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