F Y P

I wrote a lot, probably too many, words about my favorite releases of the year, but in the end I’ve realized those words and thoughts are mostly for me, besides I need to collect this music in some fashion as the year quickly ends, so here you go: (extended thoughts may come later)

sèlèbèyone & steve lehman - sèlèbèyone

death grips - bottomless pit

porches - pool

warped dreamer - lomahongva

yg - still crazy

badbadnotgood - iv

blood orange - freetown sound

ahnoni - hopelessness

pure disgust - pure disgust

greg ward - touch my beloved’s thought

g.l.o.s.s. - trans day of revenge

wadada leo smith - america’s national parks

ka - honor killed the samurai

karl blau - introducing karl blau

good willsmith - things our bodies used to have

marilyn crispell - in motion

kill alters - no self helps

thanks,

There has been an enormous amount of material to discuss, analyze, and think about in the past month or so. Donald J. Trump was elected president of The United States of America, and this past Monday was formally elected by the electoral college. Syria continues to be a shit show no one on this side of the pond cares deeply about. And the general American population sees political correctness as a bigger threat than AI, climate change, or inequality.

All of this has numbed me as a person who wants to see significant change in the world. I have resorted to useless sharing of articles on Facebook and Twitter as though me sharing them will make the world a better place.

But for whatever reason, watching Bill O’Reilly show his true colors on Fox New this past Tuesday forced me to finally want to produce a thought out piece of writing that wasn’t mandatory.

For those unfamiliar with O’Reilly’s statements this past Tuesday, here’s a link:

Before delving into what he said, let me say that the average age of Fox News Viewers is 68. Trump won voters over the age of 65. And it should be no secret that he won the white vote. Now, with that in context, let’s see how exactly O’Reilly is using his platform as a tool to raise fear in old white people.

This installment of O’Reilly’s consistent segment “Talking Points” features his thoughts on the electoral college, which has stirred up some controversy since Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million votes, but still managed to lose the electoral college, and thus the presidency. It’s nothing extremely new, as Trump becomes one of five presidents who have lost the popular vote and gone on to win the presidency (the most recent, and only time since 1888 being Bush’s win over Gore in 2000).

O’Reilly starts out by very smugly pointing out that the electoral college was established in 1787, as though this ancient dinosaur deserves some sort of respect for its age. He then goes on to point out, factually, that states with large amount of minorities tend to lean blue, and vote Democrat. But what O’Reilly says next is hypocrisy at its best. He points out that if the electoral college were to be abolished, there wouldn’t be a national election because you would have “targeted populations.” But that’s exactly the system we live under today. We don’t have a national election; we have targeted populations: swing states. Why wasn’t Trump or Clinton in California during the general election? Because they were campaigning in the swing states. That doesn’t seem to me like a national election, does it?

I have seen a lot of criticism, from the right, aimed at people who use their own identities as reasonable foundations of their politics. I hear a lot of talk about black, brown, women, and queer identity politics and how insidious they are. But I never quite hear criticism aimed at white identity politics, politics based on the fear of others and on the hold of power. And this white identity politics is exactly what O’Reilly is peddling. He claims that if the electoral college were to be abolished, the “largely white rural areas” would be neutralized. Thus saying, they would have no power. As I see it, to me it’s not about race (at least on this issue) like O’Reilly says it is. To me it is about a clear explicit democracy being run in our nation. Every vote should count. The majority of people should have the power and say in how the nation is governed and who governs it. That, to me, is democracy.

But O’Reilly claims it’s all about race:

“The left sees white privilege in America as an oppressive force that must be done away with. Therefore, white working class voters must be marginalized”

The first half is true. The second is the purposeful injection of fear and hatred meant to divide people from one another. Wanting white privilege destroyed is not the same as wanting the white working class destroyed. But that’s what O’Reilly wants his viewers to believe and think of left leaning politicians/voters. By injecting fear into white old people, he establishes a base that continually votes against their best interests. He then makes the claim that abolishing the electoral college would place all political power in urban areas, where large minority populations live. He wants people to believe that they will have power stripped away from them and given to black, brown, women and queer people. This is the narrative he provides. But that is not the narrative behind the push for a popular vote system. It’s quite simple: majority rule.

If you think he couldn’t be more blatant, see what he sums his speech on:

Well he couldn’t be more clear. And yes, this is what the left wants: to do away with inequality in our current political and societal system. But that does not mean destroying the white working class, or any white people for that matter, it means destroying the mentality behind white identity politics that wishes to maintain their saturated grip on power.

The white establishment is a poisonous tyranny that defines American history. Since its inception, America has privileged white men. It’s naturalization law of 1790 limited citizenship to white men who could “show their good character” and years afterwards until the present, laws and practices have underdeveloped minorities (whether they be racial or sexual/gender) from advancing in any socio-economic way. The list of these laws and practices is too expansive to put here. But surely not giving women the right to vote until the 20th century, and black people during the second half, has to have had an effect on the present? Right?

And O’Reilly offers his last piece of fear by claiming that the left wants to “[take] voting power away from white precincts” in order to further their “liberal” agendas. This is white identity politics in its most unsubtle form. O’Reilly factually demonstrates that there is inequality by pointing out the existence of a white establishment. And he wants to keep that power by inflicting fear into his viewers of the “other”.

But this is nothing new. In 2012 on Fox News, when Obama was about to be re-elected, O’Reilly claimed:

“It’s a changing country. The demographics are changing, it’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. They want things, and who is going to give them things, President Obama…twenty years ago President Obama would have been defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority…People feel that they are entitled to things.” (emphasis mine)

O’Reilly has been peddling this fear for quite some time now. Notice his use of language, “traditional America” and ‘white establishment.” He is telling his viewers that their traditional ways of life are being taken away, and that the white establishment’s power is being stripped. He rightly claims that Obama would have lost in 1992, but I think that has to do more with who Obama is, rather than his policies. It was Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, in 1992, who oversaw the state execution of a mentally retarded black man, Ricky Ray Rector, during his Presidential campaign. And for what? To prove how tough on crime he was. Just a year before Rodney King, a black man, was beaten by four police officers who were acquitted of their crime. So O’Reilly is right, Obama wouldn’t have won twenty years ago, but that probably has more to do with the fact that he is a black man. Today’s changing demographics did give Obama his presidency, but they also allowed white people to see that diversity is not a bad thing, and that black, brown, women, and queer people having an equal say in democracy is the just thing to do.

O’Reilly also talks about Obama voters wanting “stuff.” But people wanted change led by hope, and whether they got it or not after eight years of Obama is up to debate on a variety of issues.

back again, still at camp, still running a radio station here and realizing that my taste in music is, in many ways, obsolete to upper class 7-15 year olds.  but listen on, we must, because at a certain point the decision of what to play in our headphones is some of the most personal power we have.  invention of headphones created this power and made music personal, for better or worse (probably neither really) and that’s what the listening habit is all about.  

