Threshold of the Lift Hill

The presumptive, lumpen fantasm of the internet - typically referred to as "we" - did it, folks: SOPA and PIPA are D.O.A. Following the massive online blackout that terrorized digital natives and the late majority alike, the legislative tide has swung overwhelmingly against the inoperable & draconian bills. Let the celebratory fist-pumping & occasionally smug self-congratulation begin!

But hang on a moment. For such a media-savvy throng, the triumphal netizens appear to be totally ignorant of the classic horror movie narrative dynamic. Want to know what happens next? The moment that the protagonist relaxes, having apparently dispatched the villain, said incarnation of evil is hideously resurrected, more powerful than ever before, and attacks anew!

Thus it was that the FBI shut down Megaupload yesterday and has arrested four of seven people (including the site's founder) indicted for copyright infringement and conspiracy. Almost immediately, Anonymous went beserk with retaliatory shut-downs of just about any website operated by an acronym: the DOJ, the FBI, the MPAA, RIAA, UMG, EMI, WMG, and both the American & French copyright authorities. It appears to have been Anonymous' largest online attack ever.

But believe it or not, Anonymous are late to the party. The Megaupload raid is actually the second major development regarding a copyright-related international incursion by an American agency within the past week. Last Friday, a British court decided that British undergrad Richard O'Dwyer may be extradited to the U.S. where he faces a potential 10-year prison sentence:

US customs agents are seeking his prosecution over a website O'Dwyer set up when he was 19 called TVShack, and ran until his arrest last year. This provided links to other sites hosting pirated versions of TV shows and film. It was so popular that the student earned £15,000 per month in advertising revenue, US prosecutors claim.

O'Dwyer's lawyers said the site was little different from a search engine like Google and was thus most likely not illegal under UK law.

However, Purdy noted that visitors to the site had to register, and could post their own links. He ruled that the case met the test of so-called dual liability, also dismissing arguments that extradition would be a breach of O'Dwyer's human rights.

The real story, however, comes at the tail end of the article:

Separately, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has faced criticism for perceived over-reach, targeting websites which, like TVShack – which had servers in the Netherlands – have no direct link to America.

In July the agency's assistant deputy director told the Guardian that ICE would now actively pursue websites similar to TVShack even if their only connection to the US was a website address ending in .com or .net. Such suffixes are routed through Verisign, an internet infrastructure company based in Virginia, which the agency believes is sufficient to seek a US prosecution.

Read that last paragraph again: any website registered as either .com or .net is subject to the full extent of American copyright law because those suffixes are routed through Virginia. A website's administrators, staff, servers, even users & advertisers can all be outside of America and it doesn't matter because the suffix alone is sufficient ground for prosecution. Hell, compared to the O'Dwyer case, shutting down Megaupload must have been a slam-dunk since Megaupload actually maintains servers on American soil.

By the above legal logic, the government has the authority to shutter any file host, any private web host, any website to which material can be uploaded of which users claim ownership - in other words, everything from YouTube to Flickr, from Facebook to 4chan, from Wordpress to BoingBoing to Blogger to Twitter. This is strictly according to current law regarding copyright & intellectual property. It doesn't matter that neither SOPA nor PIPA will pass, because clearly the government doesn't need them.

Also noteworthy is that, on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress had the authority to remove works from the public domain. The real shocker of the 6-2 decision is that the dissenting justices, who felt the ruling was against the public interest as it discouraged the spread of knowledge, were Stephen Breyer and Samuel Alito. Yeah, Alito - appointed by Bush, condemned by the ACLU, guardian of Guantanamo and concurrent of Citizens United. Since when does Alito make decisions that would prohibit further bloating of corporate power & profit?

Anyway, the Golan V. Holder ruling allows U.S. policy to comport with the Berne Convention, a European copyright treaty first introduced way back in 1886. It can hardly be argued that the Berne Convention has been legal strangulation depriving the French, Germans, Italians, or Swedes of easy access to each other's cultural wealth. This has much to do with how liberal the Convention's language is, especially within Article 2.3:

Translations, adaptations, arrangements of music and other alterations of a literary or artistic work shall be protected as original works without prejudice to the copyright in the original work.

However, the main factor at work is the massive discrepancy between how Europe and America value the arts. Despite how fundamental art is to cultural identity, America has evermore lost sight of art's symbolic value and assigns it exchange value accordingly only to its sign value. This means that all art is subject to the whims of the market: the only art that deserves to survive is that which excites the market. This cultural Darwinism blends with a libertarian phobia of propaganda ("You know who else favoured public funding for the arts?") to ensure that the government does little, if anything, to support the arts.

This is why public-domain material is indispensable to the livelihood of orchestras, performers, publishers, and repertoire cinemas in America. Over half of the average nonprofit arts organization's income is contributed - 13% publicly and a whopping 43% privately. Art, therefore, is less a common good than a private investment, and its investors obviously want a handsome return. This means artists have to make a hit to reward their investors' faith; but creating something new is dangerous & uncharted territory, and few artists have the cash to license performances of established favourites. Therefore, it's back to scavenging the public domain for tried-and-true yet free-to-use materials. The public domain is what gives permission for orchestras to perform Stravinsky's Petruschka, for arthouse cinemas to screen Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and for publishers to print new editions of Dracula, Ulysses, or Pride and Prejudice.

So how can European artists continue to perform, screen, and publish if all the material is still protected under the Berne Convention? Public funding. European governments understand the immaterial worth of art in daily life, and so there are subsidies and grants to ensure the public's easy access & steady engagement with their and others' culture. Were similar funding available in America, then orchestras could afford to license Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf if its copyright were renewed. But as it stands, the social dimension of art is a communist conspiracy and art is only worth something if it's for sale.

Finally, on a more prosaic note, now that Megaupload's been deep-six'd, all the various MP3 mixes I've uploaded over that past few years have been likewise erased. Would anyone like them back up? Are there any special requests for a particular mix that's missing? Does anyone give a toss?

A Half-Hearted Attempt at Genuine Enjoyment

As the recently-late, formerly great Christopher Hitchens once said, travel - contrary to popular belief - narrows the mind, in that it diminishes difference & spotlights repetition. So it is with the touring musician: the more gigs you play, the more other bands you see, the more other bands you talk about and listen to... the more everything starts to sound the same. This is why so many stalwart musicians are crusty chauvinists guarding the carved-in-stone conventions of their respective genre: they've had to retreat to only the most elemental, primordial iteration of what they love(d) about music to feed whatever flagging enthusiasm they have left for the art form.

The point is that I'm a very tough motherfucker to impress. In the past, this was largely thanks to arrogance (and still is to no small degree), though by now I've logged enough hours as a listener, enough miles as a working musician, and enough hearing damage as an audio engineer that I'm rarely - if ever - surprised. Of course, I still want to be surprised, and seek it like a fiend. On the odd occasion I am surprised, it's not the shock of the new, but the unexpected re-appearance of some estranged sonic friend. No wonder all the contemporary bands that push all my buttons are older dudes who've been stubbornly strumming away since my formative, sponge-brained adolescence in the mid-'90s. Vaz produced one of the gnarliest rock records of the year, Chartreuse Bull, but they're veterans of the hallowed, harrowing Amphetamine Reptile roster. The Psychic Paramount are the most instrumentally enthralling band on the planet, but that is certainly because guitarist Drew St. Ivany and bassist Ben Armstrong have spent almost twenty years in the art-rock trenches. Meanwhile, the inimitable Metatron from Maryland, Daniel Higgs, might as well be one of my parents' old art-school buddies.

