theQuietus theQuietus
Morning fun to be had running Gristleism box and birds of Britain app through girlfriend's megaphone app, not sure flatmates will agree
Song(s) of the Day # 4,357 Donny Osmond
3 hours ago
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Never mind the Balearics: the Ibiza-ification of pop
The other day we were driving in the car, listening to one of Los Angeles's top 40 stations, and I turned to my wife and asked: "How come everything on the radio sounds like a peak-hour tune from Ibiza?"
All these smash hits have the Auto-Tuned big-chorus bolted on top. But underneath, there are riffs and vamps, pulses and pounding beats, glistening synthetic textures and an overall banging boshing feel; it's like these tracks have been beamed straight from Gatecrasher or Love Parade circa 1999.
This week the Quietus ran a piece on a particularly bludgeoning and tyrannical aspect of the now-pop, what writer Daniel Barrow calls "the soar": the wooshing, ascending, hands-in-the-air chorus, which has been divorced from its original context (90s underground dance and drug culture) and repurposed as the trigger for a kind of release-without-release.
Barrow's references to steroids ("the steroided architecture of these tracks") capture the unsettling "stacked" quality of these recordings. Like the images you find in bodybuilding magazines, the now-pop can be at once grotesque and mesmerising.
Strangely, Barrow makes no mention of the tune that seems like the now-pop's defining anthem and blueprint, a song still omnipresent almost a year after it first hit big: Dynamite by Taio Cruz. His name, with its odd unplaceable quality (it sounds like some kind of Asian-Hispanic hybrid) suits the Esperanto-like qualities of the now-pop. Though often described by hostile critics as Euro house, it is simply international, post-geographical, pan-global.
(How apt that the video for Dynamite is preceded here by a commercial for Las Vegas tourism, since that city is both Mecca and model for a certain idea of "a really good time" celebrated by so many in-the-club anthems).
I started out loathing Dynamite. The "ay-o" bit in particular always made me think of "day-o" as in Harry Belafonte's The Banana Boat Song. Gradually I succumbed – or perhaps I should say, "submitted" – and started to think of Dynamite as possessing a dumb genius. Especially the line, "I'm wearing all my favourite brands brands brands brands".
But looking from the vantage point of my forthcoming book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, what's most striking and unsettling about the now-pop is its not-so-now-ness: the fact that in the year 2011, mainstream pop sounds like the late-90s.
The Black Eyed Peas pioneered all this of course, creating a sort of 21st-century update of European "hip-house" from even earlier in the 90s (Snap, Technotronic) and working in some 80s-retro flavours. The Time (Dirty Bit) also qualifies, abundantly, for the category of "dumb genius". And as with Dynamite, there's a forced insistence that everyone is "having the time of their lives". So much of the now-pop has this vaguely coercive undercurrent. As Barrow notes, producers know how to work your reflexes, they've got pop pleasure down to a science, they target those euphoria-centres of the brain as ruthlessly as soft drinks full of high-fructose corn syrup.
Kids love this, of course. At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice awards in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, the Black Eyed Peas performed The Time: what with the dazzling lights and deafening volume, it really was like a rave for children. We were there with our kids: five-year-old Tasmin is totally into the now-pop. Recently, driving in the car and flicking back and forth between pop stations and classic-rock stations, she opined that Katy Perry was "rock'n'roll" but was quite adamant that the Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll was "not rock'n'roll". She wouldn't be budged.
Perhaps Tasmin is correct, in spirit. The substance of the now-pop has absolutely nothing in common with rock'n'roll or indeed any form of live-band music. But perhaps its blaring bombast is the true modern sound of teenage (and pre-teenage) rampage. Maybe all this steroid-maxed über-pop is just as artfully mindless and cunningly vacant as records made by the Sweet with Chinn & Chapman, the production team who were the 70s equivalents to Dr Luke and Will.i.am: expert programmers of artificial excitement, architects of crescendo and explosion. Tasmin's a big Sweet fan too.
