Ashes, Ashes
Saturday night, some friends and I went to a show at Cake Shop. Ostensibly, we went there to see Zola Jesus, but ended up leaving before her set – in fact, I felt a little bad as we put on our coats pretty much two feet away from where she was waiting to use the bathroom. I'm not completely familiar with her work, but I wanted to see her live as she was one third of the quasi-supergroup Former Ghosts, whose debut album was one of my favorites this year. She'll be opening for Xiu Xiu when I see them in April, however, so no big loss.
The band I want to speak about is White Ring, composed of Bryan Kurkimilis and Kendra Malia. According to the band playing after them, this was their first live set ever. Their set-up was pretty bare-bones: Malia was on the mic, with enough reverb to make it sound as if she were in a hallway nested matreshka-style within a dozen other hallways. Kurkimilis had a Yamaha (?) and a Macbook. The synth drum-beats (offsetting the drones) were incredibly, almost insultingly simple and her lyrics were incomprehensible. This didn't affect my enjoyment of the group at all. They got their dark, minimalist-gothic ambience just right. The simplicity and complete artificiality of the set was a conscious departure from both dissonant and untuned folk-Goth on one end and dramatic synth-dance productions on the other.
Image, edited, co. White Ring.
Two aspects of their set stuck out for me – the use of gun samples and the shrieking. I don't usually hear samples of guns cocking (chick-chick) and shooting (boom) outside of hip-hop, but their presence, played to the beat of the music and simultaneously creating their own, was not only attention-grabbing, but genuinely interesting and novel. Malia's shrieks and screams were also well-placed, bringing the rising tempo and mumbling lyrics to a head.
An aside: as someone with crippling stage-fright for even the most inconsequential of presentations, I'd like to commend Bryan Kurkimilis on keeping his own in check. The dude was scared and it showed, but it didn't affect the quality of the show at all. On the other hand (and equally likely), if intense fear is part of his stage persona, I'd like to congratulate him on his successful wholesale embodiment of the emotion.
Here's one of their newer tracks, entitled “Roses” and set, inexplicably, to either the opening or ending scene of Stanley Kubrick's Lolita. I'm not sure if this is a fan video or not, but it's notable that the creator of the video kept the gunshots in from the original soundtrack. I've been told that White Ring will be releasing an EP this spring:
UPDATE
Courtesy of Pendu Magazine, here's a video of Saturday night's set:
How We Won the War
Today, take a quick tour of the Technology Wing of the War on Artistic Constraints Memorial Museum
Roy Lichtenstein wields the nigh-unstoppable Image Duplicator...
...while the Dead Boys pack the mighty Sonic Reducer.
Synthetic Sharing Machine
I spent last night browsing YouTube for live sets of bands that I like and came up with two gems I've been ever-so-giddy to share. The first is a live set featuring Rap (a.k.a. Dragon, a.k.a. video artist Hari Ziznewski) opening for wunderkind Beirut in 2006. He is accompanied by the incredible Alaska in Winter. While Rap remains relatively – needlessly! – obscure, Alaska in Winter has been all over the place; his track “Your Red Dress” was featured in an episode of Gray's Anatomy (season 4, episode 15.) AIW's 2007 LP Dance Party in the Balkans has been one of my most listened to albums this year and one track features a young(ish) Zach Condon (of Beirut) on vox. So here's Rap and Alaska in Winter with “Sega Song”.
Now, this one is the real treasure. YouTube's own goldenpuppy1 has been slowly and steadily releasing a live set Neutral Milk Hotel played in New York in 1998, on their tour for the seminal indie album In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Neutral Milk Hotel are responsible for some of the greatest music released during the 1990s and, in my opinion, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is their crowning achievement. If you have never heard this album you absolutely, absolutely must. To certain individuals of certain tastes, lead Jeff Mangum's nervous breakdown and complete resignation from the world of music was an event with as much resonance as the death of Kurt Cobain. Considering that a twelve year old VHS transfer isn't the best introduction to this band, I'll make this offer: if you want to listen to this album that I absolutely fucking insist you listen to, drop me a line and I will hook you up. No one who claims to enjoy music should go through life without hearing In The Aeroplane at least once. Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying you'll necessary like it. Much like the styling of John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, it is easy to dislike Jeff Mangum's unique vocals and abstract lyrics, and the band's insistence on bizarre, noisy instrumentation. Whatever. As far as the experimental aspect of 1990s indie rock is concerned, they're the origin of the species. Considering that there has been an absolute dearth of quality NMH recordings on YouTube – there are a good videos of Mangum's solo sets however – these videos are a revelation. Now here's Neutral Milk Hotel with “King of Carrot Flowers pts. 2 and 3”
And here is my single favorite song of theirs, “April 8th” from the album On Avery Island.
