Two amazing pieces of research

Writing for Scientific American, Jen Christiansen has solved the 35-year old mystery about the origins of the Joy Division "Unknown Pleasures" cover.  We know it depicts radio signals from a pulsar, and her story links to an interview with designer Peter Saville where he talks about the source for the image (an astronomy encyclopedia) and the mythology that has been built around the image.  Christiansen went even further and tracked down the source publication for the image and interviewed the then-Ph.D. student who actually made the plot. As you might have guessed, he had no idea that he'd inadvertently created the cover art for a legendary album.  Equal parts scientific and music history, this story goes far beyond a simple SciAm blog entry, it's one of the best pieces of music journalism you'll read this year.

-----------------------------------------------------

I'm hardly an audiophile, but I've always been fascinated by the differences in sound quality and tone between different formats (vinyl vs CD, CD vs mp3, etc.).  It's no surprise that I was all over this essay by Ryan Maguire, a Ph.D. candidate at the Virginia Center for Computer Music (hat tip to RA's news feed).  Using Suzanne Vega's "Tom's Diner" as source material, he experiments with the original and compressed files, but rather than focus on the sound quality of the mp3, he extracts the sounds that are discarded from the original during the compression process.  The detritus that is left behind consists of ghostly remnants that contain easily recognizable parts of the original song.  As he notes, you don't have to be an audiophile snob to hear the valuable sonic information that gets thrown away.  Most of Maguire's experiments are done with relatively low quality (128 kbps) files, because that's what the mp3's creators were using as their reference when they refined their algorithms.

The purpose of his work isn't to rail against the decline of listening standards.  Instead, he sees this work as a form of cultural criticism.  A sculptor who makes art out of garbage or recycled items might have similar motivations, creating their art in order to critique the wastefulness of modern western societies.  He even uses the "ghost recordings" as a basis for sound reconstruction, for example, by playing them back in a virtual "diner" and commenting on the new textures that emerge.  Alvin Lucier ("I Am Sitting In a Room") would be proud.

Popmatters -- The Greatest Hits from the Greatest Hits Albums

This article is a couple of weeks old, but I had to make note of it here because it's the most interesting idea for a list I've seen in forever.  Considering that 95% of entertainment-related media is made up of lists, it's rare to see a list that to my knowledge has never been done before, even in a vaguely related form. 

Honourable mention could have gone to Gordon Lightfoot for re-recording half of his greatest hits for "Gord's Gold".  The re-recorded versions are now by far the most well-known versions, although technically they don't qualify for the list because they weren't new songs.  Unless you count "I'm Not Sayin'/Ribbon of Darkness" and "For Lovin' Me/Did She Mention My Name" as new songs in their joined forms. 

I can't remember why Tupac sampling Bruce Hornsby and the Range wasn't a bigger deal ... or maybe it was?  Thugs belting out the chorus to an 80's MOR hit?  Did Puffy completely steal his thunder the year before with "I'll Be Missing You"?

It makes sense that Lenny Kravitz and Madonna would show up here because, as noted in the text, their music is best represented by their singles, even though they worked in album-dominated eras.   It's especially surprising in the case of Kravitz, who released his best known material in the 90's when the CD album was just about the only music format available. 

The list loses me at #2 and #3.  Neither song really ranks among the best of Tom Petty or Depeche Mode.  Janet's "Runaway" is a reasonable choice for #1, but I don't think it stands out from her other singles in the same way that "Lady" does for Kenny Rogers, or "Again" does for Lenny Kravitz.  I would have ranked those two at the top in some order, although you could make a good case for "Raise Your Glass" too.  #4 would have to be "Justify My Love" -- it's not Madonna's standout song (although up until the "Evita" era it basically defined her 90's sound and image) but it's a personal favourite.  

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 21

"Technological advances in producing the isolated mix have facilitated real time experiments", 104 minutes

It has been a while since the last mix I posted here.  Much like the last mix, I have been sitting on this one for a few months (since August) wondering what exactly to do with it.

At the time I had bought a bunch of discounted CD, decided to take tracks I'd barely heard from those discs, and use them as the basis of a mix.  It was not the first time I'd done this, or the first time I'd made a mix with the intent of revisiting some old music that I hadn't heard in a while.  It's difficult because inevitably you have to give airtime to tracks that don't have much of a place in the flow of the mix.

