This interview with Godspeed You! Black Emperor blows my mind.  The whole thing reads like a manifesto, or song lyrics.  The link calls it a “transcript” but I cannot fathom someone actually answering questions like that.  Perhaps they were prepared with pre-written answers, or maybe I don’t know how interviews actually work.  I kept thinking, “hey I should copy that line and quote it,” but then I realized I was going to quote every other line or so.

I never much cared for Yanqui U.X.O. but this new album is very good.  You can stream the whole thing online.  I’m glad I went to see GY!BE in Chicago back when I did – the poster is on the wall above me right now.

I love it when the internet delivers on its ability to let you make a few hops and find something that you would otherwise have never possibly found ever. Case in point: I was reading this article on Gizmodo about a photographic technique involving tilt-shift lenses that makes real-life images appear like macro images of tiny models.  Amazing videos, you should check them out.  But also amazing is the MUSIC the guy uses for his videos.

So spend some time on his website and I learn the music is all by a band called “Sonido Lasser Drakar”.  Soulseek helps me out and BAM I’m rocking out to Mexican electrodance tracks.  As far as I can tell this band has barely even made it out of the basement; an album of 6 tracks and a few singles on electronica collections.  Though it’s so good, maybe just because I am picturing funky internet videos but I am also grooving as I sit here at my computer…

Check em out!

Also, I didn’t even have to read the article to know that one day my library/reading room/den/secret lair will look like this.  So beautiful, so amazing, so brea…  I have to go change my pants again…

EDIT: oh oh oh speaking of stuff you can find on the internet that involves music and electronics and dancing and non-American origins: check out pornophonique.  The tagline says it all: gameboy meets lagerfeuer (again with the internets: lagerfeuer means campfire?)  Ok maybe the tagline doesn’t say it all.  It’s good!  Check it out!  They post their music for free!

So I haven’t updated in a while.  I guess once again I’ve hit that slump where there really isn’t much to update about.  I’ve been striving to listen to new music and I have been finding new and exciting things.  But I just don’t feel in the mood to write stuff up.  Maybe if I keep rambling I’ll get there again.

I went to a show this past week.  It was a DJ show for a guy named Bassnectar.  Good dance stuff.  But I’m not as young as I used to be, since the guy started playing at 11pm and I go to work at 7am.  Ugh…  Though it was fun and worth it.

Metallica – Death Magnetic
First of all, Metallica has only earned itself any press lately by acting like retards.  Recall that Metallica was the band that brought down Napster; you may have also heard the story of how the band invited music critics and writes to screen the new album, then when those critics posted reactions and reviews, the band threatened and demanded they remove the reviews.  Metallica is the band that hates the internet.

Then they go and release a new album.  The thing about this album (and many before it) is that it comes with a cute anecdote and a pithy response and can thusly be summed up very quickly.  The word is the that the band’s producer went to Metallica and said, “Master of Puppets was your best work ever but pretend like it was only half of an album.  Now I want you to record the other half!”  Yeah!  Inspiring words!  Let’s thrash it up, guys! RRRAAAAWWWwwwwrrrr….

But recall that Master of Puppets was recorded in 1986.  It is no longer 1986.  Everything and everyone has changed a bit since then.  The original work is classic and it will remain as such but you cannot stand on the shoulders of success and beside it at the same time.  Thus the pthy response: They failed.

I do think my opinion is tarnished by the Pitchfork review.  They whine about the lyrics (I swear the chorus of one song is, “if it don’t kill you, it makes you more strong,” which sounds so grammatically incorrect I want to cry).  They do point out that there are parts where the music echoes faintly of Master of Puppets and so there are happy moments.  But alas…  it’s still not 1986.

The Chemical Brothers – Brotherhood
I am always weary of bands who try to extend their life expectancy by releasing multiple “best of” albums.  This is their second, with maybe one album after the previous “best of” to cut the monotony.  Don’t get me wrong, the music is still awesome but I still get frustrated with these grabs for my money.  Brotherhood features a second disc of “Electronic Battle Weapon” tracks which apparently the Pitchfork review claims is its one saving grace.  Again I find myself merely echoing the Pitchfork review.

