With my Best of 2014 post coming up, it felt like great timing to notice Shabazz Palaces have dropped a fresh, wildly psychedelic animated video for the second track on Lese Majesty, one of last year’s best albums. Fellow Sub Pop artist Chad VanGaalen provides his unique style of surreal hand-drawn art, meshing with the song’s astral imagery in perfect fashion. Check it now.
Well look, we’ve got Magic Johnson riding a slice of pizza through hyperspace! There’s not much to say about this video; the bonkers imagery speaks for itself. It fits the impressionistic hip-hop sound playfully, perfectly.
As for the music itself: there’s a reason Lese Majesty is one of the best albums of 2014. With a liquid, organic flow kinking to every philosophical whim of the duo, an end-to-end listen is more like twisting through a wormhole than anything resembling a straightforward rap album. There are a few brief flashes of familiar song structure, but they’re outliers on an album more closely resembling something from Oneohtrix Point Never, Flying Lotus, or Miles Davis at his spaciest.
If you enjoyed the brilliantly kaleidoscopic debut, Black Up (check my thoughts), you’re in for a weird surprise. This is Ishmael Butler and Tendai Maraire absolutely elevating their game, mutating an alrady impeccable sound into something more expansive and indefinable. I feel confident saying, prepare thyself for to deal with a miracle.
Edit: apparently the wrong video was showing; it’s been fixed.
This is no joke. I was wandering through Vertigo Music in downtown Grand Rapids, MI, yesterday and my eyes fell upon something I never expected to see without the internet exploding well ahead of time: a fresh LP copy of the timeless shoegaze masterpiece, Loveless. I hugged it lightly against my chest as I finished browsing (and picking up a copy of Cocteau Twins‘ Heaven Or Las Vegas) before asking the wise and friendly owner if he knew the details.
As my cursory Discogs browsing had indicated, it’s a likely bootleg. Do not let this fact discourage you. The sound is impeccable, and after a single listen the moment I got home, I have to say that it sounds warmer, and a bit more substantial, than the tinny original CD edition we’ve all been stuck with for over two decades. It may be sourced from the few-years-old analog/digital remaster that Kevin Shields has still neglected to release or it may be from the original vinyl issue, for all I know. The point is, if you love this album already, you’re going to adore the sound quality of this release.
The packaging claims that it’s a Creation Records release, “made in Nippon,” which, along with the lack of an Obi strip, tips me off to the bootleg nature of this release. With a money back guarantee if I wasn’t satisfied, this was hardly a passing concern. I’m so thankful that I took the leap and now own a perfectly decent copy of one of my favorite albums of all time on vinyl.
Now, for a bit of additional information: this is not a straight reissue of Loveless in its original form. There is a second disc, and while the original 11 tracks are in place, a small wealth of bonus material fills out disc two.
As shown on the back side of the full size insert, there is a minor annoyance: the original album tracks are spread over three sides, instead of a single disc. Perhaps this was to allow for a deeper mastering, or simply to ensure that they could fill out a full four sides of music. Regardless, this became a non-issue once I heard how fantastic it sounds. As an owner of the original Tremolo EP on CD, it’s fantastic to have the three original songs (Swallow, Honey Power, and Moon Song) represented here along with Sugar (from a split single with Pacific) and Instrumental no. 2, a tune I only recently discovered with the 2012 2CD EPs 1988-1991 release. These five wonderful tunes round out the reissue in a non-essential yet entirely welcome manner.
I’ll finish this post with a couple links to help my fellow MBV fans make a purchase of their own. The fact that I hadn’t heard one peep about this says that it might come as a surprise. There are a handful of copies on Discogs, and one seller on Amazon seems to have this edition for $79. Please note that there are occasionally copies of a 2003 Plain reissue floating around, but my experience with this company isn’t encouraging. Shields himself has stated that it’s “ripped from the original CD” and the label doesn’t have a great track record with regards to pressing quality.
With all that out of the way: I can’t emphasize enough how much of a gorgeous, mind-bending landmark this album is, how much of a monolithic presence it’s played in my life and the development of my musical taste. Loveless is so much more than “the best shoegaze album.” It’s a sound that bends rock music so far that, instead of breaking, it pushes into entirely new dimensions. Once you’ve let it into your life, your sense of audio aesthetics will be forever changed. I couldn’t wait to share the news with everyone.
(Here’s the full album, in case you’re wondering what the fuss is about. Play at high volume.)
By the way: if you live anywhere nearby, please visit Vertigo Music and talk to the owner, Herm. Tell him I sent you. It’s easily the best record store I’ve ever visited in the midwest. There were 2 copies left yesterday, at only $27. Hurry if you’re interested!
