Wednesday, February 24, 2010  12:05 am 

Virtues of the Tweenage

Long gone are the shocking days of the unauthorized remix. Z-Trip’s work is done as mashups have gone from underground to the driving force of mainstream radio (at least here in Los Angeles). Even the video game DJ Hero only makes sense in a post-mash up world. Cultures no longer clash, but rather swirl together in a land where almost everything can co-exist lovingly. Internet Utopia. When everything is a webpage and no wikipedia entry is really any more accurate than the other, things start all feeling the same. And while it is nice that the completely boring pop divas of the 00’s have been slightly one-upped by Lady Gaga, we all know very well that Gaga’s glam doesn’t represent the common citizen any more than Beyonce’s overly insured legs. Meanwhile, 13 year old female singers are swinging on stripper poles for daddy and most can’t tell that ethics, in the least, are at least changing without a sound. In a world becoming the porn version of itself, the music category known as Tween is a strange pilot indeed. Perhaps Die Antwoord will save our souls the way Nirvana did, but in the meantime Sickboy points out the necessary obvious by creating Tweencore. Hard to call this satire or critique, but more just a breakcore essay on the State of Indifference.

Sickboy – Tweencore 6

As my esteemed colleague Brian rightly points out, the blatant and unauthorised appropriation of corporate-owned music recordings, as a musing or protest against perceivably draconian copyright laws is now an old tradition. However, these dusty scrolls of commerce designed to protect the musician, are still being used to control and exploit in ever more devious ways. And not just creators, but also appreciators. In an age where music blogs go missing in the middle of the night, and these hallowed texts are wielded to draft a bill that will essentially turn digital Britain into a police state, Sickboy’s sentiment is all the more relevant.

Although the music industry’s attitude towards illegal sampling and alleged plaigarism seems to have mellowed out since many of the infamous court cases, we still see examples of record companies flexing their legal muscles in order to make a quick buck. The idea that a band can be sued for unconsciously using a traditional riff embedded in a national psyche, in a track they wrote 32 years ago, when the original composer of the riff never sued them in her lifetime, is very difficult to define as anything other than exploitation. To me, it is indicative of an industry brought to its knees by uncontrollable free exchange, desperately trying to re-assert its control.

John Oswald – 2net

(this one is especially LOL given the napster incident)

As plunderphonic pioneer John Oswald argues in his essay Plunderphonics, or Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative, respectful and adaptive plaigarism has been one of the main driving points of musical development since the year zero. And, as as there is no means for the muscian to adopt the system of quotation marks when referencing the work of others as there is in written language, by conspicously borrowing or homaging the recorded musical ideas of others, one is asking for trouble. If not the same troubles of old, then most certainly a snub from Auntie and other institutions. Of course there are some who do just outright steal the ideas of others, and everybody’s got to make a living, but use of other people’s work in our own compostions offers a path of inspiration and learning that our present system restricts. In his own words;

Professional developers of the musical landscape know and lobby for the loopholes in copyright. On the other hand, many artistic endeavours would benefit creatively from a state of music without fences, but where, as in scholarship, acknowledgement is insisted upon.

Written 25 years ago, his thoughts are propetic of the Creative Commons attribution license, a freer form of copyright law which enables this to happen, and something we shall be dabbling in very soon. In fact, my co-collaborator’s own Foot Village have already taken a very large step into this area with their Chicken and Cheese covers project and Anti-magic remix kits all licensed under CC available for you freely remix and sample, with the only priviso being that you let them hear the results.

V/VM – Goodbye

V/VM’s nihlism is sorely missed. Not having much internet in 2006 meant that I missed the V/VM 365 project, another pioneering Creative Commons project. 365 was an epic daily track giveaway with with intention of each piece being freely remixed of sampled by anyone and everyone. Given that some of source material for these tracks was copyrighted material, re-licensing it in this way creates an interesting conundrum. If one is to take a part of someone else’s record, tamper with it in some way, then relicense it under their own CC attribution, does this mean one is still liable to be sued? Now that we have the technology to retune every single note in recorded music so that it can become an entirely different compostion, will anyone even apply conventional copyright law to sampling any more? Is ‘Goodbye’ a Spice Girls song put through some effects, or is it an original piece?

My issue here is that, as Brian mentions, we now live in a culture where audio recycling is commonplace. And, as the laws that are supposed to prevent this haven’t changed, then we can only assume that a blind eye is being consistantly turned, especially given the promotional virtues of  the remix and mash-up. It is seemingly only when the coffers of the mainstream music industry are under actually under threat, or revenue can be generated from a court case, that this law is now applied.

My research into this whole area is in its infancy, but to put one’s money where one’s mouth is, I would like to credit the original piece I sampled for my track Jealous Swingers, you can find all the samples from 4.25 in. Can I suggest to others that they sample this too?  Can I license my own edited stem of this under Creative Commons for anyone else to sample instead? There’s only one way to find out.

