Elephant's eye

The title is both reference to the fact that we are in the height of summer, which means growing season here in the midwest and the Elephant Eyelash album Why? released late last fall which I've been fixated on recently. Its a definate departure from his earlier quasi-solo efforts and collaborations like cLOUDDEAD, Greenthink, and Reaching Quiet, but a not too surprising progression given the sound of the Hymie's Basement collaboration or Oakland Asylum album. You hear bits and parts of his old rap cadence here and there, there is a little turntablism, and there's probably some Dr. Samples work, but mostly its an indie rock record complete with singing and a full band sound. And a really good one at that. He's maintained the slanted take on life and song structure that gave his previous work its distinctiveness and added a really strong pop sensibility and slightly more straightforward (and to me more affecting) approach to lyric writitng. Not quite a classic but it wouldn't surprise me if the next one was.

Song: Daniel Striped Tiger
Artist: Tiny Hawks
Album: Fingers Become Bridges
Day: 7/13/06

Song: You've got a right
Artist: Tiny Hawks
Album: Fingers Become Bridges
Day: 7/17/06
I know I've talked about Tiny Hawks before, but there's good reason for it. Their spazz-emo-prog is like all my favorite elements from my favorite bands of the early-mid 90s hardcore bands updated for today. Plus there's this wide-eyed hope and beauty and heart that shines through the furious strumming and tapping (eat your heart out Eddie Van Halen!) and drumming, which is why all that 90s diy noise was worthwhile in the first place. Their music is a restorative. And just plain fun, like "You've got a right" which is a quick riff that they manage to develop and give narrative motion to in just 20 seconds or so.

Song: Friends Are Evil
Artist: Jesu
Album: S/T
Day: 7/20/06
Metal meets shoegaze in an overwhealming and engulfing mass of sound, like being underwater in the ocean as waves pass over. It's similutaneously ego-crushing and narcisistic. You realize you are something tiny in something big, while at the same time the rest of the world is blocked out, so in some sense you are the world, at least for the duration of the album. For the same reasons, the music fits night was well, especially summer nights when you can be outside and be enveloped by the darkness and the warmth. I had never really paid much attention to this song until it happened to be the song that came on my ipod as I was going home this day, but it has some cool parts that make it stand out - a looped almost industrial part at the beginning and a cool coda of a more gentle but feedback-y loop.

Artist: Yellow Swans/D Yellow Swans
Album: Drift Yellow Swans
day: 7/22/06
Yellow Swans or DYellow Swans like to put different D words in front of their name. (Perhaps they are fans of Will Oldam/Bonnie "Prince" Billy/Palace x, perhaps they want to confuse record store clerks.) Sometimes they are just yellow swans. Other times they are Declawed Yellow Swans. Or Duh.... Or Dosed.... or Dyad.... Or... you get the picture. On this CD they are Drift Yellow Swans which is a pretty good description for their sound this time around. If you are not familar with D Yellow Swans, this is noise. Stressed circuits, tape loops, feedback, the whole nine yards. But this doesn't sound like "noise." There is an ambient structure to the sound. The first track even has a clear pattern and some tones. Its still pretty abstract stuff, which makes it different and cool, but there's enough here to ground it that you can listen to it (although I don't recommend driving to it; I've found I kind of space out too much for that) and not just use it as a sonic assault.

Artist: Shogun Kunitoki
album: Tasankokaiku
Song: daniel, but really any and all from this album
Day: 7/23/06
Its rare that something impresses me this much on the first listen (I got this album on this day). Its so rare in fact I'm a little scared of it, that it might be fleeting. Oh well, if it does fade away, might as well enjoy it while it lasts. This is instrumental keyboard and organ based music. It reminds me of the drone-y and patterned based elements of Stereolab but with the space age bachelor pad feel removed and replaced with a swirling, almost psychedelic quality. And perhaps some of the melodramatic grandeur of M83 (with a little less melodrama). And the arpeggios recall Philip Glass some. Like all of these folks, Shogun Kunitoki make experimental music that is accessible, immediate and dramatic. Church music for agnostics.

And did I mention they're Finnish?

Artist: Arthur Russel
album: World of Arthur Russel
Song: Keeping Up
Day: 7/24/06
Man I had a good run at the old record store the other day. In addition to the Shogun Kunitoki album and some Why? EPs I got this collection of Arthur Russel's music. I came to him via Glissandro 70/Polmo Polpo who have name dropped him (and the general excitement over the reissues that have been coming out recently). Tucked in among the left-field disco that I was expecting is this track which is a series of cut and overlapping vocal tracks with a spare cello, guitar and gentle bass drum accompaniement. The vocals are slighty disjointed and disorienting like vocalese chopped up by some glitch dj/producer. Or perhaps I should just say it sounds like The Books, only this is from the mids 80s. There is a delicate, organic quality that makes it irresistable.

Honorable mentions: Buck 65 - Bachelor of Science, Lightning Bolt - Hello Morning

Cadillac Ranch, or We Bury Our Baby Blue Sedans

Quickly for the record:

Day: 7/11/06
Song: We Bury Our Dead Alive
Artist: Yaphet Kotto
Source: We Bury Our Dead Alive
After a quiet, clean intro, a wall of distorted guitars kicks in, not quite at hardcore tempos but with a more interesting rhythm. The vocals are somewhere between a roar and a scream, like the dude is about to burst. The whole thing gets transformed into something beautiful and empowering, but no less urgent, with the introduction of a high guitar line that seems to skip above the fray, like wire-based kung fu movie stunt. Simply DIY punk/emo/hardcore at its best. An amazing emotionally charged, politically influenced song about conscience and the duties and hopes thereof.

