YouTube Heroes #3

Brooklyn- and blood-based band The Gregory Brothers have been on an edutaining roll with "Auto-Tune the News," now in its ninth episode.

To my micro-nostalgic mind, though, the series reached its harmonically enhanced pinnacle way back in April of this year, with help from Katie Couric and some very, very thin ice:

The Friday Mixtape

So here is a thing I have been doing:

http://rrriles.com/mixtape/

Today's installment (the 4th in a pseudo-weekly series) has a fairly obvious and superficial theme, but I guess any theme is better than none at all. I hope you like it.

Mad props, by the way, to the developers of Opentape, an open-source clone of the essentially defunct Muxtape interface. I've been it using for the better part of a year now, and I love it dearly.

Over and out.

YouTube Heroes #2

I was first exposed to the comic genius of St. Sanders a few months back, but this entry from P.I.S.S. raises the bar considerably. NSFW if your coworkers are disinclined to appreciate stifled giggles and peed pants.



via Kelly and Coilhouse

Phreelancin' for the 'Phobe

A smattering of '09 reviews:

Horse Feathers @ Sunset Tavern 2/11/09



Mark Farina @ Neumos 1/30/09



Video Games Live @ The Moore 1/24/09



Tapes 'n Tapes @ Neumos 1/20/09

lo tech noise

Dunkirk from Pete Ashton on Vimeo.

Top 10 Albums of 2008

As submitted to Melophobe for this list.

1. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Lie Down in the Light
- His best since "Master and Everyone"

2. Baby Dee - Safe Inside the Day
- Transgendered is the new gay

3. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
- Best revisionist 80s prom ever

4. Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
- Aussie electropop is the new French house

5. Shearwater - Rook
- Better than step-sister Okkervil River of late

6. Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing
- PLZ TO HAS MOAR FUZZ DRONE

7. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
- Reverb-drenched Seattle alt-country is the new fuzz-drenched Seattle grunge

8. Deerhunter - Microcastle
- Walks that fine line between heroin and music

9. Portishead - Third
- Either I liked "Out of Season" better or I expected less from it

10. The Very Best - Esau Mwamwaya and Radioclit are the Very Best
- Malawian mash-up mixtape FTW!!!

---

Honorable Mentions:

Hercules And Love Affair - Hercules And Love Affair
- "Blind" aside, I just can't keep a straight face while listening to this album

Noah and the Whale - Peaceful, the World Lays Me Down
- I liked them more before I read their Wikipedia article

Fucked Up - Chemistry of Common Life
- If I were in middle school, these guys would be at #1

of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
- Kevin Barnes, dredged in sex and glitter, deep fried

Paavoharju - Laulu Laakson Kukista
- A sad Finnish circus drowning in a sea of static

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
- Kids these days (and their acid)

Girl Talk - Feed the Animals
- The fact that he steps on my artistic toes is no reason to hate

Shugo Tokumaru - Exit
- Badly Drawn Boy meets Architecture in Helsinki. For drinks. In Japan.

Four Tet - Ringer
- The Orbital fan in me can't get enough of this EP

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
- It's nice to know that street preacher rant rock still has a home

TV on the Radio - Dear Science
- Each album is poppier than the last, and I can't say that I mind

Conor Oberst - Conor Oberst
- "On the Road" ... again

Erykah Badu - New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
- I just hope Part Two doesn't take another five years

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
- Fittingly enough, a perfect winter driving companion

Beach House - Devotion
- More of the same, but it's a good same

Marnie Stern - This Is It & I Am It & You Are It & So Is That & He Is It & She Is It & It Is It & That Is That
- What the hell is this, Deerhoof for the masses? Nice

Suzie Magnion - The Other Side Of The Mountain
- Turns out she didn't much need the other half of George

diskJokke - Staying In
- Would make a fantastic video game soundtrack

Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
- Paul Simon did a better job of white boy Afropop, methinks

El Guincho - Alegranza
- It is really, really hard to stop moving while this album is playing

Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
- Hey look, the endangered straight-ahead indie-rock band!

Blatant Self-Promotion

<ADVERTORIAL>

Two quick items:

1) M83 concert review for Melophobe



2) Tuneage on Casewag's burgeoning mixtape blog



That is all.

</ADVERTORIAL>

Interview w/ Daedelus @ Stranger Genius Awards 9/13/08

Tighe and I went to see Daedelus perform at the Moore last weekend on the 'phobe's behalf, and were somewhat disappointed to found out we hadn't been scheduled for an interview. Undeterred, we asked the man for a few minutes of his time, and he was kind enough to play along. The whole thing's now up on mel.opho.be, complete with Tighe's super-sweet Holgaroid photos. Do check out.

