PondaBlog

very interested in hearing the latest offering from ricardo villalobos and max loderbauer. Re: ECM remixes tracks from the revered ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music) label, founded by Manfred Eicher and renowned for pursuing “the most beautiful sound next to silence” for more than four decades. The label hovers on the outskirts of jazz, classical and otherworldly musics, with a roster that ranges from estonia’s holy minimalist arvo pärt to fourth-world windblower don cherry to alien chanteuse meredith monk. and the record sleeves are revered for an abstract and austere aesthetic that, in its consistency, is matched by precious few other labels – 4AD or factory records might compare. 

the two candidates taking on this rather daunting project are also fab choices. the chilean-born, berlin-based villalobos is a minimal techno titan. loderbauer, another electronic figurehead, is currently part of the sublime moritz von oswald trio.

it’s a seductive set-up…the electronic versus the acoustic, yawning space of ECM. yet i’m a bit hesitant. oftentimes these sorts of concepts sound tantalizing in theory, but somehow fall flat in the immediacy of now. and to add to my suspicions, here’s a somewhat middling review that recently appeared in the grauniad.

but whatever. i still wanna hear it.

in the meantime, check out this chat:

you can also read this great villalobos interview, courtesy of fact - complete with amusing druggy cover art comments.

and while we’re on the berlin tip (home to villalobos and loderbauer), here’s an article in the wall street journal (!!!) about the raging nightlife in said city. are hedge fund managers about to invade berghain?

RIP Chris Cahill

(image source: http://csgraphi.files.wordpress.com)

RIP Cy Twombly

And for some additional thoughts on the iconoclastic American ex-pat painter who called italy home, check this out: a video, courtesy of the tate, of a certain john squire commenting on Twombly’s magisterial quattro stagioni. ageing readers may recall that squire was at one time the guitarist for manchester’s stone roses; his proto-Pollock paintings adorned the cover and inside sleeve of the band’s fabled, self-titled debut.

but i digress. this post isn’t about squire, it’s about twombly. watch and enjoy. 

(http://images.wikia.com)

holy hardcore! you know how things happen in threes? well, then…first up is fact‘s 250th mix, a superb and shocking offering – in the sense that i pretty much leapt from my chair when i first stumbled upon it. 2 bad mice? really? i’d figured that they’d disappeared absolute ages ago and that all i’d ever know from ‘em was a handful of fantastic yet orphaned tracks.

so this is a beyond-pleasant surprise. 2 bad mice were superb, a rave-tastic duo that delved into ‘ardkore’s cheesy, cartoony side yet also laid down basslines and beats that were dark and fierce – lethal. you can feel the warehouse walls closing in. it’s a sound that spawned no u turn’s hoover malestroms, swarming with beltram synth stabs and claustrophobic bass.  

but that’s just the beginning. next is sam bubblegum’s grime mix, which features roll deep, wiley, kano, dizzee, tinchy, danjah et al.; and ben ufo’s never went to blue note mix, which chronicles the sounds of an immortal space during a magical time. enjoy. rewind. enjoy again.

RIP Gil Scott-Heron

can’t recommend nick cave’s meet me at the center of the earth – currently on display at the seattle art museum – highly enough. i recently visited the emerald city and this was peaking on my must-do agenda, along with spending some quality time at easy street records. and eating donuts. and quaffing in the park on a rare sunny spring day in the pacific northwest.

anyways, this show from nick cave – a phantastical african-american artist, not to be confused with the hirsute and well-suited one from grinderman and the bad seeds – is pretty much a mind-bender. i had not an inkling of what to expect, so the ensuing glee and shock and, yes, wonder of cave’s soundsuit creations threw me in all the right ways. think hype williams’s visionary cyborgian videos for TLC and missy elliott; sun ra’s cosmic egyptology; rammellzee; shamanism; dr. seuss. but hurry – your inner selves only have until june 5 to be tickled in seattle. otherwise, you’ll have to travel to the centre of the earth.

(Image credit - www.123posters.com)

 Q: OK. What do you think of the MP3 revolution?

A: Ah, revolution, wow. It’s great to hear the word “revolution” again. It’s great that a song now costs exactly the same as a pack of gum and lasts exactly the same amount of time before it loses its flavor and you have to spend another buck. That era which finally ended whenever, yesterday – you know, that era when we pretended rock was the scourge of conformity and consumerism, instead of its anointed handmaid – that era was really irritating to me. I think it’s good for the honesty of rock and roll and good for the country in general that we can finally see Bob Dylan and Iggy Pop for what they really were: as manufacturers of winter-green Chiclets.

- Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

the pixies are playing tonight in vancouver. and tomorrow night too. and who knows, mebbe they’re playing for the next eight weeks after that, three times a day and four times on the weekend. the shows sold out in nano-seconds, and even more predictably, the braying crowds are oohing and aahing over the sheer omnipotence of the portly ones from boston.

we’ve been through this before, of course. back in 2004, the “alt-rock legends” reformed and fans spazzed out then too. but this time it’s even better! they’re playing doolittle (the much-worshipped second album that came out in 1989) live! the whole thing! you know, the one with that tune about slicing eyeballs! it’s gonna be sooo awesome!!!!

i won’t be one of the, er, lucky thousands attending the sold-out gigs in vancouver. don’t get me wrong. the pixies were a formative listening experience for me. come on pilgrim slapped me upside the head, surfer rosa continued to seduce with its lacerated bliss, and doolittle cemented the band’s rep as the purveyor du jour of spiked pop mayhem (what followed that triumvirate is more open to debate, but that’s another vent for another time).

but here we are…in 2011…and this is what gets the volk soiling themselves with glee? i suppose it’s ain’t that surprising, really. it’s a seemingly great cash grab for the pixies, who keep banging out the same tracks night after night. they don’t even have to decide what to play anymore – just crank up the machine, set it on doolittle and hit autopilot. it’s actually quite brilliant. and if that’s what the fans want, and if they’re willing to pay to see and hear a simulacrum – which they clearly are – well, fair enough. in another completely unsurprising development, the georgia straight, vancouver’s weekly bastion of banality, picked the pixies as one of its choices of the week. its only quibble? that surfer rosa is a better album than doolittle.

we mock the boomers, but we have become them, sycophants gnawing on the winter-green Chiclets spoonfed to us by our generational symbols – this week by black francis and co. next week? who knows. maybe pavement will come through town again. but we’re fooling ourselves too. cuz you can’t go home again. and monkeys can’t go back to heaven. death to the pixies, indeed.

RIP Poly Styrene