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I’d be willing to wager that a third of you do not know who or what LCD Soundsystem is and that a third of you know who LCD Soundsystem is and have had this album for close to two, maybe three months now. The remaining third of you fall somewhere in between and are aware LCD Soundsystem but are just now beginning to listen to this album or are starting to see it popup in your favorite periodicals. Regardless of which catagory you may fall in, you should have this album for the following reasons:

1. James Murphy, the creative engine behind the project LCD Soundsystem, is a passionate librarian/historian of sorts. He collects, processes, and archives LP’s. He has an entire library of them. Check the cover of his Introns album or listen to his first single Losing My Edge. He uses lessons learned from classic Punk/Post Punk, Electro, Disco, and Rock to produce fantastic hybrid tracks. Groups like The Fall, The Velvet Underground, the Talking Heads, have all become part of his palette. Ask him to pick a favorite song and he might cripple under the weight of his library.

But my favorite song ever? I can walk over to my records and look and think– and there are a bunch of them, and I say it a lot, I’m like, “This is my favorite song ever!” But that’s a hyperbole. Because I’m a hyperbolic shit. I use hyperbole too much. I use hyperbole all the time, every day! I can’t stop using hyperbole!

2. Murphy has wit. Before deciding to pursue music as a career he turned down a job as a writer for what he believed to be a destined for failure Seinfield. In this album perhaps the best example is North American Scum where Murphy sarcastically reminds listeners that North Amercians are scum because they’re, well, North Amercian.

we are North Americans
and for those of you who still think we’re from England
we’re not, no.

and

you see i love this place that i have grown to know
alright, North America.
and yeah, I know you wouldn’t touch us with a ten-foot pole
‘cause we’re North Americans.

3. The end result. These are a bunch of hybrid disco/rock tracks infused with vintage analog sounds. The album is an important milestone in the evolution of popular Rock, but more importantly it is simply a fun album to listen to.

LCD Soundsystem – Get Innocuous

LCD Soundsystem – North American Scum

LCD Soundsystem – Sound Of Silver

I have a record collection. It consists of a few hundred LPs that I inherited from every close relative I have within a 1,000 mile radius. Don’t be impressed. Apart from a Madonna single on translucent blue, and a pretty clutch catalog of Frank Sinatra, it’s not much to brag about.

In highschool, when I really started to get into hardcore, I watched countless friends blow their allowance money on 7″s and LPs of bands that they’d sometimes never seen or heard of. I didn’t get it. To me, it was all about going to shows and experiencing the music. Of course, I didn’t have a very big allowance.

Now, I feel like I’ve been left behind. Friends with literally thousands of records worth thousands of dollars, on vinyl that is every color under the sun, bask in the glow of new records on their doorstep each week, sometimes, each day. Oh, vinyl nerds, what treasures you have, what money you’ve wasted!

So now, I have started my own little collection. None of it particularly rare, though some colorful. I’m starting to understand the appeal. After all, most things just sound better on vinyl, but I want this collection to be manageable, not just amassed for the sake of rarity, but because its music that I love and that I want to enjoy in the privacy of my own bedroom, away from all those other ears…and all that dangerous moshing.

Golden Earring – Radar Love
Home – Dreamer
Small Faces – Rollin’ Over
The Chocolate Watchband – Expo 2000
Funkadelic – Hit It and Quit It
Warpig – Tough Nuts
Sopwith Camel – Cellophane Woman
Moby Grape – Can’t Be So Bad
The Electric Prunes – Long Day’s Flight
The Byrds – Eight Miles High
Strawberry Alarm Clock – Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow

Charalambides is a pioneer band of what is currently being standardized as Free Folk. I don’t really think Free Folk is yet a genre per se, mainly because it’s a label for many different acts despite them crossing references. Take Noise and Wolf Eyes as an example; Drone and Double Leopards; Experimental and Sunburned Hand of the Man; Psychedelic and Charalambides; the list goes on. Also, there are still other terms in the game, the most prominent being Avantgarde and New Weird America. This pretty much resembles the early 90′s when media created a new genre, which at the time it was Alternative VS Indie. They are both meaningless as definitions for musical genres, but eventually Indie took the stage and is accepted and somewhat understood today. I think the so called Free Folk is nowadays what Indie was yesterday, the off-mainstream being prepped for sale in the hopes of the arrival of a new Nirvana. If that does actually happen, a good analogy would be that Charalambides would do for Free Folk what Sonic Youth has done for Indie, being clearer and refraining, the first sentence, a pioneer. I’ll probably write more about bands that are under Free Folk label in coming articles since most of what I listen to falls under this umbrella.

