Meet Ssion, the gender bending electro-punk dance band from Kansas City, led by front person Cody Critcheloe. Is Cody a man or a woman? I’m not completely sure, but it’s not important - s/he can be whatever you want hir to be. And as with other current queer artists like JD Samson, Cody likes to play with people’s traditional perceptions of style and beauty - witness the trademark combo monobrow and mustache, a pretty risqué fashion move in these anti-hair-biased times
Ssion (pronounced “shun”) are a full on audio/visual/performance-troupe well known for their live shows and support slots for the likes of Gossip and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Critcheloe has been making a respectable career as a video director on the side, working with Peaches, Liars and Scream Club. Ssion formed in Kansas in 1996 and released their first material in 2003. The band released their last album Fools Gold in 2007 and with it the full length feature film Boy which compiled all their music videos and has been described as a “gay, punk rock equivalent of Forest Gump.” Ssion have taken the step of releasing their new album Bent as a free download for a limited time, and it’s definitely worth downloading. As with Tyler the Creator’s first album Bastard, it’s surprising to hear music released for free that is of this high quality.
Make no mistake though - Bent is pop music. It’s party music, it’s designed for dancing - for those moments at a friend’s house when the sun is coming up, you’ve had a ball, but you’ve got that melancholic feeling that to quit now as it’s can’t get any better. There are shades of very early Madonna here, coupled with the classic mid-80s synth driven sound of the Pet Shop Boys and Eurodisco, all refracted through early 90s NY dance pop like Deee-Lite. Bent is basically the album the Scissor Sisters should have made by now, classy dance music stripped of the chintz (and Elton bloody John references) and honed to a sharp electro-pop point. It’s pretty damn good. So my advice to you dear readers is to let a little bit of Ssion into your life - get Bent.
Ssion - “Clown”
Ssion - “Psy-Chic”
Ssion - “Luvvbazaar”
Ssion - “Credit In The Straight World” Excellent cover of
There has been a lot of dropping of the H-Bomb here lately, whether it be in relation to riots at SXSW, or criticism of The Stone Roses. The word “hipster” has gone from vaguely meaning “poseur” to being a catch all term to describe anyone with different tastes to ourselves. I think it was time I addressed the matter head on. I’m not going to try and define what a “hipster” is here - if you need a crash course, I’ll point you in the direction of the Wikipedia “Hipster (contemporary subculture)” page, which is surprisingly on-point. I don’t even need to prove to you that the term is media fabrication used to hate on the young - though I probably will. No. I just want to say “Enough! If you going to call someone a hipster as an insult, then you should know that makes you a square.”
The first article I ever read on the subject of “hipsters” was Douglas Haddow Adbusters’ piece “Hipster - The Dead End Of Western Civilsation” from 2008. The article’s shrieking headline and hyperbolic tone should be a giveaway to the author’s intentions, but the fourth and fifth parts of the essay really show the hypocrisy involved. Haddow is at a party taking photos, yet manages to complain about both the other photographers at the same party AND the kids who want their photos taken. It’s genius! And herein lies the rub - the people doing the complaining themselves fit into the neat little bracket they have described. We have cultural commentators and arbiters of previously obscure tastes moaning about the now more widespread acceptance of those tastes. We have opinionistas offering up opinions on why we should hate other opinionistas. Photobloggers bitching about other photobloggers. Fixed gear cyclists who tell us only THEY can ride bikes properly.
Using WIki as a guide, it is possible to trace how this meme caught on in the media, and came to be some sort of established fact . It was not the first time the term was used this way, and “hipster” was not completely pejorative when it re-emerged in the last decade, but articles like Tim Walker’s “Meet The Global Scenester” re-inforce the idea that “hipster” was a stick used by cultural commentators to beat a perceived threat to their roles. There was no talk of the positive elements of the emerging youth culture, a culture these articles sought to define. It felt like it was a backlash waiting for an actual scene to happen. For a time in the early ‘90s, the UK music press lumped shoegaze bands together as “The Scene That Celebrates Itself” - anti-hipster chroniclers could now just as easily be labelled “The Scene That Berates Itself”.
Originally posted on 04/08/11.
After the jump, the relation of irony and authenticity to fashion and music, new media and new cultural norms versus old school cool, and John Peel as the ultimate hipster.
The Theremin is a unique musical instrument that, according to WIkipedia;
“[was] originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox [and] is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device in 1928.”
A cat is a four legged feline animal that, according to Wikipedia;
“[is] also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felines and felids, [and] is a small, furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests. Cats have been associated with humans for at least 9,500 years.”
