A to Z

A new perspective on the old every other Sunday

[atoz-2015]

Computer World - Computer World 2

Great pads on the #2 version with all the robo counting you could hope for. Only listened through this once or twice before the big change but the sounds are perfect with great little clicky drum tracks.

[atoz-2015]

The Man Machine - The Robots

I loved all the tracks on this album. I was expecting all of Kraftwerk to sound like Autobahn and that I would only appreciate it from a historical perspective but I finally hit on some stuff that I could just play cruising around, which I did about half a dozen times before deciding to move on to Computer. Of note, Neon Lights has an unmistakable vibe that sets right with the chill wave crazy of the early 10′s, especially the namesake Neon Indian.

[atoz-2015]

Trans Europe Express- Trans Europe Express + Metal on Metal + Abzug

You probably are wondering where I have been. I had a baby on Wednesday night and it is about as busy as you would imagine for a first time dad. Let me play a little catchup.

You get three tracks here because they are all contain the same theme even though they have different names which is a nice practice and each can be taken on its own but better as a group. There is that funky little synth line that would fit right in with some Detroit techno and I am sure I have heard it played before on mixes or other places so it is nice to put a name to the face.

[atoz-2015]

Radio Aktivität - Radioland

This album has a nice solid theme of radioactivity and the cold war. It is hard to imagine Kraftwerk in a divided, ground zero Germany in the mid 70′s but it puts an entirely different spin on the music were it just another American or British group. I didn’t really read too much into the theme since I have been quite busy myself but I enjoyed all the synths and simulated flutters of invisible radioactivity as though it were to be perceived as some kind of zipping and zapping filter sweep. 

I haven’t ever taken the time to appreciate the context that synthesizers and electronic music were introduced to the world.  It was long enough after WWII that people would have forgotten much of the immediate violence but still with the awareness that we now had the power to destroy our world and that nations were actively acquiring the ballistics to do so. Trying to pose such grand awareness for the world based on an event 30 years prior seems like stretching it but it is more like what it evolves into over those thirty years. It hasn’t even been quite half that since the Twin Towers were destroyed but I could surely make connections with how many of our current fears and desires could trace their ways back to that event and the surrounding changes with the war on terror. 

If you saw Ex Machina then you will recall the Oppenheimer quote that the two characters discuss briefly. I will put it on sometimes to hear his voice and his inflections and imagine how he felt as he talks about watching the first atomic bomb tests out in the deserts of New Mexico. It never fails to send chills down my spine: I am become death, destroyer of worlds. it is more than just his guilt or thousand mile gaze beyond the camera as he says these things that makes the clip so powerful. There are so very few moments in a lifetime that feel like they can really be classified as an awakening of any kind but to hear him talk, it is as if a fundamental truth about reality and the meaning of our own existence was revealed to him right there and what he saw changed him forever.

[atoz-2015]

Autobahn - Autobahn

Apparently there are over 100 different releases of Autobahn with cuts ranging from 3 to 20 minutes long. I have listened to several different lengths and they all come down to what I would have to describe as synth porn. As absurd as it sounds, it reminded me of the new Mad Max in this regard.

Other than the two hour car chase comparison (obviously), Autobahn has some of my favorite qualities in electronic music while lacking many others, much like Mad Max lacked a compelling plot or dialogue. But damn if I don’t love a good arpeggio bass, which I only just realized Grimes directly riffed off for 2012′s huge Genesis and holy shit if that isn’t a Mad Max inspired video with funked up babes with swords hanging out of car windows in a deserted landscape. Anyway, I make this comparison to say that if Kraftwerk didn’t use such sweet sounding instruments, like if someone did an acoustic cover of the song, I would have no interest much like if someone did a black box theater cover of Mad Max, it would be pretty disastrous although perhaps quite humorous. As long as Kraftwerk keeps up the synths (which I know they will) I won’t have a problem this installment

[atoz-2015]

K is for ... Kraftwerk

Kraftwerk is absolutely the obvious choice. It was so obvious that I almost forgot to post it but I blame Memorial day weekend. I have little exposure to Kraftwerk but I have been known to fahr’n on the Autobahn a little. I am not sure what the arc for them is but they embrace futurism so hard they are practically the model of retro future. What a warm feeling to think that the future could have been just emotionless robots helping us to do all the wholesome things that keep the fabric of society tightly woven and supporting all of the hardworking people of the world.

