Megabiblioteca

This is footage from the Ex’s second show as a band. They’ve been all over the place since then. On their first U.S. tour instead of renting a van they just bought a completely broke down used one that they constantly had to work on, maybe they thought it would be good for their morale? Stranger things have happened, I’ve even heard of American bands touring Europe without hiring a driver. Luc injured his leg at some point, and so he had to perform while sitting on a stool. By twists and turns this stool ended up in Barrington, IL somehow. The first time I ever saw them play they were opening up for Fugazi at the 9:30 Club in Washington, DC. At one point Terrie was playing his guitar with a spoon, and it sounded like a violin and that blew my mind, and was probably the start of my obsession with people playing instruments in a way that sounded like some other instrument. The Ex are a band that are at their best when they are playing with other people though. I wish I could have seen them play with Tom Cora, their records with him are my favorite, and Mississippi Records recently reissued the Scrabbling at the Lock on vinyl.

The last time I saw the Ex was at Millennium Park in Chicago. They were performing with Getatchew Mekuria, and a couple of other Dutch dudes with a dude on bass playing in the Dog Faced Hermans style, and then the rest of the dudes were playing horns. I was on my lunch break so I didn’t get to see the whole set. I was grumpy the rest of the day from not having eaten, and not having been able to watch their entire set. A week later I was driving a car across the country to go live in San Francisco.

That last picture is them playing something no doubt crazy & intense sounding to a bunch of Ethiopians. The great thing about the Ex is they have no ideology, they just do what they want, and collaborate with all kinds of awesome musicians. That’s how it should be.

Look at all the blown minds in the audience. I can relate to that. Kraftwerk’s music was the first music I responded to positively as a child, so they have been with me my whole life, and it is great to still come across footage or recordings that I haven’t heard yet. The recorded version of this track is pretty sweet too.

Via Blastitude

Matt Shadetek over at Dutty Artz posted this new video from a track off of Wiley’s upcoming album. Unlike the new track by the Bug of which I have some reservations, this track reminds me that Wiley is still on top of his game. A lot of people that loved the rawness of grime were not into last year’s Race Against Time, but I thought it was great to hear an album of tracks with hot production from an MC who’s been through it all. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the raw stream-of-consciousness shit too, but I’ve probably got at least 24 hours worth of that stuff, it is great to hear this new sonic approach.

Last I heard of the Bug was the Ganja 12″, which was a serious banger. The B-Side, Flying, was a real slow burner, kind of going into the territory that he explored in greater detail with the King Midas Sound album. Both tracks were pretty great, and have always been hits whenever I’ve thrown them on at parties.

However in the King Midas Sound interview Kevin Martin expressed a certain frustration with the characterization of the Bug in the music journalism world, where the production under that moniker was described as “angry music”. Seemingly, the King Midas Sound seemed to be a shot back at the critics who thought of Martin’s music as unidimensional. Look, it stated, there are other emotional capacities I am readily capable of you know. There are many great artists who wear all sorts of different masks.

There is, of course, always a great risk from people sensitive to criticism that they overcompensate, and by taking such great steps to avoid previously perceived mistakes, thereby make even greater, although different, sorts of mistakes. Unfortunately, I have serious misgivings about this new track. There is nothing wrong with it per se, and the production is superior to anything off of the Pressure LP or before then. Despite all that though, I don’t think this track is on par with anything from London Zoo, even though there are a lot of similar sonic traits. Although I appreciate more mellow tracks as much as anyone else into that sort of thing, when I listen to this track I hear more aimlessness than anything else, and I attribute that to a mode of production that functions negatively. That is, the inspiration is not something positive and concrete, but rather on the level of it is not this, but this sort of directness is ineffective without something substantive to back it up.

In a lot of ways, I think a similar criticism could be leveled against dubstep in general. The prevailing generic techniques of wobble bass ended up producing a self-consciousness in a lot of more earnest producers that resulted in a lack of clarity behind the vision of where to go next. The result was a lot of half-hearted tracks that were too worried about playing it safe to have anything interesting to say.

I dunno though, what do other people think?

I have never been able to write off the history of organizational music of the Western world, as I doubt anyone else has. But I think Cage’s obvious contribution here was to bring to light the fact that this hyper-organization was only one expression, perhaps in the most restricted form of such expression, of the lived music around us. The extent to which noise, disharmony, and ambiance have pervaded Western (popular) music in the latter part of Cage’s life is a testament to the power of this thinking. Cage foresaw the coming of the synthetic age, the ambient movement, the “noise” movement, cut-ups, radiophonic experimentation, and the necessary completion they provide to the already-fruitful composed musical cultures.

The above quote is from a nice piece of writing over at Mighty Shocks. He also has some comments about how Cage and post-Cage music relates to Zen practice and meditation about which I have serious reservations. Despite that, it is an excellent essay that I recommend to everyone.

On that note, I never thought I’d say this, but I am loving the latest beta version of Audacity. It is still a fairly clunky and inefficient program, but it has some useful new features, and it seems to work.

Happy birthday Nik! Sorry about the rain!

Bossa nova screwed = existential dread as walls of sound threaten to collapse

Avicenna – Sun is Shine… Uhhhh (Screwed Mix)

Of course, in my perfect world, dub would exert a lot of power on all music.