Sun God 2014: Fuck you Diplo

Diplo headlined UCSD's annual Sun God festival this year.  I don't blame the event staff, but he did a terrible job.

You know a DJ is in trouble when his intro bumper is the best part of his set.

When he got on stage, 'DIPLO' lit up in 20 foot letters on the three screens behind him as a computer voice chanted his name.  The drums were building, and the BPM was growing.  Then came a single promising drop.

 What followed this 'banger' intro, was crap.  Diplo couldn't play a single full track; he kept switching tracks every minute---never played anything through--no real drops, no real commitment to any song.  It was ADD music--an endless introduction that never took you anywhere, more an exercise in mixing (Diplo showing off) than anything else.  He could only hold the crowd for seconds at a time, but it didn't seem to bother him.  Fuck you Diplo.

A friend of mine took this picture.  Fuck you Diplo

Luckily the event staff dropped a ton of inflatable blow-up balls onto the crowds.  This made the set more enjoyable, since it was temporarily no longer about the music.  I still left early.

The problem with Diplo was that he was acting like a superstar, and not performing like one.  I prefer my DJ's humble--and I believe all musicians should put their music first.  Diplo, with his good looks and vapid stage performance seemed to enjoy the ego-jerk more than anything else.  His music did nothing for me.  He was on race to mix as many banger, big name tracks as he could in that short hour--playing each track just long enough for recognition, before moving on.  It was hollow, forced, and didn't spark the [eager] crowd.  I hate dumping hate, but it was just so unsatisfying--like eating a Safeway cake, or reading a free newspaper--that I can't help it.

-----

ASCE should invite an intelligent, no-nonsense DJ like Machinedrum to headline next year.  Machinedrum delivers.  He's amazing live.

Weightless

Scientists in the UK did scientific tests, and concluded that this song is the most relaxing song ever made--so good, in fact, that even Enya can't touch it.  It's a song so powerful, that it lowers brain activity, cuts anxiety, slows your heart-rate, and is even effective at inducing sleep.

Clocking in at a glacial 60bpm, "Weightless" by Marconi Union, is a song that was engineered with sound therapists from the start to be the most relaxing song known to mankind.  Unlike conventional songs, it has no consistent melody, which prevents your brain from trying to anticipate changes in structure.  This unusual decision, along with a host of other tricks that I'm too lazy to explain or understand, come together in a song that is definitely drug-like.

Green Eyed Love

I missed the boat on this track, since it's from 2009, but I heard it recently at the tail end of a mix Duke Dumont made for BBC Radio 1 and it won me over.  This Classixx remix of a Mayer Hawthorne track (?) is a dreamy, glittery vicodin pill--five minutes of campy nirvana.  Take one, and come floating with me.

Everything was Chillwave

and nothing hurt.

Found image + Photoshop

Mr. Flesh

Mr. Flesh

Closer

Saw this for the first time today.  What a music video.  Not to mention it's 20 years old, and it still looks and sounds great.  I can only imagine how edgy it must have felt back then.

Remember Me

Two days ago my friend and I drove back down to San Diego, and listened to Eminem's new Marshall Mathers LP2.  It's a good album, but as fun as it is, it's nothing compared to his first LP.  Even with his new-and-improved technical abilities, nothing touches Eminem's early days.  Days when he was rapping over spooky beats like these.

Gesaffelstein & Aleph: Electro's Yeezy

Gesaffelstein released a new album this past week, and I had no idea was in the works.  "Aleph" is a bizarre 14-track collection of music that carries Gesaffelstein's dark power away from dance-floor ready electro-tech into the arenas of trap and hip hop.  The best way to describe it actually vis a vis Kanye West's most recent album Yeezus (which fittingly Gesaffelstein helped produce).  With Yeezus, Kanye West continued his exodus out of the "rap game" and into electronic music.

With Aleph, Gesaffelstein has done the reverse.  He's taken his signature dark gritty electronic sound, and hybridized it with elements of hip hop.  It's as though Gesaffelstein is trying to reinvent himself as the king of a new breed of electronic music that borrows from modern hip hop--like he wants to be the "Yeezy" of electronic music.  The cover art for Aleph certainly indicates this desire.  It looks like a the lovechild between the gold patterning of Jay Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne album, and Kanye West's austere Yeezus album, only with circuit boards instead of filigree.

