Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared

Don't Hug Me I'm Scared from This Is It on Vimeo.

Black Pus - Primordial Pus

 (Load Records, 2011)

It’s going to be hard when two gorillas, two larger-than-normal gorillas—enormous, bulky, gigantic gorillas—are smashing your head in from either side, ears turned inside out, processing the muted inner sloshings and crumblings of the beating, to distinguish between that sound and Primordial Pus.

Why I like it.

There’s almost no fault in Primordial Pus. There is no fault in Primordial Pus.

I’m in the twilight of my heavy music listening days (volume-wise, not harshness-wise), I just know it. And if you’ve been following the blog, you know it too. Music pickens 've been sparse. There doesn’t seem to be as much caliber 2011 noise keeping my ears busy, that and I’m getting ready to trek across the country with the whole famdamnly for graduate school. Even still, as newer music seems to be offering diminishing returns, Primordial Pus, from the first pitch, bombing down on my ears with reverbed bass, Chippendale’s signature clatter-clatter drumming (do I even need to mention Lightning Bolt?), and those distinctive, indistinguishable vocals, all seems well in the musical (non-musical) universe.

I really love Chippendale’s Black Pus project in all its variations, but I am also super happy that Primordial Pus falls back towards the ground perfected by All Aboard the Magic Pus: weirdo pop songs generously stuffed with noise (or vice versa).

This will stand as one of may favourite albums of the year; there is no doubt about that. In fact, it’s the first album I’ve listened to that feels vibrant and addictive enough to challenge Colin Stetson’s New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges for best of the year. (Both, amazingly, solo efforts mangled together, virtually, in real time.)

It’s in that category.

Black Pus - "Hole In The Ground"

Black Pus - "Favorite Blanket, Favorite Curse"

LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends," Lego Version

The video from one of the best songs of last decade remade, shot-for-shot, with Legos.  Bravo, Michael J. Green, bravo!

Video after the jump.

Pink Reason - Shit in the Garden

(Siltbreeze, 2011)

Kevin de Broux: Pink Reason: 2007: Cleaning the Mirror: scotch tape epicness. Siltbreeze of course. Have you heard Cleaning the Mirror? No? Yes? Either way, it’s worth revisiting/discovering. It’s sooooooooooooo good.

Up The Sleeve by pinkreason

Kevin de Broux doesn’t assemble Pink Reason albums very quickly. Pink Reason isn’t prolific. Cleaning the Mirror was six songs, was released in 2007. Four years later for a follow-up and we have, briefly, six more (though, to be fair, there were quite a few 7”s to account for).  I’m not complaining about the lethargic-seeming pace though, I'm not.  If that’s how long it take you, Mr. de Broux, to lay waste to six-odd three-to-five minute rock n’ roll songs, for placing each rip of scotch tape in its careful place, for upending the side table—building the crumblingness of it all—then that’s the way it is.   I’m ok with that.  The effort is evident in the end product.  Swaths of back alley swirl in this album. “Holding On” with its junk drum machine pummel, “Sixteen Years” with its rock noise lambasting puree, “You Can’t Win” with its ramshackle, meandering flower pluck.  Time has been favorable (though short) in over-shoulder views of Cleaning the Mirror. I imagine the same for Shit in the Garden. Well played, de Broux, well played.

Sixteen Years by pinkreason

Björk - "Crystalline"

Björk's music videos are always worth watching, and this one directed by Michael Gondry no less, but the star here is Venetian Snares. If you haven't heard "Crystalline" before, you're going to want to make sure you reach past the 3 minute mark.

View it after the jump.

The Moors by Ben Marcus

 (Madras Press, 2011)

I have for nearly five and a half years now worked within a corporate office setting, in different capacities, for the same company. I am, as of my writing this, in preparation to leave this setting in one week, to move out of my home state, to attend “graduate school”. (I don’t know why I put it in quotes. Really, I am attending graduate school. In “Literary Arts”.)

And I wonder sometimes how the office has influenced me and if it has at all influenced the way I write and what I might write about. Honestly, I can’t imagine myself writing anything of fictitious worth about an office space. Regardless, one of my probably biggest literary influences, Mr. Ben Marcus, has in fact written up a story about a bland, all-too-familiar, cubicle-flooded space, and has done so incredibly.

Things I Saw at the Pitchfork Music Festival (2011)

This is the second time that Erin I have attended the Pitchfork Music Festival (the first time being in 2009), and while the bands have always been a big draw, we attended primarily tell sell our humble screen-printed rock n’ roll posters at the coinciding Flatstock Poster Festival. Even so, with there being two of us, there is always the opportunity for one of us to sneak off to see some one band or another, and this year was no different.

Here is what I saw / what I learned / observed:

EMA – It’s a hot Friday afternoon (the afternoons only got hotter as the weekend wore on) and the awkwardness of EMA in glare of sun was more than apparent. This music is definitely better suited for brick-lined basements. Still, despite it all, she managed to pack some punchiness into her dark, gothic, grit-punk, and her half-baked rock moves were definitely amusing (albeit in a humorously awkward way). All I really was planning to do was watch her set until she played “California”, but she played “California” last so I ended up seeing the whole set. Good move, EMA, good move. “California” ended up being pretty anticlimactic and yet it still gave me chills – I’, not going to pretend to understand why.

Heather E. Day

In Chicago, Pitchforking and Flatstocking this weekend.  Saw an amazing career survey of Mark Bradford at MCA Chicago.  Received an email from Heather E. Day:

"Surfer's Hymn" by Panda Bear

Video after the jump.

"Last Known Surroundings" by Explosions in the Sky

Video after the jump.

Lauren Clay

Michele Armas

:::Notable American Music:::

John Maus - We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

(Ribbon Music, 2011)

Since my iPod broke, music listening has mostly be relegated to the internetz.  Thank you Altered Zones for upping this little bit of majesty:

John Maus: We Must Become The Pitiless Censors of Ourselves by alteredzones

-----------------------------

Apache Dropout - S/T

(Family Vineyard, 2011)

Some explosive, garage-burning bliss:



--------------------

Shabazz Palaces - Black Up

(Sub Pop, 2011)

Oh, and if you haven't already, believe the hype (or, "my bi-annual hip hop obsession"):

Shabazz Palaces Sampler by subpop

RIP Cy Twombly

Sarajo Frieden

Guim Tio Zarraluki

The Little Friends of Printmaking

New stuff from The Little Friends of Printmaking up at Rotofugi in Chicago. Check it: