#but most division all stars songs are a separate release and not an album thing

[akkivee]

i’m hoping those plans got moved around after rei cancelled the drbs but i’m a little scared of this possibility lol

#this is vee speaking #like if we get the 3rd drb as the last drb then the next set of solos would also be endgame solos #which is what i’m really hoping for tbh lol #the other two songs could be group songs of however they could split the og divisions or division all stars songs #but most division all stars songs are a separate release and not an album thing #like glory or dust was its own release!!!! but counterargument!!!! cross a line was album based which could be those two if so!!!! #i’d much rather get two eps with short group songs that form a bigger picture once you play them side by side tho #that’s a lot cooler and doesn’t continue to leave out nagosaka lol

[thesinglesjukebox]

SHAKIRA X BIZARRAP - BZRP MUSIC SESSIONS #53

Separation, Shakira-style!

[8.35]

Nortey Dowuona: FC Andorra are 7th in the Segunda Division; Karol G is on the Barbie soundtrack. I say this divorce was the best thing to ever happen to them. [9]

Peter Ryan: A comprehensive public clobbering, an icy-caustic bookend to the relationship that wormed its way into her discography with the ebullient "Me Enamoré", stuffed with double entendre indictments sharp and specific enough to preemptively render any rebuttal pathetic. Structurally it ranks among her most ambitious, all polyrhythms and quasi-freestyle character, the latter part no doubt owing to the BZRP Music Sessions format. There's catharsis in her kicking open the door on the private strife about which she'd previously stayed tight-lipped, and in the meta-narrative of the megastar shaking off the dead weight and finding creative reinvigoration. While they've become fewer and farther between in the last decade, she hasn't lost her knack for creating a Moment -- I heard this at the corner store, wafting out of passing car windows, on the dancefloor -- she wasn't kidding about cashing in. [9]

Alex Ostroff: The main attractions here are Shakira's righteous and yet somehow still icy fury and her impeccable wordplay. She wishes her ex the best with her "supuesto reeemplazo", but makes it absolutely clear that nobody is capable of actually replacing her. In someone else's version of this revenge-pop anthem, your husband absconding with a woman half your age might be a source of insecurity, but for Shakira it's another sign of his cluelessness -- at 44, she's worth two 22-year-olds and presents it as a simple and obvious fact. Bizarrap initially seems to take a backseat, but he brings plenty to the table, evolving his production and adding details that accentuate and complement hers. Tonight, I'm obsessed with the way he brings in that reggaeton-esque percussion right at "Me dejaste de vecina a la suegra/Con la prensa en la puerta y la deude en Hacienda" and how that propels the song into Shakira's triplet of creíste/heriste/volviste rhymes. Shakira's best material in the post-Fijación Oral era of her career has consistently been her Spanish albums, but until the restructuring of streaming and Billboard chart metrics in recent years, their popularity (and pop excellence) was never properly reflected. Of Pique's many, many sins, the one I'm most angry about was causing Shakira to relocate to Spain -- away from her main collaborators and recording studios -- and thus keeping her away from the radio at a time when audiences' engagement with global pop (and especially music in Spanish) seems much bigger and more permanent than the limited crossover moments of the 90's and early 2000's. Her post-BZRP releases have mostly been collaborations with an extremely varied list of rising Latinx stars in a wide range of genres, from a reggaeton heartbreak diss track with Karol G to a regional Mexican polka track with Fuerza Regida about labor rights and Pique firing the nanny who snitched on him for cheating. I have absolutely no idea what to expect from Shakira next, and I couldn't be more excited. [10]

Harlan Talib Ockey: 1) Cultural reset. 2) I love mess. 3) We now go live to Pique stepping on a rake. 4) Infinitely more energy than "Te Felicito" or "Monotonía". 5) Actually, Shakira hasn't sounded this forceful in a long time. 6) Bizarrap at the top of his own game rather than trying super hard to make corridos, for example. 7) "¡LAS MUJERES YA NO LLORAN, LAS MUJERES FACTURAN!"="margin:> [9]

Aaron Bergstrom: As a non-Spanish speaker, I'm probably missing out on some of the nuance here, but allow me to offer a brief letter of recommendation for 1) listening to this for the first time with minimal context, 2) focusing only on Shakira's inflection and intonation, 3) picking out a few lines where she sounds especially pleased with herself, 4) thinking "ooohhhh, I bet these are daggers," and then 5) looking up the English translation and confirming that every single one is just as vicious as you'd hoped. Because let me tell you, it is a delightful experience. [8]

Jessica Doyle: Cuando era niña, en mi escuela podría estudiar solamente francés; no empecé a aprender hablar español hasta desde cuatro o cinco años. Hoy tengo una cita cada día con Duolingo y puedo comprender unas frases, pero quiero apreciar el idioma mucho más, y lo que me motiva, es esta canción. Shakira canta como sus palabras tienen pesos y formas; se puede esucuchar y sentir cuando ellas se chocan con el suelo--"mastique' y trague', trague y mastique'," "con la deuda a la Hacienda." Además, ella gana confianza y acelera, asi que cuando ella canta, "Yo valgo por dos de 22," no es un cope defensivo, es una declaración de hecho. El idioma es su arma y su poder. Y el ritmo es único; ella no lo podría haber canto en inglés. Entonces, escribí este blurb en español; no lo escribí en inglés y traducé. Sé que hay muchos errores (Google Translate me dice que "I translated" no es "traducé," es "traduje"), pero creo que sería un error más grande hablar de esta canción en inglés. La escucho y me hace querer estudiar y aprendar más. [8]

Will Adams: An undersung aspect of what makes "Pa Tipos Como Tú" so compelling is how Bizarrap's beat switch-ups throughout the song propel it forward. It begins as an icy breath of Italo that recalls She Wolf's more delirious moments. Midway through the second verse, the floor caves in to reveal a heavy, rhythmic groove, as if gathering power for the next attack. The second chorus arrives with a walloping synth bass, reminiscent of "Padam Padam" but even more menacing. It makes for one of the most exciting listening experiences of the year, instilling an uncertainty of where this thing is headed next. All the while, Shakira floats on top, mercilessly delivering a brutal takedown that leaves nothing in its wake. [8]

Tara Hillegeist: The last time anyone on Shakira's level tried to write a song about how mad she isn't like this, it was over a decade ago, and "Irreplaceable" that effort absolutely wasn't, drowned in goopy self-affirmation and breathy lack of confidence. Compare the liquid contempt swirling around every syllable, here, the bared-fang sharpness of the enunciation as she howls "You thought you'd hurt me, you only made me stronger/Women no longer cry, women get paid". Shakira's fury isn't the fury of a woman left abandoned, with only scorn as her cold comfort -- as one of pop's inarguable queens, she has an entire country at her back. It's only natural that she can't simply settle for destroying her ex's memory alone, when there's an entire dancefloor waiting to destroy it in her honor instead. Pity Shakira's ex-husband, who will go down in pop-cultural history as nothing more than the expertly character-assassinated trophy this song leaves behind to hang on the she-wolf's wall, alongside all the others who thought to make a prize of her instead, only to find, as ever, that it's not their world to rule, but hers. Or don't; the viperous specificity with which she approaches the subject matter in question makes it readily apparent that from her perspective, this reckoning was only ever held at bay by the love he squandered in the first place. The other woman should probably count herself lucky Shakira only holds her accountable for thinking herself entitled to taking Shakira's place in his affections; if there were any other reasons, Shakira clearly wouldn't have hesitated to include them. Let the dancefloor show mercy, then, if there's any to be found. [9]

Katherine St Asaph: Shakira's hips don't lie; their involuntary sway, she's said, is how she identified Bizarrap's track as a Depeche Mode homage too chilly to pass up. And yet the track is not nearly as cold as the way Shakira vaporizes her song's targets from on high. That her specific complaints are relatively petty -- basically, that getting cheated on has stuck Shakira with a lot of rich person problems -- is beside the point. Repeatedly, she drops the real names of two real-ass people, syllable by syllable via careful wordplay, as if putting a scope into place. Her vocal is mixed loud, processed past any human timbre, and arranged to fill all space in the track. She sounds less like an individual jilted woman than a metallic weapon, than the genderless, pitiless, all-judging voice of God. Finally comes the killing smite: "and now you're with someone just like you." It's not often that experiencing a punching-down feels this bitter and inevitable, this compelling and correct. [10]

Rose Stuart: I said in my review of Olivia Rodrigo's "Vampire" that, in the year of breakup songs, hers was the only one that wasn't full of posturing. This is the only song where that posturing feels earned. Where other songs made neither their pain nor strength convincing, Shakira comes out triumphant, coming for blood with each finely picked detail in every savage line. The song never stops going in, even using the name of her ex's partner for some masterful wordplay. I've heard many breakup songs that try to go at the singer's ex, but this is the first time I've actually felt sorry for the song's subject -- after all, it must be hard to show your face in public after being roasted this thoroughly. [9]

Wayne Weizhen Zhang: A swaggering, sexy encounter that has me simultaneously wanting me to say "I'm too good for you, bitches!" and "Step on my face, mother!" [9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: lol hell yeah [8]

Alfred Soto: With any insignificant number of synths per track signifying as "1980s" the response to this track was a given, but the thudding insistence of its beat muscled past those assumptions. As alert as a burglar with good tools, Shakira talks so much shit that the judgment fades before the verdict. Imagine if they'd released this at the height of the 2010-2011 EDM epoch. [8]

Jonathan Bradley: Bizarrap's sleek, gleaming disco sets off the lack of adventure in Dua Lipa's 2023 comeback; these cool synths glide with a propulsive sense of drama. Shakira, uncharacteristically, is the weak spot though, allowing herself to recede into the background. She doesn't always command attention, but even her reserve is usually compelling all on its own. Here, she's content to vibe, waiting for someone else to make something happen. [5]

Brad Shoup: Impeccably imaged: we're used to that from Shakira. But the chilliness is something else: a brisk disco kiss-off that fogs up the anguish she's audibly fighting. The way she paces herself is really cool: icy pop in the first verse, a switch to reggaeton cadence at the end of the second that fully detonates in the third. She's acting as her own feature rapper: just another power move. [8]

Ian Mathers: I was the high mark last time we covered Shakira, but even if I was going to be here (doubt it!) it'll clearly be for very different reasons. With "Don't Wait Up" it was that fucked-up little organ (or whatever) riff, and while Shakira was good, her performance wasn't specifically what drew me to the track. Here, while the production is good, it's her performance that's much more central. Even before my monolingual ass looks up a translation you can kinda just tell from the vibe that someone is getting it in the neck, and/or Shakira is feeling her oats ("and," as it turns out) and then once you do... "Sorry, I already took another plane" is a hell of a way to start. Plenty of specific detail lurking in there, but the repeated "I was too big for you and that's why you are with a girl just like you" fairly blisters as it goes past. [8]

Taylor Alatorre: All else aside, it must really suck to not only have the Tsar Bomba of diss tracks dropped on you, but to have that track sent out to the world with this podcast episode-ass title. Like, at least Jay-Z can boast that he's part of the reason we all say "ethered" now; no such consolation here. The tossed-off nature of the release, while adding insult to injury -- you don't even get an album track! -- makes it harder to admit this into the pantheon of the greatest diss songs of all time. But I get the sense that legacy is not really what Shakira is concerned with here. This is a crime committed in the heat of the moment, in broad daylight, and everyone will remember where they were when they witnessed it. For her, that is enough. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#shakira #bizarrap #music #music writing #music reviews #music criticism #the singles jukebox #Youtube

[passionate-reply]

What would Great Albums be, if not for defenses of albums lots of people hate? SPK’s Machine Age Voodoo is, of course, one of those albums, being the attempt of a noisy, drony early industrial group to make synthy disco magic. Did they succeed? Well, maybe not--but at least it’s interesting. Find out more by watching the video, or checking out the transcript under the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! This time, I will be once again be coming to the defence of an album that’s been very divisive: Machine Age Voodoo by SPK, first released in 1984. Earlier in the 1980s, SPK had distinguished themselves as one of the most prominent figures of the nascent “noise music” movement, alongside acts like NON and Throbbing Gristle. Just two years before Machine Age Voodoo, they released their arguable magnum opus: Leichenschrei, an album that eschewed a traditional tracklisting, featured the mutilated visage of a victim of napalm burns on its cover, and sounded something like this:

Music: “Seite ((Klono))” / “Napalm (Terminal Patient)”

With their follow-up to Leichenschrei, SPK would take their sound in a very different direction. They abandoned the harsh, buzzing textures and nauseous, whirring drones of their earlier work, and set out in a remarkably more pop direction. While Machine Age Voodoo features verses and choruses, brighter synth textures, and winsome slap basslines, it still maintains a certain “industrial” identity, tying it into the same overarching web of related styles that SPK’s earlier work fell under. This album reminds me a bit of Depeche Mode’s mid-80s output, such as Some Great Reward, in its incorporation of both synth-pop structures as well as some accents of mechanistic clangs and bangs. Depeche Mode and SPK were, of course, passing by one another after coming from opposite directions on this spectrum, but the end results remain comparable.

Music: “Junk Funk” / “Machine Age Voodoo”

Listening to the album’s stomping opener, titled “Junk Funk” on most releases but made into the title track for the US market, I’m struck by just how upbeat of a track it is. Where many industrial acts are keen to portray modern labour as a punishing, soul-sucking, miserable endeavour, “Junk Funk” seems to make it into something of a party. Given that even Depeche Mode were penning tracks like “Everything Counts” with a dour outlook on capitalism, the seemingly playful aura surrounding this single really sets it apart--though not necessarily in a good way. As I mentioned earlier, *Machine Age Voodoo* has consistently been panned by fans of the group’s more aggressive earlier work, and I think the album’s affinities with light-hearted, and perhaps even silly, post-disco pop make it all the more easy to write off as ridiculous and asinine. But much like simply being in a style you don’t care for isn’t a reason to lambaste a work of art, simply being lighter in tone is no reason to reject something. Not all great art needs to be stone-serious, after all! While Machine Age Voodoo may not be a continuation of the classic SPK sound, I think it’s an album that has plenty of appeal for fans of lighter synth-pop, and one that I wish had managed to achieve a bit more renown among those who might be a bit more receptive to its style.

