Cover of Björk's Homogenic (One Little Indian, 1997); image courtesy of slantmagazine.com

Cover for Björk's Vespertine (One Little Indian, 2001); image courtesy of harmony-korine.com

When I began conceptualizing this blog in the ol’ brainspace, one of the first sections I came up with was “Records That Made Me a Feminist.” I knew Björk was going to get at least one entry. Homogenic and Vespertine each played a vital part of shaping my politics. So, I figured out I’d probably have to write about them together.

Pairing albums for this section of the blog is something I originally wanted to do this when covering Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, which I started listening to around the same time as PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. I liked the idea of dialoguing seemingly dissimilar work by female artists with one another, but I feared covering those two albums together would short-shrift the artists who made them. However, talking about two distinct pieces of work by one woman seemed easier. And essential. So here we go.

I must admit that covering Björk’s 1997 and 2000 full-length releases present its own political challenges that makes me think critically about how I understand and practice feminism. Both of these albums made me a feminist largely because of the boys I was preoccupied with at the time.

But while my initial reception and resulting connections to them were tied up with potentially normative feelings around romantic angst and heterosexual coupling, I feel the albums speak to my development at the time as well as transcend it. In other words, Homogenic and Vespertine may remind me of boys I used to date, but they speak to larger, more overtly feminist issues as well.

Of course, being a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t like boys or be hung up on them from time to time, so long as you don’t let them run your life. Which I don’t think Björk endorses in either of these records, even though she herself has an ambivalent relationship with feminism (though not with calling out the music industry’s sexist practices of attributing male engineers and instrumental songwriters).

Importantly, as both albums were prescient to my development, they also went over my head when I first listened to them. Debut and Post were more accessible and, as a result, I liked them almost immediately. It was hard for 10-year-old me not to fall for the girl dancing through New York City on a flatbed in the music video for “Big Time Sensuality.”

But Björk’s next two albums took more time to process. Both albums mark advances in the artist’s production sensibilities, approaches to music-making, and interest in electronic instrumentation. Thus, just as Björk had to evolve as a musician before creating these albums, I had to mature a bit as a person before liking them as a fan.

So, Homogenic came out just as I was starting high school. I don’t exactly remember when I bought it, but I think it was sometime toward the end of junior year. I completely ignored it at the time. Or rather, I listened to it once, went “ooh, so angry!” and put Post back on.

The particulars I’ll keep to myself for the sake of decorum. Suffice it to say that I dated someone for a little while, fell in love, we broke up, and I spent a little over a year trying to get us back together. It didn’t work out. Eventually I got over him and whatever I thought we were, but not without some pain and denial and then serious personal re-evaluation. The healing process involved some righteous anger, loud parties, several bottles of wine and other goodies, and burgeoning feminist development. After a rough start, 19 turned out to be a pretty okay year. Homogenic was its soundtrack.

Now, I have no problem acknowledging that this guy was a total jerk to me. But feminism isn’t only about recognizing and calling out chauvinistic bullshit. It’s also about self-empowerment, personal accountability, and un-learning heteronormativity and patriarchal co-dependence. It isn’t always just the guy’s fault, even when it is.

Thus, I also have to own up to being really needy and delusional at the time. I pinned my worth on whoever I was dating without questioning whether being with them was actually good for me. So I projected my own big feelings and insecurities on someone who clearly didn’t want to be with me. I was ignoring the reality of the situation and, as a result, my own well-being. I finally recognized what I was doing when confronted with the lyric “How could I be so immature to think he could replace the missing elements in me — how extremely lazy of me.” 

Kinda appropriate that a break-up record got me over mine, no? Apparently, Björk made the album after breaking up with drum’n'bass musician Goldie while they were working on their own project. Hence lines like “So you left me on my own to complete the mission, but now I’m leaving it all behind.” But it pretty much hit all the right notes of melancholy, indignation, rage, and feisty recovery for me. I’m a quarter Norwegian on my mother’s side, so even the line ”I thought I could organize freedom — how Scandinavian of me” in “Hunter” applied.

Attention must be paid to the album’s sound and how it marked a musical departure for Björk. Post was an eclectic mix that boasted songs like “Army of Me,” “Enjoy,” and “Headphones,” that opened up her sound to include state-of-the-art aggressive digital distortion and serene electronic minimalism.

While this was evident in the production work Tricky and 808 State’s Graham Massey did on Post, it wasn’t the focus. It would come to define the artistic work she began doing with producers like Mark Bell on Homogenic and would continue to do with Matmos on Vespertine. But I’d hedge that most casual listeners just remember Post’s ”It’s Oh So Quiet,” which was produced by Björk’s then-mainstay, Nellee Hooper, the man responsible for all the production on her breakthrough Debut. He was also responsible for “Hyperballad,” which I’d argue suggests the artist’s shift, which is fully evident on her next album.

Man, I wish I could post the music video, but WMG has apparently disabled the audio. All the more reason to check out Michel Gondry’s Directors Label DVD, or any of the other myriad DVD titles that have documented her videography.

