i’ve just gotten my copy of the new
pikelet ep in the post, its really good. it is released on a label called
sabbatical recordings that specialises in short-runs of local experimental artists. pikelet makes music by looping her voice, accordian and percussion and et cetera. if you were to make a lazy comparison you could maybe draw a line between pikelet and argentinian lady of the loop
juana molina. i’m sure more apt descriptions of pikelet’s sound are out there - oh hey look, here’s one that i ripped off from the sabbatical website -
While the narrative elements of her self-titled debut are largely absent here, vocal harmonies continue to play a key role alongside melodic cycles and deceptively complex rhythms. Pre-Flight Jitters also pursues some unexpected textural qualities and compositional approaches, while maintaining the rich layering typical of Evelyn’s recent work.
check out this track “bryson” from the release and then make sure you head to the
sabbatical website to pick up one of only 200 hand-numbered copies of the EP (mine is number 40).
regular readers of the blog would know that i remixed one of evelyn’s tracks “bug-in-mouth” and that the remix appears on my latest EP. for the sake of having something to talk about i thought i would tell a brief story about how the remix came about. basically i became really obsessed with that song after hearing it late one night on the radio - i managed to track down a free mp3 of the track on last.fm (sorry but you can’t download it any more)… i resolved to get in touch with evelyn and ask her if i could get the original recordings of the track to play with - the separated parts - but for one reason or another it didn’t come together. late one night i was working in the edit suite of the production company of a certain australian ex-tv-game-show-host when i was fiddling around on my laptop with the mp3 of “bug-in-mouth”.. a few hours later the track was more or less finished. it was like 3am or something, and i was working alongside the hum of spooling tapes and buzzing tv screens. but yeah it was such a natural thing to play with, and fun to work with the track as a whole and not with the separate pieces of it, if that makes sense. it made me try some weird and wacky things, and i discovered a couple of oddball techniques (mostly involving the loooping and stretching of vocals) that i’ve been using a lot since, while working on new stuff.
so in conclusion, thankyou evelyn morris, and thankyou glenn ridge
a couple of really hot youtube clips from my good pal pablo! check it out:
gene krupa & buddy rich drum battle. 1966. two masters. did you know that peter sellers studied as a drummer under krupa? rad.
rahsaan roland kirk’s ‘pedal up.’ 1975. dear quincy jones introduces rahsaan as “the black master of black classical music” and its only then that you get a peek at an absolutely smoking jazz sax ninja… the dude plays two saxes at once! are they both saxes? one’s a soprano sax, right? anyway you got to wait for it, it gets completely absurd at about 5 minutes in, when one of the saxes threatens to pack it in and briefly ends up sounding eerily similar to a balloon having the air let out of it. this is crazy stuff.
my knowledge of computer game music is far from encyclopaedic, in fact its barely even a footnote on a random page of the great book that is computer game music, it is more like a barely legible scribble in the margins, in greylead pencil, that reads something like “you don’t know shit about computer game music”
but a couple of things have happened this week that makes me think i need to get my head back into that.
first up, while preparing to interview luke
disasteradio - yes, theres that name again, he pays me in virtual synths every time i mention his name on this blog - i rediscovered my favourite commodore 64 computer game theme,
commando. if you ever played c64, you probably played commando. when we played it during luke’s interview, one of the other announcers came in to the studio saying “i’ve played this game… what is it?!” its a song that never leaves you. this game i played a lot when i was a kid, though i could never get past the first few levels. i didn’t realise it at the time, but now i’m positive, that the reason i kept going back to it despite the fact that i was so shithouse at it was obviously just to hear rob hubbard’s amazing theme song over and over and over:
what is amazing about this track, and i guess about all computer game music from this era, is how the composers could make such compelling and innovative songs using only the barest of building blocks. they were under such restrictions in terms of the sounds at their disposal - they were literally constructing music out of the tiniest shards of electrical noise. so they squeezed everything they could out of melody and rhythm. recently several groups have rather infamously started transposing the old commodore 64 game themes into orchestral arrangements.. eg
the c64 orchestra… but there is actually something about the original distorted proto-digital sound that i find really inviting and comforting. but i guess thats all about memory, as most things tend to be, that really its just the way this song evokes so vividly a piece of my childhood, thats why it gets my rocks off so severely.
the second thing thats happened - and i see this to be some marvellous confluence of mystical energies that led these two things to happen in such temporal proximity - or perhaps it was a coincidence - it actually happened just a couple of hours ago when i got an email from marcus asking me about my EP changes (i hope he doesn’t mind me quoting some of his email here):
Incidentally, have you ever played the video game ‘Secret Of Mana’ or heard the soundtrack? The first time I heard Changes on the radio it immediately reminded me of a song from that game, which is why I like it so much. Listening to the rest of the EP, it sounds like it was very ‘Secret Of Mana’ inspired. Is this the case, or is it a fluke that they have similarities?