Watch the Throne

+

Yeezus

=

Aleph

Cover art aside, I just don't love this album.  As a starting point, look at the BPM counts on each track:

1. 106BPM: Out Of Line
2. 71BPM: Nameless
3. 102BPM: Destinations
4. 101BPM: Obsession
5. 94BPM: Hellifornia
6. 90BPM: Wall Of Memories     
7. 130BPM: Duel                                  
8. 117BPM: Values                      
9. 95BPM: Perfection                 
10. 109BPM: Pursuit                          
11. 81BPM: Aleph
12. 88BPM: Piece Of Future          
13. 103BPM: Hate Or Glory              
14. 107BPM: Trans                        

The album doesn't really manage to find a comfortable niche to work in.  Spread between 71 and 130 BPM, Aleph it is unfortunately beyond what I would call "eclectic," and comfortably in the realm of "scattered."  None of the tracks sit in that golden zone of 123 - 128 Gesaffelstein did so well in, and in the teen count we only have Values (117), a track that's too morose and soft to be a dance-floor banger. 

The abundance of tracks in the 100 BPM range really bring the album down.  Slower, heavy beats take Gesaffelstein's signature dark sound--which at 120bpm range made for exciting dance tracks--into somethings that feels cumbersome and emotionally overwrought for an electronic album.  Interludes like Nameless, Perfection and Wall of Memories try to give the album emotional depth, but register flat and out of place in an album that's so scattered and forcible.

Hellifornia--the idiot lovechild of techno and 90's hip hop--is a droning, sterile hip hop beat glazed with the whine of synthesizers.  It's terrible.

Duel, at 130bpm, is the album's black sheep.  It's too fast, and too bizarre.  Jittery electronic digeridoos, ominous frantic chants, and plastic synth that pulses dangerous across the entire makes for a track that is   almost as bizarre as it is terrible.  Seriously terrible.  If autistic robots took cocaine and had an orgy, it might sound as bad as this track.

Other tracks are just decent.  Pursuit tries to scare and excite us with spook-show sounds and deep space synthesizers, but the builds and drop are formulaic and uninteresting.  It's ride we've all been on before.  Out of Line features church bells, nonsense vocals, and even a tribal beat with chanting.  But even with all of these gimmicks, it doesn't do anything for me.  It's boring.

There are a few bright patches.  Trans is excellent--a real Gesaffelstein classic.  Hate or Glory is bombastic and self-possessed (it belongs on Yeezus) but it's a decent merger of hip hop and techno that covers some new ground, and is grounded in an excellent beat.  But overall, this is only a decent album undeserving of the hype it's getting.  

Aleph: Nothing revolutionary.  

The Good: Trans

The OK: Hate or Glory

The Bad: Hellifornia

I can get Love

I stumbled on this gem while browsing some of Toro y Moi's music videos.  Most of his music videos feature him, but this one's different.  I'm not sure if it's official, but this an audiovisual combo that really stands out.  Visually it's a powerhouse of abstracted motion sequences, color and distortion.  The music itself is the kind of glitzy funk and aching dream-nostalgia you'd expect of Toro.  It's weird, but weird enough to keep me locked for the entire song.  Enjoy!

Beginning of the Ring

Music: Rondenion



Images: Tomoo Gokita

Love is Like a Diamond

One of the greatest house tracks ever made--a classic I return to now and then

Rhinestone Eyes

A little late on this one, but I've really been enjoying this song lately.

Mono - Part Two

Mono was a flash-in-the-pan late nineties electronic duo out of the UK.  Comprised of Siobhan de Maré and Martin Virgo, Mono toured once, put out one full-length album, and then disappeared off the map.

But while they were around, Mono put out some solid music.  Their only album, "Formica Blues," crosses genres and eras.  Sitting somewhere between the refined downtempo drawl of house music, and the sexy,  big-band feel of a sixties jazz symphony, its an album that truly feels divorced from any particular time period.   It is not
something you would immediately recognize as a product of the late nineties.  As one reviewer wrote:

What distinguishes the album from a shopping list of mid-'60s cool is the enormous affection de Maré and Virgo conjure up for the period they invoke. It's the lack of irony or distance in that affection that are the key to understanding this band.

In other word, this isn't hipster sixties.  It's an earnest, modern take on an older style of music on an earlier era.  I think this which is why it's not immediately obvious when it was made.  Although some contemporary critics saw the band as a product of the nineties ("that very Nineties pairing of the shady back-room knob-twiddler and the photogenic chanteuse") I think Mono was too honest to be discounted as gimmicky.  