So Homogenic marks a transition from being a pop star to an artist who challenges her listeners’ ears and expectations with each release. By 1997, we also heard alternative pop stars like Beck and Radiohead establish themselves similarly with Odelay and OK Computer. We would hear Radiohead do it again in 2000 with the mind-blowing Kid A, where they really demonstrated their love for electronic instrumentation and experimental production techniques.

Björk was already on this path in 1997, but while Radiohead looked outward toward the fallabilities of modern life, Björk looked inward at the seductive pleasures and wobbly peculiarities of domestic life and partnership on her next record, rapturing at her voice’s clicks and finding percussive possibilities out of shuffled decks of cards. I don’t think these innovations went unnoticed when Radiohead went to work on In Rainbows. To me, Vespertine’s influence is all over a song like “Nude,” which was originally an outtake from OK Computer. This is further confirmed by the band’s rendition of Homogenic’s ”Unravel” as a tip of the hat. As if lead singer Thom Yorke’s backing vocals on “Náttúra” aren’t enough.

Hmmm. Maybe at some point, I’ll consider Yorke’s duets with Björk and PJ Harvey. Yorke is one of my favorite vocalists, a fact confirmed by a recent revisit of Hail to the Thief. If one of my friends ran a blog on male masculinity and music culture, I’d pen a guest entry in a second.

But I was afflicted with a troubled mind when Vespertine first came out. In addition to boy heartache, I was going through some considerable familial strife. I was also starting my first semester of college, so a tackier person might blame 9/11.

After seeing the music video for “Hidden Place,” I dutifully bought the album, along with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, another at-the-time inscrutable release, at the Tower Records by campus. I listened to the album a few times, but my head was not in the right place for it. It was too contented and quiet. I couldn’t hear it. And then for a little while all I could hear was Homogenic at full volume.

Stills from the video that convinced me to buy "Vespertine"; image courtesy of unit.bjork.com

To be blunt, Vespertine didn’t really make sense to me until I started having sex. Critics like Ryan Dombal would seem to concur. I remember seeing her performance of ”Cocoon” on Jay Leno and thinking that it was really quiet, but totally not getting how micro-embodied intimacy is the song’s entire purpose. While I had a good understanding of mechanics and had engaged in related activities before going into my first listen, I don’t think a song like “Cocoon” makes sense to a person unless they’ve experienced it, to speak euphemistically, in a corporeal sense.

BTW, yes that is Bill O’Reilly adjusting his tie. If he was actually listening to the song, I’m sure he’d be appalled by how delightfully, defiantly sexual this song is and that it was performed uncensored on network television. Watching it now, I can’t believe I wasn’t really listening. Maybe I should have been leaning into the television.  

Again, the particulars here aren’t really important. I was a week or so into being 20 and, frankly,  didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. The guy was someone willing, it was fun, and didn’t last very long.

In short, the romanticism and emotional connectedness that is often built into such an experience was not there, nor do I regret that it wasn’t. I would find that later, which would make my understanding of those aspects of Vespertine more profound and further develop my feminist principles.

I bring sex into the discussion because I, to borrow briefly from Arrested Development’s George Michael Bluth, find Vespertine’s complex eroticism one of its most key contributions to what made me a feminist. Though perhaps a stretch and certainly not without its own distinctions, I tend to think of this album in accord with Audre Lorde’s wonderful essay “Uses of the erotic: the erotic as power.”

And while I don’t know if this entry’s subject has read the essay, something tells me that the same woman who identifies as bisexual and recognizes the erotic potential in mundane activities would concur with much of the theorist’s thesis.

Of course, feminists must also have the wherewithal to recognize that eroticism, even ephemeral evidence like orgasms, are luxuries to some women and girls. Not everyone is given a space, a country, or a political system that allows them the safety and freedom to enjoy and explore these possibilities.

But eroticism isn’t about cataloging who did what to whom for Björk. As David Fricke gestured toward in his review of the album for Rolling Stone, it might be everywhere, at once tangible and theoretical.

This is where I think it’s important to consider the album’s production sensibilities and Björk’s particular uses of her voice. In addition to non-conventional practices like sampling and turning seemingly non-musical domestic items into instruments, the singer’s voice is the album’s real focus. Because of how closely she’s miked, you can hear every tic, breath, whispered turn of phrase, and any other sound coming out of her mouth. As a result, her voice becomes a varied and vital instrument, an idea she has continued to develop and that has continued to stay with me.

So, I recently revisited Björk’s Vespertine because, as followers of the blog can probably guess, it made me a feminist and I will be posting about the hows and whys of it at length in the not-too-distant future.

But one thing I forgot about the album that really impacted what I listen for in other people’s music is non-traditional instrumentation. Of course Björk would extend these musical explorations further with her follow-up, Medúlla, which was largely an a cappella record that explicitly configured the voice as an instrument, and often a percussive one at that (hopefully the feminist possibilities of using the voice –both explicitly female and degendered through digital manipulation – as such an integral part of song construction are obvious). But with Vespertine, she and production team Matmos often constructed beats out of surprising, often small, seemingly non-musical objects often associated with leisure pursuits or the domestic, like a deck of cards or cutlery.

