WOEBOT

For a while back there I was obsessed with Timbaland's output. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a really useful article on him in The Wire which was the twin to his excellent piece on Premier. In itself it was a handy bit of cultural transgression. From that I learned about the more obscure stuff here, the Total, Playa and more recherche Ginuwine tracks. All of these pictured are masterpieces.

In recent years however, Timbaland has outstayed his welcome. A little bit of me died when I saw him with that Nelly Furtado bird, also on hearing the latest awful Bjork record. I'm only glad that nothing resulted in his mooted collaboration with the utterly dreadful MIA. My obsessive interest tailed off after the epoch-defining "Get UR Freak On" in 2001, and was only briefly revived with Missy's deliriously wonderful "Work It" the following year. After that, nada.

Still he's an important part of Hip-Hop and there's a similarity to what was achieved with Cold Chillin'. Timbaland's stuff was glitzy, yet retained a thoroughly unconventional edge. There's a generosity to his thing that extended as far as troubling with record sleeves. Missy and Aaliyah are not just musicians, they're stars whose images can fill a twelve-inch frame. So many of the American "Urban" records I've picked up in the last five years, you couldn't begin to compile their sleeves, and that reflects the fact that in posterity those records will be remembered as mercilessly functional club bangers.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:53 PM | Permalink

Surely this was the most disastrous experiment? Ancient Termites does work as a record though, and I've always been tempted to pick up the DJ Faust LP.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:53 PM | Permalink

I don't have nearly the affection for this stuff that I do for earlier Hip-Hop. Somehow it seemed like all the juice has been sucked out of it. Even the Madlib stuff is a little wanky.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:53 PM | Permalink

My ambivalence about Hip-Hop's mutations is tempered by things like Rammellzee's work and the earlier Non-Hop records. Also it's interesting that someone like Kool Keith, one of Rakim's seven MCs, a pillar of Hip-Hop, should make something as perverse as the Dr. Octagon record. Another surprise is the Material record which is one of the best things Laswell has ever done.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:52 PM | Permalink

As far as I'm concerned, beyond those key Wu LPs these would have to be the best Wu bits and pieces. Kodwo hipped me to both the Sunz of Man twelve inch and the Killah Priest which he described as "Gnostic Hip-Hop". That's a record I picked up in NYC when I visited as blogging eminence about 4 years ago- back in the day, sighs!

The Mary J Blige/Method Man is quite a healthy antidote to Wu Tang's lack of estrogen. However the hilarious N Tyce twelve inch, dealing with her cheating behind her boyfriend's back, (which pre-dates all the famous Wu material but is still blessed with the RZA's signature sound) is also sexually complicated in an interesting way.

The Ghost Dog CD, an import which differs from the inferior standard film soundtrack is another must-have. The RZA instrumentals, which are the highlight of the movie, are reproduced here in all their glory.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:52 PM | Permalink

Well there's no disputing that!

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:52 PM | Permalink

The record which kindled my interest here is "EFIL 4 ZAGGIN". At the time I completely missed out on N.W.A. My brother had "Straight Out of Compton", but it didn't really appeal to me. Just the other day I heard it for the first time and it completely blew me away. This is an utterly seductive, brutally compelling sound which Dre achieves. In fact it transpires it's widely viewed as his production masterpiece. "The Chronic" I did have, but that's nothing on this. By that stage the G-funk sound, put crudely an update on George Clinton's synth funk, is utterly cliched. To a fan of Hardcore-era Jungle it's the gigantic, pulverising breakbeats which are so remarkable.

What people object to with "EFIL 4 ZAGGIN" however is its lyrical content, and particularly the misogyny. When Ice Cube left, probably as a reaction to his assumed worthiness, the remaining crew became as plain nasty as they could. Among the topics touched upon are gang-banging a fourteen-year old Vicar's daughter and murdering a prostitute in a drive-by. There are moments when the women appear to get their own back, a poor shmuck phones his "bitch" from jail telling her to come and collect him, she answers thinking it's another of her boyfriends then hangs up, he rather pathetically pretending to the prisoners waiting behind him in the queue to abrogate her, hiding the fact that the line is dead. But mainly this a war of the sexes with one very cruel winner.

