A list of things I enjoyed in 2022, two months into 2023, that existed before 2022.

Akira by Katsuhiro Ōtomo
Call Me by Your Name, directed by Luca Guadagnino / Visions of Gideon by Sufjan Stevens
How To Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy
Kimi wa Tennenshoku by Eiichi Ohtaki
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild by Nintendo  
Moonlighter by Digital Sun
Pocahontas by Neil Young
Riddles by Ed Schrader's Music Beat
Teenage Wildlife by David Bowie
Thrills by LCD Soundsystem

A list of things I enjoyed in 2022, two months into 2023.

Action Button Reviews "Boku No natsuyasumi" by Action Button/Tim Rogers
A Life Well Wasted - Episode 8, "Memory" by Robert Ashley
Colin Stetson at Union Chapel, May 2nd 2022
DESASTRES by Marco Fusinato 
Diaspora Problems by Soul Glo
Documenta 15
Elden Ring by From Software
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, directed by Daniels
Heaven Come Crashing by Rachinka Nayar
Kae Tempest at All Points East, August 22nd 2022 / The Line Is a Curve by Kae Tempest
Moonage Daydream, directed by Brett Morgen
New Body Rhumba by LCD Soundsystem
The Real Work by Party Dozen
Snowglobes by Black Country, New Road
William Kentridge at Royal Academy
White Science by John FM
Worldbuilding at Julia Stoschek Foundation

Not So Topical

Some 18 months ago I said I would record a bunch of tracks within a month and release them immediately after that - I even published one of these tracks as a proof of concept, like this would somehow inspire me to actually do the thing I said I would do.

Somehow, perhaps predictably, this didn't happen as expected. However, after finishing the recordings I'd started last February, the resulting pieces of music were put on to Bandcamp under the banner of Topical. At this point, the music longer reflected any sort of commentary about anything happening at the time the project started, rather than a self-deprecating jab at the speed with which I finish things.

But it's done now, and you can listen to it above because the internet is good like that. And now that I've written a post that honours the completion something I've previous said I'd do, maybe I can properly move on to something else.

A Month Off

 
Last year I took part in Weeklybeats, a year-long challenge to produce a new piece of music every week for all of 2014. While the results varied wildly, I was proud that I was able to get a new track online each week (with one exception, which I conveniently don't count, due to technical difficulties).

Since the end of 2014 I've found myself distracted with a whole new set of crazy schemes, but I found I've missed the routine of trying to quickly produce a track to Weeklybeats' local Monday morning deadline. I've thought about continuing the tradition off my own steam, but I just haven't been able to make it stick. And to be honest, the drive just hasn't been there. Something to do with the combination of said deadline, and an inbuilt competitive streak.

Whilst listening to All Songs Considered a few weeks back I heard about the RPM Challenge, which seeks to have people write and record an album's worth of material (10 tracks or 35 minutes) during the month of February. Being one to overcommit myself, I thought to give it a shot, but I've decided to make the process slightly easier on myself. I'm simply going to write a bunch of tunes, commit them to my hard drive, and then release them come March. 

This Wednesday at Difficult Music Festival.

Seems as though I haven't learned from my mistakes over the last couple of years, I've thrown together a night as part of the 2011 Difficult Music Festival, featuring some choice musicians who like to make obnoxious noises with a number of different instruments. It'll be a thing. You should definitely come along.

...

GEODESIC DOMES ON FUTURISTIC LANDFILL

JON HUNTER

KNIFE CRIMES

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5TH, 2011

7:30 PM

FREE

THE CROSS ART + BOOKS

33 ROSLYN STREET, KINGS CROSS

PART OF THE DIFFICULT MUSIC FESTIVAL

Current adventures in pop music: Rehash and carefully edit your adolescence in fifteen minutes.

Some people I know filled in an online questionnaire asking them to name fifteen albums they like in fifteen minutes. The rules work as follows:

Don't take too long to think about it. Only one album per artist. Fifteen albums you've heard that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes!