Listening to the album again reinvigorated my interest in hearing weird objects be used as instruments. Today, I offer up toys as possible instruments and present bands Y Pants and CocoRosie as evidence. Representing New York at two very different times (early 80s and present-day, respectively), these two bands have members who employ rudimentary electronic toy pianos, noisemakers, and other gadgets that seem swiped from a long-abandoned bargin bin.

Y Pants; image courtesy of waylonhatchet.com

CocoRosie; image courtesy of nymag.com

For Y Pants’ Gail Vachon and Virginia Piersol, the toy piano and drums became an interesting way to reconfigure the sound of dub and reggae, two key interrelated musical movements for both punk and post-punk that had probably become too predictable as white-appropriated touchstones by 1979. As Y Pants were associated with no wave, with ukelele player Barbara Ess once a member of Theoretical Girls, another seminal band of the period formed by guitar visionary/cranky drunk grandpa Glenn Branca, there’s an excellent chance the band was rebelling against post-punk’s intellectualist posturing and angular guitar lines. What better way to piss off the scene than making messy music about the joys of eating with factory-produced shiny plastic toys?

(Note: Apologies, but I cannot find a live performance for Y Pants. As with much no wave, which was reviled by pretty much anyone with ears at the time and only recently became cool, despite the Brian Eno-produced No New York compilation, there’s not a lot of recorded evidence of the band in concert. The only thing I’ve seen that really documents the scene is Downtown ‘81, but Y Pants were just about to break up by then. Which is too bad, because apparently they were all about unconventional performance spaces. So if you have any leads on where to track down a clip, let me know. In the meantime, check out Y Pants, a repressing that combines their self-titled EP with their only album, Beat It Down.)

With CocoRosie, the instrumentation conveys something a little more transparently disturbing. Sierra Casady’s sweet, at once jazzy and operatic vocals contrast with wheezy, out-of-time bleeps and bloops from sister Bianca’s various toy instruments, which foreground songs that tend to focus on death, drugs, doomed love, incest, AIDS, abuse, and co-dependency. The toys, which may one day expire or be discarded, then become a symbol of betrayed innocence, the cold assurance that childhood — girlhood — is going to end in loss. At least you have your sister, who may also be your lover.

As an aside, I can’t bring up CocoRosie without pointing out that they’re really problematic in terms of race. They’ve dabbled with cholo fashion, perhaps in acknowledgement to the multifaceted dimensions of their Native American heritage, which they have also hailed in their attire and music.

Racially dicey sister-lovers; image courtesy of beastnation.com

In addition, they’ve made me a bit queasy in their appropriations of blackness. They consciously try on the voices of African American jazz singers like Billie Holiday. In addition, on ”Jesus Loves Me,” a track off their first album, La maison de mon rêve, the girls uses a certain racial slur when singing that God’s only son loves them, but not their wives, or their black friends. And Bianca has long been a fixture at Kill Whitey parties in Brooklyn.

That said, to borrow a phrase from Seth Watter’s Dusted review of Y Pants, both bands’ use of toys help build minor manifestos that sound like “a small explosion in the bedroom.” In his essay “The ‘Feminization’ of Rock,” Tony Grajeda argues that the bedroom is a domestic, queerable, intimate space where most lo-fi music is written, rehearsed, and recorded. While he was thinking about primarily-male indie rock acts like Pavement, the bedroom is clearly where Y Pants and CocoRosie belong as well. Just don’t pretend there isn’t anything subversive about what these ladies do in there.

Cover of Mama's Gun, released on Motown/Puppy Love; image courtesy of dallassouthblog.com

Originally, I was going to write about Mama’s Gun, Erykah Badu’s second full-length album, in tandem with PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. The reason for this was two-fold: for one, I got the two albums within a week of one another my senior year as Christmas presents (one of the few perks of having divorced parents) and, for another, both albums are turn-of-the-century declaratives about the complexities and contradictions of women being in and out of love, sometimes thrillingly occupying both positions at once. I also thought, as a neat aside, that it might be useful to think about contemporary female artists’ work across racial and/or generic boundaries.

However, I worry that I’d be doing a disservice to those particularities by glossing over them in what would inevitably be an overgrown post. Furthermore, there are some jarring differences between the two albums that I cannot yet resolve in thinking about them together. Harvey’s ”happy” album is largely believed to be about her by-now defunct relationship with hipster auteur and New York die-hard Vincent Gallo; Badu’s “game-changing” album is conclusively about the end of her relationship with OutKast’s André 3000 and possibly the beginning of another one with Common. Harvey’s album finds her brightening her sound after her more experimental, less well-received Is This Desire? (which absolutely will be discussed as a record that made me a feminist once I start recounting my college years). Badu’s album finds her expanding her sound (and perhaps the sound associated with “neo-soul,” however silly a term that became), a project she would continue to do with last year’s mind-blowing, radically political, and tremendously funky, New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War.

Cover for New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (Universal Motown, Puppy Love Entertainment, Control Freaq; 2008), image courtesy of dallasobserver.com

Most importantly, for my purposes, while the former speaks more specifically to love’s ability to project, the latter speaks to the embodied, conflicting feelings of a female place in a relationship.  

