The Details: Charlotte Gainsbourg, IRM (Because Music, 2009)
A Quick Review: For some reason, we assumed this album would sound like a bunch of breathing exercises—a lot of cooing and come-ons, caught in a narcotic haze like Gainsbourg’s last LP, 5:55. Instead, Beck gives songs like “Trick Pony,” “Greenwich Mean Time” and “Heaven Can Wait” a nice kick in the pants. And if you prefer Gainsbourg playing hard to get, there’s still some of that as well.
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If you checked out last week’s Long Player of the Day post about Sebastian Meissner’s Klimek project, then you know the guy’s a master of ambient music. What you might not realize, however, is the extent of his punk/metal/extreme music collection. The producer will close the gap between these two very different worlds next Thursday at Lincoln Center, as part of a special Unsound Festival performance. The “Solid State Transmitters” collaboration with Kwartludium focuses on SST’s legendary DIY-or-die catalog, reinterpreting their records “in a surprising, often strikingly beautiful manner, to reveal the persisting uniqueness and relevance of this era.”
You know what’s not strikingly beautiful? The exclusive “We Don’t Need Your Freedom” mix Meissner sent us to get you ready for his set next week. It’s the closest you’re gonna get to a lovingly made mixtape from a dude with a denim jacket and lots of back patches, and it’s presented alongside a guide to Meissner’s favorite SST records. Enjoy. Just don’t blame us if you feel compelled to punch the person next to you.
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Madlib auditioning for 'The Birds III'
We sift the ‘net for today’s top stories so you don’t have to…
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[Photo by Beth Dixson]
You may remember Cubic Zirconia from their support slot set at our OSCILLATIONS party last spring, the one with the Glimmers and the dude who helped craft the greatest dance single of our time. In the months since, they’ve been slaving away at a string of proper releases. First up: a club-ready trio of digital 12s, starting with next Tuesday’s Josephine EP. The speaker-imploding single and its four raucous remixes are broke down into a minimix here.
As for the group’s debut album, it’s set to drop this summer, with guest appearances from Drop the Lime, Bilal, Dam-Funk and—if he sends his verses in sometime soon—Cage. The self-produced affair was tracked in L.A. over the course of three weeks and features more of a live, full-on band sound than Cubic Zirconia’s past releases. It’s also kinda genre-less, so we asked multi-instrumentalist/producer Nick Hook to give us a hint of where his head’s at with one of our exclusive Needle Exchange mixes. If you dig what he’s dropping and live in the NYC area, be sure to catch Cubic Zirconia at their Josephine release party tomorrow night. Get there in time for Cage, though. That man is out of his mind in the best way.
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We get a lot of crap CDs at the self-titled offices. But once in a while, a pleasant surprise slips into our promo stack. Here’s a recent delivery that knocked the s/t staff on its collective ass.
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The Song In a Couple Sentences: Since Magnetic Fields came out with a folk-infused full-length (Realism) this week—a week that also introduced the first new Lali Puna LP in five years—we thought we’d share the A-side of John Yoko’s sole 7-inch single. Who is John Yoko? Why, it’s the couple at the core of Lali Puna, singer Valerie Trebeljahr and the Notwist’s Markus Acher. Here, they take on a one-night-only alias, draping the Magnetic Fields (“Papa Was a Rodeo”) and Smog (“Morning Paper”) in steam-pressed drum machines and sputtering EFX. Snag the B-side here.
See Also:
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[Photo by Ari-Pekka Auvinen]
Every time self-titled stares down a deadline, we ban our managing editor’s extensive power ballad collection and play nothing but drone tones and subterranean techno. Not because we’re trying to be contrarian or ‘cool’; because everything else is just noise, a distraction from what needs to be done.
One office regular is Sasu Ripatti, arguably the greatest shape-shifting producer of the past decade. Name a mood and Ripatti’s got an alias to match it, whether you’re feeling melancholic and manic (Vladislav Delay), club-ready and contemplative (Luomo), or feverish and a bit freaked out (The Moritz von Oswald Trio). That last project gets its U.S. premiere at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Saturday, February 6, as part of New York’s first-ever Unsound Festival. Tickets are available here. Ripatti will also roll out his popular Vladislav Delay guise on opening night (next Thursday, February 4), as he performs a free-flowing A/V set with Lillevan at Lincoln Center. Details for that free event are here.
In the meantime, we got Ripatti to run through most of his records (19 in fact!), from the first Vladislav Delay EP (1997’s The Kind of Blue) to the his least favorite Luomo LP. The Finnish artist even drops a couple hints as to what comes next.
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Battles @ Terminal 5
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This SALEM probably won't be interviewed by BUTT magazine anytime soon.
So we just got a press release about the seventh studio album of SALEM, an Israeli band that’s been delivering politically-charged death metal since 1985. Which brings us to a simple question: is the lower case version of Salem aware that they’re two decades late in discovering that name? And if so, aren’t they a little worried about pissing off a bunch of dudes who are about to deliver “The Mark of the Beast” in three parts, two of which feature former At the Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg?
We certainly would be, especially after seeing the following record sleeve and SALEM’s trio of truly controversial video clips. You know what’s not that controversial, though? A Bob Marley cover.
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We’ve always been a fan of library music, the genre-jumping LPs that were used to score commercials, films and television shows throughout the ’60s and ’70s. On one level, their strictly-analog ’songs’ develop like a fever dream, a prismatic collage of classical, pop, jazz, country, and early dance/electronic music. The visual and sonic sides of Stereolab owe a lot to library records for this reason. As for the album’s actual sleeves, we can’t think of another musical era that’s as wallpaper-ready as this one. So much so that we’re going to post a separate gallery of our favorite library covers later today.
For now, here’s a beginner’s guide by Michael Kaufmann, the Asthmatic Kitty A&R rep who spearheaded the label’s own Library Catalog Music series late last year. Among the six volumes of ready-made records are a rather bizarre collaboration between Sufjan Stevens and his father Lowell Brams (Music For Insomnia) and a sample-savvy set from Roberto Carlos Lange of Helado Negro and Savath & Savalas (Music For Memory). Some select cuts from those two releases—and the rest of Asthmatic Kitty’s Library Catalog run—are available at the bottom of this post.
Now take it away, Michael…
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