Shock & Awe(ful)

So... Death Grips' latest album NO LOVE DEEP WEB is out. I haven't heard more than a couple of the group's older songs and they didn't seem too bad and yeah Zach Hill is in there being awesome as usual but this isn't a review because frankly I haven't listened to the thing. And it's going to stay that way in the future.

If you already know what's under that black square on the .jpg above this, you can probably guess why.

CJ's previous essay "No Homo" touched upon an important point--no one really has control over what offends them or where the line is until they find something that makes them truly uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be a logically consistent thing, it's all rooted in emotion and cultural taboos and other bullshit that don't really make much sense to me most of the time because I am ridiculously hard to offend. Hell, I like things that most would find distasteful in the process of consuming a lot of strange media, and nudity--artistic or otherwise--doesn't even make me blink.

What's objectionable--or not even objectionable per se, just lame--is how these guys are so desperate to wring a visceral reaction out of people that they'd resort to the common pastime of drunken frat dipshits texting pictures of their junk at 2:00 AM. It's not creative, or even all that provocative. It's just fucking lazy.

It's the kind of stunt that's sub-Odd Future or even sub-Insane Clown Posse. And yet the professional music journosphere being full of pretentious cockwads "in on the joke" will heap praise on an album cover featuring a boner with sharpie all over it precisely because it's not from musical bottom feeders in Hot Topic gear trying to rustle the jimmies of suburban housewives, but from a fairly interesting alt-hip hop group that recently signed to Epic and has been getting some good press of late. This kind of shit is beneath them but it will move records, no question, and their riposte to Epic and the ensuing faux-controversy is also such obvious bait that I'd be surprised if there isn't a hooked worm attached. A quote from P.T. Barnum would go here if that wasn't belaboring the point.

Yeah, the irony is thick here. Wasting my time lambasting an a puerile album cover, telling you why it shouldn't deserve the attention that I am already granting it, that it already wants. Played me good, they did. Time may be one thing, but sorry Death Grips. You won't be getting my respect or my money.

Suck my dick.

Some Thoughts on Metal, Distribution and Culture

One of the things I've noticed about my music listening habits is that I don't listen to very much metal at all anymore, and scantly any from this current decade-I doubt that I have more than 5 albums from the last 2 years in my entire collection. Considering how rapacious I used to be about listening to as much metal as I possibly could from all its myriad scenes and subgenres, that's saying quite a bit. I think there might be a couple of reasons for this, and both of them are  directly related to cost and competition. 

First of all, I simply don't have as much money as I used to. I recently moved to Brooklyn (hence the dearth of updates) and I'm living on my own without a steady cache of money I can go to to purchase new albums for the first time in my life(which is not to say that I mooched off my parents, but having a job while living at home leaves one with a fair amount of disposable income). For those of you asking "why should that be any obstacle?" you should know that my stance on free downloading is that I only find it permissible when the artist has given their explicit permission or the release has been out of print/will remain out of print for a considerable length of time. Also, it may sound strange to hear for those of you not familiar with both areas, but there isn't a record store anywhere in New York that I've been able to find that has both the breadth of selection and price range that Amoeba, my go-to record store back in California, used to have. The result is that even when I do manage to make it into one I usually can't find any metal, or if I can it's of the Converge/Isis/Agalloch variety, and more often than not at full retail price. Not that there's anything wrong with so-called "thinking-man's metal," as I count albums from all of the above bands as some of my very favorites, but by God a man needs his meat and potatoes every once and a while and I'll be damned if I've seen nary an Immolation or even a Megadeth CD the entire time I've been here.

The second reason is closely tied to the first, and that is that, as stated, I don't have very much money anymore, and other genres of music-namely hip-hop and electronic-are particularly tuned to the interests of budget-minded, college-age students these days, with some fantastic new mixtape being released every week and a slew of MP3s coming out every single day. They're both genres that, by nature, foster a sense that music should be not only readily available to, but creatable by, the average man and so to some degree it makes sense that they would be able to so easily eclipse their contemporaries in terms of available, cost-effective music. 

That stated, it's not so much that I don't have the time for metal anymore as much as the resources. I'd certainly be devoting as much time to it as I do to hip-hop and electronic music if metal had some sort of equivalent to the mixtape or the gratis single, but for whatever reason-maybe due to the effort needed to create it, maybe due to its status as an already niche, generally unpopular genre of music-metal doesn't lend itself as easily to being cheap and easily attainable as the previously mentioned other genres. Sites like MetalSucks and Decibel will occasionally offer a free album stream but good Lord, I don't want to listen to metal while sitting in front of my computer. I listen to it when I'm walking around, exercising, bringing things to bear in the dead of night. Even the greatest metal album isn't going to inspire what it should while wafting out of my laptop speakers at 128kbps. 

It may seem unfair to ask a genre, particularly one that needs as much support from its fans as it does to thrive, to essentially give me something for nothing, but as a ravenous consumer of music of all different genres, metal's relative lack of availability in the 2010s has or more or less knocked my attention away from it. The sad truth is that today's listener needs music placed in front of them in a way that much of the metal industry and creative community has been unwilling or unable to do. Maybe it's a situation that has more to do with my individual listening habits than any kind of seriously widespread problem, but for someone with as wide a palate as mine, more and more I find my appetite being sated elsewhere. I believe that metal has the ability to not only keep up with but elevate music culture from an artistic position; whether it'll be able to do so from a distribution position remains dubious and, to my mind, worrying.

-CJ

Disposable Music

A few years ago me and my younger sister were crashing on the couch of a Harvard Graduate student in Cambridge. Though he was a remarkably accommodating host, he didn't have much time to show us around this unfamiliar as most of his time was committed to research and writing papers. I remember reclining in his living room reading some Wilde stories I had found on his shelf and hearing a stream of shuffled indie pop/folk/etc flow out of his room where he hunched over his desk. It was delightful. I had recently discovered the sugary joys of the New Pornographers and Apples in Stereo, not to mention a still constant flow of deeply effecting bands like Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin and The Shins, and found myself sitting there thinking, Damn, this stuff is amazing. There is so much wonderful indie pop in the world, I could just listen to it all the time, forget everything else. Look at how interesting and tuneful all of these sounds coming out of his stereo are. I listened closer. Occasionally I'd recognize something, So Says I and Young Folks, and more often I knew enough to place a band without having really listened to them before, Devotchka, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, but most of the time they were the kind of unimportant but delightful bands that swarmed the scene at the time.

And through this closer listening I realized that most of the music coming out of his speakers was not that good. Most of it was derivative and catchy in an uninteresting way. Each song would use an instrument in a way I hadn't previously heard, sure, but had none of the power and depth of the great songs of the genre. There would be no, say, "Seeing Other People" or "I Woke Up Today". These songs were great, and the mix was superb, but they were disposable.

One blizzard and three days later I get back to New York and sit down to make a tape of indie pop songs that would be as amazing to listen too as the MA student's, but with only incredible songs. Only songs with the catchiness and the orchestrative playfulness but also containing incredible depth and power. Only the "I Am Warm + Powerful"s and "Death By Misadventure"s of the world. And I realized that I couldn't do it.  All told I had maybe ten or fifteen albums of indie pop that I loved wholeheartedly and to make this flow of music I would need so much more than that. And that perhaps the brilliance of the Cambridge mix outshone the dullness of each of its tracks individually. It created an emotion and continuity that couldn't be gained by a list of unique and striking songs. Perhaps the whole was greater than its parts.

This was the first time I ever understood the benefit of disposable music, worth in a scene that goes beyond worth in individual bands. This is perhaps a particularly internet age phenomena as previously mixes took hours to make, not to mention the expense of buying so many records in order to create this wash of music. Now with internet streaming and shuffle it's a natural way of hearing this. And it opens up worlds.

