| rss2email.ru |
 ЛерКом - из-под мышки художника  |  Интернет-инструменты для малого бизнеса  |  Удобные штучки  |  Все о компании Google!  |
 |  Music: Music blog | guardian.co.ukArticles published by guardian.co.uk Music about: Music blog http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog рекомендовать друзьям >> |
- Audio advent calendar: Warp's second playlist
23 December: Before we finish with a festive song marathon from Domino, Warp treat us to an awesome Christmas playlist
Featuring Lonelady, Born Ruffians, !!! and Nice Nice, this playlist is Warp's final contribution to our audio advent calendar.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Audio advent calendar: PVT playlist
22 December: We're nearly at the end of our 24 Plays of Christmas, but this PVT playlist is a cracker (groan – puns ed)
Australian trio PVT have really gone to town with their festive playlist. So sit back and enjoy while the band's Richard Pike explains their choices ...
PVT playlist
John Maus – Bennington
John Maus is a bedroom composer/singer who teaches political theory at the University of Hawaii. This is a great B-side but you all have to get his record Love Is Real, which features just drum machines, synths and his low and unsettling voice intoning mantra-like lyrics. For a while this was the only record I could bear listening to in a sea of inane new music. The vinyl is translucent too.
Grasscut – Muppet (Nathan Fake Remix)
Dave (from PVT) suggested we get Nathan Fake to remix us so I checked out his stuff, and this became my favourite electronic track this year. He's a bit of a post-modern master, blurring the line between producer/engineer/audio sensei. Nathan remixed our last single Light Up Bright Fires, which is superb.Depeche Mode – Condemnation
I never listened to DM when I was young. A friend recommended we check out Songs of Faith and Devotion when he listened to our new album. This track is a cracker – Dave Gahan sings like he means it.The Units – High Pressure Days
A good friend played this to me recently. Why have I never heard of this band before? Early-80s post-punk from San Francisco with amazing keyboard and programming work. They're like Devo but with a looser vibe. And no one's heard of them. Why?Scott Walker – Copenhagen
PVT played Copenhagen for the first time this year. We got a parking fine as soon as we got there and our tour van was broken into that night. Then we played in Christiania, basically a hippy commune a bit like Barter Town in Mad Max 3. We walked for hours to the landmark Little Mermaid statue, which turned out to be exported to China. Copenhagen isn't even a place. Personally I don't believe in Copenhagen. Fortunately, this track is great. Beautiful orchestration.
David Bowie – Crystal Japan
A B-side produced by Brian Eno that should be regarded as an ambient classic. I think Trent Reznor owes something to this track.Alan Vega – Saturn Drive
Alan Vega's 80s solo diversions from Suicide are a trip.Jonathan Richman – When I Dance
Only really discovered Jonathan Richman this year. I know people who are just like him, but he turns his drunken insecurites and womanising into great songs.Here We Go Magic – Casual
PVT did a remix of these guys this year, and they are the loveliest bunch. They made Broken Social Scene look like complete amateurs when they opened for them in London. Jen the bass player is the new Tina Weymouth, if that isn't going too far. The clip for this song is really great too, but is NSFW.Elvis Presley – I'll Never Let You Go (Lil Darlin')
I put this in for my girlfriend. Elvis both swoons and shows off. Singing was a joke to him. I also love the vocal delay/reverb. He really plays into it. No one makes them like this any more.PVT – Felicity's Blue Dress
Thought I'd put in a PVT B-side that no one's really heard. This track didn't quite make the cut of the album, but it's one of the best things I've written.Gyorgy Ligeti – Lux Aeterna
Famous maybe for being in 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is a beautiful a cappella choir piece. I've loved this for years. I have still yet to hear it live, but I'm sure I would bliss out.
PVT released their album Church With No Magic earlier this year. You can buy it here . For more PVT info check out warp.net/pvtguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Jon Savage takes a tour through Captain Beefheart's back catalogue
Don Van Vliet shouldn't be seen as a 'weirdo' – he had pop tricks up his sleeve and his most difficult music entered the top 20
There's one Captain Beefheart song that I haven't been able to get out of my head since his death was announced. Sue Egypt (from 1980's Doc at the Radar Station) has many of the Captain's trademarks: sudden rhythmic breaks and twists, otherworldly sounds, a super-killer slide riff and vocal pyrotechnics taken into another dimension.
