Who says an artist only has one main ability? Just take a look at Danish fashion designer Henrik Vibskov. When he’s getting tired of making almost disturbing colourful garments, he goes banging the drums at his buddy Trentemøller’s live shows. It really proves that people just don’t have to be skilled at one art form, and that the same people could live off what they think is fun even though it won’t generate loads and loads of money (but that’s not why we’re here anyway, right?).
A fairly long known Internet friend of mine told me he had a musical project going on for about half a year ago and the other day he let me listen to the whole thing. Inos is the alias of Victor Jönsson, a 21-year old illustrator from Göteborg, Sweden. Primarily he works under the name Loud Major and nowadays has a whole collective of artists by his side. Nothing More, Unless is his first (and maybe only) EP and, according to himself, the only reason he compiled it was to get to illustrate a cover sleeve of his own, but since this shit is too good to just wrap in a nice package and then wave off I don’t believe him at all.
Anyhow, think Keith Kenniff influenced IDM/Ambient with a sweeping soundscape and some raindrops and you’ve got a slight idea of what’s going on in the head of Mr. Jönsson. The whole EP can be downloaded for free at the Loud Major Collectives website, but hurry up since it will be gone by Monday!
Tycho happens to be one of my favorite musicians, and if you haven’t heard him, you are missing out. He reminds me of the Boards of Canada and PBS, and his graphic design is a constant inspiration and influence to my own.
There’s a new track on his myspace, and it’s absolutely brilliant. I can easily listen to it over and over again, it’s lovely and trip-hoppy and ambient and I think I’ve just listened to it six times while writing this.
It’s called “Cascade” and it’s from his album “Ghostly Swim”.
Check it out on his myspace, or listen here.
The first two mp3s from the yet-to-come Super Famicom epic “The Wandering Floret” have been posted on the sf myspace, and they sound wonderful. For those who aren’t in the know, The Wandering Floret is eight albums, all of which are going to be simultaneously released on eight record labels, on 08/08/08. I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this, and I honestly can’t figure out why no one’s talking about this, because it’s completely unprecedented. This dwarfs 69 Love Songs and just about any other indie rock concept I can think of, if only for the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. The record labels involved have not yet been announced, but I’m sure they’ll include some of the labels PJ has released on already such as Sanitary Records, Tract Records, Red Chair Records, and Pj’s own PJ Records. This is a big deal.”Sometimes” starts out with the killer line “sometimes you let someone ruin your life to see how far they’ll go,” and keeps loose time with the sounds of rustling brushes and moving water. “Nice Really Nice” reeks of delicious Super Famicom reverb, and keeps the lonely lyrics coming. From the looks of it, The Wandering Floret’s gonna be the best thing PJ’s ever done, and I’m way excited.
But in the (pretty much) absence of content, I smell a power vacuum. And I’ve always wanted to be king. So guess who just became royalty? Patrick Ripoll, that’s who. I broke free of my stale prison they call “Friday assignments” and am now proposing something new.
You (all twelve of you) don’t go to this blog because you want to see where we stand on the big entertainment issues of the day (but, for the record, Semi-Pro is shit). You want us to share with you. This is a place where we stand on our little soap box (which would promptly tear and collapse, because it’s a fucking cardboard box that’s designed to hold soap) and yell “Hey! You! The funny looking one with the hat! Check this out! It is awesome!”. So that’s what I’m going to do every day. Sometimes it will be in the form of an album review, a rant about women in prison films, a retrospective on the career of Bill Duke, a comparison between stand-up comedy and 80’s cop films, whatever. Point is, I see some shit, I know some shit, I want to share this said shit with you. Because goddamnit, that’s what it’s all about.
I, King Patrick, declare that this blog be a place of sharing, from now until forever, cuz there’ll never be another better*. If this whole goddamned Collective is about people sharing music for the sheer thrill of it, then there’s no need to be as stingy as to limit my output to one day.
And I declare this: If you e-mail me (soybomb@care2.com) with a link to your music, your website, your blog, your short documentary about midget turtles, I will mention it here. People will hear about it. I’m not gonna lie and go “Oh my god, Long Necks, Little Torsos is the greatest short film about midget turtles ever made!” but I’ll keep an open mind, I’ll keep positive energy, and most of all, I will keep what I write about it entertaining so even if it sucks, at least a funny joke came of it.