As a means of distracting myself I attempted this task, but after relying on my memory for the first ten I could think of, I started to cheat, flicking through various mp3 playlists to try and jog my memory of various things I should include. Quickly, the whole integrity of the process was thrown out the door as I realised I was being selective about what to include, lest I be accused of not having the correct contextually relevant nostalia-based picks. So I tried to do it again, believing I'd be truer to the process with a clean slate. I still cheated, but felt slightly better about the whole thing. For the sake of showcasing how I spent way too much time thinking about this, I'll share the list with you now (in alphabetical order, not of preference, of course):

Bloc Party – Silent Alarm
Blur - 13
LCD Soundsystem – Sound of Silver
Michael Jackson – Dangerous
Muse – Origin of Symmetry
Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile
Pulp – This Is Hardcore
Radiohead – OK Computer
Regurgitator – Unit
Roxette – Tourism: Songs from Studios, Stages, Hotelrooms & Other Strange Places
Super Furry Animals – Guerilla
Supergrass – Supergrass
U2 – Achtung Baby
Various Artists – Teen Idols*
Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)

*Note: This probably doesn't count, as its not by one artist, but if it's something that theoretically "will always stick with [me]", then this definitely counts, if only because of the amount of times I listened to it as a child. This was a cassette my grandfather owned, and played in his car on almost constant repeat. As a result, I can easily recall the lyrics to "Workin' For The Man" by Roy Oribison. 

As these things go, there are always things you want to include, or wish you did due to time constraints, or a sudden change in taste. In this particular instance, these were:

The B52s – Time Capsule: Songs For A Future Generation
Faith No More – Album of The Year
Garbage – Version 2.0
Negativland - Dispepsi
(The) Smashing Pumpkins – Adore

...

Feel free to judge.  This won't change much, but you can nonetheless.

Research - 10th of November, 2008.

"... actually get a band, [a] band's much better than ipods. But then you gotta pay em, and they never want to tour, and you always get one guy in the band that you just wish was never in the band."

- Dan Deacon, on technology.

Seventeen... or maybe not.

If you know a man over the age of 80, and have grown tired of listening to them talk about how music was better in their day and that they could teach these young people a thing or two, their ship may be about to come in [for the record I am sorry to fall back on such an ordinary stereotype, but the point will be served I promise].

The Biennale of Sydney, a slightly large international arts festival held, well, every two years, is currently audtioning potential members for a punk band to serve a part of a work by artist Christoph Büchel. The work, titled No Future, will involve said punk band publicly rehearsing and performing the song God Save The Queen by The Sex Pistols every day for the duration of the biennale [which runs from the 18th of June to the 7th of September]. The rationale I assume involves a connection with the band's rehearsal space on Sydney Harbour to Australia's convict past, whilst maintaining a slight sense of memento mori in a group of elderly gentlemen screaming the line "No future / No future / No future for you", but who knows, its art after all.

Whilst the thin connection to Australiana gives way to a work that potentially may be somewhat expolitative, I'm curious to see where this one goes [being someone who is quite interested in durational exercises in boring acts and all]. Should you know of a distinguished gentleman who may be keen to take part, direct them here. Never mind the lyrics; they're included on the site.

Current adventures in pop music: "he scratches his beard"... then wonders what the hell is going on?

It's difficult to say whether or not the world needed a cover of The Sugarcubes' song Birthday by The Mars Volta, but we have one nonetheless. Stranger still [that says a lot considering pretty much everything to do with this song is somehow odd], it's somehow popped up as an "exclusive" on amazon.co.uk [admittedly I first stumbled across it via Pitchfork's forckast section but we won't split hairs]. Some digging around has discovered that the track is a bonus on the Japanese edition of their new album The Bedlam in Goliath. Score!