IV - BADBADNOTGOOD

for those long time readers of the blog and/or personal friends of the author, you should know bbng are fairly significant for “the listening habit” and peanut butter paisley.  i’ve called them my favorite band to often confused and wondering faces more times than i can count though they definitely are growing in popularity in certain circles.  chester harris, alex sowinsky and matt tavares were three in the beginning, in my junior year of high school, when bbng2 blew my mind, showed me the light in an increasingly dimming and shrinking world of jazz music and drove me to pursue jazz music myself.  bbng2, an album comprised of 80% jazz covers, tells the story of three canadian dudes going to music school for jazz, realizing they don’t just want to play rhythm changes for the rest of their lives and reacting to this by using their not fully developed jazz chops to cover odd future and kanye and gucci and did it really well.  they probably weren’t the first to do it, but they certainly did it at the right time, as the rap industry began it’s temporary retrograde back towards a more jazz influenced sound.  flash forward a two years and bbng is spending some more time with their friend leland whitty, and reaching the maturity of their jazz demystification on their album III and a soulful collaboration with ghostface. if anything III was a testament and statement of “yes we can write music, but we are still trying to figure out what exactly that means.”  and it sounded good, cleaner definitely than anything they had done before, but more mature and focused.

when is saw the trio a year ago i got the chance to chat briefly with the band, matt responded to my fan boy appreciations with a casual “man, we’re just goofing around.” in many ways that conversation was an important one for myself as a musician and music listener.  it broke down the my internal concept that 1) music is an utterly serious thing, that must always be treated as such and 2) that those musicians we look up to are just humans having fun and making sounds they feel compelled to create.  it’s a fact inherent to the name badbadnotgood, for there exists a certain acknowledgment of a lack of skill and mastery.  and that acknowledgment, so central to the band, is also very central the music they create because once the self-consciousness of personal ability is abandoned the “goofing around” can properly begin.  

IV is a proper extension of said goofing around, though this time i would argue the boys have come full circle to their roots in jazz.  no longer caught up on the dated conventions of institutional jazz education, their spectrum and taste has expanded to names like weather report and mwandishi and the aacm and ornette and jazz is exciting and new and real again. no longer a flavor that accompanies a hiphop cover to peak interest but an entity that can stand by itself.  “And, That Too,” the first track, is the perfect example of this shift with a steady bouncy pulse held down by a minimal bass line, piano chords and primarily modal and repetitive harmonic structure.  the song is essentially an ABA form with a harmonic tail, that especially when leland (oh yeah he’s also in the band now) enters becomes a modern iteration of a sedated modal fusion jam.  and this pattern continues on songs like “Chompy’s Paradise,” “IV” and on of my favorites “Structure Number. 3” featuring chester still kicking on the upright. the free jazz influence makes it’s way on the album too with a guest from wonderfully screechy Colin Stetson on the long awaited “Confessions Pt. II” a song billed as the sequel to the most popular track on III and one that clearly illustrates the different approach between the two albums.  if “Confessions” was the band’s hip hop leaning pseudo-jazz composition of a 20 year-old turning away from his formal jazz education then “Pt.2” is a more mature realization of self and a return to jazz in it’s more modern and fragmented context.  then of course there are the wonderfully soulful tracks “Time Moves Slow” and “In Your Eyes” featuring singers Samuel T. Herring (of Future Islands) and Charlotte Day Wilson that sound a little out of place amidst the more free leaning jazz tracks on first listen.  but there is something about each of these vocal tracks that brings attention to the emphasis on groove throughout the surrounding instrumental tracks.  it’s the same groove based music that Headhunter’s helped to pioneer, a subtly that extends further back in time to jazz pianists like Errol Gardner and Ahmad Jamal, a groove that we often forget about in vocal music but one that BADBADNOTGOOD puts up-front and foils with two traditional vocal based tracks on IV. the Mick Jenkins feature on “Hyssop of Love” is in a different category, and almost pays homage to the earlier sessions with Tyler and

Earl’s“Hoarse,” the track finds the band a little more in their element than on Sour Soul with a more forward thinking, contemporary rapper who seems to align with the bands own musical fabric better.  and then oooh ahhh, “Cashmere” a closer in the best way and so soft, the most tender moment on the album and hopefully a sign of more to come.  

It shouldn’t be any secret by now that I love BADBADNOTGOOD. in many ways their progression as a band has paralleled my own musical journey both as a listener and composer, and will always be dear to my heart for it.  That being said, I think they’ve really put down something special here, and would encourage you to listen and follow the various roots of this more subdued, yet free groove based music, because while bbng presents it to the world on IV in new invigorated context, there is a long and important history behind what they are doing hear. search out all the old in every claimed new and have a great week.

IV by BADBADNOTGOOD

hey there i’m back.  it’s been far too long since my last post on this funny little blog that upon further thought and contemplation i’ve realized is actually a pretty special thing.  so i’m back with another listening update, this time from a summer camp in maine where i am surrounded by children of the actual 1% with 0% respect or consequence for any of their actions, but that’s the subject of another post.  camp life has been difficult and i don’t get much time to myself, but what i have been able to do is some very focused listening to a small collection of music every night; i’ve had a fine listening habit. also i think this is volume 2 now, volume 1 can only last so long and i’ve inevitably changed since then.

YG - Still Brazy

ok, so this has been a major escapist head bob inducer, the album i put on after an eleven-year old tells me to shut up and i can’t do anything in the realm of discipline here at camp. a good friend of mine, ben shear, called that Still Brazy would be the album of the summer a month before it came out and since that moment it’s release was on the radar (ben has great taste).  to begin with this musical explanation, i would like to first admit that i don’t consider myself an expert in hip-hop, while i definitely enjoy it and listen to a fairly large amount of it, i have always felt a little bit of a visitor listening to rap. in many ways that feeling only amplifies with an album like Still Brazy, a piece of art so very localized in the experience of a young black man in south central los angeles. it’s an experience i’m able to admit i have nothing to do with, aside from growing up on the west coast, but i can at least identify the sonic landscape and lyrical content. it’s the same synths dre pioneered on 2001 and the same west coast bounce that filled the speakers of my southern california poser privileged youth.  the same that would fill my speakers listening to kendrick the past few years of college.  but while kendrick went from his maad city to a more broad sweeping cultural mission/expose YG continued to dig in to his locale and experience with Still Brazy to create one of the more insular rap albums i’ve heard in a while.  it’s the same experience oriented rap that makes illmatic a specifically new yorkian piece of art, almost excluding for those who haven’t lived the same experience. it’s a process that i think creates a few different kinds of fans:

1) the genuine experiencer, who grew up living a life similar to yg’s in south central

2) the privileged but conscious exploiter of black music culture, probably the most common and there are obviously varying degrees of this.  but essentially raps/listens along, often fascinated with descriptions of life in the ghetto, whether for personal enjoyment or with genuine interest. (as much as I don’t want to be, i’m probably in this category)

3) the ignorant listener, whereas the above at least acknowledges their exploitation and lack of experience, this listener doesn’t even realize this much and maybe even fantasizes about the localized experience very far from their own.

4) the casual listener who just wants to bounce and have a good time, this category doesn’t really exist in reality (if we are to take music listening as serious as i apparently do) and is probably subsumed by category 3.

so why are all these varying people drawn to album like this?  it’s not extremely popular music, like drake, designed for the ignorant masses, YG is a little more obscure than “One Dance” while still being relevant and it’s probably for the same qualities that make Still Brazy so insular and specific. it’s the genuineness that YG has when he says “my life my life, this shit brazy…look at my life, got bullet wounds twice” a general genuineness that our lives all seem to lack in 2016.  we are drawn to YG because he’s real in a world with people are walking around throwing pokeballs at a little animation on their phone screens, and in many ways is probably unarticulated reason why many people enjoyed good kid maad city more that tpab.  a new sincerity with YG, who simply says “fuck donald trump” rather than creating an ironic meme or Facebook post about it.  while i can’t say i share the experience of being shot twice in gang cross fire i can attest to a personal detest towards the irony that pervades the core of my generations culture. Still Brazy moves against this irony at it’s core and in this ways is an album for anyone tired of not being able to just say “fuck donald trump”

Jerry Paper - Toon Time Raw!

if Still Brazy is an album of a much different southern california than mine, the Toon Time Raw! hits a little closer to home, especially if canadian Mac Demarco’s music can be accepted as a musical manifestation of the young adult experience of southern california.  

