Thanks iPhone! You are my BFF!

So yeah I got an iPhone, and I know that that makes me suspect and not to be trusted in many ways, but hey I was still rocking some piece of shit razr knockoff that I got purely because it had metal hinges and I am awesome at breaking stuff that is worth money. So give me some slack.

So far the things that have been most utilized have been a ton of bizarro music creation things that are pretty good at helping you avoid conversations and stare blankly into your lap while you tap madly on a touch screen. (Uh btw if you want to be as socially awkward as I am, I recommend the free version of noise.io and Tonepad Lite and RJDJ which is just incredibly geek cool).

But when I am not alienating those around me (ok maybe just in a different way) by far the most vital piece of APPLE IPHONE MOBILE DEVICE APP SOFTWARE PRODUCT is Shazam. Which, if you live under a rock somewhere is a free thing that listens to whatever music is playing and identifies the song and artist. With the help of this, I hope to finally realize my dream of not being the dude that flips out and abandons conversations to go see what is playing on the jukebox, or writes little scrawled time and date info on his hands in order to check the radio playlist when I get near a computer at the expense of the safety of other motorists/pedestrians/people sitting on roadside patios or low-elevation front porches.

So I thought I'd share one of these things with you. First up is The Knux - Bang! Bang!. Now, being a professional blogger dedicated to my craft, I have since done research and know that lots of blogs are all atwitter (I refuse to stop using that word just because of that whole social networking thing, so shut up) about the Knux, and I am sure that all the backpacker hunters out there are just frothing at the mouth to denounce these dudes, but due to my security in my TOTAL TASTEMAKER SUPERIORITY, I know that they are wrong. I've heard a bunch of Outkast references, because the one guy has sort of a thing going on that is momentarily similar to Andre 3000 and dudes that write about music on the internet (that aren't Dan or I of course) are notoriously lazy and too busy counting their monetized piles of gold Bloggerands to think and stuff. What gets me about this song is the weird industrial throwback at the beginning and the non-annoying jinglejangle guitar stabs (you listening out there late 90's Depeche Mode?) and the cadence of the vocals getting punctuated by that awesome noodly synth.

On a different take, Future Of The Left just keeps getting better and is basically the only rock band that matters anymore so the rest of you can kind of just quit if you like. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to make an optimum ringtone out of "You Need Satan More Than He Needs You", but slicing out 30 seconds was impossible so now I just play the whole song in public places and afterwards have a pretend conversation with my imaginary friends.

Finally, it would be remiss of me to post a blog without mentioning Michael Jackson, so I present the finest song ever written about falling in love with a rodent. In case you think that I am the kind of asshole that isn't totally bummed out about MJ passing away (oh hey whats up DUDE WHO WAS HIS DAD you heartless money-grabbing cock) I think this is his most achingly shiver-inducing beautiful vocal ever, and this song has made me tear up a little every time I've heard it this week. Goodnight you sad, strange little child man - your weird life will never overshadow the greatness of your music.

http://www.futureoftheleft.com/
http://www.theknux.com/

Not going to post a link for you to check out Michael Jackson because I respect you too much to insult your intelligence, but as a super-weirdo bonus, I bring you THIS

Actually I'm going to say one more thing

TRIBUTE SONGS CAN BE A TERRIBLE WEAPON IN THE WRONG HANDS.

MAMA SAY MAMA SAH MAH MAKUSAH

And that's all I'm going to say about that.

um ok so

I am a fan of the mashup. I am a fan of the cover song.

this is kind of awesome.

this is kind of kind of uh awesoawful

shameless self promotion and also missing the point (which is dumb to begin with)

i might like this better than the original

oh btw this tossed off entry is a great example of the down the rabbit hole aspect of youtube cover songs THIS WAY LIES MADNESS

HEY

HEY

download this. it is free, and everyone should go ahead and give it a shot. and i know this dude, and i think he is awesome. if you like it I will direct you to his incredible Tool parody that led to a cease and desist letter.

ok then.

5 feet of pure unadulterated self-seriousness

You know, it's easy to laugh at Danzig. I mean, the guy raises wolves and takes his super-satanism very literally and seriously (or so he claims). Also, his tough guy vibe got kind of smudged when the internet got to collectively watch a washed up hardcore dude hand his ass to him on youtube about 10 billion times.

Sometimes it's hard to be satan's most avid minion (well outside of scandinavia anyway). And you can't blame him for wondering if we really are taking him seriously enough.

