we pass notes on bananas

Postscript (Sick-Disco)

2009-11-28T00:10:00.003-06:00

Untranslated Korean Title / Untranslated Korean Artist

via Lovefingers (06.29.09 - Fingertrack 898)

The Ax

2006-08-30T15:49:00.005-05:00

Here or now or both WPNOB comes to a close. Feel free to read, but only some of the old MP3 links will work. Bye!

Also: check out the new site at Yr Cover's Blown.

The Elemental Backstroke

2006-08-24T13:24:00.003-05:00

MP3 The Elements / Tom Lehrer

Dance to this song in the crevices of the Museum of Science and Industry.

Plus: a neat animated version that reminds me of Young-Hae Chang's work with Gil 'n' Sullivan's "Major General's Song" substituted the for hard bop.

The End Is Fast Approaching

2006-08-19T13:14:00.005-05:00

MP3 Chinese Farmer / The Ten Speeds

Left Seoul and returned to the States, so WPNOB will retire in a few short days, though the content will remain online. If all goes according to plan, this is the second-to-last post. As a courtesy to circles, it's a song by the mildly-Korean rockers The Ten Speeds, whom I wrote about at the very beginning.

Read the first banana note here. Read the last one soon.

Spooky Action at a Distance

2006-08-17T12:51:00.004-05:00

MP3 Collapse Coming On / Decoder Ring

Hospital room and a sound building into Einstein's final words lost in German on the ear-rims of his nurse She the only person present when he died And if they don't speak your language then you're with no one whispering wordlessly across the infinitesimal in-betweens Nothing normal at distances like these

From Spooky Action at a Distance, 2002; courtesy Juliet.

Learn and buy at this site or that site.

Murakami: Pinball, 1973

2006-08-16T06:47:00.004-05:00

...qe interrupt our regularly scheduled programminq... with a digital copy of Haruki Murakami's out-of-print second novel, Pinball, 1973... courtesy a wonderful Frenchperson dealing in contingences...

...a nameless narrator predicts sandboxes, reads Critique of Pure Reason in bed, has his story interrupted by the Rat, describes the humble Hitler-esque origins of pinball, and sleeps with twin girls named 208 & 209.... the catenae are one, two, three...

PDF full text of Pinball, 1973

read about Pinball, 1973

buy Pinball, 1973 ($400 to $3,000)

It is made of fifteen pieces, and this is...

2006-08-15T12:49:00.011-05:00

a mix of bits for the outdoors.

MP3s It Is Made of Fifteen Pieces / Various Artists [95 MB]

1. Untitled #3 / Wooden Spoon, and this is the frontispiece.
2. The Mop / Shugo Tokumaru, and this is the fiftycent piece.
3. Great Day (inst rmx) / Four Tet & Madvillain, and this is the showpiece.
4. No Form, No Food, No Future / My Dad vs Yours, and this is the nopiece.
5. Data.Vortex / Ryoji Ikeda, and this is the timelesspiece.
6. Safe As Milk / Hopewell, and this is the mantlepiece.
7. Great Release / LCD Soundsystem, and this is the unconversation piece.
8. Girls / Death In Vegas, and this is the basic codpiece.
9. First Period / Rei Harakami, and this is the period piece.
10. Bijoux / Manitoba, and this is the fancy neckpiece.
11. White Film / Tujiko Noriko, and this is the missing piece.
12. Whirr / Fonica, and this is the re-piece.
13. Super Good / Boredoms, and this is the non-centerpiece.
14. On The Roof / Raccoo-oo-oon, and this is the penultimate piece.
15. I Saw A Dolphin / Psycho-Baba, and this is the final piece.

It is made of fifteen pieces, and this is the fancy neckpiece.

2006-08-14T22:27:00.003-05:00

MP3 Bijoux / Manitoba

(from Up in Flames, 2003)

The Go! Team is so 2005

2006-08-02T12:42:00.001-05:00

Let's Make Love and Listen to Death from Above / CSS

Music Is My Hot Hot Sex / CSS

Cansei De Ser Sexy—five hot electroclash Brazilian girls and one kinda-studly boy—were the only truly worthwhile moment of the 2006 Pitchfork Music Festival. Their album doesn't work as well as their performance because the singer can't hop out of your computer and toss her digits into the crowd, but here at least are two hints of why their live show is so damn tiring.

Time, That Tasty Donut: 4 Convolutions of Jackson 5

2006-07-08T10:47:00.007-05:00

Time: The Donut of the Heart / Bulssajo (불싸조) [2006]

Time: The Donut of the Heart / Jay Dee [2006]

All I Do Is Think of You / Troop [1989]

All I Do Is Think of You / Jackson 5 [1975]

In 1989, this was unthinkable. Sure, an aspiring R&B boy band might cover a Jackson 5 tune to flesh out their sophomore effort with a third single, but who, without the assistance of strong psychotropic drugs, could imagine a Korean post-rock band covering an American instrumental hip-hop track that reworked said Jackson 5 tune? (Not me, I was 7 years old.)

The result is impressive, musically speaking. But it's also more than that. Bulssajo's version of "Time: The Donut of the Heart" is a neat example of the way that American culture is/was digested in Korea. In general, one expects certain Western styles to emerge in Asia second hand. Korea opened to the West in the '90s and thus, to oversimplify, received both Jackson 5 and J Dilla simultaneously. Much of popular American culture was consumed vertically rather than horizontally. Take punk rock for example.

In 1998, Tim Tangherlini, Professor of Asian Languages and Culture at UCLA, went to Korea to explore the emerging punk rock scene. The result was a documentary, Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community and a solid scholarly article, Anarchy in the UK, Solidarity in the ROK. The following is an excerpt from an interview with Tangherlini conducted by Meg Sullivan.

Tangherlini was particularly fascinated by the speed with which a single culture was digesting a whole musical tradition — albeit a contemporary one. Thanks to the liberalization of restrictions on rock music, nightclubs and foreign travel, the Internet and such music file-sharing services as Napster, South Korean youth in the 1990s enjoyed unfettered access for the first time to foreign rock, he explained.

“They got all of punk rock history at once — the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and Nirvana,” Tangherlini said. “It was like being in London or New York in 1978 and Seattle in the mid-80s, all at the same time.”

The corollary of this phenomenon is that if you're a Korean punker you needn't cite The Clash as an influence if you actually like Green Day better. A recent New York Times article included a quote from a young girl describing China, in it's love of Korean pop culture, as not postmodern enough for Sex and the City. I'd argue that Korea, and possibly urban China as well, has leapt straight over post-modernity into a phase outside time: meta-modernity. (The grad school bs-ing has officially begun.)

In this leap—a moment and an eternity—Green Day becomes The Clash. And this de-emphasis on originality, or "date of origin," is not limited to the sphere of popular music. Take fashion for example. If you grew up in Korea and first encountered ripped jeans in the late '90s, the difference between wearing through a pair of Levi's yourself, buying a pre-worn pair from a thrift store, and buying a pre-torn pair from Urban Outfitter's is minimized. It's much harder to argue for the authenticity of any particular band or style if you receive all bands and styles at once. After all, what does time matter if it's just a donut, if it just loops around on itself?

At the same time, you can't simply plead ignorance. Bulssajo represents a thoughtful approach to embodying the vertical consumption of culture, an approach that creates new possibilities ("make[s] it new") by paying attention to details. Their Jay Dilla cover suggests that when the donut of time is squashed, when a song's sections, intro and chorus, are folded together, when music history is compressed into a single moment, the original guises of authenticity (older, rarer, etc.) cease to be important. International borders disappear when everything good is everything to everyone.

Selecting a genre, or a history of influences, also becomes less important. Bulssajo's guitarist, who DJ's in his free time, is influenced equally by JD and the original J5; the band itself equally by Yo La Tengo and Velvet Underground. Unburdened by the history of western music, they aren't ashamed of the recency of their idols. And by condensing them all to a single point—by mixing rather than layering—they have no trouble looking fit to eat two dozen more while downing the entire first donut in a single bite. An infinite, and grossly beautiful, eating contest of sorts.

More Bulssajo here.

The Best Jeff Tweedy Show Ever: 2002-06-10

2006-05-28T21:35:00.010-05:00

Download the full concert: All 31 Tracks [100 MB]

Download a song: New Madrid

The only thing to do after making a list is to make another list clarifying why the top-ranked this or that is so top-ranked. In the case of the episode of the Amazing Spectulariffic Jeff Tweedy Traveling Variety Show from June 10, 2002, the answer is simple: This one just has everything.

1. a Thax Douglas intro featuring Boris Grebeshnikov shout-outs and two poems, one of them not half-bad (see below)
2. Tweedy coughing along to the opener, "I'm a Wheel"
3. good audience rapport: "You guys are being really nice already..."
4. bad puns: "I'm really hot... [Should we] turn the fan on?... I'm trying to turn the fans on, man!"
5. a great setlist featuring the likes of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," "Please Tell My Brother," "Hesitating Beauty," "Pecan Pie," "Be Not So Fearful," "Acuff-Rose," "Jesus, etc.," etc.
6. a rare cover of "Henry & the H Bombs" by Mott the Hoople
7. the best version of "New Madrid" to date
8. the word "penis"
9. a Stan-the-sound-guy story
10. "Passenger Side" as a drunken sing-along closer

Jeff Tweedy live links
-at The Abbey, Chicago, 2002-06-10 (full concert)
-at The Vic, Chicago, 2003-01 (three highlights)
-at Mandel Hall, Chicago, 2006-02-25 (full concert)

This Setlist
Jeff Tweedy
2002-06-10
The Abbey
Chicago, IL

1. [thax douglas intro]
2. i'm a wheel
3. spiders (kidsmoke)
4. someone else's song
5. i'm the man who loves you
6. [talking: she's got a penis]
7. sunken treasure
8. i am trying to break your heart
9. pick up the change
10. please tell my brother
11. heavy metal drummer
12. [talking: in the house]
13. when the roses bloom again
14. hesitating beauty
15. california stars
16. henry & the h-bombs
17. [talking: ian hunter]
18. we've been had
19. casino queen
20. [talking: the classic rock section]
21. pecan pie
22. be not so fearful
23. [applause]
24. [talking: stan]
25. was i in your dreams
26. acuff-rose
27. war on war
28. jesus, etc
29. reservations
30. new madrid
31. passenger side

Boris Grebeshnikov
by Thax Douglas

Eventually a carp will cover the exact entire bottom of the lake
like stars plugging up the holes in the sky, but which carp?
The rest of the carp might start feeling intense
pre- or post-nostalgia for the dirt or the air
so strong that the hard-livered gills, etc. are like little kids
who want to grow up to be actors instead of solid reliable organs.
But the carp at the bottom will keep the lake fresh and clean
with the millions of gills shivering over its body.

He walks home with a carton of white peaches / Held high on his should like a badge.

2006-05-23T19:58:00.004-05:00

Peach / Otomo Yoshihide's New Jazz Ensemble

Parallel / Metal Tastes Like Orange

Japanese free jazz conspirator Otomo Yoshihide recently performed in Seoul with Sachiko M, Sato Yukie, and Joe Foster. Above are two highlights from his career. The first is a dirty waltz through half-deserted streets and past unmoving bodies. The second, from Secret Recordings 1, is straight noise. Plus saxophone.

iTunes Chronology & the iTunes Word Game

2006-05-23T03:09:00.002-05:00

Breakfast / All of My Brother's Girlfriends

Breakfast in NYC / Oppenheimer

The world of wires has, of course, changed the way music is made, distributed, and consumed. But it's also changing the way musicians live, writes Chris Dahlen, the best Christopher Pitchfork writer since Chris Ott. There's an awful lot of fancy stuff you can do with a computer and a bunch of music files, he continues. You can keep track of your listening habits, make your own mash-ups and remixes, get recommendations from people or machines you don't even know, and automatically generate mixes to fit your mood. Moreover, if you have a nice computer and a degree in computer science, you can even analyze online music reviews. Pitchformula, the brainchild of Loren Jan Wilson, creates wordlists by scouring the database of reviews available at Pitchforkmedia.com and ranking key words like "guitars," "dissonance," "frenetic," and "warmth." The first goal of this project was to demonstrate the limitations of critical language in describing pop music. (Check it out yourself by viewing Pitchfork through Wilson's filtering program. Predictably "positive" words appear in green and "negative" ones in red.) The second goal was to use the words with highly positive connotations to select criteria for writing songs that would score well with reviewers. Despite this careful work, unsurprisingly, the songs that Wilson ended up producing for this project are far from 5-star material. Much better are those he'd already written, freely, for his band Starlister, which hails from Hyde Park, Chicago, and has recorded a number of decent cuts, including The Deepest Color of Your Hazel Eyes.

The gap between Wilson's "real" songs for Starlister and his "homework" songs speaks to the obvious conclusion that both he and Dahlen reach: There's an unidentifiable "mystery element" that makes certain songs and albums great. Call it luck, fate, passion, sweat, creativity, heart, or feeling. Whatever you dub it, its defining feature is that it's not open to analysis. Anyone approaching music without considering this fact is missing the point. Computers can probe all they want, and musicians can try their best using electronic wizardry to satisfy snarky critics, but there's ultimately more to music than that. Nevertheless, computers can assist us to better appreciate and better analyze songs. In fact, they often help us the most when they keep it old school. Computers are best at improving our daily lives when they're used in relatively simple ways: for e-mail, for playing music and movies, or for finding the address of a restaurant. Think Number Munchers and Crystal Quest.

Maybe all this background is obvious. Complex statistical analysis doesn't help your average indie fetishist, and music isn't just ones and zeros. The point is, there are fantastically simple things that can be done with songs and computers. Simpler than Last.fm, and simpler than AppleScripts. Below are two blue-collar iTunes tricks that can help spur new interests and new connections. Both, hopefully, can make things a little more interesting without sacrificing the elements of chance and creativity. Either way, they're easy and we can pretend they're important.

1. History of the World in Song: iTunes Chronology

Recently, I met a guy who is truly obsessed with iTunes. He's one of those folks who must have artwork for every album and spends hours carefully delineating genres. Anal but not abnormal. The thing that surprised me about this guy was that he organized his entire music library by album. That is, all his albums were in alphabetical order, leaving The Immaculate Collection right alongside The Low End Theory and Let's Get It On alongside Let It Be and (more appropriately) Let It Be... Naked. I found this amusing. I found this foolish. But to him it was genuinely more important to have all the songs from compilations and soundtracks next to one another than it was to have all of the albums by a particular band grouped together.

I disagree with my friend's organizational approach, but I applaud his dedication. And I thank him for forcing me to reconsider how I was using iTunes myself. After our encounter, I immediately realized that I wanted my albums in chronological order by band. The solution was simple: place the recording or release date before the album title (e.g. 1997 Handsome Western States). Now each musician in my music library has his/her/their catalogue neatly organized like a timeline. 1997 Handsome Western States comes before 1999 When Your Heartstrings Break, as it would have in your average iTunes library, but they also both come before 2001 The Coast Is Never Clear. A little difficult to explain, but easy to grasp visually: Take a look.

Of course all this is as stupid as it is obvious, but once you organize your music in this way everything is put in perspective. Hundreds of connections and concatenations reveal themselves. You have the intense satisfaction of being reminded—every time you listen to it—that Blood On the Tracks was released a full ten years after Bringing It All Back Home. Then maybe you remember that the "blood" is symbolic of the end of Dylan's marriage to Sara Lowndes. You also realize what sense it makes, historically, that 1969—that year of endings that followed the assassinations of MLK and Robert Kennedy and saw the death of the counterculture movement—was the year of the last true Beatles release; the year in which the Kinks put out an album with the phrase "decline and fall" in the title; and the year of Nashville Skyline, a continuation of Dylan's return to acoustic Americana and away from politicizing his music. It suddenly makes perfect sense that the Velvets released Loaded at the beginning of the "Me Decade," and that Brian Eno retreated into the studio and focused on electronica halfway through that same decade. Seeing the years alongside the album titles reminds you that every piece of music—no matter how great it is, no matter how much it transcends time—falls into a history of events, of people and of places. The '70s become the '80s as Joy Division becomes New Order. Sonic Youth, born in 1981 and debuting in '83, grows up alongside you, through the fall of the Berlin Wall and through the fall of the World Trade Towers. Today, SY lives on—a twenty-something finding new ways of doing old things—while R.E.M. and U2 turn decrepit and senile. Sure everything's in its right place, and time and seasons and bands turn. But everything turns at its own pace. The interesting part is connecting the dots and comparing those paces.