I was high on the individual tracks I chose for this mix but not on the journey you had to endure in order to hear them all.  This mix got shunted to the side, until now, when I finally decided to do the mastering for it.

It's better than I remembered.  Then again, it's been a while since I've heard most of these tracks.

Technological advances in producing the isolated mix have facilitated real time experiments by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud

The Aphex Twin Soundcloud filedump

In a recent interview for Grooves magazine, Aphex Twin answered 25 questions posed by 25 top DJ's and producers.  Some questions were thoughtful and introspective to the totally ridiculous ("Does it suck to be you?" ... thanks for playing, James Holden) but all were entertaining.  His answers were refreshingly honest, a rare glimpse behind the curtain into the mind of a notorious recluse, a master of deception, and an expert at using his notoriety to fuel his own myth.

But after reading the interview, it took me a while to realize that he hadn't revealed very much at all.  He'd managed to avoid any mention of exactly what he'd been doing for the past thirteen years and why he hadn't felt the need to release much music.   It's nice to know that he's still motivated and keeping busy with recording, but ... what does that mean precisely?

However, he repeatedly mentioned closing new chapters and moving onto new ones, and also dropped hints about listening and compiling which could possibly lead to putting out a lot of new stuff ...

Well, this week I've been making my way through more than one hundred "new" Aphex Twin tracks that he semi-anonymously uploaded to a Soundcloud account.  The news sent the internet into a frenzy.  We've been hearing rumours about dozens of albums of unreleased Aphex music for the past twenty years ... so why would they start appearing now?  At first, most people concluded that the tracks had to be fakes, albeit really high quality ones.  Except that they kept piling up and piling up and who would possibly invest this much time in trying to copy Aphex Twin's style?  New tracks were being uploaded in bunches, and people were finding it hard to stay up to date.  Eventually I found a 102-track download and stopped worrying about being a completist (the final total was 110 tracks).  On the day I'd finally finished listening to ten new albums worth of material, he uploaded another thirty tracks (and later that day another ten) and nobody has any idea when it might stop or even why he's doing it.  And again, why now?  Is this what closing a chapter means?

Arranged chronologically, the first hundred or so tracks tell a story ranging from the more rave-y side of the SAW I era to the late 90's drill n bass era.  You can hear him experimenting with tracks that are a lot like "Quoth" but not really like "Quoth", tracks that could have been on SAW I but not really because they're too rave-y, several tracks that sound like burbly acid house remixes of the stuff he actually released, sublime seven or eight minute tracks that he likely rejected because they were too long or not poppy enough or whatever, a couple of chill out numbers (but nothing that really would have fit onto SAW II ... which means there must be loads of unreleased isolationist ambient still lurking in his archives, right?), a couple of weird voice experiments, and plenty of other odds and sods, and nearly ALL of it is really fucking good and flows together well like one of the best box sets of unreleased rarities you'll ever hear, and did I mention that he's STILL putting this stuff out and nobody has any idea if there's any end to it in sight??

Low @ Barby Club (Jan. 26)

The opening act whose name I didn't catch performed a mesmerizing one man solo act of tortured country blues, which hit upon exactly the right formula for setting the mood for Low.  I heard a name like "Sam Taylor" which is unfortunately un-Googleable (as is "Low").  Make no mistake, this was a crowd of dedicated fans who came out in full force to see Low, packing the Barby fuller than I'd seen it in a long time. 

Much like their last visit in the fall of '08, Low went long.  Not 2.5 hours long like they had previously, but close to two hours, spanning two encores and some twenty songs spanning just about their entire career.  Low have reached the point in their career where you can pencil in each new album for a middling 6.5-7.0/10 from all the usual review sites, but they can still make an impact by playing these kinds of gigs to a healthy group of fans for as long as they want to.  Their most recent album, "The Invisible Way" was their most muscular effort since my personal favourite "The Great Destroyer", and anyone who dismisses Low as one trick ponies either live or in the studio hasn't been paying close enough attention.

