Do you love, hate or play the accordion? My friend Maria is conducting a survey about accordions for her MA project. Take 2 minutes and fill it out!
Do you love, hate or are a virgin? My friend Toby just sent me an email about this messed up case of Virgin Enterprises forcing people who use a 'virgin word string' for their companys/urls to give the urls to the company. The fashion designer Virgin Threads is fighting back. Take a second to read up and let other people know if you're into this whole free culture movement, as per Lawrence Lessig or Kembrew.
6.27.2005
6.23.2005
sublet my apartment for august 2005, ya
Do you or someone you love need an August sublet in Williamsburg? I will surely be in Praha for the month and looking to not pay rent. Help a sister out.
Loving: Mariah Carey, Decomposure, Colleen, Wolf Parade, the second 1/2 of the New Pornographers record, windsor for the derby's newest. Are they the best band who sucks live?
Also, went to see Annie Gosfield at John Zorn's new place The Stone, which is as intensely sparse and raw as the website is puritanical. My friend Nitsuh brought in a Red Bull and I half thought Zorn himself would fly down from the low ceiling and snatch it away saying, "music...not...ENERGY!!!!' Her "Manufacture of Tangled Ivory," for sampler, drums, bass and cello got me rocking prog, so I've been listening to early Genesis and frankly mostly loving it.
Disappointing: New Benzos, Billy C (ya ya I know), Metalux.
Exciting: Played music with six other people last night at Ultra on 30th street - my friend Katie's friends who do this Yo La Tengo/Pavement/Slowdive thing. Only their second practice and things sounded pretty good. I was on cello, and for the first time actually played with people who stopped and turned down their own instruments because they couldn't hear me - Imagine!
Loving: Mariah Carey, Decomposure, Colleen, Wolf Parade, the second 1/2 of the New Pornographers record, windsor for the derby's newest. Are they the best band who sucks live?
Also, went to see Annie Gosfield at John Zorn's new place The Stone, which is as intensely sparse and raw as the website is puritanical. My friend Nitsuh brought in a Red Bull and I half thought Zorn himself would fly down from the low ceiling and snatch it away saying, "music...not...ENERGY!!!!' Her "Manufacture of Tangled Ivory," for sampler, drums, bass and cello got me rocking prog, so I've been listening to early Genesis and frankly mostly loving it.
Disappointing: New Benzos, Billy C (ya ya I know), Metalux.
Exciting: Played music with six other people last night at Ultra on 30th street - my friend Katie's friends who do this Yo La Tengo/Pavement/Slowdive thing. Only their second practice and things sounded pretty good. I was on cello, and for the first time actually played with people who stopped and turned down their own instruments because they couldn't hear me - Imagine!
6.21.2005
xtian rock
Don't normally do this, but am posting directly about my piece in this week's City Pages, on xtian rock. I went through a few rewrites on it and moved from first person essay to trying to take the idea of secular listening to spiritual music in general. Thoughts?
6.09.2005
seal the envelope, mail it to myself
I daphne carr being of mostly sound mind and body do hereby declare that I had a pennyfarthing bicycle tattoo long before this video and that I am in fact only psychically related to Billy Corgan by two coincidences of the oeuvre and one adolescent obsession. Okay, and post-adolescence. When does that end?
That said, this video is very bad. It's like all the playful early cinema that made the Méliès homage of "Tonight, Tonight" something beautifully overwrought into a chinsy undergrad final cut pro project. Also, I loved the top hat on Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire, but that was umm, over 10 years ago. Everyone knows that vampires now look like Aaliyah. Which is another thing - Billy Corgan keeps getting more white, while his press releases (at least) keep stressing how black his roots are, at least, how house his Chicago was - which is a striking difference from when he used to talk about how Cheap Trick his hometown was while still using blues structures. Go figure. Maybe his wounds will heal and he'll go find a babe to marry in the rainforest.
about not art about industry:
Also, I got the CD today. This is the first time I've ever gotten promo with one of those perferated tops like that of 1) a cereal box or 2) plastic wrap, and which by my tearing off apparently means that I have agreed to their "restricted release" policy, printed on the package, reminding me of Sasha's "Just Say No" to listening parties post on his blog. The packaging actually reads:
By opening or using this CD, the authorized recipient and his/her organization ("you") agree as follows. If you do not agree, notify us at once at 1-866-367-5413 to arrange for return of the unopened CD. [that part was in bold] Until the CD release date, this CD is to be listened to solely by the authorized recipient, and you agree not to reproduce, transmit, distribute or otherwise make the music on this CD available to any third party. Therafter, this CD may not be resold, but my be used in any manner consistent with copyright law. At all times, you must agree to keep this CD safe from unauthorized use....
