Antipop

So I listened to Primus' Antipop for the third time ever today, and I remembered why I pretty much never listen to it. It's atrocious. It doesn't even sound like Primus. I mean no wonder why the band went on hiatus after this album. It's not the heavy influence of outsiders & their production, it's not that simple. Hell, the song produced by Fred Durst is actually one of the best songs on the album, the nu-metal aggression keeps it afloat. Everything that makes Primus "Primus" is completely gone. Les Claypool's bass playing doesn't drive any of the songs, or stick out in that cartoony, Claypool angular fashion. It's just gratuitous, "hey look at these chops" slap bass. Larry LaLonde no longer has funky, staccato bass to work off of, and just riffs along with Tom Morello & James Hetfield. That dynamic that defines Primus is nowhere to be found. Not to mention Claypool's lyrics are no longer perverse or surreal, they're just all around contrived & weak.

Can we pretend this album never happened? That's pretty much what I've been doing. I mean Animals Should Not Try To Act Like People more or less picks up immediately where Tales From The Punchbowl left off. And I'm thankful for that, as Animals is the band at their best. How or why Antipop ever happened is one hell of a mystery to me, it reeks of contractual obligations, but I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it. I just want to forget it.

It's THEM

Themselves - The No Music. (2002) on Anticon

1. Home Work
2. Mouthful
3. Good People Check
4. Poison Pit
5. Live Trap
6. Only Child Explosion
7. Paging Dr. Moon Or Gun
8. Dark Sky Demo
9. You Devil You
10. Out In The Open
11. Hat In The Wind

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?nec3hdi12mt

Themselves is gonna drop a FREE mixtape this week over at anticon. They've leaked some previews, over at pitchfork & XLR8R, which I can't stop listening to. It's also caused me to spin The No Music. nonstop as well.

The mixtape & following album are probably the most anticipated projects of 2009, simply because Themselves haven't released a new album since The No Music. Dose One & Jel have been busy with Subtle since then, and only returned to Themselves with the band Notwist, forming the group 13 & God. So this year marks the first time we get to hear Themselves with fresh production. Their 1999 debut Them is too raw for my tastes (as is the case with nearly all early anticon), and The No Music.'s production is better, but still murkier than what you'd like.

Despite the production, this album is still irresistible. It's pretty debatable if it's hip-hop or not, since Jel's soundscapes do more than blur lines. Dose's prose is stream-of-conscious at it's rawest, stream-of-subconscious would be a more appropriate term. He admits to things in rhyme that most people won't even admit to themselves. This is more avant garde than your standard anticon album, which says a lot, but more importantly, nothing compares.

Find Candace

Venetian Snares - Find Candace (2003) on Hymen

1. Befriend a Childkiller (Remix)
2. Mercy Funk
3. Find Candace
4. Yor
5. Children's Limbo
6. Dolleater
7. Bind Candace

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?fz222hzzuzw

Venetian Snares is the name for the prolific Aaron Funk. Find Candace is one of half a dozen releases that Funk produced in 2003 alone. His output has slowed down in recent years, as he only graced us with a single full-length in 2008. But this here is one of his easily over-looked albums, as it was issued (and now deleted) on the obscure, German label, Hymen.

This is considered the "sister album" to his classic Doll Doll Doll, probably his best known album aside from his genre breaking Rossz Csillag Alatt Született. While the production is similar to Doll Doll Doll, if not a few notches higher, the content isn't as abrasive or terrifying. The track "Dolleater," which originally showed up on the the Doll Doll Doll LP, is as bleak as is gets. So it's fair to say that Find Candace is a median representation of Funk's work.

If you're wondering about the perverse artwork, it's by the Japanese based, British artist Trevor Brown, who's managed to grace quite a few Venetian Snares covers, as well as have a lot of his work confiscated by Japanese Customs, for being too pornographic.

life in MONO

i've had an ear infection for almost a full week now. i haven't been able to hear out of my right ear at all. it's as interesting as it is frustrating. obviously i have no aural disparity (or would it be "cochlear disparity"? i don't know what the proper terminology would be here), so the origin of sounds completely eludes me. except for the fact that logic & reasoning aid a whole lot more than i ever would have assumed. for example: i hear muffled dialogue, which i know is a family member on the phone in the other room, so i know where the sound is coming from, because i know what room the telephone is in.

the brain clearly does more post-processing of sounds than what i used to be aware of. an odd phenomenon is when i go to bed at night. i'll sleep on my good ear, as to not put unnecessary pressure on my bad one. but sound waves, from sources such as the frequent passing of a nearby train, will vibrate my mattress. so it'll sound like i have a train inside my mattress. hearing through an object like my mattress seems to compress the amplitude of everything, so everything that happens inside this peculiar mattress world is just about the same exact volume. it's not much of a problem when it comes to the sound of a train, i can easily tell what that is. things stop making sense however with random bumps and clanks that i can't tell what begot them.

a similar thing happens with music. things manage to cut through the mix that actually startle me. parts that i've heard & registered subconsciously now jump out, and i'm frequently mistaking them for sounds that aren't coming out of my stereo. obviously i haven't been listening to a lot of music recently, but when i do it really puts it into a different perspective. the first album i listened to after going mono was a Bear vs. Shark record. it honestly took me at least 90 seconds to register what was going on. the organized chaos had been flattened into a single dimension. without any depth it's pretty easy to get confused. so i find myself gravitating towards albums of my youth, that i haven't listened to in years, but once knew like the back of my hand. the fun part is when i listen to an album where the depth of everything is still discernible in mono. although it may just me getting better at listening to things so flatly.

as educational as this experience has been, i sure as hell wont miss it.