The ambient music scene is buzzing (/pun) like it never has previously, if there even ever was an ambient scene before. And though I doubt I could point you to many individuals that have blown my mind (besides, perhaps, Sean McCann and Noveller ) a quick stroll though bandcamp or youtube will show you few stand outs but and incredible wave of music that could bring wonder and definition to every summer afternoon. The same holds uniquely true for the worlds of dubbed out bass music and instrumental hip hop beats and free mix tapes, and certainly of the streams of violent garage bands and surf rockers and synth-pop textureists swarming the Brooklyn scene today.

It goes almost exactly against the Post-Punk ideal of forward forward forward and, at the end of the day, you probably won't be finding things that change your life. But with everything going on in the United States underground music oceans these days I've found brilliance in the whole what I couldn't find in its parts.

-Stuart

No.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

Here's a picture of a person.

This guy is dead. He played guitar really well, he irrevocably changed the course of popular music from now 'til doomsday, he was a prolific lover and by all accounts a really sweet guy, and forty two years ago he took too many pills and drank too much wine and died. He's not on earth anymore and he's never going to be here again, because that's what it means to be dead. It means you're not alive anymore and you can't be alive anymore.

Here's a picture of another person.

This guy is dead. He sang in a way that inspired a lot of vocalists that came after him, he defined a lot of the poetic attributes that have come to be associated with psychedelia, he was sort of a strange fellow that never really seemed comfortable even as he reached the peak of his success, and forty one years ago something happened that nobody is quite sure of, and he died. He can't breathe anymore and he can't walk anymore and he certainly can't sing anymore. That's what happens when life leaves your body.

We, and by we I mean people, have a big problem with letting things go, and we also have a big problem with assigning dollar worth to intangibles. Technology has developed in such a way that the music industry has been able to create a new avenue of exploiting both of these flaws, by computer engineering a method of putting a gas tank in a corpse and throwing Christmas lights on top of it for purposes of a stage performance. You couldn't have asked Philip K. Dick himself to paint a bleaker, more cynical future of the entertainment industry.

A man approaches you and says that if you give him some money, he'll let you see your dead father again. If you talk to him he won't talk back to you, you can't touch him, but the thing that you're looking at will move like him and sound like him and if you're lucky, for a minute, you might feel like you're spending a moment with the man who raised you. You're not-he's dead and he can't come back-but this thing may lead you to imbibe a moment of connection because, on the surface, it's similar to something you're familiar with and something that means a lot to you.

A man approaches you and says that if you give him some money, he'll let you see your favorite performer. There will be no lungs in his form to sing from and if you throw something at him it will pass through the image that your eyes have trained you to register as a human body, but the thing you're looking at will move like him and sound like him and if you're lucky, for a minute, you might feel like you're in the presence of the artist who has most inspired you. You're not-he's dead and he can't come back-but this thing you're looking at may lead you to imbibe a moment of awe because, on the surface, it's similar to something you're familiar with and something that means a lot to you.

A thing, by any conceivable standard, is not a person. Jimi Hendrix can go on stage and play the guitar and preform for you. A hologram of Jimi Hendrix may be able to present a reasonably convincing facsimile of such but it is at best an afterglow of a person who has not been alive for almost half of a century and at worst a mockery of one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. And it is a mockery because buying a ticket to see a hologram of Jimi Hendrix is a signal that you care about what he represented more than what he was, that the idea of him is more important than who he was as a human being. And it makes you forget that he was a person at all, that the sounds heard on Are You Experienced? or Band of Gypsies did not spring fully-formed from a mystical sonic womb but were composed and created and preformed by men like you and me, with fingers and throats and minds to guide them. And that's exactly what they want; the companies can sell you the music but they can't sell you the man himself. Or at least, they didn't used to be able to.

This is happening. We didn't really know it was happening when they produced a synthetic Tupac Shakur and paraded him through the desert; some of us were able to fool ourselves into believing that it would be a vulgar one-time stunt with no hope for marketable longevity. But what we have told the record companies, in overwhelming numbers, is that a person's visage matters more than their material, as long as it is a man that we have some fond connection towards. We have said that the content of an action matters so much less than the representation of such. We have told them that we are fine with memories of things that never happened, and that nostalgia is as good or better than the experience that inspired it in the first place.

We have embraced the dreams, and forsaken the dreamers.

-CJ

No Homo

"Faggot soundmen, they be sabotagin' shit!"-Method Man, "What the Blood Clot"

The other day I was reading a review of a documentary called Bully; the film as a whole seems to present the issue of bullying and psychological victimization with a striking level of clarity, but one scene in particular stood out in that regard. One of the kids that the film follows is bullied so frequently, and by so many people, that he starts mistaking physical abuse for regular joshing and playing around. His mother tells him not to hang out with people who beat him up, and his reply is heartbreaking: “What friends does that leave me with?”

I think there’s a similar sentiment present in wider media, in that there are certain messages that are so ubiquitous that we think it’s impossible to cut them out of our cultural diet, lest we miss out on pretty much everything we want to watch or listen to or read. We don’t let Sergio Leone’s fixation with female degradation interfere with our awe at those incredible shots he manages to get, we don’t let H.P. Lovecraft’s horrific racial views distract us from his once-in-a-lifetime expressiveness of imagination, and if you listen to hip-hop, you tend to brush aside the ever-prevalent, near-deafening homophobia that infests the genre in order to better focus on the lyricism and production.

"These faggots hit like teddy bears."-EL-P, "Delorean"

This is something I have been doing, and am doing, and will probably continue to do, much to my own distaste. The reason I do it is because I don’t want to stop listening to things I like, and I like hip-hop, even though so much of it will at least reference in passing beating up gay people or emasculating an opponent by questioning his sexuality. And I do mean so much of it, because it’s everywhere. It’s inescapable. From thugs like Ghostface Killah to freakshows like Danny Brown to nerdy “nice guy” rappers like XV, it seems like pretty much everyone has to get their shots in. And sometimes I have to question my principles when I listen to this stuff, which sucks, because aside from the rare not-just-unoffensive-but-actively-socially-positive group like BBU, there are pretty much no alternatives.

People tend to have kind of an all-or-nothing attitude when it comes to issues like this in hip-hop. As in, you either accept the whole package as presented or reject it entirely. Whenever you try to discuss the ethical problems with the genre it's thrown in your face that you either don’t know what you’re talking about (“it’s all pimps and hos and crack and murder, what happened to the Rolling Stones, why don’t comics cost a nickel, etc. etc.”) or, if you do have legitimate concerns to raise, you’re told it’s not your place to bring them up since you’re not part of the culture. I think that’s kind of a bullshit response, though, since I’m not a part of skinhead culture either, but that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to be appalled by the existence of things like Stormfront.

"Ayo, I'm quick to lick the mag twice/And cold take a fag's life."-Big L, "8 iz Enuff"

Obviously, very few hip-hop acts are quite so militant in their hatred or dismissal of LGBTQ culture. That doesn’t mean it’s not a completely shitty aspect of the genre, or that it’s in any way excusable. If rap’s opponents can’t use the “poor and ignorant” card to dismiss the music, that means that, in turn, its advocates can’t use it as a defense. When I’m listening to Action Bronson, and I stumble on a lyric like “I’m a man motherfucker, you’re half a fag,” it not only takes me out of the song, it fills me with disgust. It makes me instinctively push the skip button on my iPod. There's no rationalization I can come up with that will deaden the feeling that that absolutely revolting lyric gives me in my core, and frankly I don't think you should be able to contextualize away the chilling significance of lines like that.  Does it say something about me that I didn’t have that same gut reaction to the songs on the very same tape that mention beating up hookers? Probably, yeah, it does.

