America Asleep

So I dig pop music, its a place in our sound memory bank when we think of the "catchy" songs you like that we hear on the radio or see on the screen. If they make it that far. But for me when I think pop, I think Dance music or electronica.

Too bad here in America we have terrible exposure to this. Whatever nonpublic radio station is playing or what the Television has to offer....hardly anything of it is worth noticing.
Not here in the U.S.A. To enjoy good music you really have to dig and go searching for it, because playing those records that we took song long to find will wear down if we play them, so we're not playing those...

Anyway, I feel like I slept on some shit...
c


and there is more where he's coming from. Now I've been onto this Mark Ronson cat for some time now, but I didn't realize this guy is planning a take over Prince style! Fuck some Black Eyed Pea's shit, this guy recruits mawfuckin Q-tip Go ahead and start comparing to American musicians from our era....nope. Nobody is near this far gone....
Mark Ronson | Somebody To Love Me by Jawhar
dunno where I was with my thoughts on music last JUNE!! But due to our poor communications from the external sources, us Americans will never be as cool as Europeans

Felix Uran - Masprojekt_3 by Dramatic Records

But as long as I got my friends in Orange county I might be getting closer

Calling Bullsh** On: Odd Future

Every once in awhile, something starts trending, like a storm cloud on the horizon, and I think to myself "please don't come here and ruin this beautiful day at the golf course". Well, one of those trends is upon us here in the Indie Kingdom of Suburbia, in the form of a bunch of middle class black kids from LA called Odd Future. You might've seen them on Jim Fallon recently.

They're wild, they're miscreants, they're reprobates, they're getting tons of press. In the Galaxie of Trends, they're in the constellation Lil B. In the opinion of this blogger, their antics are transparent and tiresome. They're obviously just semi-pampered teens with too much time on their hands to come up with 'shocking' memes. They have a (frequently updated) tumblr.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, if you're a middle class black person from a Huxtable-wave family - do not rap. Do not try and have a hip-hop career. Try to win a Nobel prize, which none of your people have won yet (besides the Peace prize). Become a billionaire so Oprah doesn't get too lonely as the only black person in Palm Springs. Make your people proud. Stop trying to shock honky ass white people into taking pictures of you on their smartphones.

Why do I not like Odd Future? Well, it's basically because they take the whole architecture of 'indie culture', which rap is normally exempt from, and transfer it squarely to rap. They have a labyrinthine crew structure (even containing 'crews within crews' - a gimmick they stole from Junior M.A.F.I.A. probably, but white journalists don't usually catch that), use lots of 'imagery' a la Wu-Tang or Three 6 Mafia [note: I'm not comparing Odd Future to any of these groups musically/quality-wise. They're actually more akin to Matsiyahu but that's another story.], and create lots of 'hype' for the media to process and disseminate. And what keeps media-people busy, makes media-people happy. Dig?

Here's a video that a serious music critic guy compares to 'Nuthin But a G Thang' and calls it "history in the making"

Really? Kinda felt like I just listened to that shitty group Atmospheres or whoever they were hyping 10 years ago, accompanied by a straight-to-youtube music video made by high school kids. I think Snoop was like, the same age as these kids when 'G Thang' dropped... whose team would you rather be on?

Okay, so some of Odd Future is promising. I think this guy 'Mellowhype' (or is it 2 guys?) might be the zany/creative one in the group [via ODB]. Some compelling production on this one...

[This will be the last racially-motivated paragraph I write on here for a while, guys. promise.] Wonder what this Tyler bro thinks about 90% of his fans being white?

is this the Insane Clown Posse for ppl with 4 year degrees? Or is it just a rehash of Insane Poetry with skateboards, writ large?