This is my quotation marks BTW. I dearly love this song.

Black Ivory – Mainline

Although the V/VM 365 project was seen as a failiure by creator Leyland Kirby it was an awesome example to us all, and hopefully another prophecy of things to come. I doubt we will ever see the Beatles back catalogue enter the public domain, but we as creators of any kind are at least offered a different path by Creative Commons. And given the amount of unrecorded copyright violations that must now occur every second of every day through sampling, edits, remixes, and filesharing it is, perhaps, time for a bit of a rethink into this whole area that’s a bit more positive than Mandelson’s lockdown.

This has been a collaborative post between Brian Miller and Genuine Guy. I am not a lawyer and this post does not constitute legal advice. This one is going out to a most pluderphonic of chums.

labels >> Black Ivory, Brian Miller, Genuine Guy, John Oswald, Sickboy, v/vm, xxjfg

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Tuesday, February 23, 2010  12:05 am 

Heavenly Zork

Pional’s Another Room is minimal techno for a world with an alternative history where instead of adopting its proverbial reactionary stance, the Catholic Church had embraced all that’s cool and all-encompassing and nature loving about the old time relijuns, leading us down a totally different evolutionary path where hedonism became not the last refuge of the reality-negating pitiful scoundrel, but the first step in the ascension towards the shining gates of enlightenment, Jacob opens the door at the top of his ladder into a heavenly party with Danny Aiello DJing clad in a gold-dust sprinkled robe. All hands in the Air of Elysium, come on.

The original mix of this one has been doing the rounds out in the world, but, like with Apocalypse Now, we prefer the redux. Actually, this could be called Epiphany Redux. There.

Pional- Another Room (Pional Reduxed Version)

Get Pional from Barcelona’s very fine Hivern Discs.

Everyone is loving Coyote Clean Up’s spaced out struts down the psychotropic gravity well, and FUR’s unselfconsciously intelligent tundra-core. It made sense that they came together in the aptly named Lackadaisical collaboration via Waaga records on the 1st of March. Fur’s version you can listen here, while Coyote’s dub awaits below with its, erm, dare I say, chilled grooves- nothing wrong with that buster, couldn’t think of a better thing to do on a Sunny Saturday Morning.

Get there, it’s like skinny dipping in the pink waters of an ocean of psychedelic syrup to swim with sirens intent not on wrecking your bodily vessel against cruel rocks, but embracing you warmly into a space of amniotic peace, and mutter a soothing lullaby into your ear. Everybody heals sometime.

FUR- Lackadaisical (Coyote Clean Up Dub)

I couldn’t put it better than Ashley: ‘Burnkane sounds like My Bloody Valentine if they listened Burial’- perhaps I would have said  ‘Salem if they were into voodoo instead of satanism’.

Who cares when that martial dubstep shuffle which is the eternal standard of Can’s Vitamin C as updated via Richie Hawtin’s remix of La Funk Mob’s Motorbass Get Phunked Up kicks off, some lineage, add ominous bass convolution which wouldn’t be out of place of a Sunn 150 gram B-side spinning the haunted spiderweb which trapped the urban djinn whose spectral incantations you hear, and you have the perfect soundtrack for the horror sub-plot that William Gibson didn’t get to include in Count Zero: the flipside of heaven.

Burnkane- You Know

Grab yourself a copy of the 12 here.

labels >> Burnkane, Pional, fur, xxjfg

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Monday, February 22, 2010  12:05 am 

The Virgin Homicides

Agape’s Autocathe has been bidding its time, scratching with 8inch curved claws the walls of the corridor where the greasy detritus of last year piles up, growing, breathing through its shiny nostrils so that oxygen can be transformed into energy infecting blood  pumped from a vicious heart and through a fractal spiderweb of capillaries into suitably menacing eyes, ready to jump with the murderous abandon of a mongrel offspawn of Bobby Orlando’s nastiest – surely Divine populated- mechanoid nightmare and a flayed puppet straight off Blood Brothers theatre of shriek.

That is what it is, and I have the scars to prove it.

Agape- Autocathe

Which slides like scaly King Kull hating lizard-man hand into the glove of gold and filigree which is E-Rock’s remix of Peepholes’ Lair.

We have watched them grow from their early days as power chaos garage duo into a new kind of monster, put Coachwhips’ metronomic sister howling from the eye of the Hurricane which took Dorothy away from Texas together with a skeletal organist at the peak of his frenzy, hurling gothic lightning bolts from the emerald tabernacle of the Church of Dagon and you have a vortex which is a blur which is the mystic kick that Katia and Nick deliver. In his remix, E-Rock slows it down into some sort of amaze communion of tribal stomping and holy riffarama which comes across like Gang Gang Dance and Fucking Champs massacring Daft Punk’s Veridis Quo, literally banging.

