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Random Album Generator #458

This, folks, is the first in hopefully many posts of this kind. I decided last night to download a random number generator app for my phone in order to play a little game, shake things up. You see, I have a number of pieces of vinyl staring out from a hefty, imposing shelf at me, begging to be played. Some days I'm good about it, I love my records. Other days, I'm ignoring them to dust-collecting and whimpering unheard desires to be played, instead relying so heavily on mp3's and the portable music fiend's lifestyle. Something had to give, because feeling so inconsistent drives me nuts. It displaces a certain sense of order that my brain craves, but that I have become accustomed to undermining this last year. Stumbling drunkenly and depressingly into my room in a pre-dawn haze of, "...oh shit, I have to set my fantasy baseball lineups before I go to bed..." leaves little room for the contemplative, sedentary practice of listening to music. Something I need and want, but find that ignoring the need can throw me out of whack. And when you arrive at the impetus to change increasingly sullen patterns, you have to get creative.
My inspiration, ironically, came from sitting at a bar watching some fellow regulars play a simple chance and dice game. They would pull out a sizable volume titled The Big Bad Ass Book of Shots and they would roll a ten-sided die a pre-ordained number of times correlating to the number of pages or entries in the book, consequently drinking the shot the numbers landed them on.
Well, seeing as that I am OCD enough to keep my record collection on an excel spreadsheet, I decided to utilize the random number generator app to select an album-a-day to listen to based on its numerical place on that list.
Today's pick, #458, is Esther Phillips Confessin' the Blues, Esther's sixth album on Atlantic Records, but first in a stretch of six years. It would be her last on Atlantic.
Her familiar, piercing Southwestern nasal smoke taking center stage on Side 1 for a batch of 'standards' like "C.C. Rider". For a 1976 release, this A-side is staunchly Jazz touched, almost flying in the face of the wave of Funk- or Soul-infused directions so many of her contemporaries were testing. The B-side, doesn't buck that trend, save for the inclusion of Fender bass and a Rhodes electric piano on some tracks (the B-side is a live recording with a different group than A-side's studio roster).
I may be decidedly influenced by the recording qualities and differences from side to side, but her voice sounds half as good on the B-side as it does the A. The mic for this live set in Los Angeles is a bit too flat and doesn't open up certain tones and qualities of her voice. The room 'appears' (through its sound) to be small and laden with thick fabrics, for there is a lack of naturally positive reverb. It also lacks the equal levels that the studio tracks on the A-side possesses. Furthermore, the version of "Bye Bye Blackbird" just feels too jumpy and up-tempo to me, which drains it of its inherent melancholy.
Overall, this album is a pleasure to re-visit for probably the first time since I bought it, but I don't feel guilty for that. Hopefully the random generator won't force me back here too often...once a year or so would be cool. Or maybe I just need a fuckin' girlfriend to play records like this for.

I Wanna A New Stat

I just watched Scotty Pods here get an infield single based solely on his speed. For 98% off all baserunners, that would have been a ground out with the shortstop beating 'em by a step (or two) with a laser. So, it got me to thinking that maybe we should introduce a new, non-sabermetric stat to this statistics-rabid sport and fanbase. Ready for it?

The Stolen Hit.

Yes. The Stolen Hit (designated 'SH' on your score cards kids). This kind of infield single, which I see a ton of from my hometown icon, Ichiro Suzuki, is less like a hit (save for that it came off the bat) and more like a stolen base. It would still factor in normally to batting average, on-base% and whatnot, but not be included in the WHIP of the pitcher who just had to suffer through the ordeal of giving up a hit based solely on the speed of his opponent.

Let me know what you think folks. This could be a great new statistic!

Food For Thought: Year of the Pitcher

If the 2010 baseball season is "The Year Of The Pitcher", then why did Joe Blanton just struggle to stay under 40 pitches in the top of the first against the Dodgers? After Jamey Carroll lined an RBI double to left center with two outs, Blanton then intentionally walks Brad Ausmus. Yeah, Brad Ausmus. The guy with the career .669 OPS. The Brad Ausmus who has hit all of .207 against Phillies pitchers. Sure, it was in order to face the pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, but come on, if this really is THE YEAR OF THE PITCHER, then shouldn't the argument be made to defeat such piss poor performances as this?