Anyways, the first time I listened to Mono was maybe six years ago, in a mini documentary on David Choe.  That documentary was called Whales and Orgies.  It was a quick look into his life and his methods--a sort of ten minute manifesto on who David Choe was, what he did, and how he did it.  For better or worse (and probably worse) he became somewhat of a lovable anti-hero and a role model to me in my teen years.  I was a lonely, artsy, angsty teen and his--almost nihilist approach to art and life was refreshing.  Anyways, Whales and Orgies opens "Blind Man," an excellent track off of "Formica Blues."





Here's "Blind Man" in full:






Mono also has some interesting videos of their own:

Mono - Madhouse

Green World

Pirating music off of the internet is a funny thing.  You can never be sure of what you're actually getting.  Years ago--back in 2005--I downloaded the classic Gorillaz album Demon Days, and was instantly hooked.  I listened to it nonstop until I knew every track.  I thought it was genius--Gorillaz creativity and execution on all levels.  It mixed narrative elements into genres like pop and hip hop with great results.  It was an album that was uniquely intimate for being a multiplatinum record.  I mean, who could forget El Manana?  Or November has Come?

Anyways, the album grew into one of my all-time favorites. It played in the background of some of my most intense teenage years, and has retained a certain sentimental value ever since.  

Loving this album as much as I do, I was surprised to learn the version of Demon Days I had downloaded was not the real version.  One of the songs had been replaced with something totally different.  My pirated version of Demon Days had had "O Green World" replaced with an unrelated song by an unknown artist.  It was a song that sounded like a true Gorillaz track, and skillfully wove vocals from various lesser-known, independent hip-hop artists into a minimally-produced beat.  It sounded like Gorillaz and I would have never guessed it was "fake."  The track was one of my favorites, and I always held it in high regard as an example of just how good Gorillaz were at their craft.  

Perhaps even more bizarre is the fact that the real song "O Green World" sucks.  It doesn't even compare with this mysterious, unclaimed remix.  Maybe it's a little disappointing, but at this point it's hard to care.  Just one more interesting chapter in my relationship with Gorillaz.  

The track in question:

Only God Forgives

New audiovisual mashup by longtime favorite of mine, Hugo Redrose.

Aronovsky Orgasm

This NEUS remix of Gesaffelstein's Viol, has long been a favorite of mine, so when I found it on youtube, paired with scenes from Darren Aronofsky's Pi, it had me making snow angels in a metaphorical pile of audiovisual cocaine.   Viol is a dark, violent, pulsating song.  Pi is a dark, cerebral film.  Both works are genius, so experiencing them together is, well...some next level shit.

Six Squares, Five Circles, Four Pictures, One Song

Music: Nebraska

Photos: Laura Bell

Mutual Core

Presented in Times Square with the help of Times Square Arts and The Streaming Museum, the music video for Bjork's new song "Mutual Core," is excellent.  It's a simple, dark, elegiac melody set over rumbling, downtempo bass vibrations.  The visuals are gritty mix of rocky grays, and glowing bright reds, oranges and yellows.  It could be summed up by the word "vulcanic."

The original, seen below on vimeo, is equally (if not more) impressive.  It's so refreshing seeing amusic video like this after watching a million acres of shit.

BJÖRK - "MUTUAL CORE" from Andrew Thomas Huang on Vimeo.

Jackson and His Computer Band "Glow"

Excited for Jackson and His Computerband's new album "Glow" to come out on September 2nd of this year.  It is long overdue.  His previous album "Smash" was released all the way back in 2005!  7+ years ago!

September 19th, 2005

I will confess that I only discovered Smash two years ago, and I can remember thinking it was one of the strangest albums I'd ever listened to.  It's mix of whimsical stories, interludes, ballads and bangers.  The tracks are all so different from one another that it took a while to appreciate the collection as a whole. 

At the same time, it also had the feel of a product that is uniquely the product of one man's feverish efforts and imagination.  It's like a beethoven symphony, or a Rodin sculpture.  You have a hard time seeing the work outside of the context of the artist, because the two are so intimately linked.  I read somewhere that he's a classically-trained musician, so it doesn't surprise me.   

Thus, I would probably describe "Smash" as "the electronic music equivalent of a Gorillaz album,"  --dark, lively, diverse and unexpected--the sort of musical game changer that is both rare and refreshing.

September 2nd, 2013

If the cover art is any indicator of quality, it looks like "Glow" is going to be a killer album.  This is one of the darkest, most elegant and austere album covers I've seen come out of EDM.  It radiates musical and artistic genius, and belongs in a gallery.  I'm curious to know who designed it, but I'm sure it will be hard to find out until the album is released.