Naturally, the title of the album and the themes of its sometime title track invite us to consider the role that appropriation of “primitive” themes has to play. Ever since industrialization and colonialism began to create large separations between the lifestyles of “the West and the rest,” Western artists from Picasso to Gauguin have found themselves fascinated by so-called “primitive” ways of life, found among communities of colour whom they believed to live closer to the natural or archaic state of humankind, uncorrupted by capitalism. But followers of the religion sometimes known as “Voodoo” are living in the modern world as much as anyone else is, and the use of their faith as a symbol of barbarism or the unrestrained id here is presumptuous at best, and bigoted at worst--particularly given the reference to “funk,” a music style that, like Voodoo, is strongly associated with Black culture. The love for things “primitive” has served an important cultural role in the West, offering an apparent alternative to the crushing death spiral of capitalism, and serving as an outlet for questioning the assumed status quo and the truth of human nature--but at the same time, I think we can fairly criticize it for offering a stereotyped and tokenized view of cultures outside of the West. Machine Age Voodoo offers another, very different, perspective on the Other on its second track, “With Love From China.”

Music: “With Love From China”

Compared to “Junk Funk,” “With Love From China” is distinguished as one of the album’s more plaintive and less dancefloor-oriented tracks, and, in contrast to “Junk Funk”’s joyful embrace of “high technology hoodoo,” “With Love From China” portrays the titular Communist power as something quite sinister. While a simple read of the lyrics suggests that it may be a triumphant hymn to the state, the track’s plodding, dirgelike melody makes it hang like an ominous cloud instead. Arguably the most successful state to be built upon Marxist ideals, China is a prominent feature of lots of early 80s synth-pop, where it and other Communist states saw varying portrayals as anywhere from dystopian to utopian. Like the appropriation of “voodoo” earlier, the dread romanticism applied to China by SPK on this track says more about them than it does about China itself. I think both tracks, taken together, paint a picture of a sort of “anywhere but here” ideology, defined less by any strong feelings for these particular cultures, and more by a desire for an escape to the exotic, and an abandonment of all that is sick about the West. Overall, though, “With Love From China” isn’t necessarily a fair representation of the average track on Machine Age Voodoo, as the album consists mostly of higher-energy tracks, like “Metal Dance.”

Music: “Metal Dance”

Perhaps the track most clearly aimed at nightclub rotation, “Metal Dance” feels like a logical choice for the album’s first single. Less of a pop tune and more of a floorfiller, “Metal Dance” still hums with industrial touches, propelled by clunking metallic percussion and chant-like shouts that prefigure the synthesis of machine music and club fare that EBM acts like Nitzer Ebb would achieve later in the 1980s. With its succinct title and a compelling hook that implores us to “synthesize our dreams away,” “Metal Dance” almost feels like a love letter to the sheer concept of electronic music for dancing to--a consummate paean to the discotheque, even if it comes from what may seem like an unlikely, and perhaps dishonest, source. A similar embrace of dance music qua dance music is found on “High Tension.”

Music: “High Tension”

If “Metal Dance” sounds like a preview of later industrial dance genres like EBM, then “High Tension” feels like a throwback to the first attempts to “synthesize” an electronic disco, with its dense, complex production style, prominent bass, and lyrics that promote “danc[ing] ‘til you drop” as a response to “bad times.” Despite its compelling use of a well-textured vocoder, “High Tension” veers away from the worship of the machine that was central to “Metal Dance,” and its straightforward celebration of dancing itself makes it feel like the most likely genuine crossover hit on the album--not that it really had any. It’s also worth noting that the track’s bridge contains an early reference to “hip-hop,” back when artists like Man Parrish were freely using the term to describe club-friendly electro that didn’t necessarily include rapping. Times have changed, of course, but I think “High Tension” fits right in with other works in that style--even if, again, it comes from a group that nobody would have expected to make music like this!

On the cover of Machine Age Voodoo, we see a fantasy cityscape, defined by a massive tower crowned with the band’s name accompanied by a Communist-inspired red star. It’s as firmly removed from the vile and shocking imagery of Leichenschrei as the music contained within. But, just as the music has retained some degree of industrial sentiments, the cover is not without its own sense of subversion--it is, after all, apparently enshrining the ostensibly dangerous, foreign ideology of Communism!

It’s tempting to compare this image to the futuristic imagery of Fritz Lang’s classic silent film, Metropolis, particularly given that there’s also a track on the album that shares that title. But I think that the visual style employed here, with its blocky, cubistic rendering of form and lively use of diagonals to enrich its composition, is perhaps more reminiscent of the work of the Russian avant-garde of the 1910s. Even before the Russian Revolution, pioneering abstract artists, like the “Rayonist” Natalia Goncharova, were looking towards the exciting potential of the future, and making art that celebrated the beauty of machines in motion. The early abstraction of painters like Goncharova would go on to influence the abstract art associated with the early days of the Soviet Union, which makes it a particularly fitting affinity given the themes of Machine Age Voodoo.

After Machine Age Voodoo, SPK never returned to making more melodic music--perhaps unsurprisingly, given the album’s simultaneous failure to achieve crossover success, or retain the interest of their existing fanbase. They returned in 1986 with Zamia Lehmanni: Songs of Byzantine Flowers, an album of dark ambient music that avoided slavishly copying earlier works like Leichenschrei, while still feeling like a worthy continuation of the spirit in which they had begun their career.

Music: “Invocation to Secular Heresies”

My favourite track on Machine Age Voodoo is “Seduction,” which is easy to overlook as it actually only appeared on the US release of the album. “Seduction” is striking for its blatant, wantonly sexual lyricism, which, when combined with SPK vocalist Sinan Leong’s competently sultry vocal style, recalls the best work of the experimental disco outfit Gina X Performance. And much like Gina X Performance, there’s a bit of subversively queer gender-bending to be had here, as a male backing vocalist repeats Leong’s line, “you call yourself a man?” I think that may be unintentional, a sort of happy accident, but I love it nonetheless. That’s all I have for today--thanks for listening!

Music: “Seduction”

#music #spk #industrial #industrial music #great albums #album review #album reviews

[kalluun-patangaroa]

Suede brush up

The Guardian, 21 October 2010

by Jude Rogers

(This is the actual article The Ministry Of Sound photo shoot was done for)

Drugs, ME and despair sent the poor urchins of Britpop their separate ways in 2003. Now Suede have come roaring back to life.

'Much less interested in the persona of Brett Anderson' ... Suede's frontman at the Ministry of Sound, London. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian 

This year, in the first flush of spring, a band that time forgot played the gig of their lives. "It was so special, it was impossible to leave it behind, wasn't it? We had to keep picking at it, didn't we? It was like a scab." The once long-fringed frontman who led the band that launched Britpop – albeit against his will, Brett Anderson reminds us – sits in a hotel room on a darkening weekday evening, remarkably untouched by both time and excess, recalling Suede's performance at the Royal Albert Hall in March. Next to him, drummer Simon Gilbert and keyboardist Neil Codling are similarly Peter Pan-like; bassist Mat Osman is in New York; while Richard Oakes, the young pup who replaced guitarist Bernard Butler after writing to the band's fanclub, is in the gents. 

"He's hiding," says Anderson. "He's terrified. Be gentle with him."

In 2010, something remarkable has happened to Suede. Nearly 18 years after their debut album became the fastest-selling in British history, and seven years after they split not with a bang but with a whimper, they are, incredibly, the talk of the town. Next month, they release a carefully curated Best Of – Osman says on the phone, later, that Anderson has spent months labouring over it, making his own CDs to discover the best running order. In December, they play the O2, their biggest-ever non-festival show. This is all thanks to a gig they played for Teenage Cancer Trust back in March, preceded by two "practice runs" at London's 100 Club and the Manchester Ritz. At the Royal Albert Hall, they were a revelation: five men in their 30s and 40s playing at full throttle, as if the world was going to cave in once the curtains came down. When they played Metal Mickey, they received a standing ovation that went on for five minutes. Oakes finally enters the room as we discuss it, and smiles shyly when he realises what we are talking about. "I thought someone had walked on stage, or something. It was genuinely unexpected."

"That's the one moment that I'd relive for the rest of eternity," adds Anderson. "And I did actually say on the night – here's your bold quote if you want it – I've taken a lot of drugs in my life and nothing compares to it."

Anderson at Royal Albert Hall, London, in March 2010. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA 

Everyone laughs. Suede know who the press expect Anderson to be: the easy-to-parody commuter-belt wordsmith, still in love with suburbs and skylines, nicotine and gasoline. The old dog still deploys flamboyant one-liners – when Gilbert's lost phone turns up in his pocket, for example, he says, "Oh, come on, Simon, this isn't Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World" – but in 2010, Anderson is much more self-aware. He is, he says, "much less interested in the persona of Brett Anderson", and even has a sense of humour about having a parodist on Twitter, something you couldn't have imagined 15 years ago.

Since Suede broke up in 2003, all the members' lives have changed hugely. As well as making three solo albums and reuniting briefly with Butler as the Tears, Anderson has married and gained a stepson "who likes being read bedtime stories about pirates", and lost a father, who died in 2005. Gilbert moved to Bangkok as soon as the band split, and now drums for two bands called Futon and Goo ("that's G-O-O"); Codling became "a keyboardist for hire" for Natalie Imbruglia, among others; Osman became an editor of the online zine le cool; while Oakes has been working quietly on a new band, Artmagic, though he had not been on stage since Suede played their last note seven years ago.

But then Teenage Cancer Trust came calling. At first, Anderson didn't know whether reforming would be wise. "There were two conflicting voices," he says. "One saying I'd love to play those songs again, I'm really proud of them. Another saying I should leave well alone." He spoke to Osman and Codling, called Gilbert on Skype, then spoke to Oakes – the least convinced party. Oakes stands out from his bandmates in other ways today: he wears a beige jacket and scruffy jeans while the others are stylish in black; he has a receding hairline; and he still looks acutely aware that he filled Butler's shoes, despite co-writing some of Suede's biggest hits. "I was thinking, 'Oh God, can I do it, revisiting the past?' All these emotions, I didn't think I could cope." Osman will also admit late that he had his doubts: "Men in their 40s performing teenage songs … it could have easily gone horribly wrong."

Anderson confirms there were lots of difficult conversations. "But if it had been the wrong thing for one of us, it would have been the wrong thing for all of us. We kept persevering because we knew there was still something there."

To decide once and for all whether a reunion would work, this version of Suede (Oakes joined in 1994, Codling in 1996), went to a tiny rehearsal room near Anderson's house. It was the first time they had played together for 10 years (Codling left the band in 2000 because he was suffering from ME). It was crucial there were no managers or roadies present, explains Anderson, so the five musicians could just drink tea and chat, and then hook up their instruments. They played Filmstar first, and it sounded amazing, he says. "We also noticed a purity in those songs, because we'd had distance from them," adds Codling. "It also helped everyone remember," adds Anderson, "why they were written in the first place."

As the Albert Hall show approached, Osman remembers them discussing how important it was that they present the music free of frills: "It had to be like five boys playing the Southampton Joiners Arms. To hide behind anything would have been cheating. We had to do the opposite."

Anderson felt they had a point to prove, too. "I don't think there's ever been a point in Suede's career when we haven't. We've always had our doubters. We've always polarised opinion." He stops, then smiles. "Although there's part of me that quite likes that, you know. I never wanted to be in someone's fifth-favourite band."

Suede were born to be divisive: from early on, they were criticised for being the beneficiaries of media hype, even though they had spent years in various bands playing "in front of three people". Later on, the fact that Anderson had been involved with Justine Frischmann, who became the frontwoman of Elastica and dated Blur's Damon Albarn, helped transform Britpop into a class-fuelled soap opera, with Blur cast as foppish class tourists, Suede as poor urchins looking at the stars and Frischmann a black-clad princess tearing them apart. Anderson doesn't think about the other Britpop bands now, he says, though he is still close friends with Frischmann, who now lives in LA; they had dinner together with their spouses last year, and he wishes he saw her more often.

By 1994, as Oasis became more popular, it became clear that Suede didn't fit into Britpop any more, even though it was still a year before the scene's commercial apogee. Butler's departure also gave the critics extra fuel for the fire. "They realised that a part of our armour was missing," recalls Anderson. "That was the first time I realised that people often run in packs, and when they smell blood, they attack."

Suede didn't want to run with a herd, though – and their second album, Dog Man Star, was deliberately anti-Britpop for that reason. "We didn't want to wave union jack flags. And I didn't want to talk about my life any more, or include any references about living in London on the dole. It felt weird how they became Britpop references, really, and how quickly they got turned into beery cartoons."

Anderson was also missing the departed Butler. "He's an amazing musician, so I missed him in that sense. And the two first Suede albums were obviously very special." Butler has played a big role in putting together the Best Of, Anderson says. "It was really nice: the two of us sitting together listening to Suede songs in the studio for the first time for nearly 20 years. A really lovely trip down memory lane." Anderson won't go into detail about their friendship, but thinks they made a good album together as the Tears, although they were naive not to realise how much the idea of their reconciliation being a de facto Suede reunion would overshadow it. Butler, though, will have no part of this reformation.