NASA Voyager recordings

I didnt up these, but they're too amazing to not share. The first 3 volumes are 320 kbps while the last two are only 128. Each volume is around the half-hour mark

Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 1
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 2
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 3
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 4
Symphonies of the Planets Vol. 5

In the 70's NASA sent out the Voyager I & II satellites to explore the planets in our solar system. They recorded the natural electromagnetic fields of the planets & moons they passed. NASA then converted these waves to frequencies within the human spectrum of hearing. The result is surprisingly haunting. My favorites are volumes 1 & 5. Words really fail at this, so just listen.

GIANT FUCKING SQUID

Giant Squid - Monster in the Creek (2005) self released

1. Monster in the Creek
2. Dead Man's Fog
3. Age of Accountability
4. Throwing a Donner Party
5. Dare We Ask The Widow
6. Lester Stillwell

http://giantsquid.bandcamp.com/album/monster-in-the-creek

Giant Squid dropped a new album last week, so I thought I'd up this deliciously analog EP. The entire thing was recorded live to 2 inch tape, with the vocals overdubbed and then everything was mixed in analog. So the sound is pretty phenomenal, even though this was only released on CD-R. The EP was handmade in an edition of 400 copies, which is an utter shame considering how great it is.

This release was at an odd time in the band's life. They've gone through an agonizing amount of lineup changes, and at the time they recorded this they had a second keyboardist. So aside from lots of analog synths, there are three vocalists singing here, lending to a QOTSA-no-one-distinct-frontman sort of vibe.

The track "Throwing a Donner Party" got rerecorded for their newest album, also a self-released, limited edition affair.

DUB

Dub Trio - Another Sound Is Dying (2008) on Ipecac

1. Not For Nothing
2. Jog On
3. Bay Vs. Leonard
4. Felicitacion
5. Mortar Dub
6. Regression Line
7. Who Wants To Die?
8. Respite
9. No Flag
10. The Midnight Rider
11. Safe and Sane
12. Agonist
13. Fuck What You Heard
14. Funishment

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?owo5yk1tzgj

This Friday I get to see the Dillinger Escape Plan & Dub Trio. So to mark the occasion I thought I'd post some Dub Trio, a band that is definitely too under appreciated. It would make more sense to have posted their live album, but Another Sound Is Dying was one of the best albums of 2008.

Dub Trio started out with a simple enough MO: live dub. But they've evolved into a whole lot more. They've added metal, thrash, prog and everything else in between into the mix, never managing to forget the dub. Live, Dub Trio fucking nails it. Their guitarist is probably my favorite guitarist out there. He can get his guitar to sound like anything, and the dynamic between the three members is nothing short of impressive. The fact that they can pull off "Funishment" live is pretty astounding. As a band they've gotten around too. Opening for Clutch, Bad Brains, playing as the backing band for Peeping Tom, doing studio work for Matisyahu, and an upcoming tour with Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

It's also worth pointing out that Martin Kvamme, the genius that did the artwork & layout for this album, as well as a plethora of other albums for Ipecac, won a Norwegian Grammy for his work on Another Sound Is Dying.

Polmo Polpo

Polmo Polpo - The Science of Breath (2002) on Alien8 Recordings

1. High Breathing
2. Oarca
3. Mid Breathing
4. Acqua
5. Low Breathing
6. Rottura
7. Complete Breath
8. Riva

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U9N24X8T

I uploaded this a while back to share elsewhere, but I might as well add it here since it's such an awesome album. Polmo Polpo is one of the many monikers of Toronto based, avant-garde musician Sandro Perri. The best description I've read is "grainy, dubbed out techno."

This is really hypnotic stuff. Loops degrade & fade away, as slide guitar slowly creeps in. The sound is relaxingly deep, as if you're at the bottom of the ocean or inside a womb. I really can't get enough of this. There's another Polmo Polpo album, but unfortunately it's not as pelagic sounding as The Science of Breath. Nowadays Sandro Perri seems to be performing under his own name, more acoustic type stuff. A personal reminder: Check out more of Alien8 Recordings, which also features Nadja and Tim Hecker. Hell, I need to expose myself to more "abstract electronic music" in general.

World/Inferno - Me V. Angry Mob

The World/Inferno Friendship Society - Me V. Angry Mob (2005) on The Company With the Golden Arm

1. Me V. Angry Mob
2. Cats Are Not Lucky Creatures
3. Leni Riefenstal at the End of Time
4. Brother of the Mayor of Bridgewater
5. Paul Robeson
6. Fiend in Wien

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?mjt1f5wygwt

I love EPs, and World/Inferno, so what better a way to kick off this blog? The truth is, 2006's Red-eyed Soul renders this EP obsolete, as the CD has 4 of these 6 songs, while the 2xLP version has all 6 of these songs. But there is no better introduction to this band than this.

This is basically the European version of their Speak of Brave Men EP, but with 3 extra songs. And all of these songs are golden, no filler here. "Cats Are Not Lucky Creatures" & "Leni Riefenstal at the End of Time" are probably my two favorite World/Inferno songs, with "Leni Riefenstal at the End of Time" being one of my favorite songs of all time.

One of my favorite aspects of this band is their sense of narrative. The titular track is a great example of this, as it's a story-turned-joke with the punchline at the very end. There really aren't any other bands that tell a story with such style and grace in every single song like World/Inferno does.

So give this band 20mins of your time (if you haven't already). "Cult" is always used to describe this band, because you either follow them with such devotion, or have no idea who they are, there really isn't any in between.

i decided to "jusk fucking do it" and start a music blog. i'll try to focus on more rare-ish titles, things i own myself. so all the rips will be done by me. something like 256 VBR with LAME 3.97. unless i download something that i just have to share.
let's see how badly i neglect this thing.