the Horn Farm Paste Mob
Posted in music by Jeanie-Jew Rack-Jobber on Friday, March 31st, 2006 - 4:43 pm.
Loving The Information Chase so much, I decided to just download the whole site and see how that went. I love net labels who release everything for free.
Played the releases alphabetically by album title to make things somewhat scientific, but very quickly learned that 8BP’s sound had changed substantially around item #40 in the catalog. Early on everything sounds formless: ambient, or else too simple to dance to and WAY too simple to listen to. Then suddenly they began attracting guests with maximalist tendencies. You can make a hell of a lot of noise with just a Game Boy sound chip; whether most games of that era actually did, I don’t remember, but the staticky percussion rings a bell. My favorites:
GOTO 80 - Contech Entirely brilliant except for the so-so Aphex Twin tribute on track 1. “Comsten” and “Llamawarning” stick angry Elmo vocals to drill breakbeats, in the former case adding Jazz From Hell-type runs of notes on top. The other two tracks sound like Matthew Dear writing video-game music, but that’s only easy to say, not to do.
RANDOM - Happy Ending After All Moment to moment, Random sounds more like videogame music than most of his cohorts, but with all the development and dynamics of pop music (which, to be fair, some videogame themes have, especially the longer pieces that play uninterrupted over credits).
AMOR ANTIQUITA - Metallic Sonatas If you ignore the first two songs (which are undistinctive, though not actually much different), these could be sketches for Postal Service songs, especially “Lost Something”.
I also liked “Overdrive! Easter Egg Mode” by RushJet1 and– the one good part of the label’s temporary fascination with 80s covers– Minusbaby’s version of “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby”.
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Posted in mp3 by Jeanie-Jew Rack-Jobber on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 - 12:03 pm.
The Monroes - “What Do All The People Know?” (mp3)
As far as I know, the only people that heard this song upon its original release were a few people that would grow up to curate “hits of the 80s!” collections ten years later. Being on a Rhino compilation is a perfectly respectable afterlife, though.
I can’t tell whether the writer meant to layer on inversions quite so heavily– does the ‘pretend’ in “Is this just another game that you and I pretend to play?” mean “we aren’t even really playing mindgames with each other; we’re just too accustomed to the trappings of drama to stop” or is it just reflexive space-filling? Considering they couldn’t be bothered to write more than one verse…
Anyway, absent a decent lyric, what lets the catchy melody maintain its interest for a whole song? The inapposite new wave touches! Only in 1982 do you get uninspired power-pop bands securing their place in history with a keyboard bkk-bkk-bkk’ing along in ska rhythm on the bridge.
[Available, among other places, on Living in Oblivion, Volume 3.]
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Posted in mp3 by Jeanie-Jew Rack-Jobber on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 - 1:26 pm.
The Shamen - “Ebeneezer Goode” (mp3)
Just grabbed this off the shelf, mostly untouched since I got it in 1992. The interview with Terrence McKenna is about as dopey as I thought it was back then, but everything else sounds much better; at the time I liked dancing but didn’t trust music made exclusively for it.
This song apparently caused a scandal in the UK with its thinly-coded drug references even though, hey, they do warn people not to overdo it. My attempts back then to guess at the controversy MTV obliquely referred to were thwarted by not knowing British slang* and by the video’s decision to represent Mr. Goode as a creepy-looking caped guy running around London.
[*] “Eezer Goode” = “E’s are good” = “Ecstasy is good”.
[From Boss Drum.]
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Posted in clippings by Parker Mercy on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 - 11:13 pm.
If de Grate Froggi half made froggi to be solitarie well den de Grate Froggi wood half made froggis SILENT ah say. But god half beshtowed us wif speeche an spellin an frenz an each udder (to Mirander ah sed dis) an sed Mirander “Sillie Froggi ah KNO you doan belief in dat Grate Froggi stuff” an sed ah, Yesh, an praps ole aythist Froggi mush hang his hed, but Froggi mithologie ah complex an mush simplifye foah de sakes of such ash Mirander wot doan half degree in Frog-loare, an all froggis ah brot up from bean li’ul tadpoal to be gratefull, tho to wot oah whoom we do not kno.
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Posted in clippings by Parker Mercy on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 - 11:07 pm.
Ounce, dice, trice, quartz, quince, sago, serpent, oxygen, nitrogen, denim.
Instant, distant, tryst, catalyst, quest, sycamore, sophomore, oculist, novelist, dentist.
Archery, butchery, treachery, taproom, tomb, sermon, cinnamon, apron, nunnery, density.
Acreage, brokerage, cribbage, carthage, cage, sink, sentiment, ointment, nutmeg, doom.
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Posted in music by Jeanie-Jew Rack-Jobber on Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 - 6:16 pm.
Free mp3 EP, though you can give 8 Bit Peoples some money for a CD if you want. I waver between thinking the songs all sound familiar because there are only so many things you can do composing electronic pop on a Game Boy, and thinking they sound familiar because the EP’s only 16 minutes long and I’ve been listening to it all day.
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Posted in finder by Dr. Portia Capsela on Friday, March 17th, 2006 - 12:18 pm.