[atoz-2015]

Even Truer - You’ll Improve Me (Caribou Remix)

Well, well, well, look who it is popping up on the a to z again but our friend Caribou. The other tracks on here were fine to good but I didn’t even bother listening to the other tracks on here more than once because it would mean I wasn’t listening to this one. Caribou did this remix in 2011 amid a slew of other remixes that I didn’t have time to touch on but I am feeling I should revisit at some point.

I really like the title of this album based on my current trajectory of investigation into truth and beliefs. It is meant as an extension of the original It’s All True while being tongue in cheek because something can’t be truer than something else as it is either true or false. It’s nice to hold up the truth of that last statement itself. How can we use truth to examine truth? At some point it has to become axiomatic and axioms can’t be true or false just accepted as a pretense. But we accept it because it is useful just like we accept that there are colors and sounds but it is all just phenomenon in relation to us as humans. We will never get to experience the joy of truly sensing electro magnetic fields no matter how many subdermal magnets we get implanted; that’s is just a synesthesia.

[atoz-2015]

It’s All True - ep

JB really got it on this album. They weren’t trying to do it any way but their own and they came out with a catchy album with a balance of chill of vocals that don’t sound out of place or ironic. To my dismay, I only just realized that this was the last album JB released. I will dial up Even Truer for the final installment but it is all just remixes. Luckily they are some of the better tracks on IAT like Banana Ripple which has a life of its own it seems. 

I actually surprised myself a little with the featured track after latching on immediately to a couple tracks but something about ep grooves so hard. I think it speaks to the importance of third impressions. Sometimes, it is more powerful when a track can imply a dope beat than if it were to actually put it in the mix, you just have to pay attention to get your mind to do the rest. That won’t stop me come Q2 mix from making it a little more obvious though...

[atoz-2015]

Begone Dull Care - Dull To Pause

Why do I make any of the decisions I do? Why bother trying to explain what something is like there is an objective truth. To say that art can be judged at all beyond ones own taste is a statement that can’t be supported. At best you can have a set of preferences that are like a meal that has many flavors you can taste if you are looking. But a person needs to be taught to look for those flavors. It is not our job to make other people have the same taste as our own. We even use words like “tasteful” to describe when things are done well but it is usually a backhand compliment explaining that something is tasteful x where x is something that is normally distasteful.

Begone Dull Care is the Junior Boys third full length and it has them brining together many flavors to create a taste that didn’t quite sit with me. Most of the tracks felt like they were missing the Junior Boy sound and had taken up with the idea that they need to embrace a genre sound like circa 2007 Chromeo. Maybe it was a dash too much of the pop in the synth pop (there was no shortage of synths mind you). Fancy pop music is like fancy grilled cheese or fancy soul food, you can do it and people will say it is really good and you will get charged 4x as much as the regular shit but in the end it isn’t really more enjoyable, it just is interesting that it got put together like it did. There are plenty of tracks that I was into just for being some basic grooves but its like it wouldn’t be a Junior Boy track unless they fancied it up and it lost it for me. So I decided why not just go with my gut and chill.

[atoz-2015]

so this is goodbye - The Equalizer

One thing that let me enjoy Last Exit when I was first listening to it was the fact that I just didn’t have the same kind of access to music that I do today. I checked out the In The Morning single before I gave so this is goodbye a few listens and maybe it was this that focused my attention on the two singles on there but they shine far and away beyond the other tracks on the album, at least as far as catchiness.  But would I still think that if I hadn’t been primed to them from the singles?

I am usually pretty methodical in making my decisions, at least when it comes to choosing things like what vacuum cleaner to buy. What I don’t want is analysis paralysis and often I would be best off just making a choice arbitrarily based on whatever my first impression was because it wouldn’t make a difference either way. If it is so terrible that it is unusable or unenjoyable then chalk it up to a loss and replace it with something else. Chances are you wouldn’t even have noticed if it were a success so why notice if it is a failure? Surely there is a utility equation around this.

There has been an ongoing experiment on reddit recently called the button. It is a typical subreddit but with a button and a spin-down clock at the top of the page that you can click exactly once based on your account. Depending on the time it says on the clock when you click it, you get a color flair next to your name that shows up to everyone else when you post on the page. The interesting part is that the clock resets whenever a person clicks it so the lower it gets the greater chance someone will click it. What adds to the complexity of the situation is that it is an entirely self contained system that only has an impact when someone posts in the sub which by nature of the forum would be about clicking the button or not clicking it. Basically it is one big celebration of decision making for its own sake or the choice to not make a decision, which can be the hardest choice of all. 