Day: 7/13/06
Song: Baby Blue Sedan
Artist: Modest Mouse
Source: Building Nothing out of Something
At least once a year this song will pop intself into my head. Usually in the summer because that's when I listened to this album the first time around.

Isaac Brock has a good ear for clever lyrical twists. The most obvious one here is the "I miss you when your around/I never miss you when I'm by myself" inversion, but I've always been a bigger fan of "henry you dance like a woodfooted indian" myself. The way he sings it, it sounds like an old couple teasing each other (perhaps thats due to the derth of Henrys these days) although perhaps I just hold on to that as a corrective to the feeling isolation and ennui of the rest of the song.

Minding the Gaps

Catching up here and there

The song I mentioned that crushed me (this is a good thing by the way) is by Cloud Cult. I am not sure the name of the song, but I'm working on it.

Day: 7/6/06
Song: Vocal Test
Artist: Integrity
Source: Humanity is the Devil
I go back and forth between an almost naive optimism about the human condition and extreme misanthropy. This day, after witnessing new levels of pettiness, passive aggression and agressive agression in a local movie house of all places, I swung to the latter. Appropriately enough I had a copy of Integrity's Humanity is the Devil in the car with me to blast on my way home.

As you can guess from the title, Cleveland's finest weren't very satisified with the whole homo sapiens thing (there's even a little booklet/treatise included in early versions of the record about how the Judeo-Christian god has given up on its creations, handing over their care to the demons who are now 90% of the population trying to tempt and damn the remaining 10) and this revulsion comes through in their mix of hardcore, metal, and mosh. This track is just what it says it is, a wordless string of vocal screams over heavy, loud, heavy, riffs to make sure they can be heard. (Kind of like if instead of saying "check, check, check" while setting up, bands played slayer.) Since its not trying to be a "song" it has a direct, expressionist kind of punch. Music for the end times.

Day: 6/23/06
Song: please come home to hamngatan
Artist: the Mountain Goats
Source: Ghana
After they ended the US's hopes at making it out of pool play, I felt I should pay tribute to the Black Stars, by ...errr... listening to indie acoustic rock. But the name of the collection is Ghana! That counts for something right?

Anyway this song is one of my favorites in the tMG cannon, a simple idea excecuted with great skill. Like many of their highlights, this song captures a mindset and situation so vividly, its like meeting someone at a party whose on the verge of falling apart and then having them unload on you. Only its far more pleasant because you're not really at a party, you're at home listening to a record, and there's a pleasant tune that accompanies the whole thing. Also there's something about the mention of "moose" at the very end that sends this one over the top.

Day: 7/7/06
Song: Christmas Isn't Christmas
Artist: Meneguar
Source: I was Born At Night
Meneguar's combination of influences (Braid, Jawbox, Jawbreaker and other 90s bands that straddled the indierock/punk/hardcore divide) are a perfect combination for summer biking, which is what I was doing this evening. Energetic, insistant and defiant, yet still fun and catchy.

pleasant myth that makes my life worthwhile

Song: Progress
Artist: Mission of Burma
Source: VS (bonus tracks)
Day: 7/10/06

Classic Burma: Its driving and catchy, while at the same time the song always eludes my ability to hear/process it all at once. There's a level of jangly noise here that makes the tunefulness of the song all the more interesting and special and the impassioned vocals clinch it for me everytime.

Rua?

rua?

Sorry its been a while. While I've been away:

• I've caught parts of the End Times Festival II, but that isn't the kind of stuff that I take with me. It more envelopes and/or throttles me while I am there. It's like a happening, Daddy-O.


• I've been continually charmed by Think About Life's and Parts and Labor's rediscovery of the keyboards ability to be both a source of sonic abrasion *and* impossibly catchy melody. I talked about Parts and Labor a while ago. Maybe I'll post about Think About Life in more detail. Until I do, my quick take: imagine the gauzy, lofi keyboard wall of sound of Suicide put into the service of mid/late 90s indie rock. With a few Philip Glass and hip hop digressions thrown in for good measure. A little uneven but when it clicks, they're awesome.


• I've been crushed by a song I do not know the title or artist of


• If you liked the VSS (ex- angel hair, they have the distinction of a)being influenced by english post-punk way, way, way before it was cool b) releasing one of the most harrowing albums I own), the new Year Future album is really good. Perhaps this is what the loathsome thrill of the Sex Pistols was like before everyone realized it was just rock 'n roll and they got cannonized


• Warhammer 48K


• gone traveling, which always throws me off

Anyway back to our regularly scheduled programming. If I remember more, I'll let you know

Day: 7/5/06
Song: Portuguese Rua Rua
Artist: Glissandro 70
Source: S/T
A few years back when I was buying nearly everything that came out on Constellation Records, I stumbled across this awesome little album by this band called Polmo Polpo. It was a collection of drones and desert rock loops that built themselves up into beautiful and occasionally jaunty ambient compositions. The main force behind that, Sandro Perri is back on this collaboration with Craig Dunsmuir.

The result is a bit more dancy than polmo polpo and a bit poly-everything (rhythmic, melodic, tylistic), with a nice understatedness to it. I am not sure I know all the touchstones here (they quote Juan Atkins/Model 500's No UFOs, but all I know about that is its status as a Detroit Techno classic, and Arthur Russell is mentioned in the Constellation write-up) so I'll just say if you can imagine tortoise-style post rock with a techno approach to pacing and build and had it move its hips a little you wouldn't be far off. Or if you could imagine a mashup of Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and mid-era talking heads in their layered, poly, world music mode you wouldn't be that far off either. Layers of guitar and chants come and go, sometimes building, sometimes as counterpoint. Fun, mellow, exhilarating.