2. Searching for the Perfect Mix: The iTunes Word Game

The other iTunes trick is not so heavy. It involves trying to find words or phrases that will create mixes. The idea is simple: You type a word into the search box in the upper-right corner of iTunes with the goal of making a mix of reasonable length—between 30 and 80 minutes, say. Words like "chicken" and "arrange" work reasonably well for me (40 and 33 minutes, respectively). So do the phrases "all days" and "new time" (44 and 30 minutes). Words like "love," "change," and "dreams" don't fair so well, producing mixes that would require an entire spindle of CD-Rs to burn. Words like "fish" and "stereo" fail for another reason: too many songs by the same artist (I get all of Fishscale and all of Swordfishtrombones, all of Apples in Stereo and all of Stereolab). And words like "apostrophe" and "challenging" are just too clever (I get nothing for either). Basically, you have to find words that are interesting enough to be used but not over-used. Part of the fun is being better than your friends at finding the right words. And part of the fun is seeing just how weird your music collection is (I get hits for "children die," "wise cousin," "onion necklace," "jollity dog," and "inside hippo"). But, of course, the real goal is to find the perfect word or phrase, the one that selects a 79-minute mix with no repeats.

I have yet to nail a 79-point bull’s-eye, but a recent favorite discovered through the iTunes Word Game is the "Breakfast Mix," which includes 11 songs, features 10 bands, clocks in at 30'34", and starts with an instrumental track. The two tracks posted above are from young breakfast-loving bands that are using the internet to reach an international audience: All of My Brother's Girlfriends is from Sweden, and the more polished Oppenheimer is from Ireland. Thanks to Chris for introducing me to the latter.

1. Breakfast With Blockhead / Aesop Rock
2. Breakfast / All Of My Brother's Girlfriends
3. 40 Oz. For Breakfast / Blackalicious
4. I Am The Milkmaid And I Bring Your Breakfast In / The Blow
5. Orange Juice Blues (Blues For Breakfast) / Bob Dylan & The Band
6. Raining Rage / Breakfast
7. Breakfast Eat Rice / Breakfast
8. Finish Your Collapse And Stay For Breakfast / Broken Social Scene
9. Breakfast At Tiffany's / Deep Blue Something
10. Breakfast Cake / The Lovely Feathers
11. Breakfast In NYC / Oppenheimer

Their Skin Was Made of Ice-Cream Trucks

2006-05-21T22:49:00.003-05:00

Claudine / The Bats [1985]

Claudine / Sambassadeur [2006]

It seemed impossibly unlikely that these Swedes would ever release anything else as good as their first single, "Between the Lines," but their latest EP dispels this unlikelihood and proves Sambassadeur at least as gifted as The Concretes. Both "Claudine" and "Kate" are tired from running through heads all day. (Go here to download "Kate" and purchase Coastal Affairs.)

No Radio: Stars, Wars, Cures

2006-05-20T21:50:00.003-05:00

Turn the Radio On (live) / Jude

No Radio / Dirty on Purpose

The first song's about needing distractions ("We got so high we stop pretending / That you and I were never-ending / And it's a long way home / Turn the radio on"); the second's about being so happy you don't need anything. Some nights things are all wrong—off in metaphysical sense—and yet you wake up and everything's just right again. Sure, "there are places we have never been," but that doesn't matter for Brooklyn superstars Dirty On Purpose because "the sun came up" and Hallelujah Sirens (2006) is coming out.

Next door: Two penguins are in a communal shower. One says, "Excuse me, could you please pass the soap?" The other stares at the first and replies, "Nooo, no radio!"

Put on your spurs; dance; make Wes Anderson jealous.

2006-05-18T02:18:00.004-05:00

La Moda / Ennio Morricone [from La Donna Invisible OST, 1969]

Holy shit. Thank you, Adriane.

Raining Electrons and Cigarettes

2006-05-16T23:26:00.002-05:00

Goodbye / Asobi Seksu [2006]

Close Watch / Theta Wave State [2002]

Asobi Seksu is not inexperienced. They’ve been around in some form since 2002, and their name means "playful sex" in Japanese. Yet "Goodbye" sounds as if it were recorded during that period of early adolescence when you knew "sex" was an important adult word but were still uncertain exactly what it meant. "Goodbye" is young for its age. It's the jangliest, most Belle & Sebastian track on AS's forthcoming sophomore effort, Citrus, even though it lacks BS's melted-Toblerone-under-your-dress perversity.

Citrus itself is strongest at these types of moments, when the band pushes its inclinations toward the extremes. If "Goodbye" is the condensed sweetness at the center, the bit that gets stuck in your teeth, then the preceding track, the eight-minute "Red Sea," is the distilled border, with chords and macromolecules floating off the skin and out into space. It's last five minutes recall the band's previous incarnation as Theta Wave State, particularly the quiet "Close Watch," the only TWS track to feature Yuki on vocals.

Go here for the Music For Robot's post on Citrus, and here for Colin's post on Asobi Seksu's first album.

The king made a brief appearance to announce tourism.

2006-05-15T14:06:00.001-05:00

How To Lie / Shushshush

If I still bought albums the same way I did in middle school, I'd probably end up owning Shushshush's forthcoming debut and listening to it with as much frequency as Rubberneck, Pet Your Friends, and Breathe. Or not. Maybe, just maybe, everything will fall into place for Shushshush and they'll manage to continue embodying only the best elements of their Phantom Planet-ness. Or maybe next time they'll spurn "You possess a sugar-filled neck" in favor of its soundalike: "You possess a sugar-free neck." No matter the future, "How To Lie" is satisfying, and the best moment on the strangely unimpressive Music For Robots compilation. Occasionally, when the questions seem most elusive, power pop is the only answer.

Despite the weak comp, MFR itself is the shit. Check out the new track from Asobi Seksu.

Rural Psychogeography

2006-05-11T19:46:00.003-05:00

Sihl 4 / Jason Kahn

Timelines 3 / Jason Kahn

Jason Kahn’s sack of instruments features the basics: drums, wires, metals, room. Whatever he's using, he's using to explore the cavities and crevices of space. He'll mic water glasses, record a stairwell, or play the cymbals live without ever touching the two discs. He's featured on collaborations and compilations with titles like Popular Music That Will Live Forever, The End of the Fear of God, and Rural Psychogeography. Would you take a class entitled "Rural Psychogeography 300"? Would that class be bullshit? These are the type of questions inspired by those most elitist and elemental of musicians: noise artists. The answers are both "yes" and "no." With Kahn, potentials are exploited to such a degree that you are forced acknowledge just how much is there when you listen closely enough; you are forced to say, silently, "yes."

Kahn was recently in Seoul, playing at Relay ("a series of collective perfomances of media art presented by SLOWALK"). He stormed out obtrusively mid-performance, apparently after becoming upset with the work of one of his improvisational collaborators. Dude was using samples or some shit—samples! What a fool. Point is JK takes this stuff seriously but has the goods and good taste to back it up. You can read his thoughtful survey of the Relay scene here. Coincidentally, this weekend is huge for Relay, which will be featuring Japanese noise superstars Otomo Yoshihide and Sachiko M. Come with boobs and a Sharpie.

"Sihl 4" is from 2005's Sihl, named after the river in Zürich. "Timelines 3" is from 2005's Timelines. Kahn's site has tons more free sounds.

At Home with the Groovebox

2006-04-28T05:15:00.002-05:00

Today I Started Celebrating Again (alt) / Will Oldham

Dude's cover of RK's "Ignition" is atrocious. And dude blew in the DJ tent at Intonation last summer, where he demonstrated nothing except the high irony quotient of his iPod library. But none of that means Oldham can't get down.

"Today I Started Celebrating Again" is the single moment of brilliance on an otherwise mediocre 1999 compilation that highlights the tricky magic of The Groovebox. A reference to Merle Haggard, gentle grooving pops, and "I am drinking again" are more than enough to start this party. Barring Jim Guthrie's "Who Needs What," I can't think of a song so quiet that makes me want to dance so bad. Think overweight and white; think a Bud in each hand; think John Travolta just barely moving on the dancefloor at Jack Rabbit Slim's. Think DANCING in the mirror.

I'm on vacation for a week. This is the celebration.

Dating Advice from the Smarter Sex

2006-04-23T23:58:00.002-05:00

The Worrying Way / The Fabulettes

Tip #103: Date a philanderer, and all the worrying you do will subtract pounds, especially from your hips. (Thanks to Naomi.)

Dicks Don't Grow On Trees / Robyn Archer

Tip #009: If you're attracted to penis, you should date a male animal. (Thanks to AQ.)

This second tune comes from the incredible 365 Days Project at Ubuweb and is jam-packed with astounding facts...

Fact: I know that you could root, root, root with a well-made Japanese substitute / But I realize you'd rather have the real thing / Woo! Give me that ping!

Fact: There ain't no cock trees, prick trees, or dick trees.

Fact: You'd be lucky if you get one dried-up old scrotum.

No Junk No Soul?

2006-04-21T23:48:00.004-05:00

MP3 My Favorite Things (live) / John Coltrane [31.7 MB]

Yesterday I went to a traditional shaman ceremony in northern Seoul. We saw the 75-year-old North Korean woman who started the shaman resurgence in Korea in the 1970s. We saw a possessed shaman in drag dance on a giant knife blade. We saw a woman who'd hired shamans for a private ritual get pelted with rice and beans. And we saw voodoo-like dolls being made to scare evil spirits away from the real bodies of children.

Those were the highlights. But the one thing you don't really notice until it's gone, the one thing that truly matters, is the music. Whenever the music stops, the sacred quality of the rituals dissipates almost entirely. Without the incessant rhythms and the simple melodies, the magic just isn't there. My favorite instrument was the "taepyongso," which sounds like a stunted oboe crossed with a recorder. That is, like the alto sax in free jazz. It's riffs sound like Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler even when they're entirely harmonious.

This version of "My Favorite Things" is from Coltrane's last live recording, from one of the two shows he played in Olatunji, Africa, in 1967. There's no alto here, but the song still reminds me of the taepyongso, if only because it's as primal as can be. In "Brian the Bachelor," a season four episode of Family Guy, Brian and Brooke bond over "early Coltrane, before he got clean." Brian comments, yeah, yeah, "no junk no soul." But that is bullshit. Listen to this song and tell me Coltrane has no soul at the end of his career in '67. Sanders and Coltrane both sound as if they're punishing their own enormous spirits—trapped deep inside their instruments—until they scream cries and are freed. Only for the briefest moments does any of this maniacal 34-minute trip resemble "My Favorite Things," and the only one who needs junk to take it is the listener. This is not for the faint of heart. This is for someone with a desert or two and not much else.

John Coltrane, soprano, tenor saxophone; Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Alice Coltrane, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Rashied Ali, drums; Algie Dewitt, bata drum; probably Jumma Santos, percussion

Also: Check out Armrest, a music blog that thoughtfully analyzes the way specific contemporary songs borrow from their ancestors.

The Stereotypical Furniture Mover

2006-04-20T17:42:00.001-05:00

Thin Blue Flame / Josh Ritter [2006]

I am seated at the DWM table with George Washington, Babe Ruth, Dean Moriarty, and Chris Farley. Only one of us is unreal; the rest are dead. There are pitchers of cold beer, shots of whiskey, and tobacco. Washington remarks that he got plastered only two days earlier.

Our hands are dealt by someone famous whom I don't recognize. He might be Greek or a writer. Either way, I see nothing good all night except once, full of spades. We drink and lose our money to the Babe. He reaches over to sweep in the pot, and his gut creases against the tabletop. Farley does a great impression.

I've never heard so much bullshit spoke in one night. Dean stands up occasionally, as if to leave, only to remember through the haze of alcohol that his car is in the shop. He smacks the dealer on the back each time, returns to his seat, and asks for a set of ladies. More material for Farley, for everyone.

By the time we finish our third bottle of Jack the laughing begins to slow. Soon we stop talking entirely. The music picks up, and the rest of the people in the bar are, for the first time, really there. The radio hangs above the mirror and the bottles. It should be "Desolation Row" but it isn't. We look over and notice a machine making special air next to the speakers. Air that makes it so you don't need tragedy for meaning.

This is heaven. They have that here.

They removed the front of my eyeballs and stitched them to my upper back

2006-04-18T20:24:00.004-05:00

Debaser (Pixies cover) / Feed

Covering a song like "Debaser" is a waste. Bands should cover "Emulsified" and "Why I Hated August 93." Bands should cover "Let's Talk About Spaceships" and "Federal Dust." Bands should borrow greatness only when they're playing live. Bands should leave those versions unreleased.

Bands should mutilate greatness so far it's turned inside-out, returning to somewhere neither of them have ever been before. Bands should undergo surgery for the good of the nation. (Bands should glue their brains to the ceilings of their skulls.) Bands should try to marry other bands by screaming "I love you I love you I love you," in other words.

Bands should do this, precisely. This is a terrible beauty. The first two minutes are a declaration of love. At 2:01, it sounds like "Karate Feelings" will start playing. Then two minutes more: Frank Black on bottom?

Don't Talk to Me About Gene Hackman

2006-04-15T04:57:00.002-05:00

Top 10 Songs Titles Since 1998

10. They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhhh! (Sufjan Stevens, 2005)

9. Get the Fuck Off My Cloud (Blood on the Wall, 2005)

8. Vikings Invade the Mediterranean But Don't Leave (Prefuse 73, 2002)

7. I'm Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You (Silver Jews, 2005)

6. If You Shoot the Head You Kill the Ghoul (Jeffrey Lewis, 2003)

5. Judy Is a Dick Slap (Belle & Sebastian, 2000)

4. Me and Jesus the Pimp in a '79 Granada Last Night (The Coup, 1998)

3. Halfway to a Threeway (Jim O'Rourke, 2000)

2. Fuck Yeah, That Wide (Local H, 2003)

1. Don't Talk to Me About Gene Hackman (Robyn Hitchcock, 1999)

Not a very diverse list, I realize. Whatever, maybe lame white boys are genetically predisposed toward being more interested in the names of their songs than the songs themselves. The winner is one of the two hidden tracks (has anyone done a full album of those yet?) from Jewels for Sophia. Except for The Coup track, it's also the best piece of music on the list. The audience laughter is annoying, and Hackman doesn't deserve to be a source of mockery (Robyn: You seen The Conversation??), but I like it when he calls a coke a "bottle of pop."

Sufjan Runner-Up: Year of the Asthmatic Cat

Mr Robot Yr On Fire Mr

2006-04-14T08:02:00.001-05:00

La Nuit / Robots in Disguise [2005]

It's kinda weird that when someone tells you disguised mod-squad femme-bots are coming to take over the universe, you probably think, "Yeah, like that's never been done before." Whatever, if Robots in Disguise can make more dance songs like this, they can be forgiven. Did they get their name from Tranformers? From that Fridge song? By combining The Robot Ate Me with "There's No Invisible Diguise"? It don't matter. Listening to "La Nuit" makes you feel like you just woke up in Gunther's Tra La La video, except all those hot chicks are French instead of German. Not the leader, of course—she's a British spy.

Thanks to Maggie.

I've Misplaced My Pants

2006-04-13T00:03:00.001-05:00

Hi / The Underwear Band

안녕 / 우리는 속옷도 생기고

Mexico Line High-Speed Train / TUB

멕시코행 고속열차 / 우리는 속옷도 생기고

Along with Bulssajo, these pantsless Korean post-rockers opened for Mono on Saturday, April 8th, in Seoul. The show was good times. The three guitarists remained seated, two facing the amps and away from the audience. The bassist is a girl; she stood in the middle doing her thing, as if the three guitar players were in competition for her hand. They wooed away, each in search of the largest dowry.

But the drummer and his mallets actually stole the show. When their go-to song, "Hi" (or "Annyeong," for AD fans), peaks and the spotlight turns upward on the audience, something is really happening. The sound and the light crest, eventually, but you are left with a feeling, and staring at the drummer. Try 6:32 in the studio version.

TUB disbanding on May 2nd, but they have a show this Saturday in Seoul with the psych-rock band, The Mustangs. One can only hope that, like the five elements that form Captain Planet, these two will unite to form The Musty Stanky Underwear Band.

Easy Questions for Easy Girls

2006-04-11T21:20:00.001-05:00

The Devil Is Beating His Wife / Pedro the Lion

Sure, the b-side isn't always better, but we do always want it to be. And if there's anything better than a good b-side, it's a good demo. Promise, potential, and obscurity are more beloved than all but the greatest of polished artifacts. These are things Shrigley (above) knows.