The rest is here and seems to be irregularly updated.
P.S.: I've gone through the archives and categorized all my posts featuring live music with the live category-tag.
Oh Bowery, Up Yours!
On Friday night I went, with much trepidation, to see Owen Pallett (the artist formerly known as Final Fantasy) play at the Bowery. For those unaware, he is primarily a violinist and had, among his numerous guest spots, arranged the strings and provided guest vocals on Beirut's The Flying Club Cup. The trepidation stemmed from the fact that the tickets were a came-home-late-and-drunk impulse buy and I really hadn't any intention to see him live. I moderately enjoyed He Poos Clouds, an album rife with two things that would endear your humble blogger to practically any album: vocal desperation and oblique Dungeons and Dragons references. However, I couldn't really latch onto the dissonance, and after a few listens shelved the album away for a rainy day. His next and most recent release, Heartland – the first to be released under his Christian name – was much better. Heartland is, ostensibly, a concept album, but I have a nearly-superheroic inability to grasp onto album narratives unless someone holds my damn hand through them (a notable exception being The Mountain Goats Tallahassee, which I have listened to, in full, maybe twelve hundred times over the years and eventually just got.) The annoying, springy dissonance of both the instrumentation and his voice smoothed out and the entire sound was de-avant-garde'd and made significantly more listenable. It was because of Heartland that I was even mildly inspired to actually show up and not just pawn the ticket on last.fm.
Image co. For The 'Records'
Imagine my surprise when this turned out to be one of the better live shows I've seen. The opening band, Avi Buffalo, was a bit too precious for my taste. (In an odd aside, I ended up exchanging Flickr messages with the admittedly skilled lead singer/guitarist's mother after she mislabeled a photo I had posted. Apparently the band's relatives keep track of these things. Adorable.) I had managed to confuse Owen for one of Bowery's sound guys, confused by his ability to tune a violin. The only other individual on stage, whose name I have forgotten, assisted with a muted guitar and a small drum set with a set of cowbells taped on. As they started playing, it all came together. He generated the backbeat to the music by looping violin plucks/melodies, occasionally processed through a bass pedal, and a synth. He would then start playing a different melody and sing in that beautiful voice of his. Seriously. I haven't heard a voice that clean and pure on stage … ever, really. While musicians generally need to have their head around timing to play, listening to Owen set up his own backing and play to it was a sight to see.
One of my most favorite things about living in the Future is that I can go to a show and a few days later watch it again via a YouTube upload from some kid with a camera I could pay my rent with. So, here's Owen Pallet playing his opening track on Friday, January 18th, 2010, “CN Tower Belongs to the Dead.”
Drawing Restraint (Top) 40
It was during my brief tenure as an assistant-manager of a West Village erotic novelties store that I developed a taste for contemporary pop music. Our shifts were twelve hours long and Top 40 radio – Z100 or KTU in our case – was de rigueur during the entirety of the the day (10 a.m. - 10 p.m.) shift. Once in a while, a higher-up would allow us a taste of the classic rock station, or an iPod surreptitiously plugged in to the sound system, but those reprieves were both rare and brief. The dyed-in-the-wool noise-addict with whom I tended shop during most of the night (10 p.m. - 10 a.m.) shifts would blast Cannibal Corpse or Venetian Snares around 3 or 4 (the store having long since emptied out and the few remaining customers dallying just long enough to pick up some prophylactics,) but this too was rare. For six months I received a daily dose of two- or three-hour long repeating chunks of music offered by the pop stations. On Friday and Saturday nights the rotation dropped between 45 minutes to an hour. I can't name any titles or artists, but if you were to play a pop song that reached its peak between August and December of 2006, I probably know every single lyric.
Like every hip, young whateverthehell, I enjoy Lady Gaga and I doubt I would have been able to without the experiences outlined above. Certainly, the bridges in her songs are often crap, on the ground of sounding far too much like all the other R&B-based pop music around, but the tracks themselves reek of a certain genius in construction and marketability. I've heard and said plenty about her image (the New Madonna/David Bowie/etc.) and ability to bring the genuinely weird back into a genre yearning desperately for weirdness. She doesn't leave any room for argument about authenticity because there isn't any at all. Much as I respect Vampire Weekend for not bothering to play the po' boy hipster and instead fully embracing their My Parents Own A Yacht upbringing, I respect Gaga for overtly posing meant to be marketed. What can you really say is inauthentic about a pop star who in her latest video (oozing with [experimental filmmaker] Matthew Barney influences) is bid upon during the climax of its narrative?
