favorite albums of 2009

in no order

noche malo. muy malo

it's christmas eve and i'm in bed, drinking a beer, blogging, and possibly reverting myself back to online xbox gaming. (modern warfare 2 is just too good).

i saw avatar last night and man it was kinda good.
a bit on the silly side, script-wise. definitely a predictable story, but i kinda knew that going into it.
it looks great... yet i couldn't help but think james cameron got the idea for avatar by looking at a lisa frank trapper keeper. i mean it's a cool-looking movie... but I think if i was to have come up with a brand new world of creatures and characters, i would've probably thought of something that didn't deal w/ glow-in-the-dark forests. that's just me, though.
the action was intense, and there were definitely signs of a james cameron aesthetic (i.e. scientists, marines, guns, explosions), so that was cool.
hopefully with the money i paid to watch Avatar, James cameron will somehow find the balls to make a True Lies part 2, because let's face it: True Lies is kinda the best movie of the 90s, next to Con Air, obviously.

well here's what I got planned for tonight!
beer, pita chips w/ hummus and tabouli salad, beer, pork leg, beer, tres leches, beer, and then maybe a cookie or two.

also, I just got the Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age EP



it's pretty awesome. just a lot of mixing, noise, field recordings, and broadcast songs. really expanding the psychedelic/stereolab-ish sound to a more obscure and avant level. very cool record and i recommend it if you're either a minor fan of broadcast. or even if you're a fan of more than one artist on the Warp label.

merry christmas!

jersey shore

Let me tell you a little something about this show on mTV called Jersey Shore.
It is singlehandedly saving television from the ranks of schlocky stuff like Mad Men and 24.
Take a look at what I'm talking about:



MAN. If you're not watching this show, then you're probably one of those people that yknow have some kinda moral code, or whatever those things are. BOGUS (what?)

As you saw from the video up top, Jersey Shore is an MTV reality series (I wanna emphasize 'reality' because I really think this is authentic) about people living their lives the way they want to live it. Eight kids who live/fuck in a really shitty timeshare in Seaside Heights. They're just bro-culture personified... or guido, as they call it. The show could be seen as offensive because it displays really vivid stereotypes... but here's the thing: these people on the show KNOW that they're the stereotype. They're fuckin proud of it.

And looking at how ridiculous they are... in a sense they're kinda normal. They obviously live life by different standards: inflicting an incredible amount of damage onto their skin via tanning bed proxies, spending $10,000 a year on hair gel, taking their shirts off, plastic surgery, lip gloss (for the guys), fucking everything. I guess if you judge normality by that, then yes-- they're kinda normal.

Look they do the same things you and I do. We like to hang out with friends, flirt w/ the opposite sex, go out and drink, eat somewhere after, fuck, and shit like that.
I don't know.
I've seen the show... and not all of the characters and unlikeable. That's who they are and that's how they live. Some of them can even show hints of actual intelligence... and emotion, too.
Like one of the characters, "The Situation" (fucking guy -_-), gets really upset because one of his roommates hooked up with Sammi, the girl he was crushing on. He's insecure, man. He needs his abs to get girls. I don't know. I feel bad for the guy, sorta. Then he date rapes all of em'. And then I realize-- FUCK HIM.

good show, though.

what kinda blog is this?

I'm always debating whether this blog should be focused around things I like, as a pretty qualified indie-music meteorologist (god I wish that was a real job), or around me, in general. Like should I post blogs about my personal life? I don't know. I mean (wishful thinking) maybe this blog will skyrocket one day in being a really important, and equally relevant, purveyor of new music-- then somebody comes across an old post about a girl I like and my credibility is fucked.

Fuck it-- I think I'll leave my personal stuff for my myspace (because that's something people use, right? I'm 45-years-old)

how remixable is gucci mane?

It's a question that's lingered the music community for about the latter half of 2009.
Gucci mane's origins start in Atlanta and he's gone to jail a couple of times.
He's definitely one of my favorite southern rappers based on pure skill (if by skill, I mean pure-ridiculousness).
He's become somewhat of an oddity in the indie community, becoming kinda ironic, I guess? He would get a lot of press on Pitchfork's pages and then started getting remixed by a ton of weird-abstract electronic artists.
It started with SALEM.



Gucci Mane - Bird Flu (Salem Remix)



Then with HEALTH/Flying Lotus on that new ATL RMX mixtape released by Adult Swim. That mixtape in itself exemplifies this indie infatuation with Southern Rappers. Call it ironic, or whatever-- the heart of the matter is that most of the stuff is good, and that a bulk of these rappers (Gucci Mane not being mutually exclusive-- we're talking Dem Franchize Boyz, Young Jeezy, and OJ Da Juiceman) have the grime appeal... and appeal that works well with the abstract electronic/dubtsteppy/sampladelic stuff.




Even Diplo and his label Mad Decent are releasing a mixtape revolving around Diplo beats and Gucci's rough 'n' tumble lyrics. And on top of that, M.I.A. went out and said her new Diplo-produced album will sound like "Gucci Mane meets Animal Collective". Uhhh does that not sound like the best combination ever?
Diplo released a track yesterday sampling Mariah Carey with Gucci on the mic. And it sounds awesome.

Gucci Mane - Danger Not A Stranger (Diplo Remix)

So I guess this seems to be my prediction for what will be hot in 2010: the rise of indie credibility in the southern rap community.

what girls should be listening to

i feel like girls my age should be listening to a specific group of musicians that perfectly depict what it's like to be a girl at that age.
Bands that are not too abrasive, yet not too poppy, but carry a careful hodgepodge of both factors that ultimately equate and personify a girl in her 20s.
Though, if I was to make a venn diagram of stuff I like and stuff I think girls my age should like, I'd assume the ovals would overlap. Though, some of these bands I don't like too much anyway.
Maybe I should venture out in compiling songs my perfect girl should listen to.
I'm already thinking of some bands that would be on there: Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Field Mice, Pixies, Beach House, Joy Division, Cocteau Twins or anything Robin Guthrie is involved with, New Order, Pavement, Nirvana, Destiny's Child, and I guess Belle and Sebastian. I'm a little iffy on the amount of Stuart Murdoch involvement any project has.

had a good night last night

i tweeted about it saying it was Panda Bear karma.
last art basel i was supposed to see panda bear/no age and i was rejected because, at the time, i was under 21.
well this year i'm 21 and i'm drunk.
went to this yuppie nike art show because atlas sound was playing.
bradford cox is responsible for some of my favorite music and he never comes to miami. so this was rad.
went and saw him perform. he was sporting his best street performer/troubadour, harmonica and all.
got to meet and him. we talked for a bit. really nice guy.
saw ali from the vivian girls and talked to her. i had met her before and she recognized me. we talked for a bit about music and art.
it was nice.
she's following me on twitter and that's cool as fuck.
had some wine, mini-burgers, and beer.

i had been studying my ass off all week for final exams.
i deserved it.

real reality-type stuff #2

nobody has ever thrown me a surprise party.
and believe me i've always wanted one, but it's not the kinda thing you ask for.
you kinda just have to wait for someone to do it for you and hope in anticipation that this is the lucky year.
each year i try to hint to people that i want one, but it seems to never work.
even then, though, i'm always anticipating it so it won't ever be a surprise.
i feel like even if i'm thrown a surprise party, the surprise element will be absent.
surprise parties and me are just not meant to be.
maybe there are people in life who are surprise party-prone and some who never had surprise parties written for them in their life-book. (because that's something people have?)

i'm in quite a dilemma, right?
not really. who cares.

real reality-type stuff #1

there are these little "idiosyncratic" (*wink* *sighs*) situations in life that happen to just about everyone. some would call them seinfeldian or "larry david moments", but to me, they're just real reality-type stuff. so, i'm making a series of blogs posts, (not necessarily back-to-back) showcasing little moments that go on in life that, I feel, everyone can relate to. beginning with this one:

so there's this guy in my class who is sorta snobby, pretentious, overly-witty, and full-of-himself, and i've never really taken a liking to him. but i've been in the class with the guy for a whole semester already and along the way we've both agreed on some things, and shared a couple of laughs. he's snobby, but at the same time i can tolerate it, to an extent. whatever. i found his facebook one night and i don't remember if i added him. but i convinced myself i did? i thought i did, but maybe i didn't. point is, him and i are not friends on facebook. i go to his page today and it said (ADD FRIEND). so here's what could've happened:

a) i could've requested to be his friend and he declined, which is lame.
or
b)i never requested anything

point is, i don't want to confront him about it. if he declined and i go up to him asking about the whole situation, that'll be awkward. he'll be like, oh i didn't wanna be your friend. WEIRD and DOUCHEY, bro.
if i never requested him and i still confront him about not adding me i'll just look like a huge pussy trying to seek out a friendship on a dumb website.
and if he declined my request, but i'm not certain if i requested to be his friend and i try adding him, he'll just think: "this fucker is adding me again? fuck him: NO. AGAIN."

weird situation.
so basically i just can't be friends with this kid on facebook. i've arrived at some kinda paradox where the internet meets reality and there's some kinda strange hodgepodge of awkward.
sorry, bro-- looks like we can't be bros after all because of i forgot something.

what do you suggest?

Best Albums of the Decade

I've been following the flow of decade-end top albums lists and find myself disagreeing with about half of their selections. Now I've been given the arduous endeavor to sum the whole decade up. In other words, I'm summing up my entire music catalogue and tastes into one list. I'm summing up my pre-pubescent/adolescent/teenage/college years. I'm not sure if you're going to get a good look at my tastes because a lot of the albums on this list I haven't listened to in more than a year. My state of being is in the "current" so if I was a dumb enough to conjure a top 10 list of the decade, most of the albums would be from either 2008-2009. But leaving that aside was tough, hence It took me two weeks to come up with this so here it is, in no order:

1. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People



No band did more for indie-rock in the 00's than Canada's own Broken Social Scene. Bold? Yes. Before "You Forgot It In People", BSS dabbled with post-rock and ambient song textures. The songs were beautiful little nuggets, well-suited for indie-film soundtracks than your stereo player They were tame and very modest instrumental songs working with electro-acoustic tendencies and minimalism. They were playing with the same type of soundscapes Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Sigur Ros were playing with.

But "You Forgot It In People" marked a growth. It was a move from introverted long-songs to anthemic tunes for a generation. It gave BSS a voice... actually more than one. Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Leslie Feist, Emily Haines, Amy Millan, etc. They are indie-rock personified: a rag-tage collective of musicians willing to experiment and produce something different with each others' help. Broken Social Scene is here to stay and perfectly summed up my childhood: teen angst, youthful abandon, and a life with the people you love. We're all in this together.

2. Panda Bear - Person Pitch



Panda Bear never really did anything new. It's not like sampling old songs was some new-found innovation. It's a beautiful artifact that from afar seems pretty frustrating to me: keeping up a tempo and having to deal with copyright and permits. But what made Person Pitch a distinct jam was how it exerted a feeling of sunshine and joy that's forgotten in our post-9/11 world. The Animal Collective member used the samples, not as the primary, but as background for his voice. The Brian Wilson comparison is tired but makes sense. For some reason, I see baby boomers and modern hipsters really bonding over this album. A record that plays with Beach-Boys arrangements of old and techno sensibilities of new.

3. TV On The Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes



Brooklyn will always serve as a beacon for indie-rock creativity and experiments. If you want to find inspiration and live in a community of musicians, just walk down the Williamsburg neighborhood. TV on the Radio evolved from this NY borough and their album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes recalls Brooklyn better than most bands. Many argue the Young Liars EP is their strongest effort, but it seems Desperate Youth is their most misunderstood. It's the harshest they'll ever sound without coming off too abrasive or melancholy. Songs like "King Eternal" and "Bomb Yourself" paint a pretty vivid picture of the world in Brooklyn's eyes. Not to mention Sitek's production is heavy and loud, emphasizing bass and electronics. It was a mid-2000s triumph.

4. M.I.A. - Kala



M.I.A. is a really strange person. I feel she used to be some kinda political blogger who was given a Casio drum machine and a microphone. If you follow her on twitter or read her blogs, you'll see she writes in CAPS. I'm guessing she's upset about something. She went on Bill Maher to talk about the Tamil Tigers and came off a bit ditzy. Her lyrics aren't really too complex, yet they're said with such ferocity and anger that it resonates. Kala is probably the angriest I've ever seen her and if she wouldn't have appeared on television or in magazines, I would be really intimidated by her. Kala marked a transition from the simple electro-bass aesthetic used on Arular, to a more a global African/Carribean perspective. With the help of Diplo, Switch and Timbaland on the production tip, M.I.A. made a rough and abrasive dance record with tons of genre variety including dub-step, reggaeton, dance-hall, grime, and house. It's my go-to club record.