As far as it goes, despite The Mars Volta's leaning toward apocalyptic melodrama with guitars, their version of Birthday is painfully faithful. Cedric Bixler-Zavala isn't Bjork, but he knows this, choosing a series of electronic mumbles for the chorus as opposed to the original's proverbial primal scream. The overall result is strangely alluring, but I'm not really sure if it's any good. A friend of mine described it as "like an underwater elevator nightmare". Even with it's slightly negative slant, that's still the best description of the song I can offer.

The morbidly curious amongst you should proceed here. One thing's for sure; no matter how horrible you think it might be, it beats 30 Seconds To Mars' version of Bjork's Hunter by a long shot.

I know that reads like a cliffhanger, and you're going to want to know more, but trust me, just leave it alone.

Research - 7th of January, 2008.

" 'We go to highschool. We dig rock 'n' roll. We date and go to parties and yes, we sometimes neck but no, we never pet. We also fall in love and that really burns us up. Then we pass notes in class and don't eat and even cry at night. We also think coke and hamburgers are really neat. We wear sneakers, short shorts, highschool sweaters. The girls have ponytails and the boys are crew cut. Our parents can be kinda draggy at times but, gee whiz, they were young themselves once and they're only trying to do their best for us. Finally, we dig America. We think it's really peachy-keen.' "

- Nik Cohn, Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: Pop From The Beginning.

(The things of 2007) Current adventures in pop music: (Grudgingly) Sharing the love.

Some may note that my first attempt to backtrack though the back log of my brains blog-related sector didn't end so well. In fact, it never really started enough for it to end badly. Nevertheless, in the interests of persistence and flogging the proverbial dead equine I am going to try this again. So over the next little period of time I'm going to through up the occasional tidbit left over from last years' notes. This won't make any chronological sense, but I feel that that we'll all be able to cope. That, and I like the name I've come up with for it, so that settles it then.

That's it. I'm not going to introduce the blog post you're about to read, that would be pointless. Really.

...

Discovering that someone else likes a band or artist you otherwise believedly were relatively obscure can be a bizarre and disarming experience. You initially feel excited and safe in the knowledge that there are other people as clever and enlightened as you are, but this can sometimes give way to pure unadulterated jealously. How dare someone else be in tune with your intimate knowledge of the underground's underground! Surely only I could possibly be aware of this sub-genre of electronic post-grime break step??? Ultimately though, this feeling and it's true implication is no different to walking down the street and seeing someone wearing a t shirt you also own; you initially feel that someone's been through your wardrobe, then you realise that Target probably sells clothes to people other than you.

My most recent reencounter with such a feeling occurred whilst reading the music section of the Sydney Morning Herald supplement Spectrum on the weekend of October the 15th, and discovering reviews for Jens Lekman's new album Night Falls Over Kortedala and The Pipettes' album We Are The Pipettes, which rated as album of the week.

I had been introduced to The Pipettes and their poptastic stylings by Katherine earlier in the year, and had become quite a fan since acquiring the album over the internets long before any sign of an Australian release. Essentially, the music is no different to the product of anything a hundred Phil Spectoresque girl groups have ever released. There's the harmonising over love gone wrong, love that's unrequited, and love that's in process. And of course, there's the Be-My-Baby drums. Can't forget those. There's also harmonising over one night stands, boys who won't leave girls alone, boys who don't get the point, and boys trying moves on girls to place them in uncompromising situations. The production is so on the mark, and the vocals so sweet and lulling that you initially don't notice, and you almost do a double take when you do. It's this complementing bitterness to the saccarine sweet melodies that makes The Pipettes really interesting. That, and it's great to dance to. I talked about this with Kate at the time, and how these contradictions in the music pretty much alienates them from an Australian audience. Who do you possibly market them to? It's too pop for alternative radio, and no where near family friendly enough for the pop charts. But there was the review, glowing at that, so someone obviously thought it was a good idea [this would be later reinforced by the fact the group toured at the end of last year, but we'll get to that another day].