Badu and I had met previously. Baduizm came out in 1997 and I found out about it thanks to Kurt Loder and the good people of MTV News who proclaimed that I would, in fact, hear it from them first. I bought it that summer for my birthday (for what it’s worth, I bought it with Ben Folds Five’s Whatever and Ever Amen — happy birthday to 14-year-old me!). She also made appearances on One Life To Live as herself, and acted in Blues Brothers 2000 and Cider House Rules (which I still have not seen in its entirety, but I know that she does a good job playing a tragic character in what I thought was an otherwise totally boring movie). But I treasured my copy of Baduizm, marvelling that someone could make vintage jazz, R&B, and funk sound so refreshingly hip and contemporary. She had such an interesting and beautiful voice. I loved that the music was coming out of a Texas girl who also spelled her name with a “y” (albeit for far more politically motivated reasons than me; Erykah Badu changed her name to be closer to her Ghanan roots while I became ”Alyx” because we were studying Egypt in sixth grade social studies and I thought the spelling looked — ugh, white girl fail – more hieroglyphic).

But this album, which came out during my senior year hit me like a soft, sexy bomb (an apt reappropriation of Tom Breihan’s assessment of D’Angelo’s Voodoo, another pioneer 2000 release that, for some reason, I don’t own. I have, of course, seen the delightfully NSFW video for “Untitled“). I actually heard “Didn’t Ya Know” for the first time at a movie theater in West Palm Beach visiting my dad on Christmas vacation (I think it played before a screening of Cast Away). The Spice Girls’ “Holla” played some time after that, but as J. Dilla’s warm, soulful production wrapped around me and Badu’s at-times wrenching and at-times assured vocal delivery let me know what I’d be spending that Sam Goody gift certificate on.

Speaking of J. Dilla, Badu’s collaborative spirit was also something of an inspiration to me, especially since was able to work with men. Like Björk, who has worked extensively with like-minded dudes like directors Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze, as well as producers like Matmos, Mark Bell, and Nellee Hooper, Badu was always able to forge creative spaces with men while still standing her own ground. With The Roots or producer J. Dilla (and later Madlib and 9th Wonder), she was still fully able to articulate her artistic imperatives. When she duets with Stephen Marley on “In Love With You,” she seems to be coming at the song (and its subject matter) as an equal. It should also be noted that she’s got room for the ladies too, working with women like Jill Scott and, on this album, Betty Wright.

One thing I’ve always felt Badu doesn’t get enough credit for as a musician is her loopy yet razor-sharp sense of humor. Anyone who follows fatbellybella on Twitter can tell you Badu is hilarious. But her humor is also evident in her songwriting, which while often confessional will often diffuse potentially maudlin moments with daffy yet incredibly perceptive asides (the bridge to  ”…& On” recounts memorable moments – in loose rhyme – going with her mom to the laundromat, her first period, learning about oppression at school, watery cereal, hearing herself on the radio, and wearing head wraps). Her self-awareness is also evident — “…& On” makes several direct references to Baduizm’s breakout hit “On and On,” and “Cleva” mediatates on how she uses her brains and wit to compensate for self-perceived physical deficits, lamenting that her breasts sag when she’s not wearing a bra, bragging that her thrift-store togs look awesome, and stating, upfront, that this is what she looks like without makeup.   

Her humor is also in her voice. People tend to focus more on her voice’s supposed “jazziness,” especially early on in her career when critics were clamoring to figure out how most subtly to compare her timbre and tone to the tragic Billie Holiday’s. And while Holiday’s humor also gets obscured from this discussion, if we have to compare Badu’s voice to someone else’s, I actually think Badu’s closer to Blossom Dearie, the recently deceased singer who used her high-pitched coo to utilize a myriad of possibilities, whether it be taking pot-shots at hipsters or singing about unpacking adjectives. I could hear Badu doing both, maybe even in the same song.

What makes Badu’s approach to songwriting interesting is that her sense of humor can turn a song whose subject matter seems silly or inconsequential or rote on the surface into something surprisingly more progressive. Take “Booty,” for example. The song originally seems to be a a diss song directed at a woman whose man has turned his attentions toward Badu. While the woman has a PhD, is more conventionally attractive, is a better cook, boasts a fast-tracked career, and is more financially stable than Badu (at least in this song, as college-educated Erica Wright went to Grambling), Badu still has to fight off her partner’s advances. At first, when Badu says “I don’t want him,” it seems to suggest that this man (and, by association, this woman) are beneath her. Yet, in the bridge (the song has no verses), Badu reveals that her intentions speak toward a kind of female solidarity, albeit one strained by classed circumstantial differences. She doesn’t want this man, not because she has designs on someone else, but because he doesn’t respect his current relationship enough to be honest and make arrangements with his partner. In essence, Badu believes both women need to cut this man loose because they can do better.

She performs a similar feat with “Bag Lady,” which at first seems to be an indictment about women who enter into relationships with too much baggage. What it ends up becoming is an anthem about personal freedom and empowerment, with Badu encouraging the woman to break free from her self-imposed shackles, stressing that self-love will make it better while being backed by a euphoric women’s chorus. 