Definitely a good sales formula (or is it? think about all those broadband connections, wi-fi broadband connections...), good formula for press, seeing as mainstream journalists HATE writing about 'bling' as some sort of artistic motive/muse. C'mon, white ppl treat bling as a foregone conclusion... college --> bling --> kids --> inheritance --> college --> bling --> governmental influence --> mega bling... nothing out of the ordinary there. No, what white ppl want is what they can't have - talk about fucking your girlfriends corpse after you murdered her, eating your grandparents eyeballs, or similar free-associative nonsense [via Beat Poets] the collective spits out. Really feel like this is manufactured, Lil B formula copy/paste, endorsed by the Jimmy of Fallons and other liberal pressure groups nationwide. That's why I'm taking a stand as the voice of TNRR and calling bullshit on their 2578 mp3s spread across 523 mixtapes.

"Odd Future can eat a big fat dick. Don't add us to your tumblr blog roll." - real OGs

Normally not a promoter of real violence in the hip hop world, but fuck, it's been 15 since the Biggie/Tubac debacle, let's call up Jadakiss, 50 Cent, and a handful of other 'real niggas' to pack up the tools "with the infrared beams" and do a 187 on the entirety of Odd Future. The block is about to get real hot. I'll drive.

little preview of the forthcoming Golden Age hip hop mixtape produced by yourstruly

P.S: If you google 'Junior Mafia' + 'Odd Future', we are #1! Could the Truth be the first to identify that rip? Or have I just lost my mind?

Note for vinyl users...

One of my biggest gripes with the vinyl format has always been it's lack of high-frequency performance. The low-mids are perfect. CD doesn't come close in that respect. I mean, that's why you can't get stoned to digital music, amirite? But CD consistently wins on the high end, even though I know that 'theoretically' LPs are supposed to have this 'super high frequency' information, well into the 40-60 kHz range, that you can't 'hear' but can only 'feel' (ever have that experience?). But usually, LPs sound rolled-off on the high end, subdued. That's not only because I have a shitty turntable that isn't set-up properly, but because I think the records themselves are slightly destroyed. Turns out that you shouldn't play a record more than once every 24 hrs, because the pressure from the needle actually melts the groove and reduces the high-frequency response in the process. In my experience, this is true! A new record loses its 'crispiness' after a while, when I play it a lot, whereas a CD never does [via Perfect Sound Forever]. Obviously, if your turntable isn't setup right (if the tracking force on the tonearm is too high, not straight, etc.) it will cause additional wear on the groove. This is bad news, cause unlike dust, which just adds noise, this actually ruins your record, and is the reason most used records I buy have a sort of 'muted' sound to them. At least, that's what I think [haven't verified any of the science behind this].

Here's the piece from Wired, referencing another magazine:

This particularly esoteric -- and vital -- piece of vinyl lore came from High Fidelity Magazine (which originally ran complete with electron microscope illustrations) explaining why you need to wait 24 hours before replaying a record to prevent high wear. At the one-millionth of a square inch point of the needle (1000th X 1000th inch) the one and one-half gram weight on the record groove is magnified to 18,000 pounds per square inch! This pressure liquefies the vinyl -- which in does flow back into proper shape BUT the vinyl is now brittle and playing the needle over again will rub groove off. It takes 24 hours for vinyl to regain its elasticity. You may play a record every day for 20 years and it will sound like new. But if you play it twice in a row it will lose significant fidelity. I once replayed twice in a row the first 30 seconds of Elton-John's Funeral for a Friend (I had made a mistake timing a recording). I figured just once would not hurt. Wrong: that first 30 seconds lost a sparkle that the rest of the record permanently retained.

What do yall think? Is the Kid A lim. ed. 10" vinyl on Capitol the 'perfect record' - does it somehow never wear out, even though you've play 'Everything In Its Right Place' 1,500x in a row? Should High Fidelity merge with High Times for a special double issue?

Knock Knock: Who Is It? Fame!

The inimitable Simon Reynolds (he coined the term post-rock) has had a long meme on guitar solos going over at his blog, and was cool enough to post some of my suggestions. I'm not identified as 'The Truth' (that's not how they roll over there), but as 'ajb' (one of my email accounts), and I appear towards the end of the March 13th post. For those of you who like books, read some of his, they will make you a better person. How do you think I became The Truth in the first place?

