Pop Your Funk

mark e

2008-08-18T16:10:00.000-07:00

been wanting to share this for a while... mr. e doing an ra podcast has reminded me how killer he's been for a while now. that re-edit of grace jones's la vie en rose in the middle of the 'cast is so wonderful...

mark e - ra podcast

more mixes:

cosmic disco mix
night moves
love the action
beats in space
warm mix
turnitout mix

recent listens

2008-05-25T21:21:00.000-07:00

have mostly been work listens. at home i listen to my records (new & good: mountain goats 4ad albums finally on vinyl (so glad to finally pay for dude's songs), magnetic fields charm of the highway strip (same), glimmers edits box, james brown live at the apollo, quiet village silent movie, studio (still...)), some podcasts, and movin' 92.5.

but most of the music i listen to is at work, where unless i play something in the kitchen to drown out the crappy xm that's pumped into the cafe, i have to endure it (40's big band station that cycles thought he same 25 songs is inhumane). so i usually have something playing on the little radio whose cd player is pretty shot, so it's either kexp/kbcs/movin', or tapes.

ahh, tapes. too lazy to track down blanks and make my own too often, i've been hitting the 2/$1 deal at everyday pretty hard. paul simon, pet shop boys, depeche mode, miami vice soundtrack, vangelis... anything white people listened too in the 80's is apparently really cheap if you're willing to listen to it on degraded cassettes.

favs though are two tapes that i picked up mostly on a whim:

bass patrol's planet bass, aside from having one of the best covers i've ever seen, is fucking badass pounding miami bass. my exposure to that sound has always been mediated through other genres, so i don't really know how it compares with other stuff from that period, but damn. so good.

played it for alex and i'd say it floored him but it did the exact opposite in that he started bouncing around and saying silly things like "this is the only thing i want to dance to ever."

bass patrol - eddy mix

sly and robbie's reggae greats is far more chill, but after about three weeks i'm pretty sure it's one of the best albums i own. amazing tunes by sly and robbie mixed up and dubbed to fuck my the mixing engineer. very deep dubba.

sly and robbie - demolition city

cop them shits, and remember to play them with the bass turned way up.

new listens

2008-02-19T00:33:00.000-08:00

vinyl and the like:

roy ayers - everybody loves the sunshine
various dfa 12"s (syclops, h&la, still going, gucci soundsystem, altz, ...)
p.i.l. - metal box
studio - west coast
the slits - cut
john cale and terry riley - church of anthrax

podcasts:

mix blogs

studio

2008-02-13T11:32:00.000-08:00

west coast has been ruling my life for the past few days, especially the opener "origin", a sixteen minute track that is over too soon. it turns to pure magic at about the 7:50 mark, but it is all wonderful.

studio - origin
(warning: visiting zshare without adblock plus installed is annoying)

more info here and here

mixtapes

2008-02-11T14:47:00.000-08:00

as many laserpeople may know, we got it for cheap vol 3 dropped recently, and is good. i have been feeling more oldschool lately though, and have been listening to the effing awesome mixtapes that dj sloppy white is now giving away for free at his site.

right now, the best thing

2008-01-16T00:35:00.000-08:00

the frankie knuckles remix of blind by hercules and love affair sounds like the most devastatingly beautiful thing i've heard in years. has arthur russell's vocal style become a thing while i've been not paying attention to music? i wish i could concentrate enough to write about it but i just want to listen to it over and over... not going to post it but you can find it at the hype machine.

new music

2008-01-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

shortly after getting a new laptop on which i can listen to loads of free music i... went and bought a bunch of records. went edit crazy and picked up half of the underdog edits and the first three wurst edits. also grabbed the hatchback white diamond 12" with the infamous prins thomas remix on the b side... listened to that many times already; very pretty.

internet music i have heard lately:

new mountain goats album (really great)
new magnetic fields album (really great)
peter visti's balaero-cosmic edit/remix/cover of dolly parton's jolene (fucking fantastic, listen at xxjfg)

i have a laptop again bitches

2008-01-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

now rocking a refurbed thinkpad running ubuntu. i know, i know, using ubuntu linux is like riding a pista and thinking you're cool, but it's better than windows and lets me use a laptop that, unlike all the mac 'books i've encountered, probably won't die every nine months.

maybe i will start listening to lots of music again, who knows?