I would be beyond curious to know if it were actually illegal for me to a) play this CD to my roommate right now or b) play this CD at a DJ gig right now. Also, from a totally annoying 'what does writing mean' standpoint, why is it okay for me to WRITE about the CD before it comes out, but not to even PLAY it for someone else? I mean, isn't reviewing a CD 'making it available' in some ways, to other people? Luckily Kembrew is coming to town (how envious am I of someone whose first name googled pulls up their stuff? Star power!) and he will likely have the answers. Actually, shit, I'll just call the number tomorrow and ask them. Stay tuned adbusters nerds...
That said, this video is very bad. It's like all the playful early cinema that made the Méliès homage of "Tonight, Tonight" something beautifully overwrought into a chinsy undergrad final cut pro project. Also, I loved the top hat on Brad Pitt in Interview with the Vampire, but that was umm, over 10 years ago. Everyone knows that vampires now look like Aaliyah. Which is another thing - Billy Corgan keeps getting more white, while his press releases (at least) keep stressing how black his roots are, at least, how house his Chicago was - which is a striking difference from when he used to talk about how Cheap Trick his hometown was while still using blues structures. Go figure. Maybe his wounds will heal and he'll go find a babe to marry in the rainforest.
about not art about industry:
Also, I got the CD today. This is the first time I've ever gotten promo with one of those perferated tops like that of 1) a cereal box or 2) plastic wrap, and which by my tearing off apparently means that I have agreed to their "restricted release" policy, printed on the package, reminding me of Sasha's "Just Say No" to listening parties post on his blog. The packaging actually reads:
By opening or using this CD, the authorized recipient and his/her organization ("you") agree as follows. If you do not agree, notify us at once at 1-866-367-5413 to arrange for return of the unopened CD. [that part was in bold] Until the CD release date, this CD is to be listened to solely by the authorized recipient, and you agree not to reproduce, transmit, distribute or otherwise make the music on this CD available to any third party. Therafter, this CD may not be resold, but my be used in any manner consistent with copyright law. At all times, you must agree to keep this CD safe from unauthorized use....
I would be beyond curious to know if it were actually illegal for me to a) play this CD to my roommate right now or b) play this CD at a DJ gig right now. Also, from a totally annoying 'what does writing mean' standpoint, why is it okay for me to WRITE about the CD before it comes out, but not to even PLAY it for someone else? I mean, isn't reviewing a CD 'making it available' in some ways, to other people? Luckily Kembrew is coming to town (how envious am I of someone whose first name googled pulls up their stuff? Star power!) and he will likely have the answers. Actually, shit, I'll just call the number tomorrow and ask them. Stay tuned adbusters nerds...
6.07.2005
Mutek as a newbie
Montreal:
Amazing city with not but two sets of world spectacle residuals - the '76 Olympics and the Expo 67 - for me to visit and photograph in my catalog of distopian modernist architecture. Went to the biosphere and biodome, where little French-Canadian children kept running around shrieking 'le penguin!!!!!' which is actually adorable, as are most things shrieked in what would otherwise be totally out-of-context (how often can you shout 'the penguin' and be referencing something in the room?) that starts with Le.
Mutek:
Ahh, the small festival, seeing the same freaks for days on end, the sense of focused thought. As pointed out in car-full-of-music-journos (which was odd when doing the border crossing 'what do you all do for a living?' ummm...write about music? i thought they'd shut us out for sure (we know what you think about Celine Dion - banished!) it was a split between head and heart, or should i say, the basement experiments and the rest of the house.
Was psyched to see Diane Labrosse not just because she was one of two women on stage for THE WHOLE FESTIVAL but because her low-menace super sharp premordial mix of tones (electronic music suited to the movements of t.rex back when his claims of world dominance were unchallenged) stood out from first two days of rumble-and-click boys for its sense of balance across the whole event, just just lamely building up like it's the damn golden section then retreating.