Some more thoughts on Chairlift...

(Caroline at least) has been appearing on a lot of other artists' songs over the past year or so. Most of them are boring indie tunes made in Brooklyn, but I forgot about this one I enjoyed with white-person-approved rapper Das Racist, called 'Fashion Party'. It highlights one of the elements of the band I like - the fact that they embrace luxury, the high-roller scene, and aren't afraid to 'be okay with money' (i.e. that time they modeled Marc Jacobs), unlike the majority of hipsters who conceal their offshore trust fund accounts, and pretend like the gig at the coffee shop is their life's work. Reminds me of say, Roxy Music in that way...

Caroline is apparently on this This Mortal Coil-sounding track, although I think all she does is add some 'woos' and noises.

Thoughts on the new Chairlift album

Word.

People familiar with this blog know that Chairlift is my one modern major label indulgence. Us 'true fans' were racked with some bad news last Fall when it was quietly announced that co-founder/songwriter Aaron Pfenning left to do his own thing (a decent sounding Cure-Depeche Modey band with one of those stupid ___s type names, called 'Rewards'). My hunch is that the split was romantically motivated, seeing as former gf/co-songwriter Caroline Polachek (above) is now living with the dude from Violens. Anyway, this presents a real problem for the band, both sonically, as one can tell that Chairlift's songs are a mélange of Pfenning and Polachek's influences, and logistically, because now the lineup has been reduced to a lame 'boy-girl combo' (multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wimberly).

So what the fuck is the new album gonna sound like? I have no idea... Caroline describes it as 'more acidic, and faster', which is surprising to me. I don't know how many songs Aaron wrote before he left, so who knows if the 'balance' is still there or not. I DO know that the album is schedule to be released June-ish, so we can expect a whole nother round of 'album cycle' promotion, which in fact, has already begun. Caroline collabed with hipster lingerie line 'The Lake & Stars' for the Fall '11 show, providing the soundtrack for the catwalk, and modeling (I couldn't find any shots of her in panties, but when I do you know TNRR is getting the hookup! All I could find was this so far).

Apparently the inspiration was 'Italian neo-classicism' meets '70s minimalism', so Caroline mashed up 60s electronica, classical pieces, with some of her own synth treatments. Here's a video of her 'collabing' in her apartment, playing Terry Riley's A Rainbow In Curved Air (because she's that kind of chick):

Could 2011 be the Year of Caroline? Will she do Playboy? (she would if asked I bet) Should I send her a mixtape pronto before she marries a subpar indie star?

Icon lost

So instead of posting on a regular basis these days I spend my time defiling the town I live in with shiny spray paint or watching old rock docs...and so I come to Harry Nilsson. Now he isn't some one that I've never heard of before (we've all heard this one)



But as I venture further into the life of Harry Nilsson and learn how he was a 'one upper to John Lennon' and putting aside all the bias that I neglect from my roommate Brad..(he saw the same doc a year ago and tried pushing this singer guy at me, but like most music Brad finds, I tend to ignore) I'm not gonna say he was on to something, because I think the guys at RCA long ago were the ones onto it.

What really really intrigued me was when I heard two songs in the film that caught my attention.

1st:

A nice Jam featuring some Beatles and others jamming away with Nillson, but hmmm...this is the 70's and the Infamous Cee-Lo Green has yet to hardly exist..

Nowadays you can't hardly go anywhere without hearing "Fuck You"....sure its a cool song, every dude wants to have his day with the hotter chick looking back at the older chick (also hot) and give her a good...well you know the song.

But now the real catch, where I'm gonna need your help Briggsy...this one is short, sweet, catchy and from a kids film made by Nillson, but its been sampled, reworked, stolen and turned into a dance mix or something....help me find where we know this track: