So this blog has been defunct for a while hey. To all my faithful readers who still come by here once in a while I have new site up at: www.therosterguide.com. It is a big gig guide for Melbourne. Although most of you losers live interstate/overseas I will be doing a few gig reviews over there so you can still get some of that patented lo-bag shit talking on occasion. So come on over, have a click around, leave a comment, bump up my traffic.
If I find myself with the time Icarus Fit will probably be back but not for the foreseeable future.
Maybe that whole “death of the album” thing that everyone keeps talking about is finally going ahead, or Pitchfork have started doing song reviews again, but bands seem to be releasing a lot of one offs, EPs, big news remixes and pre-album singles at the moment. If you are Hype Machine savvy at all you will probably have these already but here are my opinions anyway:
DOOM: “Gazillion Ear (Thom Yorke Remix)
I still love Four Tet’s remixes of Mad Villain from way back when. Doom’s whacked vox sounded great over something a little less conventional hip-hop. And Born Into This is pretty cool but how many album does he have rapping over cartoon samples and a beat too low in the mix? So anyway, I was looking forward to this. And it starts out pretty good with some typically clicky, textural percussion and spooky synths blending into clipped Yorke “ooohs”. But old mate seems to forget that this song is long for MF at four minutes and that the original completely switches the beat around a couple of times to keep our attention. Instead, the envelopes just fade up the whole time and then DOOM runs out of words.
doom – gazzillion ear (thom yorke remix)
HEALTH: “Die Slow”
Despite having a faint reek of late-90’s rocktronica, of vintage Placebo or something, this second attempt at writing “Glitter Pills” still slays. Putting their thin, decayed vox and noise over Led Zep beats and addictive synths, they then go about writing an actual song. Even my fucking girlfriend likes this.
HEALTH -die slow
Major Lazer (featuring Santigold and Mr Lexx): “Hold The Line “
I find Diplo and Mad Decent and all that stuff pretty hit and mix, but this is one of the good ones. Its Diplo and Switch’s new project and the track features Santigold or whatever she has to call herself now and some dude Mr. Lexx. On top of all the star power, its fast, the drums are big, and there are lots of crazy noises going on. You’d think the whole ‘phone song’ thing was played as far back as M.I.A.’s lowest low, “URAQT”, but other than that…
Remember when you loved The Horrors for like five minutes in 2006/2007? An awesome lead single and an even better video to accompany it was promising but the highly fashionable, stylised and derivative sound didn’t really carry Strange House’s running time. In fact it was hard to get through more than three or so of their frenetic organs + feedback + bleary screaming jams at a time. It seemed the band could only be destined for a short history of diminishing returns, self parody and Mighty Boosh cameos.
But new album Primary Colours, due in May, is their bid for credibility, and sees the band finding their feet, discovering space and filtering their influences smartly rather than throwing them all in the blender, leaving the lid off and flicking the switch. The band enlisted Portishead dude Geoff Barrow for production duties and some of 3’s starkness and brittle shards of sound find their way onto the album along with new-romantic synths, big 80’s basslines and a few more girl group/wall of sound/Velvet Underground signifiers.
They no longer sound like “The Munsters” theme song, their hooks are better and this time it feels like you are left wanting more, not ready to turn it off after ten minutes. They still look like a bunch of natty pin-up boys who are way too into The Corpse Bride though. Anyway, here is seven minute closer and album highlight “Sea Within a Sea”.
The video for the track is also streaming over on their website for people who have faster internet than us chumps in Australia.
I have been pretty slow on the whole Twitter uptake. Seems to get mentioned in pretty much every university class I go to, every newspaper I read, Jobe Watson even got asked about his twittering habits on “AFL Game Day” this Sunday. But of the few times I’ve gone to have a look at someone’s Twitter I have been pretty disappointed. Expecting some seriously stoned nonsense from Flying Lotus, all I got were two updates, one of which being “about to eat”. His other at least led me to Steve Buscemi’s twitter which is not bad but not as good/insane/like stepping into the world of Barton Fink as you might expect. Carles from Hipster Runoff’s is ok I guess too.
So I was failing to see what the fuss is all about but then of course I was forgetting Lil Jon. I mean, his songs don’t get on Nova anymore (am forced to listen to this station at my chump job. Oh the sad decline of naughties pop) and those Dave Chapelle skits are from a million years ago. But turns out dude is still hilarious, writes almost entirely in CAPS and is touring Germany or something. Also: “HOW COME I JUS GOT A NEW PHONE NUMBER AND ITS FUCKIN MILEY CIRUS OLD NUMBER!!! STOP CALLIN ME LIL DAMN GIRLS!!!! TRUE STORY!! NO BS!!”.
To my peoples: I have just started contributing to sweet new music site My Vision TV. It is based in Brisbane and has heaps of vids on top of the requisite news and reviews. Here is my review of Lotus Plaza’s new album. I am hell of legit now. Well sort of, here is a legalish mp3 from the album that they aren’t really going to host over there:
Top image from Boner Party via Wits Or Dagger.