The thing is, at the end of the day, you can’t really control what you are and are not comfortable with in the media you consume.  I can’t outline the exact reasons why some kinds of violent lyrics bother me and others don’t, except to say that as someone who identifies as bisexual, those sentiments can't help but instill in me the impression that I am not welcome as part of the listening audience. More importantly, though, it gives me the impression that these men do not believe that we share the same common ground as human beings. 

That’s a weird thing to say, coming from a white suburban twentysomething (how many umpteenth million times have you read that qualifier when reading a blog post about hip-hop?) so I’ll give an example.

"You're on the side of faggots and cock blockers/I'm on the side of bad-ass kids and the top-notchers." Tyler, The Creator, "Nightmare"

One of my favorite albums of the past few years has been XV’s Zero Heroes. It wasn’t a concept album per se, but a lot of it dealt with how XV grew up in a small town, without a father and with few friends, and became dependent on comics and music to help make it through the most difficult times in his life. That describes my adolescence to a tee, and it was revelatory to hear someone rap about things I could relate to on such a personal basis-escaping into the variety of personas that music could afford you, feeling your jaw drop when you meet a pretty girl who’s into the same weird stuff as you...99.9% of that album is an honest, utterly relatable story that’s near impossible to find in any other kind of music. It’s the sort of personal, confessional storytelling that hip-hop does as well or better than any other kind of art there is.

And then there is one, almost unnoticeable line near the end of the last song on the album where XV says he’s “iller than a nigga on the DL.” For those not familiar with the term, “on the DL” usually means “in secret,” but it also refers to gay black men who haven’t come out of the closet. In context, there really aren’t a whole lot of things that line can mean: XV, mere feet from the finish line, made a “gay people have AIDS” reference. And so now I've got this notion hovering around in my head that this dude, who I’ve been listening to, who I’ve been relating to, who I’ve been bonding with in that way that can only be facilitated by great music, probably thinks my sexual orientation means I've got AIDS (because hey, bi basically means gay and I'm just too scared to commit to the label, right?). And that illusion of personable friendliness that had been built up over the course of fifty some-odd minutes reveals itself to me as just that: an illusion.

And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of having to treat the music I listen to like it’s a fucking minefield, sick of everyone making excuses for this hideous specter that no one can seem to exorcise, sick of having to steel myself when I listen to a song with a phenomenal beat and great lyrics, bracing for that horrific slur casually slid in like a razorblade in a scoop of ice cream. How do I reconcile what I like with who I am? What are the options here? Where’s my out? Do I tell them to stop? Do I just quit listening to things I love?

"Call me homophobic but you know it and I know it/You're filthy and funny to the utmost exponent."-A Tribe Called Quest feat. Brand Nubian, "Georgie Porgie"

“What friends does that leave me with?”

-CJ

The Shins' "Nothing At All" and Nihilism

We've long jokingly refereed to this as the nihilist song. I've got this ideal inside of me, but it's nothing at all. It's almost too funny, too straightforward, an upbeat song saying Hey Guys! There's Nothing At All! I've argued with friends about it, them saying that its about personal dissatisfaction and disenfranchisement. But somehow in the context of the shin's work (first three albums, at least) it looked to me as James slapping a nice melody to conceal that he really truly believed what he was saying. And in the five years of me thinking they'd never release a thing again, that they'd break up (they kinda did), it was the perfect post script to their career. The dropped last song on their last album, now only included as a bonus, as if to say "in case you didn't get it in the coded verse of the rest of our career, here it is for you, spelt out". "You want to put your trust in some solid thing? Yeah, it's a drug to us all". The record store clerk handed me a 7" record, for free, with it on the A and split needles alt take on the B, and as far as I can tell this particular combination isn't supposed to exist, I don't know why I have it.

Of course, this is not the first time the Shins have endorsed nihilism, or perhaps it's a brand of existentialism. The belief that there is no governing force to the universe, no spiritual ties that bind, and no meaning to life. That there is no fate, no god, no deeper reason to live, and perhaps even no love or happiness. In fact, the first seeds of this emptiness manifested on the opposite end of their discography, the first song on their first album. Caring is Creepy deals heavily in existential angst, images of walking naked in snow and feeling nothing, and hiding the fact you're dead again. Even the title shows this depressed detachment, as if to say "I don't care. Caring is creepy."

This trend is active throughout Oh Inverted World, the Shins' most cryptic album, notably on Know Your Onion's tale of teenage misanthropy. "When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters, we knew the worthless dregs we've always been". However, it took until the straightforward, poppy Chutes Too Narrow came out for it to really take off. It's been said that the album is made up one third of love songs, one third of break up songs, and one third of despaired philosophy. Saint Simon and Fighting in the Sack even seem to specifically deal with the meaninglessness of life and the falseness of religion. Fighting's second verse states "Most ideals turn to dust, there are few in which we all can trust. Haven't you noticed I've been shedding all of mine?" He suggests that the whole idea of meaning is just because we humans know that our fate is to die and vanish, and we intentionally believe something else so we won't have to deal with that. "The cruel uneventful state of apathy releases me. I value them but I won't cry every time one's wiped out".

However, there are love songs, which would perhaps suggest that he shifts more towards existentialism that nihilism (in a nutshell, that he believes the universe gives us no meaning, but we can give ourselves some). Though there is Gone For Good, about breaking off an engagement after finding "a fatal flaw in the logic of love", there is the incredible Those To Come to counter it. In it our man wakes up to a beautiful girl making tea in her underwear and through her sees the entire cycle of life in the universe, and seems ok with it. There are few things I've ever been able to identify with as much as this song. I am in love with this girl I've never met through James Mercer's eyes. He is amazed to see her "still prone to care", a dramatic contrast to the original title of Gone For Good: A Call To Apathy.

Snapped back from the relatively clear lyrics on Chutes, the third album drowns itself in symbolism and references, a dense thick shell to crack, and certainly the hardest to tell exactly what James is trying to say. So I can only tell you what I've got. Certainly Australia deals with a whole score of themes of meaninglessness, from it's opening lines questioning the depth of human's purpose on earth to the "selfless fool who'd hoped he'd save us all" holding you down. He talks about the dodo's and the android's conundrum, perhaps meaning the emptiness of wings without flight or living without true life. He wants to cry, but nothing happens anytime he tries. Phantom Limb begs us to "follow the lines and wonder why there's no connection".

Turn On Me deals out one of the most potent anti-love lines, and certainly the one that has had the most violent repercussions throughout my life, from the fifteen year-old who first heard it down to now. "Do affections fade away? Or do adults just learn to play the most ridiculous repulsing games?" There's a handful of other lyrics sprinkled throughout the album that could be on the same strand, but they could also mean dozens of other things so I try not to speculate more than I have already.

Of course this all leads up to A Comet Appears, where, far from the concluding song on their previous album, he looks into his heart and sees a numbness growing. "Every post you can hitch your faith on is a pie in the sky, chock full of lies, a tool we devise to make sinking stones fly."

