From the cellulose nitrate days of music video.
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Records: Gang of Four, Lindy Vision (2019).
Andy Gill’s Gang of One turns out to be a good band making good records. And new Lindy Vision is always a delight.
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Links: Mark E. Smith, keeping Nazis out of punk, have you heard about Napster?
Suspended in gaffer.
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Cryptorave: Arpanet, M.E.S.H., Amnesia Scanner — Romantso, Athens, Saturday 16 February 2019
Excessive quantities of pseudish babble wrapped around a surprisingly good live techno gig.
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Boy Harsher: Careful (2019).
Darkwave disco. I’ve been hanging out for this one, and I’m thoroughly delighted. You will be too.
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Gary Numan: Savage (Songs from A Broken World) (2017).
For those most familiar with the classic synth-pop Gary Numan, this will be quite different. For those who have followed Numan in the past thirty years this is not a surprise.
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Mono: Nowhere Now Here (2019).
Tell you what I love about Steve Albini recordings: the drums.
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The The, October 5 2018, Melbourne
A long concert, though more amiable than epic.
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Christmas links: 500 Songs bonus podcast, Lindy Vision.
Give yourself what you deserve today — both of these.
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Links: Bauhaus, WFMU Free Music Archive saved, post-punk indie labels, Pete Shelley’s XL-1 videos, Boy Harsher.
What’s important to understand about entertainment from the 60s or 70s or 80s is that the entire audience is lead-poisoned, poisoning their kids with lead, pumping drugs cut with industrial solvents bought outside their kids’ schools, which are also poisoning the kids with lead.
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Records: Nora Roy, Laibach (2018).
An indie singer-songwriter and the return of an old favourite with a slab of excellence.
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Records: Frog, Keen On Keys, Metal Disco (2018).
Metal Disco is today’s pleasant surprise winner.
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Links: Threatin’s faked tour, WFMU archive closing, Winamp 5.8, streaming as the last format.
The Threatin story is this week’s winner.
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Andrew Hickey: A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. Subscribe to this podcast now.
I want you to go right now to 500songs.com and download every episode. And if you follow podcasts, you need to subscribe to this one. Every record nerd needs this.
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Records: Dew, Irk, Transmaniacon featuring Lydia Lunch and Maya Berlin (2018).
Dew and Irk are both remarkable finds and produce the correct horrible racket, though the loved one compared Irk to a sack of hammers falling down stairs.
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Records: Nosound, Trash Deity, a Cabaret Voltaire tribute (2018).
Popular US industrial music has always tended less Throbbing Gristle and more alternative buttrock.
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Links from the past month: post-punk, pop and piracy
I’ve moved house! And oh my goodness, the backlog …
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Blue Man Group, 20 July 2018, Berlin.
The BMG themselves in this particular incarnation are Martin Marion, Kuba Piezchalksia, and Stefan Ruh, supported by the band of Jan Burkamp, Tim Neuhaus, and Nils Westermann.
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Links: BitTorrent “web” client, the women of Rolling Stone, Deerful how-to, “Despacito” on kazoo.
I can kazoo this on my own.
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Owen Kentauros brings you the 1980s on ukulele, in Japanese.
1980s New Wave on ukulele and occasional kazoo, on a grainy old webcam in 4:3. Bow to the viewer, play.
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I ran the Perth indie record charts, from 1989 to 1991. Corruption! Manipulation! Propaganda!
An excuse to get Perth bands into a published record chart, so they’d get some publicity and could use it in their marketing. And to propagandise Australian indie to the masses. Includes THE HITS OF 1989!
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Records: The Rolling Stones, Deerful, Benjamin Shaw (2016, 2018).
A party that everyone’s been looking forward to for weeks. They seem to be having a wonderful time.
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Lords of Acid: Pretty In Kink (2018).
Everyone’s familiar with Lords of Acid at a basic level, right? Dark electronic erotica? Techno songs about fucking? It’s all very nineties. Pretty in Kink was released in May 2018 but still puts out the oldschool LoA vibe.
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Blacklab: Under The Strawberry Moon 2.0 (2018).
Hey, are you interested in letting a couple of women from Osaka just completely melt your fucking brain? If so I have found the album for you.
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The Twinkles: We Come Along (2018).
A 10 song album that is everything you’ve been looking for if you’re sad that The Vandals haven’t had a full length release since 2004.
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Links: EBM is trendy, managing the Rolling Stones, Swiss modernist post punk, egregious YouTube content filtering.
Post-punk albums in the style of 1960s Penguin nonfiction paperbacks.
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Reviews: Aboleth, Zanias (2016, 2018).
Writing about music is the most ridiculous notion, and the review pile is only getting larger. So I’ll give just embedding players and mumbling something a go. This works for me, and that’s the important thing.
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Links: Spotify metadata, VU meters, songwriting camps, Disney defends fair use, the history of Smash Hits.
Twenty deadly diseases.
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Pastoratet: THLM (2018).
A nice combo of hardcore and surf punk, it’s got a mellow, melodic feel that edges toward pop-punk but brings in just a tiny bit of metal to keep an edge to the sound.
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Links: Why the Rolling Stones suck, “fake artists,” ’80s remixes of current pop, ABBA, Philip Glass and S-Express, YouTube Music.
The Rolling Stones piece certainly answers for me the question “why could I never get into this stuff?”
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