jerry paper is a dude that my good friend vil introduced me to, not by showing me his music, but more by just mentioning him in conjunction with mac demarco in many a conversation about looking up how much it costs to book certain artist, mostly jerry paper and mac demarco.  Toon Time Raw! is the first Paper album i’ve really taken the time to dig into, and i finally understand, why mr. zsolnay talks about the two in tandem. and it proves that mr. demarco is not as completely exclusive or unique in his sound or vibe as some, myself included, may have thought.  in some ways i think there is a really tender and thin line here, comparing artists to other artist and ending up significantly downplaying artistic achievement and also not really saying anything, so i’ll try my best to say more than, “dude sounds kinda like mac demarco.”  the moments i love on Toon Time Raw! are also the most absurd and subtle, like the little saxophone trio soli in the second half of the spare track “benny knows” that offer a sort of necessary solace from the sometimes too dreamy and chilled out rock scapes of a music like paper’s.

 a music that’s also very subtle precise in execution for such a laid back label it begs, just listen to that lock up between the drums and bass! incredible! i really really love the drumming specifically on this entire record, it acts a sort of energetic counter the often wavy guitars and slackers voice of paper.  if Still Brazy was great because of it’s genuine realness, then Toon Time is great for an opposite “music that doesn’t take itself too seriously” kind of reason, finding its way into a muzak bossa jam on “Elastic Last Act” with a very appreciated saxophone solo. the album starts with a silly little etude for bass and saxophone title in the “puzzle room,” before diving into my sunny groovy favorite of the moment “Ginger & Ruth.”  Toon Time Raw! is a great reminder “Shouldn’t you be laughing” because music is silly and fun, and life is shitty sometimes when you find yourself trapped in a summer camp for america’s extremely privileged youth!

that’s it for now, expect some writing on shellac soon and maybe m.e.s.h.?  only our circular time structure of eternal tumblr return will tell.

I’m sitting here in a study room at 2:37 AM in the morning, May 26th, the day after my birthday. I should be writing a paper, that’s what I came here to do, yet I cannot help but write down some of the things which have been on my mind. This is appropriate because I have begun my third decade of living, also, it serves as a productive form of procrastination.

I’m about to finish my 2nd year of college and about to enter my 3rd year. It seems like just yesterday I was graduating from high school, excited to leave and to integrate myself into a new world—into a new way of being. Who I am as a person has changed a lot in these past two years, I wouldn’t say drastically because many of my views remain the same, such as my love for the English language and written word. I used to believe in certain things back in the day. I used to believe that everyone who drank and smoked were a bunch of sheep, a bunch of mindless creatures aimless in their desires of individualism, and this to me was an insult to life, and insult to the miracle of living. Of course, I now have participated in some of these activities, and close friends whom I consider individuals have also participated in them, so this belief of mine was quickly knocked down, although I still critique certain sections of the party lifestyle. 

I’ve attempted a more direct and honest approach towards people around me, and although some have appreciated it, others have been hurt by it. I apologize for this, because even though I believe that honesty is one of the most important virtues, I also have come to realize (or have been shown to realize) that being honest must be selective and appropriate. 

This past year has been, and I don’t mean to be “poetic” or “philosophical” as some would accuse me of being, life changing. Not in that my life has drastically changed, but that how I view life has drastically changed. This is something that comes with age and with the on going improvisation called life. I now have a girlfriend, and sometimes it’s difficult, but most of the times its magical beautiful glorious. I love her. I really do. I might not feel this way in the future, and I acknowledge this because change is inevitable, but I do truly believe that I love her. She is the most human person I have ever met. She is imperfect, she has faults, and she often makes mistakes, but I cannot get enough of her. Her very presence makes my day better. I wish things would be perfect between us, but perfection belongs to the abstract, and a relationship is not abstract. It is real. Being in a relationship means giving up a bit of oneself, for it is a selfless action. You are no longer caring about yourself, you are also caring about someone else, someone who feels and bleeds like you do. Someone with dreams and needs like yours. And this is what makes things difficult, because at the end of the day you cannot control how the other person is, but if you can both be together despite this inevitable facet, then things work out. They really do. 

I look at the world around me and see that the biggest problem we have, collectively, is the inability to understand each other. If we could only see past ourselves and our massive prides and egos, then we could possibly make progress towards a better way of living. This is what I try to accomplish with my pursuit of directness and honesty, but we are human and we have emotions and feelings, so these two often collide. 

I’m beginning to feel like an adult. I am in debt. I have a job. I have responsibilities. The crushing weight of the future looms upon me, and this is what at times most frightens me. It makes me want to call it quits, it makes me want to throw down the towel and walk off the ring.

I never do. I continue because although grey clouds surround me, the cathartic rain they release is worth the sun they block. 

Life is one of the worst things that can happen to someone. It truly is awful. We are never in control. Some people find consolation in religion. I don’t believe in such mysticism. That is why the now is so important because there is no heaven, no pearly gates, no rich afterlife where we can all rejoice and feels joyous. As for hell, it is here. It is other people. It is breathing and walking. Still, this view of life is the easy way out, and I think it is the one we are most attracted towards. This is why we praise the tragic and overlook the comic. 

Everyday I am in pain. I suffer from gastrointestinal issues, and have suffered from them for over two years now. I’ve gone to the doctor plenty of times and have had the most thorough of exams performed upon me, but nothing shows up. It is an invisible pain that never ceases to exist. I blame this for my sometimes morose view of life, but I have to ignore it because there are things I need to do. 

I don’t believe in happiness. I believe in bursts of it, and those bursts of it are the ones we must learn to hold on to when they are present. 

It is time to end this because my academic responsibilities beckon me, but the winds still flow, and the waves crash, and the sea, the sea is endless.   

5/25/16

I’m not qualified to use the word ‘best’ and doubt any individual in the world of music journalism can exercise that kind of authority.  Firstly to say “best” implies a complete knowledge of the whole, in this case every musical release of AD 2015, and secondly in a subjective judgment of an interpretable art form, “best” is nonsensical and as much a claim of personal taste as the music in question.  So until speed listening technology and the Ministry of Culture passes down the guidelines of music judgement and take the joy out of it all, I’m going to stick with “favorite.”  These are my favorite musical releases of 2015, a collection I wanted to share and collect more for myself than you (no offense).  It’s a matter of practice, one of of conscious listening and categorization and reflection that drives a collection like this.  My intentions are not to flex some sort of musical knowledge or imply that my favorites are better than your favorites, my intention is to share.  To share music that struck me profoundly in hopes that you may experience some sort of congruent bliss.  2015 frightened and depressed and enlightened me in many ways, but through the year new and inspiring music kept me based.  2015, if nothing more, was a fantastic year for music, I hope you were able to enjoy it as much as I was.

In Colour // Jamie xx

If number of plays in my iTunes library is any indication of a favorite album, In Colour would certainly top the list, with oh gosh, 48 plays?  More than the obvs Jamie xx forward looking garage grooves and steel drum samples, In Colour is a perfect exercise in restraint and identity in dance music that popular music seems to constantly attempt to dismantle.  In Colour is dynamic, with loud places and soft places balanced on a sort of sonic seesaw Jamie holds tight, never letting one side slam to the ground too violently.   And this balance leads to an album fit for bumping in the car with your lads and drifting off with during a sunny afternoon, not something that happens very often (just saying).  With his first solo release xx didn’t shy away from the not so stranger in the room (The xx) and features the favourite guy and girl vocal duo of the early 10s, while at the same time rising above the influence of his former band.  Overall I sleep sound because with music like In Colour I know there’s gonna be good times in 2k16, the rest is noise.