But hold on dudes, this is the guy who (sorry doyle) is the Misfits and Samhain and we probably owe him some respect, no matter what sort of trollish self-caricature he (maybe) has become. If I am impassioned or (perhaps) drunk, I am willing to throw down for my opinion that the Misfits are the most important punk band ever, mainly because a careful listener will discern that they aren't really all that punk, but more weirdo alternate 50's by way of the anti-spector wall of spaced out soundlessness. Also, all of these innovators of the fake micro genre "hellbilly" really ought to tithe a bit of income to the Danzig.

Anyway.

This whole blog post is mostly spawned by walking through the used CD section and deciding that well hell yes, buying DANZIG II LUCIFUGE was probably the best way to exert my wallet. Many people have made the tired yawnsome comparison of Danzig/Elvis (oh hey, thanks for trying so hard, dude sings with throaty gravitas GOLD CRITICAL STAR DUDE). But for those of us that aren't missing the point, this is the way The Doors would have sounded if they had ditched that overpresent B3 organ and the lead singer had been a far more entertaining sort of self-important douche. Danzig doesn't want to be your lizard king (HAIL SATAN), and he doesn't want to throw it into his mother in some sort of primitive brained freudian schtick. He wants to raise wolves and live in a gated community with them and take a minute out of his busy schedule to write fantastic fake blues and bombastic power boogie nonsense. This is the sort of thing that Jim Morrison would have been trying to cram down our gullet these days (if he weren't awesomely dead sorry) but he would have been A) a big fat beardo creepy dude instead of a 5 foot tall powerhouse of mediocre fighting bravado wolf cuddling awesome B) BORING and perhaps exploring his softer side C) a far more nnnggghhhh fucking awful singer D) working that whole "american poet" bullshit. Danzig is a poet destroyer, because at least he could beat poet dudes up, unless they got the drop on him or were like 5 and a half feet tall.

A sensation not unlike slapping yourself in the face

I'd seen Modeselektor mentioned a few times on I Love Music but I never actually heard them until I plugged M.I.A. into Pandora and one of their songs came up as being similar (specifically, the song "Silikon" off of Hello Mom!, which could fairly be described as "M.I.A. for people who want more straightforward dancehall influence and hate M.I.A.'s voice"). I, of course, gooned out over them and immediately bought both of their albums, which are fantastic and lovely but not the point of this post.

I know nothing about Apparat, the other artist that makes up the group Moderat; listening to the collaborative's self-titled album makes me want to change that. I picked up Moderat on a whim; I had gotten out of the habit of buying things based on tenuous connections or word-of-mouth a few years ago and have been slowly working my way back into it over the past six months with great success (expect a rambling post about M83, aka my "How Did I Never Hear About These Guys Before Now" band of 2008, sometime soon). If I keep finding things as awesome as Moderat, I'll be a very happy person. Check this out:



This is pretty representative of the album as a whole; decent tempo dance tunes done on mellow synth patches with the occasional vocal. The juxtaposition of driving energy in the beat mixed in with the mellow warmth of the synths is what really attracts me to this music; every song make me want to bang my head in the tenderest manner possible. All I have to do is close my eyes while I'm listening to this and I'm instantly transported to a gigantic dancefloor filled with true PLUR practitioners, everyone bouncing and gyrating together in a mad frenzy of love and euphoria. Pretty much every song shares a lot of the hallmarks I love in my favorite choral pieces; long, held swells mixed in with droning, incremental chord changes matched over more active repeated figures, all building towards a painfully glorious crescendo that releases all of the pent-up joy and pain in your body in one ecstatic rush.

Buy this. Now.

OK SO UM

A few caveats before we start this long lost vastly ignored blogventure that I am despite all appearances over the last few weeks DEEPLY COMMITTED TO:

1) So I realize that in the recent timespan my efforts on this blog have amounted to what the hip internet intelligentsia refer to as EPIC FAIL but you do not fully understand the situation because (as far as I can tell) you do not live in my house and you have not been cheerfully cleaning up surprise poo.

No, I have not become incontinent, or at least not more so than before. I have a dog. He is the awesome. His name is Henry, and he looks like this:















Ok then, obviously you see the gravity of my situation.

2) YES THIS NEXT POST SOUNDS FAMILIAR BECAUSE YOU HAVE SEEN TWELVE MONKEYS AND YOU ARE SO, SO, SMART

but listen up.