5. The Strokes - Is This It?



It seems like New York City, in general, was a source of inspiration for many indie-rock bands in the 00s and the pivotal one that comes to mind was the Strokes. Their debut "Is This It?" sat as some kind of weird landmark for rock. Watching them live, you'll be fooled as to how bored they actually are with their music: a group of NY lads standing around strumming and drumming their instruments with little to no showmanship. But that's the type of attitude they resurrected with their brand of hipster 60s and 70s resurgent rock. A reckless abandon that kick-started indie-rock back to fruition when it was down. Is This It? is arguably one of the most important albums of the decade.

6. Ghostface KIllah - Supreme Clientele



I had trouble deciding which Ghostface album was superior this decade: Supreme Clientele or Fishscale? Fishscale was a nice little album about cocaine and robbery that had Tony Starks at his most nonsensical via stream-of-consciousness. It was fun, and above all totally awesome. But Supreme Clientele had Ghost at his most confident. It really felt like his album. His solo debut Iron Man was about as much his album as Only Built For Cuban Linx was to Raekwon; they were both two sides of the same coin. Supreme Clinetele was truly Ghostface Killah's album and he had fun with it, complete with Iron Man cartoon clips and a sharp tongue. Also, Nutmeg is probably the best song to start with on an album.

7. Arcade Fire - Funeral



I feel like all the music released this decade was a response to September 11th. Funeral by Arcade Fire definitely felt like an album you can mourn to. With it, the band introduced the most original sound this decade: a blend of baroque pop, chamber orchestrations, and shout-out punk. At the time, I didn't think much of the album because I hadn't really dealt with any deaths. But soon after a relative of mine died, Funeral made perfect sense. Honestly, this is the best album of the decade because it paraphrases this bittersweet 10-year period in less than an hour.

8. Kanye West - Late Registration



Jon Brion multi-instrumental production? Check. A plethora of guest spots including Cam'ron, Lupe Fiasco, Jay-Z, Nas, and Paul Wall? Check. A seven minute-long, progressive rap song about retrospection and success? Check. Seriously, Kanye West's Late Registration is the best hip-hop album of the decade. Up to that point, he really only flaunted his production chops, which he had on lock. In terms of rhyme, he could really only add "mayonnaise-colored benz / I push miracle whip" to his resume of amazing lines. Though, songs like "Gone" and "Drive Slow" had him at his most creative and most clever. Kanye West hasn't really shown any sign of slowing down, minus the whole Taylor Swift thing, though I feel West is constantly experimenting. The guy is about as consistent as Animal Collective, meaning he is never consistent. He's constantly growing, and whether that means he is evolving into an egotistical narcissist or a maniacal genius, you can't really deny his importance in the 00s.

9. The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow



You can blame Zach Braff or Natalie Portman all you want for making The Shins a household item. In reality, there are a lot of people who still don't know who they are. Chutes Too Narrow is The Shins' sophomore LP and it's exemplary indie-pop leaning more towards the pop. James Mercer is a master at writing traditional pop records but Chutes stands out next to their first record Oh, Inverted World, which relied on atmosphere rather than song structure. Chutes moves with a precise hand and each song never fails. You, also, can't deny their indie gateway appeal, which definitely had sway over me and my fellow youth cohorts.


10. The Avalanches - Since I Left You



If you're feeling overly pessimistic or sad after listening to Funeral, then pop in Since I Left You by The Avalanches and watch your day go from overcast to ridiculously shiny. An album pieced together by samples taken from television shows, old records, and field recordings-- it's a giant jigsaw puzzle with a picture of a animals, cartoons, and friends dancing at a beach party. The whole frustration with sample-clearing I talked about on Person Pitch is multiplied by a hundred with this record. Strangely enough, the The Avalanches haven't released a sophomore album to accompany this gem, yet Since I Left had a glee about it that's hard to recreate.

hustlin' hard as fuck

if there's one thing I've learned in my 21 years of life, it's that any song sounds wayyy better chopped and screwed. not that UGK's International Players Anthem wasn't good before.

completely obsessed

aaliyah is fucking great

best coast

Best Coast is my new favorite artist. Real talk.

Best Coast is a band led by Bethany Constentino? Constantino? Cosentino? Every blog misspells her last name and I don't wanna write her last name wrong so I'm gonna just omit it for the time being.

She was a former drone contributor to NY group Pocahaunted. Then she moved out to the west coast to do some straight-up hustling and chillin.

It was there that she started making surf-rockish pop w/ major love-based songwriting.

This blog isn't really about how much I love her music, because, honestly, her music is amazing and doesn't really need any extra praise from some blog nobody reads.

This blog is essentially a love-letter to her. I follow you on Twitter and you sound pretty much like me except punkier. We should be friends and maybe date, depending on how we hit it off.

I like Beyonce and Jay-Z. Pimp Chronicles is pretty awesome. Sun is High and so am I! I also say totes all the time.
But anyway, you seem like a normal person and it'd be cool to chill, yknow?

Hope you make it out to Miami for Art Basel, for we will definitely chill if you come.

p.s. i'm not a serial killer.

Peace
-Ryan

lightning bolt - earthly delights

Noise-rock and metal are two genres that, for some odd reason, have a blurry, grey distinction. The two are abrasive, experimental, and angry. Classifications between the two strands of rock deal mostly with aesthetic. Noise-rock bands usually affiliate themselves with a broad D.I.Y. mentality arguably introduced and influenced by 80's hardcore punk. It's a more humble approach to playing shows than your glossy arena-rock concerts. Metal, however, has always carried a type of grandiose, almost biblical vision of popularity where small clubs aren't big enough to house such walls of dark sound.

But if the line between noise-rock and metal are already cloudy, then Lightning Bolt's new album Earthly Delights does not help the cause. The pummel-throbbing Providence, Rhode Island noise giants released their 5th album; an album so rough and droney, it can easily be passed off as some kind of post-metal oddity.

