Weird Stuff
- Details
- Category: Music for Mondays
- Published on Monday, 08 April 2013 21:33
- Written by Chris
In post-Soviet Russia, weird music listens to you...No, weird stuff is not the name of a band. Today's M4M celebrates a few of the crazy, fun, disturbing stuff I've run into over the past 20 years.
When I was a high school geek-wad, I was into They Might Be Giants, natch, to a degree that probably wasn't healthy. (Before high school...well, you don't want to know. Let's just say the only mentionable one was R.E.M.) But John & John weren't the only thing I listened to. Besides playing my parents' Queen and Led Zeppelin vinyls, I also logged many hours with 2NU. Fronted by 'Nardo Polo', 2NU's one and only album (that I'm aware of) is a delightfully insane, formulaic, 80s spoken word collection. The formula: Nardo talks, encounters a woman with an animal name, followed by a deep-voiced singer kind of rap-talking. This is why drugs are bad, kids. As a potentially interesting note, almost all of my favorite lines to quote come from this album. "She points to a sign that says 'Welcome to our S A, Mr. Polo'. So I say to her, hey Mona, there's no 'p' in your spa. And she says 'Yeah, and we'd like to keep it that way." "She was extremely short for her weight. I'd say, 7 feet." "I think my imagination is starting to run wild. She said 'I have the same problem with my cat.'"
2NU - This Is Ponderous
and Count 'Em Up Queek
You might recall that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. It was in all the papers. This set the stage for many wonderful things for humanity, culminating in my study-abroad semester in 1997. I spent a summer term in a distant Moscow suburb called Zelenograd, which I am certain produced a disproportionate number of super models, male and female, judging by how ridiculously tall and hot the teenagers were there. Freaking ridiculous. Anywho, it was a time of great media freedom, which allowed a wide array of musical acts to rise from the soviet rubble. Many of them were talented, respectable musicians. And then there was electronica prodigies President & Amazonka.
President & Amazonka - Жу-жу
and КЛУБНИЧКА
Blame Doug for this one.
Zlad - I Am the Antipope
and Elektronik Supersonik
I heard this just a couple of years ago during quiz night at Sound Pony in downtown Tulsa. There is no defending it, yet it remains on my iPhone's short playlist.
Vengaboys - We Like to Party
I talk about Rasputina at every opportunity. Which is why they kicked me out of that funeral...
This is from their album Oh Perilous World, which is mostly about life on Pitcarin island after the mutiny on the HMS Bounty, of course.
Rasputina - Choose Me For Champion
My friend Alex is responsible for this, which makes the list for being uncomfortably sexy in a weird way.
Alex Gaudino Ft. Crystal Waters - Destination Calabria
Justin gets the blame for this, I think.
Rachel Bloom - Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury
That's all for this round. Enjoy and feel free to suggest any other weird songs you think deserve a mention.
---
Chris is an American writer and educationalizer living in Istanbul. You can follow him on Twitter @crfsanders if you're into that sort of thing
musicSavages
- Details
- Category: Music for Mondays
- Published on Monday, 01 April 2013 23:10
- Written by Chris
Once more to the frothy well that is the SxSW festival. This time, we're listening to the Savages. NPR Music calls them a noise-rock band. Wikipedia calls them post-punk. Both accurately describe the all-XX chromosome group from London, but you really need to listen to them to understand what they're all about. They've only been on the scene since 2011. Considering how competent and awesome they are, you'd think they'd been together much longer. Their sound, noise-rock or post-punk or estro-rock or whatever you want to call it, is stripped down, loud but not over-produced.
According to their site:
SAVAGES is not trying to give you something you didn't have already, it is calling within yourself something you buried ages ago, it is an attempt to reveal and reconnect your PHYSICAL and EMOTIONAL self and give you the urge to experience your life differently, your girlfriends, your husbands, your jobs, your erotic life and the place music occupies in your life. Because we must teach ourselves new ways of POSITIVE MANIPULATIONS, music and words are aiming to strike like lightning, like a punch in the face, a determination to understand the WILL and DESIRES of the self.