The song is a Pedro the Lion demo from 2005. DB#3 takes a southern expression (devil's beatin' his wife = it's raining while the sun is shining) and transforms it into one of his mini-sagas. The king of hell, maybe, is reimagined as a drunkard who hits on check-out girls and is... "Trying to focus his high hopes / On a vagina or two." Unpolished, but classy. Satan's all class.

Then again, "God isn't listening" either.

You Know I Hate Stupid Phones

2006-04-08T08:15:00.003-05:00

Hate songs are tough to write. They have the virtue of rarely being cheesy, but they just as rarely manage to capture hate in a way that allows them to endure as the most enduring love songs have. Here are seven that try.

Hate Song / Daniel Johnston

The directness of hate makes for great gags and great names. "You Know I Hate Stupid Phones" (Liars). "If You Hate Your Friends, You're Not Alone" (Pretty Girls Make Graves). "Whisper in My Ear and Tell Me You Hate Me" (Prefuse 73). "Prom Night at Hater High" (The Long Winters). "I Hate My Generation" (Sloan). "I Hate Your Fucking Guts" (The Queers). "I Hate Hate" (Cornelius). Viva Hate (Morrissey). I Hate You When You're Pregnant. These work because hate is funniest when it's at its most viciously blatant. See the David Shrigley drawing. Hear the Daniel Johnston song describe a lonely ex-lover who kills herself. It's funny in a pathetic, cruel way: "You'll be all alone... no one to talk you out of it... no one will be there to find you dead... 'cause you'll be all alone." Funny, but not his most rewarding song.

Miss Me / The Wrens

Hate makes for great sparks and flashes, as it makes for humor. But hate songs almost never last. NO ACCIDENT, perhaps, that the word "hate" is contained in the word "whatever": it's hard to care about a hate song for an extended period of time. This is strange because bad memories, those of death and of betrayal, tend to last much longer than good ones. Maybe these experiences don't translate into song as hate. Hate is instantaneous, not meant to last. Perhaps it can't, really. Of course, that's where rock and punk should be perfect: immediacy and directness. The hate itself might disappear, but with a push of a button a good song should be able to recall it. "Miss Me" (a simplistic but louder early version of the better-known "Boys, You Won't Remember") is my favorite Wrens song. One of the strangely few hate songs with enough energy to pump you up and down at the same time, every time.

No Children / The Mountain Goats

Yet "Miss Me" still lacks the depth of a good love song. It's fine for transforming anger into mobile energy, for a pissed-off ride through the suburbs; but to get at something more we have to pull out the big guns. Guns that will last, that will not be eased from a loosening grip. We know where to look for the knockout:

In my life, I hope I lie,
and tell everyone you were a good wife.
And I hope you die,
I hope we both die.

Johnny B. Good-->Road Runner / The Sex Pistols

"No Children" is an ending, but it's not the ending. The first three songs were about hating someone: a person, a girl, someone you used to love or still do to no avail. More or less successful attempts at building on Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hate. But hate comes in another form as well, a more general one. You can hate a group of people, a scene, music itself, and so on. As it gets more general, spiraling out ad infinitum, hate also becomes more complex. Less focused and less sharp, but more deadly. The sarcasm doesn't emerge quite so readily, and thus is transformed into something even more bitter. The Jesus & Mary Chain song "I Hate Rock 'n Roll" is a good example; this Sex Pistols covers-medley is a better one.

Old New York / Silver Jews

At its most general, hate consumes everything. This nihilistic version of hate can be baffling. Why bother? What is really being said? "No Children" is a classic, but it's completely decipherable. "Old New York," an old Jews tune from 1993's The Silver Jews and Nico, in contrast, is totally bewildering. It devours a scene, certainly, and an entire city. But Berman and Malkmus seem so revolted with the people, objects, and activities they mention, so revolted by their own wryness, that absolutely everything seems to burn, slowly.

Trickle Down / Mercury Rev

This burning can smolder, or it can provide space for something new. The Jews song just dies; the bar is bombed and nothing grows there ever again. "Trickle Down" is also from 1993, and the vocals sound eerily similar. (Is there something universal in hate? An atom of anti-love?) Hates on Reagan, ironically on minorities, and definitely on life. But it's even more lost and confused than "Old New York," even more bizarrely diffuse, especially for being so ostensibly topical. Yet, unlike the other hate songs, from out of this confusion it moves (slowly) forward both musically and linguistically: "You think / You think / You think too much / I think / I think you think too much." This song succeeds in being both hateful and great. Unfortunately, the attempted rebirth is only partial. No one involved with Mercury Rev would produce anything as great as Boces ever again. On "Trickle Down" you get a sense of the core of hate and the interpersonal conflicts that led the band to dissolve around itself; that led it to emerge as a new-agey Flaming Lips spawn with its center, its heart of both light and darkness—David Baker—completely excised. And as any good dualist will point out, hate it or love it, without the hate there's no real love either.

Revved Up (ft Nina Gordon of Veruca Salt) / Triple Fast Action

In the interest of not ending with pseudo-philosphical bullshitting, here's a full-circle palette-cleanser of sorts. Rev-erence for general hate, like "Trickle Down," but with the straightforwardness of Johnston's "Hate Song." The high-pitched "hate you... hate you... hate you... hate you..." at the end is one of my favorite moments of mid-'90s alternative rock, that acme of music history.

Where was it one first heard of the truth? Té te'.

2006-04-05T23:45:00.001-05:00

It must be called "Intelligence" if people stop when they realize they are not able to become what they are wishing to be. / te' [2006]

Break the "heart" to what is actually being told instead of asking who said that. / te' [2006]

The name: Way cooler the way it's written on their website, on their tour poster to the left, and in the articles written about them than the way it's written on the cover of their "deview" LP: te' is infinitely better than té. The diacritic mark, whether accent or apostrophe, is definitely supposed to be falling off the edge of the "e" into oblivion. Or truth. Or something. Either way, it recalls "teh," which can't be a bad thing.

The album title: Take a breath... If that is what is being thought, liberated sound talks the depths of "musical" world.

The song titles: Take that, Sufjan Stevens.

The sound: Japanese post-rock that kicks eth shit out of Mono's latest release. On the U.S. version, which just came out in March, the album opens with the strongest track. Originally released as a single in 2004, "It must be called 'Intelligence'..." quickly reached #1 on the Disk Union charts in Japan.

Listening to this song makes me think of The Shins, but only because it sounds absolutely nothing like them. The one time I saw The Shins play, they ran through maybe 15 songs before finally reaching full steam. And then het concert was over. They'd finally reached the point where the experience was something worthwhile, and they just stopped. This is not a lack-of-badassness-critique. Not even Natalie Portman expects Te Shins to be badass. But there's no reason they shouldn't play with some heat and maybe even, god forbid, rock out or something.

In contrast, "It must be called 'Intelligence'..." starts off as if te' has been playing for three hours already and is finally reaching a true climax. And that's just the first fifteen seconds. Admittedly, the entire album doesn't sustain that type of energy and is replete with the expected quiet build-ups and lulls; still, hte double lead guitars and pounding drums are never just going through the motions. Even for non-post-rock fans, te''s (yes!) young blood noticeably invigorates the standard tropes of the genre.

The closing track: A bonus only available on the U.S. version, "Break the 'heart'..." adds a number of sounds (including steel guitar?), to nice effect and gives a glimpse of the band moving forward. Maybe the apostrophe will be one space over next time around.

Related: If you haven't, read the article in which Simon Reynolds coined the term "post-rock." It discusses a variety of tensions (studio vs. performance, democracy vs. elitism, brain vs. heart, Eno vs. rednecks) in unexpected Reynoldsian ways. The the.

Jeff Tweedy Live at Mandel Hall, Chicago: 2006-02-25

2006-04-03T13:58:00.008-05:00

This is going out onto the internets...

Download the full concert: All 21 Tracks [93 MB]

Download a song: Remember the Mountain Bed

Above is a zip file of the entire Jeff Tweedy show I mentioned last week. Below is the setlist and links to more live stuff. This one took place in Mandel Hall, which Jeffs called "like the best sounding room I've ever been in." And it does sound good, as if it happened outside on a day when the entire planet was indoors. In a good way.

Jeff Tweedy live links
-at The Abbey, Chicago, 2002-06-10 (full concert)
-at The Vic, Chicago, 2003-01 (three highlights)
-at Mandel Hall, Chicago, 2006-02-25 (full concert)

This Setlist
Jeff Tweedy
2006-02-25
Mandel Hall, University of Chicago
Chicago, IL

1. Sunken Treasure
2. (Was I) In Your Dreams
3. Remember The Mountain Bed
4. Muzzle Of Bees
5. One By One
6. Bob Dylan's 49th Beard
7. I'm Always In Love
8. Spiders (Kidsmoke)
9. The Ruling Class
10. Theologians
11. A Shot In The Arm

Encore 1:
12. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
13. Forget The Flowers
14. Please Tell My Brother
15. I'm The Man Who Loves You

Encore 2:
16. In A Future Age (with Nels on dobro)
17. Dash 7 (with Nels on dobro)
18. When The Roses Bloom Again (with Nels on lap steel)
19. Airline To Heaven (with Nels on lap steel)
20. Walk On (with Nels on dobro)
21. Acuff-Rose (performed at edge of stage, without PA system)

More Intensity

2006-04-02T20:08:00.002-05:00

Stara Planina / Ruins [1998]

The song title is Bulgarian and means "Old Mountain," referring to the Balkan range. The insane pace, bass, and drums seem to foreshadow vocals from a hyper 12-year-old girl, but instead we get Tatsuya Yoshida straining to make his voice as deep as the sea. The Ruins have trekked from Japan to perform a ceremony.

Dust is the Missing Variable

2006-04-01T01:24:00.001-06:00

Some Hot Lazy Day / Obadia [2005]

I have no recollection of obtaining this song. If I were ever to pull a Rob Fleming/Rob Gordon and organize my music autobiographically, this would go in the unknown section at the back.

I was going to write "this would go in the unknown section at the back, alongside [clever band X] and [clever band Y]," but it's surprisingly difficult to think of a band or an album that you don't associate with some memory: a person, a room, a show, a meal, a holiday, a record store, a magazine, an advertisement... something. If you don't believe how hard it is to find an indecipherable, just glance through your own music in search of one. Lame or significant, something personal is associated with almost every song. Almost. There are always a few that manage to elude the memory.

Of course, the stuff that is lumped together at the back is usually the junk that you don't really care for. The Aristotle story is an exception. The librarian at Alexandria placed Aristotle's books on a shelf, with one coming at the end after the collection entitled Physics. The librarian had trouble understanding what this last book meant, so he (or she) decided to name it Metaphysics or "After Physics." It's probably a mistake to compare iTunes libraries to collections of ancient Greek texts, but the songs at the back, the autobiographical unknowns, do tend to be some of the most mind-blowing exceptions.

Yet, as much as it is meta-anything, "Some Hot Lazy Day" is also proto-something. Organic experimentalism. Electronic naturalism. Folktronica. Whatever you call it, it sounds like an earlier version. And it is. Recorded between 1998 and 2003, Obadia's free-to-download Where Does Dust Come From, with its hanging preposition, is both a question and an answer, before and after. It's free from associations and free to make new ones, both beyond the natural world and the source of it: both skin and fabric.

Living Things Living in the Subways

2006-03-28T21:22:00.003-06:00

비단사슴 / 3rd Line Butterfly [2000]

View of the Rain / Urge Overkill [1995]

3rd line butterfly | Butterfly of Line 3 | Line #3 Butterfly

In the future: every band is born on a screen.

Every band emerges from its cocoon to be replaced by tiny costume players. From atop a small translucent table, these men and women mime the motions while the real musicians are kept underneath where they are strongly encouraged to build albumsworth of material to be showcased over the course of the drama's life. If you watch from far away, you're not sure which men and women are onstage. You're not sure whether you're at a filming or a performance. When you try to focus on the individuals, they transform into people you know, but just barely: distant cousins and former two-doors-over neighbors, coughing shopkeepers and kids you only recognize from speed-walking practice.

But first, before they were born, the band sits in a tiny apartment and records something of its own: Self-Titled Obsession. Before they end up projecting themselves through what will be praised as the best-written Korean television drama of 2002, Ruler of Your Own World, before they sometimes forget what their own faces look like, they write thirteen songs for no special reason. Most of them approach Blonde Redhead, but in the ninth track is hidden a song that sounds like The Magic Numbers covering the chorus of "View of the Rain" by Urge Overkill—also a ninth track. Magic number nine, number nine, number nine.

In English, it's called "Merely the Deer." In the future: that it is there.

ATTN Musicians: Sample These Clips!

2006-03-26T10:48:00.003-06:00

The Rhythm Method / TOEFL Listening

Hobbies / TOEFL Listening

Let me briefly explain how TOEFL Listening classes work at most hagwons in Korea: The teacher stands in front of a group of 10 to 15 Korean middle schoolers or high schoolers with a small boombox, a tape, and a book. He or she plays a recorded lecture from the tape while the kids fill in blanks in their workbooks. This is difficult for the students, so the teacher will often rewind and replay short pieces of the lecture. The primary skill required of the teacher, then, is an ability to maneuver a tape deck expertly. Basically, you end up playing tiny portions over and over, as many as five or six times, spaced only by the sound of an old tape rewinding. This part is fun because it sounds like a glitch-hop song, like the teacher should be simultaneously beatboxing and manning the decks.

But TOEFL Listening class really gets interesting when the content of the academic lecture is something special itself. Sometimes you learn that crows are smarter than chimpanzees. Sometimes you are provided with a thorough answer to the age-old question "What is a sneeze?" My absolute favorite lecture, however, is entitled "The Rhythm Method of Birth Control." When I play this one for my 11-year-old students, the number of questions they ask is simply inspiring. It's particularly fun to navigate the rocky moral terrain of not really describing intercourse while making it clear that the rhythm method is not effective—but still more effective than the pull-out method.

The highlight from "The Rhythm Method of Birth Control" occurs at 41 seconds in when the female lecturer announces, "The method's main flaw lies in the menstrual cycle itself."

The second clip is of a TOEFL conversation in which a man is asking a boy and a girl about their hobbies. The highlight occurs at 16 seconds in when the man does his very best impression of a sexual predator and says, "That's interesting... How many car models do you have?"

Japanther Dash

2006-03-24T23:31:00.004-06:00

I-94 / Radio Birdman [1978]

I-10 / Japanther [2005]

Driving in Seoul takes place in a Hobbesian state of nature. Rules such as stop lights and road signs are optional at best. Sedans and SUVs alike park on the sidewalks of major boulevards. Motorbikes abound, coughing and speeding around every corner, delivering packages and steel boxes of takeout. I look forward to the U.S. and its grid of thruways and interstates. To its room.

Eskimo Pies comin' to you aha yeah
Eskimo Pies comin' to you
Yeah burning to you straight from hell

Headphone Children Are Underground Goblins

2006-03-24T00:38:00.001-06:00

コバルトブル (Cobalt Blue) / The Back Horn [2005]

The color name "cobalt blue" comes from Middle High German. The word kobolt meant "an underground goblin."
Source: Pigments Through the Ages

The name "The Back Horn" comes from modern English via Japan. It means a group of hard rocks; one wears a silvermoon tracksuit.
Source: a goblin

All-American Bullet-Headed Saxon Mother's Son

2006-03-22T05:17:00.001-06:00

GT 400 / Thee Michelle Gun Elephant

I've been listening to Thee Michelle Gun Elephant off and on over the past couple months, trying to decipher some hidden Beatles code, on the mistaken assumption that their band name is a reference to two fab four songs ("Michelle" (no-duh) and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill"). Turns out it's just a combination of Thee Headcoats and an inside joke about their bassist's mispronunciation of The Damned's Machine Gun Etiquette EP. Anyway, they probably owe a lot more to the fey four and Iggy Pop, so there goes my theory.

TMGE (or so i imagine those in-the-know call them) had a pretty good run, '91-'03. Although they were pretty big in Japan, they never successfully crossed the pond, and now their imports cost like 40 bucks. Bollocks. This one's a single from 2000, a point at which those in-the-know would probably say they'd sold out. To the man.

The Flying Dutchman Quick Quick Show

2006-03-21T04:05:00.003-06:00

MP3 Een Nagemaakte Gek / Spinvis [2002]

I'm kinda all up on Spinvis's nuts, but I ain't care. The Dutch genius Erik de Jong released 2005's best album, Dagen van Gras, Dagen van Stro, and he didn't get all the love he deserves.