@'The Guardian'
All these smash hits have the Auto-Tuned big-chorus bolted on top. But underneath, there are riffs and vamps, pulses and pounding beats, glistening synthetic textures and an overall banging boshing feel; it's like these tracks have been beamed straight from Gatecrasher or Love Parade circa 1999.
This week the Quietus ran a piece on a particularly bludgeoning and tyrannical aspect of the now-pop, what writer Daniel Barrow calls "the soar": the wooshing, ascending, hands-in-the-air chorus, which has been divorced from its original context (90s underground dance and drug culture) and repurposed as the trigger for a kind of release-without-release.
Barrow's references to steroids ("the steroided architecture of these tracks") capture the unsettling "stacked" quality of these recordings. Like the images you find in bodybuilding magazines, the now-pop can be at once grotesque and mesmerising.
Strangely, Barrow makes no mention of the tune that seems like the now-pop's defining anthem and blueprint, a song still omnipresent almost a year after it first hit big: Dynamite by Taio Cruz. His name, with its odd unplaceable quality (it sounds like some kind of Asian-Hispanic hybrid) suits the Esperanto-like qualities of the now-pop. Though often described by hostile critics as Euro house, it is simply international, post-geographical, pan-global.
(How apt that the video for Dynamite is preceded here by a commercial for Las Vegas tourism, since that city is both Mecca and model for a certain idea of "a really good time" celebrated by so many in-the-club anthems).
I started out loathing Dynamite. The "ay-o" bit in particular always made me think of "day-o" as in Harry Belafonte's The Banana Boat Song. Gradually I succumbed – or perhaps I should say, "submitted" – and started to think of Dynamite as possessing a dumb genius. Especially the line, "I'm wearing all my favourite brands brands brands brands".
But looking from the vantage point of my forthcoming book Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to Its Own Past, what's most striking and unsettling about the now-pop is its not-so-now-ness: the fact that in the year 2011, mainstream pop sounds like the late-90s.
The Black Eyed Peas pioneered all this of course, creating a sort of 21st-century update of European "hip-house" from even earlier in the 90s (Snap, Technotronic) and working in some 80s-retro flavours. The Time (Dirty Bit) also qualifies, abundantly, for the category of "dumb genius". And as with Dynamite, there's a forced insistence that everyone is "having the time of their lives". So much of the now-pop has this vaguely coercive undercurrent. As Barrow notes, producers know how to work your reflexes, they've got pop pleasure down to a science, they target those euphoria-centres of the brain as ruthlessly as soft drinks full of high-fructose corn syrup.
Kids love this, of course. At the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice awards in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, the Black Eyed Peas performed The Time: what with the dazzling lights and deafening volume, it really was like a rave for children. We were there with our kids: five-year-old Tasmin is totally into the now-pop. Recently, driving in the car and flicking back and forth between pop stations and classic-rock stations, she opined that Katy Perry was "rock'n'roll" but was quite adamant that the Stones' It's Only Rock'n'Roll was "not rock'n'roll". She wouldn't be budged.
Perhaps Tasmin is correct, in spirit. The substance of the now-pop has absolutely nothing in common with rock'n'roll or indeed any form of live-band music. But perhaps its blaring bombast is the true modern sound of teenage (and pre-teenage) rampage. Maybe all this steroid-maxed über-pop is just as artfully mindless and cunningly vacant as records made by the Sweet with Chinn & Chapman, the production team who were the 70s equivalents to Dr Luke and Will.i.am: expert programmers of artificial excitement, architects of crescendo and explosion. Tasmin's a big Sweet fan too.
Hey Facebook: What’s SO wrong about a pic of two men kissing?
This is perplexing. And annoying. And infuriating.
