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Archive for the ‘The Prodigy’ Category

David Thorne–Burning Bridges to Light the Way (2019)

Posted in Australia, Concert, Coronavirus, Daniel Day Lewis, David Thorne, Essays, Food, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), Guns, Humiliation, King Princess, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Peter Goers, Quarantine, Smarty Pants, Squirrels, Teenagers, The Prodigy, Threats, Tiny Desk (Home) Concerts, Tiny Desk Concert, Toilets, Unlikable main character, Video Games, Yuck! on April 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KING PRINCESS-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #6 (April 8, 2020).

I’ve heard a lot of buzz around King Princess–that she’s fun and puts on a wild show.

This home Tiny Desk is not wild in any way.

“Welcome to the quarantine shed!” King Princess exclaims. She’s in jogging pants and sitting on a fluffy white chair, with two guitars, an amp and a tiny keyboard at her side. “I’m in Hawaii and brought as much gear in the carry-on of my plane ride as possible.”

She calls herself KP, which I rather like.  These songs are really quiet. She plays “the three songs from her late 2019 album, Cheap Queen, in ways I never would have imagined.”

“Isabel’s Moment” is played on a quiet keyboard.  She says it’s an homage to people experiencing quarantine thirstiness–texting their exes and ex friends and everyone.  It’s my least favorite of the three because I don’t like the keyboard sound she chose.  But her voice is excellent.

“Prophet” is played on one of her guitars (with lots of echo and slightly out of tune she admits).  The chorus turns surprisingly bright. She says it’s about the entertainment business and it is now more relevant than ever.  We’re all out of jobs right now.

She says this is back to making music in my room, trying to find that creative spark we had as children, when I could sit in my room and make things for hours.

“Homegirl” is also on that guitar and sounds really pretty, too.  I really like her singing voice quite a lot. It holds up well in this quiet setting–so if Bob says that it’s very different from what he’s used to, I’m very curious about what her live show is like.

But I really don’t like her speaking voice, I must admit.

[READ: February 2020] Burning Bridges to Light the Way

Evidently I asked S. for a book by David Thorne a few years ago.  I don’t know what book it was, I don’t recognize any of his titles and I didn’t even recognize his name when I saw this book.  She didn’t get me the book then, but she did get me one this past Christmas.

Turns out that David Thorne is an Australian smart ass.

As the foreword from Peter Goers puts it, this book is full of “barely coherent rants about friends, family, and colleagues.”  He continues,

David isn’t a dreadful human being all the time.  He has to sleep and I know he cares a lot about squirrels.  There are parts of this book that even hint at a certain degree of empathy for other human beings.  Some human beings, not all of them, maybe three.

I’m not sure who Peter Goers is, but his introduction is very funny.  Don’t skip it:

I once asked David if he’s autistic and he replied, “It’s pronounced artistic and no, not really, I can draw a cat though.”  I assume he was joking but it’s hard to tell with David.

In the first essay, David says that every year when he releases a new book friends and associates say that they are going to sue him if he says anything derogatory about them in his book.  But he’s not worried. Nobody he knows has enough money to hire a lawyer. (more…)

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César Aira–“The Musical Brain” (New Yorker, December 5, 2011)

Posted in César Aira, Chris Andrews, Death, Foreign Books, Fred Armisen, Funny (strange), Magic, New Yorker, Primus, Short Story, Surreal, The Prodigy, Translation, Trenchmouth on December 5, 2011| 4 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: TRENCHMOUTH-Inside the Future (1993).

This album came before the other Trenchmouth CD I reviewed.  And it’s safe to say that all of the ideas were still in place for this CD as well. 

What I love about Trenchmouth is that all 4 members seem to be playing different songs and yet they all work so well together.  True, it sounds chaotic and at times unpleasant (such is the nature of punk) and yet when you listen a few times you hear how it all works.

“Telescopic” opens with a crazy punk bass line, the guitars are just screams of noise and the drums are rhythmic yet chaotic (that’s Fred Armisen on drums and he is a wild man).  Then lay over the top the disaffected vocals (which are in a different ke)y and you get one hell of  a punk song.  The feedback squalls at the end let you know that they have no intention of being on the radio.