Now the past is the past, and Spinvis is back to work. The latest, JA!, is a collaboration with Vinkenoog. It reminds me a little of 2002's dramatic project Nog Meer Apen!!! from which the above track is taken. But JA! is much more experimental, in a very European way. Think Kraftwerk collaborating on an operreta with the first free-thinking Dutch robot.

You can listen to the interesting-if-not-exactly-lovable new release in its entirety here. Tracks...

01 JA!
02 The Flying Dutchman
03 Gnomendans
04 Louis Lehman Suite
05 Goddank Het Licht/Quick Quick Show
06 Talatta (uit Het Sienjaal)
07 Lieverd

Eye of Thundera

2006-03-19T19:11:00.002-06:00

Full Cup / Japanther

Once upon a time there was a panther who loved the island nation of Japan. And Japan, she loved the panther. Unfortunately, though, the girl's father disapproved: no daughter of his was marrying a damn panther, Mr. Japan said. Well, long story short, the panther finally got a semi-respectable job at his uncle's real estate firm, Mr. Japan acquiesced, and the two young lovers did get married. And, a few years later, after many tender nights together in the jungles of pantherland, a litter of little baby Japanthers was born. Being the genetic coupling of a large predatory mammal and a volcanic island chain, these creatures were of course horribly deformed, pink and knobby, and proof of god's terrible cruelty. Today we call them the Cooper Mini, and god still hates them.

As far as cosmogonies go, this one seems fairly reasonable, given that the actual Japanther has absolutely nothing to do with either Japan or (as far as I can tell) panthers. But the kids like their portmanteaus...and who can blame them? Plus I almost sharted my pants when Jeremy told me the title of Japanther's 2003 EP: Dump the Body in Rikki Lake. Wordplay aside, they're kind of hard to put your finger on. Sort of lo-fi, sort of post-post-something...they describe themselves as "bedroom pop blast," which I guess is as good a description as any. "Full Cup," today's song, is off their most recent release, Wolfenswan. A great track, if a bit annoyingly lo-lo-fi.

Keigo Oyamada is Cornelius

2006-03-19T04:04:00.002-06:00

This past week (March 13-18) was dedicated to the pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, better known as Cornelius. In 1989, Keigo and his friend Ozawa Kenji formed Flipper's Guitar, whose stylings have influenced virtually every subsequent Japanese indie-pop band. In 1991, Keigo dissolved the group and began releasing solo albums with a more electronic cut-and-paste bent. There are five segments in this series, featuring a total of 14 tracks.

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3
Click here for Part 4
Click here for Part 5

Want more? If you're interested in the Shibuya-kei scene, particularly in relation to Flipper's Guitar, I highly recommend checking out the thorough six-part article dedicated to the topic at Néomarxisme.

Click here for Part 1
Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3
Click here for Part 4
Click here for Part 5
Click here for Part 6

Hello! My Name Is Cornelius the Fifth

2006-03-17T23:30:00.002-06:00

This is the fifth segment in a five-part series on the Japanese pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, of Flipper's Guitar and Cornelius. For the last post in this series, here are two tracks that reveal the fluency of Keigo's evolution.

Dolphin Song / Flipper's Guitar [1991]

Hello! I am the Japanese Brian Wilson...

The Micro Disneycal World Tour / Cornelius [1997]

...And this is my associate Cornelius. This is what my genes have become.

Hello! My Name Is Cornelius the Fourth

2006-03-16T23:29:00.004-06:00

This is the fourth segment in a five-part series on the Japanese pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, of Flipper's Guitar and Cornelius. Here are the three best covers of Flipper's Guitar songs.

Cool Spy on a Hot Car (cover) / Spaghetti Vabune!

Despite their exclamatory name, Spaghetti Vabune! treat "Cool Spy on a Hot Car" with such delicacy the song almost disappears. Gentleness is not always a virtue, but it works in this instance: a complete reinvention of the clamorous, off-kilter original makes for the single best FG tribute.

Hello! (cover) / Twinkle Jack

Playing up the Lost in Translation humor inherent in "Hello," Twinkle Jack does a good job presenting a faithful rendition of the original without making the task entirely pointless.

Wild Wild Summer (cover) / Hazel Nut Chocolate

A group of kids have been listening exclusively to "Wild Wild Summer" for the past three years while planning a party. Now it's the day of the blowout and they are so excited they start early, at 7:30 instead of 8 PM. They start all at once, all together; when that girl in the background shrieks at exactly seven seconds into the song, they know it has begun. They know that even if all that came of them was that split second of insane joy, the days of preparing and buying colored hats have been more than worth it.

Hello! My Name Is Cornelius the Third

2006-03-15T23:10:00.005-06:00

This is the third part in a five-part series on the Japanese pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, of Flipper's Guitar and Cornelius. Here are three Pastels-related Keigo tracks.

Goodbye, Our Pastels Badges / Flipper's Guitar [1989]

The UK anorak scene exerted a disproportionately enormous force on the Japanese underground during the late '80s and early '90s. This song, my favorite by FG, lists a number of key influences—badges that Keigo, despite the title, would never completely outgrow. (P.S. What's the relation between remix and cover?)

Clash (Pastels remix) / Cornelius [1999]

The Pastels all up on Keigo.

Windy Hill (Cornelius remix) / The Pastels [1999]

The best track off of both Cornelius FM and Illuminati.

Hello! My Name Is Cornelius the Second

2006-03-15T00:00:00.002-06:00

This is the second segment in a five-part series on the Japanese pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, of Flipper's Guitar and Cornelius. Here are three tracks, one from each Cornelius LP.

Moon Walk / Cornelius [1995]

“Moon Walk”—one of the few Cornelius songs that actually calls Beck to mind—stomps the fine line between “Novacane” (or “High 5”) and Party Fun Action Committee’s rap-rock parody “Watchu Know Now.” This isn’t Michael Jackson’s magic Billie Jean move. This is an obsessed Michael Jackson fan celebrating his hero’s acquittal by throwing on some actual moon boots and rocking the fuck out.

Chapter 8: Seashore + Horizon / Cornelius [1997] (highly recommended)

Let’s get one thing straight: Shibuya-kei is not a subtle art, and Keigo is not a man of subtlety. He mixes and matches with the flair of someone making a collage using one of those giant purple glue sticks. He brings out the “paste” in the Pastels and leaves thick streaks of color all across his work. And in “Chapter 8” he displays his seams with even more pride than usual. One-half Olivia Tremor Control and one-half lullaby, “Chapter 8” is ostensibly a cycle alternating between the the A-side and the B-side of a tape. The transitions are marked with the sound of a tape deck actually flipping sides. Blatant, but perfectly fitting. Like a giant puzzle with four enormous pieces.

Bird Watching at Inner Forest / Cornelius [2002]

Keigo’s titles tend to be precisely descriptive. “Moon Walk” sounds like one. “Chapter 8: Seashore + Horizon” is literally two different pieces. And “Bird Watching at Inner Forest” highlights a sample of real birds really chirping. This obviousness, while frustrating at times, makes obvious sense at about one minute and twenty-two seconds into “Bird Watching” when the song picks up speed and the chirps are left to fill in only the tiniest gaps in sound.

Hello! My Name is Cornelius the First

2006-03-13T12:20:00.002-06:00

This is the first segment in a five-part series on the Japanese pop-experimentalist Keigo Oyamada, of Flipper's Guitar and Cornelius. Here are three songs, one from each FG LP.

Hello! / Flipper's Guitar [1989]

So innocent it makes Kimya Dawson sound like a demented perv.

Wild Wild Summer / Flipper's Guitar [1990]

I love that he thought the best way to introduce this hyperspeed-powerpop was with a raucous "1-2-3-4!" screamed at the top of some white guy's lungs.

Groove Tube / Flipper's Tube [1991]

Never been in a groove tube but fairly certain it sounds like this.

I'm Singing To You Ayatollah Khomeini

2006-03-11T01:34:00.003-06:00

Ayatollah Khomeini / Unknown Eskimo DJ

One day, John "Mr. Plunderphonics" Oswald gave a nice present to Station Manager Ken at WFMU: a tape from the early '80s of an unknown Eskimo janitor and his friends commandeering DJ responsibilities at a radio station in northern Canada. The station's other employees were on strike at the time.

On this tape, titled She Be She Strike, the janitor/DJ speaks in Inuit (er, Inuktitut), sings a bit, plays a few tunes and commercials, and even translates some of the songs line for line. The first track begins with him giving a few shout outs and ends with him singing to Ayatollah Khomeini. Listening to it is like finding a priceless toy in a box of cereal that was supposed to be prizeless.

Many people have written about this tape. You can read the original posts and listen to more here and here and here. Thanks WMFU, you're the best!

A Very Decent Proposal: Jeff Tweedy 2003-01

2006-03-09T22:42:00.011-06:00

MP3 Millionaire / Jeff Tweedy [2003-01-06 in Chicago]

MP3 Not for the Season / Jeff Tweedy [2003-01-08 in Chicago]

MP3 Dear Employer / Jeff Tweedy [2003-01-09 in Chicago]

On February 25, 2006, Jeff Tweedy played a solo show about four blocks from my mom's apartment in Chicago. The venue, Mandel Hall, is where my school held the Martin Luther King Day assembly every year. It's where I pretended to play the flute during band concerts. It's where my middle school graduation was held. It's where I saw my first show (A Tribe Called Quest).

I've seen both Wilco and Tweedy play a number of times in Chicago, but this would've been different. I wish I could've experienced this thick pile of memories. Plus, the show itself was incredible; according to Tweedy, "[Mandel Hall] is like the best sounding room I've ever been in." You can listen to the entire concert here, or you can download the entire concert here.

In honor of missing things, here are three of my favorite solo Tweedy recordings. A quiet rendition of "Not for the Season." A version of "Dear Employer" with a short utopian rant at the end. And the real treat, "Millionaire." It's a quiet, unreleased bit. It's by the other Jeffrey Tweedy. The millionaire. And it features the best use of enjambment in altcountryrock history: "I wish I could fuck you like he thinks he does / Before he falls asleep // But I've never been that tired."

Jeff Tweedy live links
-at The Abbey, Chicago, 2002-06-10 (full concert)
-at The Vic, Chicago, 2003-01 (three highlights)
-at Mandel Hall, Chicago, 2006-02-25 (full concert)

Millionaire
by Jeff Tweedy

Wish I could fuck you like he thinks he does
Before he falls asleep
But I've never been that tired
I wish I could move you like a millionaire

I wish I could move you like a millionaire
However I please
I'd make you scream teen recipes
I wish I could move you like a millionaire

Remember how you made me a poet
Down on my knees
You spray-painted my shoes pink
And you filled up all my notebooks
And you made me stink

Wish I could fuck you like he thinks he does
Before he falls asleep
But I've never been that tired
I've never been too tired
I've never been too tired to believe

Lucky Bugs Win Prizes

2006-03-08T20:36:00.001-06:00

Lucky Bugs Win Prizes / Hassle Hound

White Roads / Hassle Hound

Along with the Magnetic Fields and Blanket Music, Hassle Hound is one one of those bands that can be enjoyed on car rides with your children when you have them. "Lucky Bugs" is especially crafted for repeated listens on sunlit afternoons in the woods, afternoons with a leather hip-flask carrying liquid brewed in the basement of Redwall Abbey I can't stop drinking.

The other song is the same as "Hushed Noon Drinking" (from 2004's Appalachian Listening Post) except for the addition of a female vocal sample that sounds like something pitched-up from a Mi and L'au track. This transformation is just understated enough not to ruin a good thing. Almost always, Hassle Hound is best when they remain grounded, when they keep their samples organic and simple, when they hit the Books rather than the Avalanches. And that's what they do on most of Limelight Cordial, which comes out March 20th. Get it here.

Skip Class, Fuck All Day

2006-03-07T21:23:00.001-06:00

All Points North / Beulah [2000]

B-eulah's B-est B-side.

Song?

Internet problems mean the tracks for the next few days might be old ones, ones that already happen to be available to the wires.

Mention it in general to the moon

2006-03-07T01:25:00.001-06:00

KW Jesus TV Roof Appeal / Baby Bird

Hi! Yer listening to the "Nervous Ass-and-Cheek Cola Show." The name's Dave Christ, the brother that Jesus forgot. I want you to put your hands in your pants, feel around, smile a little bit, bring out something shiny, put it in an envelope, and send it to me at KW Jesus TV, and we'll get this roof back on my house... Damn!... Shit!... I'm the church!

You're Gorgeous / Baby Bird

Y-O-U-R-E-G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S

Rumor is there's a new album on the way from Baby Bird-meister Stephen Jones. Not sure if that's a good thing. Between 1995 and 2002, Baby Bird released no less than 7 albums, 3 compilations, and 9 singles. Sorting through this excess of bizarre and mostly lo-fi material is something of a chore. If you're not already on friendly terms with Baby Bird, these two tracks embody the best of his experimental and poppy extremes, respectively. See also "Blow It to the Moon," "45 & Fat," "Aluminium Beach," the Nirvana-homage "Not About a Girl," the U2-parody "Candy Girl," and the 2000 single "F-Word."

Further Advantages

2006-03-05T21:20:00.002-06:00

Hello Mate! / advantage Lucy [1998]

Anderson / advantage Lucy [2005]

I posted on this group a few days ago, but there are two more songs that need listening.

In particular, the first four seconds of "Hello Mate!" deserve attention. It's the perfect intro—just a simple baseline that I'm sure has been used before, but it creates so much anticipation, is so confident, so sure that what follows will be fun, that it should be required study material for indie-pop songwriters from now until the end of time.

Fortunately, that's not all this Lucy's got going on. Like most of the band's 10-year catalogue, "Hello Mate!" and the latest single, "Anderson," are sprinkled with horns, breaks, and sound changes in all the right spots. Just when you begin to wonder how a song will keep you interested for another full minute, they switch things up. "Get out of my head!" you scream. But they're already far away by then.

Also: Many thanks to Colin's friend Jon Rubin who wrote about WPNOB last week at his ubiquit.us blog, which thoughtfully analyzes everything from shitty music sites to politics to quantum telecloning. Quantum telecloning, now there's something even William Shatner can get behind.

aL's AMG Bio.

White Album v. Abbey Road, Round 3

2006-03-04T20:57:00.003-06:00

This is the third portion of a three-part debate.

Click here for Round 1
Click here for Round 2
Click here for Round 3

Concluding Remarks: White Album

Colin: Some differences are irreconcilable, and unfortunately this seems to be one of them. I mean, I respect that. If that-thir’ Holy Bahble says’un tha earth’s not but a couple a’ hunnerd years old, then who’re all ‘em fancy college-boy scieeyntists to be blasphemin’ th’ good Lord?

A brief response: to claim that the White Album has no cohesion whatsoever is foolish. This is not a mixtape…this is a band recording a number of songs during a definite period of time, and so all the songs naturally bear a great deal in common. No song on the White Album bears any great resemblance to any song on Please Please Me, for example (from which I would certainly choose both “Twist and Shout” and “I Saw Her Standing There” for this hypothetical mix-CD you speak of), yet most of the songs on the White Album share common themes and preoccupations. Note, for example, the wealth of references to guns, animals and violence in the lyrics…again, a list of which I will gladly provide should you wish to face your mistake. They certainly didn’t fixate on this aspect of the music, because they were focused on writing good songs. You seem intent on faulting the Beatles for any type of diversity in their songwriting.

My main point stands: the quality of the songs on an album determines the quality of the album. This seems to me like such a ridiculously obvious tautology that there’s really little left for me to say. Your only remaining argument, then, is that the songs on Abbey Road are better than those on the White Album, which to me seems almost as ridiculous. By your own admission, the White Album contains the greatest song of all time. And I will go pound-for-pound with you, matching any song on Abbey Road with a better one on the White Album. You claim that three bad songs (“Goodnight,” by the way, is not a bad song, I’ll only concede “Honey Pie”) somehow negate twenty-seven good or amazing songs? Well then, throw out every good album ever recorded. Your beloved Blonde On Blonde? Oh, whoops, “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat.”** Baby out with the bathwater. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust? Pretty much blew the world’s collective mind…meets your high standards of cohesion…no, wait: “Hang On To Yourself.” If I could just disregard that one song, the album would be amazing…but no. Can’t do it. Ziggy sucks, I guess. And Janine D’agati is so hot…except for that one mole on her lower left…OK. Sorry. That’s below the belt.

The mole, I mean.* Not my conduct.

*AUTH. Doug D’agati is now entitled to one free “Sarah Bennett” comment of the worst nature imaginable. That one deserves it. He should nevertheless bow down before the supremacy of my Beatles argument.

