Monday, March 15, 2010  12:05 am 

The sky that wraps the world round, past the blue and into the black

If Lindstrom’s ‘Where You Go I Go Too’ was a love letter to Steve Reich written from a Balearic beach circa 1981, Prins Thomas’ forthcoming self-titled album shows the Scandinavian maestro bounding all his warm influences together with muscular motorik lasso. It all sounds like dub edits of Fletwood Mac covering Michael Rother’s secret repertoire of utopian pan-european music, or a reverse of Hawkwind’s Opa Loka where the Warrior comes back home after psychedelic skirmishes in the provinces beyond the edge of time. Prins Thomas wears his influences on his sleeve, but what a sleeve this is!

If you need proof, just check out ‘Wendy not Walter’, whose title is of course but a tip of the hat to our favourite post-gender composer, depicted above. A classical primitive techno motif is wrapped into all sorts of deft synthetic flourishes and obstinate drum-beat, magick fingers removing layers of artifice in the boudoir of reality until a being of pure light is revealed, lying in a bed of black sky tattooed with slo-mo kosmische pyrotechnics. Hold a hand of fire that doesn’t burn and climb up the final steps towards the gates of the Holy Mountain.

Prins Thomas- Wendy not Carlos

Many a budding composer out there be rocking the minimal romantic styles, which is all well and good, if there’s something the world needs more of, it is the paranoid metronome of a John Carpenter leftover, synthetic tritones tickling our proverbial sides, and reveries of a neon Miami that never existed. But the problem tends to be that the output of these efforts are rarely distinctive enough to deserve anything else but a footnote mention in the ledgers of the canon to which they pay homage.

Enter Beaumont, who just about sent us a couple of demos. Here we are in the presence of someone who, by an strike of genius and inspiration has produced two pieces which we will be revisiting again and again, in the same way in which we revisit the blueprints, not just thinking, ‘this could have soundtracked a wistful interlude in a Z-series 80s thriller’, but thinking ‘there’s actually a really cool Z-series 80s thriller somewhere that we never watched, and this is the theme tune’.

Beaumont- Adrift

(We found the image above at wonderful sci-fi-o-rama)

labels >> Beaumont, prins thomas, xxjfg

  1 Comment »  

Wednesday, March 10, 2010  12:05 am 

Nu World Order

2012 is a coming y’all. Not long now before global grip of the Fourth Reich is slid around our fragile necks and Xenu enslaves us all. The moment when you will have to apologise to the stoner conspiracy theorist that you scoffed at all these years, only to watch his bong-stained body spliced in two by the photon cannon of an Illuminati warcraft, is almost upon us. In only a few months the serating pain of a reptilian workmaster’s whip eternally lashing our sorry backs, will be as normal a part of our daily lives as making a cup of tea or reading the newspaper. You know by now how this shit is going to go down, one government, one ruler, one currency, one nationality, one love, one blood, one life. You got to do what you should.

When the anti-christ finally scratches off his elaborately constructed Prince Charles prosthetics to reveal his appalling face, when his fiendish plot ingeniously concealed behind the good natured actions of corporations, banks and world leaders finally triple-crosses our trusting souls, we shall be ready. In order to be spared when the day of reckoning comes, we have come up with an offering for the Negachristus. We call it the One World Genre.

Debate still takes place about what the One World Genre will actually sound like, but the popular 1-4-5 chord progression with lyrics about girls type, should probably suffice. Upon the 12th hour of the 12th day of the 12th year of the new millennium (121212 * 2 = 666 yo) there will be a mass demolition of all material not conforming, as part of the ‘Everything else apart from the One World Genre sucks’ campaign. Records will be deleted and mp3s will be burnt. Those using a fourth chord will be tortured remorselessly until they forget it.

Unless you want to be garroted by the cypherblade of a level 6 masonic warrior in the flaming hour of judgement, we really suggest picking up that Oasis guitar tab book and getting busy.