I’ve been listening to new music lately even though I haven’t posted.  I’ve been busy with moving sale stuff and Netflix watching and omg new TV this fall.  I download the stuff overnight, load up my iPod and listen to it at work.  I want to keep my first impressions written down so the music doesn’t just wash over and through me and I forget about it.  So what I’ve been doing is scribbling little notes on post-its, not the regular square ones but the mini ones.  And I write tiny to get several albums’ worth of notes in.  Now comes an exercise in decoding what the heck i wrote down:

Digital Orgasm – Do It
Sounds sexy, right?  Sounds like someone kidnapped the singer from Lords of Acid and made her sing for their fan band.  Ok I guess…

Scientist – rids the world of the evil curse of the vampires
With a title like that, how can you go wrong?  Well, you could have an album full of reggae which seems totally incongruous with a band and album name like that.

Subtle – For Hero: For Fool
Recommendation from Matt.  A little too hip-hop for my tastes.  The music is good and the vocals are a bit more subdued than a full-fledged rap album, so not all bad.

The Dexorcist – Bad Robot
I admit, this album pulled me in only because of the title.  It’s not even an album, it’s like a three-track EP I think.  But it’s robot music for sure and I love it.

Stars – Heart
Light.  Airy.  ZZZzzz…

Villain Accelerate – Maid of Gold
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ…

Asian Dub Foundation – Time Freeze
Hippity-hoppity.  Pass.

Girl Talk – Feed the Animals
HA.  This is a mash-up in every sense of the word.  There is actually a Wired article talking about all the samples that this guy crams into his album.  It’s fun because I actually can recognize some of the stuff, which is not typically used for sampling.  I’d like to share the article with you but apparently they took down the image.  Oh well.

Flying Lotus – Los Angeles
Sounds like an old record, which is why Pitchfork loved it.  I like it too, even though once again we’re airing on the side of hip-hop.

Unter Null – The Failure Epiphany
Face-crushing industrial bullshit.  Like Wumpscut Jr., complete with the distorted vocals and feedback drenched grinds.  I love it.

Times New Viking – Rip It Off
Clever name, sonic earfuck.  I didn’t make it very far.

Boris – Smile
Announced as one of the opening bands for Nine Inch Nails’ fall tour.  Pitchfork complimented Trent’s choice and Trent himself picked them out.  I however found this album to be a sonic deathwall that got blood stains on my nice white iPod earbuds.  However, their earlier album Pink has a little more melody and structure so I enjoyed it more.

Health – Disco
A remix album.  Health is another NIN opener.  These guys collaborated with Crystal Castles and I liked CC, so Health sort of got in on the ground floor.  Still good.

The Bug – London Zoo
The third NIN opener (keep in mind these are a single opening band for different shows, not 3 openers in a single night).  This is more reggae stuff on top of electronic beats.  Not bad but not really dance music either.

Justice – Planisphere
Omg omg omg I love these guys.  Pitchfork says it all.

In July of this year, French duo Justice presented a lengthy piece of music called “Planisphere” at the Dior Homme Summer 2009 Fashion Show. The piece, divided into four parts, with an addendum of some sort called “Planisphere Final”, is streaming now at their MySpace page. I hear some spacey, shredding guitar leads, spooky harpsichord, their distincitive churning beats, and a single riff that recurs and ties the whole thing together.

Go to their MySpace page and check it out.  Trust me, it’s worth braving the wastelands of MySpace for a listen.

Younger Brother – The Last Days of Gravity
A friend told me about a band called Infected Mushroom.  They’re good and a topic for a later post.  But while looking for more of Infected Mushroom’s style, we go to their genre which is “psytrance.”  And so far that “genre” has turned up pretty empty except for a band called Shpongle (who is also a topic for a later post).  And one of the guys in Shpongle did some other work under the name of Younger Brother.  Pretty lame as far as band names go but it’s good stuff!

Wolfmother – Wolfmother
The AllMusic description says it all: Truly a band out of time, Australian power trio Wolfmother were conceived in 2000 — about 30 years too late, considering that their psychedelic brand of proto-heavy metal sounds like a ringer for late-’60s/early-’70s bands such as Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath.  I don’t know Blue Cheer, but the description of old-school arena-rock really seems to fit.  It’s good stuff and you’ve probably played their song on Guitar Hero 2.