so far, on my new 'pad, i have listened to and enjoyed two mixes:

this is not an exit vol. 9

peter visti's mix for 24 hours

so hiphop -> so rave

2007-11-23T23:24:00.001-08:00

for tim:

snoop's acid drop

s/fj on r-kelly

2007-07-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

fantastic article. excerpt:

Kelly seems to have no superego; he is willing to say anything that occurs to him, no matter how strange he sounds or how self-incriminating it might seem. Many people facing serious criminal charges related to sexual conduct would not include a song called “Sex Planet” on their CD, or, if they did, would probably omit the line about a “trip to planet Uranus.”

more shows, briefly

2007-06-14T10:06:00.000-07:00

michael mayer was expectedly great, played a lot of kompakt favorites. staff at the mezzanine announced that his set was over by turning on the lights. a handful of people were extremely reluctant to leave the dance floor and kept telling mayer how much they loved him.
lcd soundsystem was short and sweet. this was probably my least favorite of the shows that i've been to at the mezzanine during the last few months... it was sponsored by a local radio station and reaked of corporate evil (this was not helped by the gigantic e-surance projections on the wall). also the crowd was kind of lame... appearing to be composed mostly of people who had called the radio station to let everyone know how much they loved it.
bpitch's Smash TV played at a small venue in sf called the rx gallery. this was a fun show even though i was super tired and broke and too sober to really enjoy dancing. also, the gallery exhibition consisted of 300+ hand-made vintage mr. t dolls. check out the package on this one.
finally, i enjoyed the very short set that i saw by sac locals, two playa game. i will certainly make an effort to see a full length set by them in the near future.

also check out kelley b, a san fran dj who was a supporting act for two of these shows. she plays lots of fantastic microhouse records...

upcoming: dan deacon on thursday... and hopefully carl craig on friday.

feeling nordic

2007-06-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

lsb – original highway delight (mungolian jet set's miami camp remix)
lindstrøm – breakfast in heaven (diskjokke remix)

finally tracked down that mungolian jet set remix after months of additively clicking on it at mungolian jet set's myspace page. i don't think i've ever brought myself to listen to stuff on myspace before (interface = ugh/arg) but the mungolian jet set remixes are worth it, esp since they're so hard to find in any other form, and everything they touch is really really good.

lindstrøm track has been stuck in my head for three straight days. so weird and good.

amin peck

2007-05-16T16:29:00.000-07:00

anxiety

kano

2007-05-10T22:11:00.000-07:00

i'm ready

three shows last week

2007-04-30T17:08:00.000-07:00

wednesday, the junior boys - this show was everything i was hoping it would be. the encore, under the sun, was especially the bomb. definitely one of my favorite all around acts over the last few years.

friday, the evening episode - mostly new line-up for this local sacto band... the emphasis on vocal effects is a good direction because the new singers aren't as amazing as teresa (2nd from left)... not that they're bad, but...

saturday, digitalism - this show was unexpectedly amazing. having only heard a few digitalism songs ever, i didn't really know what to expect, but the set was killer. i had so much fun, i don't even know how long they played. i know we kept dancing when the house djs came on after the show, and they had to tell us when it was time to leave. seriously, i will be happy if the daft punk show is even close to this good. i would love it if someone could point me to a good recording of one of their live shows. also, i rather enjoyed the opener, joakim: loud, tall electro-rockings.

up next: mayer in may, daft punk in july.

the need for general knowledge

2007-04-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

lately i've been reading a bunch of samuel johnson's collected essays culled from the rambler and the idler. they are a joy to read, and it's been fun to page through the idler compendium from 1790 that i checked out from UW and compare it to other earlier london publications like the spectator and see johnson's genius shine through the bougie-handbook style of writing that was the seemingly requisite style of the times.

the rolling richness of his prose just kills me. nabokov, when he's on, is the only other writer who's ever lit up the page for me like this. last night, i was reading the rambler no. 137 [the need for general knowledge], wherein johnson chides academics for failing to get out of the ivory tower and interact competently/constructively with the rest of the world. he ends the essay with this beautiful paragraph:

By this descent from the pinnacles of art no honour will be lost; for the condescensions of learning are always overpaid by gratitude. An elevated genius employed in little things appears, to use the simile of Longinus, like the sun in his evening declination; he remits his splendor but retains his magnitude, and pleases more, though he dazzles less.

doesn't that last sentence make your heart sing? i haven't been able to get it out of my head all day.

