On TV Shows and Background Music...Part One in an Ongoing Series of Appreciations

Since I first became interested in music (ehh...9th grade or so), I've always loved hearing shit that I recognize on TV. I remember getting a giddy rush of pretentious high-school-music-nerd delight running down my spine when I heard Rapture Rapes the Muses playing in the background of some episode of MTV Cribs. "Well," I proclaimed to no one in particular, since I was awkward, highly unpopular and usually alone, "it looks like someone at MTV has some taste in music." And I promptly high-tailed it to an E6 message board, finding that I wasn't the only scrawny 15 year old who had heard the ten second keyboard riff.

Anyway, since then I've always gotten something of a pretentious thrill out of recognizing snippets of respectable music on the tubes. So I've figured that I would call it out and give credit where credit is due, in a regular series (aka just this one post) of articles highlighting the best of background music.

And the first show to be highlighted: Top Gear UK. Not only is this the best show ever (fuck you Nat, just admit it), but it also has this awesome habit of using really high-level, complex electronic music to buffer its standard car-porn shots.

For example, skip to 2:19 in this video (can't figure out how to do the whole automatically start at a certain time thing when embedding video, so bear with me here):

That's "Nightlife" by Amon Tobin! No shit, they had the taste to throw in one of his jazziest, most melodic and wonderfully creepily reverb-drenched tracks. Bloody fucking brilliant.

And they get even nicer, check this one out (audio starts later, but just watch the whole thing, I know you're not busy):

Come to Daddy (Pappy Mix)! Aphex Twin! Perfect music for watching some car go screaming down a track. Sheeeiiiit, I used to bump this monster back in the day when I was crawling through rush hour traffic to try to make first period...it's just straight up driving music.

Those are the only two examples that I'm gonna bother to demonstrate, but just today I've heard them play a few of my other favorite Amon Tobin tracks (Saboteur especially), Windowlicker, and some Boards of Canada.

Get nice BBC, get nice.

And...we're back // Playlist #1

Hey.  So we're back.  For now.  I'm in India, Ed's back from China.  We're both bored and disappointed in ourselves for letting this get away from us.  We're using this as a platform for talking again.  We're gonna take a slightly different approach and we've made a pact to update 5 times a week (each), no matter what.  So that's like 50 posts a month.  The format is definitely not the same, but the sentiments are.  Fuck off.  Get stoned.  Take a nap.  Rinse.  Repeat.  Sooooo.  Without any further ado.  I'm gonna go do the last part and pass out.  Before I do that, I will leave you with some choice music nuggzzzzzzzszszzszszzszszszszszszszszsz.  No.  I am not high.  I'm not gonna provide mediafire links this time; you can do that on your own, it's too easy.  I might in the future, but not now.

Poison // Into the Abyss // 1987

Nope, not THAT Poison, but a super angry German thrash/black metal demo from the late '80s and early '90s.  Long songs (nothing below 7 minutes), excellent musicianship and song structure, and just really fun, riffy angst.  These guys sound pissed as fuck.  I'm usually not much of a thrash guy, but the vocals take this above and beyond the typical thrash sound that I can really groove to it.  By groove I mean sit in bed (I'm sick) and rock the fuck out.  Plus there's awesome moments where it completely drops out and builds up in this maniacal, devilish way.  It's awesome.  Go find an mp3 of this four-track demo.  Here's a taste:

Choking Victim // Crack Rock Steady EP // 1994

I woke up to this today.  It was awesome.  A total classic.  Anti-establishment ska-hardcore at its best.  Silly, irreverent, angry, and not afraid to be outspoken, these guys set the standard for American anarcho-punk in the mid-90s.  As many of you probably know, a few of them went on to start the hugely influential Leftôver Crack circa 2000.  This is the entirety of their first EP in a single, 9-minute youtube video.

ACxDC // He Had It Coming // 2005

These guys sadly split up before they could release a full-length, but this is just such a killer fucking first attempt.  Grindcore/powerviolence at its absolute best.  Star Wars Imperial March breakdowns, laughably over-the-top anti-Christian sentiments and completely unintelligible vocals with some killer start-stop timing and super-short songs.  8 songs, not even 10 minutes.  Every second is worth it.  This is one of my most played albums ever.  EVER.  Fortunately for us, they just released a second EP called The Second Coming.  They're both free at their bandcamp.  But the first one is better.  Listen below:

OMG OMG NEW VENETIAN SNARES ALBUM COMING

So, according to Wikipedia--a newspaper of record, I assure you--Aaron Funk's new record, My So-Called Life, "sees Funk returning to concepts explored as early as 2005, revisiting themes from such albums as Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett and Huge Chrome Cylinder Box Unfolding," two ridiculously wonderful albums. I guess this mean that we, or at least I, can enjoy some wonderful orchestration, dense textures, and fucking ridiculous breakbeats.