this is seriously one of the coolest things i’ve ever heard about my own music! i’ve managed to do a little bit of googling and tracked down some info about
secret of mana, which i’ll be honest i haven’t played before. i think it was a super nintendo game - i never hooked into that generation of consoles to be honest. for me it went C64… xbox… neverwinter nights. and not much in between. except for civilisation. railroad tycoon 2- that shit is hot! but i digress. secret of mana:
The game’s soundtrack was composed by Hiroki Kikuta, and is perhaps his most famous work[citation needed]. It is known for its variety of tunes which tend to focus on the use of percussion and woodwind instruments, ranging from a lighthearted dwarves’ polka to a somber, wistful snow melody to a tribal-like dance.
my music sounds like a dwarven polka! if only! though i will admit - “tunes which tend to focus on the use of percussion and woodwind instruments” - this is not so far from the mark given the liberal doses of sampled drums and flutes that litter the track “changes” and also just most of my stuff in general. anyway, thanks so much marcus for making my day!
the secret of mana soundtrack can actually be downloaded in its entirety from
this website. i’m just starting to give it a few spins and some of it is great stuff. here are a couple of samples to whet your appetite:
i saw wellington NZ’s
disasteradio at a pretty small venue last night, and it was pretty awesome. if you are in melbourne i recommend you check him out tomorrow - he is defying the laws of time and space by playing two shows in the one day, first at this thing called the applecore backyard festival in thornbury, and then secondly at 2am at roxanne parlour. rock n roll. he’s a one man party. we just did a pretty extended interview with him on our radio show, which you can download
here. check his
myspace for the playing times tomorrow - or simply catch him when he comes to a town near you.
i gotta say i’m not really a strokes fan but this little clip (taken from camp a low hum 2007) is a pretty good example of the amazing inciting potentiality of the disasteradio performance. i think it might get a little crazy down at roxanne tomorrow night. i think luke is a bit disappointed there hasn’t been some serious stage invading, so if you make it down there tomorrow night then, well, get on that. invade a stage.
speaking of camp a low hum… camp a low hum 2008 took place a few weeks ago over there in new zealand. if you’ve never heard of this (i hadn’t until i
read this a week ago) you completely have to check it out:
Camp A Low Hum is pretty small (no more than 700 people), most bands play twice and it’s BYO, but perhaps the key to its success is that it’s not about “what bands are playing”. Blink ensures this by not announcing a line up, but rather pushing the unique vibe of the festival. It’s certainly a difficult thing to sell, and before the first camp in 2007 many people (including myself) felt a bit too sceptical about travelling to a campsite an hour north of Wellington to watch a mystery band line-up. As it turned out, however, Camp 2007 was a total success, with many of my friends coming back raving things like “I can’t explain why it was so good but it was seriously the best weekend of my entire life”. After that I was basically sold on Camp 2008.
the lineup - not officially announced before the camp started - included the brunettes, the phoenix foundation, the ruby suns, liam finn, disasteradio, pikelet, & many many others. i ended up at
radio new zealand’s website listening to this
great live broadcast that they did from the camp - it opens with a great little candid interview with festival organiser blink and his sister. so choice.
on sunday i’m accidentally going to the
laneway festival, melbourne’s “little festival that could”. i’ve not been before and wasn’t really thinking about going until a birdie gave me some tickets. friends who can get you free stuff are the best kind of friends! but seriously… i figured the line-up was just basically not up my alley at all, but it turns out i’ve actually got a lot to look forward to: did you know there’s an electronic stage? i don’t know how much fuss has been made about it, but the schedule for the ‘red bull music academy stage’ includes dan deacon, flying lotus, harmonic 313, plaid, steve spacek, declan kelly, qua..! i know where i’m hanging out all day. though i might have to sneak a peek out to the main stage when a certain belgian gets out there, because from what i hear i’m in for a bit of a thrill…
but yeah this RBMA electronic stage - how is this not news? isn’t it big news to have these kind of dudes all in town at the same time? have i been living under a rock, or is it just that in melbourne people don’t really make a fuss about electronic music? oh hang on, i have been living under a rock. strike that.
i think the RBMA stage is exclusive to melbourne too. so… sucked in, other dudes.
so for those of you playing at home, the deal with the crying dawsons and the youtube wall of loneliness is basically that i haven’t been feeling very well lately. in an effort to break the silence on this blog - its not like i’ve got nothing to talk about, i just haven’t felt like talking - i’m writing an emo blog post, in the tradition of desperate livejournalers and suicidal myspacers. back to normal after this Ok.