And if you have the bonus track you're then suddenly hit with "I've got this ideal inside of me that we're nothing at all." "I'm just a shell as empty as can be. Yeah, I've got nothing at all." and the ending chant, upbeat, of

"There's noting at all

there's nothing at all

there's nothing at all

there's nothing at all"

-stuart

Tracking001

So I think we're about ready to start this site back up again, with some rearranging. Please bare with us as we try to lift this from a poorly taped together blog into a legitimate website for music aficionados. We founded Styrofoam Boots three years ago to try to find a view on music criticism that was lacking on the internet. Most online publications either veered towards a professional style, feigning objectivity and impersonal descriptions, something that does not exist when talking honestly about music. Or worse, some of them began to focus almost entirely on the social commentary they believed the music to be pushing, loosing all sight of emotion or personal philosophy. On the other side are most blogs and other online outlets, where people tend to disregard their responsibility to their audience, and instead get self-absorbed, spewing half formed and thrown away opinions. So we hope to land in between, people who feel the music very very much on an extremely personal level, but still hope to get across exactly why that's so, always taking risks with our taste without ignoring the simple things that just get to you. We hope to be like the friend that comes up to you and shouts "you have to hear this", and plays you something brilliant.

My name is Stuart, I am on the verge of being twenty one years old, I live in New York City, and my live has been defined by music. If you have any questions or anything you want to say to us, please leave a comment bellow, we'd love to hear from you.


So without more delay, let me introduce our singles column, Tracking, bringing your attention to any random solitary tracks that have been pulling on our ears and heartstring recently.

Trim - Confidence Boost (Harmonimix Remix)

It's odd that this song is quite as powerful as it is, dealing a swagger that's unlike anything you've heard before. It's not really the forward-pushing dynamic brute force of metal, not the aggression and confidence found in most hip hop, the kind of shouted violence of punk music, nor the wild push of most club music. What it has is something far more static, self-confidant force to it, singular and calm, but no less swagger than you could find anywhere else. I've started to use it as distinct evidence that experimental techniques can create a drop more destructive than the normal and that experimental hip-hop is not just a deconstructionists dream, but a suddenly-exploding field with nearly infinite possibilities.

Dirty Projectors - Gun Has No Trigger

I suppose it's mostly surprising for the Dirty Projectors to be doing something you want them to do. The band has built their legacy by willfully denying convention, taking the melody at a sudden turn just when you want it to break, holding things just painfully too long. And while that pattern busting ability is incredible, here they prove their worth when they stick to building a song. There's something here I've never found anywhere else, like an old noir tune cut out from time, with rising voices providing an affecting alternative to synths or guitar. I love almost everything this band has done, both for pure aesthetic reasons and also for the slight academic joys they send down my music nerd spine, but I'm never actually connected with one emotionally, and here I'm putting the song on repeat, all in.

Radiohead - Lotus Flower (Jacques Greene Remix)

Like the Dirty Projectors' standard work, here Jacques Greene plays a little bit with your mind as well as the undefined part of your brain that connects with music. Which is to say, you fall into a state of anticipation listening to this, the synths holding you in a kind of stasis, looking forward, waiting. And yet, unlike most ambient leaning dance music, somehow this anticipation is wholly pleasurable, I can even taste faint euphoria seeping in the back of my mind. I could wait forever.

Jacques Greene - Another Girl

Another Girl, however, is something else entirely. When you take a hard look at the independent-leaning dance scenes in London and LA right now something terrible becomes apparent. Though the music is brilliant and beautiful and forward thinking, you probably can't dance to it. Or at least your girlfriend's buddies won't want to, and it's not gonna start any parties. Another Girl might, though, finding itself at the only true post-dubstep banger aside from Hyph Mngo. Somehow it's able to fulfill almost everything dance music is intended for in an ideal universe. It can get you hyped for going out and it can also serve as the lovely comedown at the end of the night. It can start people shouting on the dance floor and waving their arms in the air, but it also feels delicate and kind on headphones.

DJ Elmore - Whea Yo Ghost At, Whea Yo Dead

Footwork hits like more fun noise music to me, churning away of the aggressive knots that build up in my misanthropic head. It's generally acknowledged to be the coolest and most boundary pushing thing going on today, yet even the critics seems to have trouble listening to it and people tell me to turn it off pretty damn quickly when it starts. I don't care. The most aggressive battle raps never got to the temples of my head like this, and even the ambient tracks (this one is the first cut off of Planet Mu's amazing compilation Bangs & Works Vol. 1) sound like nothing you've ever heard before. Just good luck learning the dance.

Drake featuring Lil Wayne - HYFR

Shlohmo dropped this during a dj set last week and I can't even tell you how much my brian swirled when the flow went to double time. Drake may be doing something incredible here, virtuosic, crafting lyrics about dissatisfactions with ex's and accidentally slipping I love you into drunken phone conversations with an absolutely weatherproof style. Mainstream hip-hop never gave signs of being able to produce something this awesome and heartfelt, and I am continuously aghast as the all of the lyrics slowly embed themselves into my memory. Hell Yeah Fucking Right.

1,2,3 - New Heaven

2011; Frenchkiss Records; Pittsburgh, PA

123land.net

I think it would be apt to discuss how I came upon 1,2,3 and their debut LP “New Heaven” before I really dig into the record. It was late, I was a little bit high, and I happened to be hanging out in a turntable.fm room hosted by The Antlers. There I sat, nervous and just a bit sweaty, keenly aware that I was chatting (oh so casually) with two of my favorite musicians, and getting a first hand taste of their respective music collections. The room, as far as I could tell, consisted of Peter Silberman (the Antlers’ frontman) Darby Cicci (their keyboardist) a Frenchkiss Records staffer, an odd assortment of fans and lurkers, and Holly Miranda who popped in and out sporadically. Count me old-fashioned, but none of this felt right to me at the time- like the rest of us of course, I’ve become accustomed to the internet’s slow euthanization of pop-stardom, but this, this direct contact, made me feel predominantly… queasy.

Seven odd years ago when I first downloaded The Shins’ “Chutes Too Narrow” from Limewire (and subsequently launched my first flat-out band mania) I never imagined that via the internet I would one day interact so flippantly, so casually, with one of my favorite bands. The whole Antlers thing felt so run of the mill, so banal, that in retrospect, it was almost boring- that’s not how the prospect of meeting and greeting my idols used to feel. When I think about just how normal and how boring the whole thing really was, I feel a very palpable malaise, and I’ve since lapsed into a spell of cynicism with regards to the pop music, and the popstar-killing blog culture that surrounds and defines it.

Putting aside the distress that this whole phenomenon has caused me (and the difficulty of reconciling the Antler’s extraordinary music with the reality of their overwhelmingly ordinary lives) it’s worth saying that it was in this very turntable.fm chatroom that I first encountered 1,2,3’s absolutely infectious single “Confetti.” And so I promptly opened a new tab, and quickly discovered two things: a name like 1,2,3 is infuriatingly “un-googlable” and 1,2,3’s “New Heaven” is a deliberate, cohesive, more-than-impressive debut LP that has me convinced of band’s talent. In my mind, good pop music should do a number of things: it should establish a new, unique voice that’s at once recognizable but inimitable, it should be simple enough to hook you within a listen or two but complex enough to take on a new character with each new listen, and it should have lyrical focus and depth that’s at once nuanced and general. 1,2,3 hits the mark on all counts.

Let’s not pretend for the sake of “journalistic integrity” that I didn’t glance over several reviews of “New Heaven” before sitting down to write this piece- especially today, when online critical outlets posses the eminent ability to make a band likable (more so, arguably, than bands posses themselves) critical reception is fair game for criticism. Pitchfork’s Ian Cohen writes of “New Heaven” “it's pure populism down to their lyrical concerns: girls, drinking, or being broke as fuck…” The drinking, the girls, the poverty- it’s all there, but its not as general, or as trendy sounding as Cohen would have you believe. It all feels real- everything on “New Heaven” rings true, as Snyder’s lyrical style deftly blends a gentle wit with keen observation, a bit of paranoia, a fear of stagnation and finally, cautious optimism. Most importantly, the record’s lyrics convey a clear and direct sense of uncertainty that lucidly elaborates the paradoxes of blog-pop, and displays an understanding of personal insignificance that is rarely- rarely- coupled with such satisfying pop music. At its best, the lyrical style of “New Heaven” seems to articulate exactly how it feels to be both a mostly unknown musician, and a bored, confused kid. The nuance of the lyrics, which require a bit of effort to pick out (especially because none of 1,2,3’s lyrics are available online [a rare thing, these days]) will not be lost on any aspiring musicians.

