HEALTH::Disco2

It’s been 42 days since it’s release and I’ve only just realised that I’d missed the boat (once again) on what, for me, is the most anticipated album of the year. It’s now been 43 days and I’ve had the chance to give HEALTH’s HEALTH::Disco 2 a proper listen.

First impressions: Fudging hell.

HEALTH have managed to do it again. They have this whole band lark completely sussed, and in three simple steps.

Step 1: Release an album that’s so messy and unconventional, yet so planned and so painstakingly orchestrated that the music world can’t help but take notice.

Step 2: Gather all your super-cool-up-and-coming-producer friends and get them to remix the album.

Step 3: Repeat.

Simple, eh? Well definitely. That is if you’re friends with genre defining bands and producers like Crystal Castles, who were virtually unknown before they remixed your song. Ok, so maybe it’s not as simple as I made out, but what has really helped HEALTH is the fact that they have maintained relations with the bands that were responsible for the truly amazing HEALTH//DISCO (Lets face it, anything with Crystal Castles on it is going to sell, particularly after the masterpiece that was (II)). Alongside remixes from a lot of new faces (Small Black, Salem, Tobacco, Javelin to name just a few), who promise to be the next Pictureplane, CFCF, and (if they’re lucky) Crystal Castles, this album looks set to follow in the footsteps of it’s predecessor; unique, innovative and essential.

HEALTH::Disco2 opens with a new song; USA Boys, which, pretty much goes against the whole purpose of a remix album. Having said this, USA Boys works. It’s reminiscent of Glitter Pills off HEALTH’s first album, with its glitch-hop beat and overly distorted synths, a recurring theme of HEALTH::Disco2.

USA Boys is followed by a CFCF remix of Before Tigers and guess what. It’s 80s a fuck. No surprise there then.

Come to think of it, there’s very little surprising about this album; we all knew it was going to be good, we all knew it would feature the likes of CFCF and Pictureplane and we all knew it would be pretty genre busting. The only real surprise is how much darker this album is compared to HEALTH//DISCO.

While HEALTH//DISCO had more 80s synths, bleeps and glitches than the Thompson Twins making sweet, sweet love to a Sega Master System, HEALTH::Disco2 begins with shoegazey, dream poppy, glitch-hop, but evolves into something much, much darker, with Crystal Castles’ remix of Eat Flesh acting as a catalyst, resulting in the second half feeling like a big grey cloud of glitchy, danceable goodness. Perhaps the only exception to this much darker half comes in the form of Pictureplanes remix of Die Slow, which pretty much conforms to the experimental, tropical house that you’d expect from Pictureplane. HEALTH::Disco2 ends on Blindoldfreak’s beautifully epic remix of Before Tigers, which is a truly amazing end to the album.

Overall, there’s not much you can fault this album for. It has everything that you’d expect from a HEALTH remix album, alongside a few little surprises. It lives up to the hype and expectation, but only just falls short of topping its older sibling. I seriously recommend downloading this album, and if you don’t already own HEALTH//DISCO, then get on that too.

Feeling.

This song has induced the weirdest feeling. A feeling I’ve not felt since the first time I heard Motion Picture Soundtrack. I don’t know if it’s a good feeling or a bad feeling. It’s the feeling of a knot in my stomach, but it’s so happy at the same time. I can’t even explain it without sounding like an emotion moron that needs to man the fuck up. It’s like something truly awful has happened yet for good reasons. Like the biggest greyest cloud with the biggest silver lining in the world. I hope you understand what I mean by this.

Peace out dood and doodettes x

Yoni Wolf…

… is an absolute genius.

One of my favourite lyricists covering a song by one of my favourite bands. It’s quite a coincidence how I found this video. It’s not very interesting but I’ll bore you with all the painful details because it’s not very often I write a blog post and this is my second one of the day.

Basically I made a massive Pavement playlist for my friend who’d never heard of them before. This is crazy, because everyone should know Pavement and these days everyone does know Pavement. NME, yes, NME even did a CD called Gold Soundz a few months back (I’d like to point out that I only know this because my mother still thinks that NME is a valid source of ‘new music’ and insists on buying it every week. I’m too cool for NME these days. I read Pitchfork and look moody in pictures on nights because I’m so arty and that trololololooo).

Anyway, back to this really pointless story (I did say I’d bore you with all the painful details), the next day, i.e. today, I was having a little debate with a different friend about Why? and which was a better song out of The Hollows and Fatalist Palmistry. Obviously Fatalist Palmistry wins.

Skip forward like an hour and I’m back on my Pavement playlist on Youtube listening to Shoot The Singer (1 sick verse), when I notice in the related videos that Yoni Wolf (the singer of Why?) had covered it.

Wow, that was a massive fucking anti climax, I just couldn’t resist another blog post that mentions how fucking awesome Pavement are. Jeez I need to stop saying ‘fucking’ in my blogs. Or else the blog police will be on my back.

Anyway, to conclude, Yoni Wolf is an absolute genius.

Peace out dooooods x

*EDIT*

I thought I’d explain why I prefer Fatalist Palmistry to The Hollows.

As much as I love The Hollows, Fatalist Palmistry reminds me of a really specific time in life. It was the first song I played when I left home. I had just moved into my university halls of residence and my Mother had just left. I put this song on, lit a cigarette, laid on my bed and cried. I’ve never been so scared, happy, excited and sad. It’s pretty lame but it’s just one of those songs that’s always going to stick with me. I love it.

Dad there’s a little phrase called too much information…

I have little to say. I’m too tired. I have no energy. But on the plus side, I’ve discovered three bands/artists that I really, really like. I’m definitely going to look into these three in more depth and then maybe I’ll be able to write something a lot more worthwhile.

Out Hud.

Joe And Will Ask?

Joanna Newsom

I saved the best ’til last. I literally cannot get enough of this song. Beautiful.

“look at something you see everyday and notice something you haven’t”…

…Is definitely the way life should be lived. I’d never heard that saying before today, but it’s definitely something I’m going to try and do.

It’s been far too long since I’ve written anything and I completely gave up on the epic task of trying to sum up a whole academic year through the medium of album reviews. I’ve been mega busy doing literally nothing over the last month, but still not had time to fit in a blog post. Writing this, I’ve kind of realised that the reason for not writing a blog post is the fact that I’ve not anything to write about.

Musically, it’s all about House for me right now. I can’t get enough of it. Fidgety House, Minimal House, Tech House, Tribal House, I love it all. Having said this, I recently discovered a band called Cymbals Eat Guitars. “Fuck me you’ve missed the boat on them” I hear you say. Well this is partially correct. I’ve had their album on my laptop for months, but I never really got into them until I heard this song:

I just love how happy it is. I love the cheery up beat melodies and clean neat guitars juxtaposed against Pavement-esque sloppy, seemingly ramdom note hitting with way too much distortion. In other words, this song has reminded me that there is a lot more to music than House.

Back to House (although more “electro/techno/disco”) music, I’m currently promoting/being general bitch for this wonderfully amazing night in Sheffield called Club Pony. If you’ve never been you need to go. I’m not saying this because I’m being paid for it and I’m not saying it because it’s going to get me 10 Pony Points (ok, partially for the Pony Points), I’m saying this because I genuinely love this night. The music, the ethos and the fucking cheap Jager.

Peace out Dood and Doodettes! x

Year 2

I finished my second year of university the Friday before last and I’ve spent the last week trying to thing of some worthwhile way of summing it up.  It’s been an odd year; I don’t really know if it’s been the best year or the worst year of my life. Academically it’s been one of the worst, and socially it’s been one of the best. I guess that’s the best way of putting it.

I’ve learnt that I shouldn’t have gone straight to university, however, I only learnt that by going to university, so I don’t regret it for one second. If I’d not have gone straight to university, I can guarantee I would be working fulltime in Wilko’s on Vicar Lane, or maybe one of the other great retail opportunities Chesterfield has to offer (Have you seen the poundland they just opened?). The only upside to this that I can think of is not being in the dire financial situation I currently find myself in.

I really enjoyed writing the Desert Island Discs blog, so I’ve decided that the best way to sum up this academic year is in terms of albums. This post is going to be a log of all the albums that have defined my year, that have defined my seemingly ever-evolving taste in music and that have generally been played to death over the last ten months.

September: Valerie and Friends – Various Artists

Before I heard Valerie and Friends, it was all about electro, and very little else. This album is definitely the reason why I got into French House and thus the catalyst for all the ‘Sick French House’ jokes that I became the butt of.