Many would argue that “Green Eyes,” a ten-minute suite that stands as the album’s final song, is its centerpiece. I’d be one to agree, and find it especially astonishing that OutKast’s “Ms. Jackson,” which tells André 3000’s side of their break-up was released but a few months before Mama’s Gun came out (Badu also makes a cameo on the album, singing with her former partner about broken dreams in the chorus of “Humble Mumble”). As Touré discusses in his Rolling Stone review of Mama’s Gun, it’s hard not to read into these musicians’ personal moments that then get projected into their work, with the audience knowing who’s singing (or rapping) to who. You could easily do it with Beyoncé singing about being ”Crazy in Love” with Jay-Z, who would then reply that he’s got hip hop and R&B’s ”number one girl . . . wearing (his) chain” in “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” You could also easily do it with Badu’s appearance in the music video for Common’s “The Light,” a song the rapper wrote for her about their (now-defunct) relationship, strengthening the musical association by having J. Dilla steer the production.  

But on its own, “Green Eyes” is an epic, discursive, devastating break-up anthem whose power few since have touched (though I think Aeroplane and Kathy Diamond’s ”Whispers” comes the closest). It begins with a flirtatious, jazzy lilt wherein Badu claims that her eyes are green, not because she’s jealous that her former lover now has a new partner. Instead, she unconvincingly lies, her eyes are green because she eats a lot of vegetables. After claiming “it don’t have nahhhh-thing to do with your . . . friend,” the music becomes slower and more dirge-like. Her voice and lyrics also become less certain, shakier. She doesn’t know if she loves him anymore, but thinks she might, and is clearly frustrated how love is putting in her in such a tether. From here, she pushes her lover further away in one phrase, claiming to do fine and realizing how angry she is at him for not recognizing her worth, while a few lines later asks if they can make love one last time. Her humor is still there, at times helping her sell the lie of her feelings, while other times confronting her with the truth. She calls herself silly at the thought of her lover being true, stating that she should change her name to ”Silly E. Badu.” It’s a joke, but no one — least of all her — is laughing. You know she’ll get through it eventually, but she has to work through her hurt before she moves forward. I know it was a song that helped me work through a broken heart, even if I had to lie face down and sob into the carpet to do it.

But there is plenty of love and lust on this album, acknowledging that women can turn art out of being happy and healthy. “Orange Moon” begins as a stately, romantic ballad to finding someone helped her believe in love, only to erupt into pure, unadulterated about how good/God her lover is (the “God” reference potentially serving as a Five Percenter allusion). “Kiss Me On My Neck (Hesi)” focuses its attentions instead on the more immediate nature of necessary gratification. The inclusion of these songs evince that for women, love and sex are neither mutual nor exclusive concepts. They can be both.

The album also allowed me to think outside of love (and thus myself) to start questioning more political matters and begin to want for more radical action. While Badu may be charming and funny, she’s also a fine, agitated mind. The song that accomplished this most specifically for me was “A.D. 2000,” a song about Amadou Diallo and his brutal murder at the hands of a quartet of trigger-happy police officers. Excepting the Rodney King beating and subsequent hearing, this was the first time I really thought about police brutality (note: Bruce Springsteen also addressed this horrible tragedy in song, to some controversy).

A year later, I would read about Mumia Abu-Jamal. Two and a half years after that, I would start dating a person who got pulled over by a cop for driving the speed limit with the headlights on in a residential area at 10 p.m. while listening to GZA’s Legend of the Liquid Sword. Eight months after that, I would read Assata Shakur’s profound autobiography. About a year after that, I would read Angela Davis’s autobiography, stunned that this intelligent, sensitive individual was the same person Ronald Reagan swore would never teach in California. Two years after that, I would get accosted by a cop for jay-walking through a red light at 3 a.m. when it was clear that the officer was more concerned by the nervous young college student of either Middle Eastern or South Asian descent walking three steps in front of me. In all this time in between, I would come to know several people who shared similar stories or worse, whether they were arrested for “obstructing a passageway” during protests or were accosted with racial profiling. I would also read about similar reported items in the news, always sad and horrified and sick and helpless that these kinds of actions still go on.

Badu would continue to be concerned with political issues like religious freedom, institutional racism, the drug trade, poverty, and sexism, and incorporate these matters into her music, which became increasingly more experimental as she matured as an artist. But with the political she always intersected personal issues, whether it was remembering growing up on hip hop records, motherhood, reconciling the fact that she had three babies with as many men, growing older, working within the mainstream, looking for ways to work outside of it, and always thinking about the ways that she fit (or chose not to fit) within it. This album was the start of thinking through these issues for me. I look forward to what Ms. Badu has to say next.

M.C.(Martin) Schmidt e Drew Daniel além de formarem duo de música eletrônica cabeçuda Matmos, também são casadíssimos. Em clima de Dia dos Namorados, que tal curtir uma intelligent dance music com um swingue latino? Acho isto tudo muito lindo, minha gentem! E o nome da canção abaixo é bem suspeito… Huh huh huh!

