Wednesday, May 26, 2004
It's gonna be a slightly less obsessive posting schedule (both in terms of length and frequency) until I get my work foolishness and home foolishness in a row. About the latter, you don't want to know; trust me. On the former, I have a helluvagood story to tell that involves urine. And no, it's not a piss test.
As always if you have or know of a New York jobbiejob for me, that would be cool. But you know this routine:
Blahblahblah i need a job blahblahblah hire me in nyc blahblahblah help help help blah.
On to the tunage.
Not that you'd know it by my past entries but I'm a BIG fan of electronic music, especially mid-to-late 90's (though a Ray Scott post probably looms in the not too distant future). YES, there's a lot of crap in the form but Heinlein's law is appropriate ("99% of EVERYTHING is shit"... and don't forget Heinlein's corollary: "Heinlein was an optimist.").
I get a tetch annoyed with the subgenre-ing out the wazoo (tho' the obsessive can always reference ishkur's amazing site to decide if what they're listening to is "newstyle gabber" or "illbient"). One would think that fans of such a generally maligned artform would band together; instead they break up into smaller and smaller chatrooms where you have to be solely into 196 BPM songs composed entirely of sped-up electric guitar, tympani drums and cookie monster vocals to be a "real fan".
Unsurprisingly, people tend to view electronic music with a wary eye after that degree of elitism. There's a tendency among lotsa indykids to reject anything with the general flavour of "Get Busy Child" as mindless pabulum.
But, hey: I _LIKE_ pabulum sometimes!
Nonetheless, the tracks selected for today's Hut are HARDLY pabulum. They're all wired to shoot the message directly from your coccyx to your reptile brain and get you moving to hurricane speed.
Plug it in.
electric glisten
Orbital - "Technologicque Park"
After almost fifteen years of cutting edge electronic, Phil and Paul Hartnoll are calling it quits. Orbital is releasing what they claim to be their last album in June and I don't buy it for a second. These guys are going to stop TOURING, yes; but more music will come.
Orbital has been a mainstay of film, TV and videogame soundtracks for years now; you've undoubtedly heard "Halcyon+On+On" whether you know it or not. They've been getting their due from the press since step one, but with their patently radio-unfriendly style (thirty minute tracks?) and offbeat sensibility (go give "I Wish I Had Duck Feet" a listen), they've remained somewhat under the US MTV generation's mainstream eyelevel.
More's the pity; I'm as obsessive about Orbital as I am about Prince and would love nothing more than to spread the gospel.
They also put on one fuck of a good live show.
It's as likely as not to show up on the forthcoming "Blue" album, but for now you could find "Technologique on the last track of disc one of the XXX soundtrack, available from Amazon.
It's a STRANGE soundtrack; one disc of (ostensibly) rocknroll and electronica and one disc of (ostensibly) rnb and hip hop: Mr Cheeks, Pastor Troy and Joi cohabitating with Queens of the Stoneage and Rammstein?
Less of a soundtrack, more of a collection of confused licenses. This is bound to catch some giggles twenty years from now.
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Loopz is Orbital's official website and is likely the best artist website I've seen in terms of excessive content. Click on "remix comp" for a healthy dose of 80+(!) Orbital remixes for download.
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An '02 interview with the brothers Hartnoll.
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Underworld - "Dinosaur Adventure 3D"
All of these are tracks that I work out to. I don't think I've ever told anyone this, but when I lift or run, I tend to do some ultra-dorky mental visualizations to help maximize the adrenaline boost I get from the songs; mental movies that accompany the track. After awhile, I have a comfortable scenario that I've linked to each song. These tend to be pseudo-comicbook fantasies that appeal to gutlevel machismo and keep my feet hitting the ground or the weight rising and falling.
Surely, I'm not the only one?
This is by way of explaining that when the "WAAAAAAAAAR MACHINE, WAAAAAAAAR MACHINE" chorus kicks in, I'm in a mecha Gundam style battle and I tend to sorta zone out, yknow?
Buy One Hundred Days Off from Amazon.
Though not quite as satisfying as "Beaucoup Fish" or "Second Toughest of the Infants", this is a solid album. "Dinosaur" is the best track on there, tho'.
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Dirty. org's Underworld Pages are excellently laid out, meticulously researched and overflowing with audio samples. They provide a great way to learn and listen more.
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For the true fan, you'll love underworld live. It's absolutely awash with audio and video cuts.
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Daft Punk - "Aerodynamic (Slum Village Remix)"
If you wanted this on CD, you could always get Daft Club from Amazon but except for this one track, I simply can't recommend it.
The album is a musical trainwreck; a collection of offbeat remixes that either add nothing to the original or just wrongheadedly run the song off the musical tracks. I say this as a big fan: it ain't worth your time.
So if you MUST have it on disc, why not get the Kiss of the Dragon soundtrack from Amazon instead? That way you at least get some NERD and Mystikal to boot.
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"Because we are Daft Punk and we don't need to show our faces to get on a magazine cover or sell shitloads of records. Because we're young. Because we're sexy."
A very neat Mixmag article on the young Punks. Search around on the Mixmag site for their Orbital article as well; it's awful good, but I can't find a permalink.
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This bizarre little Daft Punk/River City Ransom video for the undeniable "Harder Better Faster Stronger" is just something short of compulsively re-re-re-re-re-re-reloadable, so since I don't want the boss to have to make you quit running the damn thing in the background, I'm gonna be kind and toss you a bonus cut: my current favorite remix of this superbadass track, Pojmasta's "Hard to Forget".
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spiffy
I've got LITERALLY dozens of musicblogs to share, but this one just came in and I thought I'd be the one to break it.
"Anyway, here's what I'm meaning to do: Every post consists of two songs, and at least one has to be a) Swedish and b) unknown outside Sweden. Age is no concern. Sounds ok?"
Certainly does. Welcome 'Marx vs. the Monorail' to our midst.