**ED. Wha what??

Concluding Remarks: Abbey Road

Doug: I’d expect an outburst about my younger sister from Adam, and perhaps even Luis after a few shots of rum. But never from such an upstanding gentleman as Colin. Then I realized I couldn’t really blame him. To do so would be like blaming a small rodent—trapped in the corner of a cage and being poked with a sharp stick—for trying to claw out my eyes in one last desperate attempt at survival. I would probably do the same in his position. Thankfully, I’m the one with the sharp stick.

Colin, I am very familiar with the story behind “Her Majesty.” But I could care less if Ashley Simpson put the track at the album’s end. It works. I love it, and you love it. Now, the White Album is a great album, arguably one of the best of all time. But Abbey Road is better. Far better. the White Album, admittedly full of great songs, is also full of not-so-great songs. I count at least 7 (and I’m being quite fair, as I think “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” and “Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” are atrocious, but nonetheless will concede due to irreconcilable differences). Also, many songs that pass as decent surely cannot pierce the shining armor of Abbey Road. Let’s be serious, do you really believe “Yer Blues,” “Savoy Truffle,” “I Will,” and “Glass Onion” are among the Beatles’ good songs? If so, I’m fine with your admitting that. Now let’s consider Abbey Road. There is at most one BAD song—“Because”—and that’s debatable. Then there is one mediocre song: “Sun King.” Unfortunately, this is not debatable. It’s very mediocre. However, every other song would qualify as great, particularly if Colin considers a whopping 19 songs on the White Album “absolutely phenomenal” and only 3 songs “so-so.”

Much can be said for experimentation. Experimentation is interesting, unique, and by its very nature, new. There is no doubt that without their successes and failures on the White Album, the Beatles could not have produced Abbey Road. The Beatles took what they learned from the White Album (and others) and produced their final masterpiece, Abbey Road, which solidified their position as the best band that ever lived. But, experimentation is not always great. It may be necessary, it may be interesting, but it is not always great. Take, for instance, Crystal Pepsi, a beverage that I’m sure my opponent liked.

Colin, go listen to the White Album while enjoying a refreshing glass of Crystal Pepsi. I’ll be sipping Chardonnay* while listening to Abbey Road.

*AUTH. This writer would like to note that he cannot afford Chardonnay, and will instead content himself to shotgun multiple cans of Milwaukee’s Best. But you get the point.

White Album v. Abbey Road, Round 2

2006-03-03T20:34:00.003-06:00

This is the second portion of a three-part debate.

Click here for Round 1
Click here for Round 2
Click here for Round 3

Rebuttal: Abbey Road

Doug: Number9. Number9. Number9. Number9. Number9. Number9. Number9. Number9.

Pretty annoying, isn’t it? No? It’s just “genre-warping,” you say? Well then, please allow me to continue:

Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. Number 9.

Okay, that’s what I thought. Perhaps “genre-warping” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. While I can stop this nonsense, you’d have to endure another 8 minutes if you were to listen to Colin’s beloved album. And, lest we forget, those excruciating 8 minutes are followed by the Beatles’ second-worst creation (I hesitate to use the word “song”): “Good Night.” Game. Set. Match.

I thought I’d be generous; I thought I’d be compassionate; I thought I’d make this contest interesting and give Colin a fighting chance by excluding Disc 2 from our little debate—if you can even call it that. But no, Colin got greedy—and now I’m going to make him pay for it, in blood. He says Disc 1 of the White Album is better than Abbey Road. Admittedly that’s a tough pill to swallow, but I can do it with a strong chaser. But to have the audacity to state that the entire White Album is superior to Abbey Road, well that’s like taking a shit in a cup of Dubra, swishing it around in your mouth as if it were a fine wine, and then spitting it out just to get the flavor. Or, if you will, like swallowing a slice of “Honey Pie.”

Still, when I first read Colin’s argument, my reaction wasn’t anger; it wasn’t sorrow; it wasn’t even disbelief. It was pity. In fact, I prayed for the poor soul.

The good news is Colin can still be saved, but the path to redemption is long, rocky, and barren. Further, it requires him to embrace every single word I write as if it were a divine proclamation. Except for this one: bogart. I just like the word. It’s a funny word. Okay, now let’s begin.*

Colin—in his futile attempt to reason with me—stated that “Happiness is a Warm Gun” was enough to propel the White Album far above Abbey Road. To be sure, I’m sexually attracted to the brilliant Lenon track. It’s the greatest song ever recorded. Unfortunately, being an abstract entity, it lacks the proper organs necessary for me to express my love. Score one for Colin—he’ll need it. But, if one song is enough to elevate the White Album, surely the two most heinously awful Beatles songs hold equal weight? At best, they negate “Happiness.” At worst, they completely eliminate the album from contention. True, Colin, God may be on your soccer team, but you also have that overweight, pale kid with the hiked-up shorts, thick glasses, and acne-scarred face playing goal. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

After all, it is Abbey Road—not the White Album—that allowed each Beatle to shine. It includes George’s two best songs, “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun,” as well as Ringo’s hit “Octopus’s Garden,” which is far more interesting than “Don’t Pass Me By.” And let’s not neglect Paul’s very best song, “You Never Give Me Your Money”—or John and Paul’s final medley, which is the greatest stretch of songs ever recorded in pop history. While John’s best may appear on the White Album, so do some of his worst. Perhaps this is my point. The White Album is a great album. But when the fantastic four missed, they missed badly (something apparent on Disc 1, but even more so on Disc 2).

I’d like to conclude by examining Colin’s laughable premise that individual songs are more important than a cohesive album. Colin, let me pose a question to you: if you could vomit all of your favorite Beatles songs onto a CD, would your soggy, multi-colored chunks of songs be better than Abbey Road, or, if you must, the White Album? Of course not. To do so would destroy all continuity, theme, and emotion. That’s why even you—in your obsessive song worship—never listen to a “greatest hits” album. And before we get too carried away, let’s keep in mind that the White Album is far from a collection of greatest hits. If anything, it is a collection of greatest hits AND MISSES.

*ED. “Don’t bogart the can… man.”

Rebuttal: White Album

Colin: Fine…let’s just assume, for the sake of argument, that there is some sort of overriding value to the “meta-structure” of the album—that is, the relationships between songs. I suppose I could just use the term “structure,” but “meta” makes it sound like I actually know what I’m talking about. Anyway, Abbey Road certainly isn’t the shining example of such meta-structure.

First of all, notice how different in style and substance the A- and B-sides of the album are: this is because John and Paul (with George Martin on his side) were basically at each other’s throats by this point, and had to divide the album straight down the middle with a chalk line, I Love Lucy-style. To be conciliatory, they mixed-and-matched some of each other’s songs, but each side was essentially a one-man show in terms of song selection.

Granted, the crux of your argument is the medley…you sort of disregarded the entire A-side, which I think is kind of foolish, given the strong showing by John. But even the medley is more fractured than you would like to admit: Paul didn’t conceive of the thing as a medley…all of the songs were written individually (most of them, by the way, during the fertile period in which they were composing the White Album). He reworked the order again and again before the final release…in fact, “Her Majesty,” which you refer to as an “appendix to the record” was originally cut from the record by Paul. It was in the middle of the medley, and a sound engineer, upon receiving instructions to cut it out, and having received previous instructions to never ever erase anything the Beatles recorded, moved it to the end of the reel, 15 or 20 seconds after “The End.” The effect seemed sufficiently whimsical that they left this mistake in. And a good mistake it was, but certainly not planned.

The medley effect, therefore, is secondary to the songs within the medley. I mean, what if I wrote a medley? Certainly no one would listen to it, even if it might have a great deal of this zen-flow you seem to be referring to, because the songs that made up this medley would suck.

I must reiterate: the basic unit of pop music is the song, not the album. That being said, we are debating on the topic of best Beatles album, not song. But nonetheless I contend that a pop album, being a collection of songs, must be judged on the merit of the individual songs of which it is composed. And I personally count no fewer than nineteen absolutely phenomenal songs on The White Album (a list of which I will gladly provide to my opponent) and eight others that no mere mortal could write. This leaves only three so-so songs. One-tenth of a two-disc album falls flat…certainly not the “skip-skip-skip” arrangement you spoke of.

An album is not a novel, as you claim it is. An album is an album. To say that the definition of a good album is one in which “each song is connected to that which precedes and follows it” is unnecessarily narrowing the scope of all the things a good album can be. Take a live album, for example: the best albums of many bands (the Velvet Underground comes to mind, or just about any jazz musician for that matter) are recorded live, and are essentially a reassembling of their previous studio work, usually in a radically different order from that originally set down. Please, Douglas, admit the profound error of your ways.

White Album v. Abbey Road, Round 1

2006-03-02T22:31:00.003-06:00

This is the first portion of a three-part debate.

Click here for Round 1
Click here for Round 2
Click here for Round 3

Does anyone remember the Q101 Cage Match? Long before interactive media was a common phenomenon, back when Lance and Stoley were still on the air, Chicago's jammin' alternative radio station began pitting two songs against one another. Listeners would call in to vote for a winner, and the victor would move on to face another song the following week. The Cage Match has since inspired a host of similar programs, including the Pillow Fight on 94.7, the Zone.

Today, we embark on an entirely new journey. Instead of facing Spacehog against Hagfish, we are forcing the Fab Four to fight amongst themselves. Instead of one mediocre alternative tune against another, we are throwing two of the all-time greatest pop albums into the ring. In one corner we have Abbey Road (1969) defended by our very first guest writer, Doug D'Agati. Douglas, we welcome you. In the other corner we have The Beatles (aka the White Album, 1968) defended by WPNOB veteran and founder, Colin Bennett.

What follows is never polite, often personal, and yet always sophisticated. In sum, the two opponents have prepared their very strongest arguments, which will be presented here over the course of three days. During this time, we urge you to comment and share your own thoughts. By the end of the week, we hope the people will have declared a true winner. For now, let the match begin.

Opening Statements: Abbey Road

Doug: There are many questions that deserve careful thought: Is there a god? What profession am I best suited for? What’s that growth on my toe? However, one question trumps all others, and deserves the thought and attention of every discerning mind: What is the Beatles’ greatest album, Abbey Road or the White Album?

To begin, one must ask yet another question: What is an album? Some would assert that an album is a series of recordings issued together by an artist or group of artists. These people are jackasses and should be ignored. I would argue that a great album—much like a great novel—flows cohesively and logically from section to section. Just as a great novel guides us from chapter to chapter, a great album guides us from song to song in a deliberate fashion. Each song is connected to that which precedes and follows it. In short, a great album contains some sort of underlying structure. The White Album lacks such structure. I mean, what kind of copout ending to Disc 1 is “Julia”? Furthermore, what holds “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Wild Honey Pie,” and the “Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” together? Nothing. Skip-Skip-Skip. Play.

Abbey Road, on the other hand, flows effortlessly from start to finish. Beginning with the potent “Come Together” and culminating with the tender and muted, “Her Majesty,” Abbey Road is an unparalleled musical odyssey, changing tone and speed in segments, rather than by song. The highlight of the album is the final 10-minute medley, which merges almost imperceptibly and includes such—dare I use the word—masterpieces as “Mean Mr. Mustard,” “Polythene Pam,” “She Came In Through the Bathroom Window,” “Golden Slumbers,” “Carry That Weight,” and “The End.” Conversely, if any kind of marriage exists between songs of the White Album, it is a J-Lo-esque marriage.

Abbey Road is one; the White Album is thirty.

Even when Abbey Road does make the occasional abrupt transition, it is deliberate and provocative. For instance, from its start Abbey Road slowly gains momentum, until climaxing with the hard-hitting and emphatic “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”—only to be followed by the gentle strumming of Harrison’s “Here Comes the Sun.” To place the two most disparate tracks back-to-back is a bold move, but one that certainly paid off. Similarly, the deceptively titled “The End” begins with a raucous drum solo by Ringo—his only such solo—and then fades into the song’s final lines, which signal the album’s ostensible end. The perfect ending to a perfect album, you think. I guess I’ll pull up my pants, pry myself out of my lazyboy, saunter over to my CD player, and put in another disc, you decide…

Whoa, slow down there, chief!! The Beatles have one last surprise for you—but do pull up your pants anyway; it’s getting weird.

After a lengthy pause, the 17-second gem “Her Majesty” roars in, as if it were an appendix to the record. One word, two syllables: sublime. Okay, now it’s safe to pull up your pants and make your way to the CD player—though when you get there, you may want to hit “repeat.”

Opening Statements: White Album

Colin: To begin: there are almost as many “favorite” Beatles albums out there as there are people on this planet. How is this possible, you ask? The Beatles released some 20 albums and there are almost 6.5 billion people on the planet…surely there must be overlap? The answer is no. There isn’t. I don’t know how this works, it’s f-ing crazy. But I’ve never met anyone who agreed on a favorite Beatles album. Unfortunately, there are wrong choices to be made. This is not simply a matter of taste. I once met a man who said his favorite album was Help!. I punched this man in the face. You crazy man, I said. Help!, he yelled again. I pulled back for another punch, until I realized he was being mauled by a bear and was actually crying for help. Oh, I said. Later, in the hospital, he told me his favorite album was Rubber Soul.

Anyway, enough preface. My point is just that Abbey Road is not my opponent Douglas’s favorite album. He might think it is, and say it is, but he’s wrong. That poor little man hiding inside of him that I’ve seen with the aid of special drugs is screaming with all his heart “White Album! White Album!” Listen to that little man, Douglas. For he is your father.

First of all, I already know, thanks to other special drugs, what my opponent is going to say: Abbey Road stands as a cohesive whole, a shining, multi-faceted blah blah blah blah. Fine. Abbey Road has a “medley.” Big whoop. This is nothing extraordinary: Paul simply took a genre (classical symphony) and put his own unique pop stamp on it. And when you get right down to it, what’s so amazing about any of it? The fact that they rework musical “themes” throughout the record? Yeah, fifteen seconds of “You Never Give Me Your Money” in the middle of “Carry That Weight.” Wild.

If you’re looking for genre-warping, look no further than the two discs of The Beatles, my friend. It’s a history of every genre that led to the development of pop music, rolled into one and then smoked: slave spirituals, country-western, blues, soul, folk, rock and roll of every stripe, even reggae. There are, of course, more. There are almost as many different genres present on this double-album as there are songs (thirty). It’s as if they set out to write a better version of every song written in the fifty-odd years preceding the album, and pretty much succeeded. And with the possible exception of Paul, it contains the best songs individually written by each Beatle: Ringo with “Don’t Pass Me By” (undisputedly better than Abbey Road’s “Octopus’ Garden”), Harrison with “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” and John with “Happiness is a Warm Gun” (more on this shortly). And in the case of Paul, I think you could even make a strong case for “Back in the U.S.S.R.,” although admittedly I’m partial to “Rocky Raccoon.”

This was a perfect-storm situation: each Beatle was simultaneously at the absolute pinnacle of his creative potential. The result is an album that seems schizophrenic only because a pantheon of gods was clawing at the insides of its creators’ minds. You say that the album lacks cohesion? Any sort of pattern? Well, good, I say. They weren’t sewing a pretty dress. They were writing songs. Remember: the basic unit of pop music isn’t the album. It is the song. Pop music was around long before the album, back when you could only fit three minutes of music onto one side of a record. And the Beatles were pop musicians…the best that ever lived, but pop musicians nonetheless. The Abbey Road medley is a wonderful achievement, but it’s a gimmick…it just doesn’t stack up to the best works in the symphonic genre it is trying to imitate.

Finally, the atom bomb: “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” Hands down, no question, the BEST SONG EVER WRITTEN in the last 12 million-or-so years. I happen to know Douglas agrees with me on this point. This is sort of like having God on your soccer team.* Even if he were the only player, I still think your team would have a pretty good season. So, I say, if they had put out an album called the White Album that contained only this ONE song, it would still be in the running for best album ever recorded. It just so happens another twenty-nine great songs are grouped around it. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

*ED. ...or Michael Jordan on your basketball team.

Baby, Put On Your Shoegazing Shoes

2006-03-01T19:56:00.001-06:00

I Dedicate D Chord / Toddle
So Long / Toddle

It is generally assumed that there is a long, serial string of influence in rock music which tends to run westward: that is, good music starts out in New York or maybe (maybe) Europe and works its way around the globe. Like the bright and blessed sun of neo-imperialism. You have, of course, already thought of about 50 counter-examples, and more will come to you. Please note that when I say "it is generally assumed," what I mean is that I just made this up.

