some interesting pieces I heard or saw or sometimes both today

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1. Keri Hilson - Pretty Girl Rock



I hated this song when 101 the beat jam started playing it all the time earlier this year. Then I caught the first 12 seconds of the song, which reminded me of Depeche Mode. Warmed me up a bit, industrial sounding shit usually does. Delightfully surprised with the video - pretty basic decades-of-inspiration theme. Camera quality corresponds to its respective decade. Ending makes me want to puke though. Audibly...The chorus is the weakest element of the song. First two verses are fun though. Sucker for that repetition in the first line of the first two verses. All downhill from there.


2. Tyler, the Creator feat. Earl Sweatshirt - "Assmilk"



This is the sickest thing ever all year forever. I am in disbelief at how good these children are at virtually every aspect of their craft. Analogy: The Outkast that wasn't living their developmental years during the great happiness-stability facade that was the 1990s. And the internet.


3. Bibio - "Jealous of Roses"



Many options for a favorite part of this song. The natural effect of practicing audio-sample bricolage.

4. Daedelus - "Slowercase D"



I just got this album today. Some of it is a bit too joyous for my taste I am afraid. Slowercase D, however - sounds like people being pulled back and forth. Underground. Perhaps a sinister character is giving orders.


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Review of Girl Talk "All Day" (2010)

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Theoretically, if you like most of the artists on this list, then you should like this entire album because the sum is greater than the parts. I like almost all of the artists on this list. I even starred the items that I have in my itunes. I listened to the album once and noted the samples I could recall without much effort. There were a lot of little pieces I recognized but couldn't think of formally though. If you're interested in what Girl Talk listens to these days, here ya go.

1. "Oh No"
Ludacris - Move Bitch
Jay-Z - New York State of Mind**
Cali Swag District - Teach Me How to Dougie
Alice in Chains - Jane Says
Jay-Z - Swagger Like Us**
The Brothers Johnson - Strawberry Letter 23**
Dorrough Music - Ice Cream Paint Job
The Ramones - Bliztking Bop**
Missy Elliot - Get Yr Freak On

2. "Let It Out"
Jay-Z - Big Pimpin**
ELO - Mr. Blue Sky
Trey Songz - Say Ahh
Snoop Dogg/Pharell - Drop It Like It's Hot
Beck - Loser**
Ohio Players - Love Rollercoaster
Fugazi - Waiting Room**
Rhianna - Rude Boy**

3. "That's Right"
Fabolous - Ya'll Can't Deny It
Peter Gabriel - In Your Eyes
Fat Joe - Lean Back
Beyonce - Single Ladies**
Myley Cyrus - Party in the USA**
Dr. Dre - The Next Episode

4. "Jump on Stage"
Portishead - Sour Times**
Big Boi - Shutterbug**
Skee Lo - I Wish
Radiohead - Creep**
ODB - Shimmy Shimmy Ya**
Iggy Pop - Lust For Life**
Whitetown - Your Woman**
Lady Gaga - Love Games**
Beastie Boys - ???**

5. "This is the Remix"
Rick Ross - ???
Lil Kim - The Jump Off
The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back**
Toadies - Possum Kingdom**
B.O.B. - Beautiful Girls**
Wes Anderson type-music
INXS - I Need You Tonight
Fabolous - Holla Back

6. "On and On"
Cream - Sunshine of Your Love
Notorious BIG - Fuck You Tonight**
Ke$ha - Don't Stop
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle**
Birdman/Lil Wayne - I Want It All
U2 - With or Without You
Kraftwerk - Metal on Metal**

7. "Get It Get It"
Lady Gaga - Bad Romance**
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker**
Soulja Boy - Pretty Boy Swag
Daft Punk - One More Time**
Black Eyes Peas - Boom Boom Pow
M.I.A. - Paper Planes**
Depeche Mode - I Just Can't Get Enough**
Pitbull - Hotel Room Service
Kid Cudi - Day N Nite**
Daft Punk - Digital Love**
Missy Elliot

8. "Down for the Count"
Belinda Carlisle - Heaven is a Place on Earth
Derek and the Dominos - Layla
Talking Heads - Our House**
T.Rex - 20th Century Boy**
MSTRKRFT - Bounce**
Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head
Young MC - Busta Move
Usher - OMG
Missy Elliot
The Temptations - Get Ready**

9. "Make Me Wanna"
Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
Basement Jaxx - Where's Your Head At
Rick Ross - BMF
Wacka Flocka - Ego Trippin
ripping off some sick IDM beat
Arcade Fire - guess we'll just have to adjusstttttt**
RAdiohead - Idioteque**
Little Richard - Shout

10. "Steady Shock"
Blue Oyster Cult - Don't Fear the Reaper
Usher/Nicki Minaj - Little Freak
N.E.R.D. - All The Girls Standing in the Line for the Bathroom
Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark
Drake - Over**
Flock of Seagulls - Ran
Nirvana - Drain You**

11. "Triple Double"
Beyonce - DIVA**
Phoenix - 1908**
Ludacris - How Low**
Lil Wayne - A Mili**
Mark Mothersborugh - underwater theme from "Life Aquatic"
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust**
Ice Cube - Today was a Good Day**
Willow Smith - Whip My Hair
Rolling Stones - ???**

12. "Every Day"
Gucci Mane - Gucci Time**
Modern English - Melt With You**
Jay-Z - Dirt of Your Shoulder**
John Lennon - Imagine**
Pimp-C - One Day


The album sucks, by the way. The best part is the Aphex Twin/Gaga/Soulja Boy mashup in track 7, because Richard D. James is timeless and his music makes whatever superimposed pop vocal trying to suffocate it wanna fuck him instead. I liked a lot of songs on the 11th track, but they sound horrible all crushed together.