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Although most people usually focus on England, there has been great European music coming from Scandinavia for years. One of those great acts is Finland’s Husky Ruscue, with their typical Scandinavian sound, made mostly by the music’s whole atmosphere and Reeta-Leena Korhola’s pronunciation. Together with Marko Nyberg she is the core of this studio act, but they have been performing live for some years now with a five man band. In fact, I will go and see them here in Amsterdam in May. The band’s music can be described as a mixture of fragile folk, filmic music and up-tempo rock.

This album contains eleven tracks which all, in their own way, are quite unique. It has very diverse moods. Where the first two tracks start out very dreamy, the third, Nightless Night, is a really sunny kind of up-tempo song to start spring with. The following three tracks, Blueberry Tree Parts 1 to 3, should really be listened to with headphones. This will give them that extra dimension and will make you feel the music even more, you will feel like you are in the middle of Finland’s beautiful countryside. The next track shows the band’s open-minded character and explores some other music styles. The last tracks come back to the album’s original dreamy sound, which again, have that chilly feeling and will make you feel like you are in some dark Finnish forest. The album’s last track, Caravan, is a perfect up-tempo closure of this album and will leave you with a great feeling. All in all this is a great album to dream away with!

Lastly, this album’s cover-art is one of the best i’ve seen (it was one of the reasons that i bought this album), as is all this band’s other cover-art, check it out at www.husky-rescue.com

Husky Rescue – My Home Ghost

So, I live in Houston, Texas.

Did you know that Houston, Texas is the 4th Largest and 2nd Fattest City in the United States?

So, in Houston, Texas, the north side specifically, there is a neighborhood: Houston Heights, colloquially The Heights. The Washington Mutual in The Heights, it has a fancy front fascia that contrasts and complements the other nearby buildings’ front fascias in a way that only a panel of roundtable-sitters could have brainstormed in what they undoubtedly refer to as a “session”.  The Heights has itself a white-washed diversity that appeals to 30-somethings looking to hang on to some shred of their modern and urban lifestyles while, you know, “safely” ploppin’ out some youngn’s.  But The Heights, she has a darker underbelly.  The kind of underbelly always and only present in places sporting numbered street names.

Towards the northern end of The Heights, which is itself towards the northern end of Houston, Texas, around 26th street, there is a factory.  A factory that, as far as any reasonable persona can surmise, produces wire clothing hangers.  Who the hell uses wire coat hangers?  Everyone does,  what the shit are you talking about.  Talkin’ ‘Bout a fantasy word where every hanger is thick plastic suitable for both shirt and pant, obviously.  Apparently this kind of confusion has caused this factory to develop sentience, voicing it’s entire range of opinions and emotions in the singular phrase, “BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP…..FIRE.”  A phrase which, obviously, must be repeated for the entire three hours you are within earshot, because you, and the subsequent fire-respond teams, could not comprehend it’s obvious depth, obviously.

So, across from the Talkin’ Hanger Plant, in the northern Heights, on the north side of Houston, Texas, there is a place called Super Happy Funland.  Super Happy Funland is the kind of place disaffected youth of (most of the time) all-ages can congregate upon after an early evening of pill-popping and oral sex, or whatever the hell fucking highschoolers do these days, fuck.  The kind of place where the bill will, without question, always include an act someone, somewhere has at one time described, or will describe, as experimental noisecore.  The kind of place that charges seven dollars to get in.  The kind of place that has various child-instruments in the “lounge” for you to play with while you sit around waiting to listen to music you are not interested in.  The kind of place that refers to a room housing:  pee-soaked couch (1) and tables (2) – as a lounge.  The kind of place where the disgusting underwearless proto-hippy proprietors also sleep and eat and live.  The kind of place where, for Jesus Christ’s sake, I have performed.  The kind of place that does not play host to Real Fucking Rock and Roll.

So, I mean, yea, I was pretty surprised.

My friend, Jessie, had called me up; told me they were going to a show.  Some Japanese band they had seen before.  So I went, went to this show they were going to.  We sat around outside, talking to the drummer from this Japanese band.  The set was going to be “more psychedelic”, this time, apparently.  The other members came around, eventually, to complement psychedelic-drummer: long-hair bassist and polka-dot-pants geetarist.  The guys got them high.  Because apparently that is what you do when you are a twenty-something male trying to bond with another group of twenty-something males (drummer is 30, this was discovered later). Went inside, to watch the openers.  Afro-headed Strokes guitarist looking/guy. Thick-legged long-hair girl-bassist in biker-shorts.  Back outside.