Sometimes, however, the student outdistances the teacher. It is generally assumed that such is the case with Toddle. At least, they give it the ol' post-college try. I mean, where is Occidental noise-rock anymore? When I need to drown out my sobbing through the paper-thin walls of my apartment, must I really listen to Loveless again? Toddle recalls the 90s lo-fi movement of Sebadoh and Sonic Youth with a dash of pinkerton-style Weezer or The Rentals thrown in.

At this point, Toddle is sort of a side project for members of various other bands...but supposedly they're touring right now, which I guess is a good sign. The two selections today are the first and last song off their one and only LP, 2005's I Dedicate D Chord.

Welcome to the Delihouse

2006-03-01T00:55:00.001-06:00

Chow Chow / Deli Spice

March 1st is "Independence Movement Day" in Korea, a day to commemorate the 1919 student demand for liberation from Japan, which was not achieved until after WWII. In celebration of the holiday, and because I haven't posted a Korean song in a while, here's an indie classic of sorts: "차우차우 (Chow Chow)."

This 1997 hit still seems to be Deli Spice's calling card even though the band's been around for almost 10 years now. It starts with a nice dream-rock guitar lick that would sound at home on Seam's Are You Driving Me Crazy? or The Problem with Me. The rest isn't as good as anything on those two albums, but Deli Spice does manage to reel in the K-pop penchant for melodrama just enough to make for a solid song.

I have yet to hear the rest of the catalogue, but it's gotta be awesome if the title of their second LP Welcome to the Delihouse is any indication. Ranks right up there with Welcome to My Face.

I Had Two Gals Every Morning

2006-02-27T22:10:00.001-06:00

Thirteen Women / Bill Haley & His Comets [1954]

(What follows is a licensed reenactment of the mental process of writing the B-side to the first rock 'n roll single to hit #1 on the charts.)

It's over. You've lost everything. The bomb has taken everything: your wife, your kids and your dog, your home and your Chevy with wings, your precious heirlooms and your cabinet of tchotchkes. If you wear glasses, they're gone too. The air is thick with smoke and radiation. But that doesn't matter because there's nothing to see. Nothing for miles and miles...

Wait! What's that?? You managed to salvage your guitar? A saxophone and drums, you say? And, look, in the distance—what is that? It's... it's thirteen women! Hooray!! There's women! There's tea and bread and 40-karate diamond rings! There's butter and sweetener! There's money and clothes! There's women! There's song! What more could you need?

Ah, yes: one man.

I'll Pull Potatoes From YOUR Ears

2006-02-26T21:26:00.001-06:00

Rock Upon a Porch with You / TBLLT
Every Grubby Little Memory TBLLT

Little Donkey / TBLLT

After mentioning The Boy Least Likely To on Saturday, it seems reasonable to share their three B-sides today.

Yes, "Rock Upon a Porch" is the 4-star song of the bunch. But "Every Grubby Little Memory," is welcome to, even if it takes a while to build and employs what sounds like a dentist's drill toward the end. "Little Donkey" is the decorating-the-Christmas-tree song that circulated this past December. It is little.

Also: If somehow you haven't, definitely go get "Between the Lines," one of the two lovable Sambassadeur tracks that those wacky Swedes are still handing out for free after many a month.

The Other Best Party Ever

2006-02-24T23:12:00.003-06:00

Solaris / advantage Lucy [1999]

朱い夏 / advantage Lucy [2005]

The cover of Fanfare (1999) to the left reminds me of The Best Party Ever (2005). And like The Boy Least Likely To, advantage Lucy has a deceptively juvenile sound. They are named in honor of Lucy Van Pelt of Peanuts fame after all.

This Lucy, however, doesn't just flirt around a piano. On "Solaris," the female vocalist, Aiko, sings, "Let's go for the Milky Way!" as the drums pound and the trumpets blast off. The guitarist even tosses in a mock countdown. It's their least subtle track, but the boisterousness doesn't hide the fact that this veteran group can compete with the best of its younger European counterparts, like Sambassadeur and The Concretes.

"朱い夏 (Vermilion Summer)" is more like a slow ascent in a hot-air balloon. Who needs a rocketship when there's no particular destination? Who needs real words—Japanese, English, or otherwise—when we've got aL singing "La, la, la" like this?

MORE advantage Lucy here.

aL's AMG Bio.

Put On Your Party Socks

2006-02-23T00:29:00.001-06:00

Mr. Lee / The Disketttes

One day my boss says to me, "Jeremy, I have the best life in the world!" Taking the bait, I ask, "What makes your life so good?" (Beat.) I suddenly realize that he is being sarcastic. Even though he said "I have the best life in the world," he actually meant "I have the worst life in the world."

This all being quite complicated, I decided I would just give him a cheery song to make him feel better. I chose "Mr. Lee" by the Diskettes because his name also happens to be Mr. Lee. As I handed him a burned CD with only one song on it, I was fully aware that he might not enjoy it. Mr. Lee, the boss, is a 40-year-old Korean man with a wife and a son; Mr. Lee, the song, is a sock-hop clapfest appropriate for birthday parties in which the guest of honor is under 7 years old. Fortunately, the CD did not go to waste. Mr. Lee's son happens to be well under 7 years old, and he has recently fallen in love with "Mr. Lee," transferring it to cassette in order to listen to it on a Walkman everyday at school. An elementary school in Seoul. Just where it most belongs.

A number of other songs by the Diskettes and their friends can be found here. The band is also often happily featured at Said the Gramophone.

Glossed in Translation

2006-02-21T22:06:00.001-06:00

Uroko No Nai Sakana / Anatakikou

Karinto Bon Bon /Anatakikou

In case it hasn't been painfully obvious so far, I should make a belated confession: I don't speak Japanese. Or Korean. Now, living in a country where your permanent silence effectively renders you a muted beast of the field is one thing, but listening to the native music is something entirely else. See, normally I'm sort of a lyrics freak, which has made my appreciation of Korean and Japanese music a little more difficult...at times I feel a bit like Helen Keller at a Seeing and Hearing Stuff Conference (ba-dum-cha).

That's why it’s always nice to find a band like Anatakikou. What does their name mean? I have no idea. But it’s fun to say...kinda rattles around in your mouth. Ditto for the songs...in fact, I have a feeling that if I understood whatever they were singing about, I probably wouldn't like them. On the second song, karinto bonbon, I just have to sing along when the background vocals get to "ka-koo-kee-ka-koo-kee-ka-ka." I imagine this is (to a much much lesser extent) the way the "rest of the world" feels when listening to the Beatles. In fact, if I had to classify Anatakikou as something, it would probably be as a valiant but quixotic effort to recreate the Fab Four's style circa Revolver. And yes, I used the thesaurus to find quixotic.

Oh, both songs are off the 2005 compilation Gradation, which you can buy here, if you happen to speak Japanese and traffic in Yen.

The 2000-Year Problem

2006-02-21T09:48:00.001-06:00

Check out mp3blog.ch, which is currently hosting a blistering Japanese noiserock track (the oh-so-ironically titled "Pop Group") by the band にせんねんもんだい (aka Nisennenmondai aka 2000-Year Problem).

A Regular Robert Moses (redux)

2006-02-20T23:04:00.002-06:00

(Note: The following MP3s were forcibly removed from this site.)

Punky Bad Hip / Blankey Jet City [1993]
Akaitanbarin / Blankey Jet City [1998]
I Love Tokyo / Blankey Jet City [2000]

How many fictional cities have you created? If I had to, I'd guess zero. Even if we agreed to count both cities and any additional "lands," I think I'd still go with zero. Don't be disheartened though. You aren't that far behind...

Creating fictional cities is no small task.

Plato: 1
St. Augustine: 2
Sir Thomas More: 1
Francis Bacon: 1
Jonathan Swift: 7+
William Faulkner: 1
Italo Calvino: a bunch of invisible ones
Kenichi Asai: 1

Thing is, all those guys are dead except one: Kenichi Asai. (My "hook" or "lead" is now officially over. I hope you liked it.) Mr. Asai created an imaginary metropolis and a rock band, and he named them both Blankey Jet City. Led by him, BJC emerged in 1990 after winning a prototype Japanese Idol contest. Despite these humble origins, BJC grew strong. Steve McClure explains,

"BJC soon gained a reputation as one of Japan’s hardest-working rock bands, doing a nationwide tour every year and releasing a steady stream of singles and albums. The band inspired intense devotion among its fans, who were caught up in the mythology of Blankey Jet City, a fictional city that served as the background of many of Asai’s songs, which deconstructed various images and pop icons of Western subculture."

The brash slices of English ("Sometimes I have skills / Sometimes I have sex") suggest that the Japanese lyrics are worth understanding. But I have not a lick of Japanese, so I can't say much more about the whole cities thing. What I can say: of the glut of Pixies-inspired early-'90s punkish Japanese bands, BJC sound the best. Definitely good enough to make Plato look like a pansy for wanting to abolish music.

Two recent compilations collect all of BJC's best songs; the 1997-2000 one is especially great.

Sweater Had Faces All Over It, Famous Faces Knitted All Over It

2006-02-20T11:52:00.001-06:00

내게로 와 (Come to Me) / Clazziquai Project

Fill This Night / Clazziquai Project

The first two bands you learn about when you arrive in Korea as a foreigner are Epik High and Clazziquai Project. Along with pop singer/ridiculous dancer/snazzy dresser Rain, whose recent world tour included stops at Madison Square Garden, these two groups are very much responsible for helping spread the Korean wave throughout Asia and beyond. Why is it a "wave" rather than a fire? Probably because it's not exciting enough to be a fire. Unless, of course, you're a married Japanese woman unhealthily obsessed with stars from Korean television dramas. Then it's a fire. In your loins.

Seriously, Korean drama stars like Bae Yong Joon (pictured above and better known by his Japanese name Yon-sama) are gods. Their faces are on billboards, calendars, shirts, socks, moons... everything. In that always-trustworthy-on-contemporary-popular-Asian-culture-issues publication USA Today, Paul Wiseman writes,

Hiroshi Saito holds one of the most perilous jobs in this city of 12 million people. He's the security guard responsible for keeping hundreds of middle-age Japanese women away from a sculpture displaying the toned torso of South Korean heartthrob Bae Yong Joon.

An especially tough job because, supposedly, this sculpture comes to life if you squeeze it hard enough. And once the real Bae Yong Joon is unfrozen, there will be no stopping him: he has reportedly physically assaulted (i.e. slapped around) over 30 different managers and personal assistants already. Not to mention his genome, which was manipulated by Dr. Kwang so that he comes back stronger after each death (just like Superman's good buddy Doomsday).

The fervor over Korean music (as opposed to television and film) is a little more mellow, but Clazziquai Project is still wildly popular in and around Korea, providing guest spots and remixes on just about every big new K-Pop release. Their sound is clean and loungey, a little like Portishead lite. Boring, basically. But if you're interested in Korean culture at the moment, or drugged out enough to enjoy watered-down trip-hop, these two singles will be a grand treat. They're from Instant Pig (2004) and Color Your Soul (2005) respectively. No idea how one declines in albumtitle-making abilities so severely in the course of only one year. Zoloft, probably.

If for some reason it's genuinely good music you're looking for, check out the Valentine's day post at the always-fashionable Fluxblog.

The Dominant Theme in a Number of Places

2006-02-19T20:37:00.001-06:00

Your Blood / Destroyer (2006)

No Cease Fires (Crimes... Baby) / Destroyer (1998)

Idea 18 / Destroyer (1996)

FINALLY. Finally: Destroyer's Rubies comes out tomorrow, featuring ten new tracks penned by Dan Bejar. All ten are good; seven are great. They've been listened to and written about already, so I'll spare you for the most part. The best description of the full album can be read at Popsheep, which also had some crazyrare Bejar demos up for grabs. They've removed "Idea 18," so here it is again. DB2 sings, "You tread water while I read the history of water." DB1 retorts, "All water is classic water."

Bejar's band, Destroyer, though both intelligent and sensational, is not to be confused with the professional wrestler who calls himself The Intelligent Sensational Destroyer (see Figures 1 & 2, which must be clicked on to be appreciated fully). That Destroyer is apparently big in Japan. He has his own bobblehead doll, wrote a book about himself, and released a Christmas album on which he sings "Jingle Bells" (half in Japanese). The Destroyer we're concerned with just has a bunch of albums. I guess there's no need for a Bejar bobblehead as his real head is already big enough.

That's probably why his songs are so good and so dense: his head is physically capable of harboring a huge number of obsessions simultaneously. The best thing about these obsessions is that while Bejar is often tagged as being ironic, he is so completely fixated on the subject matter he treats wryly that the obsessions themselves becomes genuine. The real crown jewels...

Track 1: Rubies
Obsession: meaning
Quote: Cast myself towards infinity / Trust me, I have my reasons

Track 2: Your Blood
Obsession: himself
Quote: Never had a chance / Never had to choose "Your Blood" versus Your Blues

Track 3: European Oils
Obsession: music, crimesagainstthestateofourlove
Quote: When I'm at war I insist on slaughter / And getting it on with the hangman's daughter

Track 4: Painter in Your Pocket
Obsession: words
Quote: Where did you get that line? / Where did you get that look? / Where did you get that penchant for destruction in the way you talk?

Track 5: Looter's Follies
Obsession: art, melodrama, European history
Quote: That month: another version of this miniature Rome / To set fire to / Why did we stop fucking around? / You girls like gazelles / Raise boys wearing bells / Blaze new trails in sound!

Track 6: 3000 Flowers
Obsession: literature, poetry, modernism
Quote: One-hundredth of a wet black bough // I was Clytæmnestra on a good day

Track 7: A Dangerous Woman Up to a Point
Obsession: mythologizing
Quote: Hey, your friends are fucked /In-so-far as your friend's an ancient beast bronzed in tar // Have I told you lately that I love you? / Did I fail to mention there's a sword hanging above you?

Track 8: Priest's Knees
Obsession: music, Maximalism
Quote: And I was just another West Coast Maximalist / Exploring the blues, ignoring the news from the front

Track 9: Water Colours Into the Ocean
Obsession: women
Quote: Too thin, too fair, downing your third drink / Standing at arm's-length in the square

Track 10: Sick Priest Learns to Last Forever
Obsession: religion, history, the music scene
Quote: Molly begets herself / She plans a merger with The Scene // To make it legal, Wilhelm's bride goes bulemic at the feast

Spirit, Stallion of the Pink Chiffon

2006-02-17T23:39:00.002-06:00

The Funeral / Band of Horses

I’m certainly not the first small-potatoes blogger to say it, but mark my words: Band of Horses is definitely gonna probably be sorta big. They just signed with Sub Pop, and reportedly are in talks regarding the changing of their beyond-the-vast-prairies-of-the-golden-land-of-ridiculous name (might I suggest "The B.o.-Ho"?), a name which I imagine has thus far been the greatest stumbling block to t-shirt sales.

Admittedly, they have only officially released one song...but it's a good one. A lot of Iron and Wine (who they were opening for a few months ago), minus the wineyness.* Even...dare I say it...Dashboard Confessional. No. I daren’t. Forget I said that.

*A pun. to-wit, "wine," versus "whine." A subtle charge of "whininess" imputed to Iron and Wine. see, this is why (o humble reader draughting from the fount of my genius) i get paid the big bucks.

I Want Many Dresses, I Want Much Money

2006-02-17T04:37:00.008-06:00

Thank You / Rocket or Chiritori

Fifteen Love / Rocket or Chiritori

Vacation (Japanese Version) / Rocket or Chiritori

Anoraks are loved all the world over.

In 1997 and '98, Satoko Shibahara was 17. Better known as Rocket or Chiritori, she released a handful of singles and LPs before giving up music to focus on school. Some of what remains, especially "Vacation" and (especially especially) "Fifteen Love," is so pure it's hard to imagine Satoko is not still sitting in her bedroom, singing along every time her songs play through a new pair of headphones.

ROC's AMG Bio.

Cutie Girls Don't Love Me and Punk

2006-02-15T09:55:00.006-06:00

MP3 Kakenukete Seishun / Ging Nang Boyz

MP3 Juu Nana Sai (...cutie girls don't love me and punk) / GNB

MP3 Inu Ningen / GNB

Ging Nang Boyz released 29 punk songs over two full-lengths in '05. The cover of one album features a nice Lichtenstein ripoff; the other a cartoon that looks inspired in equal parts by the Sgt. Pepper's LP, a page from Where's Waldo?, and Rodin's depiction of Dante's "Gates of Hell." GNB themselves sound more like the latter. Like the Sex Pistols or the Buzzcocks were reincarnated as a bunch of Japanese boyz throwing a party in your house.

