love for l0ve dance & y@t-kh@

Love Dance is my new gorgeously wimpy pop rock favorite. This is the weakest, milkiest, wussiest shit I've heard in a long time & it's great. I was going to say IT ROCKS! but it really doesn't rock, which is why it rocks. Good luck finding any info about them though.

Love Dance site
Love Dance "Losing Faith" MP3



I'm also perhaps late in finally checking out Yat-Kha, the 'punk rock' Tuvan throat singers. They are certainly unique, how could they not be. Their songs are strange & beguiling. They're not really punk rock, almost more like Nick Cave or something.

Yat-Kha Myspace
Yat Kha live in Berlin Youtube

And this was before I knew they also played classic rock covers like Motorhead's "Orgasmatron" and "Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles" by Captain Beefheart.

I LIKE GRIME

What is this sound some earthlings call grime and/or dub-step? Is the bass always this ear-ticklingly good? It sounds like slow, British hiphop but with few concessions to overt melodies. Kind of a brooding vibe but good to nod the head to. I think I like it. It definitely sounds best at loud volumes, so probably best on headphones for me.



----------------
Now playing: Skream - Bahl Fwd
via FoxyTunes

FEEL IT COMING

I just hooked up the record player for the first time in forever. I'm playing the first the first record off the shelf I could grab. Great.

Deep Purple "Perfect Strangers" / "Knocking at you Back Door" 7". I bought it the first time we went to England, I was 13 at the time & the Deep Purple 'perfect strangers' album was everywhere. I tended to believe the hype. This actually isn't bad, this little Deep Purple record. The only two songs of theirs that I'm conversant with. I watched an old BBC 'rock history' thing about Deep Purple a couple of weeks ago. I think I'd like some of their early early stuff, like the late 60s when everyone sounded like an echo of the Beatles. Like the first Bee Gees album, I LOVE that mofo.

The lyrics to "Knocking at your Back Door" were embarassing to me at 13 & still cringeworthy. Looking at the cover of this record, these fat, balding, ANCIENT sweating british guys whose names mean nothing to me. It never seemed clever. But the riffs are okay & the grooves still get the job done all right.

Now I'm tempted to pull a Darrin & listen to every single record I have. Hey, it might just happen, especially since I only have..... um... well, less than 100 records anyway. Hell, I could crack that out in a weekend. Not really. Although...

IN PRAISE OF THE OCEAN BLUE'S "CERULEAN"

It's not unheard of for me to find an album I like in the car and play it endlessly for days, weeks, up to a month. This era's album is Cerulean by The Ocean Blue.

I should hate The Ocean Blue. I can't adequately explain why I don't. Cerulean rocks the house, it's so clean and the playing is so great. All the songs are catchy & inventive and the lyrics aren't the usual 'oh baby' crap.

Not that I approve necessarily of lyrics like "a pocket full of poseys, she's my marigold". In fact I might still have to deliver the only beatdown of my life if I ever meet the singer of The Ocean Blue.

It goes like this. I think it was 1990, Dave B. conned me into going to the Newport to see John Wesley Harding, The Ocean Blue and The Mighty Lemon Drops. Usually I (like many people, I bet) did whatever Dave suggested. Without really knowing why, I guess he just was good at pushing me around in a good way.

I wasn't a fan of any of the bands before the gig, though I believe one of my early penfiends had sent me a dub of some Mighty Lemon Drops material which I liked okay but wasn't crazy about.

Let's see, the gig. John Wesley Harding was great at capturing the moment but nothing more than that. It was just him with an acoustic guitar, very ironically, very knowingly, very Britishly "here I am with my acoustic guitar". He had a witty song about Live Aid that was actually kind of shocking to me because I'd never considered Live Aid to be anything but... y'know, a force for good. And here was Wes kind of funnily poking holes in it. Nice one!

Then came The Ocean Blue, who was likely touring on their first album. The one with "Drifting, Falling" which is still one of their greatest moments. What blew me away about them was how there were no distorted guitars, no Marshall stacks (this might've been one of the few non metal shows I went to at that point) & yet they were strangely powerful. Wimpily powerful? The singer, with his awful awful stringy blond bowl cut hairdo. That's all I remember about their show, his stupid hair.

The Mighty Lemon Drops, no lie, went totally over my head. I get into 'em now because I understand what they're about. But at the gig there was no chance! It was more information than I could process. I remember them playing very enthusiastically and being bombarded by g0th girls in the balcony with .... wait for it..... lemon drop candy.