As for Jens Lekman, this was the second occasion I'd been reminded that someone other than myself had heard of him. The first occurred in 2005, when he toured on the back of his first album When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog. Playing the Hopetoun Hotel on a Tuesday night, I expected a fairly quiet evening with the odd punter strolling through. By the time Lekman hit the stage, the gig had sold out, and the room was filled with adoring fans. That the gig was great needs no mention; there was audience participation [via egg shakers thrown to the crowd], and backup tracks provided by Lekman's laptop which he dubbed "The Party Machine". Gold stars all around. I managed to speak to Jens after the gig, telling him that I'd first discovered him by accident via the video for his song You Are The Light buried on a rage new year's special I'd taped earlier. I thought this would make a nice anecdote, instead he replied [very nicely] that a few people had told him the same thing. Despite all of this, a return trip [which saw him playing on a Sydney harbour cruise no less] and and year and a half of building a fan base, I still was amazed to see the write up for his second album. The album, whilst a little tougher to crack than the first, is wonderful. Bursting with bombastic samples, witty lyrics and melancholic romanticism [yes it's possible, and I'm standing by it], Lekman's meticulous construction of pop songs has improved greatly in the passing years.

Zuel, as the narrative structure of this post would have you believe, agrees with me. Pitchfork agrees with me too. Lots of people probably share similar opinions. And yet, there's something mildly heartbreaking about this. Moments quietly spend taking in the music in the realms of your private universe seem to have a lesser value when you consider when it's occupying other peoples' universes too. The fact that it's easy to torrent only reinforces this [insert moral stance about paying for music you like here]. But of course this is a ridiculous stance to maintain, as painful yet obvious a point as that is. Not only for the fact that if there's a greater fan base, this may lead to more great music, but for the equally wonderful moments to be had in sharing your great little discoveries with other unsuspecting pop tragics. The furthering of enlightenment, if you will.

And thus we arrive at a point where the interests of sharing for the sake of global musical consciousness and harmony throughout all human beings is reached. We all learn a valuable lesson, and continue with our lives in the exact same way nevertheless. At least, this post now makes some sort of contextual sense, so I'm happy with that.

Oh, and if someone actually comes up with "electronic post-grime breakstep", I totally want full wikipedia credits for the term.

The robots are coming.

Daft Punk / Modular's monstrosity of ridiculousness, Never Ever Land, arrives in Sydney this evening. I'm going, and maybe you are too. I really don't want to descend into gloating territory; chances are if you aren't going you will be soon attending events that I haven't managed to get tickets to [namely, anything at the sydney festival]. Nevertheless, I am more than a little excited about this. It quite possibly will be the best thing ever. At least the best thing ever for those who like robots, dancing to robot-made-music, pyramids, and lights... lots of lights.

Current adventures in pop music: The absolute finest pop song Jens Lekman has ever written.

I like Jens Lekman a whole bunch. I would even go so far as to say he is one of my top five in my top ten of Swedish people. He makes great pop songs that traverse the whole canon of twee-ism; misanthropy, lost love, found love, unrequited love, love that turns psycho, and misanthropy about all of the above. He has a new song that's about none of these, it's about bingo (amongst other things), and Jens believes it's the absolute finest song he's ever written:

On Swedish Radio it's on E-rotation. The lowest rotation. Which only further convinces me of what a genius I am. I'd like to change my opinion from what I said in the previous post to call it not "one of the finest...", but the absolute finest popsong I've ever written. Fuck Black Cab. Fuck Mapleleaves. In ten years this will be a true classic.

See, I don't just make this stuff up. These are certainly strong words, and what's more he may just be right. I mean, who can argue with a man who gave birth to the lyric She said it was all make believe / But I thought she said maple leaves. Genius. You can stream Friday Night At The Drive-In Bingo from here (here, being Service, his Swedish label), and order the vinyl for 7 Euros while you're at it. That's a Euro per inch, that's a bargain in any Scandinavain language.

