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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Vortex #3, March 1987: Triffids, Ed Kuepper, Greg Dear, Kno Matter, White Cross, OMD, Paul Weller.
Yes, I finally got Vortex #3 cleaned up and online.
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Reviews: Marsy, Dot Dash (2018).
Yeah, putting a Bandcamp embed into reviews is clearly the right thing.
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Links: eMusic can’t pay its bills, nobody buys CDs, catalogue prices, majors upset Spotify not rolling out the red carpet.
Welcome to the music industry! Here’s your accordion.
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eMusic releases its blockchain ICO plan! … it’s not very good.
eMusic’s plan: 1. Collect a large pile of money. 2. Write an all-new music platform that does everything! 3. Pay people in eMusic magic beans.
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Links: Windowing is passé, piracy lawyers go to jail, MP3 “restoration,” Damo Suzuki.
I blame the delay on blockchain. Taking a while between confirmations.
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Interview: Gina Cimmelli — My Little Lies (2018).
A brilliant five-track indie pop EP. And my first musician interview in a couple of decades.
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Streaming links: 24,000 new tracks a day, Spotify as label, streaming pays better than radio.
And foreshadowing of Monday’s long-form post.
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Links: World In Motion, pirates, kids listen to Swans, Irmin Schmidt.
“If there’s one group who can capture the spirit of bitter infighting that typifies being in a World Cup squad …”
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Limb: Saboteurs of the Sun (2018).
Excellent fare for people who really enjoy Tolkein. A supernatural tone and a solid pounding that most anyone who likes heavy prog will appreciate.
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rosewater: Love Bomb, rosewater AKA (2018).
Both little works have great songs on them but Love Bomb is mind-blowingly perfect. Clark and Brooke’s voices and guitars blend into a sweet, grungy, fun sound.
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Reripping the CDs, as you do.
Here’s to cdparanoia and EAC, to turn the music trapped in the silver abominations back into the pure data they were meant to be.
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Richard Syrett on Theodor Adorno, the Beatles, conspiracy theorists and … me.
Did you know that Frankfurt School philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote all the Beatles songs? I sure didn’t! In fact, I still don’t.
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