pop conf

2007-04-24T14:08:00.000-07:00

i went to the emp's pop conference again this year. caught something like twenty hours of talks over the weekend, a good portion of which were really great. the theme was "waking up from history: music, time, and place," which is a way better topic than last yeear's kind of lame "guilty pleasures" cop out.

highlights included sasha frere-jones' post 911 r'n'b talk, joshua clover's 1989 vs "1989" fall of the wall + pop songs talk, mark sinker's b-b-but what about space ramble, mike mcgonigal's dark was the night cold was the ground sanctified blues talk, simon reynolds' place and race in the uk dance continuum talk, getta dayal's examination of eauropean fetishisation of black american dance culture re detroit techno, michaelangelo matos' ripping on trustifarians re bob marley posters, douglas wolk's "the most famous rock star no one knows about" history of clydie king, jesse fuchs' insanely oveloaded and awesome overview of music videogames, robert christgau's pazz and jop ruminations, maura johnston's history of freestyle (the late 80's dance genre, not freestyle rapping), mike powell's examination of north korean pop music, brian goedde and elena passerello's intervies with iowan hip hop fans, tom kipp's secret history of montana post-punk, oliver wang's boogaloo talk, jeff chang's history of the bronx beat, and scott seward's extreme metal/pastoralism paper, and lots of other stuff too...

favorite part though was definitely the incredibly touching ellen willis tribute lunchtime panel, wherin people like sasha frere-jones and bob christgua and others that knew her or were somehow touched by her work got up and read pieces by her and talked about her. i went into the panel not even knowing who she was, and left obsessed by the need to seek out as much of her writing as possible. turns out she was an insanely brilliant popular culture wrtier and femisist/anti-oppression thoerist. i've been buried in a book of her collected crit for the last couple of days, and it is some of the best critical writing i've ever read. turns out she was also the new yorker's first pop music critc, and a lot of her stuff is still buried in the mag, uncollected and only accesible through the newyorker dvd/hard drive thingy. roommate has a copy, i think i might transcribe some of the better essays and post them, they are so good.

also heard a bunch of new to me songs during people's talks... i'm still tracking some down, but here's two of my favs, one from a boogaloo talk, and one from a techno talk. see if you can figure out which is which!

adjective is an adjective

2007-04-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

or at least it was, back in the day. this idea has been making me very happy today. also making me happy is the very wonderful partial arts (ewan pearson and al usher) track trauermusik.

recent listening i have enjoyed

2007-04-12T15:34:00.000-07:00

jeff's basement 'cast, joakim and dixon resident advisor podcasts, ronan fitzgelarld's radio show, goldie's '96 essential mix, international pony mit dir sind wir vier, märz wir sind hier, the field from here we go sublime, the studio 1 12"s.

looking forward to checking out the panda bear album, the pantha du prince album, and probably lots of other stuff i've forgotten about.

amazing

2007-03-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

interview with james murphy. he reminds me more and more of dave frost the more i see/read about him. the uncanny resemblance, the insane verbosity, the obsession with physical violence... it's all there.

plums

2007-03-13T14:16:00.000-07:00

i have 150 lbs of plums that will go bad long before i can eat them all. does anyone have any good ideas/recipes for preserves or other things to make out of fresh plums?

cannot wait

2007-02-26T13:42:00.000-08:00

until april 19. pop conference this year looks so sweet.

recently

2007-02-21T15:45:00.000-08:00

i have: made 4 gallons of salsa, brewed ten gallons of beer, rescued 100 lbs of food from a dumpster, acquired one bike frame, eaten two bahn mi sandwiches, and listed to no new music.

the lack of music is mostly because my computer is broken, and it kind of sucks, 'cause i haven't heard anything new and awesome for a while now, and i can't mp3 blog-r-done etc to get my fix. it's getting bad enough that i almost listened to a yanni promo cd yesterday.

is anyone interested in helping me out by sending me a mix cd/tape of stuff you think i should hear? any style of music, i'm not picky. i will return the favor as best i can in your format of choice.

i <3 mike powell

2007-02-13T15:13:00.000-08:00

squinting at gait and testicle size

favorite sandwich

2007-01-29T17:50:00.000-08:00

of recent memory: toasted essential columbia loaf with mayo, cheddar cheese, peanut butter (unsweetened) ands a ton of rather spicy kim chi. mmm... sandwich made mostly with things i found in the trash...