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