There are some out there however, who just won’t play ball. We recently picked up reports of a sect of radicalist monks known as Captain Ahab. Schooled in the art of all musics, these cunning rebels seem hellbent on cramming as many different genres as they possibly can into the same song.

Captain Ahab – Acting Hard

Man, our new ruler going to be pissed when he hears this. Here is an extract from our spy’s report on the recording of this track.

After several hours drive I finally manage to locate their monastery. Hiding in the back of their ceremonial chamber I bare witness to a scene something akin to Eyes Wide Shut directed by Slava Tsukerman. A gibbering, delusional rapper, presumed to drugged and kept in captivity for the specific puprose of the ritual begins to recite a half remembered lyric as the monks procession joins the altar. After a couple of minutes of chanting, the tension in the room is unbearable, I feel I must escape but seem to be overtaken by a hypnosis which roots me to the spot. All of a sudden they shed their robes to reveal their naked form, modesty is only protected by a scant covering of EBM bodyware. As the bell outside the monastery tolls, the whole room erupts into the kind of rave I have only seen in the hidden basements of Amsterdam. Released from my trance I feel this is probably the right moment to make my escape…

On the quiet, we wholeheartedly condone this kind of forward thinking activity. But when the forward you are thinking into is a totalitarian regime of Steve Dahl worshiping spider people, we seriously recommend keeping those thoughts strictly inside the box. “Acting Hard” is taken from their new album ‘The End of Irony,’ (which considering the tone of this post possibly isn’t upon us just yet) available next month from deathbomb arc. Pre-order it now before all copies are crushed under the scaly foot of the inverted messiah.

You may chuckle at our belief in the prophecies of the Internet, but throughout history the all-powerful bringer of evil’s conspiracy has been busy in the engineering of this new form. Do you not think it is strange that Bob Marley can die whilst playing football, yet Coldplay manage to fly all over the world without receiving so much as a scratch? Dark forces at work my friend, dark forces.

France 1980. In the United States of Europe in a time before humanity had uncovered the plot that will spell its termination, a member of another genre abusing clan known as Mathematiques Modernes released a seven inch single.

Claude Arto – Betty Boop

Betty Boop shall be offered as the marching anthem for the quadruped army, that shall watch over us whilst we are forced to build drive-thru McDonald’s out of stones the size of News Corporation’s headquarters. Betty Boop also represents the kind of cheeky progessive post-punk irreverence this sub-section of the 20jfg alliance loves very much. Coming like a demented version of Suicide presenting an episode of Eurotrash, abrasive oscillations can be fun.

Continue to enjoy and be influenced by stuff like this if you like, but when the Obamasatan’s men come knocking at your door you better have that Keane CD in the stereo, otherwise you might end up hanging in the walk-in fridge of a pyramidal Burger King. Just saying, is all.

labels >> Captain Ahab, Claude Arto, Genuine Guy, xxjfg

  7 Comments »  

Tuesday, March 9, 2010  12:05 am 

I have no mouth, and I must scream

Human Resources have been echoing on repeat across the convoluted labyrinth of tunnels which stretch like the blood vessels of the evil Hydra which is the bunker where we dream our evil dreams, a corrupted Mt. Rushmore carved with the faces of the Great Psychodelians, Delia is there, and so are Mark E. Smith, Blixa Bargeld, Roky Ericsson, Thurston Moore and many others, severe and enigmatic like Easter Island faces, perhaps a slight shift in their countenance, is that a smile, at the subtle reverberations of the music to which we revel in our forbidden chambers.

Understandable this is, after all, Human Resources’ racket is an irresistible one, even for titans of stone, Do-it-Yourself controlled charges of black energy detonating in the surface of a dying Sun, micro-fractures spread rapidly heralding that subtle collapse of all structures of which Einsturzende Neubauten’s industrial death march is the Jungian archetype, through the cracks bloom a thousand flowers of poisonous beauty to the drone of a sickly carousel tune.

Human Resources- Yellow Cake

Yellow Cake is included in the Fast Times c15 you can get here.