Matmos – Rainbow Flag
Matmos MySpace

E os nerds também amam! kkk

Young Jazz in Town Festival e Dancity presentano i Matmos live.
I Matmos sono Martin Schmidt e Drew Daniel, un duo di musica elettronica sperimentale di San Francisco. I loro lavori, che potrebbero essere definiti come la versione pop della Musique Concrète, sono composti da suoni di oggetti d’ogni tipo, campionati e manipolati, spesso dal sapore glitch, spesso IDM, come il flauto creato con dei rotoli di carta igienica, o la ripresa sonora di una liposuzione…il tutto condito da molta ironia. La loro collaborazione forse più celebre è con Bjork, con la quale hanno lavorato negli album “Vespertine” e “Medùlla”

I tillegg til Nattjazz (som jeg har skrevet om her og her) er også Festspillene i Bergen i full gang. Så lørdag var jeg på konsert med Matmos (myspace) i Johanneskirken, og min anmeldelse er på trykk i BT i dag. Matmos har en liten turné – eller en “tourette” som de på sine hjemmesider halvveis foreslår å kalle det – i Europa for tiden, men det er få kirkerom de spiller i. Og det i seg selv var rimelig fascinerende. Les anmeldelsen av konserten her. Her er ellers en videoutgave av “Exciter Lamp and the Variable Band”:

Og, som bonus, her er musikkvideoen til deres utgave av “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” Amazing.

Yesterday my friends and myself got talking about Drew Daniel of Matmos‘ side project Soft Pink Truth. This morning I was realising just how much this song, and the album it comes from, meant to me. I have some very special personal memories connected to this track.

Well that might be a bit dramatic but that was one of the key phrases (courtesy of Miss Jay Karan) from Matmos’s DJ set, one of the highlights of the performances tonight at the Sunset Tavern in Ballard. Various EMP presenters performed tonight and some photos follow, of Franklin Bruno, Sarah Dougher, David Grubbs and the merry men of Matmos:

Originality Corner

Black Dice: A Great, Loud Barbecue
Market Hotel
April 11, 2009
by Thomas Wilk

We return to our biweekly task to decide what original music is. Still lacking a definition of “original,” I turn to “Click Opera,” Momus’ daily cultural essay blog, for just a few short weeks ago he spent a good amount of breath trying to figure out what original music is. Momus cites an authoritative educational psychologist: “For educational psychologist Gary A. Davis, ‘personality characteristics of creative people include awareness of their creativity, originality, independence, risk taking, personal energy, curiosity, humour, attraction to complexity and novelty, artistic sense, open-mindedness, need for privacy, and heightened perception.’ The first sign of creativity, you might say, is believing in it, the second is looking for it. Belief in originality is productive of originality” (http://imomus.livejournal.com/446315.html).

Okay, creatives; list these originality categories and tally your scores, (1 – 10, duh): creativity, originality, independence, risk taking, personal energy, curiosity, humor, attraction to complexity and novelty, artistic sense, open-mindedness, need for privacy, and heightened perception. What a rubric! For the sake of space, today, let’s just talk about heightened perception. And let’s define “heightened perception” as a category charting the unique way an artist can detect something with the five senses. Possibility of sixth or seventh senses are not ruled out.

Last Friday I witnessed Black Dice release their newest disc, “Repo,” at the Market Hotel in Bushwick. Listening to “Repo” though laptop speakers/iTunes impoverishes the art. Sensing “Repo” machete through your ear drums at 200 decibels is what the creators intend, I would wager. “Repo” at home is like petting a nice cat and then feeding it milk. “Repo” in a large dark warehouse with long lines for bathrooms is like keeping a stegosaurus in your kitchen, weaving your hair with bones, and having abarbecue with the Flinstones on acid. And a really LOUD barbecue at that.

So back to discussing heightened perception. Part of the success of the album is that its palette of sound is synesthetically mixed, or rather that the radar of my senses is crossed out, rewired, and now I’m seeing sounds, feeling tastes, and hearing things I’m seeing. The tribal beats, Amazonian River party dance samples, and gurgles and blip sounds of “Repo” are immense–and very positive–it’s an aggressive album in some regard, but it’s all rapture. “Repo” is a rapture of the senses and perception; there is linear song structure, but the sheer uniqueness of samples used and electronic sounds produced, along with some vocal chants, makes for a really gooey sound show-and-tell. Actually, a lot of the sounds could be aural cousins to sound waves found on Matmos’ “Supreme Balloon.”

Black Dice sound waves annihilate your thoughts in some way. I mean, their live show is so loud I really could not think. At least temporarily. The three performers deploying this smart sound bomb had disabled my neurotransmitters and I was struck dumb for at least twenty minutes.

This was a Todd P show and it was behind a secret door. After the opening act of slithering and wiggling necromanceresses, Black Dice flicked on a couple switches, drank approximately two beers, and then switched on their sound boxes. Seeing Black Dice live will likely change the way you perceive the ratio of sound to thought. How many thoughts can you have per second of music? And how do you taste and smell sound waves? Seeing Black Dice live might also make you ralph, if you are susceptible to ralphing when high volume and afrobeat affects the speed of the hamster on a treadmill in your brain.