Lightning Bolt comprise Brian Chippendale on drums/vocals and Brian Gibson on bass guitar, sorta. See, Gibson modifies his bass guitar to hold both guitar and bass strings, then passing that sound through pedals and effects. The work of one guitar player now sounds like eight. Not to mention Chippendale's unreal, power-drumming and voice effects give the band a collective sound. The product is rough, fast, and really noisy.

Earthly Delights begins with the suitably titled "Sound Guardians". The song is Lightning Bolt in a nut-shell: stony, violent, and harsh. It's the tone LB play with since their beginnings in the late 90s.

The beginning of "Colossus", clocking in at seven minutes, can be confused with an Electric Wizard or Melvins song, but as soon as Chippendale starts his parade of hell-drums, it becomes pretty distinct as LB fodder. The song does sound a bit restricted. Lightning Bolt is supposed to sound like a full-fledged band, but the presence of only two members can easily be heard.

They experiment with proggy-country riffs ("Funny Farm"), and wreak total chaos with unconventional song structures and call-and-response vocals (S.O.S).

Yet, I've always thought of Lightning Bolt as a "metal band". Song-titles like "Dracula Mountain", "Ride The Sky", and "Riffwraiths", border on exaggeration and epic fantasy. There's something to be admired about that. A band working on a consistent grass-roots aesthetic confused with delusions of Melville-like epics.

The album's sound is pretty consistent. But consistency might not be Lightning Bolt's most flattering characteristic. Though, it's this kind of anarchic consistency that makes Earthly Delights one of the best rock albums of the year. Just don't call it an earthly delight.

liberty city liberator

so next semester i'm taking "Print News Reporting", a course into my journalism major. it's hella interesting and not like your average reporting class, but then again I really don't know what an "average" reporting class is. but the professor is taking on a new, experimental curriculum. the goal for the class is to create an online newspaper where students will report and write stories for the publication. what will we be covering exactly?

Liberty City, Miami.

it's kind of a dangerous area in the city, but it's ignored by major newspapers and television news stations. the only kinda of newsworthy headlines that come out of the area are shootings or corruption.
so my professor feels that someone should give voice to Liberty City. a voice that isn't completely interested in crime and shady business. i mean he's right. Americans live in this impoverished little community and they've got a story.

but FUCK.

it's exciting but terrifying. i don't like to talk to strangers and i'm gonna be forced to do just that. especially in a city that's predominantly black... i just wonder how people will react to me. a hipster talking with impoverished citizens. i don't know what to expect.

i mean look at me!



i can't show my whole face now! cmon!

at the same time, how awesome is it gonna be to hang out in a really poor part of town?! i'm gonna feel like the journalist in the fifth season of The Wire who writes a feature story on Bubbles, the crackhead. maybe i'll make friends with people like Omar and Bodie?!!

i've already thought of some awesome scenarios that could happen. i'm probably gonna make friends with a crackhead and he's gonna want help at like unreasonable hours. he's gonna call me at 2 a.m., because i had told him that if he ever needs anything to gimme a call! he's my tip so he scratches my back and i scratch his. while i'm sleeping he calls and asks me a huge favor. so i agree and drive all the way to liberty city (a 45 min. drive). it turns out he wants money, because he got robbed and needs the cash to buy meth. i'm gonna give him a talk and stuff... and i'm probably gonna give him the money. i'm gonna have a face of disappointment while he walks away into an alley, and I'll leave.

yknow stuff like that! real-world stuff, people!

i'm scared of talking to these people, though... so i can't imagine doing that and having to gather information from them. i feel like i'm fooling them. should i talk to them about rap music? that's racist, but i do know a lot about hip-hop and rap. maybe that can be some kind of social lubricant? i don't think our professor will have us going to the city at dark, since it can get real ugly at that time. surely in broad daylight.

all of this is terrifying, but my friend told me to look at the grander scheme of it. think of the possibilities that can come from starting a student-run online newspaper that covers an impoverished, forgotten area of Miami. we can go on to win awards, and it can probably give me some kind of edge when applying to grad schools. like, "hey, this guy was music director at a radio station, staff writer for the school newspaper, journalism grad w/ an english minor, and he worked on an award-winning student newspaper that covered Liberty City. and he's a totes cutie!!!" IMPRESSIVE. probably not, but you never know. i'm an idiot :)

hipsters have a family

miami's got a home-grown local music scene and within the scene comprises a broad group of local hipsters. a lot of them went to either your high-school, middle school, or your friend's high-school, etc.

im not too involved in the scene down here, but i would say i contribute what i can to it. and if i have any idea what the scene is, or who participates in it, it would only be a view from afar. what i'm trying to say here is that i use the internet to gaze at the scene and i hardly actually hang out with any of the people in it.

i lurk on facebook or myspace or blogger or tumblr or flckr and look at amateur photography, bedroom blog-diary entries, and miscellaneous links posted on facebook. these are the things that paint the identity of miami hipsterdom, at least for me. i can't speak for everyone.

so it's very strange for me when i see photos of local hearthrobs or well-known scenesters back in their middle-school/early high-school haydays looking not so alt (as hipster runoff would call it) as they do now.
i would glorify these local hipster images and make these people untouchable in my eyes.

i would follow the goings-on of a punk-hipster who dresses really grimey and dirty; she pretty much looks like a homeless girl. she has photos of her travels (she's gone all over the world, seriously). then i find out she's actually really rich. and her parents are really nice people.

it was all a facade. and that disappoints me a bit.
all these "cool" people have a history and are actually pretty normal when it comes down to it.

i can't wait for some of them to grow out of the whole hipster thing so we can be friends. i feel like we're not at the same level.

maybe i've grown out of trying to be cool.
i guess im trying to say that i'm pretty touchable ;)

im bored

im in class and i saw this taylor swift picture and thought i should share it with you.

farts.

dire needs

i wanna make a mixtape.
i want this one to paint the image of my 2009 fall.

so far i've got
Teengirl Fantasy - Portofino
Washed Out - Feel It All Around
Fuck Buttons - Phantom Limb
Phaseone - Panda Jawn
Pure Ecstasy - Pressure Drop
Atlas Sound - Washington School
Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms
Cocteau Twins - Blind Dumb Deaf
Ducktails - The Mall
Matias Aguayo - Walter Neff
Jacuzzi Boys - Island Ave
Fucked Up - Police
Jens Lekman - Jens Lekman's Farewell Song to Rocky Dennis

booing OJ Da Juiceman?

i don't live in New York. I live in Miami, Florida.
I'm very well aware that New York City has some kind of speak-easy preservation agenda for hip-hop. "real hip-hop". What the fuck does that even mean anyway? That you have some basement-made beat with a 70's soul sample and a NY-born hip-hop MC that just shits on every other style of the genre?

