mass culture

TRANSFERRED FROM ORIGINAL SOURCE
After taking a year-long leave of absence from blogging, I return. I plan on moving this to a central server once some money comes in. For now, wordpress. Anways, the point of this is for me to rant about music. I’ll post new releases, record reviews, track reviews, downloads, etc. A lot of the posts will be something close to relating the music to my life. No matter how objective I try to be, writing on the internet always gets somewhat personal. Let’s do this.

Today I got two new records. Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House and Fujiya & Miyagi’s Transparent Things. I highly recommend both of them, and they are endorsed by pitchfork if you are looking for that indie cred.

Transparent Things is an abstract, gentle disco-pop album. Really creative vocals, killer beats, and an overall good feeling record to accompany dancing, chilling, or heavy drug use.

Yellow House is a little more folky, and I’m still getting to know it. I ‘ll write more about it once I hear it again.

Yesterday’s releases included The Rapture’s Pieces of People that we love and the highly-anticipated Yo La Tengo LP, I am not Afraid of You and I will Beat Your Ass. The latter is much better and serves as a showcase of YLT’s work. From the stoner jams they’re famous for to some crazy horn-driven pop, every track on the 80-minute LP is a gem and worth the trip to the record store.

Pieces…is confusing me. Discopunk is dead, but the Rapture are possibly bringing it back AGAIN. While not as good as Echoes, this is definitely catchier. In fact, I think that this is the most accessable record I have heard all year. The chorus on “Don Gon Do it” reminds me of a Backstreet Boys song. Can you say Airplay?

Last night Jake G. and I ended up hanging out with The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players and Ching Chong Song, both of which are excellent bands. I was astonished by these people’s friendliness and generousity, and It was great to hang out with a band that I love. Emma, the TFSP’s dog, is also cute as hell.

I also was lucky to meet Madingo, a very nice man from Ethiopia, outside of the club. We talked for about an hour about freedom, capitalism, socialism, partisan press, and propaganda. I have never met anyone like him before. He’s trying to get back to Ethiopia, where he was born and ran away when he was 14. After going to school in San Diego, he’s slowly working his way across the country. Somehow he’s in Lincoln. Lucky us, poor Madingo. He’s been out of his country for 30 years. I wish him good luck and hope to see him again.

Back to music. MP3 from Of Montreal’s new LP, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? can be downloaded here. Pretty good, in my opinion.

Okay, I have a lot more to say but not enough time.
Until then.