Skrillex/Clams Casino
Electronical Vistas
Skrillex: Bangarang (Owsla/Big Beat/Atlantic)
"The most hated man in dubstep" therefore isn't "in" dubstep at all, which allowing for a few wannabes is fine by the rest of us who aren't in dubstep, meaning 99 percent if not 99.99 percent of music consumers. If you're too smart or knowledgeable for this young goof and his damn Grammys that Robyn wouldn't have won anyway, by all means enjoy your cool. I'm not. But I know this much. This is a pop record because its shamelessly hedonistic barrage of proven dancefloor tricks will obviously be more fun at home than in a club, where it would blare forth at quadruple volume to young jerks who'd get just as excited about LMFAO. A MINUS
Clams Casino: Instrumental Mixtape (free download)
Reconstructed from tracks created for such real-life rappers as Lil B and Soulja Boy, New Jersey beatmaker Mike Volpe's comfortably disquieting illbient glitchbeat chillwave whatsis will grow on you if you give it a chance. And because it's designed to back into your space, providing the chance won't feel all that time-consuming, preoccupied as you'll be with something more engrossing while said time passes. The opening "Motivation" powers home enough hummed 'n' moaned gravitas to remind you it's there, and the closing "Cold War" caps the 40-minute album with a vocal sample that utters the title for once. In between you'll first pick up on "What You Doin'" and "Illest Alive," better known to you as the one in the middle and the one toward the end. Then slowly the rest will ooze into place via capillary action. A MINUSI taught a Buckley chapter under the explicit rubric ****-I-can't-stand.
I will say, though, that I'm glad I didn't have this sort of temptation when I was an undergrad. The tone was "there's so much superb sh!t we'll never get to, don't even mention lesser stuff."Is it normal to feel alienated from music made 20 years before I even popped out, forgetting the extra 15 I needed to learn to listen to music? Because this poll'll really test my... listenerly habits.
totally. even as much as i am familiar with music from 1969 given my dad's classic rock music tastes and my own musical discovery, i still have trouble ranking anything pre-me with anything post me. you saw my FOAT list, right? might as well be my GOAT list.
i definitely have a greater connection with contemporary music, not to say that i don't understand or love Willy and the Poorboys or Led Zeppelin II. i just can't compare them with Late Registration.
(His Ray Charles book blew my proverbial sox off when I read it at the apex of Charles's confounding stretch as a Republican favorite. Sure wish it had gotten some renewed interest at that time: Charles refused to be contrite in the least about heroin addiction -- said he started because he liked to get high and quit only because it would have destroyed his career to continue -- and noted with relish he was into kinky sex and was utterly irresponsible as a parent and love interest. And still a helluva guy and, you know, a genius. And Ritz's Marvin Gaye Divided Soul was essential to a very potent stretch of my writing life that involved the final years of the soul master.)
Now, I'm perfectly willing to believe that I might come to like Daphne Brooks quite a bit -- that was the only piece I've read by her. I note, however, that her essay Bob selected for The Best Music Writing 2007 is on an A- album. And this --
I taught her on Jeff Buckley for six years running
raises all sorts of interesting questions. What was the context? (I understand all about the good-arguments-for-dubious-art routine. Yod knows I've edited enough pieces that put a handsome shine on, well, not toids, but lumpy spuds.)A larger issue is that the whole current notion of "contrarian" often rubs me the wrong way (heheh). Jonathan Richman had no idea what a landmark "I'm Straight" was. Now we get a blizzard of arguments that beats and hippies were conformists, that quiet desperation was really bliss, that men & women & gays & the various races do have fundamental natures, that what we thought was liberation was really enslavement, that left-wing radicals have a serious amount of clout in America, that trite art is actually deep or at least worth your time and so forth and so forth. So maybe I'm too touchy about provocative arguments.
Irene,
If you've got $10 to spare and want to take a chance on probably the only decent Costa album, I recommend the one I mentioned earlier (Gal Costa, with her picture on the cover). You can download it at Amazon (and I guess I-Tunes). It's got four stellar tropicalia tracks (including my one of my faves Divino Maravilhoso, the opening of which Stereolab stole for a track), six decent to good ones, and two duds. Nothing else I've heard has been worth my time, but I do enjoy this one nearly as much as I do the Gil and Veloso of the period.
And I love the mental picture of you in remdial listening:
Teacher: "Young lady what are you listening to?"
Irene: "Um, Filles de Kilimanjaro."
T: "Let me see that IPod...Leonard Cohen Live in London!"
I: "But he released a record in '69."
T: "That's no excuse. Now you also have to listen to Terry Riley's A Rainbow in Curved Air, and on vinyl too so I can see what you are playing."
Irene flips off teacher, leading to a riot. Class burns desks and plays the Clash. Later, as the embers of the desks burn out and the dawn rises, class falls in love with Miles as 'Mademoiselle Mabry' takes them calmly into the new day. Autocratic teacher never seen again.
I see over to the right that the price hike of her songs on iTunes was a mistake. Hmm.
about the blogger
Starting in 1967, Robert Christgau has covered popular music for The Village Voice, Esquire, Blender, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and many other publications. He teaches in New York University's Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, maintains a comprehensive website at robertchristgau.com, and has published five books based on his journalism. He has written for MSN Music since 2006.
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