All this frustration is coming out of the news I read today of NYC audience members booing OJ Da Juiceman last night at B.B. Kings for the 2009 CMJ Music Marathon. From what I read, too, OJ wasn't even bad. He was GOOD. That's something, too, because I understand OJ can be a bit ridiculous... but are people not allowed to like stuff like southern rap?

I read an article yesterday written by someone I know, in my school newspaper (I know, who cares?). he goes on to talk about MTV's top 10 artists to watch in hip-hop or something along those lines, and he said Gucci Mane was on there ahead of Raekwon. The article goes on to just trash the shit outta Gucci Mane saying stuff like he sucks or whatever. Then I see the photo of the writer next to his name and he's wearing a NY Yankees fitted baseball cap. ugh.

Let's just get things out of the way here. Since when was MTV even relevant? Uh... Never. So what if MTV puts out a list of their top 10 whatevers? it won't make any difference because they don't know what the fuck they're talking about to begin with. And so WHAT if Gucci Mane is ahead of Raekwon? I'm gonna just go out there and say that this whole list was about musicians most likely to be on frequent MTV video rotation, and I can confidently say I've never seen a Raekwon video on MTV... but I have seen a T.I. video. I've seen more than one, and a billion times.



Also, WHAT IS WRONG WITH GUCCI MANE? I mean besides that he's kinda a criminal. "yeah, he's a criminal-- he's robbing hip-hop!" SHUT UP.

The only thing Gucci mane does is rap. Sometimes he's good at it and sometimes he's bad at it. Back To The Traphouse, his first major release: Kinda fucking terrible. The Movie Pt 2, a mixtape released by him and DJ Drama: kinda fucking awesome.

If you like Gucci Mane, you like Gucci Mane. Hip-Hop is like film; you're allowed to love shitty movies. yknow the ones that are amazingly bad and full of cheese? Hip-Hop works like that. Music works like that. Everything works like that.

So this whole regional hate for anything that's not traditional East Coast-style hip-hop, or "real hip-hop" as they say, is just going overboard (somebody call a coast guard). Everyone is just a bit upset because for the past 10 years, the hip-hop blazing the radio comes from the south. Listen: Nas hasn't come out with anything good these past couple of years and I'm pretty sure he's going insane. Jay-Z is a bit hit-or-miss lately. The Wu-Tang have no mass radio appeal. Mos Def doesn't like the radio. Common is already there so I don't know what the complaint is here. Jadakiss kinda sucks. Yknow what I'm saying? Like accept it.

NY People equate the whole "hip-hop is dead" term with Southern rap's emergence. Oh I see... NY Hip-Hop is dead. Gotcha. Well good then. Enough with the east-coast rap nostalgia and on to some real 21st century verse.

stranger than kindness

fever ray has been dishing out the best music videos of the year... that's a fact, man.
i posted her video for "when I grow up" a while back because of how it reminded me of Ang Lee's The Ice Storm mixed w/ exploding-watertechnic shamanism.
She released a video, which you can definitely find on youtube, earlier this fall called "Seven". it's uh... fucking creepy. but AWESOME.

her new single "stranger than kindness" is a nick cave cover. fair to say, it's the most bizarre, rad nick cave cover ever. and the video... jeez it's sooo fucking cool.
the whole fever ray aesthetic is just ethereal and original. like sometimes i want the artists i like to wear some really outlandish stuff and not always just plaid, silk-screened t-shit and jeans all the time *cough*vivian girls*cough*. fever ray and lady Gaga know what the fuck i'm talking about.

youth bulge

yikes. what an awkward title for a post!

well it's around 12 a.m. and I'm sitting on my bedsheets taking a long-ass study break. see, i've been studying for my Contemporary International Problems mid-term since Friday night and i'm now going onto Monday morning. the test is on tuesday at 11 a.m.

Like I said before, I started studying friday night, but I took a well-deserved break and went to the cinema to watch a film. I drove to the Cosford Cinema at the University of Miami in Coral Gables to watch a film called Gomorra. It's a film that's been in some sort of distribution limbo. It came out earlier this year and it was screened in a couple of select theaters. I had been dying to watch this film ever since I saw its trailer.



I guess the film is about the Comorra crime family in Naples, Italy. But that's kind of like saying The Wire is about the Barksdale drug empire... it's really only scratching the surface of the entire picture. Gomorra is way more than just a film about the contemporary Italian mafia, whom btw look a lot like Seaside Heights, NJ natives.

First of all, Gomorra is kinda the most beautiful looking film I've seen all year. I think THEY call it Neo-Realism... which I guess means the camera is operated by hand, and the aesthetic is pretty void of any cinematic, or dramatic camera tricks. No music soundtrack... just the audio of the setting and the characters.

The beginning is a little boring and slow. It starts off on high notes with the murder of these thugs in a tanning salon. Then the film takes off by centering around 4 stories... all of which are a bit hard to follow. Some of the stories are clouded with bureaucratese and technical jargon that are somehow related to waste development, money management, and textile sweatshop complications. kinda boring material at first but they definitely apply to the grander scheme of things... very similar to how the initial irrelevance of the docks in season 2 of the wire became absolutely relevant mid-season.

the stories that catch your attention are the ones that deal with human emotion rather than corporate/official hoo-ha. there's a story of a little delivery boy who gets caught up in the Camorra business after finding and returning a gun and a bag of drugs. he goes through little man-proving initiations and what-not and the stuff is just brutal. think bar-mitzvahs but instead of reading the torrah to prove you're a man, you have to wear a homemade bulletproof vest and get shot in the chest. by the end of this kid's story he fuckin goes downhill and submits to the idea of criminal masculinity. deep shit, man.

there's another interesting story about these two teens who are REALLY REALLY into Scarface. they wanna kinda do their own thing in the city so they stick up drug dealers and steal weapons. Camorra pplz aren't happy about all the rumpus, so they tell them to stop or they will totes get killed. they keep doing it. you can see where that's headed. their story also inspired some pretty memorable scenes... one of which (as seen below) have the two idiots shooting automatic weapons in their underwear, lord of the flies-style.

what's great about the film is, not only the illusion of authenticity, but the anxiety I got from watching it. everyone's getting shot here. and when someone gets shot, you better believe it's unexpected or totally subtle. there's no soundtrack... so I feel as if anyone is bound to just get shot outta nowhere, no warnings, no nothing. scarlett johannson shows up on the telly wearing a dress at an awards show... I legitimately thought she was gonna get shot by Woody Allen.

