Essays on aesthetics.
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Category: Rock
Ganser: relentlessness by guitar.
Taut indie guitar rock, sparse but weighty; machine music by a guitar band with the proper relentlessness.
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Reviews: Diversant:13, La Vogue vol. 1, Ambrasive, DrawnSword (2016).
’90s style industrial, early ’70s style songwriting, two dance non-reviews.
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Links: High-resolution consumer audio, London for music sales, the worst Beach Boys album.
Audio snake oil, London still the centre of the universe, Summer in Paradise.
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Links: Burroughs on the presidency, American Pie, Blood on the Tracks.
A beautiful and apposite William S. Burroughs reading, and some classic rock faff.
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Reviews: The Royal They, Unity One, Graveyard Love (2016).
Pre-grunge-style indie rock, EBM synthpop and disorienting synthesizer-guitar landscapes.
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A note on A. C. Temple.
Who else remembers late ’80s Blast First band A. C. Temple?
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Theodor Adorno wrote all the Beatles’ songs as a Cultural Marxist assault on America. Possibly.
One of the finest conspiracy theories in popular culture is the claim that Theodor Adorno, a main figure in the Frankfurt School of “cultural Marxism” fame, secretly wrote all the Beatles’ songs.
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The overwhelming historical importance of the Beatles, and why Live At The Hollywood Bowl is revelatory.
The trouble with the Beatles is not that they aren’t mindbogglingly important (they are) or indeed actually good (they are), it’s that you can’t get away from them even in 2016. They are actually so famous and so important that it’s almost impossible in the present day to understand how and why.
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Reviews: Arsia Line, The Primary Colors, Lindy Vision (2016).
Black Native angular post-punk, psychedelic garage and some straight-up witch house.
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Links: Beatles, Prince Buster, Freddie Mercury age 12, Freddie Nietzsche.
The Beatles’ Live At The Hollywood Bowl recovered, Prince Buster obituary, Freddie Mercury aged 12, Nietzsche the composer.
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Links: Microsoft DRM, Brian Eno, Lou Reed and Revolver.
While I’m busy faffing with the new theme …
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Mos Generator: Abyssinia (2016).
“doom heavy stoner metal band”, the press release bluntly announces.
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I was right at the time. Nineties indie rock sucked. Except Dave Graney, of course.
Just rereading the Dave Graney interview I did in late 1992 for Party Fears. This was when no fucker cared about Dave Graney, after his indie hipness fronting the Moodists in the 1980s and his artier cowboy rock’n’roll in the late ’80s and early ’90s.
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Reviews: Airbag, Metroland, Suns of Thyme, Virus (2016).
I threw up on Lux Interior.
It was mid-1986, at the Red Parrot in Perth (name and logo blatantly nicked from the New York club of the same name) in Perth. I was nineteen and had been going out to see bands and drinking in earnest for six months. The Cramps had played (the Canterbury Court Friday 22 August 1986 show, I think) and went there for after-show drinks.
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Godzilla Black: Press The Flesh (2016).
“Formed by two frustrated drummers” tells you about sixty percent of what you need to know. The rest is descended (through similarly-influenced ’80s indie rock, then the stuff that was left after grunge imploded) from the heavier ’60s psychedelic rock, rather than prog.
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Last Words (EP) by Muzzle
“Last Words” (2014), is the debut EP for young Fremantle independent rock band, Muzzle, with three-piece Daniel Panizza on bass, Daniel Prince on drums,
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Radio Birdman Boxed Set (2014)
Courtesy of our friends at The Dwarf your author had the opportunity to see the legendary Radio Birdman as long as finger was put
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Links for your delectation.
How we’ve paid for music from 1983 to today, in one gif. Revealed: The Type of Music That Makes You Feel Most Powerful Spoiler:
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Playing to the demographic that actually has money.
Pete Farnan of Boom Crash Opera writes about playing A Day On The Green, to the most irony-free audience possible. “The Hunters and Collectors
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PF#19: Dave Graney, 1992.
I’ve been digging up the lost unpublished fragments of Party Fears. Here’s an interview with Dave Graney in late 1992, when nobody cared and
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Seven Ages of Rock.
The ABC in its infinite wisdom has started broadcasting its first run of the BBC’s Seven Ages Of Rock in the Silly Season, with
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Royal Mail issues Classic Album Covers stamp set.
Royal Mail has issued a stamp set that commemorates ten classic rock album covers ranging from The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed to Coldplay’s
Read MoreGet Well Soon Ronnie James Dio!
We’ve all poked fun at him over the years, but one of Rock’n’Roll’s veterans with a big heart, Ronnie James Dio is battling the
Read MorePet musical peeves.
“What kind of music do you like?” Fuck. Who can answer a question like that? I HAVE FUCKING THOUSANDS OF ALBUMS, MOTHERFUCKER. IF YOU
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Rock stars were not formed whole from the brow of Zeus.
From The Guardian: 1970s rock stars with their parents. “Life photographer John Olson’s extraordinary pictures of the biggest rock stars of the 1970s at
Read MoreMost tasteful. Souvenir. Ever.
Almost fifty years ago, J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson died in a plane crash with some guys called Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. His
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And now for some words on music. The Gold Afternoon Fix demos.
Any Church album recorded after 1990 is complete shite — tedious stoner hippy noodling with no songs at all and far too much pot.
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God is a Guardian reader
(Or the other way around!) Keith Cameron wrote earlier this year in the Grauniad of all places about the re-release after twenty years of
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