What marks a lot of the great Mid-Period Hip-Hop on the other hand is an even-handedness when it comes to women. There are moments of nastiness, for instance Gang Starr's "Ex Girl to Next Girl", which I've always thought exceptionally callous, though perhaps tempered by Guru's alleged homosexuality. But for instance Main Source's "Looking at the front door" is a painful, even tender account of how the rapper is made to feel stupid by his girlfriend, Pharcyde's "Passin' Me By" deals with unrequited love, and even Double XX Posse's majestic "Not Going To Be Able To Do It" involves a discourse with women, even if it details a breakdown in communications. It aint all Strippers and Hoes! Women are beautiful, worshipped and though sex is often illicit it's still fun, for instance on Ed O.G's "Bug A Boo" or Finesse and Smooth's "Strictly for the Ladies". On one level it all seems hopelessly charming (I can't pretend otherwise, ha!) but, really, nice.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:51 PM | Permalink

Great label. The Jamose, the Chill Rob and the N Tyce record (see Wu Extras) are all on the excellent Wild Pitch compilation "Hi-Phat Diet" which you must definitely pick up if you come across it.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:51 PM | Permalink

At the time, rushing rave-kid, I was heavily into the Ragga/Hip-Hop crossover, which was one of the more extreme manifestations of Negritude in the USA. There were all sorts of traces: Shabba Ranks with KRS One, the (via Eric Clapton) sampling of EPMD's "Strictly Business", Busta Rhymes's patois digressions (can't imagine him doing this these days), Phife Dawg's rhymes on A Tribe Called Quest's "Buggin Out", Chubb Rock's "Just the Two of Us" etc etc. However, as with the slightly spotty Mad Lion tunes, often it was an idea which worked better on paper. These three records though (the Fu-Schnicken's even graced with a Steely and Cleevie remix) are excellent.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:50 PM | Permalink

This totally classic cruncher featured both Pete Rock and DJ Premier on production. Never rated Pete Rock actually.

"Flavour of the Month" is the tune here.

Lovely, cheerful stuff, though sometimes the beats are so different from the dominant production style they're almost unlike Hip-Hop.

A great LP from start to finish. Like many of these records it benefits from the first wave of sample rediscovery. Samples tended to get less and less hooky as the once seemingly inexhaustible reserves of golden breaks became over-used and depleted.

Essential for "Regiments of the Steel".

The debut LP is remarkable for its catholic samples. Hall and Oates?!? Steely Dan?!? (...and to their cost) The Turtles?!? But even when they decided to fall into the slipstream and celebrate the funk they did it differently, hiring the JBs to play on this LP, to (surprisingly) wonderful effect.

Not a great record, but a fascinating, early intervention by this legend of Undie.

A great, consistently amazing LP.

Not brilliant but beyond Diamond's debut one of the best records to come from the DITC family.

Puerto-Rican Frankie. "Boriquas on da set" my fave here, but a consistently wicked set with an amazing guest-list.

Wicked Premier classic. Shades of the backpack.

The UK lot on Warner brothers on the Public Enemy tip.

Awesome twelve off the "Return of the Boom Bap" comeback LP. Another Primo joint. Can I say joint?

Always wanted a copy of this. Sometimes the rapping is a bit over-wrought. The best of this stuff strikes a balance between the rap and the instrumental. Undie's mistake was often to be too verbose.

Thanks to Oliver Craner to hipping me to this crisp, spectral, desperate LP. This was an augur of things to come, Mobb Deep were so young when they did this they practically belonged to a different generation.

Classic.

Love Premier's "Unbelievable" from this and the Mtume-sampling "Juicy" is great too.

Along with the later "My World", classic OC.

Organised Confusion definitely a cult thing.

Brilliant Busta Rhymes track. Love the piano on this.

A bit of a one-hit-wonder from the former Ultramagnetic MC, but what a hit.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:49 PM | Permalink

These three records pre-date what I'm calling the Mid-Period of Hip-Hop and are all from 1987-88. If you were trying to define this period it would be from 1990 until the Wu-Tang's "Protect Ya Neck". So for instance (and tellingly if you look at the LP's visual iconography) Eric B and Rakim's "Let The Rhythm Hit Em" (1990) is in, but all the Wu solo LPs (by merit of their pointedly inaccessible content are out). If there is one clear visual signifier it's in a thrillingly up-front, though somehow exclusive, idea of black-ness. The cover for Black Moon's "Enta Da Stage", with its "so-black-it's-saturated-red" sleeve is paradigmatic.

