What are you listening to?

[hamletpowpowpow]

i wanna say trosper is a genius - but if someone wants to explain the replikants to me, i'm game.

and you one upped me - i have no idea what any of those other things you just listed are. yr not just fucking with us, are you? ;)

ddonggho - being asian in a primarily white scene - according to our new pal, that just makes you even more superior. go with it, dude. i'm pretty sure i have that 7" around somewhere. heh.
also - just to show my lack of internet savvy - it took me a minute to figure out what "azn" was. heh.


now if only the wire would ask me to write the gravity primer, all would be well in the world. i'm dying for the chance to wax nostalgic more so than i already do.

bassline in half twist.. fuck..
guess you know what i'm listening to. &...

..BGM - backgroundd music
Salaried Men Club - gray cross
Invivo - B.B.B.
Pessimist, Kiiro Radical, Sympathy Nervous..etc..

[rorschach]

saw anthony from uoa tonight and he was also talking about that blog. small world we live in.

'the switch is down' was a really really important record to me in my youth! kinda shocked at the number of old hc kids on here sometimes. actually, now that i think about it, i've had the good fortune of running into quite a number of old HC kids in recent times and it's usually pretty nice to be able to connect with total strangers over bands you figured maybe 15 people liked.

anyway, i dont wanna get into dissecting why old HC kids feel inclined to get into fashion (high or otherwise) - the aesthetics are fairly obvious and a lot of the *********** designers derive some of their look and imagery from the 'rebellious' punk rock / hc scene. that seems pretty straight forward. if you wanna write some sociological scene manifesto trying to link the two distinctly, it's probably a waste of time IMO.

We're older and have some disposable income. I can buy my AD combat boots instead of Docs and RO leather jackets instead of the shit you find in a thrift store or punk rock approved stores like Thrash and Vaudeville (or wherever the kids go these days).. Anyway, both scenes had a look that the participants liked to maintain and to the HC / punk rock scene graduates here, I think this can be seen as continuation of that (to some extent), but (hopefully) with better taste and more originality.

anyway, while on the subject, sam mcpheeters (ex lead singer of born against/mrp/wrangler brutes) recently published an article in vice on the future of fashion that is somewhat entertaining..

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n3/htdocs/future-fashion-704.php

[malaesthetique]

<sigh>
fine, you wanna call me out? really? i never go for this, but sure, i'm having a *really* bad day, so why not.

it's just that there seems to be an isomorphic relationship between your head and your ass as illustrated vis-a-vis yr previous postings.

yeah. elitism was part of the scene, and that sucked. those were the insecure poseurs looking for a false sense of superiority through listening to a form of music few were aware of. towards the end of things, the whole scene was clogged up with assholes like that. it's what killed the scene - compare 99 to 91.

what it boils down to - what ties everything together was a sense of rebellion, a common camaraderie of being an outsider. standing out from the crowd...not because you wanted to feel superior, but because you had a different way of viewing the world.

i'm sorry that you came to fashion and music looking to feel more "righteous and advanced", but to each his own.

what really gets my goat is you stealing music and then spending that money on really expensive clothing and booze.
as a former musician and a currently starving artist, that just irks the fuck out of me. that's not something anyone who was really involved in the diy scene would ever proudly proclaim. grow the fuck up.

and i'm done, no more from me.


np: young ginns discography. fuck were they amazing. unwound + nation of ulysses + flagrant black flag worship =
snotty teenage rebellion done right. did they ever tour?

yohji yamamoto+CCP+rick owens=mature adult rebellion done right. These guys might be civil in real life, but you know their ideals are elitist as fuck or else they wouldn't be doing what they're doing. Same can be said of music, so your little theory about elitism clogging up and ruining the scene is bogus. Its an inseparable part of taking yourself and your interests seriously. No rational person is actually down with plurality.

There are a lot of subcultures that are held together by a convivial sense of rebellion, of feeling like an outsider, but that doesn't mean they share any kind of relation. But HC and high-fashion seem to have a special connection, a similar cynicism about world and an extreme approach to expressing it, so in my mind the comorbidity of the two makes perfect sense. If you'de rather deny it and simply sit in bemusement, chuckling to yourself, then that is up to you.

and LOL @ the ideology of DIY. I never took that simple minded philosophy too serious because it so obviously collapses under its own weight. You cant DO EVERYTHING YOURSELF. DIY is only sensible when its advantageous or your only option and I don't see how downloading music undermines this philosophy. Didn't you ever copy LPs to cassettes for trade with your friends? Its just foolish anyway to try to make money off of something so abstract and accessible and then complain about artistic theft if someone hears it for free. If potential profits is the main concern (instead of DIY integrity) then one should choose a more concrete medium that is easier to manage.

[hamletpowpowpow]

<cough> soooooo, anyways.

i got that vicious ginks/fucking angels split. fucking ripper of a 12". also, maybe the two best band names, ever.

[hamletpowpowpow]

cheers for the sam macpheeters article - and the coherent post. sam played about two weeks ago here in the city w/ dan higgs and i missed it. well, rather, i elected not to go. an event like that could go a few different ways...and i hate going to bushwick. my bad - as everyone said it was a great show.

but yeah - that uoa record *still* means a lot to me. i finally found video footage of them playing "stepping softly into", and that kind of blew my mind.