According to WIkipedia, the word “awesome” means: “...that which inspires awe.”
IT’S CATS PLAYING WITH A FREAKIN THEREMIN!!
BONUS!
You can see the “prequel” (Cats and Mini Theremin Part 1) here.
EXTRA BONUS!
If you were not aware of the existence of these Mini Theremins, they come in kit form, are cheap ($30) and look relatively easy to build. You can purchase a kit (and watch a video demonstrating the building process) at Maker Shed.
I have to say, this trailer looks good. I have been a big fan of Spike Jonze in the past (Being John Malkovich is a classic IMO) and an admirer of the Arcade Fire but have gone a bit, well, cold on them both more recently. This looks intriguing though, with its homeland war/terrorism and teenage love themes. I just hope the film (a short, clocking in at 30 minutes, and co-written by Win & Will Butler based on last year’s album The Suburbs) delivers:
**EDIT**
You can watch Scenes From The Suburbs in full HERE for the next 24 hours only.
The great Nile Rodgers has started uploading clips from his old TV show New Visions to his new YouTube account. This short clip gives a fascinating insight into the artwork made by Miles Davis, of which there is an example above, called “The Kiss”.
Here Miles talks candidly about the shapes and colours in his work and what they mean to him, in his wonderfully gravelly voice. It all seems very sexual. The only downside is that this video is agonisingly short - Nile, if you have the full length version of this episode then you HAVE to put it online for the whole world to see!
Bonus!
Another clip from New Visions, this time featuring guitarists John Lee Hooker, Carlos Santana, Robert Fripp and more:
Lizzy Mercier Descloux was a multi-talented French recording artist who made waves in the New York underground in the 1980s. Perhaps best known for her early 80s no wave-meets-funk output, she found more commercial success later in the decade with a world music inspired sound. The girlfriend and sometime business partner of the entrepreneur Michel Esteban, she was signed to his uber-hip ZE Records, also home to Was (Not Was), Kid Creole & The Coconuts, James White, Suicide and many more. She released three albums and a bunch of singles for the label, before moving on to CBS in 1984.
Unfortunately Lizzy Mercier Descloux passed away in 2004. Since then the re-established ZE Records have been doing a cracking job at re-releasing her older material. Her sound was distinctive - sometimes abrasive, sometimes energetic and always exciting. Now ZE are giving away a twelve track compilation of the best of Descloux’s work called From Heaven With Love, available for the next seven days only from the official ZE website. The only catch is that you sign up to the record label’s mailing list, but really you should consider doing that anyway as their catalog and roster of acts is immense. This is a taster of what is on the comp:
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - “Wawa”
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - “Hard-Boiled Babe” (what a beat!!)
Lizzy Mercier Descloux - “Slipped Disc”
To download the 12 track From Heaven With Love compilation, go here.
So the Beastie Boys are back, with their new album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two.
There’s an interesting/confusing story about this release - the first Hot Sauce Committee record was due to drop in 2009. At the same time as HSCPt1 was being recorded, the ever-prolific band recorded a bunch of extra material for NSCPt2, and scheduled the release of the sequel for early 2011. Unfortunately the release of HSCPt1 was delayed when MCA discovered he had cancer (which he thankfully pulled through), but HSCPt2 remained on track for a spring 2011 release. And so here it is - but now with the track list swapped for that of HSCPt1. The real HSCPt1 is scheduled for release later this year, presumably featuring the material that was recorded for HSCPt2. Those Beasties, they so crazy.
So what does it sound like? Well, listen for yourself:
Stefan Goldmann is an electronic musician based in Berlin, who specializes in minimal techno and who holds a residency at the city’s prestigious Panorama Bar. He’s also a pretty good writer. In this illuminating article for the website Little White Earbuds (translated from German) he explains the changes to music production and consumption over the last decade from the point of view of a small-scale, independent artist, specifically someone catering to a very niche taste.
Absurdly, the complete disappearance of economic barriers to distribution (offering a free download doesn’t cost more than the time to upload the file) hit the wallets of the “indies” first, stripping a substantial part of their income. This mostly affected the artists and the personnel around them: designers, engineers, studio musicians, promotion and label professionals, music journalists, et al. The mass of competition they encountered meant anyone with a limited marketing budget had a difficult time surviving in the market. With the same promotional tools available to almost anyone, they lost their efficiency.
...