Oh yeah...it's Joe Blanton.

Relaxation Doesn't Have a Heavy Metal Theme Song

Attended tonight's Mariners-A's tilt at Safeco Field with my family and saw Felix Hernandez toss a new career-high 13 strikeouts. I feel I'm connected to dominant performances by King Felix, as I was lucky enough to have seen his previous career-high of 12 punchouts, also against the A's, on Opening Day in 2008. Continuously, as I get older and more knowledgeable about baseball, I really appreciate watching paramount pitching performances. But that's not really what I'm here to talk about. I'm here to bitch about some 'problems' with the game of baseball as I see it.
First of all, I'm not trying to pick at M's new manager Daren Brown, but why in the hottest reaches of hell did he pull Hernandez in favor of that hack closer Aardsma for the 9th?!? Felix was beating the shit out of the A's. He was cruising. And that also meant we had to endure that ridiculous metal intro for Aardsma that goes on waaaay too long and is a hype engine as full of crap as most political campaign ads. The heart of my argument is this: I enjoy, love baseball and going to baseball games, but the pastoral, meditative side of the game is being ruined by all the racket and noise. Every player has 16 different songs they walked to the plate to. Every 35 seconds, some retard at a sound board pushes a button to play an annoyingly stiff and hollow rhythmic noise, because we fans need to be prompted at exact moments to cheer.
Instead of bitching, albeit creatively, in endless ways about how there is too much over-amplified noise at a baseball stadium, I'd just like to posit that maybe it's time to cut out a bunch of the audio detritus and let people return to attending baseball games in the calm, intellectual and reflective environs of old parks.
Or maybe I should just start going to more minor league games.

7's Mix

Apparently, I'm taking a stiff departure from having any real sense of form here, but it was fun.

-"Noon Hill Wood" ~ Richard Skelton
-"Cielo" ~ Murcof
-"Flyktig" ~ Pjusk
-"White Lake" ~ Deaf Center
-"I'm Building A Bodacious Bodega for the Race War" ~ Mike Ladd
-"Murderah Style" ~ DJ Spooky
-"Songs in the Key of Tryfe" ~ MF Doom & I-Self Divine
-"Linoleum" ~ Company Flow
-"Foiled" ~ Yellow Swans
-"A Night Without Harm" ~ Svarte Greiner
-"Hathor's Dance" ~ Higuma

Guess I tried to make a little egg center of beats, protected, cupped even, between ambient and electronic shells.

The Road

I just finished watching the movie adaptation and simultaneously starting the book. That is, by far, the most emotionally moved I have been in response to a movie in a few years. Not for the terrifying bleakness or the ravenous hunger that drives all post-apocalyptic survivors to madness, cannibalism and despair. For the tiny glimmer of hope for humanity McCarthy has for us right now, yet in his frame of putting us through the worst circumstances ever and seeing some of that humanity, compassion peak out on the other side of nothingness.

One thing I noted as a recurring theme in both the books and movies to The Road and No Country For Old Men: binoculars. In No Country, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is standing on a plateau scanning the barren fields below for his prey while hunting and also in spotting the injured dog. In The Road, 'The Man' is constantly "glassing" his environment for safety reasons; to see other people (potential predators) from a distance is a way to stay alive. But the theme to me seems to be for the narrator to have a feeling of distance from the rest of the world. His mindstate is one of being alone in the way he thinks and looks at the world, life.

One last bit. The movie was fantastic in all ways in my mind. The soundtrack by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis fits like a glove. The sound of the world in dissolution around them at all times is perfectly done. It is a sad, crying, aching world that is crumbling at all moments. The acting is fuckin' brilliant, but then what else would you expect from the likes of Viggo? The cinematography is just about bleak enough to squeeze tears out of anybody's eyes on its own. Well done.

Get on the Dice-K Express to psychological Hell!