Loved the first half of Apparat's set, all these huge sheets of warm synths over shuttled beats, just epic and hard but enveloping, too much, too much - it settled down to bugged out darkness and more straightforward beats and just went on. Other people liked the second half better, ehh.
Liked also Mathew Jonson's set at Metropolis, which became the best part of the night since Ricardo Villalobos "missed his flight" (apparently the third time this has happened to Mutek events, curious). Funny but sort of restrained take on his monster-y hooks and wiggy pads - had the whole crowd bouncing before Adam Heart came on with Luciano to do this weird Funk carioca-sounding beat for 10 minutes before dropping some rapped vocals I didn't recognize but will for the rest of my life after having them drilled into my head for the rest of the set. One carpooler actually fell asleep during the set, dear readers. Yikes.
All this said, I am really only beginning to understand the microdistinctions of techno and house in such a way as to hear the movements along a laptop set in terms of genre instead of the dread non-intellect of aural response, i.e. I'm new to inside listening and often felt completely out of the conversation because I couldn't frame my thoughts in genre-terms. Yes, it takes me a little to write this on my blog since admitting ignorance is not something music journalists or bloggers like to do, but it's true. I am new to these genres, and went to Mutek to get excited and figure out where I should go next after loving Ellen Allien, Villalobos, and the new Juan Maclean but not digging the new Michael Mayer and thinking, 'this should clear the air for me.' It did, but not by chat, by listening. Great yet odd for me.
One conversation I had with a dance music aesthete led me to the disturbing thought that people still can't get past the frustration with 'the tyranny of the beat,' the structure by which the body ingests sound and makes sense of it. The beat is not rythmn, but they are intimately related, and rhythm has alternately been chastized or celebrated in nearly every progressive music music movement of the century, but ultimately, physiologically, is it not what connects sound to body?
A few weeks ago at Webster Hall I bumped into three girls in the bathroom. They were coming in from downstairs at the club and ran right into me - I really annoyed at them and kept my eye on them because they were laughing hysterically but not making any sound - laughing sooo hard at running into me? No, they were deaf, and laughing at something else. And out dancing at a huge club. This tells me something about what the beat does to the body that is powerful and important.
And this is where the story begins and ends for now...
Amazing city with not but two sets of world spectacle residuals - the '76 Olympics and the Expo 67 - for me to visit and photograph in my catalog of distopian modernist architecture. Went to the biosphere and biodome, where little French-Canadian children kept running around shrieking 'le penguin!!!!!' which is actually adorable, as are most things shrieked in what would otherwise be totally out-of-context (how often can you shout 'the penguin' and be referencing something in the room?) that starts with Le.
Mutek:
Ahh, the small festival, seeing the same freaks for days on end, the sense of focused thought. As pointed out in car-full-of-music-journos (which was odd when doing the border crossing 'what do you all do for a living?' ummm...write about music? i thought they'd shut us out for sure (we know what you think about Celine Dion - banished!) it was a split between head and heart, or should i say, the basement experiments and the rest of the house.
Was psyched to see Diane Labrosse not just because she was one of two women on stage for THE WHOLE FESTIVAL but because her low-menace super sharp premordial mix of tones (electronic music suited to the movements of t.rex back when his claims of world dominance were unchallenged) stood out from first two days of rumble-and-click boys for its sense of balance across the whole event, just just lamely building up like it's the damn golden section then retreating.
Loved the first half of Apparat's set, all these huge sheets of warm synths over shuttled beats, just epic and hard but enveloping, too much, too much - it settled down to bugged out darkness and more straightforward beats and just went on. Other people liked the second half better, ehh.
Liked also Mathew Jonson's set at Metropolis, which became the best part of the night since Ricardo Villalobos "missed his flight" (apparently the third time this has happened to Mutek events, curious). Funny but sort of restrained take on his monster-y hooks and wiggy pads - had the whole crowd bouncing before Adam Heart came on with Luciano to do this weird Funk carioca-sounding beat for 10 minutes before dropping some rapped vocals I didn't recognize but will for the rest of my life after having them drilled into my head for the rest of the set. One carpooler actually fell asleep during the set, dear readers. Yikes.
