Extreme Retail Therapy

Borders Student Discount Day yesterday yielded:

  • Statute book for my IT law course, blah.
  • Selected Poems (Galway Kinnell), which I’ve been wanting for ever so long and couldn’t find in the UCL library. I was also tempted by Mark Strand, Jane Kenyon and A.R. Ammons, but successfully resisted those.
  • My Beautiful Demon (Ben Christophers)
  • A Leaf Label sampler (stuff by Manitoba, Susumu Yokota, Boom Bip & Doseone. Also Asa-Chang & Junray, who I’ve always found too weird for even my listening tastes, but perhaps they’ll grow on me.)
  • A Bella Union compilation (stuff by The Czars, Dirty Three, Lift To Experience, Rothko among others)
  • What’s Up Matador, obviously a Matador sampler (loads of Matador artists)
  • A Sub-Pop sampler (Migala, Mark Lanegan, Red House Painters, The Shins, more)

Bright sparks will note a pattern – the sampler fixation is simply due to the fact that I could probably get most of the other albums I want cheaper from Berwick Street or the Internet even with the 20% Borders discount, but samplers aren’t any cheaper in second-hand stores than they are in Borders, probably because they’re dirt cheap anyway. So I got them for dirt cheap, less 20%. Yay.

I came home and somehow found myself at the Django site with about $30 worth of albums in my shopping cart. Then I noticed their “Free shipping worldwide for orders over $50” offer, and couldn’t refuse. For $50, I’m getting:

  • Laika: Sound Of The Satellites
  • Firewater: Psychopharmacology
  • Third Eye Foundation: You Guys Kill Me
  • Prodigy: Dirtchamber Sessions Vol. 1
  • Bows: Blush
  • Ted Leo/Pharmacists: The Tyranny Of Distance

I should probably feel guilty for this, but you know what? I’ve just spent a month writing an essay which shouldn’t have taken anywhere that long to write, but I haven’t been able to go any faster because it’s been bloody difficult stuff, I have to do a second essay as well by the end of the month, all my other Masters course reading has been completely neglected and will remain so for a good while, my brain is so tired I collapse into bed every night by 2 am (you have to know me to understand how rare this is) but since my dreams seem to constantly feature me getting chased by unknown shadowy menacing figures, or getting stung by swarms of bees, or all my teeth falling out, sleep hasn’t been much fun either, and honestly, the pure simple intense joy I get from coming home with new music to listen to just makes what I spent fucking worth it, okay?

Rawk Quotes

From Ink 19’s Top 19 Rock Quotes of 2002. Drummers are always the most quotable, somehow.

“Believe me, even on the shoot no one knew what they were doing. It was like “Get the triplets in the jacuzzi!” or “Get the midgets in wet suits and put them here!” or “Why are we in this make up and why do we have these outfits on? I don’t know!”
– Ray Luzier, DLR Band drummer on the making of the video David Lee Roth’s No Holds Bar-B-Que.

“That was when, I think, anything we’d ever dreamed about was surpassed. You can have dreams, you can be focused and you can do things, but when you go beyond that dream, that’s what happened on the Billion Dollar Babies tour.”
– Neal Smith, Alice Cooper drummer, remembering the glory days of Rock & Roll

“Well, after we’ve been out on tour together, we all get our periods at the same time, absolutely.”
– Gina Schock, Go Go’s drummer on the challenges inherent in being in a band comprised of all women.

The Roots (Jazz Cafe, London)

The Roots. At the Jazz Cafe. Last night. Seamless. Seminal. Wow.

That’s the condensed version. Let the gibbering version begin by saying I’m a little worried: I might just have seen the best gig of my year already, although I’m hoping Sigur Ros and Massive Attack will prove me wrong. And there’s always the hope of a Pavement reunion tour (ha bloody ha)…

We begin with the venue. If you were more than 20 metres from the stage you’d have been really unlucky. I’m so glad I jumped at the chance to see them at the Jazz Cafe instead of in the vastness of Brixton Academy on March 29.