Lala just posted a note saying exactly what I wished for yesterday:
We’d like to encourage those members that do have their Cover Art to ship it with their CDs. Keeping in mind, however, that Cover Art and/or Liner Notes can increase the amount of postage needed to ship your envelope. Typically, any Cover Art composed of 4 pages or less should be covered by the .63 cents postage that la la supplies. If your Cover Art is larger than this, we suggest you add .24 cents postage to cover the extra weight of your shipment. (here)
Go them! I guess “beta” means “beta”.
They also seem to want to fix the problems that arise from recommending records to people based on what they’re getting rid of. We’ll see how that works out.
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Posted in music by Jeanie-Jew Rack-Jobber on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 - 5:12 pm.
The front cover suggests alternately Jesus hanging on the cross, Daniel LaRusso about to perform a crane-kick, and someone raising his arms to be patted down by police. Even so, it’s a brilliantly haunting photo. In fact, what it calls to mind on deeper reflection is the Hanged Man: The shadows crawling on Miller’s suit jacket seem ready to pull him down, but he stares straight ahead unperturbed; it is less significant that he’s trapped in a small space (as we see from his hands, braced on walls just out of frame) than that he is the master of what space he has. I don’t hear any of that in the music; I’m just saying.
The authenticity question confuses me, if only because the strangeness of hearing about Zion in reggae songs has never worn off for me. If the accusation is that Matisyahu is a novelty act or a cultural appropriator, he’s not in the mold of Eminem, who basically said to white kids with impaired cross-race identification ability, “You’ve always wanted to be down, and now you can be! All you have to do is imagine you’re me instead of imagining you’re Method Man.” Matisyahu might be selling reggae records to Hasidim, or Judaism to Rastas, but THAT didn’t get him into Rolling Stone.
So on the one hand, not a bad record. I hear dub holding down the music more than it does in Bob Marley, which I appreciate, and (authenticity alert!) Miller’s loose grip on his Jamaican accent adds some expressiveness as he switches registers, intentionally or not. On the other hand, I’d like my musical needs met without fundamentalist religion. Rolling Stone’s article presumably focused on the sexism of Orthodox Judaism because it’s an easy hook for a writer, not because Matisyahu Miller’s sole concern in life is avoiding girl cooties; still, there he is, refusing to be present when women sing.
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Posted in finder by Dr. Portia Capsela on Thursday, March 16th, 2006 - 6:33 am.
I rarely get excited about internet music startups based on the description, but as soon as I heard about lala.com, I wanted to try it. People post lists of CDs they have to trade and lala.com matches them up; receiving a disc costs $1.50, which is not much more than you’d pay in postage if you did this on your own, and Lala sends you Netflix-style prepaid envelopes. It’s in beta right now and nominally invite-only, but you can sign up here without having to prove you’re special or anything.
On my Mac, the interface hangs in Safari, but works fine in Firefox. (I think I’ve been typing that sentence a lot lately.) It’s very easy to use so far. Only two problems:
1. Their database doesn’t know that (e.g.) “Grifters” and “The Grifters” are the same band. I assume that will change, but for now it may mean losing potential customers who don’t realize it.
2. The shipping guidelines include “No liner notes.” The site explains that this is because they might increase your package’s weight beyond its prepaid postage, but that problem could be solved by saying “no booklets over 8 pages”, or (better) “remove the booklet’s front cover, and include only that and the back-tray card.”
The back-tray card is essentially a fixed weight, and not including it means the recipient won’t have a spine label if they put their new disc in a jewel case. AND it generally has the most useful portion of the liner notes’ information. While not everyone cares, I would bet enough people will to matter.
I’m excited anyway.
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Posted in food by Pr/Heel 3 on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006 - 2:11 pm.
SALMON:
2 C water
1 C dry white wine
4 slices fresh ginger, scraped with a knife [why?]
1 Tbsp black peppercorns
1 bay leaf
3-4 lbs salmon fillet(s) [we used much less]
SAUCE:
1/2 C sour cream
1/4 C mayonnaise
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1.5 Tbsp grated fresh ginger
1 tsp grated orange zest [we used blood orange]
2 Tbsp orange juice [ditto]
1.5 Tbsp green peppercorns [we used capers]
1/2 tsp sugar
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar
While the fish cooks, whisk together all the ingredients for the sauce and let sit to mix flavors. Serve part A with part B. We were unsure whether poaching required that the liquid definitely cover the fish entirely, or definitely NOT cover it entirely, or what. Since we had only half the suggested fish, it was quite submerged; it ended up excellently moist but not all that strongly flavored by wine/ginger/pepper. If the heat vaporizes some of the flavors out of the liquid, would having some fish exposed directly to the steam have made it stronger?
The sauce was strong enough that both M and I took a minute to decide whether we liked it, but we did. The sugar seemed completely unnecessary, even with tart blood-orange juice substituted for the regular stuff. I might have gone without the capers too, though I think M liked them (whereas I happily ate the baked-to-softness black peppercorns and she skipped those).
Notwithstanding the sugar and the decision not to halve the rest of the recipe for half the fish (which we should have), this recipe goes on the List.
The recipe we worked from, here, was awfully picky. For one example, the peppercorns are supposed to be “bruised”; for another, it specifies that after being mixed the sauce should stand “for 20 minutes to let the flavors develop”. I’m sure this is a good idea, but prescribing that the sauce stand for exactly as long as the fish cooks seems gratuitously troublesome. How about 15 minutes instead? And how crucial is it that the liquid cool for exactly 5 minutes after boiling? Who knows? The preciousness of some instructions gave us a boy/wolf problem with others.