Spring 1991 and The Ocean Blue releases Cerulean. It blew me away then and it still blows me away. The production, the album cover, the songs, it's all so great. Horribly cheesy in more than one spot, embarassingly pretentious, but ya know... that's a small price to pay for spine tingley goodness. And that's also a small price to pay for being able to enjoy something so much that isn't King Diamond.



----------------
Now playing: Nine Horses - Money For All (Version)
via FoxyTunes

a lover loves

first impressions of new musicks:

Editors - An End Has a Start - lovely continuation of the first album, though a trifle Coldplay in spots.
Ulrich Schnauss - remixes EP - I've only heard the Robin Guthrie mix so far, but so far so f'ing good.
Shout Out Louds - new - nice, nice, fun
Scott Walker - discography - um, wow? I doubt I'll listen to anything other than the 1967 album more than once.
Motocade - EP - mostly very very good, plus the F word
Hey Hey My My - new - only heard one song but cool so far & funny band name
Officer Kicks - new - not bad indie rock
Southerly - I've heard one good & one annoying song so far.

14 YEARS LATER, SEEFEEL IS STILL GORGEOUS

Pitchfork just reminded me of how frickin' hotttttttttttt & still unique the group Seefeel is/was/always will be. Thankie-hankie to thee, Pitchfork, for pointing me to these.

Seefeel Myspace

Seefeel site

Seefeel - Industrious live

SEMI ANNUAL YOUTUBE FUN

Well, fun for ME at any rate.


BLUE NILE - Tinseltown in the Rain


David Sylvian (w/Tweaker) - Linoleum


THE ICICLE WORKS - As the Dragonfly Flies


PREFAB SPROUT - Faron Young

DEVO HIT PARADER FEBRUARY 1982

celtic frost hit parader october 1985

transfigure

ARCHIVE
Take My Head
I'm kinda on the fence with most of this female-fronted pop rock groove whatever album. It's quiet in spots, I like that. It rocks out in other spots, which is fine. It just feels kinda gimmicky or something. Like "Woman," "I'm a woman/you're a man."... I don't know. But I do like like like the uppy groove "Love in Summer," which is a uni-chord jam that crescendos with synths & everything else.

BUCKETHEAD
Pepper's Ghost
Hey, it's Buckethead's fortieth new album today. Obviously it rules.

BASIA BULAT
Oh My Darling
I only grabbed this 'cause her name reminded me of the band Beirut. But, this ain't that, exactly. She does share some soundground with them bwahs but this her own deal. Although, um, I guess they both do do kind of old-timey other-worldly folk-tunery, using old-timey etc instrumentation like strings and acoustic everything. And liberal use of handclaps, just like, wow... Beirut. So maybe I was right after all.
Basia Bulat Myspace



DE-PHAZZ
Days of Twang
This is one of those groups/artists that, once discovered, makes you/me slap your/my head & cry "where have you been all my/your life?" It's possibly banal groove electronica. Formerly known as 'dance music'. Whenever I start to think that there will never be another new album of this type of music that I like as much as the class of 1997-98 (early Fatboy Slim, Propellerheads, Daft Punk), along comes De-phazz to straighten me out. So, thanks for that. I can still get down when I need to. "Rock 'n' Roll Dude" almost sounds like Theeee Art of Noise & their old "Peter Gunn" thing. Nice. Nice, it's all nice.


HEAVINESS
Heaviness
Using My Bloody Valentine "Loveless" worship as a starting point, this-here album is fwacking gwargeous. I mean, look at the blueprint, y'can't go wrong there. "Not Yet" is the dancey moody swoony swoopy opener. Unapologetically MBV-mad. The dude's voice even sounds like Kevin Shields. "Saddest Colour": yep, more of the same. "Your Velvet Wrapping," "How You Avoid the Sugartraps," down through "Touchlast." Sexy, right down to the lo-fi flute samples!
Heaviness Myspace


JESU
Conqueror
Seriously, I might never stop listening to this wonderful wonderful beautiful gorgeous album. Sigh. Conqueror, will you gay-marry me? "Stanlow" is so awesome.