Instead, Suede's current lineup is centred around their most commercially successful spell, one that gets overlooked because of the excitement of their early breakthrough. 1996's Coming Up produced five top 10 singles, and also made Suede famous in Europe and Asia. They all remember that time fondly, Gilbert says: "It was make or break, but also really exciting. We were all waking up each morning not feeling any pressure." Things only went awry with 1999's Head Music. Codling was getting ill, and having to send ideas in by email; Anderson "was off my head on buckets of drugs"; Oakes, whose guitar parts were getting replaced by electronics, was "switching off", he says. "Which I really regret."

By 2002's A New Morning, the band had grown apart, and Anderson was trying to tear Suede's sound into pieces – partly, he now realises, because he didn't want there to be a band any more. "I think that we shouldn't have made that record, quite honestly." He persevered out of sheer bloody-mindedness – wanting to prove to the doubters, once again, that Suede hadn't been a flash in the pan. Instead, the band broke up amicably with a run of full-album gigs at London's ICA, which they nonetheless remember as quiet final flourishes. "We didn't go out the way we had planned," Osman says. "We should've gone out in a blaze of fists in Bangladesh, or something."

Quietness seems inimical to Suede: Anderson misses the danger and fierceness his band used to thrive on. "I do find it weird that the last 10 years hasn't thrown up a new definitive genre. It seems that music is here to placate now, rather than provoke. Maybe a sense of apathy has crept in, or people's lives are too comfortable. No one wants to inspire extremity, as we used to do."

Perhaps sticking around beyond the winter tour would help make this happen, I suggest. The room falls silent as the notion floats around. "At the moment … we don't know," Anderson says finally, making it clear he is the ringmaster. "I think we'd have to be convinced that it would be the right thing to do. You know, has the moment passed, or should we pick at the scab again?"

Next year, after all, he releases another solo record, a big rock-inspired album – although its energy has, he admits, been fuelled by Suede's reunion. And everyone agrees that something has changed in all of them in the wake of the reunion. "The fact it happened 20 years after the band formed – isn't that wonderful? Who's to say it couldn't happen again in the future?" Anderson raises his hands, and his cheekbones gleam in the evening light as it falls through the window. Everyone smiles, and understands. This isn't yesterday's man.

The Best of Suede is released on Ministry of Sound on 1 November.

#suede #press #the guardian #ministry of sound photo shoot

[queensofrap]

Most Misunderstood: Iggy Azalea's American Dream    

he early reality of Amethyst Kelly is difficult to imagine. There was once a small home in the tiny Australian town of Mullumbimby, made of red brick, cemented by mud and laid by her father's careful hands. Her mother would spend her days emptying trash bins at a motel as a vacation rental cleaner, a path Amethyst would eventually follow at age 14. Water didn't always run, clothes were never new, and bathrooms were separated from the home by a muddied path. It's a tale of immensely humble beginnings, a hemisphere away from the life she would come to inhabit as Iggy Azalea a decade later. And while her origins are unfathomable for some, it's Amethyst's American dream that remains universal.

I first witnessed a glimpse of that dream in the fall of 2011. It was through a cracked iPhone screen, held casually by my friend. "You have to see this bitch," she announced, flicking her perfectly coiled locs and turning up the volume. "She's every-fucking-thing!" There, on the screen, was a tall, curvy woman with ice-blonde hair and creamy incandescent skin. She was surrounded by two brown cheerleaders in matching green uniforms, strutting in towering heels and rapping furiously: My world, rhyme vicious/ White girl team, full of bad bitches. Immediately, I recognized her: this confident, eccentric girl who didn't fit into preppy white hierarchies. While others girls were quoting lines from Mean Girls, imagining themselves Regina George, she appeared as someone I knew. A girl unruly and self-possessed, always late to class, always blasting D4L. I could see her crafting beats with her knuckles and strolling into class hours late, another detention slip placed on her desk. We were sold.

If "My World" was the bait, "Pussy" was the hook, line and sinker. Iggy, Iggy/ Pussy illy/ Wetter than the Amazon/ Taste this kitty! Her accent was thick and affected, reminiscent of our cherished childhood favorite Diamond from Atlanta's Crime Mob. The "Pussy" video was a Boyz N The Hood homage with ATLien pastiche. There were ice cream trucks and babysitting, front porch posing and concrete runways, sherbet-colored pants and shredded shorts. And we weren't the only ones taking notice of Iggy and her ways. Seemingly overnight, our private cafeteria secret had become a viral phenomenon.

“ Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch.“

Press came quickly, grand and bold. The New York Times suggested that "all this proximity to blackness characterizes Iggy Azalea as a person who is no stranger to black culture and communities, suggesting it's no anomaly for her to rock the mic." The Los Angeles Times described her flow as "brash and aggressive," while Complex decided that she was ready to "really make her mark on the game." Classmates had her image as their screensavers and sprawled across their Tumblrs, and were dropping her name in new music debates. She performed at small venues in Atlanta and cars across the city boomed with Never not better/ Law should ban it! A few months later, when "Murda Bizness" featuring T.I. dropped, her dream was actualized. She was not a one-hit wonder. She was a star, poised to rise.

There are many forgotten Iggy freestyles from that era. In one, she raps over Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now," prophesying her divisive nature. In another, titled "Home Town Hatred," she reflects on her time in Australia and her desire to leave. Over Kanye West's ominous "Hell of A Life" beat, she details how industry executives told her to dumb it down. But it was her 2011 "D.R.U.G.S." freestyle that first illuminated the parameters of her ignorance.

Reflecting the industry's tendency not to look at things too deeply, at first the song went unchallenged. (It would be a year before its lyrics were critically examined). In fact, Complex covered the freestyle, commending her craft and comparing her to fellow white rapper Yelawolf. The following January, Iggy signed to major label Interscope, tweeting, "Get used to me + Jimmy [Iovine] smashing shit, cause that's the plan."

In February of 2012, she landed the coveted cover of XXL's Freshman Class issue: an annual declaration of hip-hop stars poised to break big. Between up-and-comers French Montana and Future stands Iggy in a lush green fur. She was the first woman to ever grace the cover — a backhanded achievement. For many, XXL is a bastion of hip-hop excellence. To be a cover star and stamped with their approval was to suggest an imminent dominance. If Iggy could be shot, styled, and photographed for her buzz, where were the black women who broke the boundaries, paved the lanes, and inspired her craft?

It was Harlem-born musician and artist Azealia Amanda Banks who first articulated concern about Iggy's image and her space within hip-hop. On Twitter, Banks wrote, "Iggy Azalea on the XXL freshman list is all wrong. How can you endorse a white woman who called herself a 'runaway slave master'? Sorry guys, I'm a pro black girl. I'm not anti white girl, but I'm also not here for any1 outside of my culture trying to trivialize very serious aspects of it."

Media outlets immediately crafted Bank's criticism into a heavily publicized rap beef, thrusting Banks into the insidious stereotype of bitter black woman. The line Banks referred to was a re-interpretation of a Kendrick Lamar lyric on Iggy's "D.R.U.G." freestyle. In Kendrick's 2010 track "Look Out For Detox," he raps, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway slave. In Iggy's version, she says, When the relay starts/ I'm a runaway/ Slave master/ Shittin' on the past/ Gotta spit it like a pastor.

Conversations surrounding the lyric lacked necessary context. Journalists missed questions and painted simple proclamations. In October of 2011, Banks had tweeted, "how sexy is iggy azalea?? It's kind of ridiculous…*tugs collar to let out steam*." In January, she wrote "Iggy Azalea's hair looks really great in her new video. How long do you all reckon that hair is? 40" in? By March 2012, the dream was dented, with Iggy being called out as misappropriating at best, racist at worst.

She issued a heartfelt apology, which fell on mostly unsympathetic ears. Two months later, Iggy was dropped by Interscope. Her debut album, The New Classic, stalled indefinitely. But still, there was room for redemption. In April 2013, Iggy signed with Mercury Records, a UK subsidiary of Universal Music Group. After recording new music in England, she returned stateside, armed with a completed album and a firmly set 2014 release date. During press runs she's tested: asked if she's an imposter; if her body is enhanced; if the cringe-worthy assumptions about her mentor T.I. are true. Old tweets were dug up, which made the disdainful murmurings worse. She's asked to freestyle on Sway, but instead inexplicably recites a line from her own album. Her music begins to change, becoming less lyrically explicit and trap-influenced, and more poppy and prim. Now a Complex cover star, she fumbles when asked about her divisive rapping accent. She's quoted saying, "This is the entertainment industry. It's not politics." Soon enough, that statement would no longer be true.

In 2012, political discussions had begun to dominate all forms of media. The slain lives of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis became proponents of combustible change. Movements like Black Lives Matter materialized, refusing silence or forgetfulness of the innocent and slaughtered black people, churning hundreds of American murders into global narratives. Each case, though singular and specific, represented the transgressions of America's not-too-distant-past and its perpetual present. If there was once a time when innocent victims could be smudged from history and their murderers left unscathed, that clock no longer ticked. Images of callous violence circulated more than music. Cellphone and camera footage displayed women being beaten, children being shot, and men being strangled. Language seemed to shift, relegating all ignorance to silence; expanding itself to capture the expansive feelings of others. And at the top of the same year, "Fancy" was released. Like lightning, Iggy's dream merged seamlessly with reality. She was now a star with a verifiable hit.

With her Clueless themed video for the inescapable track, 2014 became the year of Iggy's art. She held the number one spot on Billboard's Hot 100 for seven consecutive weeks. She luxuriated in the second spot too, appearing as a featured artist on Ariana Grande's "Problem." Billboard claimed Iggy tied with The Beatles and attached her name to the legacies of Mariah Carey, Missy Elliott, Lauryn Hill, and Nicki Minaj. She was now booking prime-time television spots — appearing on Good Morning America with Charli XCX — and on the covers of grocery store aisle magazines. Forbes declared her "Hip Hop's New Queen of Rap" and she was nominated for four Grammys. Simultaneously, America's racial rhetoric and division began to feel claustrophobic. In early February, Yvette Smith was murdered on her front porch. In August, Michael Brown Jr. and Ezell Ford were shot and killed. November was the month Laquan McDonald and Tamir Rice became portraits of unfinished lives. In July, Eric Garner was placed in an illegal chokehold, his last words becoming a symphony of unbearable sadness. The dichotomy between a world callously slaughtering black people on one end and rewarding a white rapper with success and visibility on another was dizzying.

What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you?

By 2015 the dream dissolved completely. Iggy was accused of racism, cultural appropriation, minstrelsy, and ignorance, becoming the perfect conduit for whiteness and all of its horrors. Her silence during racist events was considered complicit. A world tour was canceled, and neither a follow up album or a Top 10 hit reappeared. In 2016, she announced Digital Distortion, her sophomore album that was ultimately held after three singles — "Team," "Mo Bounce," and "Switch" — and a leaked music video. This year, Iggy released "Savior" with hopes of a refresh.

To some, she was an untalented white supremacist Barbie, infiltrating a space crafted by black people and laughing to the bank. Her dream — an innocent one of music, money, and acclaim — had become grotesque. To others, she was an iconic legend who was just easily projected upon. Now a refracted mirror for public opinion, a line was permanently drawn: black or white — no in-between.

But for me, there's always been a gray area. In art, in music, and in life, there is a space where the eye can shift inward to ask and answer questions. What might it look like for a young girl in Australia to re-discover life through hip-hop? What did it look like to want to manifest a world of make-believe, to create art once unseen? What is it like to attach oneself exclusively to a dream, to pursue it even as the odds are stacked against you? What do you do when you can't separate criticism from hate? When each day you're bombarded with projections based on media machinations? What does it look like when your dream comes true, when it's finally real, only for it to be mocked? To me, it's a perfect portrait of America.

At The Roxy Hotel, in New York City, I sat with Iggy Azalea. We spoke about her life, her dream, her craft, and her upcoming music. She was thoughtful and articulate, eyes glinting with Gemini humor and intellect, deeply apologetic and severely misunderstood. This is what transpired.

Can you take me back to your childhood? I read that your hometown is called "The Biggest Little Town in Australia." What was it like?

I still don't know why the fuck they call it that. It was a really small town, incredibly rural, but there's a looser, less stereotypical element to it. There were a lot of crystals and hippies, weed smokers, and horoscopes. The town was split between this hippie, carefree fairy spectrum, or conservative farmers and their crops. My parents were on the fairy spectrum, but I went to public school. Everyone there was straight-laced with names like Amber and Stephanie and there I was as Amethyst, with platform shoes, and immediately it was like, Okay, bitch prepare to get bullied.

What were the students like?

There were two schools. One was private and more artistic, and that's where all the people that could be considered carefree and more imaginative were able to go. The public school was very sterile, very conservative. The private school was expensive and my family had no money for that, so I went to the public school and I was miserable. These were the children of bricklayers whose parents drove tractors and guys who played football on the weekends. I got teased for everything. Literally everything, there was no winning with those kids.

I'm ignorant to Australia — I've never been — but there is the classic stereotype of the tanned, athletic, white Australian. When we think of whiteness, we often forget its specifications, even the types that are lauded and coveted. For instance there's the archetype of the popular blonde. You were tall, pale, and curvy…

Oh my goodness, yes! And I was never that girl. Not even anywhere near that girl's posse. I never fit in and there was a time I really tried to fit in. I remember getting teased because I hadn't shaved my legs yet. I was only in sixth grade and I had never even thought of something like that. They would call me "monkey" everyday. One day I got my mom's razor and shaved my legs thinking it would finally be over and it wasn't. There was always a new thing. My hat. My mole. My weight. All of these things now seem so dumb, but I didn't do anything like them and there was no appeasing those kids.

When did you first think of leaving?

