Soundtrack to my Halloween (finale): "Around the World" by Daft Punk

From one of my all-time, top 10 favorite albums, 1997's Homework.

Happy Halloween and have a good time out there!



Daft Punk - Around the World from you_want_elvis on Vimeo.

Soundtrack to my Halloween: "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash

Pretty dire. A true American icon (warts and all).

You know, I refuse to watch Walk the Line or for that matter any music biopic from this point forward? Just tired of that narrative trajectory.

Soundtrack to my Halloween: "Speed of Blood" by Gallhammer

From their album, The Dawn of Gallhammer, and also polished and and reproduced on their follow-up, Ill Innocence.

Soundtrack to my Halloween: "Scared Away" by Ugress

From the Norwegian composer/DJ. How could I NOT like a piece of music taking its cue from Evil Dead (1980)?

Oh, and this is an awful, awful video.

Soundtrack to Halloween: "Voci dal Nulla I" by Fabio Frizzi

From Lucio Fulci's The Beyond (1980). Another impossible-to-find soundtrack.

Soundtrack to my Halloween: "Dig Up Her Bones" by The Misfits

From their American Psycho album. Always thought this song was oddly... melodic?

Music I Can't Live Without: Squarepusher's Hard Normal Daddy (1997)

A little personal history here: Hard Normal Daddy (1997) is the second album I bought by the multi-talented Tom Jenkinson a.k.a. Squarepusher, after being introduced to/hooked by his work via Ken Ishii's X-mix: Fast Forward and Rewind (1998). In particular, it was "Squarepusher's Theme" (which is actually on the Feed Me Weird Things album.*

Anyway, I was actually a little put out when I bought this disc way back when--there was a gulf between the high energy jazz acrobatics of "Squarepusher's Theme" and the more laid-back vibe on display here. But laid-back isn't code for lazy: the album is incredibly sophisticated, with Jenkinson employing a variety of instrumental arrangements to realize his eclectic, acid-jazz-meets-drum-and-bass vision.

The album didn't have me truly in its grasp until the second track, "Beep Street," an arrangement of digital and analog arrangements that feels like Jenkinson's output in miniature: lively instrumental arrangements based on heavily-layered compositions, relying on a variety of instrumentation (and not just a drum track and a sick sample).



If you're familiar with their output it should come as no surprise that I got into Squarepusher around the same time as I started digging into Aphex Twin (Richard D. James). I always imagined that the latter was something of a lunatic prankster, laying down sick soundscapes and occasionally wicked moods with the occasional concession to typical forms of coherence.* Squarepusher, meanwhile, always felt like a genius in his lab, trying to rebuild beats using superscience. He might have a playful streak, but he's dead serious about it.

Hard Normal Daddy is one of those albums one can revisit every couple of years just to hear how the music changes the more sophisticated one becomes as a music listener. I envy a person who discovers it for the first time with an open mind.  



*The hell? This album is out of print? I still have the original CD at home. The lack of a digital release is troubling as well. 

**His most accessible works, "Come to Daddy" and "Windowlicker" are off-putting in their own ways, subverting and twisting industrial and hip hop sounds respectively.

Playing on Repeat: Major Lazer & La Roux, Lazerproof

I've really been digging this Major Lazer mixtape over the last month or so, only getting a real chance to dig into it over the last couple of weeks. It took me a minute to place the above track - or at least the unmixed version - as the song accompanying the TV marketing of Bayonetta, a game which I'm quite taken with if you didn't know.

For comparison:




Anyway, Major Lazer's album can be downloaded at this link for free if you're interested in checking it out this weekend. Me, I have Blu Ray copies of The Good, the Bad, the Weird, and In the Realm of the Senses to occupy my free time when I'm not getting some writing done.

Apropos of Nothing Really... Some Songs I Can't Live Without

I began thinking about songs - particularly the ones that play over and over in my head and the ones that I can't bear to be without on a CD or on my iPod. Here are a few, in no particularly order:

"Marked" - Bad Religion



This was actually one of the first CDs I had to have and it was all thanks to another song entirely,"20th Century Boy." But this song just got me and gets to me still with its insistent final verse and the relentless speed of the whole thing. It was like a message delivered on the run and if you didn't get it, so what?

I've listened to other albums by Bad Religion since - my estimation of the band has diminished over time. Part of that is because I saw over time how simplistic (in the pejorative instead of "simple" as an observation)their music was and is. Of course part of it is growing a little older and not being able to maintain that level of intensity that you have when you're 13 or 14, but there it is.

"Beep Street" - Squarepusher



I actually discovered Squarepusher thanks to an Ken Ishii mix CD via the track "Squarepusher's Theme." I was completely enamored with the song - the way it didn't sound like the usual fiddling with knobs that I was used to in electronic music. I could hear real instrumentation in there even through Ishii's blending the track so that it could work as part of the overall playlist.

Being in South Florida at the time before the advent of internet music sales, it took a little while before I got hold of Feed Me Weird Things, the album where the track actually appears. So I "settled" for Hard Normal Daddy which in and of itself was a revelation.