My decision was to click it the second time it came around before knowing any of the rules based on some arbitrary numerology. I try to escape the decision cycle and any meaning that may be associated with it but avoiding meaning is its own type of meaning; there can never be nothing.

[atoz-2015]

Last Exit - Teach Me How To Fight

I was a little surprised that I still knew most of the lyrics to the songs on Last Exit, or at least up through the bonus release stuff which I had never heard (unbirthday is a very nice change of pace from the rest of the vibe). I really played it a lot when it was in my rotation but I have trouble locating it in my musical timeline. The music is quite beautiful but the lyrics can be a little melodramatic. The featured track really is one that I remember the best along with Birthday but I feel like if I heard it today I wouldn’t know what to think. Back then I genuinely enjoyed the sighing self deprecation, of course I also recognized how it sounded a little silly but that’s kinda what I like about it. It is a little ironic of me to talk about how I enjoy a track because of the melodramatic vocals when I was using that same feature as one of the main reasons to ding  a lot of the industrial tracks I was listening to last week. When I listen closely though, the vocal phrasing is actually quite interesting and varied on Last Exit, even if the lyrics are themselves a little QQ. Really, they were doing some unique stuff that I wasn’t able to find anywhere else back in 2004, a time dominated by Electro Clash and Post Punk 4x4 (which you know I love and soon to be dominated by the Electro House movement. 

So why did I stop listening to it? I never really thought of myself as one to listen to soft music and yet the reality is there and I would never deny my Cat Power and Elliot Smith fascination. The only thing that could explain it is that I was embarrassed. I wanted to define myself a certain way by my music by diving right into the heavy party electro clash sound and Junior Boys didn’t fit into any image that I could come up with; not indie enough not hard enough or just too many feelings… it makes me wonder what else it is that I be missing that I one time enjoyed. To be honest, even today I was a little reluctant to choose JB for this installment because I wanted to get in some straight techno or house like Joey Beltram or Juan Atkins (my first techno album). Luckily I came to my senses and realized that this is worth exploring but the fact that I am still trying to create this image one way or another makes me really wonder how much control I have over a lot of the decisions I make, ones far more important than a band in a blog.

[atoz-2015]

J is for ... Junior Boys

I have a very specific memory of listening to Junior Boys on repeat on a trip to Montana at my aunts converted doublewide about 30 minutes outside of Missoula. In my mind I couldn’t be any older than 17 or 18 but seeing as their first album didn’t come out till 2004 I must have been at least 21. This kind of flawed memory is exactly the kind of truth that is obscured by time because it exists in a place that doesn’t need to be examined but when it is, it points more toward how I viewed myself at the time as a child instead of the man that one is expected to be by the time he is in his 20′s. This was my last trip out to Montana to visit my Dad’s family because it is the last trip that my Dad offered to pay for me to fly out there and visit my family which is perfectly reasonable considering i had a full time job by the end of the following year. 

I feel like Junior Boys is absolutely one of those bands that should have stopped existing when I stopped listening to them after college like the Unicorns or Enon. Thankfully though they persisted and from what I can tell, kept their music on a nice trajectory that was just enough rooted in the indie scene that they didn’t feel beholden to a lot of the dance traditions that can hold some artists back from exploring new territory. They had been mostly off my radar until this past summer when I fired up a podcast from one half of the duo going by the name of DIVA. I would have expected to find academic explorations of old 70′s records mixed with electro or something but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was straight forward techno. Could this have been at the root of Junior Boys all along? This definitely warrants some revisiting and high hopes for later albums that I have yet to lay ears on. 

[atoz-2015]

Paula Temple - Deathvox 

This. This is what I have been listening to this last week between the Skinny Puppy and the Frontline Assembly that form someone's memories of the late 80s and early 90s but not mine. Paula Temple satisfies on many levels in this wide world of industrial influences. If it has a sound that could come from a tool or machine then it will thus forth be industrial. Simple and effective and let's me enjoy the industrial I like with all its bass and battery. They say that it doesn't take artistry to dial the dark up to 11 but there is artistry in being able to do it and keep the magic. A few days ago I was slapping my chest with an open palm and I could remember the feeling of being somewhere so loud I didn't have to do it myself. Sometimes, I want to get lost but just for the night. How can I lose myself out in the open without the cape of black to cover my head?

