Will Dâm-Funk ever get “Best New Music” on Pitchfork?

                No, probably not. Damon G. Riddick might have had his moment pass back in 2009. Back then every type of music began to sound excellent. Pitchfork popped “Best New Music” every other day. Even then Dâm-Funk managed to get only an 8.2, nothing terrible but just a few points shy of that coveted score. 

                Of course Damon did a few things to ensure a good score on Pitchfork. He did a remix for Animal Collective. After that he managed to get a sweet blurb in the taste-making newspaper “The New York Times”. Those in the “New York Times” foresaw great things happening to the Professor of Funk. Using his remix and NYT article he maneuvered to open for Animal Collective in Prospect Park. Everything was falling into place. 

                Watching him open in Prospect Park felt like seeing all those people from the Titanic flail about due to a lack of lifeboats except somehow more heart-wrenching.  Everyone around me looked in disbelief as this man choked up pretty hard. In the beginning he told people what year a record was made to try to get cheers; by the end he was reduced to saying “Cheer if you like being alive”! Not many people cheered, they felt cheated by his utter lack of charisma and annoying long-windedness. 

                His ultimate statement came out towards the end of 2009 called “Toeachizown”. I stayed away from the release for a while, remembering my awful experience with him at Prospect Park. The lame performance turned me away from his music for a long while. Only after I saw he did remixes of virtually anyone who had ever released a song did I begin to let my guard down. With his kind of remix release schedule I figured he made roughly three remixes a today, one for breakfast, one for lunch and one for dinner. 

                I wonder what Dâm-Funk’s average day is like. I imagine most of his day consists of finding puns off of his name. As he’s driving down the road looking at the empty California landscape he sees someone dressed in a Pepé Le Pew costume he says to himself “Damn Skunk”. While he watches TV and a character does something ridiculous on his favorite USA Network show he laughs “Damn Monk”. Going to his day job as a head of a recycling plant he thinks about everything people throw away and mutters “Damn Junk”. Performing at The Smell, a famous venue in Los Angeles, California, he sees someone vomit on a shorter person’s head and screams out “Damn Drunk”. 

                Perhaps 2011 will recognize the huge amount of work this guy does. Sure, his live show is a bit empty but what do you expect people’s reactions would be to retro slow-moving funk? Now I realize the Animal Collective concert might not have been the best way to reach out to potential fans. Animal Collective and Dâm-Funk aren’t that compatible. Plus releasing an over two hour debut is a tough thing for anyone to handle. Yet I have respect for someone who follows his muse this hard for this long. Before Damon goes to sleep I’m sure he reads roughly two to three funk history textbooks. He needs to in order to keep his professor position at a local community college over the weekend. 

                Thursday marked his partial re-habilitation into the indie-sphere. Since the Animal Collective fiasco he’s kept a lower profile, releasing some old tracks and one EP. Remixes have been his only new material. After coming out with his remix of Ariel Pink’s song “Fright Night” it is time for him to emerge out of the darkness and into the light. Finally he came out to Bonnaroo. How he did I do not know days after the fact. What I’m going to ask is unusual: anyone cognizant enough please advise me how well he did in your own words. I want to know. Thus far I’ve only found gearheads checking out his equipment. Gearheads aren’t people they are machines. 

                Bonnaroo isn’t even that great a music festival. I’d probably put it down as a third-tier festival, after Coachella and SXSW. Each one of those festivals is real. They are held in states that people generally hold favorable opinions of. Tennessee is gorgeous, beautiful really, but the middle of nowhere Tennessee doesn’t hold quite the same charm of desert fun in the sun or Austin’s Hipster Paradise. Appearing at Bonnaroo is a good first step, but Damon will need to improve his festival game for next year if he wants to tap into a buzz vein. 

                Dâm-Funk I want you to tutor me in the ways of the funk. Failure to do so would be tragic as I’ve dedicated roughly 800 or so words to you. Don’t damn the funk.

Gary War – Police Water 7.3

                 Gary War emerged from the muck of countless synthesizers in 2007. Since then, he’s been releasing a decent, though not massive, amount of music. This EP happens to be one of my more liked projects of his. Here he appears to hone his craft even further.

                I remember when I was first listening to “Born of Light” I was walking through various subway tunnels. As the song’s quiet introduction exploded into a futuristic pop, I thought it was the perfect thing to hear as I passed by countless underground lights. Easily this is the best song on the entire EP; it just seems to be his mission statement. The vocals are thin, the sound dramatic. Out of all the songs, this one I hope represents what his future development might be. 

                Actually a lot of the EP sounds fairly dramatic. Whether or not this is a conscious effort on his part, I’m not sure. By having a focus on more emotional content rather than pure gear worship, he’s able to avoid a lot of the criticism thrown at countless other lo-fi electro artists. 

