moodmat

mrkvm

With my recent post and an excellent recap of the current Meat Beat Manifesto show at Beware of the Blog, I’ve been jonesing for some new goodness from Jack Dangers.

I have yet to purchase Autoimmune, his most recent work, but I found some free flavor in the form of “Bush of Lies,” a bonus track from the album sessions. I could be wrong, but it might be some sort of political statement.

The first track, “International,” is also available. You won’t hear it in this lead-in, but word is Dangers toys with “dubstep” on this record. We’re fans of this relatively new and thankfully underdefined sound, but when Meat Beat Manifesto decides to experiment with it, I think it’s safe to stop drawing genre lines.

PICT0053.JPG, originally uploaded by Mama-sama.

Thanks for catching this one John & Asa!

ario j

Too often, academic discourse of dance music retreads the same ground: explaining the dj-as-musician, the participatory nature on the dancefloor, and the subtleties of “the mix.” Granted, any understanding offered by master theses on these subjects doesn’t seem to “stick.” It’s more-or-less accepted as part of popular culture, but the masses never remember how the whole thing works.

So I was very pleased to discover an essay by Kevin Driscoll of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT. Bitch Ass Darius “Follow the Sound” Mixtape manages to cover all of the ground I mentioned above in short order and without creating a thicket of academic jargon. Instead, the reader connects immediately with Driscoll’s initial shock at the lyrical content of booty bass or ghettotech and, even if they’re not fans themselves, can relate to his repeat visits to what will become a favorite mixtape.

You could say Driscoll is making excuses for the cut-to-the-chase sexual banter and the prevailing male dominance within. You could. I have too many Electrofunk records to argue that point. Instead, I loved his explanation of the role the lyrics play in the context of the dancefloor:

The joy I find in booty bass is not simply the naughty thrill at hearing sex chat but is in the liberating potential of a construction of sonic space in which sexual desire, fetish, and perversion are no longer taboo.

I don’t think you need to actually be on a dancefloor to understand this, but I’m also fairly sure these records aren’t targeted at white guys blogging from their couches.

melyviz

I am not usually a man of extremes.

This is not to say that I don’t enjoy bungee jumping off of suspension bridges while doing The Dew and tattooing Wolverine on my crotch. Life’s too short.

The rest of my life involves shades of gray. The more of them I can find, generally the happier I am. This makes decision making a lot more interesting and me probably far less easy to live with.

Moodmat is one place where I’ve made a stand. You’ve probably guessed by now that we’re not big fans of the “genre.” In fact, this blog is as much a bomb shelter from classification as it is a genuine celebration of music. Another clue might have been my post “Genres Can Fuck Right Off” — oh wait, I see that I never pressed the “publish” button on that one.

But I digress. You see, I either want to see/expose/know every kind of music genre, or not use them at all. Oscillating between those two extremes is my great luxury.

And now, I shall exercise that power, by linking you to the delightfully specific categories unearthed by the fine folks at WFMU. Those being country tango, hillbilly rhumba and hillbilly mambo. I am truly inspired. The more minute the niche, the more interesting it gets.

It’s much harder to get out of the habit of not using any level of classification and go by artist, by label, by mood. We’re not a freeform radio station, where this belief can be easily practiced and broadcast, but we’ll get there.

The Justice League called — they’d like the Flash back.

Once you hear this Frankie Cutlass break you’ll never forget it, whether you want to or not. Since 1993 this is the raw break that won’t die. When this drops at a party, or in this mixtape, even for 30 seconds (which is long enough), watch people go absolutely ape shit. It’ll stick with you, I’m just sayin…

It’s was nearly a full year since their last mix, but you have to give Mix of the Week some slack (they’ve been rocking since at least 2000). Back in April, a new 45 soul mix from Soul-Sami of Club Soul Sides found its way to the top of their page. Even if the mix is from 2004, I’m hoping this is the impetus for much of more cross-genre MOTW goodness we’ve come to expect.

Welcome back Pirkka!

And then there’s this kind of mashup. Take a Last.fm user or artist name, plug it in and your personalized stream of YouTube videos appears.

You can thank Tim Bormans, a Belgian national living in London, lending his genius to Last.fm.

It’s super-smooth and very interesting, as I’ve found it also finds interviews and television appearances I wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. The only downside may be for fans of the eclectic and obscure: you’ll often run into lame slide-shows passing themselves off as videos.

via Wired

Digital-exclusive remixes? I’m listening …

mushon

What was that we were just saying?

As a fan of any kind of music, it’s always good news to hear of out-of-print albums surfacing.* I guess I just wasn’t expecting to hear of it happening on Amazon, fueled by CreateSpace, who will help create them on demand for the online retailer.

Sony/BMG and EMI plan to unearth hundreds of albums, including those by Henry Mancini and Joe Strummer, and release them on CD. Hey, we’ll take ‘em anyway we can get ‘em, but wouldn’t digital distribution of these recordings be a hell of a lot easier?


*I suppose I should caveat that — there are undoubtedly thousands of recordings that should remain buried. That’s actually an interesting twist: could consumer demand force crap music to be destroyed? The long tail of musical vengeance?

Hey, Jefferson Starship? About that city you built …

Via Mog, I found a fun (if a bit over-wrought) review of the new M83 album Saturdays = Youth. Here’s a snip:

All of this is meant to accompany a listener’s interpretation of the 1980s, and how each year the music changed, and sometimes it brought you closer to someone, and sometimes the songs were like a kegger, the voices and faces and personalities blurring together to the endless techno beat blotted out by kegs of Natural Light. And as the eighties looked out over the precipice into the nineties, to the Acid House movement, we feel like we’re right in that pocket, watching the sun go down.

“Dark Moves of Love” with its rising chorus out of a cloud of guitar and keyboard tells our imaginary high school that its not too late, because they like just broke up like yesterday, calling our hero to action to traipse across the campus to where she is, over to the art room, and maybe when he goes through the circular tube that is the entrance to the print room. And she was in there, her face framed by the half waterfall of blonde hair, head cocked back just so, and this was falling in love for the first time.

The art room! Maybe my slight uncomfort with this review is it pinpoint accuracy at each atom of concentrated nostalgia, it’s remarkably close to home. Is it TOO perfectly throwback to be forward? Regardless the music is rich, different, emotional, soundtracky… maybe it just needs to speak for itself. Such is the media swirl we skewer and at the same time accidentally-on-purpose perpetuate. You can listen to Graveyard Girl on the top of the review. I liked Before The Dawn Heals Us alright, but this is something completely different. When you’re looking for something inbetween My Bloody Valentine, Simple Minds, Tycho, Wang Chung, Lush and the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, given this album an old fashioned Reel Around The Fountain.

I know we’re kind of obsessed with the mixtape, the shape of a cassette and all that jazz. But holy shit this takes the TEAC.

Via the mighty Bloggerton.