Their set featured two songs from their debut that I'd been dying to hear live for ages, "Words" and "Lullaby", the latter being particularly rare in their live sets.  They also played "Things We Lost In the Fire"'s arguably most sublime moment, "Laser Beam", and several songs from "The Invisible Way" that simply slay live, most notably "On My Own".  But Low have reached a point where they have ten albums worth of material to pick from, and songs that they can conceivably play in just about any order. The mood is the star, not any particular song or past single that they may or may not get around to playing.  It never comes as a surprise, but Low delivered their signature sound and mood in spades. 

Pazz and Jop 2014

The results were published last week, and there was a surprise winner!  This is a true rarity for P&J in the internet era.  Every major print and online publication posts its list by mid-December, so by the time P&J counts the votes and publishes its list, dozens of competing polls and lists have already been dissected for weeks from every conceivable angle.  By that time, the Village Voice's list is often little more than a foregone conclusion, despite the care and thoroughness that goes into it (you still won't find a larger poll with a more varied electorate anywhere).  To counter this somewhat, the Voice has moved up the P&J publication date over the years, from early February to the first half of January, but they're still the latest arrivals to the end of year wrap up party.

The advantage with being the last to publish, however, is that they're the last to accept ballots -- often right until the last few days of the year.  I personally have always hated the idea of seeing "year end" lists published in November, or people starting to rank their top tens in July, because a year is a year, and I want to maximize my time spent with every release, particularly the ones that come out in the fall.  That leaves room for albums like D'Angelo's "Black Messiah" or last year's Beyonce album to capture some last minute crit-love before the year is over.  Equally surprising is how handily D'Angelo won, and the amazingly high number of points/vote that he received (12.3).  Only seven other P&J top ten finishers from 2010-2014 had a 12.0 or higher.

Statistics for the poll, as always, come from Glenn McDonald's indispensable database.

I had my highest ever centricity score this year, breaking into the top 40th percentile for the first time.  The only other year that comes close was 2009, when I also voted for two albums that finished in the top five of the poll.  Otherwise it was my usual stars and scrubs ballot.  My third album that cracked the top 20, Swans' "To Be Kind", had 49 other voters.  My other seven albums combined had just 33 other voters.

This was the first year I didn't submit a singles ballot.  I absolutely hate being one of those people who doesn't vote for singles but my long standing rule is not to vote for token album tracks from my albums list, and I didn't get into enough proper singles this year to the point where I could put together a list I could really stand behind.  The vote distribution on singles was arguably the most divided ever in the poll, so I think there were many voters who were of a similar mindset.  There weren't any brilliant and inescapable singles that a large number of people could rally behind, which likely resulted in an apathetic attitude toward singles in general.  

Glenn tabulated a stat called Vitality this year, where albums were re-weighted by the percentage of points that came from new voters.  For years many people have been complaining that voter tastes are too narrow and that an injection of new blood is needed not only to keep things fresh, but to increase the visibility of under-recognized genres.  That sentiment reached a fever pitch around 2009, when the P&J top ten was dominated by Pitchfork-approved indie rock.  So Glenn tabulated everything according to Vitality, and the top ten is dominated by ... slightly more obscure indie rock!  Listen, I'm all for adding as many new voters as possible, I'm not elitist in any way about preserving the sanctity of the ballot like the BBWAA is with their baseball Hall of Fame ballots.  But I never understood this strange belief that adding new voters would automatically increase diversity.  I also never thought the answer was to "add metal music critics" or "add country music critics" to get those genres represented, because they'll load up their ballots with nearly nothing other than metal or country.  Adding new voter blocs isn't the same as adding diversity.  "Breadth" measures this somewhat -- if someone consistently votes for a variety of genres, they're more likely to be discovering new artists all the time and less likely to be voting for the same artists year after year.  

On that note, I usually complain about the poor state of techno and electronic music in the poll, but this year I'm not sure I can.  The strong showing by genre-spanning artists like FKA Twigs and Caribou shows that many of the old boundaries between genres are becoming blurred.  Todd Terje and Aphex Twin may be canonical and therefore boring according to some, but they both made the top 40.  Do we have the EDM boom to thank for this?