Holding Hands With Jaime // Girl Band

My job at WNUR includes helping our wonderful music director Camille sort through the piles of mail the station receives and adding appropriate albums to the stacks.  If I’ve learned anything in this process of sifting and reading and judging it’s how really important first impressions really are.  Or maybe a better way to approach to call it is the expectations each piece of a music release create for a listener, from the packaging and album cover to that first downbeat.  So when an album by Girl Band shows up at 1877 Campus Drive, so do a set of expectations.  The four dudes from Dublin, not only play with expectations with their band name, the album is an exercise in repetition and the tension and release expectations in repetition create.  It’s an edge of the seat kind of listening experience, like watching a buckling tree in a hurricane, when is going to break, is it going to break, why do I want it to break?  It’s that nervousness that lies at the core of Holding Hands With Jaime, the claustrophobia repetition creates that powers my favorite new add to the stacks this year.

To Pimp A Butterfly // Kendrick Lamar

I distinctly remember lying on the floor of my room this past spring, three-quarters through my first listen of To Pimp A Butterly thinking to myself and genuinely believing “this is our important album, this means, this is history.”   9 months later I still believe, without any need for verification or confirmation, we will look back on TPAB in 20 years and mark it as a major musical achievement.  And I’ve debated this claim with many and I cringe to call it more socially aware than other rap or music.  Because how is Kendrick’s art rap more socially conscious than Gucci or Thug or Future?  The short answer is its not and the longer answer is maybe it’s actually less.  Cast those questions aside though and you will find a significant musical achievement.  One that moves through essentially a history of Black music in America with an artist of the highest marks in the center of it all.  No matter how you slice it, regardless of whether you liked Good Kid M.a.a.d. City more or if you plainly don’t like Kendrick’s flow or how To Pimp A Butterfly sounds, it’s the closest thing we had this year to an objectively great album, a special music.

Kind of Blah // frog

In a year with so many novel and interesting releases in computer produced music, guitars and drums certainly had a tall order if they were to stay relevant in 2015.  Enter frog, a duo from Ithaca, New York and a cheekily named LP Kind of Blah.  This album soundtracked my springtime thaw in Chicago this past year, the first of at least four for this San Diego transplant.  There is something very genuine about frog’s music, something counteracting the constant validation that seems necessary with every stylistic decision artists make in the current state of affairs.  Instead of somehow proving worth or irony frog plays music they enjoy making.  Music that doesn’t need an accompanying thought piece for the audience to figure out what is going on or make them feel relevant.  None o’ that, Kind of Blah is simple beautiful rock music.

Depression Cherry // Beach House

People often talk about sonic space, whether in reference to a venue or the perceived space recording engineers try to create on record.  “The sound” as we often refer to it, is something we experience and develop a taste for throughout our lives, and it’s often specific to individual experience.  Beach House have a definite sound, one that I experienced in high school as they filled a hazy Los Angeles night sky like no other band I’ve seen since.  It was space, not just sonic but the air around my body that moved and flowed with the layers of sound.  Their records have never been the same for me, only ever a symbol for the experience that once was, but never something I listened to for its intrinsic worth until 2015.  Beach House must have injected some of that Los Angeles smog filled air into Depression Cherry, it’s the glue that holds together every simple little fractal of this album together and the space that made me fall in love with music a little more that summer night not so long ago.  

There’s an obsession with this concept of ‘simple beauty,” it’s a buzzword in conversations about Bob Dylan and is more accurately described as surface level simplicity masking a very organic and imitation-proof complexity.  Depression Cherry is simple in a different way, it’s a collection of simple parts that achieve complexity in their relationship and dialogue with one another.  So maybe it’s opposite, like a ‘complex beauty,’ beauty in this case being a facade hiding the process and components, or maybe its just that air, no doubt distilled and presented through the same process of combination.  Either way Depression Cherry finds its way on this list because I really enjoyed it and I hope you have had the chance to as well. 

 Escape From Evil // Lower Dens

Some albums gain acclaim on a sort of novelty; to critics they are works completely new that could only have been released in 2015 and function as a direct artifact of the present moment.  The problem with this expectation however, is that it fails to acknowledge the inherent unoriginality of all music, that ‘originality’ is always something that applies more to taste than product.  Escape From Evil is an album that begs comparison, rejects any critical claim of unprecedented material and this ‘influence on the sleeve’ mentality makes for atmospheric post-punk someone born in 1996 can listen to and feel relevant and modern.  Some, usually old and/or cynical, will claim the best of music and art is behind us.  They’re right obviously, if they mean pop music will never be like it was in the 60s and krautrock isn’t coming back around anytime soon, but that doesn’t mean the history is dead.  Setting that aside for a moment and focusing on something more abstract: sometimes I’m struck by the weight of simple action, the feeling that my entire life has led to every instant and breath and decision I make.  A beautiful feeling.  A moment of bliss and purpose.  And music shouldn’t be any different.  Maybe the same feeling distinguishes ‘good’ from ‘bad’ in music, a feeling of weight.  Deliberate weight of the musician’s experiences and tastes that power each downbeat to create something new and meaningful.  Listen, its all there, Ian Curtis and Liquid Liquid and Kraftwerk and Iggie Pop, packaged and called Lower Dens.

I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside // Earl Sweatshirt

You’re listening to someone in deep; he’s staring into the void of modern existence and the darkness of his own human soul and he’s making a record and he’s not going outside.  I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside is a moment in time suspended on record, its a collection of similar sounds and thoughts combined not to try to span any length of time other than the immediate moment Earl finds himself absorbed by.  It’s an antithesis to the false moment commercialism markets with constant digital promises and distractions of happiness that feels more like numbness.  Music then becomes a moment creator in an attempt to fit into the commercial and while that’s charitable and cool for us listeners something must be lost in the process.  I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside doesn’t try to create a moment, it is a moment. (Or maybe it’s the apex of the experience of moment we’ve been marketed since birth?)

Quema Quema Quema // Kanaku y El Tigre

Hice uno función de música español en la radio el entero pasado y un razón que yo decidí hacerlo era la banda Kanaku y El Tigre.  Escuché a Quema Quema Quema mucho el verano de 2015, me ayudaba en los días depresivos durante mi trabajo en LEGOLAND.  Hay una cosa muy linda sobre las palabras en español, es una idioma con un ritmo especial, especialmente en la música de Kanaku y El Tigre.  Mi español no puede hacerle justicia, pero Quema Quema Quema es un disco muy especial, escúchalo por favor.

Gardens of Delete // Oneohtrix Point Never

And it comes out of nowhere really, its pixels on a screen and 0s and 1s then volts then air and its music.  It starts dark and it stays that way, pulses of some synthetic motor, not so human voices laughing like they know something we don’t and maybe they do, but by 1:13 of “Ezra” I think I understand it too and fall into the ride.  Our entire lives are under a process of digitization and our music cannot escape from this, I guess we can call it ‘fate.’  Sometimes its scary to think about, as someone not quite born into this world we now start to inhabit, born on the cusp of the internet’s formation and to parents who came from a different time (but don’t they always?). And sometimes music is sad because of it.  It lacks that human quality, the hope of the human soul, the spark of creation, because computer screens hurt my eyes sometimes and my fingers are tired of speaking for me.  Gardens of Delete tore me from that place of cranky naysayer, of elitism, in short Gardens of Delete inspired me.  Oneohtrix Point Never, as he’s called when making music, showed me once again that music is powerful, digitization is not the end but rather the present, and those 1s and 0s can be beautiful on occasion.

Sold Out // DJ Paypal

To work in a medium, in a genre like footwork that appears as a tiny blip on the timeline of dance music, one specific to Chicago and one that could be considered post- with the death of a founding father, takes a little humor.  DJ Paypal, acknowledges the absurdity of it all: Buy Now, Sold Out, The Mall Music crew, footwork? But then again what isn’t absurd about 2015, at least DJ Paypal can admit and move on, for acknowledgement is where creation begins and where Sold Out leaves off.  It’s post-Rashad music, and if Double Cup is really sacred and really holy then Sold Out is testament music, a witness to the greatness and by acknowledgment a transcendence of the former.  By repetition.  Whether the saxophone line on Awakening” or the cycle of collaboration and recycle and feat. within Teklife. by repeating simple acts of beat and music and life footwork is going somewhere and this album is a beautiful testament to that fact.