sooo i’ve been in a bit of a low patch, creatively emotionally et cetera, and most of it is just due to frustration and a hint of desperation regarding working on the next faux pas album… things just aren’t going well with it right now. i’ve turned to some good friends for counsel in the last few days - i think its helping to crystallise a few things in my mind tank, and i thought i’d get them down as a means of maybe moving this blog past this uncharacteristic - may i say, first (and last?) - official emo blog patch and get back to the important things like posting youtube clips of robert palmer and talking about zork.
for better or worse, when i got home from overseas last year and started working on this album, i decided that i should try really hard to make the next album… you know…. “really good.” for my first album i threw a lot of sounds at the wall, some stuff stuck together, and i put it on a shiny disc. the album was started and finished (i mean, pressed onto discs) in a couple of months, which is pretty quick. almost 2 years later i can look back at that album and say honestly that i’m proud of it, it documents something. but its not a great album. so i decided this time around i would try really hard, make myself keep going until i made something great.
so — this is, like, way harder than it looks! first, you have to define great. i think some people make music because they have stories or messages or whatever that they just desperately need to express - the process of making a record for them is just about getting it down, accurately and with candor, getting it across. so “great” is kind of tied maybe to some kind of authenticity, being true to yourself or true to your vision or stories. this is especially true for twee dudes who write songs about girls, or something. it all sounds so noble. you strive to achieve your vision. or stay true to your heart. or tell that story about your grandpa, you know the one where he was in the war and people died and shit. meaningful shit! so therefore to make your music great - and that is, lets be clear, to satisfy your own desires, to make music yoou think is great, not other people - is really just about knowing yourself and having a clear vision. fucking noble.
for me its waay more coarse and obvious - and problematic - because i think i struggle not judge my own musics by the same standards that i judge the music that i love. back that up, what i mean is.. i want to love my own music the way i love my favourite music. is this even possible? do only conceited pricks love themselves? or on the other hand is it possible - no, mandatory - that you strive to make art that you can love, be so deeply proud of, fight for. but to set those standards by comparing yourself to your idols (really didn’t want to drop that word but can’t think of anything more appropriate)… well this is self-hating 101: set yourself unachieveable goals, fall short, hate yourself. fuck!
i should be inspired by great music, right?. at the moment, i’m paralysed by awe. i can’t help this feeling sneaking up on me that.. whats the point of even bothering when there is so much great music already out there? i listen to an album i love and it should inspire me… but often it just humiliates me. i read
this blog post a while back.. it quotes a max tundra interview where he says:
“There is music everywhere that is very, very similar to music that already exists… making records and CD’s from an environmental perspective, there’s all this new plastic in the world, which is so wasteful. That’s such a responsibility, that you have to justify the existence of that product in the world. And if it’s really similar to something that already exists then you’re just messing the world up really, you’re polluting it.”
you have to justify the existence of that product in the world. shit! i have to justify the existence of my music, and its got to be more than just “it exists because i had some spare time and i made it”? damn. that is cold. and hard. also from that blog post:
“if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.”
fuck you charles bukowski looking into my soul! i got doubts enough to deal with without you giving me this extra layer of compelling shit! at the moment it is not bursting out of me. has it ever? bukowski you literary bastard!
so anyway what seems like deep shit is at most just some emo bullshit by a whiney guy who just needs to deal with the fact that he is not a special flower. this is not a nuclear crisis or anything. we are not at defcon one. security alert was beige at best. the problem here is - to paraphrase someone that i spoke to today - one of the dangers with trying to take your music or your art or whatever seriously is that you can begin to tie in your ideas of self-worth directly to how you feel you are doing creatively. what i mean is - on this stupid trip of making the “great” album, when things are going well i feel ecstatic. when things go badly, if i’m a bit uninspired or have a few bad days in a row, it kind of inevitably leads to despair. which doesn’t help the music any. if it sounds stupid that someone can be driven to existential crisis because he’s having trouble making a song sound right, its because it is.
the fact that having a sustained bad time working on my album can lead to a more general existential funk obviously says more about my personality than it does about anything else. people have different ways of dealing with stress, and i suppose some people see success and failure as binary while others are more generous with how they measure themselves.
so yeah what now? just finish the stupid music, put it out there, and try not to think about whether i think its “great”? or keep going with my ‘chinese democracy’ style approach of continually deconstructing and reconstructing my music because its ‘not quite there yet’… chasing some idea of greatness which i probably cannot get to, whether it be through lack of skill or because i’ve purposefully set myself an unachievable task in order to give myself a reason to hate myself. how am i not myself, bitches!? at the end of the day it is really just about knowing yourself.
countdown to return of normal programming commencing… might have a couple more emo posts in me but i will exorcise the demons and then get back to the usual shit
