Thursday, August 25, 2005
So, for some time I’ve had a link on the right, over there on the sidebar, but didn’t mention anything because I had vague notions of signing up with one of those independent internet labels or something. I didn’t; I never got around to doing anything, commercial-wise, and I don’t expect I will.
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Listening to Philip Glass’s Einstein On the Beach while napping will result in a seriously fucked-up sleeping experience. Go ahead and try it yourself!
I was awoken today from the inevitable post-2-cups-of-coffee-and-one-night-of-utter-sleeplessness 2-hour crash (I set the alarm myself; aren’t I responsible!) By Anata’s ‘Entropy Within’ off of Under a Stone With No Inscription. This is the true test of a record’s worth, that the normal visceral bowel-twisting GAAAHHH NO, SLEEP and sheer disorientation was mixed up with Man, [...]
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Can we just discuss something here?
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No female nudes, no heroic gods, no families here; these heirs to Rothko and Kandinsky achieve the utterly noble goal of information without content, and pleasing as they are to the eye, they point to nothing outside of themselves.My dream is one born out of deep social conscience, for in doing so I seek above all else to elevate these second-class citizens of the art world, the workhorses and commoners, to their rightful places…. I seek not to celebrate or exalt elevator music, shopping mall music, car commercial music - indeed, those wastes of sound are precisely what happens when what we hear when we aren’t listening - ie, most of the time - is left to the hacks and the suits because everyone with talent is off making art. To agree that the music piped into your head during a jaunt through Bloomingdales is irritating and banal is to concede that a) wallpaper music matters and b) it’s certainly not easy to do.There is for me, as an artist, no finer, nobler thing than to produce sound which is modular - which can be manipulated or sewn into a larger entity seamlessly - and which is functional, which can serve to please or to pique, to intrigue or to lull, certainly to challenge and ostend also when that is its purpose.
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They fucking invented it, for chrissakes, the Gothenburg sound - they and In Flames and At the Gates were responsible for the birth of that little corner of metal and for the massive surge of interest and the burgeoning scene which followed - that same scene which has by now collapsed in on itself, having diverged into the equally execrable termini of the watered-down embarrassments that were once Soilwork or In Flames (how the mighty have fallen, indeed), or into that phenom of these first years of the new century, melodic metalcore, shamelessly and skillfully aping the riffs of their forbears and replacing the soul with…… There is no fat; doses of melody and heaviness are mixed in just the right proportion, and the band completely eschews the clean vocals and anthemic, soaring choruses by which In Flames, Soilwork and their progeny have induced so many winces of late.Immediately one is struck; the first track, ‘The New Build’, begins with a thick and speedy drum fill and does not stop, as the band barrels through the song as though imbued with a new purpose.
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Modern man, sadly, does not need to ever submit his soul to the forging fires of Viking raids, hand to hand combat, or, say, the dogged and single-minded pursuit across the entire globe of that greatest and most terrible of creatures, the white whale.This, I think, is the message of Mastodon’s newest, Leviathan: you are incredibly lame…. Mastodon have of late become darlings of the fringes of the metal scene with their bizarre southern-fried grind; their first LP, Remission, was chaotic, brutal, catchy, distinctly American, and also distinctly outside of anything that could be traditionally called metal - all a recipe for (well-deserved) appeal to folks who don’t know or care anything about Morbid Angel or Strapping Young Lad.
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