Carrie & Lowell // Sufjan Stevens

Lyrics mattered in 2015.  And that means people are listening, people are looking again to music not for the beat or a mindless release but for answers and poetry and words.  Courtney Barnett told us how it is in the plain way we cannot, Kendrick made these walls talk, Dr. Yen Lo rhymed with orange, and people listened.  I gave Carrie & Lowell to my mom for her birthday.  It might seem like an odd choice given the subject matter, and I hope my mom didn’t take me for some kind of fatalistic strange son for it (she didn’t).  I gave her Carrie & Lowell because listening to “Fourth of July” I couldn’t help but think about my own mother.  How much I love her, how much she has done for me, how one day she will die.  And then “The Only Thing” played and I wept.  Out of fear, and beauty and “sea lion caves in the dark.”  

Sufjan repeatedly hits these emotional intensities on Carrie & Lowell not only lyrically but with his sparse instrumentation and brilliant melodic writing.  It’s the kind of album that keeps giving, the album I’m still unpacking a little more every time I listen eight months later, the kind of beauty a mother deserves on her birthday.

Wow, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. Catching waves and scoring babes…anyways, here’s a haiku. I wrote it while writing an essay on Othello. It has nothing to do with Othello. It’s just me procrastinating.

coffee, tea, and coke

college with its many needs

so study, study

But I’m not here to characterize some sort of experience and classification of the music for you, that’s for you to do in your own time.

DJ Rashad - Double Cup

To dance is to live at your full potential, to release a unique human spirit and claim the surrounding space.  There is vulnerabiliity and release in dance, the same way the world seems to open a little wider everytime you smile or laugh.  Clearly not a singular activity, the warm community of dance and of course the symbiotic music creating dance creating music creating dance, form a worthwhile event of human interaction.  And it was in that cycle, in a crowd of warm bodies last night that my friend leaned over to me and said “this is spiritual music.”  He was talking over “Feelin”, the opening cut to Double Cup, and as our heads bobbed in sync to the infecting break beats and rhythmic textures of Rashad’s work, I couldn’t help but agree.  It’s an unconventional spirituality, one without worship or contemplation but still a centered belief in the human spirit and the spirit of dance and music.  The temple is a dark basement and the preacher stands behind a CDJ with headphones around his neck.  

Double Cup is the scripture, the finest document of a movement in dance music, footwork, they say.  A dance music grown from Chicago house, pioneered under the banner of ‘juke’ and with an accompanying dancing style, so I’m told.  To me, Double Cup is an artist functioning at maximum potential, and then exceeding that potential.  On its most basic level, the album is a 51 minute examination of the manipulation of tempo, or at least the perception of tempo for the listener.  Because for 51 minutes the music rarely departs a common pulse, the palpating heartbeat of footwork.  Despite this near constant tempo throughout the album, Rashad never seems to allow himself to fall into habit or meaningless repetition, each second is a new idea and a new feeling.  There are no exceptions.  The album begins with “Feelin” a palette cleanser with expertly sampled horn lines, an apt exposition and presentation of intention.  Rashid says “here I am, here is my art.  hear that drums and bass sample?  where i come from.  stay to see where we go.”  And wow does it go.  By “She A Go” Rashad is playing with fire, he has the audience in the palm of his hand and hanging on his every bass drum placement and hypnotizing synth line.  And by then he reaches the center pieces, the absolute masterpieces of the album “I Don’t Give a Fuck,” “Double Cup,” and “Drank, Kush, Barz” which sit at an impossible height above the genre and the album.  Mind blowing  is the incredible attention to detail, the mapping of rhythms and use of hemiolas that dominate a cerebral experience with the music.  The same rhythms creating a bodily response, pleasure from a break in our dance music habituation, the music asking the body to move.  From these three tracks the sounds become more sparse, and repetitive as the album works toward its final track “I’m Too Hi” where drums and bass are on the sleeve, a final due paid and a perfect end.  Double Cup is the culmination of a career devoted to music, an almost desperate presentation of life lived and unfortunately lost only six months later.  Rest in peace DJ Rashad, thank you for your devotion to the craft and the joy you have brought so many through your music.  Forever missed.  

Ólafur Arnalds & Nils Frahm - Loon

Ambient/contemporary classical music super duo, this album is the perfect come down if you have only been listening to footwork for the past week.  As someone who doesn’t know much about the ambient genre ( ie. Brian Eno’s music for… gets many plays on my computer, can tell you Harold Budd is an important name, Satie furniture music) I can at least comment that to come out with album of tape loops in 2015 is not enough to create novel ambient music.  Eno did it over 30 years ago and, well frankly he did it better than you.  I’m not calling anyone out, what I’m saying is that when I hear music that sounds like Eno, I hear music that sounds like Eno.  And that’s where Arnalds and Frahm’s record succeeds, it’s ambient but it’s not Eno.  “Four” opens the album with a brooding and receptive synth pattern outlining harmonic movements and textures, which ultimately dissolves to a singular and restrained piano line. In this way the album starts with aggression, the aggression often transmitted through the angular sounds of electronic music and brings them to a point of peace, and it’s that peace which Arnalds and Frahm commit themselves to for the remainder of the album.  “Three” and “Wide Open” deal with the driving and relentless beat underpinning much of electronic music.  But instead of building on the beat, they seem to create an equal parts environment of beat to sparse melody letting the beat and melody exist in a space of hyper-relationship and playfulness in opposition to the neglect which seems to occur so often in dance music.  These are really quiet bangers in a way, like the house music of some alternate topian universe, and this vibe continues and picks up speed in “W.”  As a break down of dance music, Loon also deals with the intersections of tension and release between dance and classical music.  On “W” the they let the first arppegiated chord ride until minute three, playing with the tension often created in dance music, only the ‘drop’ here is in a contemporary classical inspired harmonic movement.  Truly a novel ambient album in 2015, Loon serves as an examination and separation of electronic into its basic compositional structures and forms, but all claims aside, a beautiful album of music.  Perfect for those late fall afternoon sunsets on cold blustery Chicago days.  The only critique I could possibly make is that it’s only 25 minutes, leaving me wanting more (and usually hitting the repeat) every time.

a series documenting real conversations that have happened in the past or probably will happen in the future

Me: "wow, this granola is straight fire. how did you make this?"

PP: "oh man, it's SUPER easy...”

"...you just take 2 cups rolled oats, 1/3 cup macadamia nuts, 1/3 cup almonds 1/3 cup walnuts, 2 T coconut sugar, 1 t cinnamon sugar, a pinch of salt, 1 T chia seeds, 1 T Flax seed and combine all in a bowl an sift.”

“Next preheat oven to 340! and put this in a small pan: 2 T coconut oil ¼ cup maple syrup 2 T almond or peanut or any nut butter heat till liquid and then pour over the dry mix”

“now put that gooey goodness in a pan over some waxy paper, and make sure you’ve got a nice even spread like 2 oats deep.  Wouldn’t want uneven cooking or burning fam.   Now put it in the oven for 15 minutes, mix and then throw it in there for another 5-10 minutes depending on how layered your pan is.   Be sure to watch it closely as there it fine line between toasting and burning when it’s smelling real nice and has a pretty toasted brown color, pull out and mix up your oats on the counter.  Let it cool down for like 30 minutes and then put it in a container so you don’t eat it all right away and have some to throw on your yogurt or milk or smoovies or just raw dog.”

Me: “great.”