The whole track explodes with energy, from the opening guitar figure through the saturated mellotron to the way that Beefheart's voice swoops through the phonetic lyrics: "Boats to forever/ Boated ether/ Creep to ether, feather/ Sue Egypt." Despite the dark imagery – "voices pick you, crows hex you" – you're left with a feeling of deep joy and total exultation.
Captain Beefheart has been presented as some kind of weirdo, but contrary to what you might think, he was popular – particularly in the UK, where Trout Mask Replica went top 20 in early 1970; Lick My Decals Off, Baby reached No 21 a year later. Thanks to frequent UK shows and the patronage of John Peel, he was a major figure in the counterculture – a charismatic charlatan/shaman.
Don Van Vliet was a complex, contradictory creature. As has been well-documented, he was controlling, if not dictatorial, but at the same time possessed a deep love for the natural world. He was a carny, a visionary, a hustler, a utopian – as crazy and as focused as a desert fox. But what matters in the end is the work. And there is so much to admire that has stood the test of time, and that indeed will last as long as any 20th-century popular culture.
Since Van Vliet's death, many people have focused on Trout Mask Replica, his 1969 double album, as his absolute pinnacle, and it remains his most concentrated and ambitious work – a dizzying mix of lo-fi, free jazz, rumbling blues, instant catchphrases ("fast and bull-bous"), sound verite and tumbling rhythms. The opening Frownland could be Beefheart's manifesto and testament: "My spirit's made up of the ocean, and the sky 'n the sun 'n the moon."
I like the Captain best when he's making his pop moves. The Magic Band's first album, Safe As Milk, takes some beating, with its Ry Cooder-enhanced hymns to white light (Electricity), protests against dehumanised work (Plastic Factory) and American archetypes enhanced (Yellow Brick Road). Other highlights include a cover of Robert Williams's tortuous Grown So Ugly and the staccato Dropout Boogie – later adapted by Edgar Broughton.
1968's Strictly Personal is no slouch either, with songs such as Kandy Korn – particularly when you hear the extended versions later released on 1971's Mirror Man. The production has long been criticised but I really like phasing, backwards tapes and weird mutterings. The idea that this was an inauthentic rendition of this sacred music was a bit of a joke, considering how his persona and mythos were so constructed.
The early-70s were Don's purple patch. The Spotlight Kid and Clear Spot contained perennial classics such as Big Eyed Beans from Venus – a passionate hymn to femininity – and Blabber and Smoke, an inspired appeal on behalf of the environment: "Clean up the air/ 'N treat the animals fair/ I can't help but think you treat love like ah joke/ Time's runnin' out." And then there's the sly humour of When It Blows Its Stacks.
Like a lot of 60s vanguardists, Beefheart began to lose his way in the mid-70s. Two simpler albums, Unconditionally Guaranteed, and Bluejeans and Moondreams, were widely derided, but both have moments of tenderness. A few years in the wilderness followed, before the eventual release of 1978's Bat Chain Puller and 1980's Doc At the Radar Station – by which time the Captain's children were all over radio and the alternative charts.
His influence has been well traced, but the most notable example would have to be Johnny Rotten – who took the phrase "old fart" from the song Old Fart At Play on Trout Mask Replica, and turned it into that perennial generational insult. Beefheart, a beacon of open experimentation, was Rotten's musical weapon against the simplistic straight-jacket within which Malcolm McLaren sought to confine him.
After 1982's Ice Cream for Crow, Beefheart never made another record and, from then on, concentrated on painting. His withdrawal was totally in character. In his finest songs – like the nakedly emotional 1975 version of Orange Claw Hammer recorded with Frank Zappa – Beefheart channeled a secret history of America, the underbelly of a continent and a culture that has now all but vanished along with one of its greatest poets.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Ask the indie professor: My top 10 gigs of 2010
From concerts in former Masonic temples to turning down the chance to sing Joy Division songs with Hooky ... it's a hard life being an indie professor but someone's got to do it
Hey there indie professor! As the year comes to a close, everyone is releasing their top/best of lists for 2010. Would you please indulge your readers with your personal selection of this year's top 10 records? Indie records, of course ...
GdEnough
I rarely feel the need to discuss best albums as I don't listen to music through headphones. I see bands play live. So instead of my top 10 records, here are my top 10 shows of 2010. It's been a strange year for gigs. I've had to miss more great bands due to work requirements and unforeseen upheavals than any other year. And yet those that made the list have been all the more remarkable for it ...