I, for one, am down in a big way.

There are two tracks on his myspace, both hearkening back to the Funk of old. Of course I've loved everything he's done in the past few years, but my true affections will always lie with the orchestral complexity of Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletett--which is pretty much entirely responsible for making my musical tastes what they are today--and the neo-jungle complexity of Detrimentalist--which pulled me back from the brink of becoming a fully-fledged Joanna Newsom fan and reminded me of just why I love breakcore.

Check this shit out: http://www.myspace.com/venetiansnares

Shitcore Part 3 - In Which Something of Substance Will Maybe Finally Be Written

So: From whence Shitcore?

Let's start in the 50's. Think about 50's Rock and Roll: a bunch of skinny white men standing stock-still on a stage, playing undistorted guitars, singing vaguely sexual/subversive lyrics to throngs of screaming teenage girls. You see, this was considered a moral outrage, to be so far beyond the pale as to be a scourge on society, a gaping wound through which the invisible bacteria of Communism could enter and wreak all sorts of malignant mischief.

In retrospect, this was all not only not subversive, but was actually rather stupid. Take a gander, for example, at some of the lyrics to Bill Haley and His Comets' non-hit "13 Women (And Only One Man in Town):"

I had two girls every morning Seeing that I was well fed And believe you me, one sweetened my tea While another one buttered my bread Two girls gave me my money Two girls made me my clothes And another sweet thing, bought me a diamond ring About forty carats I suppose Well, thirteen women and only one man in town There was a-thirteen women and only one man in town It was something I can't forget Because I think of those thirteen women yet Well, thirteen woman and only one man around

So...nuclear apocalypse, only people left on earth are 13 women and one man...and what is lacking? Sex. Fucking. Anything which is even slightly morally repugnant (at least not from a feminist view, but that point of view is safely ignored). Don't even get me started on how much more racy (again, relative to the 50's) the African-American music that all this was stolen from was. That was considered to be a moral H-Bomb of Soviet proportions, and was safely kept away from the nation's fragile young white women with a vigor usually reserved for homosexuality and meth.

Regardless of how lame all this was, it is interesting in the context of this discussion for being the first time (discounting the 20's, because those ended in such a spectacular fashion that their cultural developments were largely irrelevant post-1929, at least in my opinion) that threatening culture was viewed as a mass-marketable cultural development in its own right. Namely, this kicked off a rapid succession of generational conflict, in which young people embraced pop-culture which, at least superficially, appeared to be just subversive enough to assure them a distinct, rebellious identity. This was only in its fetal stages, of course, being far away from any sort of genre which produces lyrics like this:

Bash my intestines up my anus!

Diarrhea from my penis!

Diarrhea
A A A A A A...

Diarrhea on my penis!

Obviously, there are a host of cultural and technological developments which made such music possible. So, we have to jump forward (ignoring the 60's and 70's, which sucked...I don't care how you feel or what you think or what your stupid yuppie parents told you, the 60's and 70's sucked, they were stupid and unproductive and we're all worse off for them, you fucking tie-dye wearing wannabe douchebag protoyuppies) to Plunderphonics, which in my mind is the logical fork in the road where electronic and experimental finally branched off into their two closely related, yet quite distinct, camps: the masturbatory and the fun.

Plunderphonics was the first genre truly dedicated to repackaging other music, to taking that which other people have made and mashing it together as a sort of aesthetic prerogative, turning pop culture into something obscene, exposing a sort of incongruously disturbing/absurd quality to pop that isn't quite obvious when viewed on its own terms. Simply put, it was both masturbatory and fun. If you are--as is quite understandable--bored with my overwrought prose, then check this shit out as a sort of oasis in the desert of wanky liberal arts undergrad bullshit that I'm spewing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmJjXxbl2to

That is John Oswald's seminal (haha...semen) song "Dab", a pastiche completely sampled from Michael Jackson songs. Simultaneously experimental, pretentious, and entertaining in a sort of novel way, it was copyright infringement as artistic statement, a realization that the old could be transformed into the new without being derivative or subject to an easily described hierarchy of aesthetic/cultural development. Instead of following such a clearly defined path, it branched off at a a sharp right angle and defined a new niche from which a whole new hierarchy could develop. This goes far beyond the sampling of rap music, this is no Chuck D pretending to be in court being yelled at by "The Man" for using other people's music.* It is from here that I trace the beginnings of the wildly complicated electronic music scenes that seem to pop up every couple of weeks.