I woke up this morning to an email from Facebook with the subject “Facebook Warning”:
“Hello,Ah…yeah… it seems that the sight of two fully-clothed men kissing was too much for Facebook, or too much for some closet-case asshole (Hi Jerry! Remind me why you and I are “friends” again? I sure didn’t ask to be yours, pal…) who complained about it. The photo appeared here on Dangerous Minds in the context of Niall’s post about the “kiss in” demonstration that was cooked up, ironically ON FACEBOOK ITSELF, in London to protest against the rude treatment two gay patrons experienced at a pub called The John Snow. The two men, Jonathan Williams, 26, and Jamie Bull, 23 were sitting in a corner kissing when the owner asked them to leave. Over 750 people signed up for the protest.
Content that you shared on Facebook has been removed because it violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. Shares that contain nudity, or any kind of graphic or sexually suggestive content, are not permitted on Facebook.
This message serves as a warning. Additional violations may result in the termination of your account. Please read the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities carefully and refrain from posting abusive material in the future. Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
The Facebook Team”
Oh, WAIT A MINUTE, I went to check on the Facebook page that organized The John Snow pub protest... and it’s gone, too.
WTF, FB?
I’ve written to Facebook asking them why this content was removed, but have at this point received no reply. I’ll update this post when I do. In the meantime, why not share this photo on FB as much as you can? I’m hoping they’ll restore the post as it was so everyone can pile on the jerk who wrote all the homophobic stuff on my FB wall. I think that’s the best outcome here, Jerry getting a taste of his own medicine…
In any case, the protest went off last night against The John Snow pub, with protesters chanting “We’re here, we’re queer and we won’t buy your beer.” You can see the BBC News report here.
UPDATE:
Richard Metzger @'Dangerous Minds'
This is outrageous in this day and age!!!
The Straight Dope - Bill Moyers interviews David Simon
Bill Moyers: I did a documentary about the South Bronx called The Fire Next Door and what I learned very early is that the drug trade is an inverted form of capitalism.
David Simon: Absolutely. In some ways it’s the most destructive form of welfare that we’ve established, the illegal drug trade in these neighborhoods. It’s basically like opening up a Bethlehem Steel in the middle of the South Bronx or in West Baltimore and saying, “You guys are all steelworkers.” Just say no? That’s our answer to that? And by the way, if it was chewing up white folk, it wouldn’t have gone on for as long as it did.
HERE
Neither can I...
ubuweb Ubu Web
Robert Frank's "Cocksucker Blues" (1972,. avi). God, I can't believe this hasn't been taken down yet: http://is.gd/GwcbhA
Saturday, 16 April 2011
REpost: My father was a record sleeve...
Label: India NavigationCat. #: IN 3026
Format: LP
Release date: 1982
Release date: 1982
Music by Phill Niblock
REpost: The Human (Voice)
Voice (Julie Tippetts, Maggie Nichols, Phil Minton, Brian Eley)
Recorded live at The Phoenix, Cavendish Square, London W1, on 13th Oct 1976
Get it
HERE
(sorry only @160...I have the album still and when I get organised (stylus/brain etc) I will upgrade to FLAC etc)
Veryan Weston (piano) and Phil Minton (voice) improvise at Mopomoso at the Vortex Jazz club in London. 21st September 2008. Filmed by Helen Petts.
An interesting blog 'John's House' here concerned with John Osborne's house/a mirror & Phil Minton amongst other things.
An interesting blog 'John's House' here concerned with John Osborne's house/a mirror & Phil Minton amongst other things.
(Some incidental background business:
Back in the day when I would like to think that I was a 'jazz terrorist' when in actual fact I was just an annoying arsehole.
Veryan and I never saw-eye-to-eye to which I can only say; "Once a stinky-winkle..."
Veryan and I never saw-eye-to-eye to which I can only say; "Once a stinky-winkle..."
As for Mr. Minton...
SHIT!
The man is THE greatest vocalist that has ever walked on this planet and to think that I was priveleged to actually have shared a stage with him and at the same time!
I even take it as a compliment that he said (at the end of the gig) "you ARE very Albert Aylerish" when the combo was called 'Eye & Ear Control'.
To meet up again at the Feral Choir gig in Melbourne was just brilliant and I apologise (again) for that night in Am*dam all those years ago...
Regards/)
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