The good news, though, is that excellent music continues to be made, and in greater volume that I have time to attend. Some of this year's more experimental releases (e.g. Roly Porter's Aftertime and The Haxan Cloak's gorgeously glacial eponymous debut) were gripping textural explorations that demonstrated an intense, detail-oriented approach to composition - though I still prefer artists whose focus is wide enough to encompass the whole forest, not just the peeling bark of a single birch.

Another Year, Another Holler

1. The Skull Defekts feat. Daniel Higgs - "Peer Amid"
2. Young Widows - "In and Out of Lightness"
3. Action Bronson & Statik Selektah - "Silk White"
4. Tom Waits - "Talking At the Same Time"
5. Obake - "The Omega Point"
6. The Haxan Cloak - "Burning Torches of Despair"
7. The Psychic Paramount - "DDB"
8. Roly Porter - "Corrin"
9. Vaz - "The 2nd"
10. YAMANTAKA//SONIC TITAN - "Reverse Crystal//Murder of a Spider"

Then, of course, there is the record collection. Now that my wife is as avid a crate-digger as I am, we've fast run out of shelf space and now our floor is disappearing almost as quickly. A great many (if not most) of our acquisitions this year have been '60s and '70s Italian soundtracks and funk bibelots, since it's a musical area we enjoy equally. Sure, most of it is breezy & cosmopolitan, much to my wife's pleasure, but there's plenty of strange sound-mass strings & free-jazz bass spazzery to keep an avant-gardiste prick like myself happy. Anyway, here's a few of the tunes that earned the heaviest rotation on our turntable this year...

Fine Vinyl

1. Piero Umiliani - "Le Raggaze Dell'Arcipelago"
2. Ennio Morricone - "Trafelato"
3. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "She Fell Away"
4. Scott Walker - "Rosemary"
5. Buck 65 - "Up the Middle"
6. Roots Manuva - "Witness (One Hope)"
7. I Marc 4 - "Hyde Park"
8. Googoosh - "Shekayat"
9. Piero Piccioni - "Traffic Boom"
10. Main - "Flametracer"

Ties, Slurs, and Ligatures

Along with appearances by Bono or Thurston Moore, one of the checklist clichés of music documentaries is the breathless pronouncement that "I'd never heard anything like it before." The statement usually comes towards the end of the first act, once all the major players & their backstories have been introduced, and is typically made by someone peripheral or successive to the spotlit artist or scene. It's threadbare hyperbole by now, but bless 'em for having lived in a place or time when it was possible to be genuinely surprised by music.

These days, almost anyone with a music-listening appliance is also sure to have a decent internet connection. There's consequently no excuse to be ignorant: easy access to the full global & historical sweep of music means everyone is now a music nerd. It's merely a question of how much of what kind of nerd you are.

So should there a come a day when filmmakers decide this solipsistically self-documenting culture requires even further exposition, no one will vaguely exalt a song or artist as "unlike anything I'd heard before." Everyone will have their own hand-picked stockpile of ready references & easy similes. Nevermind the ol' Band A = Band B + Band C equation; folks will be busting out algebraic analogies, multiplying influences before subdividing by microgenre.

Of course, the opposite effect could easily result: because the internet allows users to hand-tailor their input, everyone's frame of reference could shrink to a miniscule, self-satisfied speck. Sure, it requires the same minimal effort to drag up a YouTube clip of either some new buzzband or a tried-and-true favourite, but why risk the disappointment that Yuck might kinda be bullshit when I can just listen to "Wings" for the god-knows-nth time? Why struggle to decide if it's morally acceptable to enjoy Odd Future when you can just throw on the Wu-Tang's debut again? The danger of such smug myopia is that there are hordes of nerdier-than-thou jerks (Hi!) ready to school your cul-de-sac ass. Sure, Lostage may be the latest in a long lineage of arena-sized riff merchants, but beware if you're going to "saddle the band with too many overt Page/Plant comparisons." Some snide punk out there will want to know, for real, Led fuckin' Zeppelin is the only goddamned guitar band you can draw a comparison to? What, were you too stoned to take Houses of the Holy off your turntable and investigate Drive Like Jehu, or Universal Order of Armageddon, or, I dunno, any band on Dischord records?

Mercifully, some bands make it easy for lazy critics by wearing their influences so baldly, they don't require multiple citations - it's straight Band A = Band B. (See: Black Lips, Serena Maneesh, The Horrors, etc.) Many Japanese bands actually invite such easy equivalencies. Desperate to broadcast their influences, many musicians borrow a song title for their band name (e.g. Seagulls Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, Boris) or vice versa (e.g. Number Girl's "Pixie Dü"); the clever ones quote directly but with deliberate misspellings (e.g. Discharming Man).

Often, the most interesting bands work like Rorschach tests for their listeners' musical knowledge: everyone draws different correlations, based on their personal tastes, without anyone necessarily being inaccurate. For example, a band I used to tour-manage earned sprawling comparisons to DJ Shadow, Radiohead, the Flaming Lips, and Can - all fair assessments to my ears. There were, of course, a few folks suggested jaw-droppingly inaccurate agnates (Helmet? Really?) but that's what happens when drunk Alabamans try their hand at cultural criticism.

My current band's been suited with an even baggier patchwork of musical parallels. No one seems quite sure where to situate us. So far, we've done things strictly D.I.Y. without so much as an official website, yet two weeks ago the drummer from Melt Banana said we "totally sound like a major [label] band." Well, yeah, contrasted with Melt Banana, we do totally sound like a major label band, but that's a seriously relative appraisal - like saying the Melvins sound way more commercial than Napalm Death.

Given Japan's malignant self-perception as rock's farm league, it's high praise for a band to be compared to a foreign act. Not only have we only been identified with overseas acts, we frequently receive the highest praise possible: we don't even sound like a Japanese band* at all! I suspect most people are tempted to make this comment because there's a gaijin on guitar and the lyrics are all in English. That we look & sound comparatively "less Japanese" is less a plaudit than a plain statement of fact.

Anyway, below is a mix of the bands we're most frequently stood alongside - which I find hilariously flattering, with the exceptions of Killing Joke (meh) and perennial underachievers Primal Scream. But I admit, we bear the most consistent likeness to Primal Scream, in that all of our songs sound kinda sorta like Primal Scream. Our vocalist loves Bobby and the bassist digs Mani, so we operate around 20% Primal Scream at all times. The similarity to our other soundalikes varies wildly: one song may split the difference between Shellac and the Birthday Party, the next number might sound like Sonic Youth all over.

Perhaps I should make a "soundalike outlier" mix of all the bands we've been compared to only once, just to see how ludicrous a Venn diagram that draws around our sound. Could we in fact be the middle point between Sleep, Seefeel, and Company Flow? I fucking wish.

Ties, Slurs, and Ligatures

1. Shellac - "My Black Ass"
2. Lungfish - "Jonah"
3. My Bloody Valentine - "Slow"
4. Killing Joke - "Seeing Red"
5. The Jesus Lizard - "Monkey Trick"
6. Primal Scream - "Rise"
7. The Birthday Party - "The Dim Locator"
8. Public Image Ltd. - "Death Disco (Swan Lake)"
9. Sonic Youth - "Death Valley '69"

* - Believe me, I don't consider this praise of any sort, let alone a high honour. The endemic insecurity of many Japanese rock musicians is a sorry state. And what does it mean to "not sound Japanese" anyway?