I got several different e-mails recently from various blokes asking me to review their albums. On Friday (which will still be “Patrick’s Big Stuff Day”) I’m reviewing Chicago folkie James Eric’s new album Fire in the Mountains. Spoiler Warning: It’s good. The next Friday after that I’ll be reviewing plucky young upstart Big Round Spectacle’s debut misfortuneless, which is also all sorts of pleasant. But let me cover the two non-CLLCT folks who contacted me recently, AKA, “the less important”.
I got an e-mail recently from a Nadav Young promoting his curious site www.VIRV.TV I say curious because it’s purpose is not entirely clear to me. In the little e-mail press release thing I got, it claimed to be “a hand-picked, all-indie playlist 24/7, exclusively on the web. Our playlist includes Bright Eyes, Of Montreal, Spoon, Arcade fire, Xiu Xiu, The Good Life, Now Its Overhead, Architecture In Helsinki, Bloc Party, Shout Out Louds and many, many more..”. So it’s like a YouTube with super-limited selection and no easy ability to control what you watch? I’d like MTV2 to start playing all music videos again, too, but that’s cuz it’s on TV, so it’s easy to have on in the background while I do other things, like making gin in my bathtub. An online tv station just misses the point of why people choose to sit in front of the TV: It’s passive. So why have it online? Why would someone download an application to watch videos they could find on youtube? Well, Nadav’s job is a playlist manager, so I suppose the angle they are going for is “if you like X band, you’d like Y band!” Which I guess makes a little more sense, but not a ton.
Nadav, if you read this and you could clarify exactly what your site is and the needs of the consumers it fills, that’d be super helpful. As far as the music, I think it’s silly to limit yourself to indie, but niches are meant to be filled, I suppose. For once I’d like to see a radio station that plays Curtis Mayfield, Paul Simon, Captain Beefheart,Kylie Minogue, Daniel Johnston, and Leadbelly back to back. They could call it “97.5, The Hammer: We’re completely unmarketable!” Then I could listen to it for a week before I get all up in arms about it shutting down. Cuz that’s what happens to great things. They get replaced by Lite Rock mix stations. Fuck quality, we need another outlet to hear Rob Thomas.
The other fellas that contacted me were one of those musical rock ‘n roll groups you kids love so much. Their name: Springfactory. Their mission: to rock you. Or make you dance. Or make you giggle while dancing. Look, I’m not going to tell them why they do the shit, point is they make music and they want to share it with ya’s. They have a new album of old material, their previous released EP’s, coming out through Series Two records. Series Two records is based in Nebraska, the music capital of the world. I’ve listened to music via their myspace, and the tracks they e-mailed me, and I gotta say, it’s pretty nice (especially “No More”, which has a fun Georgie James quality to it). Go ahead, check it out, it won’t hurt. It’s some rather lovely definitely well-made indie/pop/rock/dance stuff. Look, I won’t do Springfactory the disservice of lumping them into the genre. You know why? Because I’m not a good enough writer to do that. You gotta be a DaveB motherfucker to do that shit. I’m just some college dropout.
Speaking of which, will Kanye West ever be interesting again? Just wondering. Dude can make fucking beautiful beat, but will he ever be interesting again? I wonder. But speaking of Kanye West and interesting, have you seen Spike Jonze’s video for “Flashing Lights” yet? Holy great.
Anyway, that’s about all I got for now. Keep in touch though, for real. BTW, if I ever say something stupid here, or just incredibly ignorant, tell me. That’s you sharing with me. Which is beautiful.
so i have this song on my computer, it’s “fingernails” by “the nouns.” I don’t really know anything about it, except that it’s really fucking good. it’s distortion heavy, with a steady roland 808-esque synth drum beat and cryptic lyrics with some really beautiful imagery (e.g. “my fingernails are rooted to the earth, and I’m smiling while you are still breathing, and I watch you swallow your vowels like a pill that you take to go sleeping”).
the problem is, I have looked and looked and I have no information on the band “the nouns.” no myspace, no website, no nothing really. all I know is that at one time they were on Oh! Map Records, and then they just kind of disappeared from the site.
so if anyone knows anything about this band, please comment or email or something. let me know, this song leaves me craving so much more. and if you haven’t heard it, give it a listen. get down with this a little, then help me in my quest.
P.S. I realize this entry is not anywhere near as detailed or thought out as my last ones. it’s not just because there is a lot of mystery surrounding this song. honestly, i’ve been really lazy and school is hectic. I am attempting to clean up my act by next monday. please bear with me and support me in this endeavor.
