I just learned you can embed Soundcloud playlists now! This is going to make uploading music so much easier because I’m always so indecisive when choosing tracks (I can never decide on just one).
This is a playlist I made a few months ago after feeling very fed up with electro pop. So I made this “pop-only” playlist to get the music out of my system (like a mental cleansing, so to speak) and then went on an electro pop detox, which is still in effect as far as I know.
The mix itself though isn’t too shabby:
Still Corners - Beginning To Blue
Empress Of - No Means No
Fol Chen - You Took The Train
Miss Kittin - Bassline
Sally Shapiro - Sundown
Rhye - One Of Those Summer Days
Palmbomen - Wolves
Mano Le Tough - Everything You’ve Done Before
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still corners
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fol chen
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Yo-Yo Blue is Plvs Vltra’s sophomore album. I can’t really compare it to her previous album because I haven’t heard it, but I find her intriguing nonetheless. Her sound is all over the place, and Yo-Yo Blue is about 60% filler with most tracks clocking in at under 2 minutes, but tracks like “White Elephant” and “ちょーちょ” convince me that there’s more to her weirdness than just noise.
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Cibo Matto @ Littlefield, May 30th
“Extra sugar, extra salt, extra oil and MSG!!” They also played new songs. They said their new album will come out “when we finish it.”
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cibo matto
music
live music
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Magdala
Magdala
While in San Francisco last week I stopped by Amoeba Music and came across this CD tucked inconspicuously in the used rock section (even though the CD was neither “used” or “rock”). I never heard of Magdala before, but judging by the cover alone it looked like something I could possibly like. So I bought it anyway (despite its $16 price tag) and crossed my fingers I didn’t waste my money. What can I say? Best. Impulse buy. Ever.
Magdala is a new band, which might explain how they managed to soar under my radar to begin with. There hasn’t been anything exciting coming out of Japan recently, and I’ve felt for a long time that the country was way overdue for a new movement of some kind. And maybe I’m being a tad haste with my judgement, but I think Magdala might be on to something. Their operatic, poetic songs reach the level WEG did back in the mid-2000s when he defiantly shook off the bedroom pop shackles. There’s just something refreshing and new and vaguely Scandinavian about them (if you’re familiar with Nordic bands like Paavoharju or Eleanoora Rosenholm). I might expand more on these thoughts later. But anyway, highly recommended.
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magdala
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Jenny Hval
Innocence Is Kinky
Jenny Hval is a Norwegian artist/musician whose sophomore album Innocence Is Kinky is…well, a lot less subtle than you would think. The title is exactly what it sounds like: experimental, erotic spoken word resting on a bed of music that sounds like Hanne Hukkelberg or a gentler EMA. I’m liking it so far, but this song stood out right away.
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jenny hval
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i dont want my words to be taken out of context
i dont want to be infantilized because i refuse to be sexualized
i dont want to be molested at shows or on the street by people who perceive me as an object that exists for their personal satisfaction
i dont want to live in a world where im gonna have to start employing body guards because this kind of behavior is so commonplace and accepted and I’m pissed that when I express concern over my own safety it’s often ignored until people see firsthand what happens and then they apologize for not taking me seriously after the fact…
I’m tired of men who aren’t professional or even accomplished musicians continually offering to ‘help me out’ (without being asked), as if i did this by accident and i’m gonna flounder without them. or as if the fact that I’m a woman makes me incapable of using technology. I have never seen this kind of thing happen to any of my male peers
I’m tired of the weird insistence that i need a band or i need to work with outside producers (and I’m eternally grateful to the people who don’t do this)
I’m tired of creeps on message boards discussing whether or not they’d “fuck” me
I’m sad that my desire to be treated as an equal and as a human being is interpreted as hatred of men, rather than a request to be included and respected (I have four brothers and many male best friends and a dad and i promise i do not hate men at all, nor do i believe that all men are sexist or that all men behave in the ways described above)
im tired of being referred to as ‘cute,’ as a ‘waif’ etc., even when the author, fan, friend, family member etc. is being positive
G R I M E S: I don’t want to have to compromise my morals in order to make a living
Grimes’ now famous blog post where she vents about sexism and the difficulty of being a “solo-girl-who-makes-electronic-music.”
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Grimes
music
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I have to say, Twitter #Music’s suggestions aren’t too far off the mark.
But I think it’s strange that no social networking platform has replaced what Myspace was like for music back in 2007/2008. Although most people had already flocked to Facebook back then, it was still the best portal for music. The fact that Myspace never capitalized on its sudden foray into the music business was probably one of their biggest mistakes (I know they tried with the whole Timberlake relaunch, but they waited too late). With Myspace gone/dead, the closest replacement I can think of for musical artists is Bandcamp and maybe Facebook. And, judging by the looks of Twitter #Music, it doesn’t look like Twitter will be taking that spot either.
There needs to be a platform that not only centers on the artist but also provides a community where musicians can discover each other. I remember back in 2007/2008 being able to track certain music scenes through Myspace (like the bedroom pop scene, for example). And I didn’t even have a Myspace account, but all I had to do was track one artist which produced this “down the rabbit” hole effect where I discovered everyone else, who was collaborating with whom, who was touring with whom, etc. I don’t know if I’m making sense, but it would be nice to have something like that again.
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twitter
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Lizzy Mercier Descloux
Mambo Nassau
I’ve been listening a lot to The Knife’s Shaking The Habitual, and one thing I noticed was the strong tribal component in songs like “A Tooth For An Eye” and “Without You My Life Will Be Boring.” It made me think of other artists who had conquered that whole tribal/electro sound, and I immediately thought of Lizzy Mercier Descloux whose sophomore album Mambo Nassau came out way back in 1981. She was excellent at combining her experimental electro-pop with an underscore of tribal/world influence. This album is actually one of my favorite albums of all time. Unfortunately, it was her only great album.
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french music
music
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Shaking the Habitual’s problem is that the Knife seem to have dismissed the idea of making your point concisely as merely another affectation of a decadent and corrupt society. The album lasts for over an hour and a half: the impact of a track such as Full of Fire – distorted drums, horrifying shrieks – is dissipated by the fact that it rambles on for nine minutes. Things reach a head on Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized: a dark, ambient track based around a single note, it’s over 19 minutes long. Making music as willfully intellectualised as this comes with an inbuilt safety net: if you don’t get it, you’re too thick to understand it or, worse, you’re a symptom of the institutions it’s set out to critique. But Old Dreams Waiting to Be Realized gives the lie to those responses, simply because there’s a lot of music like it around at the moment. From Greg Haines to Hacker Farm and the Haxan Cloak, plenty of artists are dealing in what you might loosely term unsettling ambience and making music no less challenging, but infinitely more engaging and interesting than this.
The Knife: Shaking the Habitual – Review
To be honest, if the album was 45 minutes shorter, it would be almost perfect. And the 20+ minute track should be at the end, not in the middle of the album sandwiched between the best tracks. Just messiness all around.
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the guardian
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