PondaBlog

forget family day. who cares about families anyways? records are much better. so thank your lucky april therapy session that it’s record store day – TODAY!

mass hysteria has ensued around the world. can’t really speak to that, but here’s what’s happening in vancouver: lotsa sales and shows and general debauchery. check out the happenings – and freak out – at audiopile, neptoon, zulu, red cat and scratch.

and to celebrate, here’s another treat: 

SOUNDGARDEN from Record Store Day on Vimeo.

i’d still like to trade lives with matthew dear for a coupla days. okay, a week. i’d rock the leather trousers too.

Matthew Dear – Black City Live from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

kudos to Green College for presenting its adventurous Sonic Impressions series during 2010/11 at UBC. but leave it to academia to bleed every last drop of fun from a good night out. to whit: check out this brief on a recent Population Health Series presentation entitled (rather redundantly) “Dancing with Risk: The Subcultural Logic of Drugs, Clubs, and Risk”:

This project highlights the patterns, practices, and social contexts fundamental to club drug use and risk among youth. The research presented in this talk will focus on how the subcultural context shapes understandings of risk. Through ethnographic descriptions of the experiences of youth involved in New York clubs and raves, this presentation examines the social organization of club subcultures and the evolution of a subcultural habitus within them. It explores how subcultural capital pertains to locating one’s place within contemporary youth cultures and ultimately how such forms of capital influence youth decisions about drug use and the way they consider risks in their lives.

i can just hear the dancefloor dialogue: “where you from? whacha on? what is your subcultural habitus? and lastly, how does your subcultural capital pertain to locating your place within contemporary youth culture and influence your decisions about drug use and risk? nice one – sorted!”

sheesh. that said, i reckon this fella probably has the coolest academic title ever.

turns out the dude also likes vinyl, eight tracks and reel to reels!

Attention beat headz: make your way over to Bubblegum Cage III, where blogger, proprietor and general good egg Sam has posted a mouthwatery mix of prime-era jungle and drum ‘n’ bass. it’s a sweet selection of ’90s rollers that range from darkcore anthems (nasty habits’ “here come the drums”) to abstract, angular offerings (roni size and dj die’s “music box,” photek’s “Ni-Ten-Ichi-Ryu”). kudos to sam as well for including ed rush’s immortal “bludclot artattack,” a primev(i)l track that hints at the maelstrom to come from No U Turn Records, which melded doom-laden breaks with hoover synths that channelled the forces of electrobots like gary numan and joey beltram.

while we’re on the junglistic tip, fact is also providing a whack of free downloadable gems (courtesy of RWD) from dj zinc, erstwhile member of the ganja kru and don of the jump-up diggity. the tracks range from 1996 to 2009, and include bass-sick mixes of kanye’s mercurial “Jesus Walks” and the Fugees head-nodding classic “ready or not” (two versions to boot!).

lastly, if you wanna follow up on sam’s narrative of “rave’s descent from euphoria into paranoid ganja psychosis,” then make sure to check out simon reynolds’s tome Energy Flash – the tastiest account of rave and dance culture that you’ll have the pleasure of sinking your (grinding) teeth into. and remember, things usually sound better on the dark side…

doncha love it when coincidences happen? especially when they’re tasty? i recently penned a post about dutchie culture that started off with a nod to, er, yorkshire beat-head Blawan. mere days later, the muso gods smiled and lo and behold, a fab mix from said brit appeared on fact. and yes, it’s a treat, and then some. it starts off with some x-rated advice, then rocks and roils with nods to the dub, the step, the acieed, the bass and tres big beats. and yes, the monstrous “getting me down” is included for your aural pleasure. spread the love and check it out while you can.  

let’s start off with this terminator of a tune, a virulent slab of mutant 2-step courtesy of blawan. i actually got turned on to this when it bore its way into my ears courtesy of an ace mix for xlr8r from dutch master 2562, aka a made up sound, aka dave huismans. (between xlr8r and fact, the quest for world podcast domination is pretty much a done deal.)

this got me thinking about the dutchies…and not for the first time, given that both my parents hailed from holland. why is it that the dutch excel at aesthetic endeavors like dubstep (martyn is another prime example of the nederland ‘nuum), design and total football?

all three pursuits are defined by space: the space between notes, the space of Mondrian, the space of Kruyff and co. i reckon the actual lack of space in holland, a land partly below sea level and hemmed in by dunes and dikes and canals, leads to a subconscious need for release – one that finds its expression in outlets such as caverns of bass and and pitch perfection. and if you really want to delve into the mysteries of the dutch aesthetic, then check out david winner’s brilliant orange: the neurotic genius of dutch football – a fascinating plunge into a psyche that draws parallels between the painted cathedrals of saenredam and the spatial sensation of the best team that never won the world cup.

in the meantime, hup holland!

“once you’ve gone tech, you never ever goin’ back”

- robyn, “fembot”

interesting piece in the guardian on the encroaching human element in dance music. although i can’t say i share the author’s slant that more human = good. it’s a treatise that’s been put forward many a time: electronic music somehow becomes, well, better when humanity lends its sweaty palms to the process. let’s replace that drum machine with a real, live drummer. let’s get in a bassist. let’s sweat on stage. whatever.

the notion that dance music somehow benefits from the human touch is largely a fallacy. dance music is at its most potent  when the actual physical body is being rocked, shaken and stirred, but by the twisted logic of machines. it’s an interplay of flesh and silicon, and – apologies to the grauniad – nothing can jack the body like the metronome kick of a 909 or the undertow of a mutant bassline. there’s a reason that such sounds are so potent, and that’s because the best dance music is truly alien: non-human.

sure, there are the rare exceptions – lcd soundsystem, booka shades’s movements, matthew dear, the moritz von oswald trio (although the latter is certainly more suited to the head than the booty). but the vast amount of dance music that boasts of blatant human intervention as some sort of moral victory just doesn’t cut it. just think about the examples. squarepusher. breakbeat era. drum ‘n’ bass with actual drummers. not good.

curious too how the article posits analogue equipment as somehow more human. it’s a common equation – the notion that analogue gear adds an intangible warmth to sounds that can’t be replicated by today’s cold, clinical tech. and yeah, that’s true. but it’s also true that analogue gear can also make some of the queasiest, otheworldly sounds around. just witness the ghostly electronica of boards of canada, among many others.

even though it’s programmed by humans, dance music is at its best when it thrives in the realm of the machines – analogue or digital. and that’s why the images of the numanoid daft punk robots or the dystopian headsets of orbital resonate so powerfully. if i really wanna be moved,  i don’t want to see or hear all-too-human acts of imitation. i want to be seduced by immaculate machines, oscillating wildly. 

but really…what kind of wolf gets scared by megadeth?? in the homeland of black metal, no less! for shame.

bonus points to Ria Novosti for spelling megadeth correctly.

“[Psychedelia isn't] a world only reachable by hallucinogens but obtainable by questioning what we think is real and right, by challenging the conventions of form and temper… I discovered psychedelia and it seemed to have self-help properties that allowed me to let go of an immobilizing working class pride that was cementing a false identity into my psyche, stopping me from transforming.”

Trish Keenan, The Wire, 2009

Trish Keenan, the otherworldly singer for Broadcast, died last week (see below). the above quote is taken from a Pitchfork tribute, which you can read here.