'the switch is down' was a really really important record to me in my youth! kinda shocked at the number of old hc kids on here sometimes. actually, now that i think about it, i've had the good fortune of running into quite a number of old HC kids in recent times and it's usually pretty nice to be able to connect with total strangers over bands you figured maybe 15 people liked.

anyway, i dont wanna get into dissecting why old HC kids feel inclined to get into fashion (high or otherwise) - the aesthetics are fairly obvious and a lot of the *********** designers derive some of their look and imagery from the 'rebellious' punk rock / hc scene. that seems pretty straight forward. if you wanna write some sociological scene manifesto trying to link the two distinctly, it's probably a waste of time IMO.

We're older and have some disposable income. I can buy my AD combat boots instead of Docs and RO leather jackets instead of the shit you find in a thrift store or punk rock approved stores like Thrash and Vaudeville (or wherever the kids go these days).. Anyway, both scenes had a look that the participants liked to maintain and to the HC / punk rock scene graduates here, I think this can be seen as continuation of that (to some extent), but (hopefully) with better taste and more originality.

anyway, while on the subject, sam mcpheeters (ex lead singer of born against/mrp/wrangler brutes) recently published an article in vice on the future of fashion that is somewhat entertaining..

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n3/ht...ashion-704.php

[ddohnggo]

i saw wrangler brutes once and it blew my mind. it technically should have been the second time i saw them, but i blew my chance at seeing them a first time back in providence when they played a halloween load records fest thing. i narrowly missed their set, but bought their dope 7" and the blow job t-shirt, which i regret selling.

i never really listened to that fucking angels/vicious ginks 12". the records i regret buying from gravity were the mohinder 7" and the candle 7". i'm sure i'm missing a few more.

[hamletpowpowpow]

thanks, i'm looking forward to digging into this stuff...

yeah, so.. i guess we've sort of broached the subject already when discussing stuff like blank dogs, factums & whoever else is jumping onto the whole, uh, jerkwave/shitgaze bandwagon, or whatever that's supposed to be called these days. seeing as how low production values and fucked up modular synths are weapon of choice to a whole crop of bands occasionally discussed in the thread, i figured the time might be right to commemorate a particular footnote in music history called vanity records...

my first encounter with vanity began with the following text: "categories strain, crack and sometimes break, under their burden - step out of the space provided." many of you will recognise this as the beginning to the infamous list from 'chance meeting on a dissecting table', which i decided to follow up on in fairly random order, sometimes going only by intuition and how interesting a particular band name seemed to me at the time. eventually i came across this:



tolerance - osteo tony
tolerance - through the glass
(anonym, vanity records.. recorded in 1979, released in 1980..)

additional digging around fleshes out somewhat a fascinating moment in time - i don't know whether it was the japanese who 'did it first' or anything like that, but the fact that some seriously compelling stuff was recorded around this time is undeniable. this scene appears have been rather insular and records were produced in issues of sub-500, a lot of it coming out through flexis and tape releases only. here is a snippet of what i've been able to track down so far, culled down to some personal favourites..

sympathy nervous - the sky, 1:40 pm
sympathy nervous - multi vitamins with mineral

There's a bit of everything here really: harsh textured noise, wet drum machines, jerky percussion, seasick synths, foggy bass ambiance, atonal guitar drone and sometimes-vacant vocal delivery (often provided by phew, who, like many of the musicians involved in this label's output, went on to a prolific career in creating interesting things..)

to the best of my understanding the label existed between 79-82. although i'm not certain of the recording years for some of the here mentioned releases, they fall within that time frame. with that in mind...

RNA organism - nativity
unable mirror - ignorant animal
noizunzuri - ai
phew - fragment
phew - mapping
wireless sight - endless dark dream

[AKA*NYC]

thanks for the links merz.

currently listening to the triple tree (tony wakeford and andrew king) new album ghosts.

[MoFiya]

Currently listening to the new PJ Harvey joint
(PJ Harvey & John Parish - A Woman a Man Walked By).

Really like it so far, but gotta give it some further listening...

[qnc.hst]

Nice, merz... diggin' on that stuff.

Man I wanna go hunt down some old issues of Bananafish now for whatever reason.

np: Some Erkin Koray reish

[maldoror]

currently:

om/current 93 split - inerrant rays of infallible sun

on deck:

buried at sea - she lived for others but died for us
thomas koner - nuuk

[hamletpowpowpow]

meh. had one cooking since sept. keep whittling away at it...but in the past year i've mostly been working on my own art...that sorta uses up my brainspace for that kind of work. doing my own thing will always be more interesting me than curating other's work. the radio show was always kind of there as a place holder while i figured out my own stuff. now that i'm back on track, the show feels less relevant to me.

but still...maybe i'll take another crack at it. i'm starting to repeat myself a bit - not breaking as much ground as i'd like. but yeah, i'm getting a lot of annoyed e-mails from people. who would have thought that anyone would care?

maldoror = thomas koner - personal "grail" for me. one of my ultimate, all time faves. before i had deathprod and basinski, i had koner. nuuk is a fucking stunning record. so much pathos from so seemingly so little.

would be nice if klang or staton did a writeup for m-squared maybe?
i've a feeling my knowledge on that one has many gaps.

& joshua, new episode sometime soon please. its been forever.

[ddohnggo]

this cover was so sick.

[maldoror]

nuuk is a fucking stunning record. so much pathos from so seemingly so little.

agreed. it's a profoundly beautiful album.

[hamletpowpowpow]

and i meant "from seemingly so little". sorry, i was high.

agreed. it's a profoundly beautiful album.