Saturday, May 17, 2008

A Haunting Wave of Slow Burning Love

So I paid my respects at MOCA and LACMA to Rauschenberg....we are fortunate that some fantastic pieces are here in the City of Angels at this very moment. So this post is about the music I seem to have been getting a lot of mileage out of lately.

Portishead -- 3rd -- So I managed to obtain this a couple months in advance and forced some of my friends to listen to its brilliance. Specifically the last 30 seconds of the 8th track ("Machine Gun"). The Blade Runner-esque Vangelis style synthesizers lay waste to my soul every time. A haunting wave of slow-burning love from beginning to end.

No Age -- Nouns -- I missed their free show at the library with Mika Miko....shameful, really, I walk to it every other day. An increase in accessibility from Weirdo Rippers, but their representin' LA and local music haunt The Smell while they're blowing up. Good shit, though it all kinds of blends together sometimes.

The Smell -- Sometimes its lame, sometimes its cool, sometimes it destroys the fucking universe (Monotonix, anyone?). Best locals I've seen so far was Her Girl Friday, and they already broke up. Its down the street, its arty, noisy rock, its five dollars every time. Word.

Monotonix -- Power trio from Israel. Showed up on a Tuesday night at the Smell and went super-fucking-nova. Last number had me and some of the other audience members holding the bass drum over our heads with the drummer IN IT continuing to pound the song out. Best. Live. Show. Ever. 5 bucks. CD's ok.

Magazine -- Late 70's British band. They are to the Buzzcocks what PiL is to the Sex Pistols. Sort of. First track on Real Life I cannot get sick of. Nor the last track of Second Hand Daylight. Who hasn't been looking for a song that has a chorus of "I will drug you and fuck you?"

Captain Beefheart -- Don't get into Beefheart unless you're prepared to realize that Tom Waits is overrated. Cuz this is who Waits' been doing a watered-down imitation of for the past 30 years. This dude was too weird for Zappa, apparently. I dig it. Trout Mask Replica. Lick My Decals Off, Baby. Bat Chain Puller. Yeah.

Crystal Castles -- Their full length is out, and its good. I play it during the Photoshop class I teach.

McAllistar's Hostile Makeover -- This is radio show on KXLU on Thursday mornings that I roll with during Photoshop class. Her play list is from some other amazing planet, and KXLU in general is a great LA station for discovering new music

Marnie Stern -- Imagine if Lighting Bolt and Sleater-Kinney somehow all had a baby together and it learned to finger-tap on guitar Eddie Van Halen style, but was all avant-garde and arty. Marnie Stern's full length, In Advance of the Broken Arm will show you what that sounds like. New album is on the way, apparently.

Pandora radio -- It works too well, sometimes. I can't get anything done when its on, because I keep hearing new stuff I want to know more about. I've started a list that will break my budget if I walk into Amobea records with it. "Excuse me, do you have any Melk the G6-49?"

The Dismemberment Plan -- Anther broke up band I've discovered. Emergency & I from '99 is one the closest things I've found that sounds like Karate, one of my all time other broke-up favorites.

Maybe I'll talk about movies next............

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