Everything about this album is so unbelievably cool. The artwork, produced by The Zonders, perfectly sums up the album: 80s as fuck – but in a ‘I’m going to drive my Ferrari Testarossa along the beach on the way to pick up my pastel suit from the drycleaner’s kind of way. Which, let’s be honest, is a lot cooler than the ‘I’m going to drive my Renault 5 along this field to work, oh no, she closed the mines and now poor little Joel is going to have live of bread and dripping.’ that we had in Britain.

October: HEALTH//DISCO – HEALTH

There was quite a natural transition from Valerie and Friends to HEALTH//DISCO, mainly due to CFCF’s remix of Triceratops, which sounds like ABC having a naughty dream about a Casiotone making love to a NES. This album had been around for a good few years, but I’d completely forgotten about it, despite being a fairly big fan of HEALTH. I don’t know what reminded me about this album or what lead me to download it, but it was one of the best things I’ve done this year.

HEALTH//DISCO opens with Acid Girls’ ‘Remix A’ of Triceratops, which at first sounds like the laziest remix since Skream’s version of In For The Kill. However, just when you’re about to skip track, it turns, and you’re bombarded with glitchy, fidgety, noise. The album rarely strays away from this formula of pretty sparse sounding intros, which evolve into manic assaults on the eardrums, but this is a formula that works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

This is when things get a bit tricky. I can’t really think of a stand out album for November (or December, January and February for that matter), as this is when I pretty much stopped downloaded albums and started listening to nothing but Dubstep on Youtube. Being an absolute genius, I’ve realised that I can sort albums by date added on iTunes. So from this, I’ve worked out what my album for November is… (drum roll please)

November: Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? – Of Montreal

This seems like quite an odd choice for an album considering this was the time I stopped casually listening to Dubstep and started to become obsessed with it. However, looking back, I was pretty obsessed with this album too (like 477 plays across the whole album). The first track off Hissing Fauna that I heard (excluding the 10 seconds of Gronlandic Edit that I had heard on Girl Talk’s Feed the Animals) was the almost hypnotically repetitive The Past is a Grotesque Animal and this is definitely my favourite. Although, I’m not too big on this album anymore, which is definitely due to overplaying it, I would still say this album is genius. Hissing Fauna somehow manages to sound suspiciously like Bowie, The Bealtes and The Cure all at once, whilst still sounding distinctly like Of Montreal.

This album reminds me of me when my week consisted of staying at Bito’s house for about 4 nights in a row, then going home for the next three. As much fun as it was at the time, I’ve realised that I was just wasting life on weed. I stopped going out and I started to miss lecturers. I know I’m not the best at life, but I think this was when I was at my worst.

December: The Lay Of The Land; The Turn Of The Tide – OX.EALGE.LION.MAN

Despite being a fan their front man’s former band, Les Incompetents, I’d first heard OX.EAGLE.LION.MAN when I saw them support Lightspeed Champion in 2007. Back then OX.EAGLE.LION.MAN had no album, just Motherhood/Fatherhood and few really bad recordings on their Myspace and within a few months I’d completely forgotten about them. Somewhere between 2007 and December 2009, they’d released The Lay Of The Land; The Turn Of The Tide, an album that I’d stumbled upon when searching Spotify after finding a mix tape I’d made for my Mother, which contained the song The Drowned And The Saved. I can’t really describe this album as anything other than bleak, in the best possible sense of the word. It’s melodic yet dark, progressive, eerie and musically wonderful. I think of big black clouds when I think of this album, but again, in the best way possible.

Insufficient funds

I have a fiver in my pocket and about £3.00 in tens and twenties on my shelf. It’s got to the point where I’m waiting for my birthday cheques to clear so I can afford the train home for the summer.

Those of you who avidly read B20xS40 (Turan Hall?) will recall that I said I’d be doing weekly Spotify playlists; well that idea went to shit way before my hiatus-inducing-hissy-fit.

So now I’ve decided to get back on the playlists. Originally I said that I’d have a theme for every playlist, but I really couldn’t think of anything worthwhile so I’ve just decided to make this a playlist of what I’m really into at the moment.

I guess it’s quite a coincidence that I’m absolutely skint and I’ve been bumming the fuck out of Eddy Current Suppression Ring of late. It’s as if Insufficient Funds was made to be the opener for this playlist.

Playlist: B20xS40.2 – Insufficient Funds

Tracklist for those without Spotify:

1. Eddy Current Suppression Ring – Insufficient Funds
2. The Third Bardo – Five Years Ahead Of My Time
3. The Seeds – Pushin’ Too Hard
4 . Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Butt-House Blondies
5. Memory Cassette – Surfin’
6. Washed Out – Feel It All Around
7. CFCF – Raining Patterns

Somehow I’ve managed to get from Australian Garage to French(-Canadian) House via 60s Psychedelia in 7 songs, but I think/hope it works.

