Mark Samuelson is a genius. Have a happy thanksgiving y’all.
- Mark Samuelson – Turkey
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Happy Thanksgiving
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
Buried Alive Within Your Own Walls – The Lazy Ballad of 151 Wooster
Wednesday, June 17th, 2009
Just dug this up. Its rough, and unfinished, for reasons I hope I make clear here.
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Buried Alive Within Your Own Walls – The Lazy Ballad of 151 Wooster
There’s a bit of new york history that almost went by unnoticed. Last year, I was employed in a journalistic capacity to help cover an odd event, unique to New York, and evocative of the city’s rich history during a time where history seemed to be nothing but a brand, an afterthought…the stuff that the new condo dwellers would struggle to connect and the old denizens would struggle not to forget.
It started with a rich kid tearing down one wall of his apartment in SoHo. He could do that, his father owned the building. I’m not even sure he paid rent. He had heard a few rumours around his building that behind the wall of his kitchen and bathroom, there was a massive graffiti mural that had been simply boarded over when the building went highrise and the rents went new school.
Going on these rumors, Mike started tearing away at the wall above his kitchen cupboards. Sure enough and true to the rumors, he found writings… graffiti of a style not seen since the sweaty days of Futura, David Byrne, Basquiat and all his Mudd Club friends. The wall he uncovered was not quite a “mural”, but a massive party piece put together by the drunk beneficiaries of the historic New York downtown scene circa 79-81. Futura, Rammelzee, Fab Five Freddy, and possibly Basquiat had all scrawled their marks on the wall. A cultural yearbook to be buried within SoHo’s decaying temple walls.
After tearing down the entire wall to his kitchen and part of his bathroom, even Mike, who had to google “Fab Five Freddy” to figure out who he was, could tell he had stumbled onto something major.
Now, once the news of this discovery reached the world, there was a significant feeding frenzy. The Guggenheim wanted it, which Mike’s father and his cohorts were happy to oblige, but not until they had marketed it a bit to their own advantage. 151 Wooster was on its way to becoming one of the renovated lofts griped about in the Village Voice and snatched up by transplant professionals for absurd prices per square foot. The timing was perfect. With this cultural artifiact living in the very walls they sought to sell, Mike’s father and his team made sure the spectacle was leveraged.
This is the website of the loft itself. Check the press section for an article about the wall.
I went to said spectacle, or I viewed it, I should say. There were DJs, and all kinds of lesser art piggybacking on The Wall’s success. Mike’s young artist friends came out of the woodwork to grab the saddlehorn and ride. This girl named Miz Metro pitched a documentary on the piece but wouldn’t get out from in front of the camera when they went to film it. Mike threw on a sport coat, a liquor sponsor was found, and there was a party. Free scotch and wine for all the sycophants who came to relive the glory days of a city that will not, can not ever exist again.
I was there, when they beat it to death. I was hoping to write something about it. I don’t know, get my own piece of the action. I wanted to write a massive article, scoping from the good old days of New York to the decidedly less cool present. But I was uninspired. I got some pictures, but because of all the buzzing around and all the hands in the pie, it felt slutty to me. Used up. Now, I realize, in micro, that this must be the experience New York has been going through ever since it rose from the granite. Everyone jumping on, claiming they were there when it used to be “fun” in this city. But they weren’t there. The only ones who were there signed their name on THAT WALL. They got fucked up at a party, signed their names in the yearbook and forgot about it. Futura came by and looked at it, but he didn’t remember much, he was too busy creating something brilliant now to worry about something random he shat out then. The divide has never been more clear. The brilliant and grizzled lifetime artist, and the questionably talented marketing major hogging his camera time. Maybe it would have been better to leave that wall up. The people who created it certainly wouldn’t have been any worse off, and the only result of its uncovering was another feast over the carrion of an age that, for me, must have been the greatest god damn time and place ever to be alive and creating. We already had it, lets stop trying to dig it up, lets stop trying to explain it, and lets get our asses ready for the next one.
A big part of the discussion was whether or not Basquiat wrote on this wall. The above piece may be his contribution. If it is from him, the value of the wall increases considerably.
This is the wall that was behind the bathroom
The Fab 5 contribution. Note the Nesto tag, and the places where they marked the walls for the Dishwasher connections in the kitchen.
That’s three different generations of Futura tags right there, including an abbreviated one he did.
Fab 5 Freddy put up this bomber, above it you can see a tag by Koor.
Another shot of the Bathroom Wall, behind plastic.
This is Mike, whose father owned the building, Mike was the one who cracked the wall.
This is MizMetro, who I referenced earlier. This picture was shot by someone else.
The Metropop Period
Friday, May 15th, 2009
Alright, due to nothing other than sheer laziness, I haven’t posted any of my most recent metropop reviews. So, I went back to check some of them out, and in another lazy move I just decided to say fuck it and post them all here from the first to the most recent. I think there is a sort of narrative arc that threads throughout all of thse, but I couldn’t be arsed to find it. I’m also posting these here so I can pretend that 20 years from now, they (myself and Ogre) will be saying “I always liked him as a writer, but for my money, he peaked with the Metropop stuff.”