Then I do a bit of research on the film and find out it's based on this non-fiction research-based book. Apparently the author went undercover and wrote about his findings and research. It seems like the making of the book is perhaps a bit more interesting than the actual subject. I hear he's on some witness protection program because he saw A LOT of shit he was not supposed to see. then the dude writes a book about it and publishes it for everyone to see? uhhh is he fucking dead?? apparently not.

anyway, it's a great film and from what I read, it's coming on Criterion very very soon. So I can't wait for that.

logos

Bradford Cox has evolved. His evolution from bedroom-rock pessimist to extroverted noise-popper was one that never saw the light of privacy. His blog, dedicated to the Atlas Sound moniker, as well as his proper band Deerhunter and Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt’s solo project Lotus Plaza, is loaded with posts about rainwater cassettes, youtube videos and micromixes (one of which contained a pretty awesome Badlands score intro). Dude really put himself out there.

To make matters even more public, Cox made a record that acted as his ethereal music diary: Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel. It was a prototype Kranky record: spacious, ambient and dark. But Cox painted the album with pictures of a quarantined child dreaming of wide, open spaces. It stamped Cox's presence in the indie community as a noise-rock troubadour.



Logos, Cox's sophomore LP, couldn't be any more different. The record is a global and varied collection of songs and if it plays as a diary, it would belong to most of Cox's friends and influences. Cox stated in a recent Pitchfork interview that most of the songs on the album are non-autobiographical, and that in contrast with Let the Blind, Logos is less introverted because it simply just got too boring. To judge the first two tracks on the album, I would’ve thought he backed down on his statement.

The album begins with “The Light That Failed”, a folk song at heart laced with glitches and ticks that result in a pretty soft electro-acoustic track. Followed by “An Orchid”, which sounds like a post-Microcastle Deerhunter song. So far, the songs seem like typical Coxian noisy doo-wop.

But the standout third track, “Walkabout”, contains the much-talked-about collaboration with Animal Collective wonder-voice Panda Bear, who’s credited on the album as Noah Lennox. The song was officially released for online streaming mid-summer and acted as the best solution to summertime boredom. It’s a lighthearted, sunny song that builds upward from a Dovers sample and can stand on its own as being one of the best songs of the year. But I guess when you’re working with someone like Lennox who produced Person Pitch, a lush, smiley, loop-heavy album, you can’t expect anything less than high spirits.

“Sheila” reaffirms Cox’s transition from the obscure to poppy with a chorus that’ll stick to your head: “Sheila/You’ll be my wife/You’ll share my life.” “Quick Canal”, the album’s mid-hump clocking in at eight minutes, has Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab fame contributing main vocals and doing her best Thom Yorke croon, while Cox stands in the back. It’s really the album’s core track with a long minimal sound-wave looping over Sadier’s indecipherable voice.

The rest of the album goes through different rhythms with a slow acoustic recovery from the Sadier track (“My Halo”) to ambient-microhouse (“Washington School”), and to songs where Cox alters his voice to sound eerily similar to Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene (“Kid Klimax” and “Logos”).

Logos is some kind of brilliant mixtape without actually being a mixtape. An album that has really traveled around the community. An album that is above Cox’s personal and physical quarantines and under his new-found comfort.

google reader

so i was reading my google reader in class while my international relations professor lectured about population & security issues. i was searching for cool blogs to subscribe to on my rss feed. see, i had just discovered how awesome google reader was because it completely minimized the amount of website flow I do in a day.

so i visited gorilla vs bear and spotted a list of blogs the site follows and thought i'd take a look at some. I found some pretty neat ones, like Transparent Blog and The Old Kentucky Blog, and i added them to my feed. but i came across hipster runoff and thought it was pretty rad; kinda like a cheap and convenient VIce blog. i scanned the site looking through its pictures and blog post headlines when suddenly the guy sitting behind in class me taps me on my left shoulder. i turn around and he points at my screen and gives me a thumbs up... as in "hey man hipster runoff is a great website and you'll surely love it as much as i do... also i'm totally looking at your laptop screen and being ultra-creepy."

i gave him a thumbs up, for i totally saw eye to eye with him on this website suggestion game. But now this put me in an awkward position... it me under some pressure since this guy is totes looking at my laptop seeing what blogs and websites i visit on a daily basis. SHIT. now i gotta impress people? so i go on like Snacks and Shit & the Sartorialist (one is silly and one shows my serious side). but i never got any response from the guy again.

I always figured if you bring your laptop to class, people will definitely be looking at my screen. WEIRDZ.

brotally

neon indian's psychic chasms

This past summer was a period of many things: boredom, perspiration, the beach, minimal-layered clothing. The weather was usually a partly cloudy forecast with a chance of... haze? At least that's what one can gather from the state of indie rock during the summer solstice. A movement of electro-nostalgia and low-fidelity sound quality, creating a relatively new wave of beach-scuzz electronic: glo-fi.

Music blogs attributed this sub-genre to a current rise in grimey, threadbare-sounding dance music, which can arguably be traced to Swedish imports The Tough Alliance with their debut The New School back in 2005. They introduced a blend of tropicallia and French house music that sort of made the indie-rock community tremble from the fusion. Or you can go even farther back to when Stereolab's indie-electro rock was at its peak in the late 90s. Or even Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha in the early 90s. As much as those records were influences, none of them really embraced the dilapidated sound of acts like Washed Out or Delorean. Though, one stand-out to come through in 2009 was Neon Indian.

Mexican-born Alan Palomo is the man behind Neon Indian, his third moniker as a musician, the other others being Ghosthustler and Vega. His project Vega drew on a similar sound to Neon Indian, but where Vega was a broad, grandiose blast of club music, Neon Indian is more minimal and battered with its aesthetic.

