Tuesday, March 27, 2007  4:09 pm 

Exorcise the badness with goodness

Gotta love the record industry: it appears that the album format is not selling that well with the advent of the ‘digital revolution’ and all, you know, CDs are overpriced and most of the stuff in them is filler, people just buy a couple of tracks in iTunes and give the finger to the bundling strategies of the majors. We revel in the feeling of Schadenfreude, and if we could kick those MBAed imbeciles physically we would, it’s just that they are too far away in their golden towers of cocaine and glitz, we wish we were able to make big jumps like the geezer in Crackdown to chastise their Hugo Boss clad asses with our metal studded boots, alas, the maker didn’t endow us with the physical capabilities required for such a foolhardy endeavour, if only.

Anyway, I’m going on a tangent, let’s think about the previous a bit without letting ourselves be overcome by loathing, ok, so albums aren’t selling because:

1) They are too expensive
2) They are filled with garbage

You’d think the solution would be to perhaps, erm, lower prices, or stop releasing fucking shit. No, the record company people have ‘thought out of the box’ and decided to:

Stop making albums

Quote: ‘For some genres and some artists, having an album-centric plan will be a thing of the past,’ said Jeff Kempler, chief operating officer of EMI’s Capitol Music Group. While the traditional album provides value to fans, he said, ‘perpetuating a business model that fixates on a particular packaged product configuration is inimical to what the Internet enables, and it’s inimical to what many consumers have clearly voted for.’

It’s not just that they’re evil, they can’t even talk like human beings.

The plan is to sign bands (or what passes for them these days) and give them an advance to record a couple of tunes, or perhaps ringtones. Talk about novelty, Crazy Frog motherfucker.

Anyway, it is after listening to these atrocities that we lean in our comfortable leather chair, place a nice ALBUM on the turntable and let Elmo the tabby cat sit well comfy in our lap, fill our trusty pipe, put the needle on the record, strike a match as the grooves start cracking, the rooms fills with an aromatic cloud of smoke, quietly happy feline purring and gorgeous sounds which make us forget the dreadful things that sometimes are said and done in the name of music, O the food of love…

Talking Drums- Courage

Like this gorgeous piece of disco-funk cake by Talking Drums, from the recently released ‘Computer Incarnations for World Peace’ compilation of early 80s synth music concocted by Jazzanova (yeah, the guys have good taste to spare, even if their own productions aren’t precisely our cup of coffee) and Berd Janson. This particular nugget was luckily unearthed from the shadows of some Belgian record store, and it’s sexy excited summery fingers now caress our confused visage like succubi of goodness, our heart swells merry in complete agreement with the message being transmited: ‘It takes courage, fight the fight’, right on.

I got the koala-tastic vinyl re-issue of Dinosaur L’s 24-24 on saturday and have been listening to it on repeat, you might have heard the gorgeous Francois K remix of ‘Go Bang’ in the aces ‘World of Arthur Russell’ comp the good folks at Soul Jazz released not that long ago, well, here you have the original in all its spaced out expansive improv glory, there’s this thing about Arthur Russell’s music which makes it so special, listening to it is like this good friend you haven’t seen for a while paying you a visit, he’s a bit weird and somewhat troubled and so incredibly sensitive and intelligent it’s kind of scary saying anything in case you come across as a clod, but at the same time it isn’t, because he’s a good person and he listens to you with a shine in his eyes, he’s also got stories to tell about the places he’s been to, stories you wouldn’t believe, he tells them with music, I don’t know if I’m explaining myself, hold on, look who’s coming, Elmo, it’s Arthur, let’s make him a nice cup of tea and just enjoy because whenever he shows up it’s totally good times.

Dinousaur L- Go Bang

He’s in his music, as long as we’re here listening, how could he die?

That’s what I mean, we want music that does this for us, there’s enough out there to keep us listening for ten lives so please, major record labels, don’t make us lose our time with your bullshit.

labels >> xxjfg