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Tuesday, Jul 30, 2002

kennelmus

"Another fine reissue from fine reissue label Sundazed (who put this out in '99 -- so we're slow, sorry) of late sixties era psych rock. Kennelmus were from the Arizona desert and played a sunbaked style of almost surfy psychedelia, as documented on this, their sole LP release from 1971. Influenced by the Beach Boys, early Alice Cooper, and we'd have to assume some mind-expanding drugs, this is gorgeous stuff that's also weirdly unhinged as you'll discover as the album progresses. 'Indonesian instrumental '60s guitar pop band The Steps doing Morricone Western soundtrack music' (cool!) is the first thing we thought after hearing the initial three or four songs, but then as the tracks advance, more and more songs feature vocals, often silly, nasal ones...partially because of this, at times this reminds us of another strange band originally from Arizona, the Sun City Girls! "

grease monkey

"It's going to be hard to do this one justice... We just got a few copies in of this actually out-of-print double cd. Cheap, too! The Hampton Grease Band released this, their debut and only album, in 1971, to almost universal disinterest and, even, active dislike. It was, famously, the second worst selling album in Columbia history. It might not have helped that Columbia's marketers, doubtless confused by the dadaistic hippy rock weirdness of the Hampton Grease Band, pitched it to stores as a comedy album. It certainly is funny -- funny ha ha and otherwise -- but it's as an avant-garde rock record that we recommend it. Imagine Zappa, Beefheart and a southern rock band all rolled into one absurd, palpitating, guitar-totin' ball. The end result: gorgeous, dissonant, textural guitar-based instrumentals that wouldn't sound out of place on the best Polvo record you've heard, plus the raving loony vocal 'stylings' of one Bruce Hampton (who has kept up his antics as the leader of Col. Hampton's Aquarium Rescue Unit, which we definitely aren't recommending). He's untrained and maniacal and his screechy voice makes this sound at times like Sam Kinison fronting the Allman Brothers. An acquired taste, perhaps, we'll warn you -- it even took a few listens for Allan (the biggest, and maybe only, Hampton Grease Band fan here) to get into this originally. And he doesn't like Zappa, either. But annoyance soon gave way to enjoyment. There's definitely some stoopid stuff on here, but then there's the several extended (around 20 minutes long, three of 'em are) compositions/improvs in complex, interlocking time signatures and whatnot. Not normal rock, not jazz, certainly not jazzrock. Instrumentally, amazing. Lyrically, certainly odd -- Hampton often sang "found lyrics" from whatever text was at hand, like an encyclopedia entry about Halifax or the back of a can of spray paint. As it says in the cd booklet liner notes, the HGB were "an intensely musical group with an intensely non-musical singer"."

dream on

"This long-awaited legit reissue of the lost classic by one man band the Dreamies will easily provide hours of crypto-analytic fun in response to the question "Who else besides the Beatles have the Olivia Tremor Control blatantly copied/paid homage to?" Kidding aside, we promise you could totally mistake this for an OTC record...a *great* OTC record! From 1973, it is an outstanding if bizarre psychedelic album with spartanly bleak arrangements for acoustic guitar and hauntingly Donovanesque vocal melodies, injected with trippy sonic squiggles and snippets from 70s newscasts to paint a disillusioned picture of the failure of 60s ideologies. Mesmerisingly beautiful and faithfully reissued from the original masters. Recommended!! "

babar sings!

"First it was Frogs of North America invading our record bins, then it was Antarctic Seals and Penguins, followed by Insects in Stored Foodstuffs... now it's Elephants from Thailand! Brilliant recordings by non-human, um, sound-artists that we just can't get enough of here at Aquarius. In this case, the elephants are not just making their natural noises, they are indeed playing instruments! You may have read about this project in the New York Times -- when we found out about it we immediately contacted the label and ordered a whole bunch (based also on the on-line sample we heard at www.mulatta.org) and now here they are. These are elephants from a elephant preseve in Thailand who have been trained to play specially-built instruments (many marimba-like instruments similar to the traditional Thai renat, as well as such things as harmonicas, drums, and even a stringed "electric bass"), but they haven't been trained *what* to play, it's all improvised with minimal human guidance! Yet it's definitely music. It was kind of an experiment to find out how the creatures might express themselves, and we'd say it was very successful indeed. If we didn't know these were elephants, we'd think this was a strange No Neck Blues Band recording or something. Imagine a stumbling, primitive hippy folk jam on gamelan instruments, but not one that's random or erratic. The elephants play steady beats, the struck gongs or chimes interspersed with their vocalizations as well. With no overdubs and few edits this is certainly a very impressive recording!"

le meow

"Francoiz Breut is the modern Brigitte Fontaine, with a healthy dose of Cat Power thrown in. Acoustic loops, soaring strings and skittering drums all frame absolutely beautiful songs, full of emotion and intensity. Breut's voice is husky and deep, the lyrics all in French, making the songs dark and dreamy and romantic."

Monday, Jul 29, 2002

newport news

"Next Saturday, Dylan, now 61, will return to the Newport Folk Festival for the first time since that evening. It would be easy to read too much into the occasion. If there is a general remark that might be true about a figure like Dylan, it is that general remarks are almost always distortions. The opposites contained in any real artist prepare an ambush for generalizations."

chimichanga

"At approximately 2 a.m., Rosenblatt was finishing a particularly difficult course-pack reading on the impact of feminism, post-feminism, and current 'queer' theory on received notions of gender and sexual preference/identity. Realizing he hadn't eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases�cultural, racial, economic, and political�that infect all ethnographic and commercial "histories.""

Friday, Jul 26, 2002

take me home

"The Department of Homeland Security: An Alternative That Will Work"

rush to judgement

"When AOL bought Time Warner, the New York Times asked me to write a comment piece. "What does it all mean?" my assigning editor asked."

"What I wrote was that AOL's purchase of Time Warner heralded the end of the dotcom bubble. AOL was cashing in its casino chips. And just like the gambler who trades in his coloured plastic disks for real cash, AOL's Steve Case understood that his run was over and that it was time to trade in his stock certificates for those of a company that had genuine assets."

"The New York Times refused to run the piece. They told me I was misreading the landscape to such an extent that for them to publish such a view would be irresponsible. See, all the experts - at least all the experts the Times was listening to - believed that the AOL purchase of Time Warner indicated "new" media's domination of "old" media. Interactivity would take over. Time Warner's only hope of getting in the game was to be absorbed by a new media company."

imperfect storm

"Dahl's main points form an argument that goes roughly like this. Wise and great though the framers were, their vision was circumscribed by what they knew, what they mistakenly thought they knew, and what they lived too soon to have any way of knowing. Even within those limits, they were hobbled by the political necessities of a particular moment, which forced them to swallow provisions to which the most eminent among them were strongly (and rightly) opposed."

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