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Pitchfork: Various Artists – 808 Mafia

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Reviewed that 808 Mafia tape. It’s pretty good? Hard to tell if it’s because it’s Lex and Southside’s buddies or if Lex and Southside’s awesome beats would get kinda tedious without rappers as well…

The Lex Luger beat– an ugly tangle of glitching rhythms, hissing hi-hats, and booming low-end– currently dominates urban radio. Its ubiquity isn’t a surprise. Rap is forever falling in love with a production style and then shamelessly squeezing all the life out of it. But at the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, something is different this time around. It’s all a bit more numbing than usual. Thanks to computer technology, which makes spot-on mimicry quite easy, and facilitated by the industry’s embrace of ruthlessly utilitarian music (see also: dubstep, four-on-the-floor euro-pop), there’s no demand to gently tweak the Lex Luger formula…

Written by Brandon

February 23rd, 2012 at 2:54 pm

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Pitchfork: Bebetune$ – Inhale C-4 $$$$$

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Reviewed this jokey, James Ferraro side project…

Inhale C-4 $$$$$ finds Ferraro developing a mutant strain of mainstream rap and R&B. Auto-Tune is mimicked, the skittering snares of radio rap show up, and there’s special attention paid to the sloppy mastering and obnoxious DJ drops common on mixtapes. It turns out however, that hip-hop actually takes some finesse and knowledge to recreate– and Ferraro just doesn’t have the skills.

“Maccau Celebrities” cribs its melody from T-Pain and Lil Wayne’s “Can’t Believe It”, and though it captures the sound of Wayne’s syrup-drunk croons, there’s no emotive charm. “#GRINDLYFE” has some of the demonic guitar-crunch grandiosity of Flockaveli but does nothing with it, and “H20″ squiggles around like a Timbaland rip-off. Then there’s “Street Dream$$”, a failed attempt at giving Gang Gang Dance’s “Glass Jar” the sample-slicing, drum pattern piling, AraabMuzik treatment. It features hi-hats and hand-claps, an airhorn, a dripping water sound, and some Drake-like Auto-Tune– and it’s a mess. Perhaps that’s the point, though…

Written by Brandon

January 13th, 2012 at 3:49 pm

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Pitchfork: “2011 Holiday Gift Guide”

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I got to write about one of my favorite things ever: the Giorgio Moroder version of Metropolis! It’s out on DVD and Blu-Ray and totally makes an awesome gift for the holidays. I also co-sign that Smile box set, Ellen Willis’ Out of the Vinyl Deeps, and Chuck Eddy’s Rock and Roll Never Forgets. By the way, if you haven’t seen Moroder’s version, it is on Netflix Watch It Now.
In 1981, disco game-changer and electronic music pioneer Giorgio Moroder thought it would be good idea to restore Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic Metropolis. Previously lost footage was rediscovered and the negative was cleaned up– and then the running time was sliced nearly in half, the footage color-tinted, and a propulsive soundtrack featuring Freddie Mercury, Pat Benatar, Loverboy, and others was smeared over the silent cinema classic.

Arriving in 1984, Moroder’s Metropolis soon disappeared– no doubt, because it was an insane idea that film purists saw as something like sacrilege. Now, fresh off a 2010 theatrical release of Metropolis (the old boring version without Billy Squier songs in it), Kino Classics has made Moroder’s version available on Blu-Ray and DVD. If you can comfortably accept that this thing exists– it helps to remember that Metropolis never had an official score and many now believe it has been projected at the wrong number of frames-per-second– this remixed version is just a lot of fun.

A big fat synth squelch announces the infamous explosion of the M-Machine. Robot Maria’s theme song is Bonnie Tyler’s “Here She Comes”… and it works! The upper-class, all residing in monolithic skyscrapers are soundtracked by coked-out synths and gated drums, predicting Oliver Stone’s Wall Street via footage from the 20s and somehow ending up as a comment on 2011. When it first shuffled into theaters, Moroder’s Metropolis seemed gauche and excessive. Now, it’s ideal for our era of GIF-making and retrolicious music videos that routinely refashion other peoples’ property.

Written by Brandon

November 25th, 2011 at 4:06 am

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Pitchfork: G-Side – iSLAND

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Reviewed that new G-Side. Check it out if you haven’t yet. Right now, I feel like it’s their best release yet, though it’s also the most insular and contained; Curren$y-like, if that makes any sense.

In less than two years, G-Side have gone from being one of the most slept-on rap groups around, to well, kind of taken for granted. That will happen when hip-hop’s having its RSS-obsessed, gimmick-happy, bloggy moment, and ST and Clova’s concerns are consistency and ever so slightly widening the lane they’ve carved out for themselves. So, on iSLAND– the equally estimable follow-up to January’s THE ONE… COHESIVE– they’re still indefatigably grinding, and just as geeked-up on the fact that people write about them in magazines and on blogs.

But there’s something darker creeping into their music here, confounding the occasional misreading of COHESIVE’s glowing, cathartic hip-hop as “escapist” or head-in-the-clouds. Forever right there in the background is their keen awareness that, when it comes down to it, they ain’t all that important to this rap shit. That’s why every interview is a huge deal to them. There’s also their past, rife with tragedy and loss– bouncing around in foster homes, family members lost to cancer and addiction– which they tastefully reveal only in snippets…

Written by Brandon

November 22nd, 2011 at 6:40 pm

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Pitchfork: James Ferraro – Far Side Virtual

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Reviewed the latest James Ferraro record which is a little different than the dozens of others James Ferraro records. I listen to this a lot but I have no idea whether or not it’s any good.