The pugilistic Black Pride evinced in Public Enemy's music was taken to the next level; Black Pride was a given, naturally! Where once record sleeves tried to dodge the race issue now they celebrated difference. Sonically this went hand in hand with a shift (pioneered initially by Marley Marl) by a shift from using neither electronic instrumentation nor rock hooks, but a delight in funk samples. Concomitant with that was a celebration of Black History.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Cold Chillin' records was pretty much synonymous with Marley Marl's Juice Crew a collective of artists who are represented by the discs above but most quintessentially by Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie and Roxanne Shante. Very often, especially on the earlier records, production was handled by Marley Marl- though later on (like for instance on the Kool G Rap & DJ Polo record) he seems to take a back-seat.

Cold Chillin' had a five year deal with Warner Brother Records, a label which throughout the seventies and eighties seemed to effortlessly combine solid business with the highest artistic values (see Reprise etc). The problem with Hip-Hop is that, after what I keep referring to as its "Golden" Mid-Period, it split into two halves. On the one hand there is the Platinum-fixated R'n'B-tinged, Gangster-inflected vein comfortably-ensconced within the tawdry values of the mainstream record industry and on the other a militantly bohemian Undie scene dedicated to preserving the values of "Real" Hip-Hop. Something like the Cold Chillin' label represented the absolute best of both worlds. This was a label whose output was neither in bed with the man nor drippily marginal, at once glamorous and refreshingly of-the-streets.

Of the Kane LPs, the first "Long Live the Kane" is clearly the greatest, but the other two are also very strong. Biz Markie's debut is utterly indispensable. Both the Marley Marl production Samplers are excellent, though the second is extremely rare on vinyl. Roxanne Shante's "Have A Nice Day" is a personal favorite. I've had Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's "Streets of New York" for fifteen years now, but thanks to Luke Heronbone for encouraging me to check out the LP, which is excellent.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:48 PM | Permalink

Eric B and Rakim's first three LPs were really remarkable. At the time I picked up the Coldcut mix of "Paid In Full" which was a balearic staple and is credited with kick-starting all manner of things, as well as the second and third LPs. You could take a purist approach to that remix, but have you heard the original recently? It's a work of genius but does have the feeling of an idea sketched, but not fully fleshed-out. A lot of the "Paid In Full" LP is turned over to Eric B, and perhaps "Eric B is On the Cut" and "Extended Play" are a little dry. There's a pervasive influence of Marley Marl's crashing breaks across the disc, but on the bass-heavy flow of "As The Rhyme Goes On" and innovative JB-sampling "I Know You Got Soul" the future and Eric's signature style really emerge. Rakim's rhyme for "Paid in Full" is one of the only raps I can perform from start to finish- a party trick waiting for a suitable audience.

"Follow The Leader" is probably the more consistent disc. I first heard the title track having broken out of school, booming out of a sound-system at the legendary Acid-House club Heaven under the arches at Charing Cross in 1988. It was mind-glowingly cosmic, maybe the first Hip-Hop track which really embraced the palate of modern audio production (rather than working against it and striving for rawer sonix). The third LP is excellent too. I used to dig "Mahogany" but have recently rediscovered "In The Ghetto". Apparently Eric B is worth a fortune these days. He owns a chain of restaurants and was invited to the White House (in Chocolate City) to meet George Bush.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:48 PM | Permalink

Among the first people in Britain to latch on to Hip-Hop were the UK's musical Avant-Garde. Mark Stewart and Bristol's Wild Bunch were caning mixtapes of the New York Underground just as Malcom McClaren was fixating on the early Rap. Adrian Sherwood deserves kudos for going right to the source and hiring Skip McDonald, Doug Wimbush and Keith Leblanc, the Sugarhill Records rhythm section.

The Akabu record is fascinating for a number of reasons. It's on Tommy Boy Records, is a joint On-U/Tommy Boy production (rekindling the NY/London relationship that Y records and 99 records enjoyed) and it also features not only improv refugee musician Steve Beresford, but also Steinski on the edit.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:48 PM | Permalink

Rammellzee on vinyl is so impossible to come by. This is my original copy of "Beat Bop" which I found in a car boot sale in Camden for 50 pence.

