Monday, April 28, 2008

Today's Soundtrack: 4/28/2008

Today is nerdy, meditative and percussive, with a little looking down the shirt to spice things up.

Man or Astro-Man? - A Spectrum of Infinite Scale
I think I like the surf side of MoA-M? better than their science nerd side, but the 'A Simple Text File" - a recording of a dot matrix printer printing out lines of different characters, exploiting the slight tonal differences between printing a bunch of colons vs. a bunch of capital M's to make an actual surf song is nothing short of astounding. I think seeing this performed live, with a microphone pointing at the printer would be amazing, but this Lego animation will suffice until that footage surfaces



Ruins - Tzomborgha
The Ruins are what prog rock forced through a surf rock filter against it's will would sound like. "Gurthemvhal" for instance starts out like the opening to The Jackson 5's "Give Me One More Chance" paired with Les Claypool for the purposes of a team building exercise.

Primus - The Brown Album
Which leads me to Primus, a band I don't care for. This 1997 album did not make me a fan, but Les Claypool's patter and voice have only convinced me that is really one of the Residents, even though no one will believe me.

The Residents - The Voice of Midnight
Looking for evidence, and I think I might be wrong. Man, the Residents have been busy since I last checked. I think The Residents should go totally Vegas and give the Blue Man Group a run for their money.

Roxy Music - Country Life
I needed to switch to something I could listen to all the way through.

John Zorn - Workingman's Death

A meditative largely percussion soundtrack to a documentary about really dangerous jobs, like sulphur mining. Now we are getting somewhere

Califone - Roomsound
Meditative, percussion laden blues, where "Fisherman's Wife" and "Porno Starlet vs. Rodeo Clown" offer their own tales of less-than-glamorous employment.

Bardo Pond - Set and Setting

Still meditative but in a sexier direction. Bardo Pond is like looking down a witch's blouse at the blood ritual.

Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising
Fulfilling the trajectory of drugged out desert witch booty with Lydia Lunch "Death Valley '69." SY guitarist Thurston Moore was quoted somewhere saying "I'm gonna call my next album, 'So, Thurston, did you fuck Lydia Lunch?'" I've never noticed that cut-up Stooges sample (I think is from "Not Right" off The Stooges. I assume this is common knowledge that I missed ou on somehow.) at the beginning " I Love Her all the Time" before. Sonic Youth has matured rather gracefully without losing what made them interesting (to those that found them interesting; the people that hated them back then surely still hate them), but back in 1985, they were a force to be reckoned with.

1 comment:

  1. there was a running joke for a while about "when is the compilation of experimental music based on cats" going to come out, cuz, like, everyone was using cat sounds, then low and behold that comp did come out.

    now it seems to be time for the dot matrix comp as this is at least the fourth dot matrix piece i know of; Paul Panhuysen, Nurse with Wound and The User have all beaten MoAM to this one.

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