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.