“Power to the Amplifier” condenses all of that noise into 2 minutes of fury. 

“The Dawning of a New Sound System” starts with some crazy guitar chords (showing you just how weird the guitars are) but this song has a pretty catchy chorus (with backing vocal shouts of “Hail Hail”).  “Yes, This is the Place” offers slightly less abrasive guitars and a very smooth middle section.

“Capsule” actually opens with a sound similar to Prodigy’s “Smack My Bitch Up” and it has a different vocalist (although I don’t know who).    The percussion on “Confectionery” is amazing, while “In the Event of a Struggle” is another 2 minute cycle of styles.  “The Future Vs. Centrifugal Force” sounds the most like that mid 80s SST style that I like so much–kind of a jam feel, but short and punky.

“Sea of Serenity” is listed as “Swing Version”, although I don’t know if there’s another version.  This one has intense guitars (don’t they all) and frantic drumming.   It also has a wonderful third part with a great off-kilter guitar riff.   The final proper song is “Hit Men Will Suffocate the City” and it is more of the same noisy wonderment.  It ends with a great bass line.

The final track is “Now I Have Tasted Life” and it is absolute filler.  A weird addition, it’s 7 minutes of slow melodica noodling and occasional reggae sounding guitars with random percussion  There’s also some feedback squalls.  It sounds like one of their real songs stretched out and slowed down.  It would be okay if it weren’t so long.  But it’s hard to blame anyone for experimentation when the rest of their experimentation is so good.

It’s obvious why Trenchmouth weren’t popular (although you can hear proto-Primus all over this record–I wonder if Les and Ler knew Trenchmouth at all?), but it’s a shame their music is so hard to find.

[READ: November 30, 2011] “The Musical Brain”

I have been meaning to read César Aira for a little while now.  He’s on my list of new authors to check out.  So I was pretty delighted to see this story (translated by Chris Andrews) in the New Yorker.

There are so many wonderful and unexpected aspects to this story that I was constantly kept on my toes.  This also made it somewhat challenging to write about.

The story appears to be autobiographical (we learn late in the story that the narrator is named César), about an incident that happened when he was 4 or 5.   It is set in the Argentinian city of Coronel Pringles and it talks a lot about his family and the town that he lived in.

I loved the strange little details he threw in about his family.  Like his mother’s “invincible suspicion of any food she hadn’t prepared herself” or the provenance and outrageousness of his father’s wallet.

 As the story opens, César remembers a night when the family went out to dinner.  And on that occasion, he recalls the high school headmistress Sarita Subercaseaux holding forth in the corner of the restaurant while people brought her boxes of books.  He concludes (in the present, but had no idea at the time) that they are donations for the new library that is to be built (and of which Subercaseaux will be the head librarian).

He remembers Subercaseaux very fondly both from the library and from school, and when he asks his mother about her, we get the first of many erasures of the past.  His mother informs him that Subercaseaux died long before he was born.  Which of course he knows is impossible.  But his mother’s memory is better than his! (more…)

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Junot Díaz–The Sun The Moon, The Stars” (New Yorker, Februray 2, 1998)

Posted in Culture Shock, Dominican Republic, Funny (ha ha), Junot Díaz, Metallica, New Yorker, Short Story, The Prodigy, Travel, Ulver on November 29, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Metamorphosis EP (1999).

After Ulver’s first CD, they jumped around in genres (their second was a kind of folk CD and their third CD was more black metal–I have not heard either one).  Their 4th CD was the William Blake CD of crazed experimental music.  And then they released this EP.  And I can’t think of too many bands who keep their fans guessing as much as these guys do.  This EP is full on electronica.  Dark electronica, yes, but still, it’s all electronic.

There are four songs.  The first one, “Of Wolves and Vibrancy” is like  rocking dance song from the 90s (like The Prodigy).  The drums are quite intense.  While the second song, “Gnosis” is a slower, more ambient track. There are still loud drums, but the pace is slower and less manic. At around the 6 minutes mark vocals come in.  They sound like some of Metallica’s chanting voices on later albums.