And that’s just the thing- the ears to which New Heaven will probably find its way, will largely belong, I predict, to aspiring pop musicians and/or critcs- it’s funny, but doesn’t it feel like that’s the way it goes these days? As pop music become easier and easier to make, produce and share, the people who really enjoy pop music are making it themselves, and sharing it, and for the most part its not half bad. So as the internet democratizes the sharing process, records like “New Heaven” seem to get lost in the noise; but it feels like 1,2,3 realizes all of this, and accepts it, and as a result, the record is infused with a knowing sadness, a kind of heavy shrug, that’s truly surprising and delightful. I count New Heaven among the best LPs of 2011 so far.

Quick Thoughts on Amy Winehouse's Death and the Vultures of the Rock Canon

It's hard for me to know how to feel about this.

On the one hand, I didn't care for Amy Winehouse's music particularly(she didn't drive me up the wall or anything, though) and I have no real connection with her work but it's always sad, for me at least, to see an artist die. Fewer voices in the world is never a good thing and it's always difficult to see someone spiral out of control with such finality, even if the writing had been on the wall for some time.

But my God are lazy rock journalists going to have a fucking field day with this. You know what's going to happen now, right? Back to Black is going to be lionized as a record for the ages, and dollars to donuts somebody at Rolling Stone is going to call her "this generation's Janis Joplin" or some other nonsense like that within the next year, and once that goes to print you're going to hear it parroted from coast to coast. A woman who had spent most of her career as a walking tabloid punchline is going to be a rock icon because she died at the same age Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain did.

I know this is going to happen, because I know that codger-rock journalists thrive on nothing if not comparisons, and even the flimsiest ties to their boyhood idols(let's face it, most of these people are dudes) helps them settle into their own tastes more comfortably, serves as a way of reviving the mysticism they perceived their generation's music had, and what they believe is absent from ours. It's not that I have a problem with this because I have some notion that she doesn't "deserve" to be placed at the same table as other music icons who died at the same age; rather, I'm disgusted at the hypocrisy of music journalism as a whole, and that such a table has so much power to give credence to one's career. In a lot of ways I think that's more disrespectful to her memory than any smarmy joke about her crack habit; it's like saying she wasn't worth being valued before she died at the same age "proper" rock icons did, therefore making her a "proper" rock icon herself. Nobody gave a Texas shit about her drug addiction before she kicked the bucket, except maybe to laugh at it, and now that she's dead we've all gotta trade in our chuckles for thoughtful grimaces, now that we've got some of that old-school rock 'n roll mystique to wallow in. If rock mythology has taught us anything it's that there's no type of self-destructive behavior we can't glamorize, once we don't have to feel responsible for it anymore.

I think if you cared about her and want to honor her memory, or even if you don't but just have the slightest sense of decency, cut the 27 Club bullshit and let the woman's work live and die by its own merits. Quit trying to turn a tragedy into a championship. If it takes someone's death to bring that classic rock radio magic back into your life then there is something seriously fucking wrong with the way you listen to music. There's a disconnect between who Amy Winehouse was when she was alive and who she is, and is going to be, now that she's dead, that I find extraordinarily unsettling. Why are our idols only worth showing some humanity towards once we see them as corpses?

-CJ

Bandcamp Roundup: Cheap/Free Doom Metal

With the recent releases of Indian's Guiltless and Witch Mountain's South of Salem I thought this would be a good time to give you the scoop on some of the free doom(or at least, doom-y) metal I've been downloading from Bandcamp. As you may know, Bandcamp is an incredible resource for wasting time and a surprising amount of unsigned bands that use the site are very talented. So without further ado, here's a list of doom bands/albums that you can scoop up with no damage to either your wallet or your conscience.

Dirty Knobs-Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell

Would you consider yourself a fan of avant-garde music? Maybe one who enjoys music that's somewhat intense, a bit off the beaten path? Well check this shit out, dude: Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell is Sunn O))) meets Arnold Schonberg meets My Bloody Valentine meets Skinny Puppy meets Nurse With Wound in an instrumental wall of sound that's as psychedelic and horrifying as it is beautiful. And how long is it, might you ask?

Eight hours.

This is men-from-the-boys material, folks, and if you think you're up to it the baseline price is only one dollar. Grab your nuts and pony up a buck for one of the most singular musical experiences you'll ever hear. It's a more-than-fair cost to hear evolution in the making.

Download Field Recordings From the Edge of Hell here.

Arms of Ra-Arms of Ra

Now this is the kind of thing I was really looking for when I first set out on my doomquest. Arms of Ra have made an E.P. that's as intense as it is sonically interesting, mixing the fury and at times even the technical elements of the Dilinger Escape Plan with the bold, sweeping riffs of early Isis. The guitarwork is as sharp as a knife and the rhythm section, though layered, slow and sludgy, betray a captivating complexity upon multiple listenings. Arms of Ra is a promising young band with the potential to uproot most of their contemporaries with the threat of a full length release. Most excellent.

Download Arms of Ra here.

KOLOSS-END OF THE CHAYOT

END OF THE CHAYOT (and yes, the album and band name is in all-caps) makes a pretty compelling case for why some people don't like post-metal. If you've heard a Neurosis album, or even a Mouth of the Architect album, you've heard more captivating versions of the songs KOLOSS attempts to carbon-copy. Some vaguely interesting guitar work can't make up for the fact that this band adds nothing to a scene that in many ways is rightfully accused of borrowing too much from itself. Weak.

Download END OF THE CHAYOT here.

Wizard Eye-Orbital Rites

Wizard Eye makes the exact type of music you'd expect a band called Wizard Eye to make, by which I mean it's extremely goofy and pretty kickass. The vocals sound way too close to Phil Ansemlo for comfort and in truth there's not much here you haven't heard before if you have even a casual relationship with stoner doom, but I'd be lying if I said it didn't fuckin' kick on several occasions and that it wasn't a pretty fun listen. Don't expect to have your mind blown and you might come out the end of this album having had a pretty swell time.

Download Orbital Rites here.

Cleansing the Damned-Cleansing the Damned

A little bit industrial, a little bit doom and a lot okay, Cleansing the Damned is an album that often comes out a bit cornier than it does despairing or scary. The growled vocals have absolutely no heft and the lyrics aren't so much tortured as they are wimpy. The best parts of this release are the total left turns, like the song "Stimuli", which is more or less a spoken-word piece set over a gnarly riff and a drum loop, and the closing, eleven minute instrumental. The mechanical parts work better than the death parts, and I think if this guy (as this is a one-man operation) focuses more on his industrial stuff his future releases will turn out a lot better. He's a good technician but can't pull off the emotional highs needed to drag us into his world.

Download Cleansing the Damned here.

Tempest-Passages

Agalloch is listed on Wikipedia as being "doom", and while I find that patently absurd I guess that if Agalloch can be considered to have doom elements Tempest can too. Passages is an intriguing mix of black metal vocals and huge, swirling riffs that come roaring out the gates with refreshing intensity. This is a band that was born to make a 15-minute opus, but the crust punk trappings on some of the songs, while great for energy, hold Tempest back from being the epic endeavor they should be. For a debut E.P., though? Pretty frickin' great.

Download Passages here.