I’ve been familiar with Rod Modell via his Deepchord Presents Echospace project for several years now. 2007’s The Coldest Season is often cited as a monument of dub techno; icy beats, muted atmosphere, and warm rounded analog bass flesh out an album that bumps against the limits of control.
His second Deepchord album, Liumin, is one of my favorite techno releases of all time. This time the beats are more pronounced, evolving from broken radio tuner waves into a futuristic cityscape stomper.
However, I’d somehow missed his absolutely blissed-out meditation music, crafted with Michael Mantra over a decade ago. Listen to this half hour of pure alien serenity now:
So, in 2007 The Flaming Lips released this “secret” Christmas album under the pseudonym Imagene Peise, a play on John Lennon’s famous adage about peace. It’s called Atlas Eets Christmas. At Last It’s Christmas, get it? All punny thoughts aside, this is a delicate, hazy, gorgeous amalgamation of several classic holiday tunes that even your mom will enjoy.
Oh, and it’s been described as, “A Charlie Brown Christmas on acid,” so there’s that. I think this is more fitting than not. Imagine a handful of old holiday Chestnuts on melted 78’s beamed aboard a passing UFO and you’ll get the idea. Or just fire this up and enjoy. Fire one up and enjoy?
Here’s a formal track listing. Keep in mind that this is a warped mixture of tunes, not a traditional rendition.
1. Winter Wonderland
2. Silver Bells
3. Christmas Laughing Waltz (Jingle Bells)
4. Silent Night
5. Do You Hear What I Hear?
6. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
7. White Christmas (Binson Echorec Sleigh Ride)
8. Altas Eets Christmas
I stumbled across this ominously bespoke track today while falling through a youtube hole. Understated dub techno sprawl from Deepchord Presents Echospace.
I began following an Intrusion link from a fine German friend, stepping through the nocturnal Detroit world one related video at a time.
This might be one of the more tightly controlled meditations from Deepchord Presents Echospace, but it’s ventilated, heaving, and not a little bit spooky despite itself. This video highlights the sort of mindscapes you’re bound to fly over with this tune on high volume. Dark, specific, filled with cavernous negative space. Enjoy, enjoy, enjoy.
If you’ve never seen La Jetée and are unfamiliar with video auteur Chris Marker, stop what you are doing right now and spend the next 27 minutes watching this groundbreaking post-apocalyptic dream. It’ll be a half hour spent far more wisely than virtually anything else you could be doing.
[Edit: I’ve realized that the video does not include either English audio or subtitles, so please watch the film on Hulu where it has English audio – don’t worry, purists: it’s solely narration, not a dub. My bluray edition features this and original French and both are legitimate, as Marker wanted the viewer to be focusing on the imagery, not reading text.]
Singularly obsessed with memory, time, and understanding our own narratives, Marker was never meant to become a blockbuster filmmaker, cranking out digestible films with recognizable story arcs. His film work is art in the truest sense: beguiling and confronting us with our own perceptions and lack thereof. Leaping with absolute freedom between history and personal recall, dreams and stories, his video projects have an uncanny grasp on the grey areas where most people are afraid to tread.
More than simply conveying the ambiguous nature of memory in perfect clarity, Marker often strikes the root of perception itself, holding a mirror to the connective tissue between things that we consciously perceive and think we know. This is cinema of the back alleys and neural highways between fact and fiction and history and fantasy. To take in a film of his, like Sans Soleil, is to dive headfirst into the places where associative understanding is born.
Now, back to La Jetée. You’re likely more familiar than you know. Terry Gilliam’s 1996 science fiction masterpiece 12 Monkeys, starring Bruce Willis, is based entirely on this experimental short film. If 12 Monkeys is a fully fleshed out novel, the original work is an impressionistic poem. They both convey the story of a post apocalyptic man, time traveling to unravel the mystery of what’s behind societal ruin.
The first and most striking aspect of Marker’s original vision is that it is shot (almost) entirely in still images. Along with fluid voice work and music that helps carry the tone, these separated singular instances convey the imperfection of memory far better than continuous film ever could. The closest we’ve got in modern film would be Christopher Nolan’s Memento. While that film’s backward narrative worked as a gimmick to induce confusion in the audience – thus connecting with the memory-impaired protagonist – La Jetée is consumed wholly by nature of its fragmented style. Our memories and dreams are never contiguous reels of film, spooling forward in logical fashion. Chris Marker not only deeply understands this; he gets us to understand with him.
There is a transcendent moment in this film, breaking from the still image motif, that will be etched in your mind forever. I can promise this. There’s nothing more to say, other than: prepare to be astonished.
You can buy an incredible disc from Criterion containing both this film and Sans Soleil, plus a host of supplemental material that will submerse you in Marker’s world. Check it out HERE.
Optimistic Underground 