...As soon as you hear the two quickshot bursts that open Door ("Juu Nana Sai" and "Inu Ningen"), you realize you're late. By the time you're inside, the place is packed and everyone's already drunk. But somehow you're not pissed. No matter how much yelling and noise, no matter how much beer's been spilled, it's not annoying. It's not annoying because the songs are as fun as they are frantic.

An hour and forty minutes later, the party's reached it's climax: the band plays "Kakenukete Seishun," an old favorite originally recorded when three of the boyz were known as Going Steady. Though happily all-over-the-place, GNB have remained solid all night, and there's yet forty more minutes left to go. But this moment is particularly memorable. It serves as proof that while Korean punk rockers might look better naked, they've still got some catching up to do to match the Japanese in the music department.

GNB's AMG Bio.

Original Title: 十七歳 (...cutie girls don't love me and punk)
Title Romanization: Juu Nana Sai
Title in English: 17 Years Old
Album: Door

Original Title: 犬人間
Title Romanization: Inu Ningen
Title in English: Dog Human
Album: Door

Original Title: 駆け抜けて性春
Title Romanization: Kakenukete Seishun
Title in Babelfish: Running coming out, characteristic spring
Original Album: 君と僕の第三次世界大戦的恋愛革命
Album Romanization: Kimi to boku no daisanji sekai taisenteki renai kakumei
Album in Babelfish: You my third great war romantic love revolution

I Said, "I Am Kris Kristofferson"

2006-02-14T08:40:00.003-06:00

Chelsea Hotel #1 / Leonard Cohen [live in Tel Aviv, 1972-04-19]

Chelsea Hotel #1 / Leonard Cohen [live 1972 from "Golden Voice" comp]

In Korea, on Valentine's Day the boys and the men are not obliged to do anything. Valentine's Day is for girlfriends and wives to give presents to their significant others. Korean guys get to wait until "White Day" on March 14th before they have to reciprocate. Not a bad deal, but I'm still gonna share a gift today.

"Chelsea Hotel #2" is one of my top 10 favorite songs of all time. It's like a #2 value meal from McDonald's: a true classic. You get everything you want, plus a second cheeseburger. That makes "Chelsea Hotel #1" the Big Mac meal. Original and tasty, but not as plain or as perfect as the #2.

In this case, the "original" is about as tough to find as a Leonard Cohen tune can get. He never recorded it, and only a few bootleg versions are available. This one from 1972 is far and away the best. It's both an early version and a different song entirely. The melody and the lyrics are still hypnotic, but a little off like the special sauce. Cohen hasn't yet realized the desperate simplicity of "I need you / I don't need you / I need you / I don't need you." He hasn't yet discovered that he can get away with "all of that jiving around" in a love song; as long as it's a love song about how things only become eternal by leaving, he is free to use all the '60s anachronisms he pleases. Instead he sings, "Making your sweet little sounds..." He sings, "My friends of that year, they were all getting queer / And me, I was just getting even." He sings, "Racing the midnight train all naked..." He sings like he's waiting for a great song to emerge, and it's just about there.

Used Noodle Exchange Program

2006-02-12T16:41:00.001-06:00

Gravity Thief / Noodles

Lemon Grass Foo Foo / Noodles

Japan, like the U.S., is a bit schizophrenic in its tastes: they turn out some of the most horrid pop imaginable, but also hands-down the best rock anywhere in the not-quite-living-up-to- its-name "ring of fire" (I’m looking at you, Kamchatka), and arguably in all of Euraustralafricasia. America, as usual, owns all. Don't try to out-badass a country where the sitting VP reserves the right to fucking shoot people.

Anyway, (the) Noodles are sort of Japan's answer to the Breeders. Jeremy, always the SAT instructor, very aptly summed it up as

noodles : the breeders :: the pillows : ___________

a) mom
b) POOP
c) weak post, bennett
d) the pixies

They've opted out of the whole definite article thing, though...so they're just "Noodles." Like, any noodles. Maybe these noodles...maybe those noodles...

The first song is the title track off the 95 LP, The Gravity Thief, and the second one is off their latest, 05's Ivy.

Five / Noodles

and one more... a good old weep n' sleep.

Great Lake Swimmers

2006-02-11T20:47:00.001-06:00

Let's Trade Skins / Great Lake Swimmers

A few weeks ago, I had a dream in which a serial killer cut off the skin of one of his victims and wore it like a one-piece costume. Then he went and hung out with her friends, pretending to be her until they noticed s/he was acting really strange and cracking around the edges. "Let's Trade Skins" is not that creepy, unfortunately, but it's quiet in the way that dreams are, like you're watching a movie with the sound off. Tony Dekker, the main Swimmer, sounds like the guy from My Morning Jacket lurking in the body of the guy from Red House Painters. When he says, "Tonight there's a party," you know he's lying right to your face.

See also: "Moving Pictures Silent Films," "The Man With No Skin," and "Bodies and Minds."

Imaginary Bars / Great Lake Swimmers

This song is about as joyful as GLS gets, so it goes with the photo above. Dude looks happy.

A Swift Crane Kick to the Head

2006-02-11T00:27:00.004-06:00

MP3 Karate Feelings / Messer für Frau Müller

Messer für Frau Müller is not even a little Japanese. They’re a Russian group that makes music which is probably referred to as “pastiche glitch-cabaret” on other planets in other dimensions. Nevertheless, the guy who recommended the insane Japanese video clip you were supposed to check out yesterday enjoys listening to “Karate Feelings” while watching said video. That’s right—Gene, our friend and yours, is an international multi-tasker. About this song being spectacular he is right. But I prefer to imagine it as the soundtrack to something else.

Everyone knows that the only good thing ever to come out of Mad TV is the animated version of the Spy vs. Spy comic strips. My pitch: A color version of Spy vs. Spy with Mr. Miyagi as one spy and a plump Jewish guy with a big moustache as the other. The action would involve a great deal of dodging around corners and getting hit on the head with giant inflatable bats and/or plastic xylophones. As a bonus, at the end of every episode the two spies would reconcile, and together they would beat the director of The Next Karate Kid to a bloody pulp. During each installment, “Karate Feelings” plays exactly one time.

MP3 Casiotone Nation / Soul Coughing

I can’t remember which song is used in the real Spy vs. Spy cartoon, but I have a feeling it might be by Soul Coughing. This is not that song. But if for some reason you don't have "Casiotone Nation" already, you're missing out on an awfully impressive display of lyric and mathematic virtuosity (the latter probably inspired by School House Rocks). So here it is, in all its lemony-fresh free-radical glory.

Mourning My Sanity

2006-02-09T22:31:00.004-06:00

MP3 Chu! Natsu Party / Morning Musume

So I know many of you have probably already seen the now-famous morning musume vs. lizard video (thanks to Gene for this one), but in case you haven't, please do...it's like a swift kick in the crotch for your equanimity. Crackier than crack. Not to mention probably the most poignant image in recent years of what modern-day Japan is really all about...strapping meat to the heads of young, teenage girls to bait the attack lizard.

What has kind of fallen by the wayside in the midst of this Freudian sushi buffet is that Morning Musume actually makes music. Terrible, terrible music. Not to milk a stereotype, but it truly sounds early 90s video game. Sonic the Hedgehog. Well, Sonic 2 to be exact. Casino Night level.

This being said...why post on them? Because, frankly, I can’t...stop...listening. I'm hoping maybe I can transfer the evil onto you, Ringu style. Also, from a sociological viewpoint, the whole thing is mind-boggling.

First, there've been like a bajillion girls in the band. And everyone pretends not to notice when they get switched out. Their label measures them in generations, like the bible. When they turn 18--and their fruits are no longer forbidden--they’re gone, Menudo-style. The specific euphemism for Morning Musume is "graduated." In fact, today's song technically isn’t even a Morning Musume song...it's from one of the numberless spinoff groups called "Hello! Project."

I refuse to play their mind games, though. Morning Musume, we know who you are. And your days are numbered, you son of a bitch.

Crash and Bizzzurn

2006-02-08T10:00:00.002-06:00

Crash and Burn / Anokha

Take Ecstasy with Me (Magnetic Fields cover) / !!!

We all know about the didgeridoo, mostly from summer camp counselors who thought they were really "out there" because they knew how to blow into an aboriginal Australian instrument. Amber, one half of Seoul-based Anokha, plays the sucker like they wish they could in northern Wisconsin.

Nowhere is that truer than on the explosive two-minute instrumental that opens Anokha's 2005 debut, Rough. On "Crash and Burn," the didgeridoo sounds like a pulsating lightsaber. Or rather a pair of pulsating lightsabers scratching and courting each other. Meanwhile, Anokha's other half (Pam) bangs away on the drumkit like a crazy ninja. All in all, it's some awesome ultra-violence.

The rest of Rough is a mixed bag. The other instrumentals are worth a listen, but most of the songs are weighed down by lyrics that read like they were lifted from poems locked away in a sixth-grader's journal ("Burn out desire, smite it with fire," "I'm choking on the pieces of my broken heart," and the like). This short viddy of Anokha performing "Crash and Burn" proves they've got the frantic energy to do better.

The !!! cover of "Take Ecstasy with Me" shares two extremely important qualities with "Crash and Burn." First, it begins with a similar lightsaber-ish sound, though synthed. Second, it rules. That's the other thing.

They're Not All Bitches. The Witches.

2006-02-07T19:41:00.001-06:00

눈물 (Noonmool) / Witches

Probably not the most sophisticated song you'll hear all day, but a cool little number by a k-pop group called Witches who, to the best of my knowledge, broke up after their one-and-only 2002 release. 눈물 translates to "a tear," as in, "a tear fell up out ma eye,"(Kelly 2005) but there's no cryin' going on here. Only some raucous hand-jivin'.

The single they released off the album has a cutesy little flash video which doubles as a searing critique of the seemingly unassailable taboos surrounding interspecies love. After all, who says I can't make love to a dolphin named Flappy? Certainly not Flappy. Cause Flappy can't talk. Yet.

Best of the Best

2006-02-06T21:23:00.007-06:00

Nothing new today. But in case 20 songs was too much to handle, I've hand-picked the best of the best from the Lunar New Year Extravaganza. These three should make Eric Roberts proud.

Best of LNYE, Pt. 1: Las Cruces Jail / Two Gallants [American]

Best of LNYE, Pt. 2: Ha Ha Ha Song / Jaurim [Korean]

Best of LNYE, Pt. 3: Bijt Mijn Tong Af / Spinvis [Dutch]

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

Put On Your Party Shoes

2006-02-05T03:28:00.002-06:00

A Certain Romance (original version) / Arctic Monkeys

Bigger Boys & Stolen Sweethearts / Arctic Monkeys

Yeah, yeah, the Arctic Buttmonkeys are the last band in the world that needs another write-up. But I'm a bit knackered (Brit. slang, worn; tired; tuckered out), and these two tracks off the "unreleased" Beneath the Boardwalk EP have been fondling me in all the right places today. "A Certain Romance" is available on the huge-selling Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, but this version's far better. It's not that different, just enough. It's got more energy, unmistakably, and if the Arctic Monkey's have anything at all going for them, it's energy.

It could be that the drum intro sounds like it's being beaten on steel rather than skin. Or could be that this mix is sped up and 10 seconds shorter. But it's not. It's just that the second syllable of "Reeboks" gets more love. In this early incarnation of the song, the way young Mr. Turner sings the first five lines makes me wish I'd grown up across the Atlantic.

Well oh they might wear classic Reeboks
Or knackered Converse
Or tracky bottoms tucked in socks
But all of that's what the point is not
The point's that there ain't no romance around there

Okay, so the lyrics barely reach Oasis-levels of depth. Still, if there's anything I've learned while teaching SAT Writing classes, it's that combining concrete and abstract language is an extremely effective technique. The sticky syllables and smells of "classic Reeboks," "knackered Converse," and "tracky bottoms tucked in socks" make the word "romance" infinitely less gag-worthy. In fact, they make the missing romance sound almost as good as the sneakers.

Speaking of sneaks, the way Turner pronounces "knackered," it sounds almost like "Nike." And "Nike Converse" isn't an oxymoron anymore since the former purchased the latter (history, kicks, cred, and all) for $305 million in 2003. Intentional or not, all this makes the opening lines a subtler, funnier jab at the keeping-it-real scene than might be expected.

"Bigger Boys & Stolen Sweethearts" is off the same internet-only EP. It doesn't pack quite the same punch, but we do get a Smiths reference, a few more nice Britishisms, and one great line: "But she's not nice / She's pretty fucking far from nice."

Droppin' Bombs

2006-02-04T21:31:00.001-06:00

Korean Pride / H.O.T.

In case you were wondering...Yes. Koreans rap. Take H.O.T., for example, the lyrical typhoon responsible for today's selection. I really have no idea what the song is about, but from the invocation I can sort of guess...something about N***ers who just don't care about S***. And yes. The N word is just as inappropriate in Korean.

F.Y.I., H.O.T. stands for "High-five Of Teenagers." The picture is a 100% legit promo shot of their lead shinyguy, Hee Jun. You can’t make this S*** up, N***er.

Waatchaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

2006-02-02T11:46:00.001-06:00

Waatchaaar / Jinen

Just a quick heads-up today. Jinen is a new shoegazey Japanese band that's got me really excited. They're supposed to release their debut sometime later this year; meanwhile, they've made three solid demos available here. (That's right, more ryhme action for yaaaaaaaa.) All three, though imperfectly mixed, are worth checking out.

Cariboooo

2006-02-01T21:51:00.001-06:00

Yeti / Caribou

With the disproportionate amount of really good indie rock that's come out of Canada in recent years, it's a little bit disappointing that they really, as a nation (and, mind you, I am speaking in the broadest terms possible, being quite cued into the Canadian collective unconscious), have willfully disregarded nearly every other genre.

Sure, lots of bands pushing that proverbial envelope like to claim Canadian allegiance (Of Montreal? Of Georgia. Boards of Canada? Bored of Scotland [boo-ya]. Canadian Club? Damn fine whiskey. Not an actual band, though. Maybe it should be.) That is why I was so happy to hear about a guy calling himself Manitoba who actually makes palatable, Canadian, electronica. Of course, he had to change his name because of some sort of trademark infringement. So now he’s called Caribou. Probably another legal challenge there, but Frank Black seems like a cool enough guy.

It's really good stuff...sort of like a chillaxed Amon Tobin. "Yeti," off 2005's The Milk of Human Kindness, makes me think of Christmas. Maybe it's the sleigh-bells jingling away in the background. Or the fact that, as a boy, a big, hairy, naked creature calling himself my Uncle used to stumble drunkenly into my room every Christmas eve to deliver my "present." Probably the sleigh-bells.

LNYE, Pt. 3: My Favorite Album of 2005

2006-02-01T05:05:00.007-06:00

Ik Wil Alleen Maar Zwemmen (I Want Only But To Swim) / Spinvis
Kom in the Cockpit (Come in the Cockpit) / Spinvis
Bijt Mijn Tong Af (Bite My Tongue Off) / Spinvis
Bonus: Smalfilm (Small Film) / Spinvis

The first installment of the Lunar New Year Extravaganza dealt with music from the Boring Three (the U.S., Canada, and Britain). The second segment focused on a Korean band. (See links below.) The third and final post in celebration of the new moon-year is on a man from the Netherlands.

Spinvis writes songs. When I first heard them, I figured a wizard had transformed the Icelandic noisefashioning foursome known as Múm into a 41-year-old Dutch songwriter and his troupe.
But that's stupid. The only real similarity between Spinvis and Múm is an ability to make non-acoustic music sound effortlessly organic. Spinvis writes songs that are tuneful, though crafted to feature bits of glockenspiel, strings, winds, bleeps, and blips. Spinvis also released my favorite album of 2005 and has me believing that music is better when you don't understand the words.

That album, Dagen van Gras, Dagen van Stro (Days of Grass, Days of Straw), is the perfect soundtrack for mildly-threatening outdoor activities. "Ik Wil Alleen Maar Zwemmen" is the childhood walk that unexpectedly turns to a gallop. "Bijt Mijn Tong Af" is the hang-gliding session that opens with a quiet Kim Deal "ah-ooo" and a Grandaddy bassline, and closes with you hanging from a tree. And "Kom in the Cockpit" is an upbeat flying machine sexscapade. There's also the slightly mournful backfloat ("Aan de Oevers van de Tijd"); the cellphone war around the campfire ("Het Voordeel van Video"); the storm impending on a night of outdoor ballet ("Flamingo"); the sailboat ride just off the shore ("Dagen van Gras, Dagen van Stro"); and the 11-minute stuttered-word journey through the forest of unwritten Dutch fairy tales ("Lotus Europa"). Purchase all that and more here or at the iTunes music store. (Rhymezone!)