There’s this die-hard belief that income, at least for the musicians (but not for the professional environment), will come from the fees for live performances instead. But how do you get live performances in the first place? Well, press helps. The problem encountered there is that the media has adapted to the state of the music industry. In electronic music that means whoever succeeds in producing two singles may find himself covered by all relevant press and booked throughout the club circuit, just to be replaced by the next “lucky fool” (a term from stock speculation) about three months later. New artists get “pumped and dumped.” What about a year old break, a production that takes longer, or time for having a baby?
It’s not all doom and gloom—Goldmann has a surprisingly upbeat message for artists out there who are still dedicated to making and releasing music. I may not agree with everything he says in the article (or more specifically I may not feel it is wholly relevant to everyone) but the last few paragraphs and the post script almost read like a manifesto.
Highly individualized, lightly advertised work is way more attractive nowadays than consensus-style work, advertised to death (short, unsustainable hype is the most one can hope for there). People are starting to realize this. Many top labels stopped promoting their new singles for instance. It just appears in the shops and that’s it. It’s not unlikely that artists will increasingly lose their interest in having their output available all over and seek for a more intimate exchange with the audience. Why plaster the Internet with files? Who finds that valuable anymore?
Consider this the perfect accompaniment to “Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation?” This excellent article, by writer Wallace Wylie and published on Everett True’s Collapse Board, centers around three bands (The Stone Roses, Primal Scream and Oasis) and the negative impact they had on the British music industry and general media in the 1990s. In contrast to Steven Hyden’s US-focused articles, Wylie sticks striclty to the UK and does a really great job of skewering that shower of shitty hype we had to endure called “Britpop.” This represents my feelings about the period pretty much exactly—yes, there was LOADS of great and interesting music being made at the time, but for the most part it was not being made by white men with guitars.
It should be obvious to almost everyone by now that Oasis really weren’t very good, and this is coming from somebody who bought into the hype early and even attended their monster concert at Knebworth. Definitely Maybe remains their best release, with the album coming across as rather varied (by Oasis standards) and tuneful. This was before Noel settled in to writing all his songs in the same Let It Be-derived tempo. It isn’t really necessary to go into detail as to why Oasis were substandard. This has been done elsewhere and will continue to be done for a good while yet. Their limited talents soon ran dry but not before they had kicked open the door to a million soundalikes who popped up every other week on the front cover of NME.
We were constantly being told by the press that we were living through a musical golden age to rival the Sixties (aaargh! why is always the fucking Sixites?! booo-ooring), and while I do think the 90s was a golden age of sorts, I am glad that hindsight is x-ray and cuts through all the bullshit. There were many, many groundbreaking things going on in the world, yet the British music press seemed content to just curl up into a little ball murmuring “Beatles, Stones, Beatles, Stones” ad nauseam. Remember, this is the era that saw the launch of backwards-obsessed magazines like Mojo and Uncut, and the calcification of rock culture into a rigid set of rules to be adhered to. It sucked. But hey, don’t take my word for it. Read what Wylie has to say…
Over on AV Club journalist Steven Hyden has come to the end of his ten part look-back over the alternative music of the 90s called Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? Cataloging his musical obsessions year by year from 1990 to 1999, the series (named after the long-defunct MTV alt-rock show) is a great read, and ends on a spectacular low point for pop culture - Woodstock ‘99.
Remember Woodstock ‘99? The one where lots of people got beaten and raped? Just as we had almost completely erased it from the collective conscious, back come memories of Fred Douche shouting at a bunch of drunken jocks to “RAPE SOMETHING!!” in his squeaky, balls-not-dropped voice, while security throw their badges an the ground and dive into the mosh pit. OK, so he didn’t encourage rape (not that I’m aware of anyway), but the point is still the same. The ‘90s pretty much started with Kurt Cobain in a dress, and ended with Durst’s audience forcibly ripping dresses off harassed women. What a fitting end to the decade, this series, and the story of rock music itself over those years.
So here’s a clip of Limp Bizkit playing “Break Stuff” at the festival. Yes, sorry, it is more terrible music on DM this week, but whereas I can find genuinely interesting aspects of Gaga/AntwoordAndrew WK, I cannot for the life of me see a shred of redemption for anyone involved in this aside from car-crash attraction. Durst goads the crowd into breaking stuff, advice they take literally, and then bemoans their lack of attention for almost two minutes while asking “is this mic working?”. An audience member tells him it is - presumably the crowd are too busy rioting or trying to avoid danger to pay much attention to the band. The situation has the strange, menacing air of a child playing with grown-up forces they don’t truly understand. And that pre-pubescent, squawking, try-too-hard-yet-not-hard-enough MC style of his is in full effect between 2:40 and 2:50, delivering hilarious lines like “I pack a chain saw!”