Just when my boys, the Boston Red Sox, get rolling and reforming into a playoff contender again? They send Daisuke Matsuzaka to the mound. The number one cause of episodic Tourette's Syndrome in my household. What a colossal waste of fuckin' cash this guy has turned out to be. Sure, he can throw 413 different types of pitches and needs every one of 'em to get through 5 and two-thirds innings, but it is beyond maddening to watch a pitcher, night-in and night-out, get to 3-2 counts on every god damn hitter he faces. This guy needs to pay back the rest of his remaining contract and go back to winning games for Japan in the World Baseball Classic. Hey, at least Old Man Wakefield is taking the mound on Friday. Here's to hoping the knuckler is floating like a drunken hummingbird.

Rhymes With A Passion

Sitting at the throne of the laughing king/talkin' 'bout human trafficking

Svarte Greiner: Penpals Forever (And Ever)

I remember seeing Deaf Center at the Triple Door during Decibel Festival's Ambient Showcase two years ago. I sat there with my friend Scott and a couple of new friends (other performers at that year's festival), all of us having our minds splattered on the hard table top in from of us and our hearts liquified in some oozing molten melancholy. I've never felt closer to a male group therapy session; beating drums and yelling amidst campfire flung light. It was clearly a shared visceral, emotional evening.

In the time since then, Deaf Center has gone on somewhat of a sabbatical . Svarte Greiner and Otto Totland having moved on to other projects without officially announcing time of death on Deaf Center. Totland has not produced at the frequency of Greiner, but made an absolutely smashing breakthrough with Nest (see my review for The Silent Ballet). Greiner has continued to pour out his scratchy, steel wool mind on scattered, ever-darkening and more haunting releases. His latest is Penpals Forever (And Ever). His music really has progressed to a point where I feel I'm listening to the soundtracking of a truly schizophrenic and deranged mind, from within, not cinematically. It's an important distinction. I won't waste my breath attempting, at this late hour, to describe the individual peaces, as they seem only movements within a whole that is not dissectable. To communicate how it feels as if actually inside a truly sick (genius?) mind, is to say that there are many noises that make me check if my own environment is making them or if they are part of the music. Intermittent drum beats that made me inspect my turntable to see if it was clicking or knocking its motor (it certainly was not). Low bass rumbles that tricked me into thinking a plane overhead my house was unusually low on its approach to Sea-Tac Airport. This truly is disturbing music; most disturbing for its addictive quality.

Score: 8.75/10

Choose Your Torture

Would you rather have bamboo shards shoved under your fingernails while being waterboarded or be forced to watch Meg Ryan movies for 72 hours straight?

Lost Satellite of Max Richter

{06.14.10}
she spins
spitting messages unconsciously
to audiences she's
unaware of
unimagined

beeping, chattering into the void
sweeping the vacuum
for the shattered remnants
of love or existence
that last touch, fading into
a cosmic echo

scan the frequencies
to see if she's still out there
floating less as a heavenly body
and more as a message or a hope

as she spins further into
the vastness, the full-to-overflowing emptiness
swallows her signal
a sip from some universal broth
she begins to attain
some sort of enlightened loneliness

flashing as some unexplainable nova...

working against the cold

{06.07.10}
working against the cold
most people suggest
making a fire
the creation of heat

but I strike hammers to wires
allow for their vibration
and resonance to
vaporize the arctic air
and
run a hank of horsehair
across strings
until they burst forth
in a volcanic sinew of a cry
or lament

with just that
I could stand naked
in the face of all
the world's glaciers

Free The Robots: Ctrl Alt Delete

Ever since I first threw this record on a few days ago, it feels and sounds like a direct descendent of Company Flow's Little Johnny From the Hospitul, an album clearly ahead of its time. Sure, the trademark click-chop LA beats are there and some slightly cheesey synth lines (check "Turbulence"), but the more dusty than digital aspect to much of the rhythm production harks back to that wake of sonic destruction laid down by El-P & Mr. Len in 1999. But 'Chris' (a Cher-like figure, I guess?), who is FTR, never sounds dated or retro. There's a taste of Dubstep style bass tones and samples that sound off time or wrongly situated in some audio processing software, but end up fitting perfectly (again, a la Little Johnny...). Some of the snare hit sounds executed here splinter and crack like a 2x4 being smashed against your studio-cup headphones. Then there is some lovely psychedelia in "Wandering Gypsy" that certainly shares some nucleic acid with Edan's Beauty & the Beat.
Make sure you have your ears checked by your local audiophile before you listen to this record, as to make sure you can handle the bass tones and rumble.
In parting, what I think I love best about the Los Angeles explosion (Flying Lotus, Deru, Noasj Thing, etc.) is that some of my armchair anthropological theories have been proven wrong. I never thought the grit and wisdom of East Coast HipHop would be infused into the slangin' West Coast style. Oh, how wrong I am, but how happy can a man be for being wrong?!?