I always knew I was going to leave because I knew I didn't belong with any of the people that lived there. I only decided I wanted to go to America when I visited the states with my grandparents. I was 11, and I remember seeing all the showgirls in Las Vegas, all their sparkles and rhinestones. They were the most fabulous girls I had ever seen. I had only seen something like that on TV, and it blew my mind. Then we went to Hollywood, and there were all these wig stores and the Star Walk, and just seeing all the ways people dressed, how they styled their hair, the color of their wigs, I wanted to be able to do all of those things. When I wanted to dress like this in Australia, I'd get shitted on. But coming to America and watching people put on a show, watching them being ridiculously fabulous, no one was doing that where I was from. Nobody was even wearing high heels in Mullumbimby.

When did you put the plan in action?

That happened when I really started to get into music. I was insanely confident, with the kind of deluded grandeur that I think you need when no else believes in you. I thought I was good at it even though in retrospect I was bad still. I was about 14 and that's when I started writing music. I'd go to open mic nights and take the bus all over the city. I'd go to battle raps, I'd get booed. There was a sound audio engineering school, called SAE, and the first music I ever recorded was there. From 14 to 16, that's when the plan formed. As soon as I started writing, I knew music was what I had to do. Even if I wasn't a rapper, I thought I could be a sound engineer or a writer. I just knew I wanted to be involved in music. And I knew I had to get the fuck out of where I lived. It was suffocating me. I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America, and that's where I had to go and that's where I thought people were going to accept my wild thoughts. I tried Sydney and Melbourne and they just weren't it. Nothing else was.

"I wanted to live in a place where the sky was the limit, a place where my dreams weren't strange or weird, where others had even crazier ideas than me. I knew all of that was in America."

Why Miami first?

They had a SAE campus in Miami. I thought I would be able to get in and get a student visa. I saved up enough money to live there for a couple of months, but I didn't have enough to live and go to school, so I ended up not going.

Next was Houston. What was that like?

I only lived there for a year. This producer found my music through Myspace, and he said if I was ever in Houston to let him know. Then he told me all the people he produced for, and I was so excited because I really loved Rap-A-Lot records, so I went. I met him and he was really cool. We recorded a bunch of songs and we would go to Metropolis. It was in a strip mall and everyone would just hang out in front of their cars, and inside one side was reggaeton and the other was a Slim Thug record chopped n' screwed. The plan was to give the DJ your cd and hopefully he'd play it, which they never do. Then you'd hangout in the parking lot until someone has a fist fight and then you go home. Those were my nights there. Just absorbing everything. I made some friends and then Hurricane Ike hit. Most of my friends were moving to Atlanta because their homes were destroyed. I went too.

How were you making money?

Two of my friends introduced me to their sound engineer and his girlfriend would come to the studio and drop him off lunch. She and I ended up becoming roommates. I told her how I had gone to Thailand before and how fascinated I was with the hair. How you could get in bundles and stuff. She said we should save up money to go and then bring it back and sell it to salons. So we saved up and went on our last dime. She had just graduated college and was working at Bank of America and we went out there and got a bunch of hair. When we came back we sold it super quick, wholesale, to all the salons. It was insane. Technically, even though I didn't have a work visa it isn't illegal if you invest in someone's business. So she registered it as little corporation under her name and I invested in it.

There's this idea that there was "Fancy" and then boom — immediate success! But there were a lot of setbacks.

Obviously there are years that people don't know about. I was in Atlanta for nearly two years just writing for people. I was doing so many writers camps for other known artists, just trying to get my spot. That's why there were a lot of pop demo references that came out. Everyone accused me of wanting to be a pop star and that wasn't something I've ever been interested in. I would write pop music with other people and try to get it placed. I've always rapped. Even the video that came out of the pop song, that was just some shit I did with my friend. We were playing.

The wildest thing is that there are so many reports that I used to be a model and that's always been strange. Just last week on my Spotify profile my bio says, "Iggy Azalea was a high profile model before she became a rapper." When?! I would have loved to be a high profile model, but last time I checked I'm a fucking size eight. What the fuck runway or editorial model do you know that size? There's so much of those kind of rumors that have a mind of their own now.

How did you end up in LA?

The music I was making in Atlanta, I started putting a couple of songs online. They didn't have anymore than 300-400 views. I still don't know how the fuck they found me, but an A&R at Interscope messaged me. He told me he had asked his girlfriend at the time, "Who do you think is cool?" And she played him my music. I was skeptical but he ended up being legitimate. He said I should move to LA and as soon as my lease was up, I went.

When I moved there they put me with a bunch of people. They were trying to help me make connections, but they didn't really understand what I was doing. I met these guys who make up "D.R.U.G.S." about a year after I moved to LA. We'd record in their garage. YG was there. Mustard was there before he was DJ Mustard. Ty Dolla $ign was there all the time. That's where I made Ignorant Art and put out "Pussy."

That song was such a success, Interscope must have been happy.

I had gotten to the end of things with Interscope and was at the point where I felt like since they didn't understand me, this would be a "fuck you." As soon as I put out "Pussy," they called me and said they totally understood the vision. It was a "what the fuck" moment. For nearly a year I had been trying to explain it to them, and suddenly when I did it on my own they want me? I don't think they truly got it, I think they just saw the numerical element to it.

Were you signed to Interscope yet at that point?

I finally had my meeting with Jimmy Iovine after that, and they wanted to sign me. The problem was my A&R wanted to manage me. Interscope, at the time, was working on an in-house management team with LMFAO. They wanted me to sign a document that literally detailed how signing would be a conflict of interest. They gave me two options: sign or leave. I had so many potential deals with other labels but in the end I chose Interscope. We got all the way down to the agreement and, the day of, the deal was dead. Completely done. I had bigger offers, better offers, and I stayed to be loyal to the people who helped me when I was in Atlanta.

What happened?

That was a Jimmy situation and it had a lot to do with Azealia Banks. They wanted to sign her and it became a conflict of interest. Once that happened, everyone wondered why I wasn't signed, why Jimmy didn't want it, and it brought into question my worth as an artist. No one wanted to fucking touch me at all. I couldn't get a deal anywhere after that. Before this I could've asked for a fucking elephant, a Ferrari, four monkeys, and a million dollars — after there was nothing. People wondered, What was wrong with Iggy Azalea? That's how it works with these things. I was done.

What'd you do next?

I had to go to England. I got new management based out of the UK and went and recorded a bunch of music in Wales with a few producers from America. I recorded "Work" and most of The New Classic there and went and shopped a deal in England. They were the only place that didn't give a fuck about what had happened in America. I signed to Mercury Records and after putting out my music there, I came back to America to get upstreamed through Universal Records. I put out five singles through Def Jam before I ever had "Fancy." I toured with Nas before "Fancy." I toured with Beyoncé before "Fancy." I toured my own tour in Europe and North America before "Fancy." I had done five tours before I ever made "Fancy." "Fancy" was truly the last attempt. Not for me to quit music, but for the label to quit me. They had given me four video budgets, none of them exceeded their expectations, and "Fancy" was their last hurrah. For them it was like either this works or it doesn't, but we're gonna put the album out and see if it sells. I decided to do something left and do Clueless, and it worked. Luckily, we had so many attempts before that with the label and this one worked.

What was that moment like?

I was really happy and surprised. I've always known the art I make is pretty left. I didn't expect it to connect. Music has changed a lot from when I first started, but at the time, my music was considered left. There was a lot of monumental success from "Fancy" that I didn't anticipate. All these people were discovering my music and suddenly I'm doing shows with 6,000-7,000 people. It was way more than I ever imagined. I thought I'd be doing basement shows or college parties and even that was so cool to me. I thought I had fully made it! I didn't think beyond that. To see brands that I knew, magazines, all of these mainstream fixtures, people, and media embrace my music, I never could have dreamt that.

When "Fancy" gained such visibility, the media seemed to adore you. Billboard said you tied with The Beatles and bested Michael Jackson. Forbes declared you "Queen of Hip Hop." What were your thoughts during that time?

It was very strange. I never said I was the queen of rap, I've never even thought that. I truly think it was like a great white hope, similar to the film Rocky. All of these people were championing me and branding me these things because of their own projections and not only were they outlandish, they were all incredibly premature. I had just started and there was this influx of, "Queen of rap! Queen of the world! Best record ever! Song of the century!" And so everyone starts saying, "No she's not, fuck her! She has some fucking nerve!" And all of those are things I never said.

What were your thoughts when you were then nominated for four Grammys, including Best Rap Album and Best Record of the Year?

I remember sitting at the Grammy's praying to God I didn't win, literally crossing my fingers, hoping there was no media frenzy. I didn't ask to be nominated. I don't even think I deserved nominations. People were so frustrated with those headlines and all those articles became attached to me personally. People assumed that's how I saw myself, or how I thought of my music. It's never been that. There was this element of trying to humble me, a moment where it seemed like, "Oh this bitch thinks she's this? We're gonna fucking show her that she ain't shit."

Did you ever anticipate that side of fame?

I've always known that I'm controversial. I love to move the needle. Things like "Murda Bizness," yes — I'm going to put toddlers and tiaras in a music video and I know many won't understand it. Or with "Pussy," yes there is a child and I know it pushes buttons. But I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing. I knew I would always come with controversy, but that was a different kind of controversy. I didn't anticipate that. I didn't even anticipate the success. I didn't think that would be the thing that made it all come crumbling down.

"I think that the best things in pop culture are polarizing."

What is your biggest regret during that time?

I wish that I would've handled criticism better in the beginning. I knew I was polarizing. I aim to be polarizing, sometimes too polarizing where I've pushed the limit too far. When I first got here, there was so much I thought I understood that I really didn't. I've really had to learn a lot of things by being here and having friends and seeing things play out in real life. Especially in the last few years in culture and how far conversations have come, I look back and cringe.

Like what?

Things like the Kendrick lyric, something I profusely apologized for and have learned from. That wasn't okay. It was insanely ignorant. That wasn't an experience to toy with. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way, specifically with that line, like fuck, I hate that I said it. There was so much criticism that came with "Fancy" and I wish I would've handled it better, but it felt very thick.

Everything was coming from every angle. My success. Being worn out. Having lawsuits. I had five different court cases and all of that factored into my responses. It was hard to decipher what criticism was valid and what criticism was just hate. Even with Azealia, we've since spoken and in retrospect, I'm sorry that I trivialized the way she felt about her experience as a black woman navigating the music industry. She and I have our own history and beef about other shit, but when she went on the radio and spoke there was validity to it. Those were her experiences that many others could relate to and I can't take those away, but at the time I thought it was her saying 'fuck you' and trying to hate on me.

You felt what she said was valid in the end?

There were so many critiques she made that were valid. I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked. It created a situation where it looks like I'm unable to be accountable, or I'm unable to accept criticism, that I'm tone deaf, and a fucking idiot. I felt like I had to defend myself against everyone, and that attitude didn't work in my favor. I wish I didn't give impulse responses and say things that made it worse. I was just popping off shit, and I wish I would've thought before I spoke. The problem got so big that I didn't know how to handle it, and I just thought I'll just go away and wait until it blows over or gets better. But it won't just get better, I have to acknowledge it and have conversations about it because otherwise it seems like I don't give a fuck or I'm not ready to take accountability.

Why do you think you weren't able to hear the criticism at the time?

I think when you're an artist and you're just starting out, especially as someone who isn't American, there's a difficult line to walk. I came here when I was 16 and people don't seem to understand that that time period truly defines who I am. They don't get that a lot of these things are my genuine influences, the same way they were informed and influenced by their surroundings. I really did live here. I lived in apartment full of people from Jamaica and after work we'd battle rap by the pool. I really did have friends that were involved in illegal activities. I was actually in the south, recording with Dem Franchize Boyz, listening to Outkast, Dungeon Family, Field Mob, Crime Mobb. And that seems incredibly hard for people to swallow. People think I should rap about Australia in an Australian accent but I'm 28-year-old woman now. I can't rap about being 10 and living in Australia. That never inspired me. My time in America, my time in those cities, were when I really started having life experiences that were worthy of going into my music. It all happened here in this country.

"I wish I hadn't been so defensive and emotional, but it invalidated important conversations that shouldn't be overlooked."

On some of the leaked tracks for Digital Distortion you didn't seem afraid to acknowledge it. Tracks like "Middle Man," "7Teen," and "Elephant" were incredibly aggressive and direct. What happened with that era?

For the record I love Def Jam, there are a lot of people that I truly respect and like. The problem I had during this time was that I was preparing to address how I felt. I had gotten so pop, and when you have success as a pop artist it makes the label a lot of money, so they pushed me to keep churning out hits. They pushed for more branding money, more endorsements — that's their job. And I made the conscious choice to go along with it because I was making a lot of fucking money.

But in doing that I think I isolated a lot of my original supporters. I also stifled myself creatively because I wasn't making the kind of music I wanted to make. If I wanted to make endless hits, I would have been making pop music from day one. I just lost my passion. I didn't feel motivated in the studio. When I told them I was going to make an album, I sat there with the president of the label and told him that his 10-year-old daughter is probably not going to like the songs. I said, "She's not gonna want to come to the concert," and I could see a look of pure horror etched on his face. The expression of, "Fuck, the money maker is going to make some weird, non-radio album."

They weren't backing you up.

There was no support in my decision. They couldn't understand it unless it fit into a radio format, but I knew I would never have success again unless I connected with my original fans. That's what I knew I needed for me to have authenticity and for me to feel passionate. Not only that but for me to just endure life. Everything was falling apart and I need to love the music I'm making and truly believe in it. When I delivered the album, they wanted to know where the radio hits were. All they wanted to create were songs like "Switch." And those songs are great, but pop records don't work without a foundation. Those big songs are supposed to be cherries on top, not just a roof with no house. Pop records are like Skittles, they taste really good but if you eat too many you'll feel sick. They're not a creative meal. Here I am at the darkest period of my life, contemplating suicide, and I'm singing "Switch."