The name comes from guitarist Gemma Thompson, inspired by Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and Charles Bukowski. Awesome, right? From an interview in Pitchfork:
There's a point where you think everyone knows what's going on, how it all makes sense. Then you realize that everyone's just pretending. I remember sitting on a train and realizing that if it was suddenly the end of the world, we'd take on animal instincts again-- I had an apocalyptic vision of everyone tearing each other apart.
There you have it. Go embrace your inner post-civilization wildling and enjoy.
Official site: savagesband.com
Bran Van 3000
- Details
- Category: Music for Mondays
- Published on Monday, 25 March 2013 21:42
- Written by Chris
(On a tight deadline, so this week's M4M is a little scrawny.)
Music collectives are rightly viewed with skepticism. When you have more musicians than an 8 ball can support, you're going to have a problem. Not to mention how much money each member can make. Think about the first few years (decades?) of a band's existence. They're making $50 a gig. Try splitting that 11 ways.
Bran Van 3000 is a music collective from Montreal, Quebec, that bastion of Francophonic je nais c'est quoi. At the core, though, are two members with a rotating cast of characters flitting in and out of the band since 1994. Founders DJ James Di Salvio and E.P. Bergen have started, stopped, and restarted the group a number of times throughout that period. In that time, they put out just 4 studio albums, to greater and lesser success and critical acclaim.
My interest in the group, though, is confined to one particular song: their first single, Drinking in LA. It so accurately captures the happy angst of a 20-something aspiring creative. Whenever I'm sitting in a cafe, alt-tabbing between my manuscript and Brain Pickings and Minecraft, I think of this song.
Official site: bv3.ca
New Politics
- Details
- Category: Music for Mondays
- Published on Tuesday, 19 March 2013 13:31
- Written by Chris
I'm busy. You're busy. I'll keep this quick.
NPR Music's coverage of SXSW adequately captured the Austin experience, as far as I'm concerned. Given how much the pre-eminent indie music festival has exploded, I would rather listen to it via podcast than fight with thousands of hippies with wide belt buckles to find a couple of square feet in an SRO venue to hear Karen O screech her little soul out.
Listening to their coverage, I heard snippits of songs that I hope to never hear again, mostly. A few, though, stuck out. One in particular sent me to YouTube ten seconds in. The song was Harlem (not to be confused with the Harlem Shake all the kids are talking about) ; the band, New Politics.
It should come at no surprise to faithful Breadren that this band is from Denmark, given my continuing infatuation with pop-rock from...um...Sweden. Denmark is close to Sweden, okay? They're both Scandinavian nations. Leave me alone. I'm American. I don't know geography and we haven't bombed Denmark since Operation: Market Garden*.
Rather than talk about the band, I'm just going to leave their video for Harlem here and let you make up your own mind. MMM'kay?
Official site: newpoliticsrock.com
*Yes, I know Operation: Market Garden targeted the Netherlands; it was a joke. About my poor geography skills. Got it? No? We're done here.
Add a commentIngrid Michaelson
- Details
- Category: Music for Mondays
- Published on Monday, 11 March 2013 20:39
- Written by Chris
It should be no surprise that I like Ingrid Michaelson: she's half-Swedish, and as we've seen over the past year, I have an inordinate fondness of Swedes and their (English-language) music. The fact that she was enormously talented from infancy - learning piano as a kiddo, studying at a professional music academies throughout childhood, yadda yadda yadda - helps. As does her fierce independence; she's never signed with a major label despite her growing popularity.
In fact, that is how I discovered her in the first place. One day, way back in 2007, I was haphazardly reading through the AV Club instead of writing or exercising or hanging out with people or cleaning my apartment or organizing paperclips or doing anything of practical value. A picture of a bright, intriguing woman's face above the headline for Random Rules caught my attention, which honestly wouldn't have taken much to do at that point. The article mentioned that she was a popular, unsigned artist, but I had never heard of her. After reading about the songs she was listening to, I decided to look her up. What I heard was quiet, earnest, and perfect.
Even if you don't know her name, you have undoubtedly heard her music. Ingrid's tracks appeared on a whole heap of popular TV shows as well as mass-market commercials, in soundtracks, and anywhere else musicians can sell their wares these days.
If you like any of the female sing-songwriters we've profiled in these hallowed pages, you'll certainly enjoy Ms. Michaelson. Check her out.
Official site: ingridmichaelson.com
