Weaknotes for m/e 5 October 2019
So I let a month go by. That’s why I went with ‘weaknotes’, after all. Bullet points required here, I think — just the highlights, the most remarkable that I didn’t already tweet or blog. Here we go. More…
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Tag: music
So I let a month go by. That’s why I went with ‘weaknotes’, after all. Bullet points required here, I think — just the highlights, the most remarkable that I didn’t already tweet or blog. Here we go. More…
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A semi-DIY, part-cardboard drum machine that promises to be “super affordable”? I’m interested. Let’s see when the crowdfunding campaign launches. #link
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The man in the van with a bass in his hand goes deep on his relations to the world around him. #link
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This album came out today and it’s brilliant stuff. I don’t know what it’s doing on Relapse Records but that’s not a complaint. #link
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It’s bad enough that music is missing the richness of metadata to give listeners context and background for recordings (streaming services don’t even come with high-res original artwork, for crying out loud) but when it means the artists themselves aren’t even getting paid? Well, we shouldn’t be so surprised; the music industry hasn’t been about supporting its artists for many years, if it ever was. #link
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A 1989 compilation of live and rare tracks from the then Blast First roster: Sonic Youth, Big Black, Butthole Surfers and more noisy miscreants. #video
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There I was thinking to myself, I wonder if anyone’s done a round-up of Weasel Walter’s multi-faceted musical catalogue? Of course they have, and props to Brad Cohan for a great one. Now, should I pitch something along the lines of ‘Weasel Walter’s No Wave picks’? #link
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“The vault fire was not, as UMG suggested, a minor mishap, a matter of a few tapes stuck in a musty warehouse. It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.” #link
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Fascinating to me, more for the concept than the execution. Who would’ve thunk Moby of all people pioneered hyper-speed machine drums? #link
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Just the ticket to beat these persistent winter blues. #link
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Just a short clip of Jawbox in rehearsals for their upcoming reunion tour. Which I won't be seeing. Sad face. #video
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Palm are my current music obsession. There isn’t much live footage of them on YouTube but the above is a great example of what they do. #video
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Back after another extended break, and just in time for Xmas, with more interesting sounds for your ears in Enlarged Heart Radio 25. More…
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I felt like I wasn’t the only one tempted to google ‘Cosey Fanni Tutti transphobia’ after reading this memoir, but aside from this Jezebel interview which raises the question, it doesn’t seem to have provoked much discussion. Perhaps that’s because in this particular instance, the Genesis P-Orridge depicted here is an enormous arsehole who doesn’t deserve the respect of being appropriately gendered, though it still feels like some level of disrespect to the trans community. One would really have to ask trans people how they feel about that. More…
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A really nice profile of a label I was only vaguely aware of before now. #link
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Jes Skolnik’s talk from this year’s MoPOP Pop Conference. #link
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Beautiful. More…
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Here it is, the first Meat Puppets song from the original lineup in over 23 years. Sounds like it’s from that era, too, with a touch of Up on the Sun psych in the solos. By the way, here's a bonus live set from June. #video
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Another blur of a month couple of months goes by, this time mostly busy with work, which is a good thing. You’ll never see me complaining about getting paid! More…
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I got a mini MIDI keyboard last Xmas precisely to mess around with SunVox and I’ve only just done so (it works great, as it happens). I want to treat myself to a cheap electric guitar this Xmas, too, and maybe one day soon I’ll have a free afternoon to make a track. #link
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“…I make do with what little downtime I have, even if it’s just eight hours a week of time to work on recordings at home or going to my practice space. I make those hours really count.” That puts me to shame. (Her new album is very good, of course.) #link
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Wire, performing songs from their classic first three albums live on German TV’s Rockpalast in 1979. #video
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Those of us who know, know; beyond us, Devo remain criminally underrated. #link
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Today Is The Day, Áine O’Dwyer, Gun Outfit and more in Enlarged Heart Radio 24. More…
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“Writing makes you not like yourself very much, I’m afraid. I think anyone would feel the same if they’d looked that deeply into themselves for a couple of years. I’m having to rebuild that now, my acceptance and liking of myself, because I’ve so examined myself from so many angles in such an unflattering way.” #link
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If this is what the new Low album (Double Negative, out in September) actually sounds like, it might be the best thing they’ve ever done. #video