Radiohead – In Rainbows
This album is brilliant. Let’s put aside the shouts and hollers that “the Radiohead model is changing the music business” and just realize that this record is concise (Hail to the Thief was a little long for me), beautifully layered, simply directed, and balanced, in that there is enough wanky Thom Yorke glitches and quality ‘rocking’ to make everyone happy. I can’t assess it any further now; I’m too excited to experience this one in every possible state of mind: Staring at my eyelids with my headphones on, riding in a stolen car, sitting solemnly under my home speakers, playing it on sticky jukeboxes, and finally…hopefully…with my hands in the air at a show. See you there.
Beach House – Devotion
Yes, this is supposed to be all dreamy and lo-fi and quaint, but in the words of my sister (she’s 17 and really likes Cute is What We Aim For), “it’s kind of boring”. Devotion, the second album from indie darlings Beach House is full of great melodies, slow reverb, and distant tambourine slaps, which would be really cool if I was being seduced by Natalie Portman in a Wes Anderson flick…but I’m not. Instead I’m in my apartment, its raining, and I am illegally downloading The Darjeeling Limited.
Good Shoes – Think Before You Speak
Art Brut, Maximo Park, Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party…Good Shoes? Maybe. “Think Before You Speak” comes damn close to being in the same league as the above list of Brits (yes, I know Franz Ferdinand is Scottish…jeez). Jumpy guitars, severe accents, and short songs are an extremely good look here, but their best bits come during these tiny little breakdowns where they stop the singing and let their obviously accomplished guitar players jump each others wake. Good Shoes present their sound well, but with so many bands on their small island making similar stuff, I’m really eager to see what these guys are willing to do in the future to set themselves apart. Crikey.
SONS AND DAUGHTERS – THIS GIFT
This is one of those bands I have trouble classifying because I never listened to this type of shit when my brain was soft. I’m sure if I listened to more PJ Harvey and less Norwegian black metal I would have more reference points. Anyway, this is good music. It’s a little dark, flashing a female Joy Division at random points…like if Ian Curtis’ wife was writing the songs and not him. Yet again it has high points, with tons of tambourines, angular rockabilly riffs, “na-na-na-na” chants, and all kinds of mutated Americana-via-Glasgow. This is the best music to come out of a barn in Scotland that I have heard all month.
Cadence Weapon – Afterparty Babies
I actually just got into a fight with my co-worker about this exact kind of music. Co-worker feels that Cadence Weapon and his contemporaries bastardize the pure genre of hip hop by using distinctly “non hip-hop” elements (dance rhythms, other genres, experimental sounds) as part of their identity. I don’t agree, I feel that these kids use key elements of hip hop as well as other parallel sounds to make something larger and more inventive…thus making it bigger than typical genre constraints. Co-worker and I are no longer speaking. Afterparty Babies is a fun listen. The beats – shiny chunks of tech inspired dance music are brilliant, and Rollie Pemberton uses his nerdy, off kilter bro-flow to say things like, “I hang with the idiot like I was Ian Curtis”. Blasphemy never sounded so good.
CAN – Anthology
Well I was going to write a really snarky review here that name dropped James Murphy (the guitarist from Disincarnate and the hairy DFA guy), !!!, James Joyce, Gong, and your mom, but then this song, “Halleluwah” from CAN’s Tago Mago came on and I just gave up. I am now lost in the rhythmic absurdity that makes this band so damn great. This 2 disc set is a perfect collection of their music (for an absolute beginner like myself) that had me smacking my forehead repeatedly. I now know that CAN is responsible for all that time I’ve spent listening to Boredoms, Frank Zappa, Talking Heads, Battles, and LCD Soundsystem …there I go name-dropping again…shit.
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – 45:33 + Bonus tracks
For my money, the best part about LCD Soundsystem’s music is that moment when it breaks past the point of “song” and heads into “freakout”. Where ol’ James Murphy pushes a song’s groove to its absolute peak and then sets it free, letting its own momentum carry to the end. The songs on this EP don’t really do that. The 45 minute Nike track is amazing and I am so glad they inserted track breaks, but the rest of the B-sides on this didn’t really grab me. I mean, I don’t really see the point of a “North American Scum” without the genius vocal, but its on here anyway. This is great for rabid fans/track stars, but if you really want an LCD EP, get the one with the John Cale version of “All my Friends”. Shiny.
Time Machine – Life Is Expensive
Man, life is expensive. The emotional and financial costs of being a human these days are insane, and I don’t even own a car. Instead of pissing and moaning about it though (my typical Sunday morning), L.A.’s Time Machine and their many guests (Maggie Horn, Cool Calm Pete, Greg Nice and more) put together a bright, disco-fried hip hop record that focuses on the positive, keeping it’s broke-ass listeners in the light with sunny day life-lesson verses and the kind of beats that should come with bottle openers and blunt wraps. “We don’t flinch no, we throw the punches.”