Are you an artist who uses Bandcamp? Do you release your stuff for cheap, free or Name Your Price? No matter the genre, send me an email and I'll do my best to give you a review worthy of the time you spent making and distributing your work for little cost. If you're a Bandcamp artist who'd like to see your music reviewed on Styrofoam Boots, hit me up at chrismichaeljones@gmail.com and I'll give your stuff a listen.

-CJ

Why Sunn O))) Just Doesn't Work For Me

As time has worn on, I’ve found myself gravitating more and more towards the doom end of the metal spectrum, to the point where I’m willing to proclaim it my favorite subgenre in said spectrum. The louder, heavier, slower and longer the better(that’s what she said!). There’s very little in this little burg of extreme music that I won’t listen to-from the hard rock leanings of The Sword and Red Fang to the petrifying death attack of My Dying Bride and Ramesses to the just generally brain numbing stupidity of Bongzilla, it’s rare that I’ll find something that doesn’t appeal to me in some fashion or another.

More recently, I’ve found myself becoming drawn towards that most challenging of subterranean scenes, drone doom. Earth’s Special Low Frequency Version was the originator of the genre and has rocketed into my top 100 with startling speed. Likewise, Boris has plopped out a few masterpieces in this regard, and from what I’ve heard of them, Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine sounds exactly my speed. It seems that there’s just one last gate I have yet to crash through in fully understanding what is arguably one of the most intimidating types of music that is, and that gate is Sunn O))). Unfortunately, it’s a barrier that I don’t think will come down anytime soon.

I’ve been trying to figure out precisely what it is that pushes me away from Sunn O))), besides the obvious reason of having to type out that fucking name every time I bring them up. Interestingly, the guitarist for the group, Stephen O’Malley, plays for several other done bands that I’ve very much enjoyed, but time after time Sunn O)))’s appeal eludes me. There are two reasons I’ve come up with as to why they don’t work for me, and both are reasons that make the band somewhat antithetical to the ethos of drone as I personally understand it.

The first reason is that Sunn O))) play all of their songs in chunks. They are long chunks, mind you, generally no shorter than ten minutes but no longer than twenty five. Complaining that not-quite-half-an-hour is too short is something that only a total crazy person would do, and yet here I sit in my tinfoil hat, trying to get the moon on speed-dial. One of the ways I view drone doom is as the warped, demented twin brother of Romantic classical music. Both aim to be awe-inspiring in their scope and ambition, but where classical is technically intricate and ornate, drone is stagnant and repetitious. Whereas this era of classical attempts to achieve intensity through majesty, drone attempts the same feat through monolithic singularity. It attempts to drown the listener with a subtly morphing unity of Cyclopean ambition. In order to achieve this, drone doom is best delivered as a single song, generally 45 minutes or longer. If the listener is more willing to commit themselves for a long duration of time, the music has a greater chance of solidifying itself as a Goliath that demands total attention. Anything shorter and the song loses its power: a titanic epic simply turns into a man playing the same riff for far too long to be interesting and not long enough to have any sense of grandeur.

The second important reason why I think Sunn O))) is second to its contemporaries is because they don’t fully embrace the total minimalism that the genre needs to make itself so alien and captivating. Since Flight of the Behemoth, Sunn O))) has introduced elements such as classical orchestrations and intricate vocal arrangements to pile on top of their gigantic riffs. You might think that such flourishes would help keep the music from growing stale, but on the contrary, I think it strips away what makes the genre so appealing: That breathtaking, inescapable sense of immersion in utterly foreign and beguiling musical territory evaporates the moment I have something else to compare it to. For the same effect that Monoliths and Dimensions is aiming for, I could listen to the orchestral works of Krzysztof Penderecki. For the total horror of Black One I could get similar satisfaction from a Nurse With Wound album. If I want to hear the overwhelming, ear shattering guitar intensity that Earth’s Special Low Frequency Version offers, however, I don’t have any other alternatives. And if the sweeping buildup and haunting crescendo of Boris’ Flood were reliant on anything but three people squeezing every last drop of heavy out of their instruments, I wouldn’t have much reason to listen to that, either.

My point, overall, is this: I don’t dislike Sunn O))). But that said, I have no reason to listen to them. As a drone band, their contemporaries match them with a far greater level of commitment to the form. As ambient horror, many avant-garde classical and industrial groups have already beaten them to the punch at perfecting that sickening feeling of dread which is so necessary to making their music worthwhile. I don’t need both delivered at the same time, especially when they have the effect of watering each other down.

Do you disagree? Of course you do. Tell me why I’m a big fat idiot and Sunn O))) is the raddest.

-CJ

Another Stupid List: Kurt Cobain Cares About Your Childhood

"Man like remember when the music was real and shit, right after those gaywads from hair metal ruined everything and right before those gaywads from indie ruined everything and like people could actually play their guitars and still did like fuckin' solos and shit even if they didn't do them that well but like that's the whole point that like it's all from the fuckin' soul, man, the fuckin' soul because straight up record companies didn't exist back in the early '90s and everything was real and nothing was terrible and you had your first beer, do you remember your first beer? Fuckin' A man, they don't make 'em like that anymore."

If this is a thing you've ever found yourself thinking, you probably still read Rolling Stone Magazine, and you're probably one of the people who voted in their dumbass reader poll of the best albums of the '90s. Congratulations! You're terrible. Your prize is that you're terrible.

So, yeah, you know the drill. Here are ten albums that I, personally, would substitute in place of this foolishness. Waste your time! Waste my time! Be excited!

The Lonesome Crowded West-Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse Fanboy Picks Modest Mouse Album First, Surprises Nobody. If you needed a headline for a newspaper about little-read music blogs that would be a damn fine one, but I won't hear that this album hasn't earned its place as one of the giants of indie-rock. This is without question Modest Mouse's most expansive effort, careening from guitar epic "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" to tinges of IDM in "Heart Cooks Brain", through the blistering hard rock attack of "Doin' the Cockroach" and over the southern-rock style jam "Trucker's Atlas" and (almost) ending up at melancholy folk number "Bankrupt on Selling", there's a song here for every mood and situation. If it isn't Modest Mouse's masterpiece, it's a close runner-up and arguably their most re-listenable effort.

The Low End Theory-A Tribe Called Quest

As a white person, I'm required by law to love this album. But these laws exist for a reason! It feels downright foolish to try and describe why what many have described as the best hip hop album of all time is phenomenal, but The Low End Theory has very likely the best beat production of any album ever made, letting a stand up bass and kick drum fuel the rhythms with mellow-yet-booming minimalism. When you add in Phife and Q-Tip's distinct wit and verbal agility you have a cocktail that proves relaxing, intense and thought-provoking aren't mutually exclusive concepts. The ethos behind Quest's masterpiece would go on to fuel the ambitions of hundreds of future artists.

f#a#(infinity)-Godspeed You Black Emperor!

"The sun has fallen down, and the billboards are all leering, and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles." There's a reason their music was used in 28 Days Later: Godspeed You Black Emperor! is the soundtrack to a stroll through the barren wastes of Armageddon, and f#a#(infinity) is their most intense and challenging album. This is closer to classical music than rock in every respect-their commitment to majestic despair is so powerful as to require a small orchestra to convey as images of blotted landscapes and urban decay pass on the strings of violins and subtle guitar arrangements. Desolation never sounded so beautiful.

The Battle of Los Angeles-Rage Against the Machine

Where their self-titled debut ran on immensely captivating, if unfocused, fury, and Evil Empire was marred by bad production and poor songwriting, The Battle of Los Angeles emerges as Rage's magnum opus, a collection of battle-ready anthems that steamroll a thousand other comparably "heavy" bands. Tom Morello crafts electrifying riff after electrifying riff and Zach de la Rocha belts out the most piercing lyrics of his career as the rhythm section anchors the whole thing with grooves that would make you feel like dancing, if you weren't already throwing a Molotov cocktail through a store window. Prepackaged rebellion was huge in the music of the '90s, but for about half a second you could feel like breaking a cop's jaw might be a justifiable assault, and we have Rage Against the Machine to thank for that.