—————————–

In other news, I’ve recently found out that Echo and the Bunnymen are playing Tramlines festival this year. This means, that with their Benicassim appearance, I’ll being seeing them twice this summer.

Just when I thought that things couldn’t get any better, I’m informed that Crystal Castles and HEALTH are touring.

I saw HEALTH a while back, but I was ill so it kind of put a downer on the whole thing. I was so gutted and kind of regretted not getting involved; I spent the gig stood there tapping my foot as if it was your typical mundane local band. But no, it was HEALTH. HEALTH. As you can imagine, I’m pretty fucking happy that I’m going to see them again, especially as they rarely play outside the US.

On a slightly unrelated note, how good is Crystal Castles’ new album? Very.

Peace out x

Catalyst

I’ve not written a blog post in well over a month and this upsets me greatly.

This blog was my life; I used to plug the shit out of it on every social network under the sun and sit staring contently at my stats as they gradually grew until the wee hours of the morning.

As far as I can see, there are two main reasons for my lack of blog posts. Firstly, I’ve had assignments coming out of my arse, not that I’ve been doing them. I guess the other reason, which is partly due to the first, is that it’s been one of those months where music hasn’t been my focus in life.

This mini hiatus from blogging began on a massive rant about the commercialness of certain types of music and it’s ended on the realisation that it doesn’t even matter.

Music, first and foremost, is made for enjoying, not for liking until something slightly more underground comes along. I still maintain that the Music Industry is fucked, but who cares, it’s too late for anyone to do anything about it and one post on a media student’s blog is definitely not going to do anything to fix it.

What made me come to this conclusion is really quite pathetic and slightly laughable but I’ll share it with you anyway.

I recommended Uffie to my girlfriend and she really liked her. A matter of days later I’d heard Uffie’s latest single, which sounds remarkably like anything by Ke$ha. I had decided that Uffie is definitely the worst thing to come out of Ed Banger, no, the universe and then pretty much laughed in my girlfriend’s face for liking her. At the end of the day, music, just like any art form, is going to generate a lot of different opinions and reactions. Who am I to laugh at someone because they like a certain band or artist, especially when I liked them (a lot) in the past?

The last two days have been good days for me musically. Yesterday was the first day in weeks, maybe even months, where I sat down and trawled through Pitchfork, Hype Machine and Last.fm (add me) for new music. The results were pretty fruitful if I’m honest; Tame Impala’s album is pretty good but the stand out download from yesterday’s music hunt has to be Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti’s album Before Today.

Today I was recommended to listen to a band called Washed Out, who are actually amazing. Download their EP.

—————————–

Right now I feel more motivated than I have in a long time and that’s pretty much down to three people (one being myself; the others knows who they are). I feel I’ve become complacent in life and that I’m selling myself short. The quality of blogs will get better, just see this post as a catalyst; a fresh start even.

Slow Century.

Whilst watching Slow Century, a documentary following the popular lo-fi act, Pavement, I realised a couple of things.

Now maybe I’m not looking hard enough or in the right places, but these days they don’t make scenes like they used to. It seems to me that with the current state of the Music Industry, any artist that has any success gets snapped up by a major who then forces them to change their musical style to make the label money, rather than let the artist make music that satisfies them artistically. Because of this, scenes don’t stay as scenes for very long – they become just another product.

*RANT ALERT*

A prime example of this is Kings Of Leon. A band that, I would go as far as to say that I loved. The first album was brilliant. The follow up was equally good. The third album, Because Of The Times, was, in my opinion, their best. They had matured and got darker, whilst still remaining true to their Southern American (Arkansas not Argentina) and garage rock influences. Then came along Only By The Night and Kings Of Leon’s transformation into the very definition of what I hate. A crowd pleasing rock band that made whiney songs with no substance and the style of every other all saints wearing boy band.

Now I don’t know the ins and outs of this transformation and maybe it’s because I’ve got my anti-capitalist hat on, but I can pretty much guarantee that Sony saw a band with a large following and a nice back catalogue and transformed them into what they are today – An artist that has sold over 930,000 copies with one (s)hit single that shall go unnamed (according to the valid and reliable source that is wikipedia). I can also guarantee (well maybe not, but as a budding journalist, I need practice in making obscene sweeping statements that I can’t back up) that the Kings Of Leon of old would turn in it grave if it knew what it had become.