NINE HORSES
Money for All
Y'know, I've been listening to this for so long, I forget that it's still 'new'. Obviously anything that's Touched By The Hand of David Sylvian is bound to be fucking excellent. This release has a few new tracks and a few in-house remixes by Nine Horser Burnt Friedman. And I think that's Stina Nordenstam singing on "Birds Sing for their Lives." If it's not her, it's someone doing an uncanny impression of her. Which does seem to be today's theme, after all. Fun fact: the Nine Horses song "The Banality of Evil" is apparently featured in the newest Jim Carrey movie, 23. Playing over the end credits. How's that for some weird-ass shit. Um, getting back to this EP or whatever it is, it's just fucking fucking great. The first mix of "Get the Hell Out" sounds like old old Skinny Puppy or even first-album Nine Inch Nails laying down an old Wax Trax type-o-groove. And Sylvian has never sounded more accessible. I'd be okay with this one quietly going platinum. Em, yeah right. In another universe.

fan-made video for "Atom and Cell" from the first Nine Horses album, Snow Borne Sorrow



SIMPLY RED
Stay
Dude, I've loved Simply Red since their first album. And in the mid/late 1980s, when I should've been listening to, I don't know, the Smiths or Morrissey or Joy Division, I was exploring (& later colonizing) my Smooth Jazz Side. Sort of. I've actually heard the new Simply Red single "So Not Over You" on the local smooth jazz radio station a few times, which is a strange thing for me to say. But, hey. We live in the present. The new track almost almost sounds like Mick Hucknall goes full circle. After the last couple of albums of up-to-the-minute pop music tricks & traps & techniques like mash-up (that one song used a whole ole Hall & Oates track), the new one is mostly just a full band. It's almost like a return to the disco, funk, soul band side of things. I always like his songwriting too. What can I say, I'm a fan.

Simply Red- Oh! What a Girl!


SKINNY PUPPY
Mythmaker
More ass-shakin', head-scratchin' than life-changin'. But you'll have that & as usual, it's probably more my fault than theirs. It's cool. It rocks, certainly, more than most of the rest of their trax. I just wish they'd been this accessible back in the day. The catchiness is wasted on me now.

PORTISHEAD FEB 2007

THAAAAAAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!!


Portishead - Wandering Star (February 2007)

and you get yours

SWITCHES
Switches
Nice bouncy indie guitar rock with XTC overtones. Dime a dozen these days but still nice.

AMY WINEHOUSE
Back to Black
This must be the US release. Look, I was the last person who ever expected to become an Amy Winehouse after her pissy, annoying appearance on 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks'. So this is like a double treat. The whole album is genre bending, something for everyone but in a good way, Portishead style soul pop. Type of thing. Which I may have already said. And, again, I may regret saying this, but, yeah, this album is the shit.

THE RAKES
Ten New Messages
At first glance, more not-bad indie guitar rock with XTC overtones. Um, XTC plus Interpol. Of course I've had that feeling before and it just added up to the Killers.

CUT CITY
Exit Decades
More Interpol-ish mopey guitar indie rock. Which is usually my favorite kind. The singer is copping serious amounts of Interpol up in here. Good thing? Bad thing? Indifferent thing?

JESU
Conqueror
Dear Jesu's latest album, 'Conqueror', Have I told you lately I love you?

THE CLOSE
Sun, Burn
I lose interest now.

Beat Dis

Music videos are now superfluous. VH1 Classic reminds me that it wasn't always this way. And that in certain cases, the music video is still intrinsically linked to many many songs of bygone days.

Yep, I'm old.







RJD2
The Third Hand
Homeboy goes Beastie Boys & I'm guessing he's playing all the instruments & singing all the parts. Y'know, it's like someone said to him: dude, why don't you sample your OWN SHIT this time? I'm guessing it's him on drums because most folks wouldn't opt for a floor-tom-and-double-kick pattern on the opening track of a non heavy metal album. If the songwriting is good enough, this album might even have more legs than RJ's usual beat-fuckery. Or whatever his usual deal is. I only heard his other shit last week for the first time. & hell yes I'm jealous of him, it should've been me to break out of Columbus with my humorous beats & antics. And I can play the drums.




X-CLAN
Return from Mecca
Man, it just ain't the same without the dude saying "sissy". I think he died in the past couple of years or something. Someone else says "sissy" and it's close but it's just not the same. "Voodoo" features RBX & this is the first time I've heard him in a long time. This album is nice & modern. So many of the dudes from the early 1990s can't hang in the present sense. But X-Clan does.


CONSEQUENCES
Consequences
"Parasite" opens with what I'm calling The Coldplay Maneuver. I'm not hip on Coldplay enough to say what song that rhythm originated in, but it's been a meme in modern music for like the past five years. Kinda like you had yer Madchester drum beat in the early 1990s. The singer sounds like Thurston Moore if he grew up listening to Mandy Moore.

BABY SWEETCORN
New Low
Um, aggressively wimpy pop rock with clean guitars. Even though it rubs me the wrong way on first listen, I'll probably end up liking it. Due to, yeah, the clean piano & general wimpiness. Unless they get really popular, in which case, I've never heard 'em before.

