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Here's a first stab at mixing some analog music (from vinyl) for a downloadable mp3: the Tuxedomoon Mini-Mix [.mp3 removed]. It's approximately 18 minutes, a 17 MB file. This favors broadband users, and I'm sorry, I've really been trying to keep this page surfer-friendly. Just consider the mix a bonus to the online music-crit below (yeah, I know, right).
Tuxedomoon was a kind of art-punk-cabaret band that emerged from late '70s San Francisco, specifically the scene around the Mabuhay Gardens and the Deaf Club: a time and place band member Blaine Reininger described as "our own Belle Epoque." Principal instruments were bass (that's a pun, sort of--the bassist is Peter Principle), sax, violin, keyboards, and rhythm box. Adjectives used to describe the band would be "innovative," "psychedelic" and "angsty." Three vocalists alternated on the singing chores and all sounded tortured, or suffering from post-breakdown ennui; all members were accomplished musicians downplaying their talent at the height of garage band streamlining. The band flowered during the postpunk era with a recording contract on the Residents' Ralph label, then relocated to Belgium before eventually drifting apart in the mid-'80s. In this selection I've somewhat slighted sax-and-keyboarder Steven Brown's contributions in favor of violinist Reininger's, but I love both. Here's the track listing; all songs are by the band unless noted:
"Volo Vivace" from Half-Mute (1980). Jazzy chamber music anchored in organ-and-synthesizer gloom. Principle's ultracool bass, playing counterpoint to a sequencer, supplies the rhythm."Incubus (Blue Suit)" from Desire (1981). Trippy scifi lyrics sung by Reininger, and you gotta love that beatbox.
"Crash" (flip side of Ralph 45 rpm "What Use") (1980). With its flailing drums, repetitive piano refrain, and filtered acid guitar, this is like proto-breakbeat techno. Never made it onto an album, but this is one of my favorite TM tracks. Guest guitarist Michael Belfer resurfaces on Reininger's solo LP described below.
"Birthday Song," from the Reininger solo outing Night Air (1983). Very '80s noir. Steven Brown's charmingly almost-inept sax makes an appearance here.
"Next to Nothing," 1977 rehearsal recording (from the Pinheads on the Move compilation, 1987). Singer and performance artist Winston Tong popped in and out of the TM lineup: his emotional vocals are featured here. The raw use of the analog synth here is inspiring, from the lurching, stop-and-start notes underneath the vocals to the ending where the sound hisses away in ever-rising pink noise increments. Gives me chills.
This "outsourcing of jobs" business--whether it's blue collar ones going to China or white collar ones going to India--should be a potent campaign issue. I'm betting that many workplaces have rumors going around that certain tasks will soon be sent overseas. Why should anyone trust their employers on this issue? As long as no government restrictions on the practice exist, the corporation's job is to maximize profits, so goodbye jobs. The Republicans are speaking out with their usual sensitivity to the problems of the middle class. You may have read that Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, called outsourcing "just a new way of doing international trade." The White House hasn't criticized Mankiw's comment, "focusing on the belief he was espousing that freer global trade benefits workers and consumers in all countries, including the United States," according to a recent AP article. Mankiw said his remarks were "misinterpreted" and he meant to emphasize "the importance of knocking down trade barriers while helping workers who inevitably will lose their jobs to transition into other work," according to the same AP story. In other words, retraining them from computer programming to the intricacies of waiting tables. (Though in the current let's-automate-everything climate, even those jobs are in jeopardy.)
A lot of Democrats moved to the right on this issue during the Clinton years, embracing all that "free market" jabber. Whatever candidate the Democrats put up against Bush is going to be in the pocket of Big Business, so don't expect any change come 2005. What we need, though, is to move away from the kneejerk idea that "market wisdom" is the sole way to run a society. If the market were truly wise child labor wouldn't exist anywhere. Societies (meaning governments) always draw lines regarding what is acceptable behavior. What's needed, now that even the managerial class is feeling the sting of outsourcing, is a bigger national dialogue on the American way of doing business. To me, outsourcing combined with insane executive compensation is fouling our own nest, gradually destroying the communities which originally nurtured the multinationals. Which means, we need to start passing legislation limiting predatory levels of compensation (tying executive earnings to the overall health of the company, not just the perception of being a "mover"), taxing companies that outsource and using the money to create a national unemployment fund, and penalizing corporations that move offshore to evade these laws. Sharp intake of breath from Clintonians and Republicans alike--heresy!
"Home Hip Hop," from Dragan Espenschied's Casio Gallery (guest photographer: Olia Lialina). The .gifs are rearranged here so you can see them horizontally: normally they play sequentially (in time)--hope that's OK. Espenschied is an artist, a musician (one-half of the home computer band Bodenstandig 2000), and an opinionated computer geek. His Dogma-manifesto-like wisdom on keeping things basic in computer publishing is persuasive: How to Correctly Print Low Resolution Screen Graphics makes me ashamed for putting up so many gnarly jpegs, riddled with "what professionals call 'bicubic mush.'" One could take issue with some of his rules of screen design, though: no matter how pure or innate a black screen is, it's oppressive to look at. So go ahead, call me an analog sissy for "trying to imitate paper." Other noteworthy Dragan projects are what he calls the Worst Drum Machine (which is to say, the best), and the Gameboy Camera Gallery. Especially intriguing on the latter page is the ultra-lo-res tour of a Camille Pisarro painting exhibition. If theorists from academia were still taking up causes in the art world, this might be of interest to them (unfortunately they've abandoned us to journalists).