Neon Indian's debut Psychic Chasms is a lovely little gem filled with the types of bleeps and bloops that is reminiscent of late 80s-early 90s video games like Castlevania, Donkey Kong, and San Francisco Rush. Manipulating video-game synths and lo-fi processes, Neon Indian creates a record that is somewhat flawed, but beautiful in the way it unfolds its themes of teenage innocence and boredom.

The intro "(AM)" is a small little track that begins with a loop, sounding very much like a 70's television show theme song. All of a sudden there are lasers everywhere and bloop-- the album's first track "Deadbeat Summer" comes on. A naturally danceable track that has Palomo singing about summer boredom and the weather.

What's interesting about Psychic Chasms is its overall aesthetic. It's a rough sound. Lo-fi is a pretty hard invention to grasp: indecipherable vocals, cryptic distortion, and unintelligible melodies. Psychic Chasms doesn't go as far as creating a blob of noise, but it does take the cohesion down a bit. Palomo's voice, while sounding melodic, has a really soft murmur that can be a bit difficult to trace through fuzz.

The surprisingly coherent stand-out track of the record and single, "Should Have Taken Acid With You", has Palomo singing about regrets of love and drugs ( "Should have taken acid with you/Take our clothes off in the swimming pool.") backed with a swirling keyboard loop and more distorted video game lasers. "Mind Drips" sounds like it was straight out of a Top Gun or Red Dawn montage, but shows Palomo's voice range with the song's breakdown.

The album does suffer a little bit from its really short interludes, scattered all throughout the record. They contain just bits of small instrumental loops and electronics that are there to, I guess, broaden the nostalgic 80s palette. It’s cool to hear Palomo having fun with the micro-chopped Atari noises but it only distracts from Palomo’s songwriting and fully-rounded dance tracks. But the tracks add to the overall atmosphere of longing and youth.

Listening to Psychic Chasms, one can easily dismiss it as some kind of novelty act that will only be as good as the first listen and slowly fall into obscurity. Honestly, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking such a thing. It's hard to predict the lasting future of a contemporary act. Will Vampire Weekend be remembered when we're 40-50 years old? Will they be as prolific as Sonic Youth or Yo La Tengo? Or will they just be a band at the bottom of moving boxes waiting to be rediscovered as one organizes their closet?

A couple of weeks ago, Fader magazine's online television network put up a video of Palomo and his band playing a cover of a 1950's Argentine song, "Mi Viejo". The arrangement was minimal with just a small Casio keyboard, guitar, and tambourine. The song is about coming to terms with a father figure's death. Though, what the video showed, besides a really eerie, cooing version of a beautiful death ballad, was that Palomo has a versatility to him, and that Palomo doesn't really need bleeps and bloops to emphasize songwriting. It showed that Neon Indian is probably just the 3rd of many different music personalities waiting to blast out of Palomo's musical mind. Not bad for only being 21.

it pays to be a emotional deez days

"Welcome to heartbreak," kanye west said on his last LP release 808's and Heartbreak, an album so emotional and sappy, it acted as a catalyst for a whole battalion of sentimental hip-hop.

Let's see. You got your Drake, a former Degrassi cast member whose mixtape So Far Gone displayed a confident, but totally not confident rapper dealing with, yknow-- shit. life, grlz, money, cars, family turmoil, etc. yknow life-stuff.
He also sings with autotune and raps... (yes, that's hip-hop now).

the new Ghostface Killah album , Wizard of Poetry, (which is amazing) has Pretty Toney stressing girls! STRESSING GIRLS! This is the same guy who rapped "Remember when I long-dicked you and broke your ovary?"
I mean obviously the song (Wildflower) had him lashing out at a girl who cheated on him... and in the heart of that was male who was totally stressing a girl.
But on his new one he's talking about settling down. Maintaining a steady, monogamous relationship with a wifey.
I think he even says something on the new Raekwon album about his son being 25. DAMN. that's some real adulthood stuff. I mean... rappers are totally softening up. Could Ghost's tough exterior, a large, robust black male with skullys, be turning into a giant rapping teddy-bear??
Eh not totally. His first single Stapleton Sex has him fucking a girl, and describing it in graphic, filthy detail... he also orgasms at the end of the song, which has to be the most awkward moment in a Wu-Tang album.

We even got Kanye West-protege Kid Cudi describing himself as the "lonely stoner"?? Gimme a break, man.
Besides Day N' Nite being a really catchy hip-hop song... it's a soft display of what hip-hop has been masking itself as for years and years.
Gangster rap was hip-hop with a shit-ton of narratives laced with subtle tough-guy insecurities. But hip-hop these days is throwing out the understated... and coming out as really blatant.

It pays to be emotional today.
Welcome to present-day hip-hop, guys.

orchids

woah, man. it's been a long time since i've posted anything on my blog. and I promised to post up P4k music fest photos but for some reason it took too goddamn long for them to upload onto the site so... i guess i'm just gonna create a flickr account and post a link to the album on the blog.
in the meanwhile, i'll entertain you by sharing with you a couple of things i've been into in the past month...



it's the 10 year anniversary of the techno label Kompakt, based in cologne, germany, and every year they release a compilation of really soothing minimal techno from a bunch of the artists they house. a lot of notable stuff from artists like Gui Boratto, The Field, and Pachanga Boys. so that's kind of what i've been jamming to as of late. i honestly wouldn't buy it... so if i were you i would probably just try to find it on torrents.




orchid is this... idk-- post hardcore? hardcore? screamo? i'm not really sure what the genre would be considered. it's sort of in between hardcore punk because of how stripped down and simple it is... but it's got a lot of post-hardcore tendencies like melodic bridges and what-not. i mention screamo because through research i found that they were sort of the "pioneers" of present day screamo and post-hardcore. so either they're to blame for the amount of really shitty post-hardcore/metal bands that live on Fuse... or they're the ones to thank for taking hardcore punk in the right direction. I guess present day bands sort of lost the idea that orchid introduced. whatever-- i can rant all day about the state of present day post-hardcore but it would only be clouded by bias. Orchid is the truth, though. these guys are brutal and they really have the energy that bands these days should bring to kids. there's a level of violence that is emphasized with this music-- it's kind of refreshing but ultimately sad to see that a band like this didn't flourish. oh well. here's a song of theirs from their LP Chaos Is Me titled "Aesthetic Dialectic"