Hey it’s ok, you don’t have to watch this if you really don’t want to:
OK enough of that crap, back to WHTAN? The current article “1999: By The Time We Got To Woodstock ‘99” contains some interesting and chilling details from Woodstock ‘99, including stories of women getting gang raped in mosh-pits or being forced to bare their breasts to large groups of drunk guys, and security being woefully under-staffed and themselves being refused drinking water from the festival organizers. It begs the question - how the fuck did this festival ever take place? Oh wait, it’s that old devil called greed again. Greed and the fact that the hippy ideal hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that by the end of last century it had been almost completely wiped out. But then how the hell did acts like Korn, Kid Rock and Metallica embody Woodstock’s ideals in the first place? Needless to say the organizers of Woodstock do not come off looking good in this article.
So, were the late Ninties a complete curtural waste ground? No. Of course not. If I have a complaint about WHTAN? it is that it’s too rockist. I left this comment which describes how I personally feel about the path of “alternative” music in the 1990s:
“Great series but it just underlines for me how spent a cultural force rock became over this period. The original sense of anarchy and rebellion that made rock so engaging was strip mined to nothing in the Nineties. The real story of the decade is how rock, or alternative, was superseded by other genres and how people who before would have dismissed those genres started to like them. A lot. It’s what happened to me.
I would like to see someone write about what was REALLY alternative and fresh in the Nineties. Hip-hop (THE genre that defines those times), house (the early-to-mid 90s was probably the most gay-friendly period the mainstream has ever been), electronica (producers like Aphex/Squarepusher pushed boundaries that rock bands are still catching up with), drum & Bass, rave, Daft Punk etc. Real progression / boundary breaking in 90s music was being done by kids with samplers, computers and machines, not by guys with guitars trying to fit into patterns established 30 years before. Not to mention that the drugs were better. I hope someone will write a series about music beyond rock in the 90s, because that is the real story waiting to be explored. “
This post was brought to you in association with Niallism.
Gold Blood are the electronic duo of Michael Wright and Emile Bojesen. No ordinary synth-punk act are they - by day Emile is a college lecturer and Michael makes gorgeous electronic disco as Brassica. When these two got together, it was murder. Sounding quite unlike anything else around at the moment (but with nods to pioneering acts like Liaisons Dangerous, early Human League and John Foxx) what sets them apart is their combination of lush, analogue synths and a kinetic, hyperactive vocal style derived from Bojesen’s other job fronting hardcore act Chariots.
Gold Blood released their debut 6-track Twilight Language EP last year on Manchester’s Human Shield records, to some very good reviews, and they have just followed this up with the “Gets You Laid”/“Say Something” 7” on Ex-Yat records. “Say Something” is available as a free download from rcrdlbl.com, as is the exclusive track “The Friction”. Yes, there are other bands doing similar things right now, but none of them sound as distinctive as this. In fact, I would say that you’ll either love or hate this straight away, but fans of cold/dark/minimal-wave should definitely check it out.
Gold Blood - Say Something
Gold Blood - The Intruder
The Twilight Language EP is available to buy from Boomkat.
In the first part of this on going series, I explained what a netlabel is, and gave some background on the set up of our own netlabel, Little Rock Records. For the second part I have decided to cover the daddy of them all, the netlabel that inspired me to start up my own, Leipzig’s digital reggae/free download heroes Jahtari.
It was after being shown the Jahtari.org website back in 2006 by my friends in Mungo’s Hi-Fi that the penny dropped - I really could do everything needed to get music out there without the aid of another label. All I needed was someone who could build me a website where I could host music for people to download. The concept of net labels had been floating around before, but nobody had done it as well as Jahtari, with such a coherent outlook and music policy. They took it to another level.
Mikey Murka “Sensi Addict” JTR NET 08
As the name would suggest, Jahtari is a combination of old school computing and dub/reggae. In particular, the classic King Jammy/Wayne Smith-style digital reggae sounds of the mid-80s (records like “Sleng Teng” and “Walk Like Granny”), largely made on Casio keyboards, but here compressed even lower into 8-bit jams. The design is classic reggae styles, refracted through an 8-bit prism, and combined with a love of arcade games like Kong. Most importantly for me was the format - “Net 7s”, a free download which comes packaged like a physical 7 inch record, with an A side and a B side (often a dub version), and corresponding inlay sticker art. When I first encountered Jahtari in early 2007, they already had a large catalog of free releases available, releases I plundered greedily. Yes, there is a slight tongue-in-cheek vibe about the label’s presentation - which is not out of place considering that this is reggae made by a bunch of white Germans - but the music is as high quality an hommage to digital-dancehall as you will find anywhere in the world.