Initially, I had created a folder among my google docs entitled “FYP.” This was where I was to save all of my hilarious articles and thought pieces on life. A few months passed, and I never “got around to it.” When school started back up in the this fall, I even deleted the empty folder, not seeing a purpose to it anymore. Am I ashamed? Not about to answer that. I was very enthusiastic about the idea of a communal blog to begin with. My excuse is that I never really made a breakthrough by actually writing something. This is what this little piece is supposed to be. You see, “el pajaro” himself just rolled through my place and lectured me for an hour about how I should be ashamed of myself because I wasn’t admitting that I didn’t want to participate in the blog. Well this is my clever and hilarious version of saying “fuck you.” 

P.S: I also want to take time to create a funny and symbolic pen name for myself, following in the footsteps of all the other especially intelligent creatures on this site, so expect that in the future.

Having experienced the quizzical glances and apathy towards my haircut contemplation, I think it’s safe to say I care about hair more than most of my male friends.  In these dire times of deciding how short I should cut my hair or if I should even cut it, I’m left no other option than an extended phone call ‘heart 2 hair’ with my mom.  Because, honestly, women get it.  They get that hair is complicated and a commitment when your wear it past your shoulders or have hair as curly as mine.  And I wore it long for quite some time.  

At one point in high school I had beads tied the back (not my greatest moment) and in my freshman year of college I began to tie the curly beast up on days I couldn’t find the time necessary to tame it in more humane ways.  I even wore it long as young people surrounding me shaved the sides of their heads in search of hipness and European soccer stardom.  I saw my hair in these times almost as an act of defiance against the “indie kid” obsession and ever-conscious of the cyclical nature of style, claiming that one day long hair would again reign supreme.  

Until I got tired of it all.  Tired of the commitment and the work, tired of the man-bun hype that has swept my generation, tired of the frizz and eye-curtains, and so I cut it.  For me it was a big decision, a marker of a point I felt I had reached in my life, a new point of peace and comfortably with myself.  And so I come back to college, with shorter hair and a great attitude only to find my friends and others around me growing their hair out.  

I’m not bitter.  I’m not hair jaded about long hair coming into style as I’ve cut mine.  I’m all for long hair, but I am a little worried.  Worried because as I said earlier, most guys don’t get hair.  They don’t realize the commitment it takes to have a serious relationship with your hair, and that’s what long hair is, a serious relationship.  You can’t just roll out of bed and head out for your day without any thought of what’s taking place on your cranium.  No longer are the days you could go days, weeks, months without washing your hair, and get away with it, your’e in a serious relationship now and you’ve got to act like it.  That means shampoo, conditioner, leave-in product for strengthening, and periodic trimming.  Welcome to the land of split-ends and layers and tangles, the land of responsibility.  Maybe I’m pessimistic of my fellow man, but I don’t think they are ready for this responsibility.  This view roots in apathetic interactions I’ve had with my friends in the past over haircut decisions and the noncommittal crew cut most trend followers are emerging from.  But I hope I’m wrong.  I hope dudes growing out their hair all around this beautiful country step up and take responsibility and commit to the serious hair relationship they are about to enter.  Because to not would be more than gross and grimy, it would be disrespectful.  Disrespectful of people who take care of their long hair and understand the work it takes to manage hair that extends beyond the shoulders.  It’s a privilege to have long hair, and with that comes responsibility.  Just please don’t fuck this one up guys, please.

It means everything.

Okay, let me explain what that means.

When you give someone a book as a gift you’re (hopefully) giving them something that you yourself have read and enjoyed, perhaps even a copy that contains some of your own notes. So, in other words, you’re giving them something that you yourself have worked very hard, depending on the book, to finish and complete, in all of it’s entirety. You are sharing with them a piece of your own knowledge.

If you gave them a poetry book, you are sharing with them the emotion and feeling the book delivers.

If you are sharing with them the novel Brave New World, you are sharing with them Huxley’s warning of a possible future; the list could go on.

To me, when I share a book as a gift, I give a piece of myself to someone else, because I am sharing with them something that will connect us in a very special and personal way. Other friends of him/her might have read that book, but I introduced him/her to it. That is a connection unlike any other. What’s the point of giving someone a t-shirt or a gift card, anyone can give those gifts. Anyone. A special friend, however, gives someone a book. President Abraham Lincoln once said, “ My best friend is someone who will give me a book I have not read”. Lincoln understood the connection that type of gift offers. He understood the power behind the words we wish to share with people, when we choose to give them a book.

For a moment picture a world in which you are the only person. A world, such as Earth, with beautiful places just asking for exploration. Beautiful places that yearn to be slept on, swam across, hiked up, crossed over, dived under, etc. Now picture sharing this place with someone else you deeply admire, a friend. This is what a book does, this is the everything it means.

P.S. I’d like to add that although giving a book as a gift is one of the most special gifts you can give, it will certainly not be appreciated by everyone, I say this from experience. Give a book to someone who you know will read it, don’t give it to someone who can’t even get through the first chapter of it. I guess that’s what gift cards and t-shirts are for.

I had to recover and rest my ears for a bit after an overwhelming weekend of music at FYF Fest, but I’m back on the habit with some new old and in between.

Minutemen- The Punch Line

I must first thank the wonderful Ben Shear for lending me Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life, a showcase of the many faces of the 80’s Underground American Scene, over the summer.  As I explore music in the past, present and future tense I am continually inspired (and often overwhelmed) by the sheer amount of great music in existence, and accounts like Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life offer a focused method to learning about a scene like the 80’s underground.  And so that’s how a private university attending middle-class descended music obsessed 19 year old comes across Minutemen.  A band for the working-class individual, a band that challenged the hypocrisy of hardcore conformity, a band that could truly”be your life.”  While it wasn’t uncommon for those of the hardcore genre to write songs shorter than a minute i.e.. Nervous Breakdown EP no band packs quite as many textural and lyrical ideas into a minute quite like Minutemen.  And I thinks it’s these often quickly changing rhythms and melodies that lead to Minutemen’s extremely unique sound in the L.A. hardcore scene.  To a certain extent, Minutemen create distilled and compressed music, with never more than one chorus and rare melodic repetition, that challenges popular music concept and in my opinion cuts out the bullshit in a defiance to the groove.  Add to the ever changing and to the point texture poignant lyrics of the same nature and you can start imagine Minutemen’s sound and appeal.  The Punch Line seems to me a perfect place to start with Minutemen, it comes out in 1981 and to me represents an excellent representation of the band in it’s initial most pure form as well as the the growing influence of Captain Beefheart and co.’s disjunct jazz-funk.  Riding atop of this sit D. Boon and Mike Watt’s political and socially charged gut- punched lyrics, I would suggest reading along after a few listens.   At 18 tracks in 15 minutes it’s no bullshit music, it’s econo music, it’s anti-mersh music, it’s punk music, listen for yourself.