All this said, I am really only beginning to understand the microdistinctions of techno and house in such a way as to hear the movements along a laptop set in terms of genre instead of the dread non-intellect of aural response, i.e. I'm new to inside listening and often felt completely out of the conversation because I couldn't frame my thoughts in genre-terms. Yes, it takes me a little to write this on my blog since admitting ignorance is not something music journalists or bloggers like to do, but it's true. I am new to these genres, and went to Mutek to get excited and figure out where I should go next after loving Ellen Allien, Villalobos, and the new Juan Maclean but not digging the new Michael Mayer and thinking, 'this should clear the air for me.' It did, but not by chat, by listening. Great yet odd for me.
One conversation I had with a dance music aesthete led me to the disturbing thought that people still can't get past the frustration with 'the tyranny of the beat,' the structure by which the body ingests sound and makes sense of it. The beat is not rythmn, but they are intimately related, and rhythm has alternately been chastized or celebrated in nearly every progressive music music movement of the century, but ultimately, physiologically, is it not what connects sound to body?
A few weeks ago at Webster Hall I bumped into three girls in the bathroom. They were coming in from downstairs at the club and ran right into me - I really annoyed at them and kept my eye on them because they were laughing hysterically but not making any sound - laughing sooo hard at running into me? No, they were deaf, and laughing at something else. And out dancing at a huge club. This tells me something about what the beat does to the body that is powerful and important.
And this is where the story begins and ends for now...
6.01.2005
"They ripped us off," said Gibby.
Saw the Flaming Lips docu "Fearless Freaks" last night at Pioneer. I remember another docu abt them I saw at CMJ a while back, and thinking it was pretty silly and not very good, and well, Beesley goes way to the other side being as not-silly as possible. The whole middle sequence about Steve's heroin addiction sort of fails at treating the brittle space between success and personal self-worth with any sort of coherence - it just meanders on, bluntly showing Drozd shooting up and endless shots of Wayne saying 'there's nothing I can do." The whole white-trash rags to riches but don't forget who we are is told in this sort of bated breath too, just not subtle at all.
Also, c'mon, right, where would Flaming Lips have been without Beavis & Butthead? It was a lop-rank novelty hit before that show rerunned all through the summer of 1994. No mention in the film, weird.
Other stuff:
Army hip hop on CD Baby. Judge for your self, the pages advertises, "REAL SOLDIERS!!! REAL WAR!!! And for the first time ever... REAL MUSIC!!!" Me, I quite enjoy all the fake civilian peace music.
Matos' Jukebox Jury with USE, ya it's old but I've been like, busy.
If you have any cool DIY/underground materials that you don't want, think about donating them to The Counterculture Archive at George Washington University. They are working with Tamizdat to preserve old Czech music and documents from the communist era. Cool.
MY OTHER NEWS:
Just did an interview with John Maclean for Grooves. He said that his whole album comes from listening to 10cc's "I'm Not In Love." Download and compare: scary!
Am going to MUTEK tomorrow. Are you going? Are you there? Let me know, but I won't be answering my cell for much cause it's freakin' expensive. Text me. Will be with awesome posse Geeta, Amy and Nick. Out of contact until Monday night - vacation!
Also, c'mon, right, where would Flaming Lips have been without Beavis & Butthead? It was a lop-rank novelty hit before that show rerunned all through the summer of 1994. No mention in the film, weird.
Other stuff:
Army hip hop on CD Baby. Judge for your self, the pages advertises, "REAL SOLDIERS!!! REAL WAR!!! And for the first time ever... REAL MUSIC!!!" Me, I quite enjoy all the fake civilian peace music.
Matos' Jukebox Jury with USE, ya it's old but I've been like, busy.
If you have any cool DIY/underground materials that you don't want, think about donating them to The Counterculture Archive at George Washington University. They are working with Tamizdat to preserve old Czech music and documents from the communist era. Cool.
MY OTHER NEWS:
Just did an interview with John Maclean for Grooves. He said that his whole album comes from listening to 10cc's "I'm Not In Love." Download and compare: scary!
Am going to MUTEK tomorrow. Are you going? Are you there? Let me know, but I won't be answering my cell for much cause it's freakin' expensive. Text me. Will be with awesome posse Geeta, Amy and Nick. Out of contact until Monday night - vacation!
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