I remember round at Stuart Argabright's appartment him showing me the Death Comet Crew "At The Marble Bar" record (which truly is as much Stuart's record as Ramm's) and him practically cradling it. It really is a lovely sleeve design, a real visual relic of that era. Jim Clarke was particularly lucky and picked up a copy a few years back for five pounds. I paid a bit more for mine. You can get the tracks off this on the excellent "This Is Rip Hop" reissue CD which I reviewed for The Wire.

The "Death Command/Lecture" disc might even be the rarest of the lot. Kodwo mentions it in the back of "More Brilliant than the Sun" and I despaired of ever finding it. Damn, what a weird fucked up record! Rammellzee MCs over the longest. most obtuse, skronky "rhythm track" (if you can call it that) in history. There's a lot of those slightly antiquated synth stabs, but nevertheless it's very cool. I don't often make lazy comparisons, but Scott Walker does Rap just about nails it.

Rammellzee is a hell of an interesting character. The reason he's up first in this monstrous Hip-Hop-a-thon (which I'm now going to add notes to, finding just pictures wholly unsatisfying) is that he not only lays the aesthetic foundation for the Golden Age of Hip-Hop, but also for its mirror image, the legion of Non-Hop interventions.

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:47 PM | Permalink

I'm opening a new Category for WOEBOT which is going to be called WOEBOT_lite. Within it i'll simply be posting collections of images of record sleeves with extremely scant commentary.

I've thought about this long and hard. When it comes to putting together what I used to call "Specials", the real effort, and the area I'm most interested in, comes in cherry-picking the "right" records. I try to accurately build up a picture of what was going on with an artist, a label or a scene. When it comes to the writing more often than not I rely (rather cheaply) on the inter-web. Sure there's always a healthy element of stuff I've read in books and magazines and what I've experienced first-hand, but I often feel that this written element is unnecessary window-dressing.

There's also the question of what place writing has these days in the appreciation of music. At least with posting images I feel I'm contributing non-detrimentally to the promotion of music in a way that benefits the ecology of the net. Have you ever searched on Google images for a rare record sleeve? Very often you'll find WOEBOT images at the very top of the rankings. Compare the format of this blog to the mp3 blog, and really, in the most mercenary sense, what exactly am I offering up usefully beyond pictures?

Moreover what I try to convey here at WOEBOT is (pretentiously/portentously) the value of music as an object and not, I think, for trivial reasons. There's the dimension of the fetishisation of the vinyl format; failing to grasp the importance of the object has been key to the collapse of the music business. Intertwined with this is a celebration of the power of the record cover, of the art, design, fashion and style which goes goes hand in hand with important music. Finally because the images I'll be posting will exclusively be from records in my own collection, records I've paid good money for, that should convey some sense of their libidinal worth. It's possible that by simply posting images I'll be getting closer to what I'm trying to achieve than rambling on incessantly. Though I'll be doing that as well.....

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:11 PM | Permalink

They've done a very brave thing and opened a retail outlet when most shops are shutting down. But what exactly does the new Rough Trade look like?

Turn west off Brick Lane on a Saturday and you're now greeted by this. Once upon a time there used to be one or two people at most lurking here at the weekend.

The shop front.

Presumably this is designed as a notional substitute for the legendary wall of 7"s of the Notting Hill Shop? Laptops ahoy.

From the front of the shop looking backward. Notice the security guard!

From the back of the shop.

The counter, note the de rigeur geek chic (beards and heavy glasses) of the clerks.

What do I think about it? Erm, I like it, it's very impressive. However it's slightly like a mini-HMV and is a little bit anti-septic. Am I allowed to say that?

Posted by WOEBOT at 04:35 PM | Permalink

A piece I've written for Stylus.

Posted by WOEBOT at 08:47 PM | Permalink

In the past I've gone through phases of not liking Neil Young. His voice was always the sticking point. Was it irritating? But then if you remove the voice in your mind, perhaps the backing music isn't so interesting. One has to recognise that in that era of exceptionally polished LA music his whine stands out. So I've come to accept it, love it even.

In my opinion these are the records you want, though "Zuma", "Comes A Time" and "American Stars and Bars" aren't too bad either. The way his career goes is that his debut "Neil Young" didn't quite hit the mark but "Everybody knows this is nowhere", a stone classic, became a heavy-rotation LP on the underground AM radio back in the days when they would play whole albums.

Neil, who had mixed feelings about bands after his experience with famed nut-job Steven Stills in Buffalo Springfield really took to Crazy Horse.