War of Attrition on the Listener's Attention

As irresistible as list-making may be, it presents a problem that I've purchased precisely zero albums released within the last calendar year. I've been given quite a few records by friends, but I can't convince myself (let alone anyone else) that the best albums of 2010 happen to be by all my buddies' bands, whom you've never heard.

But I've not been incurious as a listener; I think I've explored a wider array of new sounds than I have in at least several years. It just so happens that almost none of this exploration has been contemporary - not that contemporary music has encouraged me to explore it much. (Seriously, with Best-Of lists like these, who needs Worst-Of lists?) Thanks to the Internet's obliteration of the over-/underground divide, even the most subterranean acts are tempted by the possibility of a pop crossover, implicitly depressing experimental daring.

The other problem posed by the Internet is what Patton Oswalt dubs "etewaf": Everything That Ever Was - Available Forever. New musicians must compete not only with each other, but with the sum-total of musical history which is now but a right-click away. Rather than liberating listeners from the dull hegemony of current trends, this suffocates them with option paralysis. From this, the modern audience appears to bifurcate into obedient contemporaneity on one hand, conservative retrovision on the other.

This presents career-minded musicians with three wholly unpleasant options:

• Craft face-punchingly moronic Aspartame pop that seizes listeners within the first 30 seconds and fails to disappoint by going precisely nowhere.
• Pattern your tunes after a tried-and-true template (be it Springsteen, Toni Basil, or Klaus Schulze) with plagiaristic fidelity.
• Give up and enjoy your obscurity.

And the first two options all but guarantee music that is dogmatically diatonic, rhythmically regular, and grindingly dull.

Many would argue that the very curse of the internet is its blessing: everything that ever was - available forever! But, as Oswalt explains, "that creates weak otakus. Etewaf doesn’t produce a new generation of artists — just an army of sated consumers. Why create anything new when there’s a mountain of freshly excavated pop culture to recut, repurpose, and manipulate on your iMovie?" Indeed, this is the fundamental problem of the digital environment in general, as Jodi Dean elaborates in her brilliant book, Blog Theory:

...no authority tells the subject what to do, what to desire, how to structure its choices. Žižek argues, however, that in fact the result of the Master's decline is unbearable, suffocating closure. The online environment Second Life clearly demonstrates this closure: able to do or create anything (there aren't even laws of gravity), the majority of users end up with avatars that are sexier versions of themselves walking around shopping, gambling, fixing up their houses, and trying to meet people ("meet" can be read euphemistically here). It's not only boring - it's stifling as it confronts users with their lack of skills and imagination.

To be sure, there are those (myself included) to whom "etewaf" has been a boon. Anyone with a dram more discipline than the average subcultural tourist has access to whole goldmines that before were largely inaccessible by time, distance, and/or cost. Then again, we're the very people who, in Ye Olde Offline Times, had the curiosity & dedication to pursue our niche manias despite the prohibitions of time, distance, and/or cost.

As such, my chief means of musical exploration is the same now as fifteen years ago: talking with friends nerdier than myself. Ergo, to give credit where it's truly due, here are the top 5 influences upon my listening habits across 2010.

1. Watching Too Many Old Movies

As I mentioned a month ago, I was recently inducted into the gruesome world of giallo cinema. What's odd is the genre's initial appeal lies not in its cinematic strengths (which, depending on the film, are frequently few) but in its soundtracks. The friend who introduced me to gialli made no attempt to sell the genre on its Swiss-cheese screenwriting or Mexican soap-opera acting; instead, he pointed me towards the tonal warp of Bruno Nicolai's strings and the violent arrhythmia of Ennio Morricone's scores for Dario Argento.

If a score was particularly striking, I'd actually get around to watching the movie. Occasionally, the movie would exceed my (admittedly minimal) capacity for guts 'n' gore, which sent me in search of less graphic films of the same vintage. Spy thrillers fit this bill perfectly, from the cartoonish Danger: Diabolik to the more cultivated Harry Palmer trilogy. What these films held in common with the gialli is that the soundtracks often outstripped the films themselves in quality - especially John Barry's ominously exotic score for The IPCRESS File.

2. Co-Producing a Hip-Hop Album

The friend who introduced me to the giallo films had an ulterior interest in their obscure & outlandish scores: as a largely-untapped source of samples. For a couple of years, he's been quietly piecing together a hip-hop album that, even in its unfinished state, is more musically compelling than damn near any album since Fantastic Damage. I was flattered & a little intimidated when he asked me to help sculpt the record's sound, given that I'd yet to produce any hip-hop. This prompted me to research as much left-of-center hip-hop as I could handle, starting with prolific oddballs Madlib and his brother Michael "Oh No" Jackson. Though their total lack of self-editing makes for an uneven discography, I far prefer their analog grime to the slick digital minimalism that currently dominates mainstream hip-hop.

3. Talking To Other Bands On Tour

Obviously, what I've enjoyed the most about being back on the road is playing gigs. But it's also the perfect idiom to geek out as a listener - after all, what greater music nerds than musicians themselves? Our March tour with Lostage was especially enjoyable, whether it was comparing the spoils of some dedicated crate-digging (Karp for ¥300!) or turning each other on to unfamiliar acts. I'm especially grateful for the introduction to Z, whom I became immediately convinced are the best band in Japan.

4. Attending Salford University's Noise Conference

When in spring I blagged my way into an academic conference on "noise," it became suddenly incumbent that I know what I was talking about. I've never actually been a great fan of noise music: I usually find it either a pompous incursion into the "unintentional" soundworld, or just plain boring. But if I was going to participate in a 3-day conference on the subject, I'd better be on more intimate terms with it than merely having attended a My Bloody Valentine concert. Mercifully, I'd chose to focus primarily on the No Wave scene, whose "noise" was less noise outright and more about the expansive blurring of rock's outermost boundaries. This way, I got to listen to my Swans & Sonic Youth records on loop and legitimately call it "research."

The conference itself was every bit the brain-massage I'd hoped. Not only did everyone have something interesting to say, they were quite affable & easy-going. I was thrilled to have found a social milieu where the slurry pub talk would be about, say, the apparent dearth of right-wing prog rock. This niche of ne plus ultra nerdom also exposed me to musical cul-de-sacs of which I had no previous knowledge. Who knew that the Madchester sound owed its very existence to the early-'80s Sheffield scene, and why hadn't they told me before about long-forgotten visionary acts like Hula?

5. Not Being Sated By All the Above

Finally, the maniac's calling card is that there is never enough. Despite musical riches heaped upon my ears by the above experiences, I still craved more strange sounds, more uncharted territory, more unfamiliar artists - which is why I have to acknowledge a certain debt to the "etewaf" phenomenon. Between online retailers like the unequaled Aquarius Records and such appetent blogs as Son of Zamboni, Dayvan Zombear, and OngakuBaka, I became acquainted with countless enthralling artists I'd not yet had the pleasure of hearing: library funkmeister Janko Nilovic, space-rock svengali Walter Wegmüller, Ulaan Khol's rustic soundscapes, and (possibly my most oft-spun album of 2010) Getatchew Mekurya's barnburning collaboration with Dutch post-punks The Ex. I eagerly anticipate what exotic & intriguing sounds I'll be exposed to in the coming year.

And to you, I give a small cross-section of the fruits of the explorations detailed above. Click on the mix title to download, and all the best for 2011.