*RANT OVER*

Before this post becomes more of a rant and less of an observation, I’m going to get back to my original point. I think that Pavement have the perfect balance between mainstream success and artistic credibility. They have a huge following and seem to have more fan boys than any other band of their type, yet they have enjoyed no real mainstream success and thus no influence over music style from a major label. It seems to me that they are one of the last great bands to manage the almost impossible feat of retaining artistic integrity whilst maintaining a large, mainstream audience.

In the Documentary, there is a clip from an interview with Pavement where they are asked if they would change rock music. I don’t think they have changed rock music, but they have definitely achieved what every band strives to do and (to some degree) beat the system.

The second, and much less serious, thing that I realised when watching Slow Century, is just how many talented musicians cross paths throughout life. The timing and acts that bought several extremely talented people together to form Pavement is one thing, but when you find out that Stephen Malkmus (lead singer of Pavement) worked with James McNew (of Yo La Tengo) at college, it makes you wonder if these talents are somehow drawn to each other. Or is it just that the Stephen Malkmus’ of the world inspire people like James McNew (or vice versa) to go on and push their talents to the limit?

Coincidence is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

EDIT:

I believe that I may come across as a pretentious little “indie” fan boy who hates anything that’s commercial. This may be only partly true, but I’d like to take this opportunity to explain the this blog in better terms.

I like what I like regardless of how commercial it is.What annoys me is how record labels exploit bands and basically cut off their funding (and therefore livelihood) if they don’t think they’re going to make them any money.

Fair enough, the record label CEOs have to fund their livelihoods and the livelihoods of the all the staff. But what really gets to me is how much pressure is put on artists to make music that sells at the expense of the artists own musical direction and therefore satisfaction.

To me, music is an art form, and like all other art forms, it is no longer art when you’re not expressing yourself what you truly believe in.

It’s not so much the bands I dislike (who can blame them for selling out if it means they can live a comfortable life), it’s the state of the Music Industry as a whole that really gets to me.

Basically capitalism has fucked the world.

A good day.

After staying up ’til sparrows fart to get my research done on Monday night, I half expected to wake up about 1.00pm, miss my lecture (thus making the previous nights work pointless) and spend another day selling drugs out of an ice cream van and trying to evade the army on Vice City.

However, Tuesday (9th Feb) morning came and I was awake by 8.30am, I got to my lecture and even better, the weather was fucking glorious.

However, on the way to town to get a coffee with Dan, somewhere between Perry Barr-bados and New Street Station the weather got fucking grim.

This blog isn’t Alex Pegg’s analysis of the weather in Birmingham, so I’ll hurry the fuck up and get to the point.

We went to see a documentary in the Electric Cinema called Exit Through The Gift Shop which is directed by street artist Banksy. Now, I’m not Banksy‘s biggest fan, but don’t get me wrong, I’ve always appreciated his work and more particularly the ethos behind it. I’ve always defended his work as an art form, but I would never call myself a fan.

Banksy’s Kissing Policemen

I went into the cinema wondering how a Banksy movie would justify taking £6.50 of my hard-earned student loan, but I was pleasantly surprised. The film is less about Banksy and more about a French madman/pretender/director/camera man/street artist called Thierry Guetta or Mr. Brainwash as he is more affectionately known.

Exit Through The Gift Shop begins with the story of a nutter who films every minute of his life, from taking a piss, to stalking his street artist cousin Space Invader, and ends with his transformation into a successful artist, via his many escapades with the likes of Shepard Fairey and Banksy himself.

Shepard Fairey’s Barack Obama poster

I don’t want to give too much away about the documentary, but (yes, that ‘but’ denotes that indeed, I will) you see Guetta grow from (for want of a better analogy) a man with the characteristics of an autistic bull in the world’s biggest china shop with no purpose or direction, into an autistic bull in the world’s biggest china shop with far too much purpose and direction. The result: A massively successful, overly elaborate art exhibition featuring hundreds of pieces that “looks a little bit like everything else”.

All in all, Exit Through The Gift Shop was well worth £6.50 of my hard-earned student loan. In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s the best documentary I’ve seen since The Future Is Unwritten.

Yesterday (or technically yester-yesterday) was a good day. Peace x