As I evinced in my Janurary podcast, seasons drastically affect my music tastes.  During the winter I usually enjoy hunkering down and really analyzing different music types.  I tend to reach for more abstract types of music, music that will challenge me, and I believe that some of this has come out in my podcasts.  Now, as the weather gets changes (finally!), so do my music interests.  Now, instead of scrutinizing the essence of the song, I desire to exist side by side with it, letting it enter my ears and take its course on my being.  The podcast that results from this?  Much easier to listen to, and more upbeat on the whole.  Check it:

03.09: Download // Stream

1. [Δ0:00] The Sun Balance Part I by Vibracathedral Orchestra: This song is an excellent introduction to a mix because it acts as a type of ginger to the song world.  It clears your pallet before the oncoming rush of the next songs.  The sounds seem to be imitating the crashing of waves on a shoreline, yet they are far too electronic to even come close.
2. [Δ2:53] Blissout by Lemonade: Ahh sweaty dancefloors and drone music.  The break about two and a half minutes in is to die for (“lem-on-aide… blahhh!”).
3. [Δ9:52] Time For Us All To Love by Bullion: I don’t know what it is about this song, but the first time I heard it couldn’t help but yell, “OH MY GOD!” (I’m not kidding).  It probably has to do with my obsession with straight 4/4 base drum, or maybe the surprising addition of the beat at the beginning of the song.  Whatever it is, it sure gets my synapses firing in that right way.
4. [Δ14:22] Free Rider by Quiet Village: Nothing reminds me more of the 1970’s than Silent Village.  Too bad I never lived during that time period, nor was the music created then either.  I’m sure it’s the samples that are getting to me head.
5. [Δ18:27] Reconstruction by Matmos: This track throws me through a tailspin every time.  Somehow they successfully switch from glitchy, super sliced vocals, to a simple folk guitar tune all within the confines of one song.

Uma discografia, pra variar um pouco. Eis todos os 7 álbuns do Matmos, de 98 até hoje:

• Matmos (1998, OLE-380):
• Download: Clique Aqui

• Quasi-Objects (1998, OLE-381)
• Download: Clique Aqui

• The West (1999)
• Download: Clique Aqui

• A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure (March 13, 2001, OLE-489)
• Download: Clique Aqui

• The Civil War (2003)
• Download: Clique Aqui

• The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast (2006, OLE-677)
• Download: Clique Aqui

• Supreme Balloon (2008)
• Download: Clique Aqui

Here are some famous electronic producers studio shots…

I listed the synths I identified.

Alan Wilder (Recoil)

RECOIL :

• Akai S3000xl
• Emu E4
• Novation Supernova
• MidiMoog
• 2x Oberheim SEM modules
• EMS VCS3

Apparat

APPARAT:

• Korg MONO/POLY
• Clavia Nordlead
• Crumar Stratus
• Clavia Nordmodular G2
• Syntechno TeeBee

Kid 606

KID606 :

• Clavia Nordmodular
• Clavia Micromodular
• Clavia Nordlead2
• Clavia Nordlrack3
• Sequential Circuits PRO ONE
• Yamaha DX200
• Roland MC-202
• Roland TR-606
• Korg MS20
• Access Virus KB
• Yamaha CS15

Jamiroquay

JAMIROQUAY :

• Elka Synthex
• Roland System100m (3 cabinets)
• Moog Source
• Fender Rhodes

Eno

ENO : just a kaosspad on the right, but this is just an angle of the studio…

Orbital

ORBITAL :

• 2x Alesis Andromeda
• Roland Jupiter 6
• Roland SH101
• Roland TB303
• Macbeth M5
• Elektron Machinedrum

Ritchie Hawtin (Plastikman)

PLASTIKMAN :

• Akai S3200
• 2 x Doepfer MAQ 16/3
• Serge modular
• EMS Synthi A
• Roland TB303
• Roland TR808 (on the oscilloscope)
• Roland Juno106
  This shot was taken at the end of the ’90s…

Rude 66

RUDE66 :

• Korg MONO/POLY
• Roland SH101
• Roland SH09
• Roland TR909
• Roland TR606
• Roland TR808
• Roland CR8000
• Sequential Circuits Drumtrak
• Syntechno TeeBee
• Emu Esi32
• Waldorf Pulse
• Kawai XD5
• Clavia Micromodular

Matmos

MATMOS :

• ARP 2600
• Roland SH101
• 2 x Emu E4

Oh wow, I haven’t blogged in almost 2 weeks. Crazy! A lot has been going on. I will blog more about it, but today, is dedicated to a favorite new band I’ve discovered and something quite hilarious.

I have discovered the band called Matmos. They are this electronic band who, in the past, has used sounds like water hitting copper pans, the nerve system of crayfish, and the reproductive tract of a cow to make their music. Okay, like I already loved them at first listen, but now, I kind of love them so much more. There is something completely off about it all, but something so amazingly awesome about it. I am planning on purchasing all their albums via Amazon.com and their used section. All in all I will be spending like 7 or 8 bucks for 5 albums. I think, this is a very good deal.