From these beginnings, there are several genres and subgenres of electronic music that are integral to the development of Shitcore: 8 Bit, Jungle/Ragga Jungle, Digital Hardcore and Breakcore. 8 Bit can be saved for last; that is probably the most peripheral, and is most important for its effects on the internet-based Breakcore/various other -core sub cultures which have popped up over the past few years. Of primary importance are the -cores; which are the most direct spiritual descendants of the ideals underlying Plunderphonics and the most virulently in your face (I hate that term) genres to gain even a modicum of popular awareness since the early days of punk.

Let's start with Jungle, which marks the beginning of lo-fi break cutting at high speed and mind-numbing complexity. The history of Jungle has been written time and time again, if you're here (and I doubt anyone is), you probably don't need me to tell it to you. Also, I am lazy, and have no desire to do so. Suffice to say, this is where it all started. Jungle was where cheesy Europeans with ill-advised dreadlocks first started to deal sampling as a means of creating uber-complex rhythms and beats that were, to say the least, acquired tastes. Where people first began to seek out largely ignored (at least in the west) foreign genres and combine them with modern technology and already established western genres to create something both familiar and novel. It is from the high tempos, rolling snares, and oddly sequenced everything that we move to the -cores.

Digital Hardcore...what is there to say that isn't obvious when one listens to just one overly sincere, disgustingly German ATR or Ec8or (or whatever, they're all the same) track? Think amens that no one even bothered to clean up or make interesting, sampled metal guitar tracks, sincere ultra-left wing rants calling for revolution without ever offering a coherent reason why disguised as lyrics. Trashy, stupid, confrontational, confusing in the extreme...I don't care what people who actually know what they're talking about say, this is where Breakcore started. Of course, it would be a few years after the advent of Digital Hardcore that digital music technology would get to the point that anyone with a decent computer, an internet connection and no qualms about stealing software/music would be able to make passable music without any sort of real training, and disseminate it without a label or hitting the pavement with a vengeance; but in DH one sees the beginnings of individuals being able to make sincerely fucked up music within small niches, and to view true (no matter how lame) subversion as a efficacious niche within a stagnant and homogeneous pop culture. That last sentence was terrible and pretentious: DH was fucked up, stupid, hardcore, and delightful. All told, within it wank and sincerity met entertaining and hardcore, setting the scene for the widely varied and usually fun-as-all-fuck breakcore scene.

***It's late and I'm tired. Tomorrow, or whenever, a few overwrought paragraphs about breakcore and 8 bit, then I'll actually do some research on shitcore and wrap this ill-advised venture the fuck up.***

*Chuch D might have the most blatant victim complex in the history of popular music; a rich motherfucker who just loved to pretend like he was being constantly held back. I mean, he's cool and all, and It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back was fucking ill from first to last, but come on.

Shitcore Part Deux - From Humble Beginnings

Ok. I'm back from Pittsburgh (for the love of God, never drive all the way across PA...just don't), back from work, and a few whiskeys deep...time to actually finish what I started for once.

Type "shitcore" into Google. Does anything useful show up? No. Nothing. No one really seems to know, or at the very least care to put into words, the who, what, when, where and why of Shitcore. In a way, that is what makes it so interesting; one must walk a mile in the moccasins of experimental coprophiliac noisecore to truly understand it, viewing its birth less as the painless c-section of most musical genres* and more as a back-alley abortion sought by scared teenagers in response to the failure of genres which make most people plug their ears and look at you askance to be truly, uncompromisingly uncompromising. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE ALERT: There are thus two problems to be confronted. The first, obviously, is to situate Shitcore in some sort of continuum starting with the earliest avant garde electronic pioneers* and incorporating punk, breakcore, metal, noise and the innumerable other -core's that pop up every couple of weeks on the internets. The second--and to my college-addled brain, most important--problem facing us, is to figure out whether or not it is pretentious. Does being intentionally bad, intentionally unlistenable, etc. etc. naturally make a certain type of music pretentious? To what extent is Shitcore derivative, and does that really matter? Am I a douchebag?*

***TOMORROW OR MAYBE LATER TONIGHT: A poorly researched article on Shitcore's pretentious ancestors.***

* A.k.a stolen from black people and marketed well.