EDIT: Tighe informs me that Daedelus was in fact aware of our pending interview. I maintain that my memory makes for a better story.

http://mel.opho.be/index.php/articles/interview-daedelus.html

Big Nude Ideas

Excellent remix of Radiohead's "Nude" (f/k/a "Big Ideas (Don't Get Any)") by James Houston.

via Retro Thing

Metronomics

Some dumb fun:



via Music Thing

I CAN HAS THEREMIN?

via How to Spot a Psychopath

Buchla Music Easel

Those with even a passing interest in sound synthesis and/or the bending of circuits owe it to themselves to check out the following video, also available in HD.



via Music Thing

Ay, there's The Rub

NYC-based hip-hop DJ collective The Rub have apparently been hard at work on a series of historical mixtapes—one for each year since 1979. More importantly, all of the releases, which so far stretch to the end of the millenium, can be had on mp3 at their website for frizzle.

via RapidShare

Baby Dee @ the Triple Door 2/11/08

I won't bother recapping here, since the full review is available over at mel.opho.be.

Top-Notch Knob-Twiddled, Synth-Drenched, Loop-Ridden, Click-Infested, Hyperreal Tweaker Jazz of Yesteryear

f/k/a "Top (200)7 Electronic Albums of 2007"

originally published at mel.opho.be


Why seven? Because there were only seven good electronic albums released last year.

That I heard.

Often.

Enough.

To remember.

In January.


..AHEM..


7. Burial - Untrue (Hyperdub)



For some unfathomable hasn't-read-Pitchfork-since-2004 reason, I'd managed to avoid all news of this album until roughly the end of last year, when the entirety of the hipper-than-me interwubs trumpeted its minimalist genius and prodded me into dim awareness. You know what? It's rather good. I like it. If I'm slavishly working on something in a dark room with big headphones and the remnants of a hangover, "Untrue" fits that mood. On the other hand, it belongs to a flavor-of-the-month subgenre known as "dubstep," which is unfortunate, since what that ridiculous label says to me is that a) it's British; b) it's probably another dubby, garage-y soundalike with differently configured doodads; and c) it features vocals from someone who sounds uncannily like Craig David and whose voice will ruin any possible enjoyment until, through aural attrition, it fades to irrelevance like so much forgotten Kodachrome.


6. Doveman - With My Left Hand I Raise the Dead (Brassland)



There's this local radio show, "Expansions," that sneaks up on me late Sunday nights while I'm navigating Seattle's too-few thoroughfares, wending my way home through idiots in Lexi. Oftentimes, at some point during one of the show's 45-minute ambient freak-outs, I happily stumble upon what I'm convinced is a sort of spiritual tether with the DJ. He has chosen this particular song at this particular moment because he wants me to remember a late-autumn Tuesday in the fourth grade and I am taking that journey with him and it is good. Inevitably, Mr. DJ later pipes up to say "that was Doveman with his latest white label release, 'some crap I recorded on a Playskool microphone in the bathroom.'" This here album may not feature the above track, but it's worth a listen nonetheless. Oh, hey, plus! He (Doveman) took part in a Stereogum-sponsored "OK Computer" tribute project, an idea of which I can't quite seem to disapprove. Please do check out his take on "Airbag," which reminds me a hell of a lot of Mr. Yorke's once-upon-a-time collaborations with Sparklehorse and U.N.C.L.E. Funny, that.


5. Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings (Carpark)



Now that trance and its various deformed offspring have for all intents and purposes gone the way of the glowstick, the word "anthemic" no longer gets tossed around with the abandon of years past (albeit with one notable Arcade Fire exception). I suppose that's probably for the best, but my god if Dan Deacon's hyperactive drums, schizophrenic arpeggios, and plaintive, mutated nonsense lyrics aren't absolutely, unironically anthemic. Something like early (i.e. good) Orbital or Underworld, only with the way-too-excited-to-be-here naivety and energy of Danielson. Could be I've just fallen for some slick postmodern joke. I hope not.


4. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver (DFA)



Um.. So you may have heard of this album. It's pretty okay. Lend an ear to the sequence of "North American Scum" through "All My Friends" (emphasis on the latter) for a 20-minute object lesson in how to structure a generational soundtrack. And this coming from a guy who tends otherwise to lavish scorn and indifference on LCD Soundsystem at every opportunity.