Beach house - Depression Cherry

Simple elements woven into a complex blanket of sounds.  And it’s one you have to wait until the dead of winter to pull out, light enough to comfort those late summer nights and Fall mornings.  And like a good blanket game, it’s all about layers.  The music of Beach House.  They completely revolutionized my concept of live music three years ago at and FYF fest and challenge my conceptions again with Depression Cherry.  Live, their music surrounds you, lifts you up,crushes you, becoming more atmosphere than music in L.A. Historic Park on a warm summer night.  Depression Cherry can’t achieve this feeling, though it comes pretty damn close if you turn speakers up and dim the lights, but the album achieves something equally remarkable in recorded music.  Often times people comment on how beautifully simple a piece of music is, and while I acknowledge the beauty of simplicity, I think there is something more going on behind moving simplicity, a covert complexity.  Maybe a different kind of complexity than we are used to hearing but a complexity of sound none the less.  This could be the early music of Bob Dylan or Miles’ solos on Relaxin’ or in a different way, Depression Cherry.  It’s not sparse like Satie’s furniture music but rather a collection of minimal simple melodies and lines that build and warp and grow to something so much greater than themselves.  While this build and growth happens on almost every track, it never seems blueprint and somehow achieves a unique, though very characteristic, dense blanket of sound when it’s through.  And the layering and growing within each track extends to the album on a whole as sounds seems to build from the start of “Levitation” and the initial hesitation of the one track drum loop, to the arguable climax of the album in “PPP,” to the inevitable comedown at the end of “Days of Candy.”  In this sense it’s an unconventional concept album, one that deals in atmosphere and a concept of sound rather than in lyrically.  And one felt rather than thought.  If it’s not already obvious, I really like this album and would definitely urge you to take a listen and come to your own conclusions.  here is the first track, “Levitation”

Ulrich Schnauss - A Strangely Isolated Place

I guess this was kind of a shoe-gaze Beach House warm-up in my listening habit over the past week.  I heard about this album from a dude sinning records in Beacon Sound Portland, OR so it kind of had to be really great right? Right.  I don’t really know much about Ulrich Schanuss but dude makes some incredibaly beautiful music.  Music I don’t doubt can fill a room like Beach House but seems to me more ‘pure’ in the lineage of showgaze and without lyrical vocals to pull listeners in, places an incredible attention on textural composition.  It’s an album I could’t really tell you the names of the tracks because I tend to just plug in and hit play.  If Depression Cherry is a Fall blanket, A Strangley Isolated Place is like a tub of slightly viscous body temperature liquid you can slowly slip into for five to seven minutes and then return back to the world relaxed and soft-eyed.  I don;t think I’m going to be able to describe it in a more pathetic way than that so jump in yourself and enjoy.

As a a high schooligan I resisted any and all tradition.  I hated it.  Tradition in my eyes was boring, a cop-out to disguise lack of motivation and originality in relationships.  Thankfully, I’ve chilled out since those confusing times, and I’ve gotten older and taller and a little more comfortable with the mush between my ears.  And I think it’s because of all these things, especially the getting older part, that I understand the beauty of tradition a little more.  Tradition doesn’t matter when you can pretty clearly remember each of your sixteen years, but at the age of nineteen (iknowright), having lived the most volatile period of my life career, it’s nice to look back on the past three FYF Fests.  They are markers of music taste and of relationships, markers of youth and maturity that help me to realize change in my life.  Each FYF is special to me, and I’m not about to rank them because I don’t think it’s really fair to rank sentimental things.  I will say FYF 2015 was the best festival musically thus far.  The lineup was arguably the best in the festival circuit this year both in diversity and quality, and though better individual acts may have played the fest in the past two years, the mass of talent Sean Carlson was able to pull together this year was unmatched.  And I think that mass of talent speaks more than anything to the commitment of FYF towards music more than any other festival flair.  FYF isn’t Coachella or Bonaroo or Outside Lands, but it doesn’t try to be and instead focuses more attention on the music than it’s festival competition.  The result is less of a festival and more of a collection of concerts, and artists respond to this dedication allowing for the kind of lineup we saw this year.  So let’s talk about some music, some discoveries and some bands you really ought to see soon.  

La Femme

Although I knew some of their music coming into the festival, I would still call La Femme my most pleasant surprise of the weekend.  And I guess I kind of had that feeling from the moment the lead singer walked onstage in a turban make shift and in a broken French accent started yelling “fuck ya!” .  The turban came off later, as did the shirt, and the music unfolded in much the same fashion as the clothing.  La Femme is a groove band, and that is something that is hard to realize on record without loosing song cohesion and listenability.  They really lay into the groove live and build the instrumental base for an extended period of time before changing or adding any sort of melody.  Maybe it was the French vocals, but La Femme live recalled for me many of the elements I love so much about Stereolab, but with more bounce and flash, a comparison I did not make with the recorded material.  Because of their attention to development and dedication to the groove each song was exciting to watch and impossible to stand still to.  The French lyrics and my sole understanding of English made me focus on the voice as an instrument rather than the more explicit content source it usually is which is always nice as a musical exercise and sonic texture.  Notable songs included Antitaxi and Sur La Planche 2013 (look up lyrics translation) which can both be found on their latest release, Psycho Tropical Berlin.  My friend also picked up on a discreet cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”  They have unfortunately never recorded it, but hey, more reason to catch this band live.  

BADBADNOTGOOD

BBNG is kind of my favorite band.  I saw them for the first time the night before FYF at The Regent and then was back at it less than 24 hours later.  Seeing them live and actually getting to geek out and meet them opened my eyes to things about myself and music and talent.  Mostly I realized they are not incredible jazz musicians.   And with this observation I realized the frustrating talent-based judgement of jazz musicians I seemed to have picked up in my one year of Jazz school.  They are just there guys having fun, and “goofing around up there” as Matt kept insisting to me as I totally fan-boyed out.  And as I stood there and watched as they laid into “Triangle” the only person I was disappointed with was myself.  The fact is Matt Tavares isn’t Robert Glasper, Leland is no Kamasi Washington, Chester ain’t Thundercat, and Alex isn’t Chris Dave.  They just aren’t on the same technical level and it’s something I probably knew long before I stepped into the Regent, but because of my competitive jazz education, disregarded as to give my own taste validity to the people around me.  I’m not saying they are bad musicians, because they are all very talented, just not to the standard that seems to have been engrained in me through a Jazz community I seem to find increasingly stifling.  Matt repeats many of the same licks, Alex tends to rush, and Leland never really steps out of his comfort zone but the beautiful reality is: who gives a fuck?  The three give more energy and love for music and performance and each other than any other group I have ever seen and that’s the real shit anyway.  Talent and chops are cool and not something to be disregarded, but if I had my head so far up my own ass that I disregarded BBNG because of their lack of virtuosity, it would have been a sad night.  Are they still my favorite band?  Even more so, they inspire me to get out there and goof around myself, to balance the seriousness of music with the fun and love that so much of it is.  And oh yeah, they played a great show, providing the only time I have ever moshed to a piano solo multiple times (they closed with “Bastard/Lemonade”).  I can say there is some great stuff coming down the pipe from the new tunes they played, most notably a cover of Flying Lotus’s “Putty Boy Strut” that quite frankly puts the original to shame.  Just three best friends up there goofing around and having the best time of their young lives, there is really nothing more inspiring or moving than that.

Run The Jewels

I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time here because these guys should already be on your list, but I will confirm the hype is real.  Killer Mike and El-P are more than rappers, they are best friends and good vibes contribute to great performance.  Zack DeLaRoca, Travis Barker and Gangsta Boo also showed up, so that was pretty cool.

Savages

A band I’ve always known about but never really known and I want to know now.  In one word, powerful.  And it wasn’t just the music, the four piece all-female post-punk band walked out in all black and played the entire show to a background of white light.  Jehnny Beth, the lead singer wore her short hair slicked back and seemed to command the music with a cool intense gaze.   The band followed, regardless of what the music was doing, with the same cold driving energy.  The music followed suit with giant swells guitar held down by the constant pulse of the drums and bass, all topped by Beth’s eerie vibrating vocals.  For me it was one of those shows I felt completely captured by, returning the intensity of the music with a gaze of awe.

Kanye West

The only person in my mind who could have replaced Frank Ocean.  He showed up, played everything you could want, only stopped the music twice, brought Rihanna out for Flashing Lights, ended the show singing “Only One” on the ground as a ceiling of lights descended upon him, and solidified himself in my mind as one of the prolific and talented artists of the 2000’s.  It was great, nuff said.  