The aforementioned blood vessels spread deep into the rocky surfaces, past hallowed burial grounds and hidden treasures, into vast caves where a primitive tribe fooled into the belief that the world above was wiped out during a nuclear holocaust worship at the altar of the master brain, a biomechanical nightmare straight off Philip K. Dick’s twisted imagination, only kept alive by the ministrations of the tribe’s shaman, a complex infrastructure of autopoietic life support machines, and blood sacrifices where the tribe’s weakest are sucked off their life fluids, a pile of bones accumulates at the end of the conveyor belt which represents the master brain’s digestive system.

Beau Wanzer’s Wick Hunny is the sound of this apparatus at work, blips in the electrocardiogram and encephalic waves registering seismic shifts whenever the master brain cunningly devises a new myth to reaffirm his control over the tribe, the ghastly drone of a corrupt super-intellect at work, and the clicks and wirrs of the insectoid ballet through which clockwork machinery drain the living of blood so the undead can continue its simulation of life. Technology becomes dark magic under a self-preservation imperative, and we watch in horror and fascination, freaky pagan metal machine music really does turn us on.

B.W.- Wick Hunny

Wick Hunny will be included in a WMFU comp to be released in a couple of months, we shall give you a shout when it happens.

For anyone dwelling in the New York area tonight be sure to head down to Glasslands for Tuesday Nite Disco, one of the raddest parties in town brought to you by the truest bluest chaps, Todd Pendu and Harrison Owen. Earlier in the year the guys threw a shitstorm of a show with Salem and Gatekeeper and tonight Gatekeeper affiliates White Car will be bringing their zombified Jam & Lewis vibes to the stage for one night only. Rainbow Body Records recently released White Car’s awesome debut EP, full of metallic post apocalyptic funk rhythm, that sounded like the fantasy by-product of Prince being abducted by Coil and developing a beautiful case of Stockholm Syndrome for his kidnappers, jamming out in the back of some banged out white van. Be wise not to miss out.

Today Kompakt made the announcement that one of your XXJFG faithful has branched out and founded his own record label which will function as an imprint of the mighty German brand. As well as this The Guardian ran a sweet story in relation to the label that may well haunt me in the next 12 months. Whisper it gently… drag. FYI, this is a term I’m still wrapping my head around having only come to have known it very recently, and frankly it could have been far, far worse…drone and bass anyone?

The name of the label is Tri Angle and without giving too much away just yet, because after all secrets are fun, forthcoming releases can be expected from oOoOO, Slava, Balam Acab, Creep and others. More words will emerge soon.

In just over a week in partnership with Group Tightener and Market Hotel, XXJFG / Tri Angle will be hosting an event at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Needless to say, the line up turned out pretty special, so if you happen to be at SXSW this year, do come and shake bones. FREE ENTRY/NO BADGES//ALL AGES…fun. Full details of the line up and whereabouts are HERE. Hope to see some of you there.

labels >> B.W., Human Resources, Tri Angle, xxjfg

  7 Comments »  

Monday, March 8, 2010  12:05 am 

The lord strolls in view

At the end of ‘All that Jazz’, Bob Fosse, the king of lizard dancers which was obvious inspiration to our favourite late moonwalking alien bids life goodbye in the most grand of manners, surrounded by rotating Metropolis mannequins, a band of feline KISS-lookalikes, dancers clad in catsuits tattooed with a constellation of blood vessels, and an assorted variety of wondrous glam freaks. As his heartbeat accelerates towards its vanishing point, we witness that classic moment of levitation towards the pearly gates where that essence of Aphrodite he had always chased awaits for him with a suggestive pose. Never fails to give me goosebumps.

Well, you could imagine the soft jazz coda that soundtracks this transition into a higher state of nothingness, or perhaps something-ness, fading into the tunnel of sonic white which is Miracles Club’s ‘Light of Love’, a perfect introduction to whatever lies beyond, if whatever lies beyond is everything we had hoped for. We knew we were onto something special when we stumbled upon them just as last year experienced its very own demise, and this but confirms all our  expectations- if Silent Shout was dusk, then Light of Love is dawn, a piano driven mini-epic which comes across like Hercules and Love Affair if they were into the United States of America, wave after wave of pure joy washing over us with that wondrous combination of feeric energy and material dance throb you can find at the core of everything we stand for.