Score: 7.5/10

Lorn: Nothing Else

Walk to your nearest record store, browse the internet to your closest music retailer, beat up that little kid on the corner with a bag of records, do whatever you can to get your hands on the newest album on Brainfeeder (Flying Lotus's label). Nothing Else is the debut album by Lorn, some kid from the 'middle of nowhere' in the Midwest. Lorn employs the same dark side of Boom Bap HipHop that Deru so enjoys, but in a context even darker and grittier. The chunkiness of his bass drum sounds are rivaled only by that big fucking fictitious asteroid that's going to demolish Earth any day now. His synthesizers are slick and dirty all at the same time, often sounding like an old ballpark organ grinder fed through a Cuisinart cheese grater. Occasionally, the amputated bits of human voices pop up and drown away just as quickly. And one of the dopest parts of this album is that while it is most certainly an album full of vicious, tooth rattling beats, you can bang your head like you're at a Metal concert until it rocks right off your spinal column. A must have for sure!

Score: 8/10

Grails Black Tar Prophecies Review on SilentBallet.com

Score: 6/10

All serious listeners and music fans have a handful of artists they believe absolutely should be more popular; they obsess over the relative obscurity of some of their favorite musicians. Portland post-rock demigod Grails is certainly one of those bands for me. Yes, the band has certainly garnered a healthy level of popularity and success, but I sense that it has hit a glass ceiling (one it's sure to crash through anytime now). Then again, it rarely sets up camp on any particular label for more than a record or two. That can be advantageous for a band (it's not tied down), but it can also constrain an act to a tier below more successful and widely known bands. With Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 4 being released on Important Records, Grails may be leaning towards a more permanent home.

Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 4 was initially rumored to be material left off of the Vol. 1, 2, & 3 album, but to these ears, that can’t be true. It’s partly due to recording qualities and styles, but also playing styles. There’s a bit more polished sound to the final mix, scrubbing away some of Grails’ signature grittiness. In the same spirit, gone are a few of the droney, opiated sounds. Yet, this is, for the majority of the EP, not a bad thing, and it is still obviously a Grails record.

The zenith of Vol. 4 materializes in the groovy “Self-Hypnosis.” For a little over eight minutes Grails pays fantastic homage to the 70's psych and stoner rock that has influenced it. Wah-wah effects and disturbingly unassuming synthesizers place this jam firmly in the hands of Aerosmith circa “Sweet Emotion” (a huge guilty pleasure of mine, by the way). On the other hand, there are dueling Pink Floyd guitars dog-fighting through international airspace. As for the drums, I sense just a touch of Ginger Baker. What’s most impressive about “Self-Hypnosis” is how all these worn-on-the-sleeve influences are packed in together but the song still retains that surge and ebb style of build-up and release known to every Grails fan. This reveals another sterling quality of the band and its music: Grails has deftly avoided the trappings of both traditional and post-rock song structures. This attribute is exactly why “Up All Night” leaves such a bitter aftertaste.

“Up All Night” has the boys from the Rose City jumping ship and doing some sort of cinematic lounge act, sans the singing of course. As the song lacks the teeth and dark soul of everything else the band has done, it sounds as though it could squeeze into place on an 80's cop dramedy as one of the more serious, introspective songs. To get a true picture of what this means, imagine a B movie adaptation of Beverly Hills Cop. “Up All Night” also really shouldn’t be the closer for this EP, because it neither bashes its way to a grand finale nor hushes the last light out of the record. This was also a problem with Take Refuge In Clean Living. “Clean Living” trudged grudgingly to a finish line that “Take Refuge” clearly deserved. In the case of “Up All Night,” it might be better served on the cutting room floor with a completely new song written to take its place as the caboose. This may sound harsh, but focus on the fact that Grails’ sound has always laid firm roots in Americana (be it Appalachian or Frontier), and the loungey, clean aesthetic of “Up All Night” scrubs that grit away. It leaves, in its wake, a sonic Las Vegas; the promise of sin and hedonism in a sterile surrounding; the finely controlled illusion of chaos, which invalidates itself with emptiness and boredom. Another testament to the strength of the band is that, after all that “Up All Night” does to sink its own ship, it has still produced another first-rate release.

