Nonwrestler Blog

Never knew 'White Lines' was just a massive rip-off

Liquid Liquid's 'Cavern':



It's so much more interesting too - so live, and weird sounding.

The backstory of the rip-off action on this history of 99 Records is interesting too. Scroll down to the bit about the single "Optimo / Cavern".

Always amazes me to read about these "obscure" songs and then read passing comments that e.g. this song sold more than 30,000 copies at the time. Holy shit. If I could sell a 10th of that I'd be so stoked.

Labels: music, youtube

Posted at 07:57  3 Comments Links to this post

Finding Nemo's sex

Just read on the oh so reliable Wikipedia page about clownfish that they are all born male and change sex. So apparently Nemo's dad should've taken over as Nemo's mum after his wife died in the movie.

Seems kinda funny that famously conservative Disney made a movie about a naturally sex-changing fish. I'd love it if there were a sequel in which Nemo is a girl, but where that's just completely incidental to the plot...

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 22:39  0 Comments Links to this post

weekly mp3 #10: Antiguo Autómata Mexicano - Broken In Your Room Again

This track is part of a Background Records sampler on the now defunct Minlove site. Well, it may come back some time, but it's been out of action since 2006, so maybe not.

I have fairly minimal love for "minimal" where it's a stand-in for "techno" now that that term is relatively uncool. 'Broken In Your Room Again's not really so techno, it's lead by the bassline more than the beat and spiralling arpeggios and echoing layers of percussion don't exactly cry out "dancefloor fodder". It is electronic music of the right kind of tempo, I guess. Anyway, I like it.

Antiguo Autómata Mexicano is one guy, Ángel Sánchez Borges. He released a really good album last year called Kraut Slut, which opened with a track called 'Rother, Dinger, You and Me', so the guy is demonstrating his kraut rock love fairly unequivocably. I reckon that shows through in 'Broken In Your Room Again' too.

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 13:10  0 Comments Links to this post

Weekly mp3 #9 take 2: Albert Kuvezin and Yat-Kha - Love Will Tear Us Apart

OK, since Tuesday’s effort failed, here’s another attempt. You can download a ridiculously lo-fi MP3 from the band's website.

A cover of Joy Division's most famous song. Tuvan throat singing, acoustic guitar. Odd.

This is the only contemporary music I've heard from Tuva, a chunk of Russia that borders Mongolia and which Taiwan claims is part of its China. Throat singing is all about singing two tones at once, by controlled resonance of the nasal cavity. The main tone is brutally low, and the overtone is a whistle that pretty much doesn't sound like it comes from an animal. If anyone knows Massive Attack's 'Karmacoma', the melody in the chorus is actually a throat singer, not a synth.

The information on the band's site makes the situation in Tuva sound pretty bleak. Probably because it is.

I played this at the last Malty Media night.

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 15:29  0 Comments Links to this post

weekly mp3 #9: anders dahl - kärrsilja - metal bowls, electronics, bouzouki

This week's offering is a change of pace in two ways - it's not a song (or anything to do with "pop music" in any sense) and it's from a "net audio" release, i.e. it's from a free MP3 release that's not attached to some commercial release available in a physical format.

EDIT 18/06/08: Sorry, turns out Komplott have redesigned their site, and this release is no longer available.

This track is part of an EP called Kärrsilja, flockblomstriga 2 . The EP was released in 2004 by the Swedish "contemporary music" label Komplott, which does both free MP3 and commercial CD releases.

Anders Dahl makes what could be called electro-acoustic music (if you believe that doesn't have to be made by academics), noise (if you believe that doesn't have to be loud or noisy) or free improv (if you don't care about whether he's really improvising!). The ridiculously prosaic subtitle of "metal bowls, electronics, bouzouki" tells you exactly what you're in for. I'm guessing Dahl improvised three or four tracks from these sources, layered them up and did very little additional treatments. Maybe he played along with what he had previously recorded and responded to those tracks. Maybe not. :) Likewise, it's a bit of a moot point as to whether he can play the one traditional instrument in the mix, the bouzouki, because he largely plucks out occasional harmonics.

As may be clear from my description, I can certainly understand how this kind of music can seem artless, frustrating, or plain fruitless to someone listening to it. As with most music, I'm at a loss to say why this particular collection of sounds rocks my world. Formally, I like the restraint in the use of sources, and I like the timbres of those sources individually and in combination. But it's always difficult for me to pin point anything more than that.

Friends have asked in the past whether I derive some kind of intellectual enjoyment out of this kind of thing, but I don't think that's the case any more than with any other kinds of music... There's really not that much to think about here, is there? :)

It's been 4 years now since I first downloaded this EP and I still come back for repeat listens. Not sure it would work for everyone, but I've found the best listening conditions for this kind of thing are first thing in the morning on a sunny day when I have some time to relax.

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 13:10  3 Comments Links to this post

weekly mp3 #8: david byrne & brian eno - regiment

My favourite track from 1981's My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts was made available for download when the album was reissued in 2006. Lots has been said and written about it, but if you haven't heard of it around the time Eno was producing Talking Heads he and that band's frontman wrote an album together. It's usually described as instrumental, which is somewhat ironic given it's built around the premise of writing instrumentation around pre-existing vocal recordings. I suspect in this case "instrumental" = "David Byrne does not sing on this record". :p

'Regiment' is the album's most blatant funk moment, which may be in spite of having Bill Laswell guesting on bass. Never liked that guy. I'm much more excited by the soaring guitar laid down by one of Eno's more frequent collaborators, Robert Fripp. It's a slightly edgier sound than the Frippertronic vibes of Bowie's '"Heroes"', but that gives you a general idea of the sound... It's pretty great.

The vocalist, says Wikipedia, is Dunya Yusin, a "Lebanese mountain singer". I thought she sang songs, not mountains, but she sounds amazing anyway. Crikey.

If you have the urge, Byrne and Eno have offered up all the tracks from the original multi-track recordings of a couple of songs, which you can download and remix. As they point out, it's in-keeping with the spirit of the original... although I have to say I think it'd probably be more in-keeping with the spirit of the original if you could release the results under your own name and get royalties off them. ;)

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 13:10  1 Comments Links to this post

Wu Tang Clan founder starts chess-playing site

Curious. Having won the, ah, coveted (?) Hip-Hop Chess Federation tournament last year, RZA has launched a weird online business...

WuChess

Labels: misc time-wasting

Posted at 09:53  0 Comments Links to this post

weekly mp3 #7: the deadly deaths - see the world

Some New Zealand stuff this week, specifically from the much maligned (fairly, in my experience!) city of Hamilton. You can get four free tracks by The Deadly Deaths from their virb page.

Their songs are fairly samey, but I find 'See The World' the most catchy. Key words, I guess, are "pared back". The appeal for me is definitely in how simple the track is, both in terms of what's being played and its arrangement. Sometimes I love subtlety and detail, but that sense that a band is doing exactly what's needed to make something work is pretty enticing too...

Not much more to say about this one.

Labels: music, weekly mp3

Posted at 13:10  1 Comments Links to this post