The War of Attrition On the Listener's Attention

1. John Barry - "Main Title" from The IPCRESS File OST
2. Tyler, the Creator - "French!"
3. Karp - "Forget the Minions"
4. Sonic Youth - "Major Label Chicken Feed"
5. Hula - "Red Mirror"
6. Ennio Morricone - "Trafelato" from Giornata Nera Per l'Ariete OST
7. Walter Wegmüller - "Der Wagen"
8. Getatchew Mekurya & the Ex - "Ethiopia Hagere"
9. Oh No - "Smoky Winds"
10. Z - "新今日"

My Connection to the Second Resurrection

Two years ago, I sat in our emptied Hamburg apartment, wiling away a few idle hours before our red-eye flight to Baltimore. Feeling productive but a bit blighted for inspiration, I hammered out what could be charitably considered a seasonal cover version of the Brian Jonestown Massacre classic, "Jesus". I posted it on this blog, but that link has long since gone dead and I've now gotten hip to this "streaming" business, so I present my meager gift to you...

Jesus by Seb Roberts

Happy holidays, whatever your spiritual proclivities may be. I shall return with more shortly.

If I could be, for only an hour...

Well, it's Hallowe'en weekend. If you're a foreigner in Tokyo, this means partying hard on the Yamanote train with a bunch of other white people, though in recent years these impromptu costumed hullabaloos have drawn fire from not only embarrassed foreigners but an increasingly strident hard-right. Personally, I'm not particularly bothered. The Yamanote parties are hardly a utopian T.A.Z. and combating xenophobia doesn't begin by dressing up like Borat and acting like a douche; yet it hardly bears complaining that the train transforms into a mobile drunk tank on October 31 - as opposed to any other night.

Of course, people everywhere concoct all manner of fanciful excuse for the explicit purpose of playing the fool in public. Such saturnalia are exhaust valves for the populace's pent-up frustration & compounded stress, which otherwise might be channeled into some kind of radical political expression - and we certainly can't have that! So when Japanese wag their fingers at an American holiday that is little more than culturally-sanctioned juvenile terrorism, lest they forget they spend summertime getting drunk & playing with explosives.

Really, though, to be content with such intermittent tomfoolery is missing the big picture. Just become a musician. Then you can act like a complete asshole 'round the clock and get paid for it!

Then again, musicians are often as discontent to be themselves as anyone else. (Even moreso in some instances.) This is why the musical masquerade of cover songs is impossible to resist. Yes indeed, it makes good P.R. to associate yourself with an established act, not to mention trumpet your own impeccable taste. But no one's ever kicked out a Jimi Hendrix or Stooges cover who didn't want to be Jimi or Iggy (who also wanted little more than to be their respective heroes). Hell, some bands make entire careers out of hollow impersonations of their idols. As an audience, we owe thanks to those talented few who only unveil their influences occasionally & purposefully.

So instead of the usual ghosts 'n' ghoulies Hallowe'en mix (which you can grab here if you really want), here's an amusing selection of musicians playing at being other people. Click on the mix title to download.

In a Stupid-Ass Way

1. Scott Walker - "Jackie"
2. Tricky - "Lyrics of Fury"
3. Teddy and His Patches - "Suzy Creamcheese"
4. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "I Put a Spell On You"
5. The Fall - "Mr. Pharmacist"
6. The Toreno Brass - "Eleanor Rigby"
7. Sonic Youth - "My New House"
8. The Wooden Glass feat. Billy Wooten - "In the Rain"
9. Melvins - "Going Blind"
10. Dick Hyman - "Green Onions"
11. Shirley Bassey - "Light My Fire"
12. The Chico Magnetic Band - "Crosstown Traffic"
13. La Tia Leonor Y Sus Sobrinos - "Marcha a la Turca"
14. Alex Chilton - "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
15. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Wanted Man"
16. Pavement - "The Classical"
17. Faith No More - "Easy"
18. Martin Denny - "Midnight Cowboy"

Straight To Hell

Yes, I'm going to Hell. Literally: I'm trekking northward towards Osorezan, traditionally regarded as the Japanese gates of Hell. Here's how famed hiker Alan Booth assessed the place:

Osorezan is the most disquieting place I have ever visited. Of course the temple and the lanterns and the eyeless figures were shaped and placed here for a human purpose. We know their dates and the names of the priests who built them, and we know the uses to which they are put. Still, this easy knowledge is belied by their power to intimidate and to awe. Like the yellow stream and the Pond of Blood and the silent trees on the road over the mountain, they are awesome because there is an old god in them - a dusty, crouching, terrible god who does not often reveal himself in the world.

There are places infinitely more disquieting that Booth hadn't visited, say Liberia or the Aral Sea. But coming from a man who put one of the planet's most geographically diverse countries underfoot, such superlatives wouldn't come unearned. In fact, Booth's three-page description of Osorezan's ashen solitude was the primary inspiration for my trip. Whether you're gothy pseudo-nihilist or post-New Age Ouroborosian, any place styled as the underworld's welcome mat sounds damned intriguing. And the Pond of Blood? Talk about awesome! Sounds like a Cannibal Corpse song title. My morbidly-curious inner adolescent is already throwing devil horns in the air.

But it's a damned long train ride up to Aomori from Tokyo. I've already got my reading material sorted (cheers, Ben & Michael!) and have patched together a playlist that complements the rhythmic thrum of the rails, as well as the foggy sense of expectation when having a wander. Hopefully, this will make up for the conspicuous silence of the next two weeks. Enjoy, and click on the mix title to download.

Bulldozer Market

1. Circle - "Andexelt"
2. Serena Maneesh - "I Just Want To See Your Face"
3. Suicide - "Girl"
4. Wirtschaftswunder - "Patre Del Mondo"
5. Moebius & Beerbohm - "Subito"
6. Mayyors - "Ghost Punch"
7. Sonic Youth - "Tremens"
8. Mort Garson - "The Unexplained"
9. Fantastikoi Hxoi - "Na Exeis Ta Panta"
10. Boredoms - "San"
11. Laddio Bolocko - "As If By Remote"
12. Electric Sandwich - "China"
13. Scorpio Tube - "Yellow Listen"
14. Polvo - "City Birds"
15. My Bloody Valentine - "Bilinda Song"
16. The Oscillation - "Respond In Silence"
17. The Stranglers - "Meninblack"
18. The Fall - "Fantastic Life" (Live)
19. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Origin of Love"

Tangential Postscript: Desperate for more of my acerbic bon môts while I'm away? I've got a new article (about an old complaint) up on the Mute Magazine website, filed vaguely inappropriately in the "news & analysis" section.

Lonely From the Heat

Like the rest of the whole damned planet, Japan is sweltering. For two weeks, the temperature has refused to dip below the thirties (the mid-eighties for you Yanks). Worse, the baking pavement of Tokyo creates a pocket of hot air that shoves aside any storm clouds that would bring relief from this sick, dense murk that squeezes like you were a sodden dish-sponge.

Not that this was unforseen, of course. I, for one, have been stepping outside only at night. But I'm not exactly a jolly-hockeysticks day-person anyway; I spend most of my time in dimly-lit rooms with chain-smoking cynics & embittered creative types (if with anyone). So really, I haven't had to re-tailor my routine at all.

Still, when hiding inside is less a preference than a matter of self-preservation, it's damned hard not to feel some pang of isolation & paranoia. Especially when the curtains are drawn all day. (A cardboard box is better insulated than the typical Japanese apartment, so any measures to repel sunlight are necessary.) I work from home, so unless I run by the grocery store to pick up more yogurt, I can easily pass an entire day without uttering a word - which is when strange things start ringing in my ears. Conversation is breathing room, both literal & psychological, allowing various threads to untangle in one's head. In silent isolation, it doesn't take long for those threads to fray or tangle into dense & troublesome knots.