DO THE UNDO
Do the Undo
More aggressively wimpy pop that's so smarmy up front that I'll probably have to play it several times with the lights off just to get through it. Or, like, wearing sunglasses or something. It might be cool as crap, I don't know. How's that for a pointless review.






+++++




Now watch one of my favorite & most obscure bands of the early 1990s, since it's all about the early 1990s today, Levitation.


Levitation - Against Nature (live)

Levitation - Bedlam (live)


And Ultramarine - Happy Land (featuring Robert Wyatt) just for fun. Even though it's one of my least favorite Ultramarine tracks.

We Can Never See the Sunrise

DIAL A PEOM POETS

JESU
Conqueror
Well, as I've already gushed here, this newest Jesu album thing is perhaps the greatest Justin Broadrick product since... well, ever. Since Godflesh's "Slateman," certainly, in 1991. That song magically transformed music by pivoting between ethereal beauty and crushing doom riffs. It was pretty, heavy, mean, nasty, gorgeous, confusing. Sigh. It's still a classic, and genuinely unique. Flash forward 16 years and countless side projects of varying quality. Broadrick is in the big leagues with Conqueror. The title track sounds like My Bloody Valentine and Ride simultaneously playing a Black Sabbath song. Or something. And Red House Painters. It's THEEEE album of 2006 for me. Anchored but floating. See, this thing is so good that I lose all powers of description. It's Justin Broadrick back on the cutting edge, combining styles and sounds that have never come together in such a moving manner. Clean guitars mingle with samples & loops & textures & fuck it's blissed. "Weightless & Horizontal" is correct!!!! Oh yeah & there's no screaming. Whooot.


THE VINYL SKYWAY
From Telegraph Hill
Hm, Beach Boy-y, Beatley, Kink-y jangly indierock meh. Not offensive but impossible to get psyched about.


6PM
Far From Perfect
Indie electronica. Guitars replaced & replicated & remanded by synths & software processing. Kind of like Kings of Convenience crossed with Linkin Park. Scary & probably not necessary. But also oddly intriguing.

fun: David Gilmour feat David Bowie - Arnold Layne (live)

Cool, now do "Candy & a Currant Bun."

Holy Dread!

BIT O MUSE-SACK I MIGHTA MISSED OTHERWISE:


mm, tickety boo

DO THE UNDO
Do the Undo
Hmm, not bad indie guitar rock. Lots of shorter songs (ca. 3 minutes) as opposed to 10 grand epics. Y'know. Interpol meets T. Rex or something.

Do the Undo MySpace


ROBYN HITCHCOCK
Ole' Tarantula
Look, another fucking Robyn Hitchcock album, his 634th this week. I mean, I love me some Robyn Hitchcock & all, but fuck dude. I can't keep up. Look, mate, you had me with "Birds in Perspex" back in, what was it, 1849? Good tune, good time. It's all fairly interchangable since then, to me at least. This new album is the first one I've been interested in for a long time, due to Robyn cowriting with Andy Partridge in 2006. One result is included....the predictably wonderful (wonderfully predictable) "'Cause It's Love (Saint Parallelogram)." The rest of the album is... well, if you've heard one album by old Hitchypoo, you've heard them all.

lick :Robyn Hitchcock - 'Cause It's Love (Saint Parallelogram)

PSAPP
The Only Thing I Ever Wanted
I don't know when this album came out but it's still nuuuuuuu to me. So, I say... licky-licky tech fuckery with hawt female vocals. With choons. Songs, I mean. Not just beats. "Hi" is as good a starting point as any. It's like Tom Waits reborn on synths & sung by a hottie. Mm, slam dunk. "King of You" is no slouch & neither is the rest of this sexay alboom.

Psapp - The Words

THE FOUNTAIN
Original Soundtrack
KRONOS QUARTET and MOGWAI
Em, the music was written by Clint Mansell (ex Pop Will Eat Itself) and is performed by Kronos Quartet & Mogwai, who play, uhhhhhh....Sigur Ros stylee. ie, simultaneously. It's quite dark, with a few longer pieces chucked in for good measure. It's nice. And I'll probably never see the film either.

Jesu

Greatest song ever of the moment:

Jesu - Mother Earth

the way to there

AU REVOIR SIMONE
The Bird of Music

Strong, peppy, Stereolablike mechapop with lite female vocals - actually lite female everything.. Plus they named themselves after a scene in 'Pee-wee's Big Adventure'. Nice nice nice. I like "The Lucky One" and "A Violent Yet Flammable World."

Au Revoir Simone - Hurricanes

Au Revoir Simone - Through the Backyards