3. Apparat - Walls (Shitkatapult)



I briefly considered turning this column into a "top ten albums to listen to at work." That is, until I realized exactly how little anyone might care about said category. And yet! Had it been so, this gem of a record might have stood a chance at garnering the coveted top spot. It's mesmerising! Adaptive! Rewarding! Constantly varied yet thematically unified! Still not as good as his "Orchestra of Bubbles" collaboration with Ellen Allien! Oddly, the album's lone single, "HoldOn," stands out as one of its weaker offerings. Of course, this may have something to do with my aforementioned distaste for the breathy, sweat-dripping male vocals that pervade European dance pop. I much prefer when Mr. Ring treats voices as yet another plaything, to be chopped, juggled, dropped on the floor, stomped on, and ultimately sculpted to serve the greater good (cf. "Limelight"). Or better yet: the instrumentals!


2. Justice - † (Downtown/Ed Banger)



Huddled toe-tapping masses: Arise! Leap! Contort! Dance! Participate in violent head-bob action! Punch the air so hard you leave welts and bruises and it escapes to a battered elements shelter! Harder! Wish you were French so you too could make the world's best dance music! The only dance music! Remember why you fell in love with Daft Punk and forget why you ever stopped listening to "Homework"! Yup, that's Justice all right. Too bad it now reminds me of car commercials. Or maybe not? It's an unsettled and intensely personal question, thank you very much.


1. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (Kompakt)



So I guess the Swedes can excel at something other than disco-pop and orc-metal, huh? Rad. Actually, The Knife should have taught me that lesson, but until I consulted The Librarian, I honestly had no idea that the two shared a homeland. Fortunately, they also share that rare alchemic talent for transmuting base materials into something quite otherworldly. Suddenly and devastatingly off-topic, I am returned to the halcyon days of my "techno"-spewing youth, when decent samples were nigh impossible to come by, a four-note sequence of stolen 303 burps constituted a melody, and "user-friendly GUI" meant you could choose the background color of your craptastic DOS-based keyboard-only 8-bit shareware. Ah, them were the days. Now any old chump off the street can instantly assemble a collection of professional (aka "illegal") samplers and soft synths, dump the results in Reason or ACID or Ableton Live, and BAM! you've got a world-class indie-electronic producer. Or, well, not so much. Turns out that no matter how drastically the entry bar is lowered, the measure of success remains what you can do with the tools at your disposal. (-END TANGENT-) "From Here We Go Sublime" is not an exciting album in the way that Justice's hump-the-subwoofer kinesthesia is exciting, nor the way in which Radiohead's cheap-as-free publicity stunt pricing model is exciting. No, it's exciting in more of a transcendentally meditative, gently throbbing, endlessly looped carnivorous brainworm migraine of a chord progression sort of way. The way electronic music should be exciting; which is to say, not exactly. But goddamn if it ain't brilliant.

Discovering Electronic Music

Far and away the best thing I've ever seen on the interwubs. This afternoon.

[VIDEO NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

Or, in the colorful argot favored by YouTube denizens: "lmao gay"

All hail the button-masher

Never let it be said that one man with an MPC doth not a band make.

Okay, so I ran myself a little search, and it turns out that no one else has ever actually said that. FINE.

Video courtesy of Anticon's Jel, and his one-off blog.

The ever-present death knell of radio

Far from a new phenomenon (folks have been predicting the demise and subsequent resurrection of radio and DJs alike since before the advent of “telefilm” and car-based “records”), yet depressing nonetheless:

Recently I was in a meeting with Charles Bronfman, one of the wealthiest men in Canada and a great philanthropist. He was relating a story at one point about a teenager he met who said she didn’t understand the point of the radio. “Why would I want someone else to pick my playlist?” she asked Bronfman.

via Mental Floss

Daft Punk is playing at my arena

As quoted in some forum somewhere: "Don't worry, they'll probably tour again in TEN YEARS."

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/44519-photos-daft-punk-seattle-wa-072907

http://www.seattleweekly.com/music/blogs/reverb/2007/07/last_night_daft_punk_at_wamu_t.php

http://www.hedislimane.com/diary/day.php?m=6&y=2007&d=17

http://flickr.com/photos/tags/lastfm%3Aevent%3D170175/

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-are-daft-punk-actually-playing.html

Alice in Chains @ The Moore 5/16/06

If you ever lived in Seattle during the 90s, wore tattered jeans and too-big flannel shirts, or thought even momentarily about growing your hair to headbang length, you probably should have been at this show.

First of all: Free tickets!
Second of all: Alice in Chains!
Third of all: The Moore!

Special guests included Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), Duff McWhatshisface (GnR), Sunglasses Guy (Queensryche) and Ann Wilson (Heart). Singing lead was a friend of Jerry Cantrell's from a no-name hardcore band who did an ab-fab vocal impersonation of late-great ODer Layne Staley.

Awesome.