Can you tell me a bit about this new era — Surviving The Summer?

Releasing "Savior" was incredibly therapeutic for me. It felt good to have a record where I can talk about depression, and just let down all my cards. It's completely different from a lot of the other tracks which are heavily rap.

Who are you collaborating with?

I'm working with Detail. I'm working with Pharrell. There's still going to be those unexpected Diplo elements like my early mixtapes. I'm really taking it back to that place. I started with Digital Distortion, but that was really aggressive and angry. I'm not in that place anymore. I'm happy. I know my fans want me to rap and I want to give them that. I want to give them the hard shit that they love, the shit that's different, that moves the needle. I hope people will support it.

From your rapping accent, to your pop accolades, you're constantly criticized for being inauthentic — specifically within the hip-hop realm. What do you think, ultimately, of those debates?

The way I've always felt about music is that I never approached anything as partial to a genre. There's never been a sense of this is a pop record, this a rap record. Even with the way music is today, there are so many melodies and variations to any song, any genre. I think a big part of the judgement in those things — not exclusively for me, but for most women in the music industry — is misogyny. Do you know how many men are on pop records? When they do it, it's rewarded and they're considered smart for reaching a bigger audience.

People like to pick and choose the rules. We bury things that don't give our theories sense. Everyone does it, it's human nature. I feel like with me, there's a lot of reasons why people are trying to invalidate me. Is it not authentic because I make pop music? Or is it because I'm from Australia? What about the fact that I've been here for 12 years? What about white rappers who are saying the most absurd things about hip-hop, but in the club everyone's singing their songs? Other rappers are allowed to do the things that I do — even things I would never even think of doing — but it's okay because they have likability, or a different perception attached to their image, or a fucking dick. People are misogynistic. It is what it is.

"Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting."

Do you feel like you're a new artist now?

Yes, 1000 percent! It's almost harder now because when you're new people have no preconceived notions about what you are or what you represent. When you become mega successful and you go mainstream, no longer is the sky the limit. It becomes, "Oh she's mainstream, she's had a Steve Madden deal, she's on Cosmo," and the art becomes dissected in a new way with more eyes. But I like it. Sonically, when I'm in the studio, it's fun approaching music as a new artist. Fuck what I was doing before, I'm doing new shit. It's exciting.

#a really insightful and great read #iggy azalea #rap #rapper #female rap #female rapper #hiphop #hip hop #paper magazine #paper mag

[concerthopperblog]

20 Standout Roots and Americana Albums of 2020: 10-1

Last week, I brought you the first half of my list of standout roots music albums of 2020. In a normal year (aka a year when the entire music world wasn't stuck at home with nothing to do but make albums), a lot of those would have made it into the Top 10. But this was a stacked year for roots albums, with some of the biggest names in Americana releasing and some the genre's young rising stars truly emerging. So here are my favorite 10 standout roots albums of 2020. Where I reviewed the album, I have provided a link to the full review. Where I didn't, I have linked a YouTube video of one of the album's songs.

A note on my methodology, just to curb the outrage. My list has always excluded live albums, re-records, cover albums, and compilations, just to keep the number manageable. So that's why you won't see Sturgill Simpson's excellent Cuttin' Grass or Margo Price's Perfectly Imperfect listed here. I broke that rule twice this year, but have endeavored to explain why in the individual comments.

10. Will Kimbrough- Spring Break Being isolated from studios, with session players, producers, and engineers has been a hurdle for many roots music artists when making new albums. Not for Will Kimbrough, who has been all of those things during his career. Kimbrough's aptly titled Spring Break is a spare but well-produced mix of co-writes with friends and observations on isolation, wanderlust, and how political divisions change friendships.

9. Margo Price- That's How Rumors Get Started It's a rare year that a superstar like Margo Price releases a new album and it doesn't get mass press all year long. Aside from the obvious reasons for that, it was the release of her stellar live album Perfectly Imperfect- Live From the Ryman that really got all of the attention. But don't sleep on That's How Rumors Get Started. While Price maintains all of the hallmarks that made her past two albums a success, she also tapped into the rock and roll thunder of a post Sound & Fury Sturgill Simpson, who produced the album. Album standout “Twinkle Twinkle” rocks as hard as any rock song released in 2020.

8. Corb Lund- Agricultural Tragic It only takes one listen to Corb Lund's music to know that, unlike countless other be-hatted country artists crooning about tractors on commercial radio, he grew up farming and ranching. Lund's music often centers around rural life, but never the romanticized “made-for-TV” rural stereotype peddled by the Jason Aldeans of the world. Lund's new album, Agricultural Tragic, is more of what fans have come to expect from Lund. His affable personality and Canadian-dry sense of humor perfectly embodies the unflappable mix of optimism and fatalism of unprofitable horse ranchers and men with regrettable drunken tattoos.

7. Jill Andrews- Thirties Jill Andrews is at her best when she lays herself completely, often uncomfortably, bare. She does it throughout Thirties. The album is a chronicle of a decade filled with falling in and out of love, single parenting, and struggling with voices from the past. There are raw moments on Thirties that are beautiful in their intimacy, and others aching in their honesty. But all are full of the brilliant songwriting that has marked Andrews' career.

6. The War and Treaty- Hearts Town 2019 Americana Emerging Artist winners The War and Treaty's debut album was an intimate affair, a couple's love on display in all its glory and pain. With their Rounder debut Hearts Town, the duo of Michael and Tanya Trotter take inspiration from a divided world to spread that love to their fellow man. There is still that core of intimacy, moments where Michael and Tanya seem to be singing only to each other, the audience voyeurs. But those glimpses also bring songs like “5 More Minutes”, Tanya's plea to a near suicidal Michael to give her just “five more minutes to love you.” This is where The War and Treaty thrive, wrapping serious moments in boogie-worthy James Brown soul.

5. Jake Blount- Spider Tales Did you ever have that one teacher who excelled in making his subject so entertaining and engaging that you didn't even know you were learning until it was over. Jake Blount is one of those teachers. His Spider Tales is a remarkably researched dive into the deep, and tragically forgotten, history of black string music and how many of the traditional songs by white men were inspired (if not outright written) by black artists. If that sounds dry to you, then you're going to be surprised by Spider Tales. Blount's instrumental finesse and world-weary voice let the album be enjoyed strictly as a musical entity, though the detailed liner notes about each song are worth the read. Blount has emerged as black string music's most valuable historian since Dom Flemons.

4. Emily Barker- A Dark Murmuration of Words America has slept for far too long on the talents of Emily Barker. The Australian-born British resident has always been more popular “across the pond” than here, and that's a real loss for all of us. I wish I could say A Dark Murmuration of Words was the album that changed that, but it isn't likely in a nation always on the lookout for the next bubblegum distraction. Instead, Barker channels Joni Mitchell, singing scathing protest songs about environmental devastation and racial white washing in a voice so tremulous and sweet that the message sneaks up on you. For those willing to face uncomfortable truths with Barker, the reward is a stunningly beautiful album in every way.

3. Tami Neilson- Chickaboom! To call New Zealander Tami Neilson a force of nature would be to vastly overstate the power of a hurricane. Gifted with a personality and swagger even bigger than her trademark bouffant, Neilson's Chickaboom! is a celebration of pure unabashed musical pleasure. If the confident swagger of Joan Jett met the pure charisma of Dolly Parton and melded the rockabilly fury of Wanda Jackson, you'd have Tami Neilson. But songs like “Queenie Queenie” and “Call Your Mama” hide some serious messaging, from the brush off of a cheating lover to the longing for another one to the fact that “they won't play a lady-o on country radio.”

2. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit- Reunions/Reunions Live at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville I mentioned I was going to break my “no live albums” rule in this list and this is where I do it, albeit paired with a studio release. It's pretty much a given at this point that any release by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit is going to be brilliant. It's not hyperbole to say he's Americana's best songwriter since John Prine and his longtime backing band is so tight it's impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. Reunions mixes the intensely personal songs of Southeastern the social observation so often found on his Twitter page. From the “we need a battle cry” of “Be Afraid” to equating the physical distance of he and wife Amanda Shires touring separately to a couple experiencing a marital separation. So why the live album add-on? Because one complaint by some who weren't as impressed by Reunions was a feeling it was “overproduced” but who still want Isbell's powerful lyrics will want Live at Brooklyn Bowl Nashville, which is Reunions played in its entirety in stripped down renditions featuring just Isbell and Shires.

1. Sarah Jarosz- World on the Ground This is the first time since Southeastern that Jason Isbell hasn't released my favorite album of a given year. That's not a knock on Isbell so much as a testament to just how strong World on the Ground is. There is no artist in root music today more reliable than Sarah Jarosz. At this point, the question is only will the album be amazing or transcendent. World on the Ground is transcendent, Jarosz's best work since 2011's Follow Me Down. Jarosz's pairing with producer John Leventhal is perfect. Leventhal draws out every ounce of the lyrical and instrumental brilliance Jarosz has to offer. The result is an album full of gentle but powerful songs that will stay with you long after your first (or in my case, thousandth) listen.

#americana #best of 2020 #sarah jarosz #jason isbell and the 400 unit #tami neilson #will kimbrough #2020 #concerthopper #new music #music #album review #review

[suciaramadianti]

Double Standards Between Men and Women in Music Industry Reflected in Taylor Swift’s “The Man”: A Feminist Analysis

Taylor Swift has been a major pop singer and gained the label of hollywood star for over a decade. With a total of 23 music awards, it is undeniable of how much recognition she has received from around the world. Her passion for music started early in her teens by simply singing along with her signature music instrumental: acoustic guitar. Since then she has written numerous songs mostly about parts of her life and up until now she still writes her own songs. What makes her music feels special is how they are mostly written based on Swift’s own experiences regarding life. Like many other musicians, her popular hit songs are mostly talking about love which are based on her love life experiences. As a result, everytime she writes a love song, people tend to question the person talked in the song and it is unavoidable for them to not relate it to Swift’s recent significant other at the moment. Therefore, it triggers them in creating assumptions which regularly end up to be rumours spread all over existing media.

Swift’s portrayal of the media frequently narrowed the topic to be about her relationship. They are constantly commenting on her dating habits which they regard as destructive because they judged if the number of people she has dated are not common. As a consequence, people are inclined to misplace the spotlight on her personal life. Given her tremendous fame, it seems impossible for her to separate her personal life and her works. It is unquestionable that this issue disturbs and minimizes the value of her success, she specifically addresses this concern in one of her songs in her recent album entitled “The Man”.

In “The Man”, Swift puts her position as a man and wonders that all of the decisions taken in her life will be taken differently if she were a man. Since she is a musician, she is talking specifically in the scale of music industry. Other than that, it is due to the fact that many artists under the same industry also tried to downgrade her as an artist, making her appear powerless to counteract. The song itself shows that she strongly believes that all the unpleasant treatments she got is because of her gender. The song also implies that there is a significant double standard between men and women in the music industry which is harmful to women’s rights and how it benefits the men. Margaret Eichler, author of The Double Standard: A Feminist Critique of Feminist Social Science, explains that a double standard “implies that two things which are the same are measured by different standards” (Eichler 1980:15). With that being said, here’s an attempt to analyze what are the double standards seen in “The Man”  by Taylor Swift using feminist literary theory.

Feminist Literary Theory

Feminist literary theory is a theory which based on feminist theories. It is widely described as a theory using feminist principles to critique male-dominated literature. The criticism focuses on oppression of women in social, political, economic, and psychological literature. Feminism itself exists in response to women-marginalizing social construction which concerns with women’s efforts to gain gender equality with men (Harjani, 2013:28). Plain and Sellers (2007:2) state that “Feminist literary criticism was keen to uncover its own origins, seeking to establish traditions of women’s writing and early ‘feminist’ thought to counter the unquestioning acceptance of ‘man’ and male genius as the norm”. In other words, feminist criticism seeks to examine male-dominated literary works. Furthermore, feminist criticism also requires detaching the patriarchal notions in literary works. (Selden, Widdowson, and Brooker, 2005:115).

According to Code, nowadays criticism and theory appear simultaneously in feminist anthologies and the feminist literary theory includes both, practical and theoretical, approaches to literature (Code 2000:261). Based on Code’s explanation, the purpose of feminist literature theory is to “analyze the role that literary forms and practices, together with the discources of literary criticism and theory, play in challenging hierarchies of gender, class, race, and secuality.” Based on the explanation, it is approppriate to use feminist literary theory to achieve the research objectives of this research.

 Findings and Discussion

Taylor Swift has been diving in Hollywood music entertainment since around 2006. In 2008, her music career sky-rocketed with a single entitled, “You Belong With Me’”,  a love song that has been well-received by pop music lovers. Her songs are mostly based on her own experiences regarding love, friendship, family, life, and etc, this is why many times they will feel personal to listen to. Since her fame makes her into one of the most looked-up superstar, the media cannot stop invading her personal life, particularly about her love life. Everytime she enters a relationship with someone new, the media would regularly comment something about it. It started early in her career up until recently, she had several ex significant others who were covered by the media. Unfortunately, as the time goes, entertainment medias starting to notoriously view her dating habits as her way to draw inspiration to write love songs. As seen in the first verse of the song, she says:  

“I would be complex, I would be cool They'd say I played the field before I found someone to commit to And that would be okay for me to do”

In the line above, she puts herself as a man and pictures how it would be different if she were a man with the same dating habit as her. As a woman, having a history of multiple exes, makes her being labeled as a “serial dater” by the media. A serial dater is someone who refuses to center on one person in a relationship. Here, Swift implies if she were a man then the dating habit would be deemed by society as something cool and instead turns her into a complex person who rather chooses to be careful in picking someone to date before eventually commiting to one person. In other words, women tend to be stigmatized for having more sexual partners, whereas men would be praised for such behaviour. A 2009 study published in Social Psychology Quarterly found that "greater numbers of sexual partners are positively correlated with boys' peer acceptance, but negatively correlated with girls' peer acceptance" among adolescents (Kreager & Staff, 2009). This proves that as a woman Swift receives a negative stigmatization for having multiple significant others in the course of her life while other male artists under the same industry would be praised for the same attitude. 