Disrupt “Arcade Addict” JTR NET 08
Jahtari was founded in 2004 by Jan Gleichmar, who records as Disrupt, and who provides the backbone of the Jahtari catalog. Apart from Jan (who has worked with some seriously talented MCs like Mikey Murka, Solo Banton, El Fata and Soom T) the artists’ roster also includes Bo Marley, Dubmood, Roots Ista Posse and the Jahtari Riddim Force. The label doesn’t just deal in free downloads, having expanded into vinyl, tapes and CDs over the years, and now has a 7inch (physical) offshoot label called Maffi. Well, you gotta earn a crust.
There are 20 net 7s and 10 net EPs you can download for free from the website www.jahtari.org, and it all comes highly recommended. If you like the sounds of the Mikey Murka vocal / Disrupt dub tracks in this post, you will like the rest of the catalog, so my advice is just to jump over to their website now and get downloading.
But if you want to hear more music first, there’s more after the jump…
This little jazz-psyche jam is perfect for a cold, dark and rainy Sunday afternoon. At least, that’s what it’s like here in Manchester, but I bet it goes well with the sunshine too. Or any weather state actually.
If you don’t know Momus, he’s a pretty legendary Scottish indie music figure who has been around since the mid-Eighties. He’s been associated with record labels like Postcard, Cherry Red and Creation. He keeps a great blog, with some very interesting articles and all his latest news, at imomus.
This track is from his last album Hypnoprism (2010, Anagram Records) and features keys from Ben Butler (him again!). Interestingly, Momus made a video for each of the tunes from the LP, and uploaded them one by one, as they were finished, to his YouTube account.
The rest of the album, in video form, is after the jump:
JD Samson is the girl with the coolest moustache in rock’n'roll. Today sees the release of the debut album by JD’s band MEN, Talk About Body on Iamsound Records. MEN are a three piece that combine the best in dance-pop and punk rock with a definite queer/feminist outlook. JD already has form in this area - she is a member of Kathleen Hanna’s post-Bikini Kill/riot grrrl electronica act Le Tigre, and last year she worked with Christina Aguilera on her ill-fated Bi-On-Ic album., which saw the “Beautiful” warbler trying to break out of her pop/soul niche but not quite succeeding. Nice try though.
However, MEN is JD’s passion - they have been touring the globe for the past few years spreading their word to the masses from a beat up van, with just a laptop, a MicroKorg and two guitars, and collaborating with a host of different musicians and artists as they get their sound just right. This is from their Wikipedia page:
MEN is a Brooklyn-based band and art/performance collective that focuses on the energy of live performance and the radical potential of dance music. MEN speaks to issues such as trans awareness, wartime economies, sexual compromise, and demanding liberties through lyrical content and an exciting stage show.
It would be tempting to say that they are at the forefront of a new wave of electronic queercore, only that would distract from the music itself, something that JD has had to put up with a lot already because of her unique image. So let’s abandon all preconceived ideas for a little while and just get down to the sound of MEN:
If you enjoyed those slowed down versions of the Jurassic Park theme and Justin Beiber, and I know some of you did, I think you will like this mix by UK ‘s Optimo (Espacio). It’s a lovely, if slightly unsettling collection of beatless and atmospheric tracks, old and new. JD Twitch, one half of the influential Scottish DJ/production duo says:
I’d say this mix is beatless rather than ambient as a definition of ambient is ‘a background music without rhythmic elements’. That applies to some of the selections here but several of the tracks are definitely rhythmic in that they pulse or move forward without the need of a kick drum to propel them.
Odd Machine – Phase In (edit)
Cindytalk – Our Shadow, Remembered
Alvo Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto – Morning
This Mortal Coil – Song To The Siren (JD Twitch Reversion)
Zoviet France – The Decriminalisation Of Country Music
Sun City Girls – Come Maddalena
Forest Swords – The Light
Oneohtrix Point Never – Young Beidnahga
No Man – Days In The Trees
Tomita – Clair De Lune
Conrad Schnitzler – Ballet Statique
Peter Baumann – This Day
Reichmann – Wunderbar
Duet Emmo – The First Person
Carol – So Low
Zoviet France – Vienna (extract)
This mix is available to download for another two weeks only. The full interview is here.