Astor Piazzolla (RIP) is the shit. If you lived outside of Argentina, I can understand that you have no idea who he is, despite the fact that 12 monkeys used his music posthumously to rub your dilettante hipster belly with the sounds of bizarre alien tango. It's OK. We are all friends here, and I have my share of Triple Five Soul sweatshirts and that "DEFEND BROOKLYN" t-shirt with the AK47 on it despite the fact that I live in West Saint Paul and proudly own the first 30 issues of McSweeneys.

See? We are all friends here.

Anyway, Astor Piazzolla was a genius, and as long as you manage to dodge some of his messy middle period questionable work (a hint for the wise, if there is a soccer theme involved put that one back in the stacks) he is a 100% godsend that will change the way you think about the overuse of novelty accordion and maybe just maybe the definition of modern classical composition.

AHEM

So continuing on a recent theme (hey, it's a theme for me, roll with it), another great lost classical foreigner that I can't stop forcing upon any of my friends that are too slow to escape my clutches is the incomparable Mado Robin, a coloratura that is still the Guinness book record holder for the highest note ever sung by a human (as long as you ignore a couple of dreadful singers and that whole squeaky Mariah Carey nonsense). And to be fair, maybe some of them have hit notes as high or higher (D above double-high C for those opera super fans keeping score at home), but the reason that I and all other right thinking individuals don't give a shit is that the last time I checked, singing was still an art, not some SUPER LONG JUMP BENCH PRESS CRAP STEROIDS OH WAIT MY ARMS FELL OFF competition. Mado Robin is worth listening to because she can sing. Also, her high notes might be able to microwave eggs. not sure. you judge:

OH SNAP THAT IS A HIGH SINGING LADY

(two songs there by the way CLICK BOTH LINKS. Oh, and the payoff is towards the end. WAIT FOR IT.)

OK, thats it for tonight. I promise that next time I will stop with all the classical nonsense and return to my regularly scheduled meathead indie fuxor programming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astor_Piazzolla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mado_Robin

NOTE: there are no really worthwhile pages for Mado Robin, so if your interest is piqued, email me, and I will set you on the long painful path to finding the small traces of her recorded work.

Albums I have loved this year: a list

Fever Ray - Fever Ray


I don't know why The Knife never really connected with me; I heard a couple of their songs via on-demand videos and thought they were interesting but not really worthy of my attention. The Fever Ray album takes the seeds of what I thought were interesting and implodes them into an inescapable black hole of awesomeness, simultaneously chilling and beautiful. A lot of people have talked about how terrifying this album is; I don't really see it. Maybe the video imagery evokes some horror tropes, but the music itself is all about icy, mechanised love. Truly wonderful.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz


Holy shit. Every time I listen to this album, I get more out of it; another song stands out as being the best thing the YYYs have written to date. The middle section especially is amazing; two songs that are much more restrained in their structure ("Dull Life", "Shame and Fortune") use that to launch into fantastically aggressive performances, leading into the full-on steamroller of anguish that is "Runaway", easily the sledgehammer of awesome among the songs offered here.

The Prodigy - Invaders Must Die!


It is probably gross overstatement to call this album "Fat of the Land done correctly" but I've never let hyperbole stop me in the past. The great thing about this album is that it goes through a slow build on the first four songs, where each one is good but not necessarily AMAZING, but then it drops "Take Me To The Hospital" on you, a song that both launches the album firmly into the stratosphere (honestly, I think it's the best tune they've done in 18 years) AND does the neat track of making the first four songs click into place. From that point on, even slight missteps like "Piranha" are fucking fantastic.

Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe


Real talk: if you cannot get behind "In Chains", you are a sad, soulless person. The anguish in Dave's voice hasn't been this palpable since Songs of Faith and Devotion and the slow build and breakdown in the music shows a band that didn't decide to age gracefully; in fact, aging isn't really a consideration here. They've taken aspects of all of the things people loved about them: bleak and/or oppressive lyrics about life and relationships; warm analog synth lines; layered vocals; industrial percussion; all of these make their presence known on the album, contributing to an ever-permutating groove that is at different times angry, rebellions, seductive, indignant, resigned, menacing, welcoming, yearning and indifferent. I thought that Playing the Angel was the clarion call that signaled DM's return to greatness; the degree by which that album is eclipsed by SotU (ugly album cover and all) is astonishing.