Miracles Club- Light of Love

Miracles Club have their debut 12 coming out really soon, we shall let you know when it’s out.

I was commenting with the tallest member of the coterie of conspirators on which this whole space is based how we tend to have a majority of instrumental musics populating our dusty shelves and grotesque furniture. Why this so? I’ve given it some thought, and come up with a negative reason, and a positive one.

On the negative side, I guess many of the vocal production styles that dominate these days, at least in the non-fuzz & drang extreme of the spectrum are not so hot to our ears, or sound contrived, or excessively influenced by a small number of references, Animal Collective it’s all your fault. And then there is the blight of autotune.

But let’s focus more on the positive side, like the life-affirmed forever beaming through buck teeth scarecrows that we are. On the positive side, look, Kosmische and dance music are two of the reference points that inform our trajectory, and vocals never played a big role on those, at least in the traditional pop way. Instead, you get some Japanese dude ululating or speaking in tongues, or a synthesis of the glorious hedonistic celebration of the sweaty moment that dance music is- voice as the instrument and agent of the final push off the cliff of reality and into Elysium. And then there is of course, the soundtrack side of things- for better or worse, we like to paint images on the awesome canvas that music is, drawing on a bunch of disparate influences – books that would have never written if the supply of Amphetamines in the Californian underground hadn’t been of pharmaceutical grade, films that would have never been made if people weren’t so fucked up, a cybernetic utopia etc. Easier to do when the story is there for the telling.

So here you have another instrumental one, this time by enigmatic kids on the block B&Gs (as in Bare Girls), see what I say?

B&Gs- D_Dd (demo)

Or a perfect example of emotional abstraction which makes us think of a million chrysalis fluttering their eyelids inside the palpitating cocoons which lay scattered across the smooth valleys and hills of an anonymous planet, under the gaze of an alien sun and its scorched satellites. It’s got a nice early era slo-mo house melancholy vibe to it, like a love letter from a mainframe with circuits tracing the silhouette of a very distinctive and beautiful 80s face. Something wistful that can’t be reciprocated, like Demon Seed if it had been directed by John Hughes maybe? We’ve done it again.

labels >> B&Gs, Miracles Club, xxjfg

  4 Comments »  

Friday, March 5, 2010  12:05 am 

Pop Cops

While most of the world suffers due to global warming, Los Angeles is becoming more tropical in the summer and now gets rain in the winter. So no more droughts and Hawaiian vacations for all. Already the land where fun music like the Beach Boys and Mötley Crüe came from, the propensity for catchy tunes is only growing here. Enter KID INFINITY. These doodz have been around LA for a little bit now, but in recent months the addition of Erik (ex-E&E) as a behind the scenes member aka artistic director has made this electropunk flower bloom into full blown stadium pop. If you need proof, their new single/music video should seal the deal with a joy-buzzer handshake and exploding-cigar peace-pipe. A very playful and self-mocking film from the twisted and eloquent minds of The Imps of Marge and Fletch.

Kid Infinity – PYCO

While nowhere near LA, pop music lives strong in anyone who loves Girls in the Eighties, including the band by the same name. This self-proclaimed Teenage Royalty has lofi melodies powerful enough to defend the title, even if heavy weights like No Age or Best Coast came to challenge. Perhaps this band truly are some 80’s babes that have time traveled to now, gotten sex changes, and are ready to show us modern folk how pop music is really done. In any case, I am perfectly willing to pledge my loyalty to them. Perhaps you will join me in service after hearing this title track from their debut album. If not though, pray to your fuzzbox gods that you are strong enough to face off against our pubescent wrath. Or maybe Weezer will just step in and pimp slap us all.

Girls in the Eighties – Teenage Royalty

…and just to keep things mysterious

labels >> Brian Miller, Girls in the 80s, Kid Infinity, xxjfg

  3 Comments »