Not terribly surprising, then, that so much of my current listening material sounds stir-crazy & paranoid. Not only are the songs often sung from fiercely antisocial points-of-view, but the production itself sketches in bold the outline of the very room in which the music was recorded. When music is heard as from within its own space, it's not escapist, not an invitation to some ethereal/immaterial non-space: it's a retreat, a withdrawal to that finite space in which you're trapped simply by listening.

So I'm exorcising my stereo of claustrophobia and passing it on to yours, given that you're probably reading this in air-conditioned confines outside which heat haze is heaving off the concrete. Click on the mix title to download.

What Comes Into My Yard Is Mine

1. Shellac - "Didn't We Deserve a Look At the Way You Really Are"
2. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Cabin Fever!"
3. Lungfish - "Oppress Yourself"
4. Sonic Youth - "Shadow of a Doubt"
5. Ennio Morricone - "Grotesque Suspense"
6. Glenn Branca - Symphony No. 6, Fourth Movement
7. The Fall - "Neighbourhood of Infinity"
8. This Heat - "Twilight Furniture"
9. Fugazi - "Stacks"
10. Ben Frost - "Through the Glass of the Roof"
11. Swans - "A Screw" (Live)
12. Z - "500万円"

Riff Rabble

A quick word of warning: we are entering the unforgiving realm of Total Rockism on this one.

It's only been a couple of days, but so thick is the bombardment that the opening salvos of the Great Riff War of 2010 already seem like a distant memory. I'm just glad that Carl's opened up a conversation I had with a friend a few months back: whatever happened to good guitar riffs?

Think about it. How many songs from the past decade do you recall primarily, let alone exclusively, for a good ol' meathook of a guitar riff? Two? Maybe. Odds are one of 'em is by Queens of the Stone Age and the other's by the White Stripes, which is a sorry goddamn state of affairs when such derivative throwback pablum is the only populist statement a guitarist can make.

The retreat of the guitar to textural support is thanks to a two-pronged attack by (1) too-clever indie kids, and (2) an ever-retarding mainstream. After grunge had re-democratized the instrument and made underachieving mediocrity cool, the underground (as always) circled the wagons. Some guitarists took their cues from the '80s most progressive players - Moore & Ranaldo, Shields, Haino - and began pushing the instrument into more abstract & impressionist realms. (See: Fennesz, Nadja, etc.) Others, like U.S. Maple, Polvo, and Shellac, went deconstructionist, piecing rock back together Frankenstein-style into fractal, schizophrenic, and deliberately anti-cathartic forms. But what most stripped the guitar of populist appeal was indie's own bebop movement: math rock. Emotionally obtuse and indifferent to audience expectations, it was first a reaction against the earnest simplicity of the post-grunge glut. But moreover it was a wry reclamation of skill from onanist shred-heads. This swiftly became a war of attrition amongst who could most cleverly subdivide a single beat, reaching its endgame in 1999 with the impossibly dense finger-sports marathon Calculating Infinity by the Dillinger Escape Plan.

Meanwhile, things were going from bad to worse in the mainstream. Once flannel & greasy hair had fallen from favour, grunge's longest-lasting contribution to pop culture was its mawkish alienation. So when bands equally enamoured of Pantera and N.W.A. began appearing, their lyrics read as much like a high school alcoholic's diary as the prelude to an ass-whuppin'. As this "new" (or nü) metal's currency grew, it sacrificed any iconoclasm or cleverness it might have brought with it from the underground metal & hardcore scenes - neither of which were particularly dedicated to crafting earworm guitar work in the first place. As the culture machine serves only to sand off features, eventually nu-metal's angularity & dissonance were completely shorn, abdicating the rock Top 40 to sensitive rednecks blasting the same ol' bar chords through Marshall stacks.

Now, the musical centrality of the guitar both above- & underground waxes & wanes as quickly as the moon, so it's not as though the past decade has been riff-free by any stretch. Hell, in the mix below, the Aughts are better represented than the '60s. (Just a matter of taste... and avoiding the dead-horse obvious like Zeppelin.) So a better conundrum to tackle would be... what exactly is a riff?

Carl's already been parsing the taxonomy, splitting hairs between "riffs", "licks", and "vibes". I like his idea that a "lick... impl[ies] everything from a painterly, Fine Art flick of the wrist to the minimum possible unit in a cunnilingual encounter." The latter part is especially relevant: guitar licks, like the hook to "Layla", are generally spry, dexterous single-note runs that convey sensual melody - a quick tickle or cocktease, as opposed to the clenched-fist masturbation of, say, anything by Yngwie Malmsteen.

"Vibe", of course, suggests ambiance - which is generally what the guitar drifts into once the tempos ascend past or fall below a certain threshold. Most doom & sludge fall well below a b.p.m. you could comfortable bang your head to. On the other hand, as Carl explains, excessive speed isn't what's wanted either:

I think it’s probably why speed and thrash metal are such boring genres... too fast on one level but not so fast that it blurs into ambience a la black or death metal. It's more akin to a series of rapid-fire quips... that just leave you feeling slightly puzzled, there’s nothing to savour.

This reminded me of when David Yow explained why he was never terribly taken with hardcore punk (I'm paraphrasing): it just flies by like a bird trapped indoors; once the tempo slows down, the music becomes more tactile, visceral, "like being in a fistfight."

But then, what to call all the stuff guitarists do that aren't riffs? There are the obvious non-riffs: chord progressions, fingerstyle. But most of my favourite guitar bands are surprisingly riff-free. The closest to a riff that My Bloody Valentine have ever come is "Feed Me With Your Kiss", but that's still more a Big Black-like series of face-slaps than a proper riff. Do the Fall or Sonic Youth really traffic in riffs? I feel like they're more into motifs, and the obvious exceptions prove the rule. And what about Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu, Spacemen 3, or the Butthole Surfers?

The word "riff" itself has a lupine growl, and suggests something base, feral. A hoarse, rhythmic breath. This suggests to me a possible expansion beyond the bounds of pentatonic, palm-muted chopping: there are times when the bass supplants the guitar as the spine of the song. The Fall and the Jesus Lizard are excellent examples of this, where the bass is the music's inky outline with the guitar adding accents & colour.

Of course, am I just using this notion to excuse the inclusion of the Birthday Party in the mix below? Maybe. Click on the title to download.

Riff Raffle

1. AC/DC - "Let There Be Rock"
2. Flied Egg - "Rolling Down the Broadway" (Live)
3. Focus - "Hocus Pocus" (Live)
4. Sir Lord Baltimore - "Master Heartache"
5. The Birthday Party - "Nick the Stripper"
6. Lungfish - "Searchlight"
7. OXES - "Dear Spirit, I'm In France"
8. Shellac - "My Black Ass"
9. Karp - "Bacon Industry"
10. Rye Coalition - "Stairway To The Free Bird On The Way To The Smokey Water"
11. Melvins - "Hooch"
12. Mayyors - "Metro"
13. Metallica - "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
14. The Jesus Lizard - "Mouthbreather"
15. Sleep - "Dopesmoker" (Part 5)
16. Sleep - "Dopesmoker" (Part 6)

Addendum: Yes, the above is all rather North Americentric, but only because I'm not about to make sweeping generalisations about Britain over the past twenty years - least of all in the company of Messrs. Reynolds, Ingram, and Carl. I'll go so far as to say that Britpop was a provincial, conservative revival, and the guitar's been a backwards-looking instrument in England ever since the ascension of the Stone Roses. The closest the UK's come to having a six-string visionary since Kevin Shields is perhaps Graham Coxon or Johnny Greenwood - but of course the former's overshadowed but that twat up front, the latter is a tad too advanced to be content with such a quotidian instrument.

