Baudoux brothers standing out there in the audience. As Scratch Pet Land fans know, the brothers haven't been getting on too well since the electro-hippy bubble-drone unit split circa 2002 -- rumour was that they only spoke once a year or so at family reunions. It wasn't too disastrous for those of us who loved both Laurent and Nicolas, though: we got albums from their solo incarnations, DJ Elephant Power and Sun OK Papi KO, as well as Fan Club Orchestra productions. I titled a recent blog about them The energy of awkwardness, but on Tuesday night there was no personal awkwardness whatsoever: the two brothers seemed to be chatting away happily, and Laurent (who supported my show with a great set -- funky-clumsy, tactile, absurdist and very "black") even told me that Scratch Pet Land may be working together again soon.
As if to pave the way, Laurent gave me a wonderful artifact, a Scratch Pet Land CD-ROM called Qubo Gas, described as "a semi-randomized and interactive animation where users can interact on graphics and sounds". The multi-layered scribbly semi-transparent artwork is brilliant and the music seems to work the same way, taking the user from layer to layer of funky-crazy bubbly Scratch Pet riffage, as scribbles dance around on your screen. And hey, here it is online! Or do I mean here? Yes.
In London I went to an exhibition on Redchurch Street called Kill Matthew Barney. The title was painter Jock McFadyen's idea of a joke, or an attempt to bring the art world back to his kind of street-level (paintings of people carrying plastic carrier bags, coming home from the shops). Looking after the show was Glaswegian poet Gerry Mitchell, who I met at Tate Britain when I played there in January. Gerry gave me a copy of his new album The Ragged Garden (Fire CD105) and it's a mellow, surprisingly warming listen, like a swallow of good whisky. Over sentimental, lush, slightly plodding folk backing tracks by Little Sparta, Gerry mumbles his poetry (quite Joycean sometimes) in his warm Glaswegian twang, sounding a bit like an older, wiser, drunker version of Arab Strap. Nae bad at a'! He sounds more reconciled with life than he did on his last one.
I wasn't too taken with the Winsome Griffles album "Meet the Griffles". It's quite close to what Black Light Orchestra are doing (neo-cabaret), but with less genius, less quirk, and an American accent. So I'll pass directly to...
...HYPO 1995. Yes, Hypo sent me his (unreleased?) first album, and it's rather wonderful. Here be roughly-recorded indie guitars, girl singers, strategically-skewed riffs which always sound like they're just on the verge of turning into a Cure or New Order song. It's all rough-edged and deliberately clumsy, but somehow that "wrongness" gets centred, highlighted, and turned into brilliance. Definitely something I'm going to be playing a lot, and taking ideas from. Because I advance by appetite.
Oh, and Brian Szente's Brooklyn Werewolf Diaries -- what is that? I think it's this brilliant polymath reading his short stories. I'm going to put it on right now and find out.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 01:14 pm (UTC)SCANDAL! "A bop on the nose" might sound cute but punching someone in the face isn't. Is he pugnacious as in just quarrelsome or prone to actual violence? Some back-story would be interesting, if not pointless gossip mongering.
"In London I went to an exhibition on Redchurch Street called Kill Matthew Barney."
A few of my friends went to go see that exhibition. What was your opinion on it?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 01:33 pm (UTC)The Jock McFadyen show was, well, Jock McFadyen! Slightly gritty, romantic, street-level, immune to trends, painterly. It's no really ma dram, ye ken, but it's a'right, man. I think in this case the slightly flashy show title was clever publicity but misleading. Jock isn't on a mission against mannerism, but if he is, I'm with the mannerists, I think.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 01:46 pm (UTC)If you haven't messed around with the Tate's implementation of the Qubo Gas thing, do so now (http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/watercouleurpark/flash.htm), and mess around with the mouse a lot. It's fab Cute Formalism!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:09 pm (UTC)For example,
here's mine. (http://www.thejamesrocket.com) (The web-album is The James Rocket, I'm James, There's Rock in the Rocket, bla bla. It is what it is.)
Oh well. If you don't promote yourself, don't expect anyone else to do it for you...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:23 pm (UTC)Did he know you disliked him? Either way, I agree with the 'no bannings or deletions' policy you have regarding this blog (even though some of the anonymous comments made in the past have been nothing but completely off topic and downright spiteful). If you block and delete everyone you find uncongenial you lose diversity and vibrancy, which leaves you with what? Friends and sycophantic fans. A very dull blog indeed.
"The Jock McFadyen show was, well, Jock McFadyen! Slightly gritty, romantic, street-level, immune to trends, painterly. It's no really ma dram, ye ken, but it's a'right, man. I think in this case the slightly flashy show title was clever publicity but misleading. Jock isn't on a mission against mannerism, but if he is, I'm with the mannerists, I think."
It's not my cup of tea either, really.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:37 pm (UTC)Alin is
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:49 pm (UTC)The reason I mistook Alin for the one expecting a bop on the nose was because of this comment he posted in that thread, off the bat:
"I don't care if i offend anyone, or look like an idiot and no gaijin will ever nod their head to me on the street again but WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT DESIGN."
Akabe man, you're worse than me. Simmer down...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:51 pm (UTC)He's just a sad sad man...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 03:19 pm (UTC)readership
Date: 2007-10-26 03:22 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 03:28 pm (UTC)"Pity she's on Music Related, though, a label run by the most pointlessly pugnacious man since Alastair Campbell (Trevor has promised my friend Alin a bop on the nose the next time he sees him, which will be amusing, since Alin is a barrel-chested gigantor who eats mountains for breakfast)."
From that statement, Trevor or Alin could be "the pointlessly pugnacious man". And I know Momus says "my friend Alin", but that could have been sarcastic contempt.
The I looked at at that thread Momus directed me towards and the first thing I saw was Alin being uh, pugnacious (heh heh)... I then clicked Alin's link and it was Akabe's jornal. I put 2 and 2 together and got 5.
and that is how wires get crossed.
but yeah, you know what they say about Cyber drama; arguing on the internet, Special olympics, retard, etc...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 03:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 03:42 pm (UTC):(
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:21 pm (UTC)Hearing a song sung in a British accent by a British artist is quite rare, and completely unheard of by any of the other members of the Anglosphere (Momus and Sophie Ellis Bexter being rare examples of British pop artists who sing in a British accent, of course)
I dont get why Britons put on American accents when singing! I understand that more English words rhyme in an American accent, thus expanding the lyrical possibilities, but still...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:41 pm (UTC)*Though I would agree that there are probably more British singers that Americanize their voices than the other way around - right off I can only think of demo-tape era Joey Ramone and an awful lot of Robert Pollard's stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 04:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 05:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 05:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 05:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-26 05:26 pm (UTC)Arab Strap; Libertines; Blur; Art Brut; Big Country; Mogwai (when they do open their mouths); Buzzcocks; I *think* I detect UK vowels in Charlottefield; Joe Strummer never to my mind disguised his accent; I can't make up my mind about The Go! Team, but they're doing cheerleading chants, and Americanizing in that context is perhaps forgiveable. Selfish Cunt don't seem at all American in tone. Mekons. Pram. I think Thom Yorke's accent isn't so much British as I Love My Falsetto. Scissorfight's Geordie burr is the delight of their colonial fans.* Slits. X-Ray Spex. Smiths. XTC.
Oh and hey, with regard to this side of the pond, doesn't Colin Meloy throw his voice awfully Brit for a Montanan? And Interpol has to Britify their vocals some to fit the new new wave thing they rock.
*Ha. Just kidding.