I’m a long time fan of the work of multi-media artist Ryoji Ikeda. His work has a harsh, ascetic quality that is also rhythmically quite savvy. His source material seems to be strictly the most minute particles of ultra-magnified digital detritus which become, in his hands, something grand, even monolithic at times. Here’s a random introduction by way of some things I’ve recently found:
I’m amazed to find this morning that one of the finest LPs ever recorded, XTC’s Skylarking has never been heard properly. Evidently during the process of re-mastering it was discovered that every version that went out to the public was out of phase ! I can tell you from personal experience that this can really take the life out of a recording. I can’t wait to hear the corrected version ! From Andy Partridge himself:
The band themselves always had a nagging doubt that the album sounded a little too thin and bass light, not like they remembered it sounding from the recording process. Well, what John has identified is that the previous vinyl and CD’s {including the flashy US Fidelity version unfortunately} have been manufactured with their sound polarity reversed. In laymans terms this mix up means that sound waves that should be pushing out from your speakers are actually pulling them back and projecting from the rear. Something as simple as a wrongly wired XLR plug in Todds studio or the Master room would have resulted in this sound mishap. Making the record sound distant and thinner. He has identified that the original tapes appear in very good condition and with this problem now rectified APE will be able to present to you shortly a splendid double deep vinyl cut of this classic XTC album as it was intended to sound, but never has done due to human error.
In the meantime, enjoy the best song The Beatles never wrote from Skylarking :
Word from a Fab Five Freddy tweet and a post on his own MySpace blog is that New York hip-hop futurist Rammellzee has passed away at age 50 from as-yet-unrevealed causes. (@149st features a great, fact-filled interview with the man.) Emerging as a teen graffiti artist in the mid-‘70s, bombing the A-train from its last stop in his Far Rockaway, Queens hometown, Rammell ended up like many of his talented peers—a multidisciplinary creative icon submerged in the nascent metropolitan hip-hop scene. He first surfaced as a persona to the world in amazing fashion, dressed in trenchcoat and wielding a sawed-off shotgun as he MC’ed for the Rock Steady Crew in the Amphitheatre scene of hip-hop’s famous first film, 1982’s Wild Style.
Although I was too young to ever see them live, The Germs loomed large in my musical upbringing. They made deliciously evil sounding records that were irresistible to my friends and I. The legend of Darby Crash made its way out to us in the suburbs of Los Angeles and tales of “Germs burns” and other sordid activities titillated us as we blasted their sole LP and gazed at the spooky photos of the band members on the back cover. I tell you this because Rhino Handmade has just put out a limited edition CD of the final Germs show from December of 1980. Now here’s the thing: The Germs sucked live. The redoubtable Jonathan Gold does a wonderful job of describing what it was like to be there, but still I must ask: Has there ever in the history of music been a singer so utterly incapable of singing in time live as Darby Crash ? Have a listen to the clip below from said show and hear for yourself, then compare that to the truly wonderful contents of their classic first E.P. from ‘78 after the jump. I’m pretty sure all I missed out on by never seeing them live was a head injury !
Why… here’s an item that was just screaming out for a blog post, don’tcha think? It seems that Amoeba Records in Hollywood accepted delivery on a most unusual item earlier this week when a box of bespoke records and CDs for the soundtrack to weirdo auteur Harmony Korine’s latest cinematic head-scratcher, Trash Humpers, arrived at the store. It’s just a pity the employee who opened the box wasn’t wearing a Hazmat suit….
First a little background: Trash Humpers, like most of Korine’s filmic oeuvre, defies description, but I’ll try: Trash Humpoers is about some freaks and genetic mutants who like to, well, hump trash and the wacky misadventures these zany characters get up to. How’s that?
But back to the made-by-hand records and CDs at Amoeba: Each of the 500 individually-numbered, limited edition 45 rpm records comes packaged with… you guessed it (or maybe you haven’t) TRASH! In fact, one of the ones Amoeba got in the post, like a bottle of Mezcal, even came with its’ own worm! The CDs are in fact computer burned CD-Rs, and each one comes with hand-labeled art by Sharpy.
If, like many folks reading this, you’re making an “Ewww” face at the moment, I’ll leave you with the pithy comment of my always witty Los Angeles Times colleague, Alie Ward: “Why couldn’t they just wipe some gonorrhea on them and be done with it?”
This is it, the absolute apotheosis of insane 70’s Bollywood film tunes. A sublime and ridiculous Frankenstein of Sketches of Spain, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Wild Thing and I Feel Love, this may be even better than Let’s Dance for the Great Guy Bruce Lee. As with said tune, this was a mainstay at the late, great Jac Zinder’s Fuzzyland clubs in early 90’s Los Angeles not to mention a really easy song to do half-hour cover versions of. Dig that tape echo slathered all over the whole mix. Tasty !
It feels like a Pop Group sort of day, so here we have a couple of vintage promo clips I’ve never stumbled upon before. Having long loved the records, the clips are a bit of shock. Such wholesome looking kids in their nice new wave gear making all that racket ! I never managed to see the doc that Mr Novicoff posted about here nearly a year ago and it doesn’t appear to be available anywhere. I both snooze and lose. Still, the shriek of vocalist Mark Stewart is a true force of nature, a sound like no other !
At the time of the doc, jungle is definitely posited as young, multicultural black music, and treated in classically analytical BBC style. DJs, producers, MCs, label people, academics—everybody seems to chime in on issues of roots, authenticity and commercialism. Not only do you get an intro to the basic ingredients of the music—the samples! the reggae! the soul!the basslines! the breakbeats! the speed!—but the producers even weave in some drama surrounding a club gig starring the legendary Shy FX and his crew.
Of course, this program fails to feature some of the genre’s giants, like Goldie, Roni Size or Dillinja. But the American Moonshine Music label sent journalists a VHS copy of this doc along with their compilation Law of the Jungle for good reason—it’s a quality document of a time now long gone. Check it!