                “Grounds for Termination” and “Who and Why” bring to mind the best of early Ariel Pink material. I mean that as the most sincere compliment. While “Grounds for Termination” has this wonderful chugging pace, “Who and Why” feels like I can hear Ariel’s “West Coast Calamities” bleeding through the murk.

                30 minutes means it’s a fairly long EP but it breezes by quickly. Give it a few listens; it takes some time to get acquainted with Gary’s odd sonic universe. The effort is worth it.

Pink Flamingos – We Never Close 8.5

FYI: This cover has never been accused of coming from any other decade but the 80s.

                Consider this akin to finding an ancient artifact. I’m so positively thrilled about this album. Each song reeks of the 80s in the best way possible. You want to see pure, uncut 80s nostalgia without all the lenses, distortion and irony installed by chillwave, hypnagogic pop, and so on? Go no further than Pink Flamingos, who make AM hits so good they put my previous favorite (The Doobie Brothers) to absolute shame. Of course your ability to enjoy this will depend very heavily on how much irony you function off of on a regular day. Suffice it to say I’m more than happy about my discovery.

                Every bit of the early 80s is well covered. There are those piano ballads like “Just like in the Movies”. Heavier, more strung out songs are here as well. “Voodoo” sounds better after you’ve listened to homage Ariel Pink has written. In case the rhythm doesn’t get you, maybe the vocal spasm (you’ll see what I mean) about halfway through or perhaps the synthesizer at the end. I’m glad to see these guys (headed by Dave McArtney, a New Zealander) saw so much success in the early 80s. 

                What is the true hit on here though? “Hungry Night” might be the anthem I never knew dedicated to an unproduced 80s comedy. It would introduce the film with stock footage of 80s New York, complete with hard-working construction workers and waiting for trains. Oh man, this might be one of the best, most unintentionally ironic things I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Don’t worry, just because that movie never got produced doesn’t mean you can’t watch their infinitely excellent music video. 

                Slower songs work wonders too. “Anne was Hard” and “Prosperpine” conjure up images of the best of the early 80s. You want to know where the current 80s fetish gets its traction, I can tell. Listen to this, it’ll give you all the information you’ll ever need to know in some of the best pop morsels. Plus, did I mention the singer Dave McArtney has a BA in English and Renaissance poetry. That habit of his weaves its way into lyrics. 

                Man, mere words can’t describe this feat. Hear the history of so many AM-radio worshippers condensed into a simple, highly enjoyable album. It is just amazing the level of 80s AM-pop contained within here. “We Never Close” is such a fun listen.

Outer Limits Recordings – I Need My T.V: 8.2

Olde English Spelling Bee, you’ve done it again. You’ve channeled that weird feeling I get as I sleep through late night 80s movies. The dreams of Teenage Mutant Turtles through my current perception, the hopes I had as a kid, bad MTV videos,  they all come flooding back through these two songs. 

Since Sam Mehran (the mind behind these recordings) deals with the sugary aspects of pop, prepare to have both of these songs stuck in your mind. If the name seems familiar, well, it is. This guy has also been responsible for a slew of other, similar projects like Matrix Metals, 90210, Wingdings, Foxy Baby and the Sweethearts, etc. But this one is where he hits his stride, where everything he learned from those previous outings got applied in a bigger sense.

As soon as you put on “I need my T.V.” Ariel Pink might pop into your mind. I mean that in the best way possible. The treated vocals, the AM quality of guitars, and the silly nature of the lyrics fit Ariel’s template. Instantly it lodges itself into your mind, along with the carefree nature of the guitar work, and the production values. It takes effort to make music sound like this, hitting all the necessary pieces of your mind. 

“Burnin’ Through the Night” starts things off with some humor. Having what sounds like a crazed late-night DJ introduce the Sweethearts, you’re brought into bubblegum pop territory. As a side note, it is sort of interesting how the announcer introduces them as “The Sweethearts”. I guess Sam enjoys having this kind of self-referential universe. 

Both songs are fantastic. I wonder whether or not this quality will be maintained once he gets around to releasing a full-length (fingers crossed). In case you need your fix, here’s his youtube channel. 

I need my T.V 

Panda Bear – Saturday, September 11th, 2010

Months of anticipation will finally be put to rest. After purchasing these tickets long ago, I sort of forgot about them. I figured that by now Panda Bear would’ve had his album out now and that I could have become familiar with it.

Sadly, living in Portugal has dulled Panda Bear’s flair for work. Instead, we’re still hanging on a prayer that at some point Noah Lennox will get his act together and release what looks like 11 songs, based off of various “live leaks”. Now don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed the EPs up to this point, but I did wish that we could get the same sprawling, giant tracks that adorned “Person Pitch”. Maybe those songs are in the pipeline.

