Wednesday, September 5, 2012

TEED

cred

I found out about Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs while looking over the shows playing around Lollapalooza this year. TEED was at Berlin at the time and after listening to a couple of the videos tracks that he put out, I was bent on going to see this stellar . ...apparently not bent enough since I never made it over. Big mistake.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Jam Slow

So I've been noticing a trend that I would hope that others would re- or co-articulate. I didn't quite figure it out until I started realized that I like Skrillex and I got over my mountainous hump of being interested dubstep (trust me, those Whitehorn Mountains of actually liking dubstep are ever-present). First, a bit of inspiration to those who maybe still be on the same page as a the 3-week-ago me:

 
Ok, that song is the super jam. BUT WHY. My theory, it's got all the distortion, dissonance, and discontinuities that dubstep has (and bangers had) but you can dance to it unlike dubstep. But why can you dance to 'Bangarang'? Because there's no anti-gyrating half-tempoing twice in the middle of the damn track where the only thing you can do is head bang / slam / ram to your bro friends. Enough unhappiness... the point is coming up.

More after jumping...

Monday, August 13, 2012

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Bryl


from Lumpen, Version, Public Media Institute photo arch


Recently I've tried my hand at speed dating where either I regurgitate the previous conversation ("Hi my name is Con, I'm an engineer, I'm from Chicago... yes the city,") or I stop caring ("Do women have librarian crushes too? Do you ever want to get that shy guy out of his element and just turn him out?") On the few times I went on real dates with them, the concept of dancing comes up and we exchange where and what we like to dance too. I mentioned Lipgloss in Denver and how I found Darkwave Disco at Sonotheque, but then it closed a few years ago? "So what's your new Sonotheque?" And I didn't have an answer. Sure Beauty Bar replaced it in physical location, but it never got its appropriate sequel anywhere

This question plagued me for some months when I was still in the grieving period ("That's too bad about Sonotheque, eh, Conrad?" *epic sigh*) until I convinced myself that there wasn't such a thing as a sequel. At the time I looked up what the folks running it were doing but I never followed up on any of the leads. Yesterday I decided to give the guy who curated the musical end of it, Joe Bryl, a googlin':


- Runs 2nd and 4th Fridays at Maria's (960 W. 31st St)
- Musical director of the Charleston (2076 N. Hoyne Ave)
- Runs Wed nights at The Shrine (2109 S. Wabash Ave)
- Runs Thurs nights at Highball Lounge (738 N. Clark St.)

(I remember Joe was showing afternoon movies (Cinematheque Sonotheque) for a while before it closed: "We're creating a space where you can come by, have a drink, sit and relax while watching something you might not have seen before. Feel free to get up anytime, have another drink, go to the bathroom, go outside to talk on your phone, have another drink, relax a little, have another drink..")

Perfect. Brazilliance is back, Synthetiq is for New Wave, and I have new places to go.

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Nouvelle Vague

The other weekend I had the pleasure of going to dinner at smunderground, done by Sachin and Meagan, two culinary experts and entrepreneurs in the Chicago underground dinner scene.


Beef cheek brisket with pureed kale, sassafras sauce, fried sweetbreads and cream, vacuumed potatoes turned tots, fennel/cilantro salad

Not only was the food incredible, a lot of the songs that were playing caught my ear. In particular, I heard this cover of 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' in the style of bossanova. Wow.

More after jumping...

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Sounds to Silence



I was passively listening to NPR one day and heard a familiar french voice speaking along with some familiar french names. I held my hand back from turning off the ignition and sat in front of my house. Good thing I did. I was pleasantly surprised that Air was scoring an old film called Le Voyage dans la Lune. I had never heard of it prior to but some digging around led me to understand that it was basically the first science fiction film made and a nod to Jules Verne.

The story during their interview was that Godin and Dunckel were asked to do it a month before it was to debut at Cannes, 16 May 2011. At the end of endless nights, they hadn't even seen film with the score together prior to the showing. Now, the soundtrack is a available, and the DVD is set to arrive at ye olde Logan Square at the end of the month. I'll have a showing, but my pal Christopher downloaded it earlier this week (no, I'm not going to cheat). For some clips (a different kind of cheating), you should go here.



Note that this isn't the first time that Air scored a film. You would remember that they did Virgin Suicides and former (then-current) drummer, Brian Reitzell, pulled off Lost in Translation... both Sofia Coppola films, both great soundtracks.

Sidenote
Soulwax is taking the space-themed soundtrack route as well... though not as elegantly as Air is. Here the Dewaele brothers do what they do best: jam.

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Isolée



When I saw that day9 (yes, I play starcraft on occasion) posted an Isolee video on the f'book, he instantly got another 5 points. When I went to conspicks to see if I had put up an Isolée post anytime previously, I was severely disappointed. I'm confessing and the following is my repentance to Rajko Müller, Mr. Isolée himself.