[06.08.07 - According to the Service website, the vinyl is 6 Euros. I'm not going to correct the main text though, as that would require deleting the joke about paying a Euro per inch and I honestly don't think I can do any better than that. But in the interests of ethical blogging, I feel it's important you know that I know I made a mistake.]

[04.01.08 - I moved the sentence "See, I don't just make this stuff up" from the end of the paragraph before the quote to the beginning of the paragraph after it. I also took it out of brackets for grammatical correctness and such. I'm sure you don't need to know this, but transperancy is always nice.]

Flashy design that means nothing gets you everywhere.

Someone purely in the name of frivolity has decided to put on a gig at Chalkhorse gallery in Surry Hills. It only costs $5, which is a fairly cheap way to spend a Saturday evening. I haven't heard of most of the lineup, but I have seen Moonmilk play a couple of times before so I imagine the evening will be filled with music of the loud, improvised, drone variety. Have fun if you go won't you. I have to work, so I'll have to give it a miss. I do like the flyer though for some reason, so I figure it's no harm to pass the details on to the masses.

...

Intense Nest presents:

Moonmilk
Always
Knitted Abyss

Saturday 21st July 2007
8pm
$5

Chalkhorse Gallery
56 Cooper Street
Surry Hills

Culture is finished.

This is a finished book. May not look like it, but I assure you it is. I've been reading this copy of The Culture Club by Craig Schuftan on and off over the last four months, and while I have no idea why it's taken me this long to finish it, I'm quite glad that I finally have. Don't get me wrong, it's very good, particularly in a "beginner's guide to how everything is connected to everything" kind of way, and has led to a number of new pursuits including a minor fascination with existentialism's connection to pinball. More on that another time.

I've even managed to finish another book in the week since completing this, A History of Violence by John Wagner and Vince Locke. Admittedly it was a graphic novel, but that still counts right? I mean, it is a novel after all. It's all gearing up to a complete onslaught of the final four Harry Potter books before various people I know succeed in revealing all the major plot points to me. I'm tired of being behind the times people. And I don't want to hear anything from anyone about how Harry Potter is intellectual dross. Face it, if you cared that much about such things you wouldn't have ended up here in the first place would you?

Check.

Current adventures in pop music: "Don't make me hold your hand through the whole boring summer..."

Since first discovering them via their single Cry in 1998, I've been a very large fan of The Mavis's. I like to look at that particular era of my adolesence as the point where I began to realise that there may be interesting music on stations other than 2Day FM. At the same time, Cry was still very much pop enough that I still felt like I had a connection to my past as a someone with a more than mild appreciation for Roxette. Over the years I've somehow managed to acquire a number of their singles from the period between their second album Pink Pills [released in 1998] and their dispanding in 2001, but somehow never managed to buy any of their albums. Whilst sifting through a $10 rack in a music store in Newtown a few weeks ago I managed to come across a copy of their final album Rapture, which caused somewhat of a joygasm on my part. Aside from the fact that most of The Mavis's catalogue is difficult to come across in the first place [I'm pretty sure that most of, if not all of it has been deleted], Rapture is particularly notorious because it played a small role in the band's dispanding.

[At this point I'd like to note there may be some errors in my account of events, but while I can't back up anything here with specific examples, I'm pretty sure this is how things happened.]

Scheduled to be released in 2001, Rapture was preceded by two singles, Coming Home and Happiness [which was launched as backing track to a Coca Cola commercial, and would later be used in a series of promotions for Hyundai]. The Mavis's label, White [an imprint of Mushroom records] collapsed just before the album's release [This may have had something to do with the buyout of Mushroom records by Lachlan Murdoch's label Festival, thus becomming Festival Mushroom Records, or FMR, but I honestly can't remember exactly]. With the album pushed in to bureaucratic limbo and possibly never seeing a release, frustration (amongst other things most likely) led to the band calling it a day. A slapped together best-of called Throwing Little Stones was released soon after the split, and contained five tracks from Rapture. Protesting from fans saw the album given a proper release in 2002, though the cover art still states the original 2001 date.