The next line she continues to descriptively explain that having multiple significant others as a man would make the person seen as superior. Meanwhile, as a woman, it is considered as unacceptable which often regarded them with labels such as “slut”. Swift herself claimed she was slut-shamed in her early twenties simply by wanting love (Reilley, 2019). She also said  it is what inspires her to make a movement called ‘Me Too’ aiming at observing internalised misogyny still existing in the world.  In “The Man”, she expresses her concern by saying this particular line:

“Every conquest I had made would make me more of a boss to you”

The conquest meant in the line is the number of exes she had throughout the course of her life which then she further convinced if it would have made her appear more of a ‘boss’ if only she were a man. This is due to the fact that the status of men is based on the number of love partners they have had. The higher the number of their exes automatically puts men in a higher status because they are regarded as capable of conquering women’s hearts. On the contrary, this thing works the other way around for women. Eder, Evans, and Parker (1995) found that “boys tend to perceive girls as objects for sexual conquest as they compete with other boys for sexual achievements.”  Thus, making it appropriate for men to fool around with different women. Whilst women are aware of the stereotype surrounding women doing the same thing, therefore they will be prone to be labeled with negative terms if they did the same thing.  Orenstein (1994), Moffat (1989), and Tolman (2002) also suggest that young women’s fears of the “slut” label curbs their sexual expressions, while young men are encouraged to demonstrate their masculinity through sexually permissive behavior. 

Even though Swift’s success as a singer-songwriter has been going on over a decade, there are still plenty of people who are skeptical of her success. It is as if her success was judged differently in the scheme of the music industry. This is mainly because people perceived her fame as a result of her habit in dating multiple men and continuing to write about them in her songs rather than because of her artistic skill and success. In other words, people are likely reducing her successful music career to merely focusing on judging whether she has an issue commiting to a relationship or not. She even went on to say that her success was perceived by many as a trick rather than a skill and a craft (Ali, 2019). She covers this in the song, specifically in this line:

 “They'd say I hustled, put in the work

They wouldn’t shake their heads and question how much of this I deserve”

In this line, she says nobody would take her success, which she has been working hard for, as granted if she were a man. It occasionally happens in the music industry that women are constantly underreprresented, but once a woman takes the position in the top list of musicians, it is inevitable for them to be horribly scrutinized. As a proof, women are less likely to be largely represented in the music industry. In fact, the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism division just released its inaugural report on inclusion in popular music and the results reveal that just like in the film and television industry, there is a strong need for more females in the music industry (Pajer, 2019).  It is very often for a female musician’s accomplishments to be overshadowed by surrounding rumours made about her. Swift can be said to be one of the victims in this case. Thus, she points out in her song that women's success are prone to be questioned in the music industry, meanwhile men do not have to worry about the same thing.

Conclusion

Based on the result of this research, the advantages of the double standard between both genders belong to the males. On the other hand, women are often put in a difficult position because they tend to be harshly criticized by the public with all the decisions they have made. In the song, Taylor Swift effectively expresses her concern as one of the victims of the issue in “The Man”. This research shows that there is a negative stigmatization for women who have more sexual partners, whereas men would be praised for behaving the same way. Women who fool around with men will often be regarded with negative labels, such as ‘slut’,  meanwhile it is an indicator for men’s achievement. Lastly, there is a difference between how the public judge the success of a woman and the success of a man, showing that women’s success are prone to be harshly criticized.

 References:

Ali, R. 2019. 'A Trick Rather Than a Skill': Taylor Swift Says Success Is 

Judged Differently for Women. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from  https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/10/30/taylor-swift-her-success-reduced-a-trick-rather-than-skill/4100754002/.

Code, L. ed. 2006. Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. New York: Routledge.

Delbyck, C. 2016. Taylor Swift Says She Was 'Slaughtered' For Dating Famous Guys. Retrieved January 6, 2020, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/taylor-swift-vogue-dating-famous-guys_n_570f9baee4b08a2d32b92012.

Eder Donna, Evans Catherine C, Parker Stephen. School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press; 1995.

Eichler Margrit. 1980. The Double Standard: A Feminist Critique of Feminist Social Science. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Harjani, E. T. 2013. The Feminist Voice In Lucille Clifton’S The Thirty Eighth Year, Miss Rosie And Final Note To Clark. Litera, 12(1), 28–28. English Department, LIA Institute of Foreign Languages Yogyakarta.

Kreager, D. A., & Staff, J. 2009. The Sexual Double Standard and Adolescent Peer Acceptance. Social Psychology Quarterly, 72(2), 143–164. doi: 10.1177/019027250907200205

Pajer, N. 2018. New Report Shows Major Lack of Representation by Women in the Music Industry. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from  https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8096196/new-report-shows-major-lack-representation-women-music-industry.

Plain, Gill, & Susan Sellers. 2007. A History of Feminist Literary Criticism. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Reilly, N. 2019. Taylor Swift Says She Was “Slut-Shamed” in Her Early Twenties. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.nme.com/news/music/taylor-swift-says-she-was-slut-shamed-in-her-early-twenties-2563524.

Selden, R., Widdowson, P., & Brooker, P. 2005. A Readers Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory. London. Routledge.

Tolman Deborah L. 2002.  Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk About Sexuality. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

[bloobomber]

Enter Shikari’s: the Spark (2017, September 22) does it Really Light a Spark or does it leave us in the Dark? By: Christopher Quintero

Enter Shikari’s: the Spark (2017, September 22) does it Really Light a Spark or does it leave us in the Dark? By: Christopher Quintero

At the beginning of their now well established career, there was a little group from St. Albans Hertsfordshire that consisted of: Rou Reynolds (guitarist) Chris Batten (bassist) and Rob Rolfe (drums ;) They played a couple of shows under the alias of Hybryd until Rory Clewlow joined in 2003, and soon after they formed the name Enter Shikari (Enter Hunter.) Clewlow would then take over as their guitarist and Reynolds would don the bands staple instrument the Korg synthesizer. In 2006 under the label Ambush Reality, the debut album Take to the Skies was released and with critical acclaim, which included tracks from previous EPs, such as: “Sorry You’re Not a Winner” and “Okay Time for Plan B.” The album also included the singles “Johnny Sniper” and “Mother Ship.” To this day I still listen to “Johnny Sniper” and the interlude track that comes before it. It opens with a man introducing Johnny Sniper as if through some megaphone and the instruments conducting an assembly line. It continues along a steady path until the drums break away into “Johnny Sniper” along with its dance rhythm from the synths, then the guttural sound from Reynold’s vocals as he kicks it up a notch. This track definitely left a huge impression on me and remains one of my favorite songs from the band today. As time went along, the band released other albums like: Common Dreads, a Flash Flood of Color and the Mindsweep along with many other LPs and singles that included tracks, such as: “We Can Breath in Space” and “Redshift,” under the Ambush Reality label and Hopeless Records for us here in the States. Now towards the end of 2017, comes “the Spark.” This is an album that can have addicting choruses, brooding rhythms and heartfelt messages as well as insightful ones. Enter Shikari has never been one to stick with a certain genre and it is difficult to peg one down with them (go ahead and try), but I did feel some familiarity on this new album, but not enough to diagnose a certain genre.

The introduction to the album begins with the Spark; a dim intro with fleeting chords played on a keyboard that sounds like something that came out of a science-fiction piece. It reminds me of the instrumentals out of the Stranger Things, soundtrack for which I really find interesting. I think they were going for an outer space sound, and I think they nailed it with this intro. I feel as though I am floating in the far reaches of space staring at the endless amounts of stars far out of my reach.

Right after the Spark, comes “the Sights,” is a song about one person’s firsthand experiences as he or she is readying to take off into space in search of something greater. I believe this song like many other tracks on the album tackle the concept of discovery of other planets and areas, but also the sense of self-discovery. The speaker begins to talk as if addressing someone and as he/she is talking, the person sounds fed-up with their situation on Earth and how tired he/she is on the planet. The pilot compares a magpie’s flight over gleaming diamonds as something, “dull” and not as impressive as the one of a star. I love the line where he/she says that they grab their “pen like a bread knife, as I write.” I get this image of a person sitting at a desk the night before writing in some sort of journal in tense anticipation as they glance at the clock for affirmation of the hour. The song has a repeating stuttering pulse of the keys of a keyboard playing throughout as the drums jog in place with it. It is mostly Reynold’s singing throughout, but the rest of the members kick in for its crescendo moment for the chorus and the instruments pick up the pace as well. As the song continues, the pilot, as someone who is about to head off into the exosphere, feels the need to disprove Jacques Rousseau, a great mind who wrote the Disclosure on the Sciences and Arts, which opposes sciences and arts because he believed sciences corrupted the virtue of people. At the same time, he/she claims to be going boldly, off on this journey- boldly as Marcus Cicero, who was bold in his own sense and accomplishments. Even if so this is in the back of that person’s mind, he/she is going to take off for a search of something better. It is a great song and has one of the most catchy choruses in the album and I am glad that you hear the rest of the members on this song joining in on the singing because they seem to be absent in that sense for most of the album. In” Ghandi Mate, Ghandi,” off the “Flash Flood of Colour”, album, there is a moment in the beginning where Reynolds loses his mind and goes overboard with his speech and the rest of the members come running in to calm him down and to stay in character; I love this part because it throws in a bit of their humor along with their purpose as musicians in the music they write- for they enlighten people with important situations and information without being too demanding and dull. In the Spark, you faintly hear them on the album and I always loved when Batten, Rolfe and Clewlow chimed in with some great notes or some snarky remark.

The next song became one of the singles off the Spark and I completely agree with it being one of the more popular tunes off the album. This next one is “Live Outside;” just like most Shikari songs, I usually am taken by surprise by the difference of sound. At first, I did not know what to think about, “Live Outside,” with its choir sound. I thought it was a pretty solid track, but as I kept going back for more, I realized I was under the Shikari spell. The chorus with the group chanting is addicting and the song sounds like this electronic, gloomy, sing-along. I enjoyed how the song kicks off with just the bare ingredients of the vocals and the synth, but then you hear a far off Reynold’s  yell “yeah,” then it rushes into infectious guitar notes with that hazy mist sound the synth brings in (it was the best description I could give) that pair up nicely with the vocal parts. It is a great song, but standing alone I did not feel its pull until you insert it with the rest of the album, I guess when I had it all together it benefitted with the album’s space/future theme well and I always liked their songs as standalones, but I felt this song needed the full scope of the rest of the album to be enjoyed at its full potential.

When I said that Enter Shikari’s music seeks to enlighten- “Take my Country Back,” is the piece of the album that does just that. This is the track that feels most familiar with me because it tackles an important situation that is going on in our world and that is division. I believe this song mostly highlights what is going on in the United Kingdom with Brexit. Brexit is the United Kingdom separating from the European Union. The European Union is the unification with the United Kingdom alongside many other countries. Brexit was a poll in which citizens could participate in the voting process, the majority voted to cede from the Union. Just like this, in North America, we have the United States trying to cutting off immigrants, specifically from South America and Central America with the election of Donald Trump. There are similarities in both situations. With the lines “don’t want to take my country back, I want to take my country forward,” is the band wanting to keep the unification instead of having a country act as if the land was a possession to keep for oneself than to share with others. Just like the artists in the band, people of that nation share the same sentiment. The song definitely has an apocalyptic tone to it, especially when the band chants in low voices the same repeating lines “don’t want to take my country back, I want to take my country forward,” and then in despair Reynold’s goes on to say lines comparing life to an eroding Cliffside. The song is an eye opener to important scenarios occurring today.

“Airfield,” is a song that cannot exist if one did not experience struggle and rises that have coincided with downfalls. The band rarely speak about their personal struggles, but this song breaks away from their most talked about subjects and puts into light one important topic in life and that is to keep holding on when things seem the most dire and when we are at our darkest moments. Reynolds’s voice guides us through the journey with misfortune along the way, but throws in lines like: “Even if there is no purpose to the things that you have gone through an ordeal can reveal an airfield.” This signifies that even though there is misfortune along the way, they have reason and give way to a different path for us to grow and take flight. He does a great job at capturing the hurt of such misfortunes with his voice that is low and sounds like it is breaking. It is one of the many quiet songs on the album, but it is definitely appreciated. I love the climb towards the songs climax. You have a heartbroken vocalist, but hopeful, chanting along with the rest of the mates “you’re down on your luck, you’re down, but that don’t mean you’re out now” with screeching instruments as if they were losing signal. It’s terrific, but even then after the storm, he throws in this verse,” when the wind's against you remember this insight, that's the optimal condition for birds to take flight. Now the wind’s against you don't give up the fight.

The rumbustious song you are going to get ahold of here is, “Rabble Rouser.” It opens up with one of their most foreboding and grim guitar riffs- yet it has a pretty slick groove to it. It connects to Reynolds throwing in lines like some intense slam poet. At times, the tones hiding behind the rest of the sounds come off like some creepy carnival funhouse, and I am definitely not complaining. Along with all of this, there is one of the most difficult lines to deliver! “I’m on stage with a face like a stacka-stacka screwdrivers.” I cannot for the love of god get that part without messing up. Funny story- I was riding my bicycle while listening to this song, and I kept repeating that line to myself. I looked up at a police officer that had a look of concern. I am sure he now thinks I am some maniac. That is how hard I have been practicing to master that line. I think it one of the most fun parts on this song. This is one of the singles on the album and I agree that it deserves a spot as one of the more liked tracks to be heard from this album of 11 tracks. It is one the louder and faster paced compared to the others.