(The first Crazy Horse LP actually might be the best thing here and it's a shame they never topped it. Crazy Horse on the face of look like a normal band, but inspect closer and "woah"- what's old Jack Nitzsche, Phil Spector's engineer doing in there? I always remember Steve Albini's review for Slint's "Spiderland" in the Melody Maker, where he gushingly compared it to "Marquee Moon" and this LP. That sent me scuttling off down the Music and Video Exchange.)

"After The Goldrush" is amazing all the way through. To return to his voice, as an instrument it must be up there with the other great strange voices, like Diamanda Gallas's. He's unable to hold a note without quavering ridiculously, which brings to mind a dear friend of mine who has a condition called Benign Essential Tremor, he shakes gently all the time. The thing about it is that he never occupies one space, and like that visual mismatch when you're looking through binoculars, the effect is quite cosmic, as though he simultaneously inhabits a parallel universe. I always wonder about poor Neil's disabled boy, whether there's some pre-echo of that in his way of singing. Interestingly La Monte Young's thing with singing is that vibrato is strictly a no-no, sacrilege. That's what they heard in Pandit Pran Nath's voice, no quaver at all. Purity.

Young came to hate this LP, but even though it was hugely popular I think it's superb. Highlights have to be "Heart of Gold" and "Old Man". "A man needs a maid" is a rum one though, not exactly politically-correct is it? When Jack Nitzsche went on the rampage in the press, bitterly complaining (quite unfairly in truth) about how badly Neil treated him, he always cussed this song, saying listening to Young play it on stage made him want to vomit. This must date me, but I remember at one of the earliest concerts I went to, perhaps in 1988, an old guy at the concert wearing a Harvest Concert Tour T-shirt. It was really old and worn out. 1988 is now nearly twenty years ago.

After the massive success of "Harvest" Neil famously remarked that he had been in the middle of the road and it had bored him, and now he was headed towards the ditch. These three records are known nowadays as "The Ditch Trilogy". Robert Christgau, who has an amazing, very reliable users guide to Neil Young online likes "Time Fades Away". It is now the only Neil Young LP not to have been reissued on CD in spite of a massive online petition for it to be made available. No diss intended but I'm not so sure it's so good.

This, though is excellent.

The final record in the "Ditch Trilogy", I was really surprised to hear "Revolution Blues", Young's song about Manson (who like many Los Angeles music scensters: Alex Chilton, Dennis Wilson, Terry Melcher had known Charlie), among the tracks John Lydon played on Capital FM. But on reflection it makes perfect sense, the content is suitably nihilistic obviously but he and Rotten are also both unique vocal stylists. That was pretty much what Joe Boyd says about Lydon too.

(sighs) This is right up there with "After The Goldrush" I think. To return to the erstwhile Pistol, Neil's lyrics on the title track have always baffled me. "The king is dead is but he's not forgotten, this is the story of Johnny Rotten," The story of Sid Vicious surely?

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:15 PM | Permalink

After spending a couple of weeks camping in the South of France this Summer I took a trip back on my own through Switzerland. I spent one day wandering Sergius Golowin-style across the Alps above Gstaad, clambering through forests, surveying the peaks and bathing in glacial meltwater, and one day in Geneva buying records. My key find was a store called Stigmate. The stuff I picked up there was amongst the least obscure available behind the counter. Really you've never seen a selection like it in a shop, serious Vinyl Vulture territory. Swiss Progressive Jazz in numbered, minimally-designed boxes with hand-printed booklets .....ahoy.

Which I've put together because they're both Peter Baumann productions. The Tietchens, as I've described his neat 4 minute electronic ditties before, is like the best sino-Grime instrumentals. Conrad Shnitzler's "Con" quite stunning and very under-rated. Why isn't this in all the Kraut Top-tens? People are seriously missing out on this thoroughly listenable, spacious, harmonic electronica.

God I didn't think I'd ever see these on vinyl in a shop! I mean the PFM you can get easily enough on eBay, the Banco is just a reissue and the Orme is slightly annoyingly the English version (with translation by Peter Hammill), but just SO stoked to own copies of these Italian Symphonic Rock classics.

Talking of Peter Hammill, this was a total steal.

Focus Group-tastic sleeve don't you think? A couple of Dollars.