Pendulum - In Silico
A list of things this sounds like: Liam Howlett, Gravity Kills, that one song by Republica, Stabbing Westward, Primal Scream-lite, most of the Mortal Kombat Soundtrack (Napalm Death excluded), 3 am in a shady warehouse, some of the Hideaway Soundtrack (Jeff Goldblum excluded), MDFMK, The Crystal Method, and that one song that Henry Rollins did with Goldie on the Spawn Soundtrack. Now I am not saying that any of this stuff is bad per se, I’m just giving you the tools to help you make a decision as an informed consumer. Manifest destiny…or whatever.
POSTSCRIPT – HOLY SHIT THEY GO NUTS FOR THIS SHIT HUH?
Atmosphere – When Life Gives you Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold
First thing – WHERE ARE THE ANT BEATS??? They aren’t there! I was initially furious, because Ant’s beats and Slug’s words go together like cocaine and conversation. Instead, Slug sketches his painful characters over mostly-live instrumentation, which ends up being a good move. Breaking their formula (Tom Waits and Tunde Adebimpe show up to help) gives Atmosphere a chance to grow and progress….which is a good thing…even after all my pissing and moaning (the call of a true Atmosphere fan).
Ellen Allien – SOOL
Minimal review for a minimal record: SOOL. Stare into blankness, let Ellen fill it up. Click. Clack. Quality crafted sounds equal SOOL (soul). Great weight in each beat, dread and beauty in every silence. I don’t speak German. Ellen whispers in your ear while she paints her blank space. Quietly thumping house music in the dark. Dead ravers everywhere. SOOL is big as space, small as Berlin.
Booka Shade – The Sun and the Neon Light
Damn, I didn’t even hear this album until it got to track 4. “Control Me” sounds like Front 242 and Fischerspooner high fiving while re-working every great New Order song ever made (holy hyperbole!). This album has it’s “meh” moments, but I believe that an album with an extremely strong single like “Control Me” cannot be ignored. The lush, dark electronics and Underworld-ly rhythms on The Sun & The Neon Light might warrant a few listens, but the album only gets more rewarding each time.
Morgan Geist – Double Night Time
With Double Night Time, Metro Area’s Morgan Geist wanted to go back. He wanted to create a singular world out of purely synthetic sounds; with the only human exception being Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan’s clean-water vocals on a few tracks. Mission accomplished. The album is a throwback world of popping drum machines, smooth synths, and blissful disco (blissco? Nah…) sentiment. Sure, sometimes it sounds like taking a nap in the Mac Store, but then at other times it sounds like a long (double) night on a rooftop with all of your friends. That’s when it counts.
Tittsworth – 12 Steps
This record didn’t grab me until I got all fucked up on my Polish neighbor’s boat and listened to the track called “Drunk as Fuck” featuring The Federation. My breakthrough came when one Federation-er (doesn’t matter which one, they should all be named “Jesus”) said, “Cut up the pussy like the movie Hostel”. It was a “WTF?” moment strong enough to make me stop giving a fuck about anything other than partying, Elvis glasses, and the strange allure of a huge, wiggling boo-tay. Tittsworth indeed.
Murs – Murs For president
Man, I’ve always dug Murs. From his Living Legends days, to the 9th wonder collaborations, he’s always been a reliable force in underground hip hop, a world that he helped build. Now, he’s out of his element, on a major, trying to push his sound to the (can’t believe I’m saying this) “mainstream” with a snoring appearance from Snoop and some Will.I.Am production. The whole thing sounds contrived and weird, and somehow, somehow not even an assist from DJ Quik can save Murs’ campaign. No votes here, I’ll be writing in “AMG”.
The Bug – London Zoo
London Zoo, the latest album from The Bug (Kevin Martin’s genre-destroying “dancehall” project) is a beast. True, it’s a little less reckless and noisy than his last effort, Pressure, but that was 5 years ago. The Bug we are hearing now is still noisy, still brutal, still reckless, still dancehall, only now with a kind of calculation behind the chaos…making it that much scarier. Martin’s emcees fall in as perfect mercenaries, giving voice and flow to his huge, paranoid riddims. Say it with me now…“SKENG”.
P.O.S. - Never Better
Lets retire the word “mashup”. Lets stomp it dead and keep our bootheels planted so it never gets up again. Never Better isn’t just a novel blend of Punk, Hardcore, and Hip Hop, it is something truly transformative, where the lines between the genres are blurred within an inch of their lives. The result is simultaneously confrontational and introspective, with P.O.S. rapping through his teeth over scattering drums, hardcore screams, blasts of distortion and what sounds like an Alan Parsons sample. May the infernal “mashup” rest in peace.
Thanks to Andrew, the editor who basically lets me do anything I want. More to come soon.
Have a great weekend.