Slaughter of the Soul-At The Gates

Slaughter of the Soul forced heavy metal to up its game in a way that no album since Ride the Lightning had managed. It showed that you could be sad without being whiny, furious without being petulant, that your instrumentation could be brutal and bloodthirsty and technically magnificent without being dull and convoluted. Frankly, though, no explanation is necessary: All you need to do is crank up the title track to max volume and in the bat of an eye, you'll find the rest of your metal collection-shit, the rest of your music collection-hopelessly mundane. Slaughter of the Soul is a benchmark in extreme metal that has yet to be met or surpassed.

Angel Dust-Faith No More

Straddling the line between mainstream radio metal and avant-garde insanity, Angel Dust is one of the mos curiously inscrutable albums of the early '90s. It takes a few listens to notice everything about this album: the neurotic-bordering-on-depraved lyrics, Billy Gould's funk from hell basslines, the lush keyboards, the way in which an easy to spot hit can morph into a psychotic monster of a song almost without you noticing. In truth, even once you find yourself appreciating Angel Dust, its appeal will still be difficult to explain. Maybe that's the key, though. It's easy to dismiss, difficult to understand, yet with time it'll hold such mysterious power of you that you'll wonder how nobody else seems to recognize what a work of genius it is.

Rust in Peace-Megadeth

"Holy Wars...The Punishment Due".

That is all.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea-Neutral Milk Hotel

To say that In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was ahead of its time would be an overstatement akin to saying that the Vietnam war was pretty lame, or that Keith Moon was a good drummer. Every indie, folk, and indie/folk album that came out in the past decade owes this album a debt that they can never possibly repay. Jeff Mangum's lyrics have a sinister, sexual, whimsical bent that would make William Butler Yeats nod in approval, and the melodies are so lush and heart wrenching that you might not have even noticed the words if Mangum's voice weren't impossible to ignore. It could be called psychedelic, but In the Aeroplane Over the Sea doesn't choose to explore the vastness of the cosmos; rather, it plucks out the strangeness of the soul. I have a feeling that even at this stage we're not through seeing the influence of this album spread, but if even one artist manages to capture weirdness and beauty of this masterpiece, that'll be one more artist than I was expecting to do so.

Repeater-Fugazi

It's a shame that one of punk's defining albums would come at the tail end of the genre's widespread relevance. Still, Repeater is the album that should've redefined and carried punk forward in the wake of grunge. One thing that's immediately noticeable is that Fugazi doesn't sacrifice technicality for raw emotion: Every instrument is expertly played and, in particular, some of the basslines defy belief. That doesn't mean a single ounce of fury and frustration is left out, though, as Guy Piccioto blends noise and prog influences into his scathingly fast riffs and Ian MacKaye howls like a bus fell on his leg. Despite the quizzical lyrics and deft musicianship, Repeater is an album that's impossible to sit still to, combining everything amazing about punk and cutting the fat while blending outside influences with unmatched skill. An indispensable part of any music lover's discography.

Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star

This may be yet another entry in the "Rap White People Love" pantheon, but there's a solid reason that people of all walks of life are still pissed at Mos Def and Talbi Kweli for not making a Black Star 2, and that reason is that this album fucking rules. Def and Kweli spend the majority of the album mocking the rise of gangsta rap and attempting to both dispel stereotypes and defend their sovereignty as black men. It would be horribly condescending if any other group tried to pull it off, but luckily the pair has the chops to pull it off, spitting rhymes with unmatched flow and producing minimal beats in the A Tribe Called Quest tradition while adding a verve and youthful energy that's distinctly their own. Like Slaughter of the Soul did for metal, Black Star became, and remains, the alt. rap album to beat, leaving a wrecked trail of Digable Planets and Arrested Developments in their wake.

...Man, one of these days I'm going to have to do something other than shit out a list. I won't let you down, readers!

-CJ

140bpm, 110hz

What does dubstep even mean? I guess that's the question. And really it's the question that makes me feel most like a douche bag. Why? Because in answering that question I must reveal my absolute hate for the ten thousand american college students that have become obsessed with the genre over the last year, even though I know they're just trying to have a good time. I have to declare that what they think it means and what it really means are two different things. I have to make the douchy declaration that there is such thing as "real" dubstep as opposed to what they're listening to, dubbed, dickishly enough, brostep. And so the masses hate me.

But it goes further. Those in the know have a full other reason to hate me. Because in discussing dubstep I show my colors as one of the douchiest music cliches of the last fifteen years - the american indie kid obsessed with british dance music. There it is. I am. I'm sorry.

So, fuck it. What is dubstep? Is it dirty dirty homogeneous mid rage worble music, played by frat kids and ironically by hipsters everywhere? no. Just....no. I mean...that is something that these days is called dubstep (in america at least), but lets just ignore that for now. Real dubstep takes it's roots back to the drum and bass music of the 90's, when UK ravers on a lot of drugs started to realize that if you scatter the beats it makes everything feel less solid, more psychedelic. They realized that with dance tracks there didn't need to even be a melody, that the snare hits and bass lines could carry everything. This soon got pulled down and warped into an even subtler, cooler, slightly more party-centric genre of UK garage, or 2-step. Flowing with bright textures, R&B vocals and dun-chick....dunchick beats thinks started getting sublime.

And then....slow it down to 140bpm, add heavy heavy sub bass lines, mix in the darkest most off-putting aspects of dub reggae, toss in a bit of absolutely any other genre you want, and you've got dubstep. Dance music that weights on you, listen to enough of it and it starts rearranging your brainwaves. Slows your pulse, steals your breath. And it keeps growing. What started with Digital Mystikz has moved through the tribal noise music of Shackleton, through the glitch and IDM territory of Mount Kimbie, the Techno influence of Scuba, the ambient rave of Joy Orbison. Blink and something incredible and new will have happened in the scene.

So...where to start? Since it's realease Burial's Untrue has been the rock kid's ticket to ride. Beautiful and entrancing in every way, it takes a significant number of listens to get used to but then there's no turning back. Then theres the whole new guard of more indie leaning step - Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Darkstar, Joy Orbison - would be the next step, they're more immediately interesting, and often stunningly incredible, though they lack the subliminal elements that make the more ambient club tracks feel like god. And after that, just keep digging down, around every corner I seem to find something else incredible. Or don't, you may just end up feeling like a douche bag.

can't take my eyes off you

1. Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica

The date is December 17, 2004. I am 13 years old. During a period where I was bedridden due to debilitating back pain, I have reached my trembling, nervous hands into the world of music. One of the first things they grasped was Modest Mouse’s Good News For People Who Love Bad News (an album that deservedly earned a place on this list as well). I fell in love immediately: Traditional verse-chorus-verse structures abandoned? Catchy guitar playing? And…trumpets? What brazen oddity! Naturally, I wanted more, and debated using my limited funds to purchase another Modest Mouse album that seemed promising, the one that rests on the top space of this list.

At this point, 2004 had been the hardest year of my life. It was about to get much harder.

My parents were divorced, and the arrangement was that we saw my father Tuesdays and Thursdays and on alternate weekends. Due to the car accident which rendered me crippled, he had been unable to see me and my brother for smaller and smaller increments of time and on fewer days. For many years he had been trapped in a whirlpool of prescription drugs and alcoholism, and this was the day we all found that he had finally been pulled under, once and for all. My mother answers the phone at 10 PM. Uneasy horror spreads across her face as the call continues and when she hangs up, she turns to my brother and me and says, “Boys, this is the hardest thing I will ever have to tell you. Your father is dead.”

