▼▲▼vagina vangi – Benighted United Ep 7.2

                Please, let me know if there is anything with a more hipster name than this: three triangles, offensive vagina name, and the EP itself are witch house. I’m sorry, according to the tags in the MP3, it is ‘doomtronic’. All jokes aside, this is a fairly good EP. The word “Vangi” actually refers to a Bulgarian soothsayer, so whoever is responsible clearly did their homework on both the name and music. 

                They have a nice sense of atmosphere right from the beginning. Maybe coming from Russia gives this one-man band some sense of despair. Whatever the reason, “From Darkness” the opener, it sort of glides on its massive sounds. Even the bits of percussion he includes are sparingly used, and by offering little respites from the full-on sound, he’s able to emphasize just how overwhelming the sound can get. 

                Vocals are great here too. Apparently the musician’s friend Ann sung through these. Really she has the perfect voice for it, and she’s most prominent on “Servants of Death” the longest running track on here. “Christ” ends the EP on a perfect note, with the greatest amount of distortion. It sounds like a tidal wave of sound and dark feelings. Ending the EP with the strongest track is a great idea, as I sort of repeated this one a couple of times.

                What I hope for is to hear more of this stuff. Hopefully he’ll get enough songs together for another EP or perhaps a full length.

The Death of my first Musical Genre (IDM)

Yes, that means there were at least 16 volumes before this.

Everyone remembers growing up with a certain musical genre, one they truly could call their own. For me, that meant the Intelligent Dance Music, or IDM moniker. Used generally for electronic music that remained classified only by its unusual structures and lack of actual dancing, it served as the perfect gateway music for budding music snobs. The price of admission into this genre remained very low, basically anyone with a sense of melody and an interest in non-rhythmic music could join, so long as they had some ultra-cheap music software. 

Intelligent Dance music had to be the first musical genre created by and for the internet. Created in the US of A for the IDM list it was probably one of the first obsessive email lists dedicated exclusively for a specific type of music. Due to its origins in the US, a great deal of artists often described as “IDM” declared the term to be an American construct, particularly Richard D. James (Aphex Twin). Rather than just come to peace with the fairly stupid term, he decided to coin an even stupider term “braindance” and used that heavily for his own Rephlex record label. For whatever reason, the term “braindance” never caught on, probably because it looked so dang awful.

The weird thing remained how I never saw or heard the term “IDM” anywhere besides the internet. Even in what is commonly referred to as “reality” rarely did people bring up any artist who might have been considered “IDM”? What was going on? I later learned that this was an ultra-nerdy sub-sect of music which involved large doses of gear worship and familiarity with various avant-garde composers.

Just as I got it all together, that vast web of interconnected artists, it ended. That knowledge became useless, how this artist related to that one, when this one last put out a record, what record label released their first album. Genres never end swiftly, there’s always a few stragglers, a few artists who continue to follow their path. Listeners are even worse, I can’t tell you how many fans of Aphex Twin I’ve met, of undetermined ages, longing to stay young by listening to the music of their youth, when they were last relevant. 

Putting a year on it, I’d say 2004 marked the end. By then, only a few artists continually brought out a solid product, like Autechre, O9, and Venetian Snares. Most of the others had begun moving in other, more boring, directions. Squarepusher had passed his prime, Aphex Twin remained quiet. Pan Sonic came out with that absolutely monstrous Kesto 4 disc set, but those Finns could easily move themselves into the Glitch/Noise category if push came to shove.  

Snobby music changed in 2004. The indie renaissance began. Whoever were the arbiters of true taste decided that elitist music didn’t need to sound as masochistic as IDM. Instead, dance became simply dance music. DFA records confirmed that it was alright for us to re-explore the past, of what had gone on in that period between 1978-1989 in New York City. Dance music flourished, indie rock flourished. Even those who went the more masochistic route, by taking on noise, found that noise remained a less heavily curated genre than IDM ever was. Lacking the pretention of IDM while maintaining the weirdness, it fit those looking for something less accessible like a glove.

I remember releasing this genre had ended around 2004. As I looked around at the beach I was wandering around my friends put on Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and I simply danced. No longer did I have to use obscure terminology for what I listened to. Instead, simple words like ‘dance’ and ‘rock’ became usable words again. I felt human, like part of a real community, a community that didn’t exist exclusively online. 

Part of me still misses the deeply weird musings of IDM. For that I have a few artists left who occasionally let out a great hurrah every now and then. But for the most part the scene left without announcement into cataloged internet posts, various dusty corners of the web, still keeping them warm with the music of the past.  