Really nice to have an original of this, which is one of the UK folk bombs. This LP "qua LP" was the one Jimmy Page caned.

Thought I paid a bit much for this but got home and saw it on the wall at Reckless for $100. Nice score Mr. Woebot! In fact this should serve as my entry to the "that voice" canon as prescribed. Julie Driscoll must be the UK's own counterpart to Grace Slick, that she ended up in improv as Julie Tippetts, well it's very appropriate to Simon's dictats. Why? Because the fundamental quotient to "that voice" is, and there's no denying it, is "whiteness", and Improv, well it's this improbable thing, a distillation of Jazz that not only erases Blackness but actually inverts it. There's even something curiously, if not white, then perhaps de-racinated about the Black Improv players.

Yay. It's only a re-issue of this French Prog masterpiece (I have the CD of this too, like the Italian pieces) but super-nice nonetheless.

Ha! So cool to get an original copy of this in Switzerland. "Switched on Switzerland", I ask you! Actually I absolutely adore Switzerland, think I have a slightly Swiss temperament, would do practically anything to move out there. It just aint gonna happen, sighs. This record is hilarious.

Have fallen in love with Analord records, so I got this. What's cool about Analord is how Aphex abandons diachronic musical history for the synchronic. Looking into synths I've come to appreciate the difference between computer sonic synthesis, the "Rompler" style of synthesiser (essentially manipulating samples to create sound) and the older "Analogue" synthesisers. With Analogue synths one is actively shaping the sonic envelope generated by oscillators. It's the difference between carving a statue out of stone and I dunno, ordering a sculpture off a website. There's always something very physical and tactile, very "of-human-dimension" about Analogue electronic music that I find appealing too.

Recently I've tended to find Electronic music made on computers flat, I've even developed a (slightly flawed) theory that after about 2001 when music became made on Computers, rather than old synths and MPCs, that the drama ebbed out of it. It's not just the mechanical means of issuing sound of the computer are inferior, but also owing to the musically antithetical environment of making sounds in the Keyboard/Mouse/Screen environment. I think, and it's not a wholly original point-of-view, that people tend to make very un-dynamic, unphysical music on computers.

The MPC for instance, it's not a word-processor it's this big chunky hand-triggered drum-machine. As for its interface, you're not layering tracks on top of one other as is the dominant visual paradigm in Pro Tools, Logic or Ableton Live, you're building music out of stabs. By definition the music is built on gaps of silence as much as of noise (and don't you know half music is silence!) Computer music to my ears these days, of whatever kind, sounds very much like a endless, unpunctuated, obsessively-tweaked, spelling-corrected trickle.

Sam and I were talking about this, and I asked him to describe how he used Max/DSP, which he's done very eloquently and fascinatingly. I'll be honest and say I'm still not convinced by it as a process but was intrigued to find out from him that quite a lot of the vanguard experimental musicians have abandoned computers. Sam feels that he's persisting where it's unfashionable to do so, and for that he certainly deserves our respect.

This is the odd record out. I got this in Antibes, not Geneva. Another record I keep meaning to write about. The idea is that it's the brother disc to Eno's "Another Green Word". it's Percy Jones fretless bass that defines both of them. Also interesting to view Eno's stuff in the seventies as a strain of Jazz-Funk or Fusion. That's probably a deeply unfashionable view but I think it's bang on. Didn't he do a more explicitly Jazz-Funk record in the nineties entitled "The Drop"? Sad to hear of Joe Zawinul's death.

Posted by WOEBOT at 11:10 PM | Permalink

The latest piece by my colleague k-punk in FACT magazine takes in Social Theorist Thorstein Veblen's concept of "conspicuous consumption". Mark comes up with a stylish twist on the concept to describe the studied indifference London's inattentive club-goers, what he calls "conspicuous contempt". Putting down the piece I couldn't help but mull over (in my traditionally paranoid manner) the ramifications of Veblen's theory. What for instance, from a rather arid Marxist perspective, is a blog like this but an opportunity for the blogger to parade his acquisitions? Even sharity blogs have their intent undermined by the fact that the music being given away is but a copy of the original arcane vaulted vinyl.

Putting together these shots of Phillips Prospective 21eme siecle sleeves that I've scooped since I wrote my first piece on The Silver Records just over four years ago, it seemed really appropriate to reflect on Veblen's ideas. If there are any records which embody the quality of jewels it has to be these. That's ironic in a couple of ways, firstly because when originally released they were put out at bargain prices (rather like the Nonesuch records), furthermore their musical content is extremely obtuse, even punishing. A jewel on the other hand is 'cross-the-board' enchanting, even a child will marvel at a jewel.