Track three, “Limbo Central (Theme from Perdition City)” is less than 4 minutes long.  It’ s another dark electronic soundtrack with more great drums. 

The final song, “Of Wolves and Withdrawal” is almost 9 minutes of very quiet noises that grow louder in pulses. It seems to be three sections of different pulsing sounds.  The first time I listened to it, the opening was so quiet that I thought it was just all silence so I fast forwarded through the whole thing.  But because the pulses are so mechanically timed it didn’t even register as noises while as fast forwarded.  I finally had to turn it up pretty loud before I heard all of it. 

I was tempted to say that going from that first Ulver album to this one is a massive change.  But it seems that every Ulver record is a whiplash of stylistic changes.  Nevertheless, this is about as far from black metal as you can get and still be dark and scary.

[READ: November 4, 2011] “The Sun, The Moon, The Stars”

This is one of Díaz’s short stories that does not appear in Drown (it came out about two years after Drown).  It has been frequently anthologized, however, which makes it a pretty important story.

There’s a reason why I like to read author’s works in chronological order, and reading this story now confirms that for me.  The story, written in 1998, is the fictionalization of the essay, “Homecoming with Turtle” that I reviewed a few weeks ago (the one that I said pertained to Oscar Wao because of the turtle).  Well, there’s no turtle in this story, and there’s no dentists, but the rest of the story is pretty much the same as his nonfiction account.

After saying all of that though, what’s fun about reading this out of order is that since I know what the “truth” is about this situation, it’s fun to see what he has massaged into fiction.

So in this story, Yunior has been dating Magdalena for some time.  Magda is a good girl: wouldn’t sleep with him until they had been dating awhile, took him to church, introduced him to her parents, the whole bit.  And he really loves her.  The problem is that they only see each other once a week.

So, when a hot girl starts working at his office and she tells him that her man doesn’t treat her well and Yunior confides that the sex with Magda isn’t very good, well, things happen.  But they didn’t happen very often or for very long and Yunior tried to forget it.  Until the girl sent Magda a letter.  A very detailed letter. (more…)

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Terry Moore–Echo #21 & #22 (2010)

Posted in Death, End of the World, Graphic Novel, Mad Scientists, Technology, Terry Moore, The Prodigy, The Shining, Violence on June 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE PRODIGY-Experience (1993).

Before Prodigy sang “Smack My Bitch Up” and Keith Flint had devil horns and pierced everything, Prodigy were a dancey techno act. This was their first album, and allmusic calls it “One of the few noncompilation rave albums of any worth.”  High praise indeed.

I love that this disc still has the price sticker on it and that I can see that I bought it some time around May 1993 from Ralph’s Record City in Scranton (RIP).

I popped this on because I was listening to Moby and it reminded me of this early 90s dance disc.  Sarah said that it made her want to work faster (some of the beats are crazy fast).  As with most dance records, this one works for dancing and for background music.  But it does have some standout tracks.

“Hyperspeed” which has more than a few words as lyrics is super catchy, as is “Fire” which samples “I am the god of hell fire!”  What I’m learning here is that you pretty much need some kind of words for a song to be more interesting than 4/4 beats at breakneck speed.

The best track on the disc is “Out of Space” which opens up with some twinkly keyboards before the drums kick in.  But rather than just a straight heavy beat, the song slows down (with a great “boing”) into a sort of reggae vibe.

The album is full of sped up vocals (who even knows what the originals sound like).  As well as crazy fast dance songs.  It even features a “live” track.  I’m not a huge fan of dancey techno music, although I know it has its place and some of it is quite good.  This disc is definitely better than most, although I much prefer when they get into their darker stuff starting with their next disc.

[READ: June 7, 2010] Echo #21 & #22

One of the difficult things about writing sequential comics (as if I know from experience) is that each issue needs a certain arc which propels the main story but which is also satisfying in itself.  And so the story arcs in these two issues are very exciting in themselves but serve as something of a detour from the main story.

And that’s all well and good.  But it’s so frustrating when you’re only getting single issues!  The story is so good, and you get to the end of the book and ack, six weeks before the next panel! (more…)

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