Let me tell you how it will be...

In honour of American tax day, here's a mix of tunes dedicated to the motley association of resentful, politically simplistic, tacitly racist, historically ignorant, isolationist, millenarian, militia-forming, science-doubting confederates known as the Tea Party. Choke on that credit you get from The Recovery Act, you rubes.

We Don't Go To Their Parties

1. The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - "Skunk"
2. Alex Chilton - "All I Really Want Is Money"
3. The Stranglers - "Bitching"
4. Shellac - "This Is a Picture"
5. Brian Eno - "Driving Me Backwards"
6. Pissed Jeans - "Half Idiot"
7. Todd Tamanend Clark - "Mathematics Don't Mean a Thing"
8. Big Flame - "Let's Rewrite the American Constitution"
9. The Stabs - "The Patriot Song"
10. The Fall - "Who Makes the Nazis?"
11. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "City of Refuge"
12. Lungfish - "Jonah"
13. Nation of Ulysses - "Maniac Dragstrip"
14. David Bowie - "It's No Game (Part 2)"

Pearls To Swine

Well, I've hit a few unfortunate snags in distributing my recently-completed full-length, Rogues Gallery, so the masses frothing with anticipation (ha!) will just have to hang on a bit longer.

The good news is that in the meantime, here's a digital 7" pour gratuit to whet your appetite. "The Bug Man", a track off the LP, is the toe-tappin' tale of a sociopathic exterminator, while the B-side, "Tarred Memory", started as a simple folk tune but was quickly swamped in so many overdubs it'd make Kevin Shields blush. Nonetheless, it's a relentlessly fun track.

So please, go download the sumbitch, pore over the artwork, and pass it amongst your friends. May it bring a little joy to your auditory organs.

Scare Tactics

Hallowe'en has never been a big deal in Japan. This is largely because of the absence of the entire cultural context (however flimsy & fabricated) for the holiday, but also because there's already more than enough opportunity to apply ghoulish makeup and extravagant costumery. This year, however, appears to be different: paper skeletons & plastic jack-o-laterns are ubiquitous, and every nightclub (as opposed to only the ones that cater to foreigners) is hosting some kind of haunted happening. Granted, I've been absent the past two years, but my friends here confirm that this sudden enthusiasm in All Hallow's Eve has arrived without warning. I'm convinced this is an economic stimulus effort that's helping to resurrect the Japanese economy: hype an accessory-emphatic holiday, pushing everyone to purchase the necessary accoutrement.

I doubt that Hallowe'en will become a staple of the fall season, though. Other countries have had fleeting love affairs with the holiday, only to discard it once the novelty wore off and the candy hangovers kicked in. In the early part of this decade, that bastion of high culture France "went batty" over Hallowe'en, reclaiming their stake in the ancient European celebration while enjoying its New World lunacy. A few years later, of course, the French lived up to their reputation and quickly ditched Hallowe'en like the autumnal fad it was. Now, Hallowe'en is little more than an excuse for an extra ladies' night on a nightclub's event calendar.

Which isn't to say nothing scary happens on Hallowe'en in France. Last year, I witnessed in Paris some of the most ghetto bullshit I've seen since leaving Baltimore. Traveler's Tip: when some drunk steps to you in the 11th arrondissement, let it slide and believe him when he says he makes bank. I don't care about their military history, the French will fuck you up if they have to.

Click on the mix title to download.

Something Wicked This Way Comes

1. Black Sabbath - "Black Sabbath"
2. The Birthday Party - "Release the Bats"
3. Chain & the Gang - "Cemetary Map"
4. Public Image Ltd. - "Graveyard"
5. Wendy Carlos - "The Shining (Main Titles)"
6. The Caretaker - "Haunted Ballroom"
7. The Jesus & Mary Chain - "Nineteen666"
8. Scientist - "The Voodoo Curse"
9. Pete Rugolo - "Finger of Fear"
10. Suicide - "Ghost Rider"
11. Big Lazy - "Just Plain Scared"
12. Johnny Pearson - "Graveyard"
13. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - "Fire"
14. David Bowie - "Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)"
15. Teeth Mountain - "Ghost Science"
16. The Bourbons - "A Dark Corner"
17. The Fall - "Mansion"
18. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Red Right Hand"
19. Lucifer - "Exorcism"
20. Lord Dent & His Invaders - "Wolf Call"
21. Sonic Youth - "Hallowe'en"

And All Hardcore Fiends Will Die By Me

Not entirely timely, given the past number of days were eaten up by a brief escape from the metro region, but...


I've already had my say about this "grey vampire" nonsense, so all that remains is to dedicate the mixes below to the architects of this ignis fatuus "new orthodoxy."

Still, mind you... I wonder, reading such smug & protective excuses & egotism, if those paralyzed by prolepsis aren't simply exhausting themselves defending bad ideas.

Click on the titles to download.

Righteous Maelstrom (The Autumn Edition)

1. Brian Eno - "No One Receiving"
2. The Flaming Lips - "Convinced of the Hex"
3. Pissed Jeans - "Half Idiot"
4. Wu-Tang Clan - "Shame On a Nigga"
5. Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup - "I'm Gonna Dig Myself a Hole"
6. Big Flame - "Every Conversation"
7. The Jesus Lizard - "Mouthbreather"
8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience - "If 6 Was 9"
9. The Jesus & Mary Chain - "Suck"
10. The Billy Nayer Show - "Only I Can Save the World"
11. Grouper - "Disengaged"
12. Flipper - "Living For the Depression"
13. Busta Rhymes - "Woo Ha!! Got You All In Check"
14. XTC - "Outside World"
15. The Mothers of Invention - "Who Are the Brain Police?"
16. NoMeansNo - "I Am Wrong"

Righteous Maelstrom (The Fall Edition)

1. The Fall - "The Man Whose Head Expanded"
2. The Fall - "Fantastic Life"
3. The Fall - "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed."
4. The Fall - "What You Need"
5. The Fall - "Slates, Slags, Etc." Live
6. The Fall - "Recipe For Fascism"
7. The Fall - "Who Makes the Nazis?"
8. The Fall - "Gut of the Quantifier"
9. The Fall - "New Puritan" Peel Session

The Revolution Will Not Be Twittered

Were you to believe it from a specific cluster of blogs, the single most momentous event of the past two weeks has been the student occupation of various buildings around the University of California Santa Cruz. Too bad no one else thinks so. Granted, the students couldn't have counted on above-the-fold competition from dual disasters in southeast Asia, the polarizing arrest of Roman Polanski, more crotch-grabbing by Ahmadinejad, or the aneurysm-inducing echoplex of phony outrage over Kanyegate.

However, they certainly didn't make it easier on themselves by launching their incursion concurrent to China's "60th birthday" bash and the G20 clusterfuck in Pittsburgh. Doubtlessly, this coincidence was intended to highlight the shortcomings of the post-globalised economic model, but being 2600 miles away from the action in a town often derided as a patchouli-soaked corral for space cadets & pinkos is not the best strategy for scoring headlines, let alone sympathy.