[atoz-2015]

Author and Punisher 

This is what I think of when I hear industrial. This guy has an engineering degree and makes his own custom controllers and is really into yelling. I researched it too much and learned he is a flavor of doom metal that is industrial so talked myself around in circles about putting it up here. But it's up to me to make industrial what it is in 2015 because I am in to it in my own way and can pick and choose like a real selector.

[atoz-2015]

Broken - Gave Up

What overview of industrial would be complete without mentioning NIN? My first exposure to industrial was probably like most teenagers with Closer in 1994  (it feels like it should have been 95) through MTV along with as much pop culture that a 12 year sponge can absorb through the TV. God it feels like I would have been older but those summers were long in the mid 90′s and I grew so much.

I wasn’t allowed to get Downward Spiral when it first came out, thanks to the massive amounts of sensational publicity that it got claiming it to be perverse and full of sex themes (not gonna deny it). The next year I managed to get Broken off of my dad’s girlfriend who was trying to impress me by letting me order a bunch of CD’s from Columbia House. I don’t think I really got it at first but it was the kind of album I would come back to over the years and only grew to enjoy more and more, even after I acquired Downward Spiral and played it through that arc of my life. 

There is something real about Reznor that doesn’t come through with the other industrial bands at the time. It’s like they all are trying too hard to carry a tradition of something subversive instead of just letting it out; plus he screams more and doesn’t do that thing with his voice. I find it more than coincidental that The Old World is so good at cultivating very specific styles that are rooted in experiments but are themselves actually just repeating the experiments done by someone else.

I found out many years later that NIN recorded a bootleg video for the album that was released through VHS and passed around the underground. It was a horrifically convincing snuff video with violence so graphic it puts Hostel to shame. I saw it in the interim years when anything could be found on the internet but you still had to buy the physical copy since the world hadn’t quite been uploaded to youtube yet. Fortunately for you, it is at your fingertips now but I will let you find that one yourself. Damn, I am feeling nostalgic as hell right now and for what, a time when things were harder to come by and the main source of alternative culture was corporate brand MTV? At least it was honest, now it is corporate but they just know they need to hide it from us.

[atoz-2015]

KMFDM - Megalomaniac

EBM: Electronic Body Music aka industrial dance music. You could dance to this stuff in combat boots in a marching fashion with some punch-like motions. I keep trying to figure out what I don’t dig about it. I tried a few theories about the vocals like they all are done in a style where the phrasing of each word or note goes from a higher pitch to a lower one which I think gives it the perceived whiney quality. But it also has a kinda strained or stressed out quality to the vocals that I guess is done to give it the sense of urgency (not just talking about Megalomaniac here). The biggest thing though is that it seems to be  and it seems like everything is just in a much higher register than I want it. 

I tried Megalomaniac repitched to half time in Live and it immediately got much cooler and the shade of darkness I want with that half time groove where you feel the down beat without hearing it. Check out this guy’s slow down of Godlike which is getting there but this is probably only about 95 and I am talking 130/2. This site will do it but it does a vocal stretch vs repitch so you don’t get the full effect. If I had more time I would risk an upload but not gonna happen today

[atoz-2015]

Horse Rotorvator - The First Five Minutes of Death

I picked a hell of a time to try and make an academic study in two weeks of what 7 essential albums encompass an entire genre. I have been entirely distracted with my life and feeling drained. I start to listen to an album and start analyzing how it will fit in the scheme of this project before it finishes because I figure I should make sure that I take a good survey of the field before I commit my time to an entire album if I am just going to decide by the end that it isn’t worthy of mention in the great 7 album challenge. It is essentially like a two week long exercise in scanning through Netflix without actually watching anything. 

But in general my mind has just been clouded. I can’t really focus on the music and I feel like I am doing it a disservice. It may be that I am just trying to force myself into something that takes plenty of time to warm up to. Even with music that I am familiar with I am not absorbing like I know I can. Coil definitely surprises me and doesn’t seem like it is industrial music at all but what else would it be? I will probably just post a bunch of videos tomorrow and it will be hilarious.