So now you know. Despite being around for about ten years, it was the period between the release of Pink Pills and their split in 2001 in which they burned brightest, but never really succeeded in ascending to the outer reaches of the pop statosphere. More Daniel Kowalski than Kieren Perkins, so to speak. Following the break up, various members of the band emerged in other outfits [such as co-vocalist Becky Thomas's current outfit Beki and The Bullets], but pretty much all existence of The Mavis's has been relegated to second hand music stores and ebay. But that's where the social networking comes in. Some good soul has started a myspace page in honour of The Mavis's, and in true fashion it's badly laid out and not great to look at. But then maybe it's better that way. The page also links to video of Cry and Naughty Boy posted on you tube [and if you dig hard enough, you can even find Matt and Becky Thomas backing up Paul McDermott on a version of Lou Reed's Perfect Day (like how everything connects... I sure do) recorded for the first episode of the short lived Good News Weekend], along with two tracks from Pink Pills, a demo, and a version of Burt Bacharach's Walk On By, recorded for the all-Australian tribute album To Hal and Bacharach.

To channel Molly Meldrum for a moment [and believe me only a moment], do yourself a favour and allow yourself the opportunity to stream Cry through your speakers. You can't tell me it's a bad thing [there are about three people I can think of off the top of my head who may try and tell me it is... so they don't count]. In this humble little fanboy's opinion, your life will quite simply be better for it.

Current adventures in pop music: Can you DJ slowcore?

In the midst of the world's craziness, I've found myself listening to Low's album Drums and Guns a great deal over the last couple of months. Definitely one of my favourite albums of the year thus far [no, I can't believe I said that either... let's move along...]. There's lots to like; it's brooding, minimal and epic all at once. It's also mixed in a really strange way that has the majority of the vocals coming out of the right speaker... crazy!

One of the things that has me most interested however, is the video for the song Breaker (which along with the clips for Belarus and a remix of Hatchet, both from Drums and Guns, can be downloaded from their website). A simply designed scene; we see guitarist / vocalist Alan Sparhawk sitting in a kitchen, with drummer / vocalist Mimi Parker and bassist Matt Livingston standing either side of him. In front of a Sparhawk is a piece of cake, the rest of the cake and a glass of milk. A minimal drum line begins, and the band members at the rear begin to clap in time. Once the organ kicks in Sparhawk makes for the uncut portion of the cake, ignoring the slice, and proceeds to make a large mess of things.

Given Alan Sparhawk does all this wearing some sort of military uniform, one could be forgiven for thinking Low are making a none too subtle statement about the political state of their homeland. Sure they might just like cake, but something tells me it's a little bigger than that.

[For the record, despite being so-called pioneers of the slowcore genre, it's a term the band themselves aren't very found of. I'd quote them, but you might as well just read the wikipedia article and be done with it.]

As of 23_04_07

Super Furry Animals - Rings Around The World [Album]
Wilco - Misunderstood
Wilco - A Shot In The Arm
Wilco - Heavy Metal Drummer
[All from album: Kicking Television - Live In Chicago]
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot [Album]

As of 10_04_07

Grinderman [Album]
Pink Sheets Edition One [mp3 blog]
LCD Soundsystem - Get Innocuous!
LCD Soundsystem - Time To Get Away
LCD Soundsystem - North American Scum
LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great
[All from album "Sound of Silver"]

As of 03_04_07

Silverchair - Young Modern [Album]
Gang of Four - Entertainment! [Album]
Real Ultimate Power - ...for real [Demos]
Machine Death - We Can All Fade Away Sometime