1) Lou Barlow and Sarah Silverman @ Hollywood Forever Masonic Temple
Los Angeles has distinctive settings for shows, such as this converted Masonic temple in a Hollywood cemetery. Lou Barlow has many incarnations but there is nothing like his self-effacing acoustic sets where he plays like a functional Cat Power. His radiant songs are scaled down to their essence and mixed with surprising covers such as Ratt's Round and Round.2) The Wedding Present @ Troubadour, West Hollywood
I adore the current trend for performances of classic albums. The live interpretation of a favourite record is always a treat for longtime fans. As people possess auditory sequence memory, the brain starts to recall consecutive album tracks. It's as though your mental mixtape is being brought to life, augmented by accidental nuances that are the essence of live music.3) Delorean @ The Echo, LA
I went to the Echo on a mission. I was going to Madrid and wanted to find someone who was going to be in the city when I was there (Delorean are, of course, a Spanish band). I dragged Nicholas Humphrey, a London artist, to the show saying, "We are going to make some Spanish friends". Instead, we danced to their retro-futuristic electro-pop. I was invited to Barcelona and a tour of Iberia, but declined. The show was enough that I knew Spain was going to work out just fine.4) The Franks @ Spaceland, LA
Part of the reason so many great bands have emerged from southern California (such as Best Coast) are the free shows on Monday nights at LA's eastside venues. I had already planned on going when I got a text from my best friend, "Come now, first band is wow". I made it over in time to catch the Franks. They have a bit of the dance-rock magic of Franz Ferdinand but with a punkier edge. There is nothing like being blown away by a band you've never heard of.5) Belle and Sebastian @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery
While they say it never rains in southern California, it most definitely was raining before this outdoor show. I thought the rain would be the deal breaker, but it stopped in time for the screening of Trainspotting on the mausoleum wall. The band played surrounded by tombstones, funerary monuments and the mortuary statue of Johnny Ramone.6) Villagers @ Hotel Cafe
The only thing I knew about Villagers before I went to this show was that they were signed to Domino. Conor came out with his guitar and a few humble comments. Then he sang. I knew I was in the presence of greatness. His enchanted voice and plaintive lyrics remind me of both Neil Hannon and Bright Eyes.
7) Arcade Fire @ Online/NYC
They're one of the best live bands ever. When I saw them at the Reading festival, I climbed on to the stageside scaffolding and jumped around so wildly that I hit my head. I hadn't made up my mind about their latest album, The Suburbs, until I saw the live feed of the Madison Square Garden show. Not many bands can pull you through a computer screen into a transcendent performance, but they did.8) Pavement, Sonic Youth and No Age @ Hollywood Bowl
This is a legendary outdoor venue surrounded by pine trees and picnic tables. Everything was set: amazing seats, exquisite food and champers, but I was so exhausted all I wanted was weapons-grade coffee. No Age were killed, as it's quite difficult for a two-piece to fill such a huge space. By the time that Pavement came on, I knew this was going to turn into another one of the shows by a great band that I slept through: REM, the Smiths, Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. But as soon as they played Range Life I was resuscitated from the land of Nod.
9) Weezer @ The Mirage, Vegas
This is one of those times when all your good karma pulls together and makes something amazing happen – in this case, boarding a private jet and being flown to Vegas to see a band. That just doesn't happen, at least not to professors/indie fans. I'm not a Vegas person, but this was going to be insane fun. Weezer were playing a show at a small outdoor poolside club. Everyone was buzzing like they had found Willy Wonka's golden ticket. No one could believe they were seeing such a beloved band in such a diminutive setting. Weezer played hit after hit, including Hash Pipe, the song I played before I taught my first university course and I'm pretty sure there was an instrumental section that sounded an awful lot like Hot for Teacher. This show is one that will be on my best gigs ever list.10) Peter Hook and the Light @ Music Box, Hollywood
It's not often you get asked to sing Ceremony with a former member of Joy Division. I'm pretty sure this was to demonstrate that those who can't sing, teach anthropology. I declined because I don't believe in human torture. Instead, Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction sang Transmission, creating a mix of fury and poignancy. For people who identify with isolation, sharing a moment of belonging is what keeps us coming back to shows, albums, festivals, music. Old is often used as an unkind epithet, but it's a compliment when it precedes the word "friend".The indie professor will be back in 2011. Post any questions for her below or email theindieprofessor@gmail.com
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
 | Блог Подарки с улыбкой: 4 подарка технократу (анти-храп, прослушка, стерилизатор щеток, оценка чистоты воды). |
| rss2email.ru | отписаться: http://www.rss2email.ru/unsubscribe.asp?c=90855&u=756462&r=477547156 управление подпиской: http://www.rss2email.ru/manage.asp |