It’s happened again.  I’ve gotten back into the downloading groove and I’m downloading more music that I can listen.  Or even want to listen to.  I see a band mentioned somewhere on the news, by a friend, etc. and I must have it!  But I don’t download the album mentioned, I download all of their albums.  Then if I find someone with good download speeds, I browse their files and look for bands that just have interesting names.  All this piles up in my download directory until I feel that things are so messy that I need to organize.  So I do my OCD overhawl of the mp3s then move them into my organized music directory.  And then I forget about them.  Oh I have the stuff, I am a collector, but I don’t know what any of it sounds like.  Then I get all whiny about this state of affairs and write self-pitying posts.

I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive about music, just in case you have managed to been reading my posts for a long time and haven’t figured that out yet (actually since this is a blog and I don’t know anyone who reads this thing regularly, I doubt much about me is obvious at this point).  Nevertheless, when I like a band, I tend to collect their entire catalog of music and sample a cross-section.  But rarely do I really analyze the band’s changes from one album to the next (of course, ignoring that I just did that in the last post; I suck tonight).  Let me skip to my point: I listened to Hanzel und Gretyl’s newest album and had some thoughts.

Hanzel und Gretyl – 2012: Zwanzig Zwolf
I saw this band in Detroit.  I’ve known them for a while, through a few album releases.  How can you be on the goth scene and not know them?  Still, I was listening to this and i thought that it was actually an improvement on their sound and style.  It would seem my opinions happen upon “more of the same = bad” or “more of the same = good” so I’m going with the latter this time.  Yet there was growth, the songs sounded more structured.  Maybe I’m just talking out of my ass.  But one thing I noted, the girl wasn’t growling on this one.  I remember that was one of the distinctive things about this band, that both a male and female singer growling along the industrial metal riffs made for a distinctive sound.  But it seems like she’s missing from this album.  Or maybe she’s been singing like this for so long that it’s just dropped a few registers.

The Knife – Silent Shout
This is what music sharing is all about!  My friend comes into work and before he’s even sitting all the way down, he says, “ok new band of the day – The Knife,” and shares their album.  And it’s SO GOOD.  I believe I am hooked because it’s electronic stuff but just on the side of goth/industrial.  I may no longer paint my nails and wear black lipstick but I still dig the stuff.  It’s a duo from Sveden and the vocals are haunted and distorted but the beat is there.  I swear I’ve heard some of these songs before but I’m not sure where.  I then proceeded to their website to check tour dates (since, you know, I’ve had luck with that recently).  Wouldn’t you know it, they were here in 2006.  By “here” I mean in the US since they didn’t seem to want to go anywhere away from the ocean (New York, San Francisco, LA… I don’t think there are any other cities in this nation anymore).  Still, should some miricle occur and they come back, I may have to think about trying to see them.

iHave an iPod, therefore iUse iTunes.  I read about this “visualizer” addon called iConcertCal that scans your music library and checks for any activity with the bands you have.  It took me a bit to realize that it meant music library and not “on your iPod” because I’m trying to fill up a 160gb iPod from a 80gb hard drive, so I keep my music library pretty empty and control the transfer of songs tightly.  My point being, I load up this iConcertCal and check out the calendar to see what’s going on in the world of Music That Derek Likes.  Turns out jack shit! But no wait, maybe I did something wrong, so I fiddle with the settings, set the radius really large so it picks up Chicago and Detroit instead of middle of nowhere Grand Rapids.  Then I realize the bit about the library and load it up.  POW holy crap there’s a lot going on with the bands I enjoy.  But all of it is going on in Chicago.  Lame…  It makes me sort of wonder what it would be like to live somewhere where the music comes to you instead of me having to go to the music.

So here’s a lesson in deductive reasoning.  I started to foam at the mouth for downloading again, so I check the Pirate Bay’s top 100 music torrents.  “Gimme stuff and right quick,” I demanded.  But the choices were lame; Coldplay was at the top of the list by a ton but I’m not really interested in them.  But hey, there’s something for a band named Paramore, an album called “Riot”.  That’s the kind of title you’d give an album if you were edgy but hip and cool, right?  A little hop over to AllMusic again tells me they’re “neo-punk” or something.  Whatever, gimme.