Peepholes- Lair (E-Rock’s remix)

Hungry for Power, the  record label that we run as part of the 13 Monsters coven shall be releasing Peepholes debut ‘Lair’ on yummy 12” format with incredible artwork by Chris Pell on the 1st of March, don’t miss out and pre order it here.

labels >> Peepholes, xxjfg

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010  12:05 am 

Hide Wit Me

Balam Acab, like Salem and oOoOO (who included a Balam Acab song in their XXJFG mix below), traverse the same shadowy territories that seem at once sensual and unnerving. While Salem continue to burrow further and further into their crunk cave, saturating themselves in the sounds of an increasingly nightmarish parallel universe Hot 97, and oOoOO conjure up perfect pop emanations out of hazy witch house dreams, Balam Acab creates something akin to Burial being slowly drowned in an ocean of drone, a cybernetic limbo haunted by distant machine moans, those trademark ghostly digi-diva vocals positively lost in another world all together. Based on all that we’ve heard so far we have no doubt Balam Acab’s music will become something of a spectre in our day to day lives this year.

*This track is temporarily unavailable.*

Our good friend and kindred spirit George Quartz has been working away at his awesome new EP of deranged gigolo-bot nu wave, Ruf Reliks #1, which you can now download for free over at his blog La Maladie Tropicale. Awash in hi-octane industrial goth beats and Tomorrow’s World, crooner pomp, had it been released over 20 years ago it would have slotted in perfectly with one of the many futureworld funk experimentations Crammed Discs specialized in, which is obviously high praise indeed. As a taster of what to expect from Ruf Reliks, Cotton Coffin is the kind of reptilian doom funk Prince might have jammed out had he overdosed on David Byrne records and put a little more Sodom and Gomorrah into his “1999″ step.

George Quartz – Cotton Coffin

Also be sure to take a look at the man’s acid damaged porn video for “Butterscotch” created by the quite rad DESTROY.HOT.ACTION., which definitely falls into the sensual/unnerving territory we mentioned before. Watching it is kinda like imagining what Playboy might look like if Ariel Pink was up in there and running things.

George Quartz – Butterscotch from The Sibyl on Vimeo.

Finally, oOoOO, the creator of some intensely good nightcrawler jams and a firm favourite of ours, recently sent 20 Jazz Funk Greats an exclusively made mix which we’re now more than a little happy to be able to share with the wider world. So go sit in the cupboard under the stairs, light some candles, and absorb the sounds of creeped out, decaying booty bounce colliding horribly (meaning wonderfully) with dusky, drug drip teengirl balladry, slinky necronomi-pop rhythms, and backwater freak outs.

oOoOO – XXJFG Mix

TRACKLIST:::::::

1 oOoOO – mumbai
2 BrowngirlBlackhare – Inanition
3 Nipslip – My Baddest
4 MNDR – Do It Sandwich Time
5 DJ D-Wizz – Clap It
6 DJ Fela – Take Me To Yo Stash
7 Johnny Woods – ?
8 Little Peggy March – Wind Up Doll
9 The Tammys – Gypsy
10 Actually Huizenga – Marquis de Sade (Blazing Lazer remix)
11 Balam Acab – See Birds
12 John Frusciante – A Fall Thru the Ground
13 Linda Perhacs – If You Were My Man (Demo)
14 Twin Powers – Alex
15 Julia Holter – Willow Weep

labels >> Balam Acab, George Quartz, oOoOO

  8 Comments »  

Monday, February 15, 2010  12:05 am 

Rolling & Scratching

Well Rounded Records keep going from strength to strength, after Deadboy’s luminous future soul shuffle, enter Ultrasound with a chunky piece of jacking Chicago proto-house with a British twist.

This is our party music: primitive drums pummelling like a crack squad of voodoo phuturists, or Armando’s gremlins at the height of their perfectly logical madness, breakdown and come back again adding ingredients to the sizzling pot, mild cosmic synth butterfly, swinging gears and abstract disco snippets pile up in a demonstration of flow that should make Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi knot his tie to his forehead and get down in the dancefloor like this was his daughter’s wedding. This tune smells of summer, heavy roll indeed.

Ultrasound- Heavy Roll Pt. 1

Get the 12 from here while you can.

Sully’s ‘In Some Pattern’ is one of those perfect crossover tunes concocted in a heavenly limbo where 2 step impresarios, Detroit logicians, rave hippies and synth nostalgics join forces to build a spaceship targeted at your dancing bones, carrying an alien cute kitten that tries to explain to you the way people have fun in its galaxy, in an abstract language made of primary sounds, joyous changes in pitch and clockwork cadences- think Joker doing a remix of a Black Dice cover version of Prince if you want, it doesn’t matter, this is utterly irresistible in its own gloriously weird terms.

Sully- In some Pattern

Fetch ‘in Some Pattern’ here.

labels >> Sully, Ultrasound, xxjfg

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