Unsure of my own feelings toward her music, I found what turned out to be a litmus test for likability. While I generally dislike virtuoso guitar – technical masturbation not being my cup of tea – I adore Igor Presnyakov's cover of “Bad Romance.” His playing has real soul in it (you may want to take notes, Mr. Malmsteen) and his interpretation both creates a brand new song, and brings to light every element of the original which makes it a good pop song. Enjoy.
...and make sure to check out his YouTube channel for more of the like.
High Class Pros in SoHo Bars
Due to a horrible transporter malfunction, my high school-self has taken over the blog. Luckily, his near-Herculean lazyness and Warren Ellis-caliber egomania means you only have to bear witness to this photograph and a sample of my (his? damn editorial gimmicks) music tastes circa 2000. "Enjoy"!
Let’s Big Dance!
I love traditional folk crossover acts. Now I’m sure we’ve all heard of the folk-metal monstrosity Finntroll, for instance -- so how about something from the other side of the spectrum?
What do you get when you throw a pinch of Ukranian folk music, a smattering of the Pet Shop Boys, Dame Edna and whatever the hell kind of techno that’s been passing for pop music in Europe for the last ten years into a remaindered Soviet meat grinder? An overwrought use of a terrible cliché. Oh, and this:
That’s Verka Serduchka (Вєрка Сердючка), second place winner of Eurovision 2007.
Conceived as a drag act by Andriy Danylko, Ukranian Parliament spoke out against her entry into Eurovision as, ahem, “grotesque and vulgar.” Really, guys? Come on. How could you not love her?
It’s like your trashy aunt turned out to be a flamboyantly gay man, won the lottery and started showing up at the club.
Especially Rap and Country
This post is dedicated to everyone who has ever stated they enjoy “everything except rap and country.” I’ve always been confused by people (mostly rocker-types, you can pick your favorite genre thereof) professing that their musical tastes are defined by the exclusion of two immensely broad genres. I’m aware that I’m gazing far too deeply into a social network meme found mostly in the “Music” section of an individual too lazy to properly complete their profile, but the preponderancy of the phrase really irks me. So, acting as a cultural Sherpa, here is some very good rap and country.
First is the Devil Makes Three, who missed my top 8 countdown by a single spot. Pete Bernhard’s voice is incredible: young and punk-influenced, it is the antithesis of every Toby Keith-soundalike. DMT is more bluegrass/blues than straight-up country, but they pretty much define everything I like about the genre as it exists today.
Now for the rap half, here is Anti-Pop Consortium. Coming out of Brooklyn and signed to Warp Records for their 2002 album Arrythmia, their beats are closer to labelmate Aphex Twin than the standard recycled Soul and R&B tracks. This is the group that got me into hip-hop, and I present them because they’re a fantastic gateway act. I’m not about to start listing the myriad problems (imagined or not) non-fans have with the genre, but they’ll most likely not find them here.
Make My Sad Songs More Sincere
After spending this last week bemoaning the dearth of worthwhile upcoming shows, I proceeded to set a personal record for most expensive concert tickets purchased at roughly 11:45 a.m. today. I will be seeing my probably favorite band of all time, The Magnetic Fields, live in Town Hall on March tenth. Their shows are unique for what is, ostensibly, a pop band. Both the audience and the band are seated, sedate, barely moving. When I saw them during the Distortion tour (a much-appreciated present from my girlfriend at the time, who was also responsible for my first time seeing my other favorite band of all time, the Mountain Goats) the band went so far as to have a honest-to-goodness sofa on stage for the cellist and guitarist. There are no drums in their live sets, but there is a grand piano. It feels, considering the stage banter, more like a revue than a band concert -- which is great, considering the nature of the band. One of my favorite exchanges during the aforementioned concert happened when someone yelled out "Freebird" - inappropriate and cliche during most concerts, hilariously absurd during this one. John Woo, the guitarist, played that first elongated steel guitar note cracked the audience right up. When the laughter and applause died down, Stephin Merritt, in his virtuosic deadpan: "You realize we're going to have to pay for that now?"
I can't wait to see them again.
(Photo by Dreamyshade.)
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