At this point-I don’t even really know why-I felt the need to buy The Moon and Antarctica. Maybe I could control this one thing. Maybe this one thing could bring peace, halt the deafening silence bursting from the front of my head to the back. That night, it did not. But in the weeks, months and years to come, I found it to be necessary and significant in a way that no piece of art had or ever will be able to match again.

I tell you this background not to illicit sympathy, or to say that my personal connection to this album is the reason that it is deemed album of the past ten years and my personal favorite album of all time. Quite the contrary.

The extraordinary thing here is that The Moon and Antarctica would still be #1 even if none of this had ever happened to me.

This is an album crafted by man and infused with the blood of specters. One does not consider the instruments or the songwriting while listening to this album. Those thoughts occur afterwords. When listening to The Moon and Antarctica, the experience is that of oneness, of every plucked string and enunciation forming a perfect whole that sweeps over the listener as a wave of moondust. Breaking the album down into a song-by-song basis is impossible even as each song stands on its own and makes its mark in a way that completes the listening experience. Each note is a fiber made to create a blanket that covers the earth yet warms you as though you were the only living thing in existence.

The Moon and Antarctica, in the end, is a treatise on the hypocrisy, greed, malice and sloth of the living man, and how all of these things cease to matter once the vaguest hint of perspective comes into play. We travel from assertions of good and of higher power that renders human worries irrelevant (“3rd Planet” and “Gravity Rides Everything”), wander through confused philosophizing (“The Stars are Projectors”) and end, curiously enough, with bitterness and rage (“Life Like Weeds”, “What People are Made Of”). The message couldn’t be clearer: Isaac Brock leaves the album knowing less than he did when he started it, and the listener is implicated in this crime of obfuscation. Yet the listener cannot help but agree with the songs, whether they espouse bitter common truths (“Well it took a lot of work to be the ass I am/And I’m real damn sure that anyone can equally, easily, fuck you over”) or ruminations on the banality of typical communication (“All this talking all the time and the air fills up, up, up until there’s nothing left to breathe, up until there’s nothing left to speak, up until the data parts in space”). We are all to blame, and if realizing that won’t solve everything, it’ll certainly be a step in the right direction.

I suppose that’s the most impressive thing about The Moon and Antarctica. Modest Mouse, throughout their career, have had a tendency to make you acknowledge parts of yourself you didn’t know were there, acknowledge truths that you didn’t know were real. Therefore, unlike many other masterpieces, The Moon and Antarctica is not exceptional for its introspection. Rather than take pieces of from inside itself and display them, it removes them from the listener, gently but firmly, and tells you, “See here. This is what you think, even if you didn’t think it. This is what you feel, even if you didn’t feel it. And this is what you know, even if you don’t know it.”

In other words, Isaac Brock writes, sings and plays his guitar. Jeremiah Green drums. Eric Judy plays his bass. And somewhere, during all of this, you learned. You discovered.

Art can do no greater.

-CJ

2. The Antlers - Hospice

I was in a state of emotional stagnation earlier on in the year, feeling bored and not particularly inclined to feel either happy or sad to any noticeable degree. If it's not too cliché to say so, I was numb. I then listened to Hospice and it all came back. I started feeling again simply because of this music. Hospice is so incredibly depressing and well executed that it becomes hard to listen to, despite being melodically and texturally flawless. It's evocative in the truest sense.

One of the reasons that The Antlers manage to be so emotionally striking is their undeniable authenticity. And truly, authenticty is such a vital part of their emotional impact because of how connected the music is to the songwriter and band. You can feel their personal emotions seeping through. Because The Antlers manage to make otherwise interesting and distinctive sound elements they use (i.e, shoegaze tones, pop melodies) as a secondary, instead of primary focus of their music, the listener can really focus on the songwriting and what the songs are actually trying to get across - the songwriting holds up the music, not vice-versa. The band tie in textural elements frequently found in post rock and shoegaze soundscaping, and integrates them with more conventional songwriting and vocal deliveries, in a way that doesn’t simply sound like an amalgamation of different influences. In other words, The Antlers define their own sound by having evolved far beyond the process of extracting elements from other bands and utilizing them for aesthetic appeal.

Hospice also seamlessly integrates the lyrical content and narrative with the instrumentation. Although there is no sampling used on the album, the sounds themselves is enough to evoke imagery directly correlated to the lyrical content. On the second track, Kettering, the melancholy is instantly established far before you hear any lyrics, starting with minimal upright piano playing, and whispery and strained singing fluctuating in and out of falsetto. Directly after the lines “And I didn't believe them when they told me that there was no saving you”, a cathartic burst of synthesizer drone, a marching band snare beat, and airy reverberated vocals permeate auditory space. Although Kettering is a common example of using pronounced instrumentation to accent a lyrical point, it’s to be noted that The Antlers are the absolute masters of this craft, and tonality is perfectly matched with entire songs, evoking the cold sterility of hospital rooms with synthesizer melodies that recall an electrocardiogram, background tones that sound like the hums of a ventilation system, and guitars and pianos that guide the more ambient elements into the catastrophic mental states that Hospice exemplifies.

This may sound like a limited critique of what we consider the number two album of the decade, but at the same time, with these two elements I’ve described of The Antlers, it’s hard to not realize how distinctively brilliant they are when compared to the rest of the music that has come out in the decade. Watching someone die and feeling a part of you die inside is something that can’t be described in text, and if it could, a musical form to convey such a thing wouldn’t be necessary. The Antlers do something strange to the listener that I can’t even place in words; it’s not merely depressing listening session, it’s almost a completely different experience.

-Adrian

3. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

Expanding and brightening the grim apocalyptic visions of their first album F#A (infinity), Lift Your Skinny Fists stretches out comfortably into what was once firmly prog rock turf—a double album consisting of only four songs (well, “suites,” more like)—and manages to make all eighty some odd minutes count.

After the heavily ironic and snarky pastiche of the ‘90s, Godspeed ushered in a once-promising new era with one of the most grandiose, emotionally resonant and dramatically ambitious pieces of ear cinema ever made. Regardless of what you think of this Canadian mini-orchestra’s anarcho/Marxist/anti-capitalist views, the main statement of this album is rejection of a cold and cynical modern world—taking the place of lyrics are audio snapshots of preachers at the height of religious fervor, an old man reminiscing about Coney Island’s lost grandeur, and schoolchildren singing in French framed by glorious sweeps of strings, guitar, and horns backed by thundering drums. From the opening fade-in of “Storm” to the cosmic choir of heavenly drones finishing the album, this is BIG music and totally unapologetic about that fact, with crescendos that will make you fall apart sobbing, shaking your fist at the sky and everything in between and if you’re not cranking this to volumes normally reserved for B-52’s on takeoff, you’re doing it wrong.

However, details are not lost in the volume or instrumental density and Godspeed know how to employ each and every instrument for maximum effect—take for example, the few sad, droning piano notes accompanying a distant squelched voice at the end of “Storm”; a swell of mournful violin underscoring a crazed preacher and the screaming guitar lead that takes the crescendo of “Static” to Olympic heights; the Krautrock-like drumming accompanying the guitar and string turmoil at the end of “Sleep”; the rustic, Floydian melody in the middle of “Antennas to Heaven”… I could go on and on, and the band pulls all this off without a hint of pretention, detractors be damned.

Simply put, a more epic album does not exist in this decade, or most others for that matter. This is music for the last concert hall on Earth.

-Stephen