An evening with Mark Gardener @ Barby Club

You have to admire Mark Gardener for the effort he put into making this evening happen.  His originally planned visit, a supporting slot on a bill with Dean Wareham, was cancelled over the summer due to Operation Protective Edge.  Most of the time, musicians' schedules don't allow for cancelled gigs to get rebooked.  But Gardener seemed determined to deliver more than just your ordinary gig.  This was more like the Mark Gardener Experience, a unique and intimate evening with a man who will shortly be playing arenas and headlining sold-out festivals.  This seated concert was to be his last show before the long-awaited Ride reunion. 

Living on the isolated fringes of Europe and Asia has its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to international touring artists.  Most of them don't bother coming through Tel Aviv -- the market for their music isn't large compared to the major European cities, and high travel costs make for an expensive one-off show that often isn't worth it financially.  That's the disadvantage.  The advantage is that when people do come, many of them go out of their way to experience the country, travel around meeting and talking to people, and do something special at the actual gig.  The evening started out with a nearly hour long on-stage sit-down interview with Israeli author and musician Yaheli Sobol (lead singer of the popular band Monica Sex).  Sobol focused mainly on the sound and structure  of the first two albums, with a musician's eye for detail in speaking about how advances in studio technology have changed how they approach the studio.  Somehow he avoided asking the more obvious questions, which for me, first and foremost would have been "in your opinion, why has shoegaze had such amazing staying power and even gained in popularity and influence over the years when every other microgenre of 90's British music proved to be a passing fad?" 

Many artists feel compelled to comment on the political situation these days, which is in one sense unfortunate (stick to music, please) but also interesting because you get a better feel of who they are as a human being.  Gardener spoke about the boycott calls but felt it wasn't right because even though he disagreed with the direction of the country, he disagreed with the direction of a lot of countries.  Taking this to its logical conclusion, there would be no place left to play, and fortunately that's the attitude that most musicians have.  He was taken to a Heartbeat Foundation gig in Jerusalem the night before and even invited one of the singers, a young woman who went by the name of "Russia" I believe, to be his spur of the moment opening act.  He'd heard about Heartbeat after Neil Young donated money to them following his cancelled gig this past summer, and was so moved by what they were doing that he decided to donate money himself after spending an evening with them.  Heartbeat is a perfect example of how Western journalists and musicians want to see Israel -- young Arab and Jewish musicians working together to write songs about "the occupation" -- rather than how it really is, but what can you do.  As a slight aside, here is my first and last comment on the boycott situation -- there's no justifiable reason for it and it's a problem only when the artists want it to be a problem.  Macy Gray turned the matter over to her fans and it descended into a shouting match.  Gray would swoop in and declare "oh it's so complicated!" and it makes artists feel like heroic soldiers leading the charge for hope and change when all they're doing is traveling to a perfectly safe Westernized country to play some music.  On the other hand, when Mark E. Smith got harassed by fans four years ago over The Fall's upcoming concert, his response was roughly "fuck all of you, we're playing" and that was the end of it.

Gardener told a funny story about Ride getting signed by Creation.  They had a support slot for five nights on the Soup Dragons' UK tour.  Alan McGee followed them from show to show and would sit with them afterwards.  There was one problem -- his Glaswegian accent was so thick, Gardener couldn't understand what he was saying.  He figured it's OK though, at least one of the others would understand him and they'd piece it all together later.  So he asked the others later on and they all said "we didn't understand a word he said either ... but I think he wants to sign our band?!?"

As for Gardener's set, it was transcendent.  He struck a good half and half balance between Ride songs and his solo work, the latter of which was dominated by his soon to be released collaboration with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins.  Playing with just an acoustic guitar and a loop effects pedal, he would loop his riffs and backing vocals to create a swirling, shimmering miasma of sound, which is exactly what you'd want a Gardener/Guthrie collaboration to sound like.  You would expect "Vapour Trail" and "Twisterella" to translate well to an acoustic performance, based on their original arrangements.  But Gardener particularly shined with some of his more ambitious adaptations, such as "In a Different Place" and "Polar Bear".  His voice is in top form too -- stronger and more refined than in his Ride days. 

The whole night felt like a VIP-only performance from an artist poised to make a big comeback in the next couple of years.  Those of you were tickets to the Ride reunion shows are in for a treat. 