I had to wait all the way to the end to get Gucci Mane, an artist whose monotone vocal style would seem to lend itself perfectly to mashing up; for some reason I had to endure two contributions from Eric Clapton and about a billion from Jay-Z and M.I.A.; a long roster of predictible 80s radio pop songs bored me; and overall the hour it took to listen to the album was one filled with tension.

Yep, sounds like 2006 trying to mash itself into the next decade. Sorry, 2006. In 2010, remixed hip-hop makes Gucci Mane sound like this: (picks up around 0:53 - just wait)




Unimpressed? - this is the Gucci track from whence that remix spawned:




I mean, I'm not crazy for affirming the first example is superior to the second in every fucking possible way, am I? Come on, GT. This is what people are doing now. Evolve or something.

At least you don't have to pay for it. Download "All Day" for free here.

> > > >

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (WARP195)

Usually this space is reserved for my silly things; however, the only thing > words is, for me, pop music.

Several record releases in my life have truly excited me. I love almost everything - really. Since I was 15 or so I've obsessed over obtaining every new album deemed worthwhile. And all of the worthwhile albums released before me, my existence. Whatever I enjoyed most typically ran analogous to my emotional state of being, whoever I was dating/trying to fuck, my location, more and more contextual data etc.

One begins to sense patterns after so much listening. Divorcing music from yourself, applying some tonal New-Critical lens and analyzing the sounds for themselves.

"There is nothing new under the sun." -Ecclesiastes 1:9

Accepting this as a personal aesthetic maxim, for music, for art, the only segway to originality is (counter-intuitively) bricolage. And not just mash-up-ed, mixed medium bullshit. Really weaving together existing product to create something completely unresembling its prototype. We are lucky to have computers and technology to lubricate this process. Nothing depresses me more than an unapologetically referential folk song released in 2010. Nothing.

Which is why Cosmogramma excites me. Because I don't know what it is, but I know what it could be. What parts of it could be. I want bitches grinding me to "Do the Astral Plane." I want MF Doom spitting rhymes over "Computer Face." I want "And the World Laughs with You" playing at coffeeshops and "Recoiled" to be Autechre's new single. But the thing isn't all disjointed; the cohesion suggests that, yeah, genre is becoming less indicative of physical content.



I wish instead of backlashing against the increasing reliance on internet/biochips/bleeps/beeps/emoticons people would just admit that efficiency in communication is as much of an artistic merit as anything else. A good expression of this is electronic music. The evolution of it is just astounding - the only audible medium really keeping up with the times.



I mean, Thom Yorke is on board. Come on. Radiohead has always succeeded in tapping the currents of the universal subconscious.



Keep workin it baby.

Album drops May 4th. Like cocaine though headphones.

THE ANTIPOEM

An urge to "write" a poem entirely of cliches (qualification: a few connectors here and there). Yeah I threw these idiomatic expressions together in service of the slant rhyme, but can I claim authorship when eighty-thousand teenage girls reiterate these phrases daily. Poetry combats cliches but I ask you to consider THIS: "better the devil you know than the devil you don't." Does "start from scratch" mean nothing to you? What about "better safe than sorry." 


Music vid that follows competes for most radical manifestation of pop-music clichedom. At least in 1979. Actually I just heard it on a beer commercial a couple hours ago. Marked entrance into the cliche: when Miller incorporates you into their latest advertising campaign.



It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
in The Good Old Days - and Good Things Come To Those Who Wait -
a Damsel In Distress Could Care Less
about Labours of Love.

Life Imitates Art.

It Goes Without Saying that
When Fools Fall In Love,
When Push Comes to Shove,
When The Going Gets Tough,
"These Things Happen..."
i'm Calling Your Bluff.

Art Imitates Life.

My Two Cents? or A Penny For Your Thoughts?
Plenty Of Fish In The Sea is a Poor Excuse For
All's Fair In Love And War. Look Before
You Leap. the Calm Before The Storm.
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night.

(A Moment's Respite)

a Baptism Of Fire.
Blood Is Thicker Than Water.
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night.
a Kiss Of Death -
Spring To Life.

Ink and MS Paint

School's Out!!!

Chisel-tip bits and fits of bodies pushing each other
over their climactic verges and surges under towers but

he just wants to plant flowers.



(on speed)
absence. absence.
Fluidity in absence trillion.
plastic drawers and metal power.
chilling. chiseling. spinning the ball and empty the filling.
spilling. yielding. measure out liquid and powder the ceiling.






(nonsense. poem. just like the way words sound today)