While some of the darker drone and drug haze is sublimated, the almost-as-scary-as-Svarte Greiner ambient pieces, “I Want A New Drug” and “New Drug II,” add a lovely dimension to the band’s sonic canon. They both feature the stark ramblings of a preacher, who happens to sound exactly like the one from A Silver Mt. Zion’s “Broken Chords Can Sing A Little.” “I Want a New Drug” also employs a warbly, drowning sample of a choral version of “Nobody Knows The Trouble I’ve Seen,” making the opener spectacularly spine-tingling and dark. Whispered voices, one of which I swear calls my first name, whip me into the throes of a supernatural encounter with a wandering ancestral specter. And then, the preacher questions, “Can philosophy lift a man out of the cess pool of this life?………..it never has.”

Maybe that should be the closer. It would certainly be impressive to drop into silence immediately after that bleak line.

Say Hey Word! Kid

Normally, I cringe at watching Braves games; the racist team name, the insidious "Tomohawk Chop" and the fact that Chipper Jones has always annoyed me, for no good reason. But Jason Heyward compels me to watch. He's that good; on pace for a .290/30HR/100RBI rookie season. That's something that Mays, Ruth, Aaron and Griffey didn't do. Only Albert Pujols has done that (or better, of course) to my knowledge. So, I can put aside my murderous rage incited by bigoted white America's continued hate, intolerance and insensitivity towards Native Americans to watch this kid play ball. Hopefully, the Braves hit some hard times and are forced to trade the Say HeyWord! Kid (nickname of my creation, a play on his last name and Willie Mays's nickname, in case you're too stupid to figure that out).

Game of the Day

Ubaldo Jimenez used Tim Lincecum as his experimental playground whipping boy today as the Colorado Rockies beat the San Francisco Giants 4-0. Jimenez looked like a combination of Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez out there today. Lincecum actually looked better than in his last few starts, but he still couldn't master his command. I wonder what kind of software upgrade Jimenez got this off-season, because I remember him in the '07 World Series looking like an average pitcher who was over-hyped because of his bullet train fastball. Now he looks like he's going to unseat Lincecum for a few consecutive Cy Youngs in the NL (no offense to Doc Halladay, who is unequivocally a fuckin' badass).

Tragedy is something to celebrate

I was looking through an email advertisment from Ebbet's Field Flannels that I receive through their mailing list. This one concerned a sale on Pacific Coast League (PCL) team shirts, etc. That is not really the interesting part. What was so fascinating was the sidebar of the page displaying a "This Date in Baseball History" factoid. For May 28th, 1925: "Oakland Oaks pitcher George Boehler pitched 9 1/2 innings of no-hit ball, but lost to Sacramento on two hits and an error in the tenth." Baseball is certainly the only sport, and probably one of the very few realms of life, in which we celebrate tragedy in such a sense. Regardless of if we were rooting for one team or the other, what is most important is that true appreciators of the sport recognize the beauty in such an historical fact and tragedy. Boehler came close to an act of perfection, purity, godliness and immortality. Well, in a sense he's achieved the immortality part a bit, because 85 years later, people he never knew and wasn't related to are talking about him. Nonetheless, he came that close and still is pegged a failure. Icarus would've lit on fucking fire descending that quickly.

mediate the medium

Interesting listening experience tonight: I was locking into the new Grails Black Tar Prophecies Vol. 4, when I realized the copy I'd received to review was a burn from the original vinyl. The extra white noise and the faint churning of the turntable's motor gave it away, but also detracted from the focus and enjoyment of the listen. What's truly interesting about this is that I knew immediately that if I were listening to this on vinyl (soon enough!!) and could hear the same noises through my turntable, I would immediately tune them out and have a pleasurable experience. But, since it was an mp3 copy, I didn't expect these sounds and it made for a distraction. Mull it over...