Lest someone think I'm not on the students' side, let me be clear: education is a fundamental right, not a privilege, and the keystone to any society that can even pretend to be free. Distended tuition costs, the erosion of available scholarships, and funding diverted like water from Noah Cross' Los Angeles pose as great (if not a greater) threat than any nebulous group of extremists broadcasting ill-defined grievances from caves.

That being said, a well-funded & equitably accessible secondary education doesn't do shit for a country without a functioning primary education system. Speaking of too many students chasing too few dollars, the only state with a high school graduation rate above 80% that is also among the 20 most populous states is New Jersey, and 26 of the 50 largest school districts see fewer than 60% of their students complete high school. The most dreadful failures are the cities:

• Chicago (52.2%)
• Los Angeles (44.2%)
• New York City (38.9%)
• Baltimore (38.5%)
• Detroit (21.7%)

Sorry, bioethics undergrads and comparative lit doctoral candidates, but as long as almost a third of Americans can't parse the 5th-Grade prose of USA Today to read for themselves how fucked the public schools are, you'll have to wait your turn.

Another, more manageable problem facing the UCSC protesters is how they're presenting themselves & their agenda. They're flush with the same spurious romanticism as every placard-waving pseud & bumper-sticker doctrinaire from the past forty years, but because I'm sympathetic to their ends I'd like to offer them a little advice. I first thought it best to address them in their own language - that is, in a needlessly declarative, excessively florid manifesto that's as impalpable & impractical as a Japanese anti-smoking ad. But in the interest of avoiding doublespeak, I've decided to employ the more direct method of a concise list.

• "Occupation" isn't a term that rings progressive - quite the opposite. It smacks of subjugation & imperialism; just ask any Palestinian or Iraqi. May I suggest "engagement" or "reclamation"?

• If grad students are going to take anything over, they'd perhaps want to infiltrate an environment that isn't, according to this UCSC spokesman, paid for, operated by, and "used by graduate students for everything from studying to a lounge area." That's like a second-amendment rights rally "occupying" a NASCAR track. City hall, the state legislature, or even the university administrative offices might make for more effectively sensitive targets.

• For god's sake, don't blast weak-ass reggae over the PA. You'll turn yourself into a South Park stereotype.

• Do not make dangerously contradictory statements for sake of rousing the rabble. Do not proclaim that "older strategies of political action and involvement have proven themselves entirely incapable of enacting change" while employing tactics as dog-eared & assimilated as sit-ins, especially on neutral terrain. All this proves is that your revolt is but one of the squeaky wheels on the apparatus that does, on occasion, start shrieking for a little oil. Sounding the death knell of capitalism while accepting that crisis is inherent to the system itself demands concrete directions towards an exit off this hellish roundabout, not some garnished eulogy.

• Speaking of concrete directions, how about making some explicit directives? Its laughable petulance aside, "WE WANT EVERYTHING" is as meaningless a demand as "WE WANT NOTHING" in that it points to nothing as a goal. If what "we" want isn't yet clear, we should at least be able to express what we don't want and issue demands in the negative. Even to demand the impossible is more effective than demanding "everything": again, the impossible at least offers some imaginable (albeit amoebic) ends towards which to work.

• If you want to be taken seriously, don't cull your slogans from cloying cocaine-nosebleed disco or self-involved emo "anthems"; do not ironically appropriate Bonnie Tyler lyrics; don't make presumptive statements about "the working class" or "proletarian" anyone unless you're damn certain you can count them amongst your ranks; and for crying out loud, don't declare that "we are power hungry." That makes you sound like a bunch of authoritarian thugs.

But beyond that, I wish the UCSC protesters nothing but the best of luck. I'm only asking their bravery match the level of their rhetoric; you can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding. The reason I don't bandy about "smash the system" hyperbole (anymore) is because I know I'm incapable of following through on the threat. The level of violence - on every level and in every sense of the word - requisite to enact a revolution, any revolution is far beyond the bounds of my own conviction. This doesn't mean there isn't nobility, righteousness, or good within the revolutionary's heart; it does, however, require a certitude found only in True Belief, in fascists, in fundamentalists, and in sub-criminal psychopaths. As I believe the ends don't justify the means, I'll gladly play along until my "counterrevolutionary" skepticism lands me in the gulag, which will serve me as an incredibly shitty, lifelong Told You So.

Below are some tunes dedicated to those fighting to get their learn on; click on the mix title to download.

The Revolutionary Gesture

1. The Birthday Party - "Mutiny In Heaven"
2. Metallica - "For Whom The Bell Tolls"
3. Harvey Milk - "War"
4. Nation Of Ulysses - "Target: U.S.A."
5. GZA - "I Gotcha Back"
6. The Clash - "The Guns of Brixton"
7. Erykah Badu - "Soldier"
8. Hoyt Ming and His Pep Steppers - "Indian War Whoop"
9. Spacemen 3 - "Revolution"
10. Michael Yonkers - "Kill the Enemy"
11. Lungfish - "Black Helicopters"
12. Pelt - "Hippy War Machine"
13. The Stranglers - "No More Heroes"

Updated (Oct. 4): Ads Without Products makes an invaluable expansion upon my last point, regarding the "adolescent insanity" of "toussled-haired hipsters, laptopped and bespectacled," fancying themselves urban guerrillas.

My home and native land...

Homesickness can do strange and sometimes productive things - hence the video above, a speedball paean to my birthplace (delivered in a neanderthal manner suitable for a native Albertan). My friends who've seen the video picked up quickly that what I evidently miss the most about Canada is, naturally, Tim Horton's. Yes, it is, and to my dying breath will I insist that they make the finest donuts on god's green earth.

But personally, my favourite part of the video is the Three Stooges-style hockey punch-up. Physical comedy at its finest!

The song is from my latest EP, Breeds With Anything, which is available - no strings - for free right here. As I explained before, the record is a deliberately troglodytic affair, all red-blooded machismo and screaming invective because, y'know what, that's fun. The Melvins have proven it's possible to play that music with more than a modicum of intelligence, and who doesn't want to be David Yow for a day?

In this spirit - Foghat, motherfucker! - I offer you the mix below... with one caveat. I enjoy all of the songs, if occasionally for nothing more than the bassline (I'm looking at you, Lil' Jon), but some of them are so patently offensive I can't even bring myself to quote the lyrics (ibid). There is more than a little misogyny among the songs, and I don't want anyone thinking that I endorse that nonsense. But such is a byproduct of relentless Manliness; after all, how can a man consider himself the pinnacle of all creation without necessarily disparaging the other gender? Jay-Z almost gets away with it by putting a war-of-the-sexes spin on Chris Rock's Black People bit - almost. I'm pretty sure that N.E.R.D.'s whole catalogue is an elaborate cross-genre satire, though I wonder if that's putting too much stock in Pharrell's self-awareness. The only band that acquits itself of all charges (and at face value, no less) is NoMeansNo.

So, honest question: is this treading perilously close to the equivalent cop-out excuse for listening to a NSBM band, "Yes it's deplorable, but they rock"?

Click on the title to download.