When you thought the album would pick up the pace after the last track, then you get hit with “Shinrin-yoku.” Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term that means taking in the forest atmosphere. Shinrin-yoku is for healing your mind and spirit in the quiet and gentleness of the forest. For the most part, I got a relaxing vibe from the song especially with the intro with the instrumentation, and you can hear faint sounds of what seems like water and the growing of the forest plants and trees. You really never know what you are going to get when you dive into one of Shikari’s albums and when I heard this track for the first time, I felt diversity compared to some of their older stuff- not because of the inclusion of the trumpet because looking back, the last song from them that included brass instrumentation was “Rat Race,” and that was on a different tempo than this song. They have a catalog of tunes that are fast paced with upset messages about climate change like “Arguing with Thermometers,” or even quiet ones that deal with segregation like “Gap in the Fence,” and I felt that it was a nice change to take a moment and appreciate what beauty the band was defending with those upset messages. In this song, you catch the moment of being in a quiet forest lost in thought and appreciating what calmness nature has to offer and for a moment just breathing is enough to be happy. It also has the idea of how microscopic we are in the scope of the universe and it is apparent with the line, “we are the dust on the stained glass windows trying to comprehend the cathedral,” and maybe our problems are not as bad as we perceive them. Easily one of my favorite numbers they play off the album, but it falls short to the next one.

“Shinrin-yoku,” quietly steps into the following on the album, “Undercover Agents.” I believe that off the entire album, this is the most relatable and probably the easiest to get into for its ridiculously engaging chorus and lyrics that will trigger you like some sleeper agent to sing along to every word spoken. I guess they should have called it sleeper agents instead because when Reynold’s exclaims, “tonight I’m howling with the wolves,” it triggers me with this excitement that had been welling up and just explodes as I follow along to singing every line that follows. The part when the groups in unison howl together is always just so fun to hear and to join in as well and it is one of those moments that I speak of that I cannot help but to do as well. It has that bursting moment of the chorus that some of the other songs on the album included. It has the steady tread through the opening, then boom, I’m out here howling with the wolves too. With the message of the song it is familiar to us as the audience because we too face struggles in our daily lives and build stress throughout our days of work and daily activities and it is awesome when you have that moment to finally relieve yourself of all that pressure and weight; This song is a great remedy to all of that and as a person who suffers from anxiety of different numerous calibers- this song really hits home and I can guarantee that you will be howling with the pack too by the time you finish this one.

“The Revolt of the Atoms,” gives off a grim intro that sounds like a corrupted taped recording and be understood as a warning; It transitions into this melodic tune filled with anxiety and uneasiness. I believe it perhaps gives another shot at Brexit for its division of the people living in the nation and how we as people have been acting towards each other. Just like, “take my country back,” this has an apocalyptic atmosphere to it. It comments on the elimination of human life and our civilizations being erased completely because of the revolt of the atom. Everything is composed of matter and matter is created because of atoms. When he refers to the atom revolting, I believe he us commenting on us people. Now, I may be looking way into all this, but some of the lines seem to bring up news from today. The verse” I found some Intel the atoms had conveyed, convened and connived to the sound of my alarm clock now that was a shock.” I think this is just a remark on the terrorist attacks from recent years and many have been from timed bombs. The line “atoms had conveyed, convened and connived,” maybe refers to the terrorists speaking in private and planning to take out their fellow people with the use of a timed bomb. Reynolds goes on to express himself being shocked by his alarm clock I think relates to this topic. Later on he comments on the element helium and gives it a human characteristic like his alarm clock. He goes on to talk about his conversation with helium; “Helium spoke first It cooled tempers and lifted spirits, but then it made a threat and that made me sweat!” Helium can be used for many different things, like: cooling magnets used for MRI machines, it can be used for leak detection tests for container, which would be exposed to areas of high pressure. It has many other uses, but once we extract helium, it is so light and because it is so light, it can pass through our stratosphere and leave our planet completely. We have no way of regaining helium and yet we use it for balloons that rid us of that precious element. So helium making the “threat,” that made him “sweat,” could be commenting on this. The reason I think that this is also rooted with Brexit is because of the lines “it’s the revolt of the atoms from London town to ancient Athens. Eliminate all traces of human life; they plan to wipe us out,” of course London and Athens are part of the European Union and with Brexit they will we divided and this, aforementioned earlier, was decided by the people who voted for this to happen, not all of course, but the majority. At the closing of the song, Reynolds keeps repeating in a delirious state that, “everything’s crumbling.” I think him doing this continues to further push that we are destroying ourselves.

The finale to, “the Spark” is “an Ode to Jigsaw Pieces.” This is a deeply personal song from front man Rou Reynolds and his experiences in dealing with the separation from of a loved one and the heartache that comes from one. Just like “Airfield,” he strews together lines that are poetic and heartfelt. In “Airfield,” it is an optimistic melody about not giving in and looking at positives that emerge even when in such times desolate of happiness; Although they are similar in that sense, Reynolds really opens up on what really is eating at his insides. He gives us a first-person view into his daily life that maybe some of us have experienced just the same. I love how personal it is and we never really get that view-point from the Enter Shikari songs; they tend to usually ignore these topics and they rather focus their energy on maybe the bigger picture with world news and grander topics- even though love is definitely a huge topic and that is an understatement. This is a beautiful ending to this quiet and tranquil album. Aside from the review, if Rou Reynolds happens to read this, I would like to say thank you for sharing your stories and giving us such great music. You told us even when the winds against us, no to give up. I hope you will always remember those winds will always be there when you look, just grab and take flight with us.

The Spark is nothing what I expected it to be and I am quite glad it turned out that way. I am always surprised by the new direction and sound of the Enter Shikari albums. It was and album filled in with a greater list of slower tracks and seemed a little too quiet at times and some member’s voices were not as present as previous albums. It is a personal EP that wears its heart on its sleeves and is insightful to topics occurring in the world today. 8.5/10

Favorite Aspects:

-Personal topics along

-Informative topics going on today like Brexit

-New sound; they always sound completely different

Least Favorite Aspects:

-Lack of inclusion from the other members in the vocal department

-Album feels a bit short

-Although I loved the tranquility in the album, it feels a bit slow paced

Side note: I do not own any of these tracks posted they belong to Enter Shikari, Ambush Reality and Hopeless Records. Thank you.

Next review: Final Fantasy X

#enter shikari #The Spark #review

[stormyrecords-blog]

happy 4th of july!!