"Smalfilm," released in 2002, is the single from Spinvis's self-titled debut. (Double rhyme!!)

For even more Spinvis-ing, go here.

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

LNYE, Pt. 2: Purple Rain... Forest

2006-01-31T05:54:00.005-06:00

A Side / Jaurim
Vlad / Jaurim
Ha Ha Ha Song / Jaurim
17171771 / Jaurim

Jaurim is the foremost deity of Korean indie pop. The four carefree bicyclers pictured above emerged in 1997 as Ugly Duckling, quickly changed their name to Jaurim (which means "Purple Rain Forest" in Korean), and awoke to fame after recording the soundtrack for a popular Korean television drama (The Man with a Flower). Over the following 9 years, they released approximately 10 albums—it's hard to keep track because lead singer Kim Yoon-ah kinda-sorta left the band in 2002. Since then, she's released a number of solo efforts, the remaining band members recorded an album as the Chococreamrolls, and they've all collaborated for live shows and their most recent LP, All You Need Is Love (2004).

The draw is definitely Yoon-ah; her voice is Jaurim's superpower. On tracks like the brief "A Side" (off of 1999's Bijungkyojakob), a perfect opener or closer for a mixtape, she twees her way lightly through a single minute of la la la's. On "Vlad" (from 2002's Vol. 4) she flexes her muscles a bit more, running alongside crunchy guitars, singing in Korean, and yelling English fragments like, "Time to die" and "You'll be mine." But it's on the recent "reunification" album All You Need Is Love, that Yoon-ah really demonstrates her range. On "Ha Ha Ha Song"—the album's sing-along standout—she moves adroitly back-and-forth between a Latin lounge-singer persona and a punkier guise, oftentimes within the spacing of a single phrase. And on "17171771" (which boasts a melody so familiar the song sounds like a cover), she poses as the delicate type despite knowing full well that she's a great deal more.

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

Squeeze Slowly and See

2006-01-30T07:07:00.001-06:00

my foot / the pillows

back seat dog / the pillows

hidden song / the pillows

There's really nothing to say, except that I can't believe I never heard of them until now (in the very likely event that you have, please forgive this post). Anyway, I'm fairly hooked...Jeremy and I couldn't stop listening to them this weekend. Sort of a huggably soft Japanese Pixies.

the pillows' (they’re not into the whole "capitalization" jive) new album came out a couple of weeks ago, and for a band that's going on 17 years together it's surprisingly fresh. You can check them out, in all their button-eyed-dog sword-throwing goodness, here.

The first track is the title track off the new album, my foot. The second is from their 8th album, happy bivouac, and the third is a weird fucking something they did for an anime soundtrack.

Lunar New Year Extravaganza, Pt. 1

2006-01-28T09:01:00.008-06:00

MP3s Lunar New Year Fun-Pack / Various Artists

FULL ZIP Lunar New Year Fun-Pack / Various Artists

Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year! To celebrate, I will try to make you read more than usual.

Apparently there's a new rule requiring one to apologize prior to making a "Best Of" list. Every 2005 list I've read has begun with some tepid disclaimer about how it would be impossible to capture the magic and beauty of an entire year of music (or film or books or whatever) in a single list. The only problem with these disclaimers is that they are totally and completely false. Every single time I declare, "This is the best (blank) of (blankiness)" I am speaking the gospel. I love proclaiming "bests" and "favorites" because I'm always right. And I love the word "definitely."

Thus, below are my Top 12 Songs of 2005. I've already put all of them on pretty much every mix I've made this past year; I didn't create or discover any of them; and they aren't particularly obscure. I do love them, however. There's one for each animal of the Chinese calendar (plus one), but the animals are out of order because I'm not Chinese and because this is the order in which the songs should be played as a mix.

None of that is very important. What's important is that I would really like you to listen to any of the following songs that you don't already have. Click the "MP3s" link above and download the ones you need; or click the "ZIP" link and download the whole sack. Also, check the doodads at the very bottom for the rest of the New Year's celebration.

1. DOG: Major Label Debut (fast version) / Broken Social Scene

The extra energy on this version is loose like an old certainty, like it comes from a water mill rather than a wall socket.

2. MONKEY: Hey Now Now / The Cloud Room
Carefully designed to make you jump every time. If you don't, there's something wrong with your spinal cord.

3. ROOSTER: We Listen Every Day / The Go! Team
Just maybe: heaven is hot pink and these are the trumpets that sound when the gates swing open.

4. OX: Kick Out the Chairs (WhoMadeWho remix) / LCD Soundsystem | Munk
As long as we can dance up in heaven, who cares if there's a shortage of chairs, muthafucka?

5. PIG: Gone (ft. Cam'ron and Consequence) / Kanye West
Should've been the first single off an otherwise mediocre album. Includes references to Burger King, Taco Bell, KFC, and restaurants that require flair ("Says she wants diamonds, I took her to Ruby Tuesday's").

6. DRAGON: Raising the Sparks / Akron/Family
Next time you're burning effigies in the deserts of Nevada, this foot-stomper best be playing on the iPod.

7. RAT: Las Cruces Jail (single version) / Two Gallants
Within the first second of this song, the vocalist (Adam Stephenson) has already broken a world record: All-Time #1 Rendition of the Word "Well." When he screams, it actually sounds like a jail break.

8. HORSE: History of Lovers / Iron & Wine | Calexico
Best collaboration of 2005. More horns.

9. GOAT: I Have a Tail / Pompey
I first heard this song yesterday, courtesy of Fluxblog. It's play count is already 4,201. And, yes, it does sound like a mutation of Animal Collective. Like a collective of imaginary battery-powered animals. Which is to say, exactly like Caribou's "Yeti," the 13th best song of 2005.

10. RABBIT: Great Day (remix of MF Doom/Madvillain) / Four Tet
A 2005 remix of the best song from the best collaboration of 2004. Unlike the original, this doesn't take place before a party, prefiguring a great day. This takes place on a porch by a stream as a great day is transforming itself into a memory. A memory which you will later relate to your "puh-sychiatrist."

11. TIGER: Two For Joy / Electrelane
Around 4 minutes and 26 seconds, "Don't go near the water" becomes "Let's get in the water." A few seconds later, this song becomes the most ecstatic track off one of the most underrated albums of '05.

12. SNAKE: Surprise, AZ (Richard Buckner cover) / Cynthia G. Mason
In an ordered universe, a collection of covers like the 2005 Believer CD would suck every time. Not here. Devendra Banhart inhabits "Fistful of Love" completely, then outstrips it; and the Constantines precisely savor the early '90s on Elevator to Hell's "Why I Didn't Like August 93." But Cynthia Mason outdoes them both. Her barebones version disposes of the affected vocals, harmonica, and twang of Buckner's original, allowing her voice to seep into the empty spaces these excisions create. For every bit she takes away, the melody becomes that much more devastating.

13. MONSTER: Great Day (instrumental mix) / Four Tet
Bonus track, the instrumental from #10.

NOTE: The temporary/celebratory title graphic is/was courtesy of one Dr. Robert Schmidt.

LNYE, Pt. 1
LNYE, Pt. 2
LNYE, Pt. 3
LNYE Condensed: Best of the Best

Increase Your Sexual Potency (With Distortion)

2006-01-26T09:21:00.009-06:00

MP3 Immortal Seal's Gallbladder / Bulssajo
불멸의 해구신 / 불싸조

MP3 Furious Five / Bulssajo
퓨리어스 파이브 / 불싸조

That's right, the name of the first track off Bulssajo's debut LP Furious Five (2005) translates roughly to "Immortal Seal's Gallbladder." Apparently, in Korean the title is a pun that references a popular television drama; a sea captain who developed some sort of turtle-shaped warships; and the real practice, among Korean men, of eating the gallbladder of seals for increased (i.e. everlasting) sexual stamina. Also known as "staminamina."

Bulssajo itself is a three-piece dream-rock outfit. I saw them play a short set last weekend where they opened with an impressive song of their own and then played a faithful cover of Yo La Tengo's "I Heard You Looking." I figured being as white as Ira Kaplan and knowing it was enough of a reason to talk with the guitarist, Sangchol Han, after the show. He was friendly and explained that Bulssajo is currently in the studio recording their first real album (Furious Five was just a "test recording"). He said he likes YLT but also rattled off People Under the Stairs and Mr. Lif as influences because he spins on the weekends.

The two songs posted above both remind me of Seam, but the guitar work has a harder edge, and the vocals are mixed so far back you can't understand the lyrics no matter what language you speak. As a whole, the album is rough but very consistent.

More Bulssajo here.

MP3 I Heard You Looking / Yo La Tengo

MP3 I Heard You Looking (live 6/20/95) / Yo La Tengo

One of my favorite rock instrumentals of all time. The guitar's droning march becomes more and more weirdly joyful each time it emerges from its own distortion.

God Save the Queen

2006-01-25T09:04:00.001-06:00

Fuck You, Elton John / Chin Up Chin Up

First it was Bennie and the Jets, and the rhinestone arms race with Liberace. Then the whole "how could I possibly be gay if I'm married to a woman" thing. And then came the Lion King song, single-handedly ruining an otherwise respectable 1994. Now we're supposed to call him Sir, like he rides upon a goddamn steed, redressing grievances throughout christendom or something. Finally, Chin Up Chin Up has said what we were all thinking. Fuck you, Elton John.

Admittedly, the song (from 2005's Chin Up Chin Up) doesn't live up to the title, though it ends on a nice little note of Xiu Xiu-inspired caterwauling.

More Flaming Robot Music

2006-01-24T10:15:00.008-06:00

M: Hey Jerry?

J: Yes Mike?

M: Do these
yellow lights
make me
look gay?

J: (Pause)

M: Be honest

J: You're not gay?

Full-size Robot Mike. Full-size Robot Jerry.

MP3 You Gotta Hold On (full version) / The Flaming Lips

"Biggest mistake EVER" was my reaction to discovering that "You Gotta Hold On" is not on on the tracklist for the Lips' forthcoming At War with the Mystics LP. Actually I didn't care that much. But it does seem weird that this glitchy robotic new-agery is not slated for release at all even though the video (featuring...you guessed it, robots!!) was made available in November. I guess the feel-goodisms are piled on too heavy for even these softest-hearted of rock stars: "And with a lot of patience/We'll see a lot of changes/And the United Nations/Will see our love is only love//And there's nothing to be afraid of." Whatever, I still prefers this to either of the two Mystics tunes that have been released thus far. Loveisloveisloveislove.

MP3 The W.A.N.D. / The Flaming Lips

Most people probably disagree, so if you don't got it here's the first single.

MP3 Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 (Japanese vocals version) / The Flaming Lips

This one's to fill the Koreapan quota.

Seksy

2006-01-23T21:58:00.004-06:00

Walk On The Moon / Asobi Seksu

Sooner / Asobi Seksu

As I'm sure many of you know, I'm sort of the umbilical-choked, oxygen-deprived, retarded fraternal twin in this musical relationship with Jeremy. That's why I was so excited when, during a recent google search for ~~pornography,~~ music, I found this cool band...Yay me find music good too! I shouted loudly to Jeremy. Oh, them? he scoffed. I've known about them since, like, forever.* And who let you out of the basement, retard?
So, I tried. Anyway. Asobi Seksu. Sort of like My Bloody Valentine fronted by a Japanese girl. Hot.

*Jeremy actually credits Daniel Levin Becker with this one

I Heart The Lord

2006-01-23T04:21:00.001-06:00

No Job / I Love JH

Oh My Darling / I Love JH

Word on the street has it that the mysterious letters in the name I Love JH refer to both Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jesus H. Christ. But listening to the first single from ILJH's debut LP (which came out yesterday), one gets the sense that they might as well stand for the singer's middle-school boyfriend and that delicious Josh Hartnett. Whatever you believe, "No Job" is gummy and reasonably representative of Korean indie pop. The lyrics are in English and only occasionally of any interest ("I don't wanna talk about life"), but the hooks are in all the right spots.

Mildly related: According to both Dan Brown and part four of the Bible, Jesus' full middle name is Herbert. But they are wrong. Like Harry Truman, Jesus has a middle initial that refers only to itself.

Happy Smile Candy Music!

2006-01-22T00:48:00.001-06:00

Dolly / Shonen Knife

I Wanna Eat Choco Bars / Shonen Knife

They wear matching Mondrian-style dresses, sing about cute animals and junk food, and opened for Sonic Youth and Nirvana. The two sisters of Osaka's famed ultra-pop Shonen Knife (translated, "Boy...Knife") have been promoting tooth decay since 1981 and are still going strong. Well, kind of. Their drummer just died in a car crash. And their new album is...OK. Kind of. But hey, Eighty-freakin'-one. Kurt Kobain. Dead drummer. Alright? Girl Power!

The first song, "Dolly," is about going to sleep by counting cute sheep...cloned cute sheep. A biting social commentary. The second song, "I Wanna Eat Choco Bars," is off the '86 LP Pretty Little Baka Guy, and is about singer Naoko Yamano's desire...nay...compulsion, to manually strangulate prostitutes.

Just kidding. Actually, she wants to eat choco bars.

Remember That Club Scene From "Blade"?

2006-01-20T11:20:00.001-06:00

I'm a Vampire / Future Bible Heroes

Definitely the best song by any Magnetic Fields side project. Imagine Stephen Dorff, John Malkovich, Tom Cruise, Eddie Murphy, and one of the blood-suckers from the Buffy movie (not starring Sarah Michelle Gellar) all dancing together at an impossibly glam Halloween party hosted by Stephin Merritt. The eternal Claudia Gonson is onstage singing, and it sounds like this.

I'm a Vampire (extended version) / Future Bible Heroes

The remix is inferior, but it's longer and the extra minutes are appreciated. It's also further dancified and adds a nice "Ba-ba-ba-ba" backing vocal from the Vampiress herself. Still, if I was gonna remix this treasure, I'd just copy & paste it after itself and title the project "I'm 2 Vampires." Go here to buy Eternal Youth. Yeah, it's that easy.

Ve Belief in Nahseen

2006-01-20T07:02:00.001-06:00

Technopolis / Yellow Magic Orchestra

The sorta-kraftwerky Japanese technopop group Yellow Magic Orchestra formed as a one-time studio project in '78, but were soon just so darned sorta-influential that the three original members (joined on stage by a large synth-twiddling backup band) stayed together until '84, parting ways on sorta-friendly terms. Haruomi got the cat, Yukihiro got the samples, and Ryuichi gets to see the kids on the weekend. This track is off their second album, and is quite representative of what might be termed their "NES Final Boss Theme Music" period.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence / Ryuichi Sakamoto

So where are they now? Well, that happy vibration in your pants may just be Ryuichi. He's doing ringtones. Also the occasional movie score...this track is an early one from the '83 film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, in which he pulled double duty as music-writer-guy and leading man opposite David "I could act my way out of a Labyrinth" Bowie.

A Teeth-Whitening Pep Rally

2006-01-19T06:01:00.003-06:00

Lovely / Kim Jong-guk

This is the very beginning of the soon to be eminent We Pass Notes On Bananas, so the two songs for today are supposed to represent the opposite extremes of music in South Korea. This one's by Kim Jong-guk who's been around ten years and still has the voice of a castrated angel, not to mention hair that appears to be unshatterable. "Lovely" is from his third album, This Is Me (2005), and can currently be heard on every radio in every convenience store throughout the land. I'd tell you to buy the album and support Mr. Kim, but the melody is so catchy and the song so ridiculous that you probably won't want to. Plus, he's got to be a jillionaire by now.

Ping / The Ten Speeds

In contrast, The Ten Speeds barely exist. They only record when their London-based guitarist visits Seoul. They have no drummer. And their bassist is a Canadian who's been living in Korea for ten years and plans to leave soon. (He wears a Paul McCartney hat and drives a purple scooter.) But "Ping" is good, if unpolished, Ian Curtis worship, and the band somehow continues to survive in an underground scene focused primarily on punk and noise. I'd tell you to buy the album, but it's not an album and it costs nothing. "Ping" and five other tracks are available at the website for Double Riche, the band's moniker before it was rechristened The Ten Speeds. Like, you know, a bicycle.

More on The Ten Speeds...