Hard-Headed, Fuck You All

1. Action Beat - "Meat Head"
2. Mayyors - "Metro"
3. Pissed Jeans - "Human Upskirt"
4. The Jesus Lizard - "The Art of Self-Defense"
5. The Chico Magnetic Band - "My Sorrow"
6. Jay-Z - "Bitches & Sisters"
7. The Stabs - "Never Going Home"
8. Los Saicos - "(Fugitivo de) Alcatraz"
9. Snoop Dogg w/ Lil Jon & Trina - "Step Yo Game Up"
10. Reek & the Wrecks - "Stoners On Fire"
11. N.E.R.D. - "Lapdance"
12. Sir Lord Baltimore - "Helium Head (I Got a Love)"
13. Karp - "D+D Fantasy"
14. Rye Coalition - "Stairway To The Free Bird On The Way To The Smokey Water"
15. Johnny Fortune - "Dragster"
16. Ministry - "Breathe"
17. The Dildos - "Fuck Off"
18. Soundgarden - "Ty Cobb"
19. NoMeansNo - "Big Dick"

And by the way, the new Pissed Jeans album - sweet merciful crap, does it rawk. It's out August 18th. Mark it on your calender and prepare to get messy.

A New Coat of Paint On An Old Perversion

Nestled within the flesh of Christopher Weingarten's virtuosic rant on the decline of music criticism, a particularly chewy bit of gristle was the truth - accept it, however grudgingly! - that several-thousand-word homilies aren't necessary to show appropriate enthusiasm for music/film/literature/[insert cultural commodity]. A skillful wordsmith can indeed convince someone to seek out (or avoid) a work of art in a mere 140 characters.

If career writers & critics are legitimately fearing for their survival amongst the twit-plague, then what the fuck are the rest of us hobbyists and amateurs doing wasting our time clacking away all this self-indulgent twaddle? In a world where people can pass judgment on Shaquille O'Neal's choice of breakfast as he reports on the masticatory process in real-time, is there any attention left for lengthy diatribes that pass their expiration date while being written?

Life is what happens while you're blogging about it, so I accept that a number of posts I've been working on are already irredeemably irrelevant. For example, I'm going to follow up Ads Without Products' withering "K-Punk's New Clothes" piece, but since that fracas is already (gasp!) several weeks old, I doubt anyone will even bother reading it. So it goes.

Similarly, I'd begun crafting a article inspired by another of AWP's posts - about the libidinal link between sex and violence, specifically when the two are wrapped in a sweaty embrace with global Big Finance - back in fucking October of last year. Then a record, the holidays, moving across the planet and re-rooting intervened, so here we are a full nine months after the fact. Mooted! In the interest of keeping your interest, I'm including two topical playlists I made for a mix-tape swap this past spring; click on the titles below to download. And not wanting to let any labour (however late) go to waste, here's what I was writing at the time...

Talking about the globalisploitation flick Boarding Gate, AWP wrote:

The first-thought thing to say about films like this, that wrap financial activity in sex and violence, is that they are allegories of the violence that works off-stage in the real world to keep the business running. A simple furniture import-export business is really a front for murder-for-hire and heroin dealing etc etc etc. ...And every sexual act is tinged with the aftertaste of violence and ill-gotten gains.

Which, to be sure, is a romantic exaggeration. Despite whatever mirages may manifest in the mirror, I doubt very many hedge fund managers actually sustain the violent portents of of Mr. Blonde while nailing guileful femme fatales like Asia Argento. "Somehow," AWP wrote, "the world wants investment banking to be a task populated by the feral, the oversexed, the trigger-pullers. But it is not."

But not for lack of trying! If the world of cut-throat young Turks swashbuckling across the seas of int'l finance is a mere tenth as amoral, decadent, and libidinally propelled as films like Wall Street, Boiler Room, 25th Hour, Glengarry Glen Ross, or American Psycho would have us believe... then the keys to the kingdom have been handed to some of the most debased sociopaths ever to roam the earth. This is in keeping with the stories I've heard from folks who've worked within any proximity to a stock exchange. One friend, who used to work at a record store in the basement of the TSX, lost track of the number of times he'd walked into a stairwell or bathroom to find brokers bumping blow or speed, engaged in an act of self-love, or indeed getting each other off. (The gender of either party was of secondary importance to frictional expertise. How socially progressive of them!)

And science supports this view of hormonally-imbalanced psychos snorting lines off the back of our portfolio: Harvard researchers found a literal link between men with elevated levels of testosterone and men who'd willfully gamble away money on a coin toss, enthralled by the sheer fuckoffness of chance. The deeply disturbing next step is to consider, in tandem, that testosterone insufficiently counterbalanced by serotonin is a biochemical hallmark of serial killers. Granted, most notorious murderers are too emotionally unstable to play the clean-cut professional as well as Ted Bundy, but the neurology suggests that a monster like Patrick Bateman is less unimaginable than inevitable.

A lot of talk about the (now obviously & woefully ineffective) bailout has argued that it amounts to a bloodless coup by a fraternity of financial oligarchs. The fatted calf being sacrificed on the economic altar isn't merely taxpayers' money, but democracy itself. The difference between state-corporatism (fascism) & state-capitalism (despotic "communism") and contemporary America is that the locus of the masses' libido is not Dear Leader, but the "free-market" economy. As David Sitora wrote:

We have become a country that has one national religion: presidentialism. That's the religion that says the president is an all-powerful deity - and the Oval Office is a position that is the only one that matters. That this outlook is fundamentally undemocratic and offensive to the principles of our Founding Fathers seems completely forgotten. We have embraced czarism with the zeal of cult worshipers - and now this zeal has global economic forces at its back.

We are trying to economically compete with anti-democratic forces that can make financial decisions without any public input at all. As we saw with the debate over the bailout bill, the transnational corporate elite tell us our democracy and its careful deliberations are hurting our ability to make quick decisions in this global market - and therefore that democracy must be subverted to the will of capitalism.

A noted war criminal once intoned that "power is the greatest aphrodisiac." Hideous though it may be to contemplate, this appears to be vomit-inducingly true - especially when expressed via one degree of displacement through cash-grabs, imperial incursions, sexual debasement, or some obscene confluence of any of the above. No wonder Republican & Tory sex scandals are always the most titillating.

Blood/Lust

1. Black Flag - "Slip It In"
2. The Birthday Party - "Fears of Gun"
3. Jane's Addiction - "Ted... Just Admit It"
4. The Billy Nayer Show - "Billy's"
5. Melvins - "Boris"
6. Messer Chups - "I'm Psycho Bitch"
7. Dudley Nightshade - "All the Colours of the Dark" (Instrumental)
8. Sex - "I Had to Rape Her"
9. Lil Wayne - "Mrs. Officer"
10. Brainbombs - "Lipstick On My Dick"
11. Flying Lotus - "SexSlaveShip"
12. Oxbow - "Stallkicker"
13. David Lynch & John Neff - "Go Get Some"
14. Sonic Youth - "Lights Out"

Songs the Recession Taught Us

1. The Flying Lizards - "Money (That's What I Want)"
2. Madlib - "Pyramids (Change)"
3. The Steve Miller Band - "Take the Money and Run"
4. Mos Def - "Fake Bonanza"
5. Guns 'N' Roses - "Double-Talkin' Jive"
6. Ennio Morricone - "Money Orgy"
7. Tricky - "Money Greedy"
8. The Fall - "Middle Class Revolt!"
9. Hilton Sutton - "I Will Destroy Them Economically"
10. Soul Coughing - "Collapse"
11. The Birthday Party - "Guilt Parade"
12. The Jesus Lizard - "Countless Backs of Sad Losers"
13. Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention - "Can't Afford No Shoes"
14. Enzo Scoppa - "Recesso"
15. Harvey Milk - "A Maelstrom of Bad Decisions"
16. Johnny Greenwood - "Future Markets"
17. Wu-Tang Clan - "C.R.E.A.M."
18. Pissed Jeans - "I've Still Got You (Ice Cream)"