What was the hardest genre death for you to handle? Will Chillwave live? Is Witch house a real genre? What will 2011 bring, new genre-wise?

Salem – King Night 7.9

I read a ton of stuff about this band before actually listening to the music. Do not take this approach. Rather, take in the music first before looking at a single article about them. According to virtually every article written about them, they are total jerks of the highest (literally) order. Seeing their youtube video of their South by Southwest concert almost convinced me to write them off. Having their music compared to “Dubstep” a musical movement whose charms elude me didn’t exactly encourage me.

Honestly though, the music is surprisingly good. Oh boy, it is dark. No light shines in at any point in the proceedings, these are dense, bleak productions. The sound overwhelms at times in a good way. They know how to make a good song.

Also, they are aware of the history that preceded them. Bits and pieces of that large house sound from the early 90s bleeds through the songs, from the oddly triumphant “King Night” to the almost happy “Redlights”. The bass is absolutely massive. No matter what the song or tempo, the bass reigns supreme through all of these songs.

Sometimes hype does good or bad things. In this case, the hype turned decidedly negative against these guys. That is a shame, because the album is surprisingly solid, and helps to ease someone like me into Witch House and Dubstep, two things I’m usually ambivalent about.

2010 end of year list begins

Just randomly picked this after googling "2010". This sort of embodies Canada's true colors.

As October reaches an end, I wonder what will make my year end list. Writing each one of these reviews, I kind of get the impression that 2009 was some sort of “bumper crop” kind of year. So many great bands came out of the woodwork, and we even got a new, actually good genre. I’m still going through all the stuff I have from the year prior, and am shocked at the quality. Definitely I shall include an “apologies for 2009” section in the top list this year. 

Sure, I think that hype was uneven distributed this year. Best Coast was an alright debut, but nothing ground shaking. Same goes for the weak genre known as “Witch House” which barely registers as different enough to count as a new category. Other bands from this year mostly got hyped more than needed (like Vampire Weekend or WAVVES, neither of which is bad but not like some sort of musical savior). 

2010 wasn’t a complete wash though. I got to finally see one of my favorite bands (Beach House) get the kind of respect that they deserved.  Autechre made up for being sort of irrelevant lately with their surprising “Move of Ten”, which had some of those melody beat workouts I adore. And yeah, LCD Soundsystem came out with another album, which is pretty much a big deal anyway you cut it. Fortunately I got to see them live as well so that was a big bonus. 10 years later people care about Ariel Pink, but that should’ve happened much sooner. His style just kind of allowed for him to be proclaimed the founder of chillwave, etc. No worries though, he’s at least going to continue to get the needed attention.

Even in such a quiet year things do get overlooked. I though Keith Fullerton Whitman’s work was absolutely stunning this year, particularly the “Generator” release, but barely anyone paid attention. Toro Y Moi got passed over too, which I was disappointed about since so many other “chillwavers” got much more thumbs up. The Chris Weisman and Greg Davis collaboration got zero attention, even though it was a deeply weird and original take on ambient music. Women did get noticed, but a bit more underappreciated than I would have liked. Oh well, I guess I’ll take what I can get. 

A few old faces came back from the cold. We got the much missed Gil Scott-Heron, who put in a solid performance. Oval returned as much and perhaps flooded the market with too much product. No one had heard anything from you in about 8 years, so multiple EPs and a double disc might come off a bit strong Mr. Popp. Speaking of too much, Uffie finally released an actual album, complete with all the disappointment that was expected. And No Age came out with an album that showed an evolution towards a maturing phase without fully abandoning all that chaos that made me like them so much in the first place. 

I feel that the music I listened to and liked the most tended to be either very ambient or dance based. Deepchord Present Echospace ruled so much, as did the brand new project VHS Head, which only teased us with an EP last year.  Indignant Senility came out of nowhere with its ultra-depressing Lynch-informed doom. 

Before I write any of these bands down, I’m going to give the year some time to hand over a few last albums (cough, Panda Bear, cough). Plus, I want to give some albums a chance to shine. Arcade Fire grew on me over the album, and I feel there may be one or two albums that I’ve already listened to but perhaps not fully connected to yet. Sometimes I think bands fail to realize that music is in fact seasonal, and that realizing a sunny cheerful album over the winter is usually a terrible idea. We’ll see what other albums come my way over the next few weeks, but I feel as if most of my top list has already been made.