* Who I will actually mostly ignore in favor of starting with Plunderphonics (you'll see...), since (with the exception, at times, of John Cage) that really marks the beginning of wanky electronic experimentation having a sense of humor.

* Yes

Inside the Wonderful World of Shitcore - Part 1

A week or so ago, I was hanging out with some friends on my back porch. In order to shift the conversation away from a heated and terribly misinformed argument between two people about the legal intricacies surrounding an underage person throwing out empty beer cans being stopped by cops and given an underage citation (don't ask), the topic of "favorite driving music" was proposed.

I, realizing the shitstorm I would be walking into if I chose to give a completely honest answer to this question, hemmed and hawwed somewhat, acknowledging out loud that my answer would seem to be pretentious. You see, my favorite thing to listen to while driving is Shitcore. Specifically the godfather of Shitcore, a certain Passenger of Shit. I'll be posting an album of his, but if you don't want to be downloading a whole bunch of stuff then here is a quick taste.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhzZQtmU1UA&feature=watch_response

I know what you're thinking: "wow...you are pretentious. Ass, go get some skinny jeans and an ironic mohawk and write for Pitchfork where you and the rest of the hipsters can pretend to like things that are inaccessible." Hear me out though. This shit is brutal. I mean, it's like unadulterated, balls to the wall brutality without a shred of self-consciousness. As a complicated means of self-justification, let us take a walk down Shitcore lane, exploring the many wonders of one of the more, umm, unique of the homegrown, largely internet-based subcultures on the fringe of the electronic music scene.

***Because I have to get my shit together and start a 6 hour drive across the entire godforsaken hellhole that is Pennsylvania, Part 2 will come in a few days and will attempt to flesh out just how the hell Shitcore came to be***

The New Boxer Rebellion

So, since no one has posted here in, like, years, I figured it was time to bring it back with something epically irrelevant.

What I stumbled upon today, in one of my unemployed, bored-as-all-fuck internet rambles, is nothing short of the opening salvo of the East-West cultural war that has been inevitable since Marco Polo introduced Asia to Original Sin and opium. Literally. Imagine Eurovision, the quintessential example of why I am ashamed of my European heritage vs. whatever one should call Chinese pop, which makes me regret studying Chinese instead of, I don't know, Korean? I'll stop trying to be witty, and just let this speak for itself:

German: Dschinghis Khan - Moskau

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQAKRw6mToA

This should be familiar to most connoisseurs of internet-meme videos, but it's so perfectly European that it merits consistent repetition.

Chinese: Da Zhang Wei - Fendou

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTE5MzcyOTA0.html

This might be the best thing ever. I mean, they both have great dances, but this one is polished and ridiculous in ways that are beyond my comprehension. It just makes me happy; so, so happy.

I'm trying to figure out which one is better. If anyone but Nat would see this (HI NAT! REMEMBER HOW I POSTED THIS SAME THING ON YOUR FACEBOOK WALL LIKE AN HOUR AGO?) then I would ask people to vote. In lieu of that, I will instead cast my vote for the Chinese one, as an attempt to curry favor with the Chinese government because I'm kinda in their pocket. Also, because of that dance move where they do the mashed potato but do a little butt waggle, and it's just like nonstereotypically cheesy in a way that just blows Russian-style kicks out of the fucking water. Don't think this is a blowout though, look at the facial hair of the guy from Dschingis Khan...it's fake, but I love it when people jab at Russians.

***OVERWROUGHT LYRICAL ANALYSIS UPDATE***

So at first I thought that the lyrics of the Chinese version were just a translation of the lyrics of the German version, but the truth is significantly more funny, and wayyyy more Chinese.

