Try as it may to convince us otherwise, rap is a silly thing. So muchso that it becomes self-defeating, too: rappers swagger and boast,strutting like peacocks as they spin fantastical yarns and spendcountless hours in comical self agrandizement so farcical you'd have tobe a suburban adolescent to swallow it all. And all this in the name ofrealness. |
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Try as it may to convince us otherwise, rap is a silly thing. So muchso that it becomes self-defeating, too: rappers swagger and boast,strutting like peacocks as they spin fantastical yarns and spendcountless hours in comical self agrandizement so farcical you'd have tobe a suburban adolescent to swallow it all. And all this in the name ofrealness.
14858 Hits
An incredibly fertile and industrious musical world is going on right beneath everyone's noses. While this or that magazine is busy trying to pin down the next 10 big bands or the next big scene, musicians like Darren Tate of Monos and Andrew Liles are busy making music, lots of music, and nearly everything they release tackles some new sonic territory.
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Each song on this record illuminates a sense of loss, like leaving Chicago was akin to losing a lover whose influence was indispensable and comforting. Employing violins, guitars, trumpets, pianos, vocals, harmonicas, and a whole host of instruments I won't bother naming here, McBride has produced a symphonic record that may well suck most audiences right in and cast them into orbit.
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There are a number of pieces of music that have attained mythical status. Cage’s 4’33” is the first to come to mind but Satie’s Vexations is another one of those musical legends. Consisting of an instantly forgettable piano motif that lasts about one minute, repeated 840 times, Vexations is a work of endurance for both the performer and the audience.
8058 Hits
C. Spencer Yeh is a name that everyone might start hearing more of, now. There are a couple reasons to support this statement: one of them having to do with sheer prolific force and the other because he's blazingly listenable and will appeal to a lot of people who like a lot of different music.
9339 Hits
Change Ringingfollows Block’s Pure Gaze and Mobius Fuse in a trilogy of sorts,and like those belovedpieces, Change is a perfectly paced,not-a-second-too-short, 30-minute suite for chamber group and environment, everin a limbo state between where found sound ends, instrumentation begins, andwhere digital processing tangles the timeline.
6895 Hits
Invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1763, the glass harmonicais quite different than today’s mouth harmonica. Sound is createdby the movement of wetfingers along the rims of more than two dozen glass discs, arrangedhorizontally and moved using a foot-pedal. Apparently, playing the glass harmonica became a hip activity no doubtbecause of the enigmatic sounds its produces, compared at thetime to heavenly voices, perhaps also the cause of “serious nervousbreakdownsamong its mostly female players.”
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Chuck Palahniuk's meditation on silence and noise gave me an idea last night while listening to this disc—all those harsh noise providers out there must be afraid. They sit in front of their equipment and they come up with ways to drown the world around them out of existence, at least for a little while.
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In my opinion most remixers are lazy, worthless slugs that bring nothing of interest to music. Funckarma don’t appear to fall into this low life form category.
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Recompas main man Travis Thatcher gave me a copy of his first album forFlorida’s Nophi label months ago, but I’m ashamed to admit that thedisc sat at the bottom of a bag and then the bottom of a stack on mydesk until just now. I’m glad that I finally dug it up as it’s quicklyfound a place in my year-end “best of” list.
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The Hangable Auto Bulb EPs have been a bit of a holy grail for Aphex Twin fans and now I understand why. It covers in eight tracks most of the ground that he covers in the ten years or so since the EPs’ original release.
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Lair of the Minotaur’s new single is a bit of a let down. Cannibal Massacreis visually pleasing, a tongue in cheek cannibal monster drawing on thefront and the CD itself is one of those nifty 3” CDs. However the musicgets too tedious over the length of the single and it’s only tenminutes long!
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The latest from Architect recaptures a lot of what I used to enjoyabout industrial club music without playing in the regrettable sandboxof melodrama and bad rhyming couplets that forced me to leave most ofthat music behind a decade ago. This is boot-stomping beat musicthat I don't feel ashamed to blast even if I'm not heading to a club.
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Until now I’d have called Tape’s musicseasonally or temperamentally effective, but Rideau arrives as a near-reinvention of the trio’s sound, theirmost fully-realized and best record yet. Tapehas clearly taken a chance with this one and I’m glad.
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On his latest album, Randy Garcia sings “Music is the only reason on this Earth for some of us to stay,” and it’s a mantra that’s as catchy as it is bittersweet. Nerd Parade is a celebration of life and music, and it’s just another in a long line of quality home-brewed records from Garcia’s criminally overlooked Nophi Recordings.
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The collection of obscure older tracks from this Cologne-sceneüber-collaborator replaces a legacy of pastoral ambience and blessed outelectronica with the exuberances of a bedroom pop star, leaving me feeling abit punkt.
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Slowly, and without a lot of fanfare, the members of this ever-changingand evolving collective have become the world's first full-scalecarnival band without a carnival to play. Instead, life is theircarnival, and they a group of minstrels that record their reactions tothe happenings around them, natural and unnatural, without sparing thelistener anything.
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He goes by the name Lucifer and he makes a noise that'll stand outamong every other noise album in just about anyone's collection.Throbbing Gristle was as much concerned with beats as they were withconfrontation and the Noise/Girl project takes that premise a stepforward.
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I’ve never been to the Midwest, but based on the bands that come out ofthat whole scene, I have to imagine it to be a pretty fucked up place.Stnnng(pronounced “stunning”) call Minneapolis their home and they can’t helpbut be a reflection of a geographical area known better for itsoppressive winters and amazing ability to be flat than its contributionto society.
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Just when I'd almost completely forgotten about Tactile, John Everallchimes in with another well-timed collection of abstract electronicevocations of interior emotional landscapes.
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Low (Part 2)
Well, there's a few reasons we've got a second part to this Eye special: 1.) is that Jon's overseas right now and can't produce another episode of The Eye right now; 2.) there was a ton of footage and some of it included some really great songs; and 3.) well, Low just deserve it! So, here's another part to the Low Eye special: this one, however doesn't have multiple camera shots and has longer answers, so it might be best for the super dedicated fans who are patient and like the band an awful lot.40 Minutes, Quicktime Streaming Video