Until today, this earlier post about the Iowa caucus still occupied the front page of this blog; since it was written, in the hoary, ancient days of January 25-26, the whole political landscape has changed. Back then, everything was "Dean Dean Dean" and now it's all "Kerry Kerry Kerry." The latter's pro-war vote will give him more credibility with Toby Keith's America, I guess, and he is at least now questioning Bush Jr.'s cred on defense issues. Without being for him, I can still say "let's hope he wins."
The same post discussed Alexander Cockburn's takedown of Errol Morris's film The Fog of War, and Cockburn has a few more thoughts today on Robert McNamara, specifically his 13 years at the World Bank. McNamara is reportedly unhappy that these glory years aren't mentioned in the movie, but Cockburn reminds us that sacking the Third World economically isn't any more noble than killing millions of Vietnamese, really.
In Vietnam, Agent Orange and napalm. Across the Third World, the bank underwrote "Green Revolution" technologies that the poorest peasants couldn't afford and that drenched land in pesticides and fertilizer. Vast infrastructural projects such as dams and kindred irrigation projects drove the poor from their lands, from Brazil to India. It was the malign parable of "modernization" written across the face of the Third World, with one catastrophe after another prompted by the destruction of traditional rural subsistence economies.Regarding the McNamara/Morris tour to promote the movie, Cockburn says: "It's as though Eichmann had launched a series of lecture-circuit pillow fights with a complaisant biographer." I know Democratic centrist types are wont to bash Cockburn as an "old lefty"--a lot of them sided with power-nebbish Eric Alterman in his recent food fight with the Counterpunch editor--but Cockburn is still the more incisive writer, and more fun, too.
Watch Great Teacher Onizuka morph into a museum inflatable here (360 KB file). This 22 year old biker turned student teacher is fantasizing about "being in his 40s and marrying a 16 year old." Don't ask.
Bruce Sterling, on his blog, steers us towards Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Dance Music, which definitely merits a moment or two of your time. It's a handy manual to all the different electronic dance genres, where you can hear samples and go "Ah, that's what Nu Style Gabber sounds like!" On the other hand, it's a novel and fairly persuasive form of criticism. Ishkur makes no bones that this is his take, and by combining a flowchart taxonomy with written argument and clickable soundbites, he's made a formidable first draft of pop music history.
I like the way he includes Dub as a forerunner of House (along with Disco); that's a little less America-centric than the usual version, which has NY djs moving to Chicago and reinventing disco with more electronics. (Curiously, Hiphop is treated as sui generis--under "Breakbeat"--when it also had a strong Caribbean influence, e.g., DJ Kool Herc.) He gives Techno short shrift, though, treating it as a genre for boring purists when it in fact has interpenetrated and informed almost all the other styles. It's interesting the way he divides early 90s breakbeat rave techno into Rave, which becomes the progenitor of Hardcore, and Breakcore, which spins off Jungle and Drum & Bass, but mysteriously, Rave never intersects with the "Techno" timeline and Breakcore never intersects with the "Breakbeat" timeline.* Also, I'm not sure I understand the distinction he makes between two 80s styles: EBM (Electronic Body Music, posited as a forerunner of Goa Trance) and New Beat (a Hardcore antecedent). When I hear both I just say "Belgian."
One style new to me is Speedbass, which sounds like a cross between Noizecore and what Ishkur's calling Experimental Jungle (AKA Drill'n'Bass). It seems very DIY and upload-oriented (see website at www.speedbass.net), and while it's a bit more chaotic than my usual around-the-house fare, it's hard to resist anything with repeated samples of whips cracking and Hollywood extras crying out in fake pain, for example, DJ Tendraw and the Gypsies Dog's "Vocal Tripe (I'm Gonna Hurt You Mix)."
*If I was going to collect a genre in depth (meaning spending a fortune tracking down 12-year-old vinyl and dubplates) it would probably be the one Ishkur calls Breakcore [in version 2.5 he changed it to "Oldskool Rave Hardcore"]. The energy and sheer creative nuttiness of that particular musical moment has never been duplicated.
UPDATE: There was so much to say here I forgot to mention that the writing on Ishkur's site is lively and funny. Some excerpts have been posted here.
There's a nice mix of video game and game-related music over at cuechamp. A good chance to hear artists frequently plugged here, including 8-Bit Construction Set and Monotrona, as well as punchy electro tracks such as Knifehandchop's "Ryu vs. Sakura," with samples of a Real Don Steele-type announcer (from "Streetfighter Alpha 3") yelling out stuff like "Select your fighting style!" and "Beat'em up guys!" Here's the link to the .mp3 of the mix; it's a 22MB file so you probably need broadband. And here is the playlist:
1. super mario brothers - london symphony orchestraWhile at cuechamp, I followed the link to Hektor, a graffiti-writing robot that produces some really clean, seductive imagery with a spraycan rigged up on pulleys. The principle recalls the Etch-a-Sketch, or I suppose what happens inside a mouse, only in reverse: the program translates data into sweeping movements of the dangling, spritzing can, within imaginary horizontal and vertical axes. The device is documented on the under-construction website with pop-up jpegs, a quicktime movie and an extensive pdf file. Now to figure out how to get it into the trainyards.
2. video computer system - golden shower
3. bmx kidz theme - input 64
4. saucemaster - 8 bit construction set
5. ah, enemy - monotrona
6. ryu vs. sakura - knifehandchop
7. manhunt (rephlex manhood remix) – lords of the dance
8. computer games - yellow magic orchestra