James Ferraro’s latest stares down our contemporary world of the future, invaded by iPads, overwhelmed by Skype meetings, and caught up in the unnecessary conveniences of self-serve frozen yogurt spots, with an equal sense of dread and awe. All those 1980s and 90s approximations of the future, in which we’d collectively have luxury stacked on top of luxury, actually sort of arrived, and they’re totally awesome– and really fucking creepy.

Far Side Virtual is inspired by goofy junk like the Windows 95 sound (composed by Brian Eno, it should be mentioned) and the melodies that kick out of a medium-priced keyboard when you punch the “demo” button. It’s a collection of eerily wholesome sounds delivered in an uncomfortably straightforward manner. Either a whole lot of work or very little work went into this record…

Written by Brandon

November 4th, 2011 at 6:59 am

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Pitchfork: Matthew Herbert – One Pig

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The last volume in Matthew Herbert’s “One” trilogy contains the same sonic ruminations on consumerism and mechanization as the previous installments, as well as their mood and tenor. Like One One, a heady singer-songwriter record, there’s a hushed creeping intimacy to the thing, and a Zen-like acceptance of overbearing forces, even if it intends to keep on kicking against them. Like One Club, which twisted field recordings from the Frankfurt nightclub Robert Johnson into splayed-apart dance music, thereby ingesting corporatized club culture on its own terms, One Pig is an overwhelming, inscrutably political electronic record culled from an unlikely source. In this case, it consists of manipulated recordings Herbert made of a pig’s life, “from birth to plate.”

This certainly isn’t the exploitation record PETA assumed it was gonna be, and it’s not a slab of musical vegan didacticism that presumably, many more, who prefer their music to be good first, and message-oriented second, feared either. No matter how visceral Herbert’s mix of animal grunts and menacing electronics feel, the message is never something simple like, “it sure is sad that we kill animals.” Rather, it moves listeners to be more mindful of consumption and waste (the pig’s parts were even turned into instruments), while acknowledging just how strangely disconnected we are from the animals killed to put food on our table, or say, shoes on our feet…

Written by Brandon

October 14th, 2011 at 7:13 am

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Pitchfork: The Weeknd – Thursday

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Reviewed the new Weeknd, which might actually actually be better than the first one? Give it some time.

Though there’s less breathing space on Thursday, and fewer melodic hooks, it still feels of a piece with House of Balloons. There’s the same ineffably skeezy vibe and a genuine sense of the album-as-journey, brought upon by smart sequencing and Tesfaye’s willingness to complicate his devilish, drug-addled Lothario persona. The production is slightly harsher and streaked with violence, befitting the lyrical content– “Life of the Party”, the best and most disturbing song here, is based around doom-like guitar riffs that suggest something truly terrible about to happen. The guitars burst forth during Tesfaye’s mocking chorus (“you’re the life of the party”), sung as he casually convinces a girl into a group-sex situation. Other songs are tinged with similarly abrasive sounds: drill’n'bass noises rattle around in the background of opening track “Lonely Star”; “Rolling Stone” begins with a blustery chunk of heavily processed guitar; and the final track, “Heaven or Las Vegas” (not a Cocteau Twins cover) features a late-song interruption by screeching effects and heavy echo. For contrast , the only jarring touch to the production on the fairly one-note House of Balloons is the title track’s Siouxsie and the Banshees sample. So the world here, in addition to being more sonically varied, feels just a little darker and a little more dangerous…

Written by Brandon

August 25th, 2011 at 3:32 pm

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Pitchfork: Rewards – “Equal Dreams” [ft. Solange Knowles]

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Wrote up this very awesome dance track from one of the guys who used to be in Chairlift. Solange guests and kills it.

Written by Brandon

August 2nd, 2011 at 7:37 pm

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Pitchfork: Nguzunguzu – Timesup

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Reviewed the new Nguzunguzu EP, which still pales in comparison to mixes like Perfect Lullaby but hey, they’re getting there and really, comparing their production to their mixes is kinda besides the point anyways. This is a good weird, global dance EP

Nguzunguzu’s nervy approach to DJing and production is best exemplified by an edit of Monica and Brandy’s “The Boy Is Mine” that appears on their Perfect Lullaby mix from the spring. They looped producer Darkchild’s synth-harp intro from that 1998 hit and let it ride for about two minutes, turning it into a mediative electronic groove. The Los Angeles duo thrives on this type of sonic “aha!” moment, finding musical cues that expose the ways that mainstream rap and R&B aren’t all that different from what’s going on in the more explicitly experimental underground. Producers making footwork, Baltimore club, moombahton, post-dubstep, and more are toying with minimalism, repetition, and noise; but the urban music on the radio can similarly blow minds, and is often just as out-there.

This isn’t a new concept exactly (Timbaland at his peak was clearly an avant-pop genius), but Nguzunguzu are particularly skilled at bringing together disparate sounds– as if their brains were missing the part that constructs binaries or identifies genre differences. They brought this to bear earlier this year when they stitched together M.I.A.’s demos and one-offs for Vicki Leekx, making something just as jagged as /\/\/\Y/\, but way more more fun to hear…

Written by Brandon

July 25th, 2011 at 5:33 pm

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Pitchfork: “Words and Music: Our 60 Favorite Music Books.”

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Pitchfork put together a really great list of music book recommendations and I got to write the ones for John Darnielle’s Master Of Reality and Alan Greenberg’s Love In Vain: A Vision Of Robert Johnson. You can read the list here.

Written by Brandon

July 12th, 2011 at 4:18 am

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