Paramore – Riot
You’d think this would be a little obvious but you’ll have to forgive me as I catch up.  I’m looking at the top 100 downloads, meaning stuff lots of people have, and I give it a shot.  I listen to it.  I decide it’s kind of pop-y and something to appeal to the masses.  Wait for it, I’ll get there…  Top of the download list, liked by the masses…  Yeah so I dig the band and album because girls’ singing just melts my cold, lonely heart but still, sounds kind of generic.

CSS – Donkey
I’d say I love this band but the truth is I love the song that Apple used for their iTouch commercials last year.  The lead singer girl is hot and has a cute voice (girl singing, I tell you I’m pathetic).  However I never really listened to their first album very attentively.  But they release another one and I’m like, “hey I wonder if she still sings like a girl.”  Guess what, she does!  Too bad the songs are kind of lame this time around.  Pitchfork got it right, the magic of the first album isn’t really here this time.  Oh well, lead singer girl still wears skin-tight onesies on-stage I think.

Timo Maas – I forget the name of the album
Another recommendation from a friend.  A techno mix, DJ set.  Good stuff albiet generic (or maybe I was just really into debugging code and it washed over me).

Taproot – Blue Sky Research
Ladies and gentlemen, please buckle your seatbelts while we ride the Wayback Machine.  Ann Arbor, turn of the century, Limp Bizkit was hot shit and Fred Durst owned the world (yes he did.  no you shut up.)  This band from Ann Arbor (omg I went to school there!  squeee!) is talking on the phone with Fred!  I saw them at a ratty bar that has some extra space in the back where occasionally bands play (Blind Pig).  I was in on the ground floor, baby!  Those were good times.  Then Fred became not cool or maybe he still is and I don’t care anymore.  Anyway, Taproot still sounds just like that and while it may be nostalgic for me, that’s about all it has going for it.  Maybe if I dig up the mp3s of their pre-Fred-tainted work, it’ll remind me of the Old Ways.

System of a Down – Hypnotize
The companion work to Mezmorize.  Remember how I panned One Day as a Furry by that guy Zack because it was focused on lyrics and political messages instead of on music?  I get that feeling about System of a Down, they seem to be really charged with opinions and their music seems to be overflowing with that stuff.  For some reason I totally dig Toxicity since it seemed to be goofy short songs between good longer songs.  Now everything past that seems to be more of the same but without the oomph that keeps “Chop Suey” on my playlist and everything after it not on my playlist.  Man I’m negative and nostalgic tonight.  I remember going into the girls’ dorm to visit a friend and she had Toxicity on her dresser.  You see what I mean about making an impact?  How am I going to recall Hypnotize?  “Oh man, this is the part where I totally found that missing table lock that was causing the code to violate database constraints!  Rock on!”  \m/  No sir, nothing yet about this album reaches out and grabs me by the balls like she did.

Daedelus – Denies the Days Demise
Daedelus – Love To Make Music To
I actually came across this band (guy) from two angles.  First of all, a friend and coworker recommended several electronic bands and this was one of them.  I admit to being so anal retentive that his mp3s did not meet my standards, so I kept the files but avoided listening to them until recently.  Then I got a second recommendation that was enough to push me over the edge.  As I said in an earlier post, Jordan recommended MGMT.  I looked them up on allmusic.com just because I like that page as a reference.  I see allmusic described MGMT as “indie electronic,” so I click on that genre and see what they have to say.  Wouldn’t you know it, Daedelus comes up!  Maybe it is time I give him some more serious attention.  And wouldn’t you know, it’s not so bad.  Definitely a little more experimental and “indie” but good.  A couple of songs have samples that sound really awkward or repeat too often for my taste but besides that, I’d recommend the stuff.

Basic Channel – Basic Channel
Just like with BCD-2 (or actually vice versa, that album is like this one) it’s very atmospheric and experimental and good, but not really stuff to get you booty shaking.  I think it’s just mastered at a lower volume since it’s so quiet.

Polar Bears – The Future King
This is the pitfall of filesharing; you see bands that have interesting names and you give them a shot.  I downloaded this only because Eriko calls me a bear.  This band is so indie, you can’t actually buy this album except at their shows.  But the sound is not something I enjoy, it’s very much indie rock bordering on emo/punk.  Lots of screaming and thrashing, not really my style.