My favorite song by them is one I bought on iTunes to hold me over until my albums come. Its called “Polychords” and its from their most recent effort entitled “Supreme Balloon”. I seriously love this song, and whenever I love a song a lot I will go to Youtube and see if there’s a video. Well, no OFFICIAL video, but there was this amazing little ditty that I had to post:

Isn’t this amazing? Like, completely ridiculous but amazing. I implore you, don’t WATCH the video first, but listen to the song. THEN, go back and watch the video. I like the real aspect of making Godzilla walking through the street as if this were an every day occurance. I wonder what other people thought of Godzilla being recorded on the bus. Would they call him by his name Godzilla, or maybe a nickname like Chad or Franklin. My favorite part of the song is at [2.25]. Mostly I love this part of the song musically, however you can clearly see an asian girl during this part looking in Godzilla’s direction and wondering what is going on. Then Godzilla waits to cross the street because he is proper and obviously does not want to be struck by an oncoming vehicle. Then you see Godzilla walking and a Virgin Megastore is behind him. Suddenly he turns around, quickly I might add, and realizes that he hasn’t heard any good tunes lately, and stops by to listen to some music with oversized headphones. All in all, this video is amazing. And I love it.

Well, it was quite the weekend for everyone who had the pleasure of being in New York City.

In short, all those brave enough to venture into Jersey despite the less than perfect weather enjoyed three days of music marathon madness at All Points West in Liberty Park.

Although I skipped out on day three for the Jelly NYC Pool Party, the first and second days at All Points West were more than anyone could have asked for.

Day one included acts like Fleet Foxes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Vampire Weekend, and Telepathe. Of course, Jay-Z stole the show.

During his set, he had an explosive opening that paid tribute to the Beastie Boys, who weren’t able to make it for medical reasons, with his very own version of “No Sleep Till Brooklyn”. Yeah Yeah Yeahs were also great. Karen O is simply one of the best performers out there.

Day two headlined none other than TOOL but the main attraction for me was My Bloody Valentine . Aware of their reputation of being really ridiculously loud, I avoided the pit to save my ear drums and opted to hide behind a Stella at the nearest beer garden. Yet, that helped little to none. Even the kids in the VIP bleachers were stuffing neon orange plugs into their ears.

Gogol Bordello thrilled and had be up front and center. Although a rowdy dancer might have crushed my foot, their set was completely worth it. Look how excited I am.

Between mud wrestling, buying crafts, eating mediocre vegan food, and holding my breath past the port-o-potties, All Points West was an AMAZING experience. (Next stop: All Tomorrow’s Parties?)

I skipped out on Day Three at All Points West for a chance to see the line-up of a life time: Deerhunter, No Age, and Dan Deacon free of charge! This post is already far too long. Read more on this pool party on my Last.fm. See video of the Pool Party here.

Finally, there’s a new JC&L 8tracks ready to pleasure you and your ear drums called: Circle Head Bangers Jackson 5 (the August Mix). Roughly inspired by this past weekend but not really, see the full track listing after the jump (free tracks may or may not be included)!

“Mickey Mouse” – Wavves (2009 self-released) Demo
“Anti-Orgasm” – Sonic Youth
“Hold TIght” – Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
“Sweat” – Juiceboxxx & Dre Skull
“Boy Void” – No Age
“Agoraphobia” – Deerhunter
“Snookered” – Dan Deacon
“Polychords” – Matmos (2008 Matador) Matador Intended Play Spring 2008

Paslanmış eski püskü bir karavanın arkasında şehir şehir ilerleme, yol üstü duraklarda yenilen yemek niyetine atıştırmalıklar, yerde uzanmış elinde gitarıyla uyuyan grup elemanları… Rock turnesi dendiğinde gözümüzün önünde genelde bu tip bir tablo oluşur. Şimdi turne gerçeklerini, konser tecrübelerini, yolculuk maceralarını çok değerli bir sette bulacağız. ‘Art Of Touring’ adlı kitap+dvd sevdiğimiz müzisyenlerin kalemleri, objektifleri ve sanatları sayesinde turneye onlarla eşlik ediyoruz.

‘Art of Touring’de neler var… Bir kere kitabın iki editörü Erase Errata’dan Sara Former ve Electralane’den Mia Clarke. Kitapta yazılar yer alan isimler ise The Ponys’den Brian Case, Le Tigre’den Johanna Fatemon, Matmos’tan Drew Daniel. Ayrıca Devendra Banhart’ın, Au Revoir Simone ve The Ponys elemanlarının da sanatsal çalışmaları kitapta yer alıyor. Sonic Youth’dan Thurston Moore, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s’den Nick Zinner, Explosions in the Sky’dan Munaf Rayani ve Vetiver’den Alissa Anderson’un kendi çektikleri turne fotoğrafları kitapta bulunabiliyor. Sette kitabın yanı sıra bulunan dvd’de ise Mecca Normal, Erase Erreta, Electralane, the Ex gibi isimlerin canlı performansları ve backstage anılarından oluşan görüntüler yer alıyor.

Yeti tarafından yayınlanan 156 sayfalık kitabın satışlarında elde edilen gelir Musicians’ Emergency Fund’a bağışlanacakmış.