String Cheese Incident, Spearhead live at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, December 28, 2002 (12 years later)

This is another retrospective review, and it's appropriate for kicking off the new year because it was part of a series of New Year's Eve shows from a band that's well known for them.  Unlike my review of Spiritualized twenty years on, I attended this show.  It was almost exactly twelve years ago.

I wrote down my thoughts about this show after it happened.  They're in an old notebook that I have to find one of these days.  I haven't seen that review or heard the recording since the day of the show.

Spearhead were the opening act and that was a welcome surprise that I didn't know about when I went along with the idea to get tickets to this show.  I think they were announced as the opening act only a few days before the show.  I remember thinking to myself that no matter what happens, I will get to see a really good band that I'd been curious about seeing for some time.

About a year ago I bought The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprosy's first and only proper album, "Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury".  It was a bargain bin purchase and it's an album that barely remembered today.  It couldn't have been more out of place than it was -- a hip-hop inflected album by a California crew but with no connection to G-funk or gangsta rap or any of other West Coast trends of the time.  Instead, it combined the Bomb Squad's kitchen sink mix of beats and chaos, the swagger of industrial music, and Michael Franti's politically charged lyrics.   Sonically, it still sounds fresh because it's a blueprint that was never duplicated.  Nobody even tried to duplicate it, including Franti.  He decided to grab his guitar and reach out to the freaky people of the world instead.

Around the time of this gig, I saw a Much Music interview with Franti (can't recall the interviewer) and they were casually wandering the streets of downtown Toronto.  This was not altogether unusual.  Unlike MTV and many other journalistic outlets, MM was never about shutting its guests in a sterile studio, they always tried to integrate themselves into their urban surroundings by letting the crowds get up close and personal to their ground floor studio, staging events in the parking lot by the side door, and so on.  Franti wasn't the only artist to be interviewed outside Much Music building, but as far as escaping the confinement of the studio goes,  to absorb the energy of the streets, I'm sure he wouldn't have had it any other way.

Anyway, they were walking the streets and he was recognized by a passerby.  I can't even recall it they were male or female, let's say it was a male.  What happened next was remarkable.  They had a short conversation and the fan became a bit flustered in trying to communicate his feelings.  You're an inspiration, keep doing what you're doing, don't change, and just when the fan seemed to lose track of he wanted to articulate, Franti grabbed hold of him and embraced him like one would embrace a close friend or family member that was about to board a plane for a long journey, not to return for many months.  Except this was a total stranger from the street.  The hug made everything OK. Celebrities have to find ways to detach from their fans all the time, there's a fine line between saying you're a big fan and getting too nosy, outstaying your welcome, and making the encounter uncomfortable for everyone involved.  This fan wasn't like that.  He wanted to briefly say his piece and let Franti continue on.  Franti could see that.  He made the encounter special by embracing him and making the fan feel like a true friend.  After a few brief parting words, he continued down the street and went on with the interview.

This kind of connection between an artist and their fans is incredibly rare.  Of course there are plenty of friendly musicians who go out of their way to interact with their fans.  How many of them hug random people on the street?  Franti connects with people not only because he's a talented musician with something to say, but because he's nice.  He's so nice that he can connect with people without even trying.  Cultivating a stage persona and connecting with fans is hard work for most people, and it should be.  For Franti it's not work.  He can connect to people without even trying.  Obviously part of it has to do with the types of fans he attracts -- jam band, outdoor festival types who are open and welcoming people to begin with.  But Franti has perfected the art of being nice better than just about anybody.

Even after all these years, Spearhead's set from that night in '02 immediately brought a smile of familiarity to my face.  The music was infectious and fun from the first song to the last.  At the time I was wondering whether SCI could top their set, and listening to these recordings now, I'm wondering the same thing all over again.

The litmus test for SCI rears its head right away.  The first song, "Johnny Cash", features the chorus "Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash, don't smoke hash".  Even without hearing the song, if that seems like a funny and amusing chorus to you, then you'll probably like the Cheese.  But if you find it an adolescent stab at humour that came out of an afternoon of reefer madness that you're glad you weren't a part of, then you probably won't.  What does that line even mean?  Are they telling Johnny Cash to stay away from hash, or are they informing us that he doesn't smoke it?  (It's the latter, which is clearer from the rest of the lyrics)

The first set is breezy and energetic, highlighted by a cracking version of "Under African Skies" and a deliciously groovy "Born on the Wrong Planet" featuring Michael Franti and other members of Spearhead.  Seeing this live, I couldn't believe how quickly the 70+ minute set flew by, and was even disappointed for the break in momentum. Hearing it today, my reactions are largely the same.  