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Tom Ewing, who used to run ILX, is incisive on online forums as a whole: “Left to its own devices, any online community, whether small or huge, will reflect the society it’s built in. Making something better takes effort and intervention.” #link
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Celebration, Devil Master, Tigue and more in Enlarged Heart Radio 23. More…
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The new Parquet Courts is out today, and it reminds me of the Minutemen more than anything else I’ve heard from them. Not that it sounds like the Minutemen in any specific way. (And not this particular song, which owes more to the Big Boys than anything else.) #video
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I dig Power Trip and Iron Reagan; I can dig this. (Also, maybe it’s something peculiar about the metal features on Bandcamp Daily, but they tend to get way more than average social media shares and comments, the latter of which are often along the lines of ‘you forgot Band X!’. I want to look at that as a positive sign of the genre’s health; that there are more artists doing things that excite listeners than what will fit in a given article.) #link
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Here’s an excellent interactive tutorial on the basics of how sound works. [c/o Infovore] #link
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The Sage of Pedro keeps it real for surf-turned-culture zine What Youth. #video
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Consider this a supplement to my previous link on PSF Records. #link
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Joe Carducci and Mugger talk SST and things at a bookstore in Brooklyn. So curmudgeonly on Carducci’s part, but he’s an avowed romanticist for the (or rather, an) American working class mythos, so adjust your filters for his insight. #video
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Leaving aside the pseudoscience of plants ‘hearing’ music (though it’s worth musing on the notion that we humans are not that far removed from vegetable matter), this here is a great selection of ambient music inspired by our photosynthesising, CO2-respiring friends. #link
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So I let a few months sail by since the last one. (Why do I leave it so long? Option paralysis has something to do with it.) But anyway, here’s episode number 22 of Enlarged Heart Radio, another hour of interesting sounds for your ears. More…
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No more words from me; just click through, read and listen as you like. #link
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Forget that: What about Savid Bowy? Jacked Like A Man? Baddwurds? Or even Furious Band? I love the direct simplicity of that one. #link
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That Quincy interview (which everyone shared two months ago) is something else, but it’s lacking without this revealing conversation on how it came to be. #link
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Roadburn, which happens this week in the Netherlands, really seems like my kind of festival. As in, club gigs in a small city where I can chill in my hotel room most of the time. #link
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On the fates of Jawbox, the Meat Puppets and others swallowed, then thrown up my the music industry in the post-Nirvana fervour for the Next Big Thing. #link
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Another one for the inspiration pile. #link
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I should grab these at some point. #link
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And he’s working on a new album, eh? I’ll believe it when I hear it. Particularly since he’s spent the last few years working on an analogue-only version of a near 30-year-old album he can’t let go of. (That’s another great conversation, though, in fairness.) #link
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A brief oral history of the noise rock legends. #link
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The Fractured series may have come to a close, but John Mulvaney’s not done with his engaging profiles of bands in their creative milieu — this time across the Irish Sea with British doom metal crew Solstice. #video
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My second feature for Bandcamp Daily and one I still can’t believe I was commissioned to write — but that is the point of the site, to surface and celebrate smaller genres and scenes, no matter how far from the mainstream they might be. (Also, the overlap with that other article on Belfast music was inadvertent.) #link
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There isn’t much of a narrative to this, it’s just Hart and his observations on life, etc. But it makes one long for a world where we could still get his take on things. #link
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This is good; essentially a hand-holding interface for Supercollider, which is exactly what I’ve been looking for. See also: Jazzari: The Programmable Trio (an in-browser code-based tracker). #link
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An easy, breezy read about the biggest bands that defined extreme metal, much of it in their own words. It’s focused on a select few names, which is both good and bad: good in that it doesn’t get bogged down in enyclopaedic details (it doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive history) but bad in its Euro-American bias, more or less footnoting the contributions of bands and scenes in Asia and South America, not to mention lesser-known acts in the regions it does cover. Perhaps some of that is rectified in the updated edition (I read the original, from 2004) yet in any case, it leaves room for someone else to write that history unwritten here. More…
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