Anyway, I feel like you should come out. I’d appreciate your company on that small ferry as we head into Manhattan’s last true artist colony. Then I could explain to you why so many of my posts this week have been based heavily on AM pop hits.

Nah, I’ll do that now. Basically, I focused heavily on AM pop hits because they are everywhere. They form the wallpaper music you find in any large setting, due to their generally inoffensive nature. A taco bell has it, a dentist’s office has it, and a train station has it. But I feel as we cross over that small body of water, leaving the hustle and bustle of the city, we should have one of the following artists on:

Steely Dan

The Doobie Brothers

Newer AM influenced hits:

Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti

Lovelife – 1994

My pick would be the following:

The Doobie Brothers – Open Your Eyes

Somebody should print out the following lyrics:

“Girl, as we take a long last look at this love
Before you go, I've got to know
I've got to know, was it ever true
I've got to hear it from you
Girl, I can take one more hurt in this heart
Before you go, I've got to know
I've got to know, was it ever true
I've got to hear it from you

Not like before
We were lost in a whirling dance
Never slowing down
Long enough to give truth a chance
To come out
So that the light could shine in

And open your eyes
If it's not real, there's no reason to frown
Open your eyes
Let's not let what never was bring us down

I've got to know, was it ever true
I've got to hear it from you

Not like before
We were lost in a whirling dance
Never slowing down
Long enough to give truth a chance
To come out
So that the light could shine in

And open your eyes
If it's not real, there's no reason to frown
Open your eyes
Let's not let what never was bring us down...”

So as you’re hanging around in your plaid shirt, full length skirt, moccasins, or whatever you feel like wearing, we could have a dance party. Not good dancing, but more like Peanuts quality dance moves. Look at each other, hug each other. Learn to be brothers and sisters to each other.

On a side note, I feel there needs to be a Terry Riley (You’re No Good) type remix of this song, lasting about 22 minutes with the song repeated in bits ad nausea. I feel this song has enough sections and light enough fare for such an endeavor to be effective.

See you on Saturday!

Will “Steelywave” wash over us in 2011?

Lo-fi didn’t always rule over us with a rusty iron grip. Back in the early 2000s, there was a movement towards excessive high fidelity, up to the point of almost sheer absurdity. Part of that had to do with IDM’s fascination of perfect sound, the beginning of MP3 sharing of “bedroom musicians” and the glitch movement. Bedroom musicians used to spend inordinate periods of time on their music, making sure it sounded sure of itself and fully polished. Radio still maintained a greater importance, and you could find alternative kinds of music from major stations (though it did happen mostly at night). Glitch, although supposedly focused on digital error, ended up having some very pristine, highly processed sound.

            Now that so many bands sound like “they recorded inside a bum’s ass” there’s bound to be some sort of indie rejection of what has become a norm for so many bands. Certain bands have already caught onto this, cleaning up sound that had previously been messier, like Neon Indian on that one new song, Ariel Pink on his newest album, or Nite Jewel on her new EP. Eventually these outliers will become the trendsetters, if it already hasn’t happened.

            Part of this lo-fi came from nostalgia for the “unremembered 80s” but what about the “yet to be mined for material” late 70s? And now, I’m not talking about No Wave and Punk. Punk died. No Wave may be explored, but so far precious few bands have tackled the difficult style. I’m talking about light jazz-rock fusion, you know, Steely Dan. Steely Dan, that YUPPIE band which played the YUPPIEST of music to investment bankers and other assorted rich New Yorkers, is poised to make a giant comeback.

            In terms of comeback, I don’t mean their ghoulish faces haunting your children’s nightmares, though they are legendary for being hideous people. Instead, they might decide that now, with interest in disco coming back, light jazz-rock fusion might be next.

            How do they take advantage of this? Well, they can use their extremely obnoxious sense of humor, like they did once they sent a letter to Owen Wilson about his role in “You, Me, and Dupree”. Perhaps sending a letter to Pitchfork about how hard they suck it and with rewrites of their album reviews, to make those albums look thrilling. Basically, the heavy irony they already incorporate in their day to day lives (from being assholes) will help to build a following among young people everywhere.

            Marketing will be important, so they might want to do something to be funny and get it somewhere besides their embarrassingly bad website, which looks like it was designed by your grandfather. I’d suggest crashing a party, or acting like the creepy weirdos you describe in so many of your songs. Or just write parodies of your old songs:

“Driving like a tool out to Hackensack

Snorting coke off of a hooker’s crack”

-Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More

            Failing this, there’s an easier way: re-edits. They’ve already been done with equally cheesy music (disco) and you don’t have to write any new songs. Get Todd Terje to come on in, and re-edit all your songs. He can even edit out those things you hate in music, like passion, emotion, and raw talent. Instead, all that will be left is your unhip sound, made hip using technology. Think of it as a facelift for music. I’m sure your old-school fans are more than familiar with the procedure.