 Green Milk From the Planet Orange

is a three peice trio from Tokyo, Japan.  The guitarist and bassist sit in chairs while they play, the drummer: a stool.  Sometimes they stand.  Sometimes they stand on the chairs.  The seating arrangements: liquid.  The desire and ability to fucking rock so god damned hard: solid. Rock solid.  Three songs, in sum totalling over an hour.  These three men ripped through 20-minute songs, filled to the brim with abstract solos, noise-freaks, metal-wails, and more importantly, perfectly-timed reversions to completely-accessible pop-influenced riffage.  Halfway through the second opus, a mock-phone conversation (supported by sampled telephone rings – the single use of this particular piece of equipment, which was rather finicky during set-up) with, as he described to my friends and I later, Someone From the Planet Orange.  Screaming.  He was mad at this person.  I was not mad at him.  I came with low expectations and left in a state that can only be described as Progressively Rocked.

Merch purchased.  We hung around and talked to them a bit, after the show.  They were going to crash at the Super Trashy Houseland that night, playing some kind of weird house-party in Louisiana the next.  They very obviously have the shittiest road manager ever, obviously.  Tim offered to put them up at his place, they declined.  Hilarious and awkward.  Nice Fellows.

Being in your mid-twenties, and single, and living with other single people in an urban setting is kind of terrifying. On the one hand, you’re on your own, you can come and go as you please, you don’t have a parent or a significant other to answer to, and all of your friends are within walking distance. On the other hand, you’re on your own and the need to feel connected to other people can sometimes be overwhelming.

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Expression needs words. Expression needs music. “Humans have 100 languages to communicate”, Loris Malaguzzi once said. Nuuro is one of the artists who knows how to use this wide spectrum of tools. With his real name, Alex Ghersi is collecting impressions and situations to help him create. Last November, his first full length album entitled “All Clear” was released through the label SoundSister.

Marius, from onhiat.us, met Alex for an interview about his life as a musician, sources of creativity, and points of view.

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The Good, the Bad & the Queen is the name of the debut album of Blur’s Damon Albarn’s latest collaborative effort, which is as of yet unnamed. It’s a superstar cast, featuring Clash bassist Paul Simonon, Verve guitarist Simon Tong, and Tony Allen, a Nigerian drummer who Brian Eno called “the most important musician of the past 50 years.” It’s all produced by DangerMouse, who is as subtle and ingenious as ever.

As sort of a concept album in which all of the songs are themed around life in contemporary London, it’s been unendlessly compared to Blur’s breathrough 1994 album Parklife. While there are a certain number of Britpop signifiers, Albarn is by no means returning to the mid 90′s glossy guitar pop that garnered his fame. It’s rather something a bit closer the 2005 Gorillaz release, Demon Days, which Albarn also front manned and DangerMouse also produced. Though, that being said, it creates murky, melancholy, spooky, and yet sultry soundscapes interwoven with the subtle guitar pop hooks and is really almost a genre all of it’s own.

The vocal melodies tug at the heartstrings while backed by a heartbeat of a bassline with Allen’s nimble, syncopated afrobeats always just out of reach. My initial criticism was really just the disappointment of seeing all these incredibly talented musicians so restrained, but that perhaps might now be the main appeal. It lends itself to this odd comfort in its relentless gloom and melancholy. To use the words of the Italian composer Paolo Conte, this is rusty music, blackish, hot painted with soot, set in a city of old ghosts and half-remembered biography.

Kingdom of Doom
Northern Whale
Green Fields

German nu-jazz collective Jazzanova was asked to make a soundtrack for the Belle et Fou erotic diner-/theatershow by Hans-Peter Wodarz and Arthur Castro in Berlin last year.

Being one of the most well known acts in this genre, they could get help from some big names for this album. Clara Hill and Micatone are some of the big contributors here, but most of the tracks are new works by Jazzanova. The opening track, with rapper Captitol A, will remind you a lot of Barry White and goes right down your spine to set the tone for for the rest of the album. There are some super tracks, like the live recording with Clara Hill, That Night or the really funky Glow & Glare. My personal favourite on this album is a song called Caprice by Extended Spirit, which I found really refreshing. It has some really unique sound samples that sound like your mobile phone when it’s near a speaker.

The ironic thing is that the songs that were written specifically for the show are the least interesting. Despite every track not being great, the album as a whole is easy to listening background music, that works perfectly when you’re having some friends over or a dinerparty.

Jazzanova – Rendezvous