WE ARE HAVING A FAMILY REUNION!!stormy will be open friday and saturday, june 30th and july first, normal business hours. then we are taking 4 whole days off as a short staycation to do odd jobs around the house, and have a family reunion. we will be back open on july 6th at 11am. thank you for understanding that sometimes every body needs a day off!! have a safe 4th of july. keep your self uninjured, and call a cab if you need one. holidays are for fun, and you want to have more o f them, so be kind to yourself and others while having fun!! once again - more boxes of jazz lps. couple hundred are a buck each, many of the rest (about 4 boxes) are in the $4 to $9 range. lots of styles to choose from !!!  it's a whole bin's worth!! new arrivals this week by RICHARD H KIRK, PORTER RICKS, XORDOX (jg thirlwill new project), BILL ORCUTT, and more. VAPop Makossa: The Invasive Dance Beat of Cameroon 1976-1984CD   $24.99The Pop Makossa adventure started in 2009, when Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb first travelled to Cameroon to make an initial assessment of the country's musical situation. He returned with enough tracks for an explosive compilation highlighting the period when funk and disco sounds began to infiltrate the makossa style popular throughout Cameroon. From the very beginning, there were several mysteries hanging over Pop Makossa. It was not until DJ and music producer Déni Shain was dispatched to Cameroon to finalize the project, license the songs, scan photographs, and interview the artists that some of the biggest question marks began to disappear. His journey from the port city of Douala to the capital of Yaoundé brought him in contact with the lives and stories of many of the musicians who had shaped the sound of Cameroon's dance music in its most fertile decade. The beat that holds everything together has its origins in the rhythms of the Sawa people: ambassey, bolobo, assiko and essewé, a traditional funeral dance. But it wasn't until these rhythms arrived in the cities of Cameroon and collided with merengue, high-life, Congolese rumba, and, later, funk and disco, that modern makossa was born. Makossa managed to unify the whole of Cameroon, and it was successful in part because it was so adaptable. Some of the greatest makossa hits incorporated the electrifying guitars and tight grooves of funk, while others were laced with cosmic flourishes made possible by the advent of the synthesizer. However much came down to the bass; and from the rubbery hustle underpinning Mystic Djim's "Yaoundé Girls" to the luminous liquid disco lines which propel Pasteur Lappé's "Sekele Movement", Pop Makossa demonstrates why Cameroonian bass players are some of the most revered in the world. "Pop Makossa Invasion", an obscure tune recorded for Radio Buea makes its debut here and joins the pantheon of extraordinary songs that plugged Cameroon's makossa style into the modern world. Also features: Dream Stars, Mystic Djim & The Spirits, Bill Loko, Eko, Olinga Gaston, Emmanuel Kahe et Jeanette Kemogne, Nkodo Si-Tony, Bernard Ntone, Pat' Ndoye, and Clément Djimogne. CD version includes a 44-page booklet. XORDOXNeospectionLP  $23.99LP version. Editions Mego present the first release of a brand new project from JG Thirlwell. Recorded at Self Immolation studios in Brooklyn. This is Xordox. Xordox orbits a universe inhabited by darkness, wit, mystery adventure, and experimentation. The cinematic quality that exudes from Thirlwell's bent being presents itself in Neospection; Unlike Thirlwell's other works, this is predominantly a synthesizer record, including recording sessions from his residency at the legendary EMS studios in Stockholm, employing Buchla and Serge synthesizers. Sarah Lipstate (aka Noveller) plays her super-processed soundscape guitar on three of the tracks on the album, and additional mixing took place at Lazer Sound studios with Al Carlson (who works extensively with Oneohtrix Point Never). Xordox. Diamond circulating swells; Sequenced stealth sci-fi; Malleable membrane matters; Wild fabric electronic; Heart eaten beat; Fruits of fear and exhilaration. Neospection is neon noir. Neospection is ere 4 yor. Xordox arrives as unexpected and remote as any alien encounter but security lies in the cosmic drama and dark shadows that seep throughout Thirlwell's soul. In this, 2017 the listener once again enters the mind and world of one man who refuses to play along with anyone's game but the idiosyncratic one of his own devising. Tech and engineering at EMS by Jonas Broberg and Daniel Araya; Mastered by Scott Hull at Masterdisk; Artwork by JG Thirlwell; Space Shuttle cockpit photo by Ben Cooper; Space photos courtesy of NASA KIRBY, LEYLANDMemories Live Longer Than Dreams2LP  $29.992017 repress; Originally released in 2009. The third of the three 2LP editions in James Leyland Kirby's When We Parted My Heart Wanted To Die series. The synthetic luster of Memories Live Longer Than Dreams already appeared cracked and damaged the first time around, and in 2017 its phosphorescent glow remains a beacon of shelter for contemplation and secluded mind-drift, offering a surreal, nostalgic night-light to the gloomy and confused world it diagnosed and predicted nearly ten years ago. Written during James Leyland Kirby's forlorn purgatorial years spent in Berlin during the period which shaped the modern world as we know it -- a time when global financial institutions collapsed, YouTube's all-encompassing archive was beginning to spill over, and Facebook and Twitter were starting to enmesh the entire planet -- this final instalment finds Kirby channeling osmotically absorbed visions of the future, as spelt out by Vangelis, Lynch and Badalamenti, Eno, and Kirby's own The Caretaker alter ego, into a waking dream sequence of quietly anguished sound poems for the contemporary echo chamber, relinquishing a traversal of the hive mind's private fears and shared nightmares rendered in ghostly scrolls of synth noise and sweepingly emotive cinematic gestures. It effectively diagnoses a sort of cultural malaise that was perhaps embryonic in 2009, as the golden age of dance/pop form and optimism which resulted in radical acts such as V/Vm and the Ccru was now left shimmering in the rearview, with the momentous energy of its accumulated, independent scenes being diffused into institutions or calcifying into hyper commercialism, leaving little or no room for ambiguity, irony or subversively socialist thought within its increasingly binary wake; a wake which has now bifurcated into extreme left and right-leaning politics with a gulf of misunderstanding in between. Keening and reeling away his own thoughts on the matter in that inter-zone of negative space, Kirby draws on ever tightening coils of cultural feedback loops and the infidelity of memory to parse, process, and secrete a slow, plasmic ooze of melancholic musical form that perhaps best represents the feelings of our age; of our shared future occluded by an inglorious or illusive past that promised much, yet never paid up. KIRK, RICHARD H.DaseinCD  $16.99double lp  $29.99Dasein is Richard H. Kirk's first solo album since 2011. Recorded, produced, and written by the founding member of Cabaret Voltaire himself, the album was constructed at Western Works, Sheffield, over a three-year period. Work began with recording on midi and analog synthesizers before guitar and vocals -- his first use of vocals in ten years -- were added. Kirk explains, "A lot of time was spent on post-production, editing and then living with the material and I think it benefited from stepping back and then revisiting after doing other things." Although it's not an overtly political album, it's hard not to hear a reaction to recent years' world events in the overwhelming urgency of "Nuclear Cloud", "20 Block Lockdown", or "New Lucifer / The Truth Is Bad". When questioned Kirk admits, "It's not really a political album, but over recent years -- during the recording -- all manner of horror show events have cropped up and now we seem to be in a rerun of the Cold War with Russia back as the Bogeyman." The album's title, Dasein (a German word meaning "being there" or "presence", often translated into English as "existence"), is a fundamental concept in existentialism. Kirk explains "culture succumbs to nostalgia in much the same way that an individual looks back wistfully to adolescence or childhood -- the nostalgia is partly for a time when he or she wasn't nostalgic, just lived purely in the now." In 2014, during the recording period, Kirk started performing live again with Cabaret Voltaire, so the two projects coexisted in tandem. Although Kirk's varied projects have always existed separate to one another, says Kirk, "in the past some solo works served as a blueprint for what I did later with Cabaret Voltaire. FRA LIPPO LIPPIIn SilenceLP  $27.99OnderStroom present Fra Lippo Lippi's In Silence, originally released in 1981. Fra Lippo Lippi was a gothic post-punk band founded in Nesodden, Norway in 1978. Band members included Rune Kristoffersen (guitar, bass, keyboards, piano) Per Oystein Sorensen (vocals, synthesizer, keyboards), and Morten Sjoberg (drums, keyboards). Their sound was heavily influenced by bands such as Joy Division and The Cure. In 1981, the band recorded and released In Silence, a hard to grasp, dark album with ominous basslines, death-march percussion, pensive keyboards, and sinister, indecipherable vocals. The band had installed a semi-professional four-track recording studio in a small basement. The recording of the album started in June 1981 and it took four months to complete. Rune Kristoffersen on the record: "It took a long time. Our compositions were based on the drums and the bass, which we colored with guitars, voices, and keyboards. The sound was completely natural, both concrete and abstract." It's difficult to hear the vocals; it's as if it was mixed far behind the instruments. It's nearly impossible to understand the lyrics. In that sense, it is not unlike producer Martin Hannett's work for Factory Records in the UK. Rune Kristoffersen continues, "It is made quite conscious: put the voices far back to create a mood music. I also look at In Silence in a certain connection to what Brian Eno did with his ambient music." In 1998, Rune started releasing experimental music on his very own label called Rune Grammofon, where he has highlighted many experimental Norwegian acts such as Arne Nordheim, Supersilent, and Motorpsycho. Remastered by Equus; Layout by Jeroen Wille; Edition of 500. "In Silence has a more unrefined sound and should have any fan of Joy Division wishing they'd heard of this band sooner. If I were to review Closer or Unknown Pleasures today, they'd obviously receive 5/5. Therefore, since Fra Lippo Lippi is so strangely similar, and In Silence is almost like having a new Joy Division/New Order album, I'd be hard pressed to give it a anything less than a near perfect score. Find out for yourself what you've missed out on for the past twenty years. Wow!" --Tiny Mix Tapes ORCUTT, BILLBill OrcuttCD  $15.99lp  $21.99For those not following Bill Orcutt's drift into increasingly ear-friendly orbits in his recent live sets, Bill Orcutt -- his first solo electric studio album -- shocks with its space and sensitivity. On this eponymous record, Orcutt mines the expansiveness and sustain possible on the electric guitar, letting notes spin out and decay at the edge of feedback. His pachinko-parlor pacing, marked by unraveling clockspring accelerandos crashing into unexpectedly suspended tones, is still in evidence. But here, his developing melodicism maps a near-contemplative mental realm, orbiting St. Joan-era Loren Connors more than the cascading treble clatter of his duo LPs with Chris Corsano and others. From the first notes of Ornette Coleman's "Lonely Woman", there's a lucidity and slow-burning lyricism that make Orcutt's plunges into barbed-wire fingerpicking all the more striking. While no one's about to mistake Orcutt for Jim Hall, you could probably play this for your jazzbo friends (should you be unlucky enough to have them) without raising any eyebrows. Orcutt's track selection mirrors his obsession with American popular song in its most banal manifestations, as radically reimagined via acoustic guitar on a variety of releases, including 2013's exhaustive Twenty Five Songs 7" box set, and the Editions Mego album A History of Every One (EMEGO 173CD/LP, 2013). Many of the songs from those two releases are here -- but stretched into new arrangements that explore the upper regions of the guitar neck (hitherto unexplorable on his shakily-intonated acoustic Kay), and lighting up new corners of each arrangement with a sensitivity born from years of reinterpretation. The result is a languid, freeform drift through Orcutt's internal cosmos into galaxies unknown to their original interpreters -- and occasionally, Orcutt himself. Most striking is "White Christmas", its careening low-register melodies crashing into complex chords that transcend Orcutt's primitive four-string fretboard. Orcutt's original compositions are equally striking. One of them -- "The World Without Me" -- is unique to this album, and notable for its trebly flurry of Clapton-esque 12th-fret drizzle. "O Platitudes!" by contrast, spins ever-faster in the cadence of a hand-cranked music box, before grinding to a near halt, its higher-key electricity standing in for the moaning vocalizations on Orcutt's acoustic rendition as heard on his 2014 VDSQ LP. With its deep-space beauty, harmonic complexity, and dark dissonance, Bill Orcutt is a stunning landmark in Orcutt's form-destroying trajectory. JOHNSON, RAGNAREthiopian Urban And Tribal Music: Mindanoo Mistiru/Gold From Wax2CD  $19.99double lp  $26.99Sub Rosa present a reissue of volume one (Mindanoo Mistiru) and two (Gold From Wax) of Ethiopian Urban And Tribal Music, both originally released as two distinct LPs on Lyrichord in 1972. Mindanoo Mistiru and Gold From Wax were recorded by Ragnar Johnson. Ethiopia contains many diverse peoples and many styles of music. It was still an empire in July and August of 1971 when these recordings were made. Over 70 languages and 200 dialects are spoken in Ethiopia. In much of the music, lyrics are more important than instrumentation, and the transmission is oral. The urban musicians, the bagana, and Mary Armeede, were recorded in Addis Ababa. Ethiopian urban musicians come from many parts of the country and are familiar with, and adapt to, styles of regions other than their own. The Afar divination chants and flutes were recorded in the Danakil desert. The Anuak toum and Nuer harp, lament and dance were recorded near the Sudan border. The Konso dance and the Gidole Fila flute dance were recorded near the Kenya border. Mindanoo Mistiru means "What is the Unknown?". Gold From Wax refers to the two layers of meaning in Amharic poetry. File under: Le Coeur du Monde. Double CD version comes in a six-panel digipack; Includes booklet. PORTER RICKSAnguilla ElectricaLP   $27.99First full-length in seventeen years from the Chain Reaction/Force Inc. legends. Ever since their initial singles were released in the mid-1990s and became international calling cards for the Chain Reaction label, the Porter Ricks duo of Thomas Köner and Andy Mellwig have represented that crucible point in which techno music leaked into new social environments and became the background music for cutting-edge cultural critique. Their submerged "scuba" sound, presented in dark tone colors and reverberating to infinity, is now instantly identifiable as one of the "soundmarks" of Berlin club culture. Just as importantly, it is still a palpable aftershock of a pre-millenial genre explosion that saw deep dub, shimmering post-rock, abstract hip-hop, and art-damaged noise all drinking from the same well of inspiration. For proof of Porter Ricks's enduring legacy, look no further than the fact that "dub techno" is now a stylistic movement that has expanded far beyond the confines of Berlin and the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction label alliance (where Mellwig's mastering skills also played a starring role). Lurid traces of Porter Ricks's aesthetic can now be found in the work of producers like Andy Stott and Miles Whittaker, showing the potential for the duo's unique "aquatic" techniques to be applied to a variety of different musical contexts. Their new LP on Tresor, Anguilla Electrica, may be their first full-length release in seventeen full years, but it radiates with confidence and with a clarity and intensity rarely seen in a world so over-saturated with communications noise. It's made clear at once that it's a continuation of a sonic ideal rather than a tribute to what has already been achieved: the duo is not idly sitting back while their newer acolytes do their talking for them. This new LP is well worth the wait and is a life-affirming one in an uncertain and perilous time, drowning out daily anxieties like a rush of incoming surf -- yet it is far more invigorating than relaxing. True to the Porter Ricks's tradition, it will be just as exciting hearing this music as it will be to experience what new cultural mutations it leaves in its wake. VAInner Peace: Rare Spiritual Funk And Jazz Gems - The Supreme Sound Of Producer Bob ShadCD   $19.99LP  $32.99Wewantsounds are back with a superb selection of spiritual jazz and funk grooves from legendary producer Bob Shad's Mainstream Records catalogue. Bob Shad was one of the greatest music producers of the 20th century, having worked with all the music giants, from Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie to Sarah Vaughan, Lightnin' Hopkins, The Platters, and Janis Joplin to name just a few. "Bobby Shad was a legend in our family" says his grandson Judd Apatow who, together with his sister Mia, looks after Shad's back catalogue, Mainstream Records. Like his peers, jazz producers Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele, Shad went independent in the '60s, and by the early '70s, he was producing a string of superb albums mixing spiritual jazz with funk and soul. These albums are now being rediscovered by new generation of soul and jazz lovers hooked on the music of Kamasi Washington and Shabaka Hutchings. Recorded between 1971 and '73, the Fender-Rhodes-drenched tracks on Inner Peace showcase Shad's unique deep jazz sound. They feature such revered musicians as Harold Land, Roy Haynes, and Frank Foster, together with a younger generation of talented musicians led by Buddy Terry, Dave Hubbard, and LaMont Johnson. Here they are accompanied by the cream of '70s jazz session musicians including Bernard Purdie, Buster Williams, Eddie Henderson, James Mtume, Stanley Clarke, and Cecil Bridgewater. The Mainstream catalogue has been sampled by a long list of revered DJs and hip hop producers over the years. Roy Haynes's "Senyah" was sampled by De La Soul on "Pony Ride" and Shelly Manne's short outro "Infinity" forms the unmissable backbone of Jeru The Damaja's all-time hip hop classic, "Come Clean". A fitting tribute to the supreme sound of producer Bob Shad. Wewantsounds will start a reissue program of original Mainstream albums with bonus material and rare photos from the vaults. Also features: Charles Williams, Hadley Caliman, Pete Yellin, and Sonny Red.

[joneswilliam72]

Exclusive: listen to this track premiere by Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon & Michael Stein, from Hulu & ITV’s Butterfly.

Lakeshore Records will release the score to the television series Butterfly – music composed, performed and produced by Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein (S U R V I V E, Stranger Things).  

Butterfly is a three-part British television drama series that premiered on ITV on October 14, 2018 and was created and written by Tony Marchant (Different for Girls). It stars Anna Friel, Millie Gibson and Callum Booth-Ford.   

The series is now available on Hulu.   “Butterfly—Original Series Soundtrack” will be released digitally and on CD by Lakeshore Records and on vinyl by Invada Records on March 22. Pre-order it here. 

Created and penned by BAFTA award-winning screenwriter Tony Marchant, Butterfly is a heartfelt and sensitive drama about the complex relationship between separated parents, Vicky (Friel) and Stephen (Emmett J. Scanlan), and their division in opinion over how to support their youngest child, Max (Booth-Ford). From a young age, Max has identified as a girl but has tried to suppress these feelings in an attempt to earn Stephen's approval. 

Emmy-winning and Grammy-nominated Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, half of the Austin band S U R V I V E, scored the biggest pop culture phenomenon of recent years: the Netflix series Stranger Things. The duo's dreamy, throwback score helped sell the nostalgic ode to when Carpenter and Spielberg were the tastemakers of the horror/fantasy genre.

Series creators The Duffer Brothers fell in love with the band's albums, which spin classic synths into a distinctly modern sound— and the resulting alchemy produced the most talked-about soundtrack of the year that garnered a Primetime Emmy Award win for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music, two Grammy nominations for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media, an ASCAP Composers' Choice Award nomination for TV Composer(s) of the Year, and a World Soundtrack Award nomination for TV Composer(s) of the Year.

The duo completed work on Stranger Things 2 in 2017, which Pitchfork commented, "while staying true to the series' airtight aesthetic, Dixon and Stein continue to find ways to push beyond." They are currently working on the third season of the series.

2018 saw Dixon and Stein explore the worlds of Virtual Reality, with the Darren Aronofsky-produced VR series, Spheres, written & directed by Eliza McNitt. The episodic run launched at the Sundance Film Festival with Spheres: Songs of Spacetime, which focuses on black holes and their roles in the universe, and won Best VR at the 2018 Venice Biennale Film Festival.

 Most recently, Dixon and Stein scored Matthew Libatique's short film A Different Beyond, which was shot using early models of the new Fujifilm X-T3 camera system.

Early 2019 brings us three new projects. First, National Geographic's Valley of the Boom, a hybrid documentary-drama chronicling the early days of Silicon Valley. The duo also scored the three-part British series Butterfly which addresses the sensitive, contemporary issue of gender dysphoria which was recently picked up by Hulu in the US. Dixon & Stein recently attended the Sundance Film Festival in support of their debut feature film score for Rashid Johnson's dramatic directorial debut Native Son, the festival's opening night film, which subsequently sold to HBO.

Dixon and Stein note on Butterfly: "We had been keen to work on a drama for a while, specifically something that wasn't science fiction at all. This is a very serious story that touches on a lot of very personal and unique issues for a large group of people who haven't historically had much of a voice, and until recently have been largely left out of the media. We were drawn to this story not only because it is well written & thoughtfully-executed, but also because it deals with issues that many of our friends have faced or are still dealing with. To be able to help tell this story was a true honour for us.

 We had just come off our first project that had established us as these retro synth '80's producers, and we wanted to do something that helped get us out of that box. Obviously there are still synths being used, and coincidentally some of them are from the '80's - but hopefully this score won't be received as such."

Pre-order "Butterfly—Original Series Soundtrack" here and enjoy the track premiere of ”Butterfly” below along with the Butterfly original series trailer.

from The 405 https://ift.tt/2UINczj