Underwater Peoples is this label based in Washington, DC. This label is gonna be a major player in the indie-rock scene. I mean they're already getting a lot of buzz with some of the bands they're dishing out like Real Estate, Ducktails, Family Portrait, and Frat Dad (to name a few). To sort of give you an idea of the sound the label tried embellish-- it's definitely hazy, summer, lo-fi indie pock rock. it's summer here in miami and this is the type of music that pairs well with it. The label has been showcased on Pitchfork and Gorilla vs. Bear a lot in the past couple of months. They have this album called the Underwater Peoples Showcase-- this album is a pretty solid compilation of all the artists they release for and it makes for a really sunny summer record.

real estate - suburban beverage

the "thank you for lending me your camera for Pitchfork" mixtape

so this thursday, me and a couple of friends are hopping on a plane to Chicago to attend the 2009 Pitchfork Music Festival. this year's festival proves to be one of the year's best festivals for the cheapest price. $60 two-day passes in which one can see a plethora of the best in contemporary indie rock/hiphop/electronic. Luckily, my friend Sean and I were able to get press passes. Him and I will be interviewing a couple of bands and taking a hell of a lot of photographs that will make for a pretty fuckin' rad blogspot post.
To take photos I needed a camera-- a practical one at that. My high-school friend Aileen gladly let me borrow her digital Nikon to snap photos at the festival and around the city. And as a giant, magnified "thank you", I made her a mixtape comprising songs that I've either been listening to at the moment or thought she would enjoy.
here's the track list.



1. discovery - i wanna be your boyfriend (feat. Angel Deradoorian)
2. grizzly bear/lil' wayne - 2 weeks till' prom
3. atlas sound - walkabout (live) (feat. Panda Bear)
4. toro y moi - blessa
5. broadcast - black cat
6. deerhunter - hazel st.
7. cam'ron - la bumba (feat. vado)
8. cass mccombs - when the bible was wrote
9. major lazer - keep it goin' (feat. nina sky & ricky blaze)
10. the very best (esau mwamwaya & radioclit) - tengazako
11. prince - let's go crazy
12. nina sky - move ya body (feat. jabba)
13. mos def - auditorium
14. wale - the freestyle (roc boys)

blessa

i have never heard of Toro y Moi until Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear) posted up a link on his twitter about him and, man, he's great!
he's supposed to release two full lengths next year and Carpark, the label from which he resides, currently released a 7" for his song Blessa.



when you listen to the song you'll notice how air-y it sounds. there's a lot of space from which to reverberate sounds and it seems as if toro y moi takes advantage of all the space he has to create lots of delay, noisy flush, and beachy harmonies. this is kind of a great summer song.

here's a stream iMeem.

Blessa - toro y moi

Mix Tape Wars, Vol. 1

I was eating at this Peruvian restaurant yesterday with some friends (by the way, please try Lomo Saltado. it's delicious). We were talking and the topic of conversation turned to my friend Nicole and her mix CD, and how great it was. I then brushed it off by saying that it probably wasn't THAT good and I sort of said that I could probably do one better than hers.
So the idea came up to do a battle of mix tapes.

MIX TAPE WARS: Me v. Nicole.

Rules:
There are no rules. It has to fill up an entire blank CDR, which is about 80 minutes. No themes or anything. Just make a good mix tape. One that can be listened to in the car, I guess... well that's what I'm going for with my mixtape.
I'm pretty excited.
The winner will get their mixtape played on the air. I'll devote one hour of my noise rock show to playing it.

I'll also post it up on the blog in a zip. file so you can download it... maybe via rapidshare or whatever it's called.

I'll keep you posted.
-Ryan

cold souls

just saw the trailer to Cold Souls starring Paul Giamatti as a fictionalized version of himself.
warning. at first this movie looks exactly like some kind of faux-Charlie Kaufman rip-off type shit... and you're kind of right. the story is very heady and kaufman-esque.
paul giamatti as himself decides to like see some scientific corporation that deals in removing the souls out of people. that's like being john malkovich meets eternal sunshine of the spotless mind... just with a different actor to study and a different scientific procedure.
but then he wants his soul back? uhm... were they even trying to be discrete with the plot of this?

but watch the rest of the trailer and it looks like it might be pretty funny.




paul giamatti sort of plays himself in every movie so i don't see what the point of using him as some sort metaphysical observation of himself is? im already confused by this flick.
eh but then he goes to Russia and it looks like hilarity might ensue there. i don't know: just give me a movie with Paul Giamatti in a ushanka and i'll pay top dollar to watch it. in 3D. on IMAX.

manifest destiny, thursday the 18th

a friend requested a text of my playlist from Thursday's show.

hey: listen to my show every thursday from 4-7pm. Experimental and Noise Rock!


boredoms - acid police
oneida - the adversary
japandroids - wet hair
ponytail - die allman bruder
death set - had a bird
parts & labor - satellites
deerhunter - rainwater cassette exchange
abe vigoda - wild heart
grouper - disengaged
grouper - heavy water/i'd rather be sleeping
the microphones - i want wind to blow
pocahaunted - divine flesh
fuck buttons - colours move
boredoms - god from anal
gang gang dance - glory in itself/ egyptian
sonic youth - massage the history
dirty projectors - temecula sunrise
magik markers - state numbers
cymbals eat guitars - like blood does
pink mountaintops - vampire
spacemen 3 - mary anne
bibio - haikuesque (when she laughs)
st. vincent - the strangers
double dagger - no allies
lightning bolt - into the valley
boris - track 01 off of Pink
the ruby suns - morning sun

frontier psychiatrist!

whoops!
yesterday i forgot to post anything. i was kind of busy with school and my radio show. then i got home and sort of went to sleep? woke up just now.



well my friend, rafael, has been telling me to listen to the avalanches' Since I Left You for a while. I finally heard it about a couple of months ago and found it to be good... but I did think it was a bit flawed. for one: the record is just a bit too long. two: because there's so many samples being used it was hard for me to pin-point my favorite songs.
So i kind of brushed it off.
But then I was shuffling through my iPod while driving and boom: Frontier Psychiatrist comes up.
It totally reminded me how many gems are peppered in that CD.

The Avalanches have not done a CD since that first one in 2001.

The Avalanches - Since I Left You mp3

cheers
-ryan

boredoms