I suppose the quickest way to describe the performance is that The Roots live are every bit as amazing as you’ve heard they are. Half the time they’re a band that rocks harder than any of the NME’s latest “The ______s” darlings. The rest of the time they’re pretending not to be a band any more but a collection of classic records in the dextrous hands of a turntablist, except that they’re live musicians rather than recorded sounds, and Rahzel’s not using his hands. He’s “scratching” MC Black Thought’s rapping. He’s sampling. He’s cross-fading. I run out of DJing knowledge to describe most of what he’s doing, but the important thing I need to stress here to the uninitiated is that he’s using his mouth. The only other time I’ve seen live beatboxing was Killa Kela doing a solo gig at Cargo, which didn’t prepare me at all for the way The Roots fit it all together. Other highlights included their alternate ragga, ska and heavy metal versions of You Got Me, their ‘tribute’ to Jam Master Jay where they pretended to be Run DMC posing for a photo session, and the call-and-response bonus track from Phrenology for the encore.

Okay. I now redescend to essay-writing hell, but God bless The Roots for that brief foray into hip-hop heaven.

Scratch: Not Really Worth Scratch

Call me a music snob, but I suspect the reviewers who were falling all over themselves to pour platitudes on Scratch are somewhat unfamiliar with hip-hop beyond the flatulence of Puff Daddy and Will Smith.

I wasn’t impressed by its “look ma, I can speed the film up and cut quickly from scene to scene” cinematography (if you could call it that) – MTV does it a lot better, and it’s so tired and overdone by now anyway.

I wasn’t impressed by its organization or editing, in that I think it could have conveyed much the same experience in half the time it took if it had left the more inane interviews on the cutting room floor. For instance, I really wasn’t interested in Mix Master Mike and Qbert talking about how the universe and various imagined alien cultures inspire them. Instead I’d have really liked to hear from Krush, who features in a clip but isn’t interviewed, or anyone else in Japanese hip-hop, which is mentioned more fleetingly than it deserves. In the section on “battling”, we’re informed that when you compete in the DMCs, you’re no longer competing against one other person, you’re competing against everyone else in the competition. This is hardly profound. You could say the same thing about a yodelling competition.

I thought the clips it did show of scratching were often boring and samey, and hardly explored the sheer ingenuity with which some artists use it. Kid Koala doing Drunken Trumpet, anybody? It showed Beck’s DJ demonstrating the record he made composed entirely of guitar sounds, but didn’t go on to show how that becomes Smoke On The Water in concert. It showed a clip of beatboxers completely out of the blue, but provided no commentary or follow-up. I don’t even see why beatboxing would be that relevant to the subject matter of the documentary in the first place, but if they were going to put a clip in, they might as well have put some more in, because it was bloody amazing. I could go on, but won’t.

Surely I liked something? Well, yes. I always like good beats. Qbert had a gorgeous face (pity about the height). I liked the uniting theme of how everyone seemed to have been influenced by DXT scratching on the Grammy performance of Herbie Hancock’s Rockit. I liked the jam session at Qbert’s house with Shadow and others. The clip of Jurassic 5 was well-placed and did a good job of explaining the ideal, arguably, of a DJ working symbiotically with the MCs. And I liked laughing at Cut Chemist, who is either naturally inarticulate or was just really out of it. On balance it was probably just about worth the trek to Hammersmith (Riverside Studios), but only just.

[Bizarrely, at the IMDB entry for this movie (linked above), “if you like this title we also recommend…Mother Teresa.”]

Sigur Ros’s () – First Impressions

First impressions of the new Sigur Ros: it feels sparser to me than Agaetis Byrjun. More pared down, less of a feeling of majesty. It doesn’t transport me the way that album did. On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the restraint – the more I listen to Agaetis Byrjun the more the vocals seem over-emoted, and what I used to think was wonderful flow sometimes feels a bit samey these days (though to be fair, intensive listening probably contributed to that too). This one’s got guitars and buildups the first didn’t have, and somewhere in track 8 I was reminded of Mogwai at its best, which is always a good thing for music to remind me of.

I don’t give a toss about the whole Hopelandic thing (the Cocteau Twins have been there done that), and find their doing a John Cage with this CD booklet a bit pretentious, but at the end of the day they still make extraordinarily evocative music, and I can’t wait to see them in February.

[For reviews I agree with see Pitchfork and Almost Cool. The first four paragraphs of the neumu review, on the other hand, are a veritable showcase of Sigur Ros review cliches.]