I mentioned the instrumentation in "Squarepusher's Theme" but I learned that the musician was actually a virtuoso in multiple musical forms. At the time I had trouble characterizing what I was hearing. It sounded like drum and bass, but at fewer bpm's - gentler without any sort of affectation. It wasn't music you danced to but it was music that you heard. The tracks on Hard Normal Daddy demanded my attention because of the many layers of sound, with the variable rhythms and pacing making each track stand out.

I loved "Squarepusher's Theme" when I first heard it but i fell in love with "Beep Street" the first time I heard it.

"It's In Our Hands" - Bjork



More recent than the other entries and maybe more fitting with my temperament at this age. If you'd asked a few years ago I would have chosen her "Hyperballad" given the rawness of that track, the emotions laid bare. "Hyperballad" is actually still my favorite song by Bjork and one that I could never bring myself to ignore if it were playing. But "It's In Our Hands" is the one that I can't live without right now.

It's the imploring and jarringly sensual nature of this track that appeals to me. It feels like seduction out of desperation, this song without the track itself ever feeling desperate or like shallow vamping on the part of the artist.

I've always felt that she had one of the most beautiful voices in the world and this song reinforces that. It's like a well-honed tool, her voice, bouncing between wavering, almost youthful imprecation, and bedroom cooing between verses.

"La Cerca" - Sparta



It occurs to me that in spite of enjoying their music for years as At the Drive-in and when the band members broke apart to become Sparta and The Mars Volta, I know almost nothing about the roster in either groups.

For instance, I didn't know Sparta vocalist Jim Ward's name even after all these years of enjoying the texture of his voice. It's a voice that works perfectly with the material, which bounces from pop profundity to lyrical absurdity.

I don't have any deep reason or emotional connection to this song - I just like it quite a bit and feel like something's wrong if I don't have immediate access to it.

"Seed Of Memory" - Terry Reid



What the hell, right? Anyone who knows me knows I have a strong aversion to the hippy drippy sentiment of the late 60's and early 70's. I can't connect to any of it, only really vibing to southern rock and the more aggressive precursors to hard rock.

Well, maybe how I came to the track is part of why I enjoy it - via Rob Zombie's The Devil's Rejectsof all things. Say what you will about Zombie as a filmmaker but the man knows how to put together a soundtrack.

In this case, the song actually plays during the end credits after the antiheroes of the piece have been peppered with bullets by the Texas State Police. The song was actually a great comedown to the often garish violence of the previous 2 hours and Zombie was right to use it for the credits which kept the image up high - an eagle's eye view of the world below, divorced from all the terrible things that had happened before.

I appreciate the song now on its own now because of how rich and textured the track is. Its melancholy melody can alternately soothe or subdue me depending on my mood and I come back to it frequently when I need it.

"Joga (Remix)" - Bjork remixed by Alec Empire



I mentioned before the quality of Bjork's voice. Here, noise and hardcore artist Alec Empire wields it like a weapon - sending a blast of her vocals in between assaultive bass attacks. It's actually really unexpected and was such a departure from what I was used to in her work. I think the only other analogue I'd heard up to that point was "Army of Me" but there was such a gap between that track and this one that history had a way of getting lost in between.

What I'm saying is, I love it precisely because it's NOT a song by my favorite artist or at least it's a dramatic reinvention that actually makes me appreciate her talent all the more for its malleability.

On top of that, I first heard this song around the time that I was really into the Atari Teenage Riot. At this age I may not get as much out of their music, but Alec Empire's solo work has continued to endure because it's usually so raw and powered at times by its digressions and divergences.

In Honor of My First Vertigo Spotlight Column Posting on Comics Bulletin

... Here's a little DJ Shadow for your pleasure (and mine).



And hey, here's a bit more:



Oh, and if you'd like to see that new column it's right about... here.

Considered, Not Spoken in Anger...

Me: "Counting Crows is the type of band that, if heard on my car stereo, would cause me to pull over, get out of my car, and wait for the song to end - because I can't be near any radio that's playing that shit."

Burn, Berlin, Burn (1968)!

Here's the trailer for the upcoming German film, The Baader Meinhof Komplex. It's got Bruno Ganz from the most excellent The Downfall.


Interesting factoid from Wikipedia:

During a collective hunger strike in 1974, which led to the death of Meins, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre visited Baader in Stammheim Prison where he was being held. He later described Baader as "incredibly stupid" and "an asshole".^[1] Despite never obtaining a driving licence, Baader was obsessed with driving. He regularly stole expensive sports cars for use by the gang, and was arrested driving an Iso Rivolta IR300


Some folks who approve:

How you do it and how you don't.

Note exhibit A, using the art of the Other as a point of departure for a poorly told joke:




Now view Exhibit B where the foreign cultural mode is both celebrated and used to humorous effect. Set to a not-awful song.




Bonus: Another Ugress (aka Shadow of the Beat) track HERE. The opening and closing samples of the song really bookend it well. I think playing off (some) of the audience's familiarity with this particular monologue makes it work. Outside of that niche it's probably little more than your average drum and bass track.

"Look How Far We Done Came"

In light of last night's tremendous oratory...



Kanye West - Good Morning
Kanye West's Good Morning »