May 2013
16 posts
Savages - Silence Yourself →
Reviewed that Savages album. Didn’t really like it very much.
Something that has kind of occurred to me since writing this is the positioning of Savages within the “indie” world (indie as genre not set of ideals) and using this as a defence for their music, i.e. People saying “Oh, Indie music has been so soft and languid for ages, it’s good to see somebody roughing...
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“In fact, the very success of the owners of capital in securing the elephant’s...”
– Marc Chandler - Foul-Weather Friends
I don’t really have the economic know-how to fully digest all of this but certain parts stood out.
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Hardcore for Nerds: andrewtsks: “Savages do recall... →
andrewtsks:
“Savages do recall a number of post-punk, no wave, and metal bands. “I call it the ‘Old Man’s Disease,’ which I had when I was 21,” says BBC 6Music DJ Marc Riley, debating whether the band’s originality, or potential lack thereof, matters. Riley was a significant enough early…
HC4N makes a great point about the lack of originality being a bad thing until you find an album...
Read The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Junky this weekend so far. Feel like I haven’t read a book in ages. In the mood to consume everything.
Ghil - Okkyung Lee - Ideologic Organ →
Can’t wait to hear this.
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“I begin to wonder about the relationship between geo-history, the saturation of...”
– “On Quitting” - by Keguro Macharia
This is an incredible piece of writing.
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Angel Olsen & Lisa O’Neill were both...
“The punk mentality used to be a default ethos among rock kids, but over the past...”
– Nitsuh Abebe, “This Is Punk?” Best sentences of cultural criticism I’ve read this year. (via judyxberman)
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Love Nitsuh and Judy both, but this isn’t Nitsuh’s strongest work.
The “punk mentality” used to be a “default ethos” among “rock kids”?* I guess this depends on where you grew up, but...
Watchlatenightjimmy:
Hello, Tumblr readers. This is Jonathan Cohen, the show’s music booker.
We feel so lucky to bring you great music every night on the show, and today, we’re going to try something a little different. We’re thrilled to be premiering the song “Shiner ‘92” from the forthcoming Rodan compilation, “Fifteen Quiet Years,” which will be released by Touch & Go Records on June 11.
...
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“But although there was a mutual admiration pact between Eno and the no wavers...”
– From Simon Reynolds’ piece on Brian Eno’s time in New York for the RBMA magazine. I’ve always loved that Lunch put-down and it’s indicative of the distrust a lot of the people in the No Wave “scene” seem to have had for him. Can’t really blame them either....
April 2013
44 posts
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The Quietus | Imperfectionism: An Interview With... →
I talked to Gareth about his music, which is really good in case you didn’t already know that. Tape is sold out but do grip the digital, it’s totally worth it.
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Label of the month: The Corner →
I think the label of the month is RA’s most consistently excellent feature. This month is no exception, great piece on Anthony Parasole and The Corner.
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The world of music is straddled by female... →
Cannot get over how ridiculously stupid this article is. Sometimes I worry about not having ideas strong enough to pitch to people and then I read stuff like this and think “Wow, any old shit will do, won’t it?”.
Fuck sake. This is incredibly depressing.
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In freewheeling Dublin collective Seomra Spraoi,... →
Nice to see Seomra Spraoi get some press but it’s annoying that the same fluff about “spaces making use of previously disused warehouses and buildings, have popped up around the city” continually propagated. This is simply not true. There is still incredible restriction on space in Dublin, who gets to own and use it, and when/what they get to use it for. The only thing that has...
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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to turn the business-speak stuff that I wrote about before into a positive thing, like how to recapture the meaning and actual practical reality of corporate language for arts-based ideas. Is there a way in which we can imagine the future of business through an artistic lens, with the moral, ethical shifts that would require? Probably not, or at...
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“To understand the situation, you must try to imagine what kind of a trip it is,...”
– Michael Rother (of Neu!/Harmonia/Kraftwerk) quote from my interview with him in The Ticket today. You can read the rest here or you could go pick up a physical paper and read it over a cup of tea and a bagel or something. Might do that myself. Rother is playing in the Village on Monday night and it...
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“The thing about Kim Gordon’s account of her break up with Thurston Moore...”
– ‘A Thousand Braying Asses’: Kim Gordon & Churnalism’s Busy Sewer
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“I’m going to drop a real secret on you. It used to be that if you wanted to be...”
– Kenneth Goldsmith - The Believer.
As much as I don’t have a huge amount of time for Kenneth Goldsmith, this quote has been in my head all day as one thing moves into another.
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Money For Nothing
I don’t know why I did it really, but today after dinner I read through the Sunday Times Rich List supplement. Now, the Sunday Times supplements tend to annoy me anyway because they’re a gigantic splash of middle-class pomposity masquerading as vibrant culture (one pull-out is called Culture for fuck’s sake) and it’s all as empty as the souls of those who contribute. But...
“Today, citizens in Europe are threatened with an unconscious drift to...”
– In full: President Michael D Higgins’ speech to the European Parliament
I read this when it came out a couple of days ago; it’s a curious mixture of the depressing and the inspirational, because it sets out some frank truths (the Irish President and the European Parliament are each relatively...
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Probably favourite Vatican Shadow track. The...
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“If the idea is to remind a Rolling Stones fan that vinyl not only still exists...”
– Chris Richards in The Washington Post.
For the day that’s in it and all. The loyalty card idea is a good one.
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“I truly believe that returning to a blind and adolescent distrust of power is...”
– Rock and Roll is So Boring, It’s Making Kurt Vile Seem Interesting
This is a good and true article. (via @brandonstosuy)
The simple courage of decision: a leftist tribute... →
What we need today is a Thatcher of the left: a leader who would repeat Thatcher’s gesture in the opposite direction, transforming the entire field of presuppositions shared by today’s political elite.
This isn’t going to go down well with people, but I guess that’s the whole point. I’ll leave it to someone more politically fluent to pick it apart, I’m sure there will be...
Too good not to reblog. The only worthwhile thing...
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On Your Knees, Sinners: 20 Years of The House of... →
http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/feature/on-your-knees-sinners-20-years-of-the-house-of-god/#.UWyPfrXmGVo
Would love to go to House Of God some time. Some vibe.
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A Mountain Of Music - Kevin Drumm →
This run-down of Kevin Drumm’s output in 2012 is scary, before you even start to listen to the music. What a creator.
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Electronique IT Podcast - Donato Dozzy →
I haven’t listened to this yet but look at that tracklist! Immense. Saving it for later.
It’s really amazing when you can feel an artist has really connected to something deep inside themselves. I’ve been listening to noise and black metal all night and thinking how the best of these types of music are so elemental and dependent on that cathartic, expressive connection, it’s amazing to feel that as a listener. It’s pure in a way that is very difficult to...
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Degraded in Chelsea: my DJing stint at the... →
This is wonderfully angry. You’d laugh if it wasn’t all so sad.
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Bubbles&Gutz: #artistsagainstpiracy vs.... →
bubblesandgutz:
I’ve made a lot of comments in interviews and online about file-sharing/music piracy in the past, though it occurs to me that I’ve never really made an all-encompassing statement about my thoughts on the matter. In some regards, I’ve never really felt like I needed to explicitly outline my…
This is all really good.
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Gay-bashing, gay marriage, and how the media needs... →
*bangs head off wall*
It’s such a shame these pieces even have to be written in this day and age. But they do HAVE to be written.