Pat Regan (who attends USC) is a guy who knows how to win over a crowd and write some damn fine simple folk/blues songs that will get in your head. He’s like Paul Baribeau with a sense of humor, or Shakey Bones but not as drunk. Humorous comparisons aside, Pat Regan wants to play for you and your friends and has a lot of great gems to offer.
“I Don’t Understand” is potential hit-making material. A song about the awkwardness of burgeoning sexuality and society’s obsession with it, Pat Regan knows that he doesn’t know, but finds solace in that it just has to be this way. He understands that it is a natural part of growing up and all the live journals and myspaces and magazines are going about it the wrong way.
The single strum electric guitar song might be a sub-genre all on its own, but I’m moved every time. “In The Shade” even features a lonesome, perfectly accented harmonica that kills you when it echoes in after the choruses. I haven’t listened to it enough yet to get the lyrics, but I’m already moved beyond comprehension.
Pat Regan drove up to Santa Barbara to play at my (Existential Hero’s) farewell show and I requested “People Who Never Played For The Chicago Bulls” because it’s hilarious. Pat with his amazing stage presence started asking people to shout out other people who haven’t “played for the Chicago Bulls.” He did some impromptu rhyming to Prince and Shaq and in general kept everyone dancing and smiling.
A newer song, “We Got The Science,” contains the great line, “Natural causes aren’t causes worth dying for.” It is a satire on our society’s obsession with youth to the point that eventually we will cure death. It’s a Vonnegut-like waltz that is more prophetic than we’d all like to believe.
Pat Regan has an amazing infectious presence that I saw unfold before me in my old apartment and I think it carries over extremely well to his recorded music as well. You’ll be moved and moving at the same time.
Lacrymosa consists of one (1) Caitlin Pasko, one of the sweetest singer-songwriters you will find in the Village. While one may be tempted to label her Spektor-esque at first (”Lacrimosa” is the title of a Regina Spektor song, and Caitlin possibly drops a couple other references throughout her music), it would be hasty and unwise to write her off as such- she offers much more than that.
Her songs range from lilting waltzes to schizophrenic bursts of piano pounding, often ending up a satisfyingly chaotic mixture of the two elements. Her voice perfectly complements this musical yin-yang: it reads sometimes sad, sometimes joyous, (these overtones reveal themselves through her cryptically beautiful lyrics) and after a few listens, it seems safe to say that Caitlin has a proficiency in both languages.
One of my favorite songs of Caitlin’s is undoubtedly a track called “Wolf Snare.” Her voice and piano are enhanced with a ghostly reverb, it echoes and bounces around in your head and after a couple piano-key hits, you find yourself seduced and hooked in to the personal yarn that Caitlin’s begun to spin.
An irritating music snob might be tempted to say that she’s like Cat Power but more complicated, Mia Doi Todd but more classical, Regina Spektor but more controlled. But if you hear someone say any of these things, you should push them down and tell them to shut up, because Lacrymosa is just fucking wonderful and you should just listen.
In other news, the 001 collective is now home to lots of free recordings by lots of “free” musicians/bands, but if you head over to myspace.com/5432fun and scroll down to the “live recordings” section on the left side of the page, you’ll find tons of live recordings of amazing bands including Red Pony Clock, Watercolor Paintings, Little Wings, Real Live Tigers, Super Famicom, Redbear., Tinyfolk, The Robot Ate Me, Tinyfolk, Mt. Eerie, Cartoon Monster, Dear Nora, iji, Mirah, and more!!1 Not to mention you can listen to episodes of the actual 5432fun radio show, which plays all this shiz a lot.
Now, I’m not sure if you know who BMSR are. I hear they’re still pretty underground, but I don’t keep up with that sort of thing. If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening, LISTEN.
Now, I have the majority of the BMSR catalog, and I must say that “Dandelion Gum” is by far the most beautiful album they’ve ever made. Perhaps the most beautiful album anyone has ever made! Okay, I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s fantastic.
They use vintage equipment to make retro, trippyish sounds that remind me of Air, if Air made music in the sixties.
Lacrymosa consists of one (1) Caitlin Pasko, one of the sweetest singer-songwriters you will find in the Village. While one may be tempted to label her Spektor-esque at first (”Lacrimosa” is the title of a Regina Spektor song, and Caitlin possibly drops a couple other references throughout her music), it would be hasty and unwise to write her off as such- she offers much more than that.
Now, I’m not sure if you know who BMSR are. I hear they’re still pretty underground, but I don’t keep up with that sort of thing. If you haven’t had the pleasure of listening, LISTEN.