The second set is a different story.  It's slower pace and more jammy style is designed to cultivate a different sort of mood, and for me that mood was exhaustion.  I was about ready to crash, partly a comedown from the energy of the first set, and partly a physiological comedown, probably from having a few too many drinks earlier in the day.  During the encore, there's a short delay as the band tries to figure out what they're going to play.  Fifteen minutes of jamming later, the song abruptly ends and it's time to go home. The gig is over, and it's as if they were punching a clock, got in the two and a half hours that their fans expect, and called it a night.  The second set is inoffensive enough as a relaxing listen during my daily commute, but live I was straining to enjoy it.  I wanted to get the most out of the SCI experience, but by the end I was well past ready for it to finally end.  

Live recordings of these shows, plus hundreds of others by both band, are readily available online. My copies, courtesy of the Live Music Archive:

https://archive.org/details/sci2002-12-28.mbho603.shnf
https://archive.org/details/spr2002-12-28.shnf

Some of 2014's best music writing that I feel bad for not having read until now

Flavourwire's Jillian Mapes compiled a list of the year's best music writing and there are plenty of gems there.  It's filled with sites I check at least semi-regularly and writers whose work I normally enjoy, and yet somehow I missed nearly all of these.

Lauren Nostro's profile of Nicki Minaj is a long-awaited peak behind the curtain that finally makes some headway in separating her public and private personas.  The career retrospective of KISS by Chuck Klosterman seems like a must read that I'll save for a rainy day.  Chris Molanphy's history of Billboard's R&B charts is by far the best analysis in the wake of the (mostly negative) publicity surrounding Billboard's controversial changes in the criteria that are used to compile the chart (along with other specialty charts).  He also explained this widely circulated but almost universally misconstrued taste map, which not only makes sense to me no, but might also show the way forward to reclaiming the audience-specific data that the old charts used to represent (it'll make more sense if you read the article).

In the separate best of Flavourwire list, there's a Run The Jewels profile by Matthew Ismael Ruiz that I really need to read, and a Tom Hawking piece about the politics in A Silver Mt. Zion's music that would have been unthinkable when they started out fifteen years ago, or even five years ago.  The slow transformation in critical opinion over ASMZ and GYBE from polemical weirdos to broadcasters of simple but effective messages of hope has been fascinating to behold.  

Iggy Azalea vs Azealia Banks

This feud has been covered in detail by Jeff Chang.  The jist is that Banks is accusing Azalea of cultural appropriation (or "cultural smudging") and getting extremely emotional about, and Azalea is telling her to get lost in response.  My reading is that most people don't have much sympathy for Azalea because of the way she seems to take a perverse delight in adding fuel to the fire, but at the same time, Banks has received a lot of criticism for claiming black "ownership" over hip-hop.  Once art is out there, anyone can borrow it and be influenced by it, they say, although I can't help but wonder if these people were saying the same things when Katy Perry dressed up as a geisha.

Q-Tip chimed in with (naturally) a calm and reasoned approach to the whole controversy, saying that hip-hop can be fun but to never lose sight of the socio-political roots of the genre.  The reactions of Banks and Q-Tip may be as genuine as they come, but they would sound ludicrous if they were talking about any other genre.  Jazz and opera fans get ridiculed for assuming a self-righteous attitude about their music and setting up knowledge barriers for entry.

This stance is connected to hip-hop more than it is to race.  Electro and EDM have crossed over into pop music, and they have their roots in black music as well.  Nobody talks about cultural appropriation of those genres.  Techno also started as a black socio-political movement -- disillusioned black kids re-imagining a decaying Detroit as a futuristic metropolis -- and despite its long history and rapid spread around the globe, anyone who tried to claim that you couldn't really understand it unless you came from Detroit would get laughed at.  Techno always did a stellar job at incorporating its influences across racial divides though -- Kraftwerk and George Clinton stuck in an elevator and all that -- which helps to explain its global popularity.