奋斗，奋斗，为了理想而奋斗

为了将来而奋斗

WOW吼吼吼吼

奋斗，奋斗， 为了欢笑而奋斗

为了真爱而奋斗

WOW吼吼吼吼

奋斗，奋斗，为了追求而奋斗
为了目标而奋斗

WOW吼吼吼吼
奋斗，奋斗，为了信念而奋斗
为了明天而奋斗

WOW吼吼吼吼

Struggle, struggle, struggle for ideals/dreams/perfection

Struggle for the future

WOW (bellow of an animal/of rage repeated 4 times)

Struggle, struggle, struggle to laugh happily

Struggle for true love

WOW hou hou hou hou

Struggle, struggle, struggle in stubborn pursuit

Struggle for goals

WOW hou hou hou hou

Struggle, struggle, struggle for beliefs

Struggle for tomorrow

WOW hou hou hou hou

Ok, thats all that really needs to be looked at. What makes this so funny, to me at least, is how fucking sincere it is. I mean, its a cheesy cover of one of the most delightfully cheesy songs ever to be passed down from the people who gave you the Holocaust, who love David Hasselhoff (sp?), and who are entirely culpable for Atari Teenage Riot. The German condition is, and has been for years, to traffic in the most mindboggling sincerity (that is not a compliment), and to pursue that sincerity with a vigor and efficiency unmatched in the Western world.

So, to out-cheese and out-sincere the Germans is a hell of an accomplishment. This cover is kinda the lowest level of mindless synthpop, which for no discernible reason is turned into a vehicle for a kind of superficially uplifting didacticism. Think about what the lyrics to a song like this would be in America (and it would totally be a huge fucking hit)...probably something about dancing, Lil' Wayne would make an 8 bar guest appearance which would either be completely incomprehensible or an in-depth analysis of just how much money his clothes (which, rest assured, are very nice clothes) are capable of concealing at any one time, Timbaland would grunt over the beat in a crude and disturbing facsimile of spoken word poetry...you get the point. I'm reminded of a line from the novel Please Don't Call Me Human, in which a parody of a Chinese intellectual says something along the lines of: "American entertainment is just as didactic as ours, but at least it's entertaining." What I'm getting at is that this song is entertaining as all fuck, but--except for the fact that, after writing it like 20 times earlier, I've come to realize that "struggle" is a hilarious and extremely fun to hear word--the lyrics are so incongruous and unintentionally hilarious that it basically ruins the song...making it so campy and overly sincere that it just can't be taken either seriously or as any sort of good, escapist fun.

Or maybe I'm just trying to show off the fact that I know Chinese. Did I mention that I know Chinese? Do you? Thought not.

On a final note: seriously, think about how funny the word "struggle" is. Just think about it. Say it aloud once or twice. Stuggle. Uggle. Ugg ugg uggle. Strug. HA.

DJ Club Sauce - 2009 - Enter the Bloghouse

Another awesome mashup set by a friend (previously known as DJ One Oscillator) with some amazing samples. Really well produced (no this isn't just a plug for a friend, he's awesome). Unfortunately, chicken strips aren't included with this one.

DJ Club Sauce - 2009 - Enter the Bloghouse

Basshunter - 2006 - LOL <(^^,)>

Okay. I know. Not particularly "hardcore" as in "br00tAL!!" but probably the only thing on this blog that's ever going to come close to happy hardcore. Here's a Swedish dude who's living the dream of every pudgy, acne-ridden 1337-speaking loser out there. He makes the most absurd trancy pop music ever with lyrics about Warcraft 3 mods, IRC chats and Ventrilo, everyone's favorite VoIP client. It's just utter dorkiness. It's absurd. It wouldn't be good if the videos weren't littered with the most absurdly beautiful Swedish women. Don't believe me? Check these babies out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7iU0GGVco8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OzWIFX8M-Y

Plus in his English-speaking videos he uses a half Norwegian, half-Iranian pornstar to play his girlfriend. It's amazing.

Basshunter - 2006 - LOL <(^^,)>

Burnt By The Sun - 2003 - The Perfect Is The Enemy Of The Good

You ever had that feeling where you take way too many uppers and it is physically impossible to focus on anything for more than 30 seconds? Where the only thing you wanna do is to listen to the most insane music in existence? Well, I found myself in that predicament one recent evening at 4 in morning and I made a bee-line for this album. Put succinctly, this album fucking owns. I remember hearing the tune 'Forlani' back when it came out and absolutely hating it. But it somehow reemerged in my life this last year, and thank god it did. I probably listen to this at least once a week. Its pretty much just an string of awesome fucking riff after awesome fucking riff, brilliantly arranged to keep you on your toes. The first three tracks alone are worth the price (shhhh...) of the album. This is one of the only albums that leaves me wanting more every time.

'purchase'