Reading Veblen I was surprised to find that his tone isn't particularly self-righteous or pious, and that it's nuanced. I suppose though Marx is a good deal more sophisticated than he's often interpreted, for instance evincing a respect for religion that few people credit. Rather than being a stiffly critical view of Nouveau Riche or Upper-Middle class's lavish "narcissistic" acquistion of goods amassed purely for the effect of demonstrating wealth with the intention of improving their public perception, Veblen's actually quite matter-of-fact, descriptive even.

I thought this passage was particularly interesting: He becomes a connoisseur in creditable viands of various degrees of merit, in manly beverages and trinkets, in seemly apparel and architecture, in weapons, games, dancers, and the narcotics. This cultivation of the aesthetic faculty requires time and application, and the demands made upon the gentleman in this direction therefore tend to change his life of leisure into a more or less arduous application to the business of learning how to live a life of ostensible leisure in a becoming way.

There is a sense that something like the concrete explorations of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales de RTF could be such an acquired taste of the sophisticate, of the "decadent bourgeoisie". Indeed wasn't this the regime's critique of the first wave of fascinating explorations in the Russian Avant-Garde (Malevich, Vertov and Tatlin)? That it was at odds with the success of the project.

I remember visiting East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall, wandering around a super-market in astonishment. There was one type of bread available. One type of milk. Sugar. Tinned meat. There seemed to be no room whatsoever for the extraneous, or variety of any kind. In one sense this was laudable, but really what tedium! Capitalism on the other hand works by endlessly multiplying and subdividing the products available. So it is with music, it actually enables stylistic diversity, producing yet more stranger fruit. Rather than shutting it down, by prescribing a model (ie Stalin's Socialist Realism) music seems to flourish within it. Perhaps it's unsurprising how the current financial cataclysm for the Industry seems to have brought musical innovation to its knees. I can't think of a single good thing that has come out of the dalliance of Music with Marxist politics. Certainly not The Redskins but not really even the communal claptrap of the early Amon Duul communes.

On the Malec the treat for me was "Dahovi", "pour bande magnetique" though the rest of the tunes are certainly impressive "contemporary" music. The "concert collectif" is a total gem, incredibly ruff and wild, though sadly my copy (found like the Henry in Montpelier last year) is in terrible nick. "Variations pour une porte et un soupir" is under-rated and diverting though perhaps a victim of its aesthetic strictures.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:46 PM | Permalink

Ha! Look what I spotted on an episode of Tom and Jerry...

Posted by WOEBOT at 08:55 AM | Permalink

One of the reasons you can tell I'm such an interesting guy is that, you know, I'm well into world music and all that. I've got like a mad crazy exploded perspective. It's probably all that Psilocybin I necked. However, I get the distinct feeling that when I'm showing off all my exotic third world LPs that people aren't suitably impressed. I mean, you know, those snazzy pieces on Etoile de Dakar, Edu Lobo and Sunny Ade, they don't barf themselves. Baby the stakes is high! It's not all, well you know.....

These are all Oum Kalsoum records on the Sono Cairo label which I've picked up over the years. As the wiki piece reiterates, Kalsoum was big for Jah Wobble and Led Zeppelin. The LPs* are better than the "best of" CD available at Amazon (full of tiny 3 minute tracks). She could often spin "Enta Omry" out over an hour! So the records are good cos the tracks are longer, and the crowd goes mental too. Funny thing is though there's not a word of English on these covers so these might all be the work of second division Egyptian divas, and I wouldn't know! Just lost in my own little word innit.

*The top one which I found just the other week in a flea market in Antibes in case you were curious.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:13 PM | Permalink

God bless the internet! From this thread started by Luke a link to this absolutely fucking fantastic five hour mix of what we blandly call Mid-period Hip-Hop.

I don't care what the haters say about Flex, he's funny and his style is fresh and raw. I couldn't conceive of a better sonic argument for the joys of this period of music. And he doesn't get too lost in Wu or Public Enemy either. Like he *knows* what really stands the test of time. What is it about PE, one minute I love them, the next I think they sound weak?

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:11 PM | Permalink