Desperately Seeking Savings

This week will be different. This week I will radiate such an aura of thrift and asceticism that next to me the Dalai Lama will look like Puff Daddy. But I think the first step towards this ascent is to document last week’s decline.

Wednesday was relatively refined, in that solid work got done and indulgence only began with dinner with Russ at a wonderful Thai place on Red Lion Street (I forget the name), where I gorged myself on its exquisite chillied fish only a week after gorging myself on its equally satisfying papaya salad and grilled chicken.

Thursday began the downward spiral into extreme consumerism, and some blame has to be squarely placed on Benny, who endured our semi-marathonic Berwick Street trawl with grace, good humour and good recommendations, thus encouraging me to emerge somewhat shocked at the end of it all clutching 6 CDs (see Appendix 1). In my defence I can only say that this was partially financed by the 9 I sold (see Appendix 2). Borders yielded coffee, conversation, and finally, finally, finally, a copy of The Wire with the free double CD, which my local newsagents sold out of within days of its release. Two coffees and an added Alec later, we moseyed down to Malaysia Kopitiam (Wardour Street) for dinner. Benny’s already done a spot-on review of the place (post for 23/11), to which I need only add that my Hainanese chicken rice was perhaps a little bloodier than I like it, but the chilli was authentic, and as anyone who knows will know, it’s almost all in the chilli. My dessert of tau huay (beancurd) was as smooth and silky as the place near Jago Close at home in Singapore makes it, and all in all, I’m definitely going back.

Culinary G-spot titilation continued on Friday with Nick at South in Shoreditch, where I had bunny with prunes in red wine, washed down with, er, more red wine. On the way back to Nick’s place we unfortunately had to walk past The Spread Eagle which brought back traumatic memories, but apart from that moment of stress for me it was a good night out with a dear friend I don’t get to see often, and that made for warm fuzzy feelings.

On Saturday morning I trimmed my goatee and popped down to the National Theatre with Nav to watch Voyage, the first play in Tom Stoppard’s The Coast Of Utopia trilogy. Saturday night brought oodles of red wine celebrating Chris’s birthday, and Sunday a dim sum lunch with Laura and Katy.

I sense the spectre of poverty around the corner. It smells of reduced Safeway’s chicken and old cabbage, and its teeth are glittering CD shards. I think it’s coming for me.

—

Appendix 1: Bought

  • Low: Trust
  • Boards of Canada: Geogaddi
  • Coldcut: Journeys By DJ
  • Amon Tobin: Out From Out Where
  • Prefuse 73: Vocal Studies And Uprock Narratives
  • Ninja Tune (compilation): Cold Krush Cuts

Appendix 2: Sold

  • April March: Chrominance Decoder (boredom chronicled here)
  • Starlight Mints: The Dream That Stuff Was Made Of
  • Money Mark: Push The Button
  • Sebadoh: The Sebadoh
  • Wagon Christ: Tally Ho!
  • Kid Loco: A Grand Love Story
  • Blonde Redhead: In An Expression Of The Inexpressible
  • Esthero: Breath From Another
  • Galaxie 500: The Portable Galaxie 500

It should probably also be mentioned:

  • That on Sunday I also ordered the new Missy Elliot and Sigur Ros from CD-Wow
  • And am planning to get the new Massive Attack from there as well
  • And am also tempted by the new Tori Amos. Must resist. Must resist.

Dang Moment

I don’t often stop and say to myself, “Dang, this is good music writing”, but dang.

I Hear…Goodnight (Low and Dirty Three)

I Hear…Goodnight (Low and Dirty Three) is consuming me with its gorgeosity. Hours I spend not listening to it are hours spent in a world without beauty, hope or grace. It plays unceasingly in my head, slowing the world around me to a languid gentle crawl of violins and harmony and candlelit desert porches. I shout at people on the streets, asking them if they hear goodnight too. They must. Everyone has to.

Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia

I’m not sufficiently steeped in Mogwai musicology to be able to tell yet whether Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia are highest-form flatterers or shameless copycats, but in the meantime I’m thoroughly enjoying the tracks I’ve downloaded, and at the very least it has to be said that the name totally kicks ass.