The A.V. Club critics were asked to stow their cynicism in their stockings and come up with a list of holiday music we actually enjoy. Find me on page two.
Category: unsorted
Review: Italo Indies A Classic Education Release Roughed-Up Perfection on ‘Blazing’
Cool shit. Read about it. (via SPIN)
Behind the Scenes of L.A.’s Haunted Dance Fest with HARD Founder Gary Richards AKA Destructo
More behind-the-scenes business from last month’s HARD Haunted Mansion EDM festival in Los Angeles via SPIN. Further reading: yesterday’s post for the sexier stuff from HARD, and this lengthier feature on Electric Daisy Carnival (et al.) which digs into the cultural and financial capital that these events trade in.
Backstage at HARD with Skrillex, Fatboy Slim, Riff Raff, Soulwax, Rusko, Gaslamp Killer and More
Posting this nearly a month late because it’s taken that long to recover. HARD Haunted Mansion, Los Angeles’ premier Halloween (don’t-call-it-a) rave found yours truly crawling through the catacombs of the historic Shrine Auditorium with photographer Erik Voake on a quest for some truly exclusive content for SPIN. Diametrically opposed to the common sense of all involved, we were allowed into the artists’ dressing rooms to witness pre- and post-game rituals, most of which involved copious amounts of booze (duh). The article appears as a photo gallery on SPIN.com, so here it is indexed for easy access:
- Skrillex // Rusko // Fatboy Slim
- Major Lazer // Soulwax // Skream + Benga
- 12th Planet // Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs
- Switch // Zed’s Dead // L-Vis 1990
- The Gaslamp Killer // Riff Raff // Destructo
- rando scene photos from here
Baste Yr Turkey to This (#bastegod #thanksgiving)
Endless love to all friends of Phil Elverum. Happy Thanksgiving.
Breaking Out: Grouplove (+ Live SPIN Session)
I’m always the happiest when I can bring something local to the pages of SPIN. Though Grouplove’s constituent players are from all over the map, and they met on a small island in Greece, they call Los Angeles home and we’re happy to have ’em. There’s an element of the blindly treacly in their songs, but just as beauty in music doesn’t equate to dullness, happy doesn’t always mean it sucks. Besides, there’s a decent amount of dark creeping through their stuff, so, you know, sharpen your sweet tooth or lay flat. Read the piece here, which includes footage of three songs performed at the SPIN offices. Gruesome video after the jump.
New Small Black Mixtape More Killer Than Chiller
Interview: Audio Collagist Co La on Past, Process, Ponytail (R.I.P.) and Plunderphonics
Many a freelance music journalist takes on copywriting for artists, labels and PR firms to round out what’s typically a rather spare and piecemeal income. I’m no exception. We don’t talk about it much because it seems like, and can be, a compromise of integrity. We make rules for ourselves to keep our motives pure or, at least, bifurcated, but we typically don’t give away our employers. I’m making an exception for Baltimore’s Co La, recently featured on Pitchfork behind his just released Daydream Repeater LP (NNA Tapes), because our fact-finding interview was so fascinating that I’d be remiss as a journalist (so much for bifurcation) not to share it. It’s been itching at me for three months.
Co La, a.k.a. Matthew Papich, is a collage artist at the surface. He samples, he interpolates, he rips off, he recreates. He borrows from sun-dappled reggae and dust-caked soul. He takes bricks from Spector’s Wall of Sound and builds strange huts from them. What traditional beat-makers call loops, he calls “loopholes,” not because they represent his circumnavigation of copyright law, but because they act, for him, as portals into “magic grooves that can just roll forever.” The best part of a song for Co La is like that bizarre kismet tube that leads Donnie Darko from one surreal scene to the next on the way to the end of the world. I’m for music that compels without added exposition, but reading Co La’s thoughts on process provides the listener a loophole into his strange songs.
So hit the jump below to check out a tune, then to dig into the conversation. The questions are incredibly banal since my job was simply to gagther cold fact for a press release (which I’ll include at the end), and the exchange was by email, but, the answers more than make up for it. Let’s start at the beginning…
Raver Madness: Electric Daisy Carnival (and the Dance Music Industry) Fights for its Rights
Sharing this here a bit belatedly (it’s from October’s issue of SPIN), but it’s no less relevant today than it was a couple of months back. In a music industry (#whatindustry?) that has been in a constant state of tumult for more than a decade, the business of dance is booming. We’ve all heard that old “DJs are the new rock stars” chestnut a gazillion times, but it’s never been truer. Actually, it’s also misleading — rock stars had chart hits and huge record labels backing them. These guys commission their own jets to shows where thousands of kids await their favorite songs that have never been played on the radio. This article is, on a macro level, about the love-hate relationship that the mainstream has with rave culture. On a micro level, it’s about Los Angeles, Electric Daisy Carnival, Sasha Rodriguez, the nightly news and millions of dollars. (via SPIN)
Beauty With Teeth: Superhumanoids
The ever-sharp Nitsuh Abebe recently made the argument in his Why We Fight column that beauty in music, often maligned as the hallmark of generic appeal, needn’t be linked to dullness every time. In a world where Kurt Vile and Cass McCombs exist, it’s a point that’s hard to deny. Not that I’d want to. I’ll happily chase your No Ages, Wavvess and Fidlars through the garages, basements and vegan outposts of Los Angeles till the day I die, but I’ll never stop swooning to the pretty stuff, and there’s a lot of it going around locally these days.
Expect future posts on folks like Luke Rathborne and House of Wolves, over whom Jeff Buckley’s ghost looms large and glorious, but for now, I just wanna give love to Superhumanoids, who are currently recording their LP debut to be released next year. That’s their recent EP, Parasite Paradise (Hit City U.S.A.), streaming below, but do yrself a favor and hit the jump to watch their videos, which are also rare and pretty and sometimes a little strange. Toothy beauty.
Chris Writes Things 