If you're looking for lyrics, you won't find them here. We Are Monster is a collection of distilled, up-beat microhouse (think minimalist dance w/ 4x4 beats). I remember making up a dance with my friend Dan's then-girl Abby sticking my wrists out my sides and treating my phalanges as fins while bobbing like a buoy to 'Jelly Baby/Fish'. Probably one of my favorite samples ever is 4-3/4 min into 'Schrapnell' where he takes the sound made through a speaker when a cell phone about to ring near an amp/mixer/recording device. Brilliant.

Isolée - Jelly Baby/Fish

Last year he put out Well Spent Youth. He keeps to his truncated groovy roots and at the same time smoothes it out more to take a deep house turn. I can't say that I'm a big fan of the genre in general since I feel that there's a persistent discontinuity. 'Palorma Triste' and 'Trop Près De Toi' are closest to what I'm used to from him and consequentially the one I find most appealing... and not coincidentally they are the tracks that have the most number of samples creating that weave.

Isolée - Paloma Triste



Müller understands balance, and that's what gives his cuts longevity. Repetitive dissemblance with a memory is the key to good production and too often you hear artists with the loop button pressed a little too long. This is not a new concept. Probably the most famous example is Beethoven's 5th symphony; it's the same damn duh-duh-duh-duuuh thing over and over again... but not. The modern day version of this departs to the 4/8/16 bar loop, but Müller must, else it wouldn't have the house slant.

The other positive aspect in all of his work is the amount of detail that extends throughout. You can be minimalist but that doesn't mean you lack effort in the form of content. It takes a lot of leaves to make a tree and someone's got to put them there. It's great that the focus can be on the details of singular items, but I would prefer that that appreciation happen in a sub-layer of the overall design, otherwise there's less to recognize.

Good job, Rajko.

Monday, January 16, 2012

Bike Love

Good ole Christopher put this up for me a while back and I haven't had a chance to share. Christopher is the kind of fellow that always has solid gatherings and because of his positive radiance, he has a smorgasbord of contacts that are willing to do anything for him but he doesn't really need anything other than enjoying people interact. That and he really likes minimal house and most things DFA. Hence:



Holy Ghost! - I Wanted To Tell Her (feat: Nancy Whang & Juan Maclean)

Those Holy Ghost! chaps got a lot of help on this one to really make it kick. Not only did they get DFA's king and queen on the track and the video, they also covered Ministry to get it all done with a pinch of nu-disco.

Ministry - I Wanted To Tell Her

What's more, to make apply a holy trinity of musical divination on the track, the video itself is a cover of none other than Rad, the righteous over-the-top movie from 1986 about falling in love, being the town hero, standing up to evil corporations, all via BMX tricks. And Lori Laughlin is a total hardbody.



Real Life - Send Me an Angel

And just because I love them so much, and I think that the frontman of Real Life sounds a lot like Klaus Meine of The Scorpions, you need to hear this song too. (This is where the covers end, unfortunately.)

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Midnight Club For Mike



Mike, listen to a group that takes every bit of the Valerie Collective's pre- and post-Drive fame: Midnight Club. Imagine gentle synth hands with shimmering cherry-polished fingernails glossing over your earlobe. She's telling you a story and you can feel the puffs of breath on your neck, but you need to step out to pick up a couple more Vangelis tapes for the deck. You get out to go; she gets out to stay. You turn around and see:


cred: TNUC

They are off of On The Fruit records (which has excellent pieces like this and this) and they are every bit of the aural bits you want them to be whenever you and your dame's moods point to a T-top cruise in between Medusa's on the way to the Warehouse.

Midnight Club - The Machine
Midnight Club - Escape Time
Midnight Club - Hot Space

Cred to Tracasseur for pointing me in the right direction on this one.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

New PNAU Now Plus Spank Rock

Yes, 'now' really was back in July, but since I haven't been paying attention to one of my favorite artists lately, they slipped right past the lighthouse. These guys are always a hoot and this album is full of happiness. 'Unite Us' is somewhere between doing cartwheels on the 4th of July at night and exchanging smiles with your best friend at a wedding. It should be no surprise that 'Unite Us' could feel a little like 'Come Together', and since I'm smitten by the smiles I really don't care as I'm sailing in these fellows' positive breezes. 'Everyone' reminds me a little of the Presets, vocally, but is distinctly PNAU with the waves of cymbals, octavonal synths, and never in a minor key. I'm trying right now not to beam too much, but it's a real trick especially after just watching Love Actually (my #2 uplifting movie next to High Fidelity).



PNAU - Unite Us (Kris Menace Remix)

Part Deux: Spank Rock has a new album
Not only was I sleeping for PNAU, I did the same for Spank Rock who apparently was hiding over in Deutschland with Boys Noize, not only working on an album, but signing up with them. Same old quality dirt. Yes.


By the way, the director of the video, Allen Cordell, loves the ridiculously / disgustingly / disturbingly / visually awesome (I think the hot pink, telekinetic Telly knockoff vid is my fav).