Lower Dens

I caught this L.A. band as the first show in the arena of day 2 with high expectations and was not disappointed.  Their latest release, Escape From Evil is a large record, and I mean that not in terms of length or actual size, but in terms of sound.  No space, no silence, atmosphere, and it’s not clustered music but rather music created with a primary focus on filling ambient space.  These characteristics can sometimes stay in the studio, with the production or chosen recording space, but when a band can translate a massive sound to live performance the result is pinnacle.  And in my opinion Lower Dens was able to exceed the space of Escape From Evil live, as atmospheric guitars and Jana Hunter’s floating vocals surrounded my body.  And I think this, “better than the record” impression was a defining characteristic of the lineup at FYF this year and speaks again to the quality of the festival overall.  Catch Lower Dens if you can, and take a listen to Escape From Evil it’s one of my favorite 2k15 releases and deserves to be enjoyed.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Sometimes I go to shows for some sort of cerebral experience, or to release some aggression and sometimes I just wanna dance.  The later is the case with Unknown Mortal Orchestra.  The Portland-based group creates music that blends a 60’s psychedelic sound with a modern compositional ear and approach.  Ruben Nielson, the band leader and lead singer, blends these elements with an infectious pop-sensibility and just makes really good music, I think a lot of people can get along with.  As the concert developed, I realized that UMO is more than just good vibes but also a very talented and learned collection musicians, who come together exceptionally live.  It also must be mentioned Nielson has an incredibly versatile voice.  The dude can wail like James Brown better live than on record and reminds me of an indie leaning Charles Bradley sonically.  Bass grooves also set a perfect foundation from the indie neb-soul vibes happening above, and the keyboard player sounded as if he stepped out of a different time.  This all being said, Unkown Mortal Orchestra is not a band imitating the past, they may show their hand when it comes to influence, but create distinctly modern and non-kitschy music.  Catch them if you have the chance.

Death Grips

What the fuck just happened?  Bodies where flying everywhere in the red dust cloud as I clutched my t-shirt to my face and jumped into the mayhem.  MC Ride’s shirtless body bobs up and down on stage as he gruffly shouts “I’M IN YOUR AREA” to the up tempo “Hacker.”  A lot of people don’t get along with Death Grips sonically, and there’s also a lot of uneccesarry hype because it’s totally valid to not enjoy their music.  To me, it represents the vanguard of modern and parallels the exciting music of the American Underground in terms of attitude and resistance to musical norms.  I won’t spend too much time here, because Death Grip’s music music is so polarizing, and if you don’t like the music you probably won’t like the show.

D’Angelo and The Vanguard

It’s actually crazy how many hard hitters are in The Vanguard.  Pino on bass, Chis Dave on drums, Sharkie on guitar, the list goes on and it’s not just for show or jazz geek name recognition, they are so tight.  And really make D’Angelo’s music what it is, which is in my opinion the most relevant continuation of the soul music genre in music today.  And then there is the voice and the light that is D’Angelo, who brings both a presence and commitment to the stage unlike I have seen.  The music grooved deeper than anything the entire weekend, and people got down.  (myself included).  He played a pretty extensive spread of his work, with many selections from Black Messiah, “Ain’t That Easy,” “The Charade,” “Betray My Heart” and “Really Love” with classics from Voodoo like “Spanish Joint” mixed in.  It took me a while to get into D’Angelo initially despite my jazz roots and expected disposition to the style, but I persisted and kept listening and one day it clicked with the production and genius of Voodoo.  I can confidently say that experiencing the music live did even more to open my ears to music I have come to love and rooted myself in the past two years.  Take the dive for yourself if you haven’t yet, you won’t be disappointed.

Morrissey, was special and great and the cherry on top, but I think the festival ended for me with D’Angelo.  I left that show without anything left or maybe a better way to put it, completely satisfied.  It was a great weekend spent with some of my favorite people in my life listening to special music.  Until next year xoxoxo FYF 2k15.

2 cups rolled oats

1/3 cup macadamia nuts

1/3 cup almonds

1/3 cup walnuts

2 T coconut sugar

1 t cinnamon sugar

pinch of salt

1 T chia seeds

1 T Flax seed

Combine all in a bowl an sift.  Preheat oven to 340!

next put this in a small pan:

2 T coconut oil

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 T almond or peanut or any nut butter

heat till liquid and then pour over the dry mix

now put that gooey goodness in a pan over some waxy paper, and make sure you’ve got a nice even spread like 2 oats deep.  Wouldn’t want uneven cooking or burning fam.  

now put it in the oven for 15 minutes, mix and then throw it in there for another 5-10 minutes depending on how layered your pan is.  

be sure to watch it closely as there it fine line between toasting and burning

when it’s smelling real nice and has a pretty toasted brown color, pull out and mix up your oats on the counter.  Let it cool down for like 30 minutes and then put it in a container so you don’t eat it all right away and have some to throw on your yogurt or milk or smoovies or just raw dog.  

boy is crying right now frank

Anderson .Paak - Venice

I recently backpacked with my friend’s family in the Grand Canyon, and for four days of my life was wholly content.  I think it had to do with surrender. As I surrendered to the canyon walls, the trail and the group of people around me, I didn’t trouble myself with thoughts about the future or past, I just hiked and observed and felt. Music at its best is an act of surrender.  It’s an experience and creative process best served without ego and inhibition, and in this spirit, I sat down with Venice last night and just listened.  I didn’t think about whether Anderson .Paak was too “pop” for me or if he fit within the concept of my music taste, I listened and enjoyed.  I enjoyed .Paak’s confidence in exploring a diversity of textures and styles as he resists the singer or rapper pigeon-hole.  i enjoyed the acoustic guitar on “I Miss That Whip” and the unabashed trap-production of “Drugs” and the west-coast meets London vibe of “Right There.”  I enjoyed that Venice cohesively flows despite these different vibrations. Genre bending like this can seem courageous from an artistic perspective, but maybe it ties back into surrender as well.  Maybe to resist a singular style is an artifact of surrendering to the spirit of a song or album.  And maybe music created by an act of surrender causes a similar reaction for the listener, but that would make surrender more passive and defy the definition and power of its action.  Maybe i should stop talking in circles and just leave you with this:

Miguel - Wildheart

People often talk about how ‘infectious’ a beat is, ’catchy’ a chorus is, ‘contagious’ a melody is.  Sounds like we are talking viruses, probably because talking and writing about music is kind of bullshit and our language doesn’t really support our efforts.  Without ample vocabulary, we describe how music affects us in a language of comparison and sometimes it works out.  Meet the Wildheart virus.  I didn’t want to catch it, I took Vitamin C and washed my hands, but in the spirit of my prior discussion I eventually surrendered to the Miguel epidemic.  Wildheart seems to me the beautiful culmination of pop music’s recent efforts and trends towards soul, r&b, and jazz.  As with To Pimp a Butterfly, Wildheart represents an unexpected resurrgence of commercial value in cohesive albums.  Not to say that artist haven’t been creating great albums for the last 100 years, it just seems to me that people other than music geeks are caring about the value of an entire album again, and it makes me happy.  Miguel really lets each song on Wildheart unfurl, establishing an atmosphere before jumping in too deep or attempting a catchy chorus, and this constant attention to atmosphere is the cohesion I’m talking about.  Once he’s established the atmosphere Miguel goes in both lyrically (see “what’s normal anyway”) and vocally  (check out “FLESH”), and then switches everything up on you like the beginning of “DEAL.”  These elements contribute to the complexity of Miguel’s music, an accessible complexity that allows the more serious listener to explore concepts outside of money, sex, and drugs and pop hook melodies while retaining appeal to the more casual listener.  Pitchfork compares Miguel to Al Green and in their eyes Frank Ocean is our Marvin Gaye. Comparisons. Which prove how hard it is to establish and individuality in music and again how stupid it can be to write about music.  I don’t know if Miguel, or any of the modern day soul singers, will ever break their history, or if the should aim to, but in my ears Miguel is Miguel and i’m infected.  

*side effects of Wildheart may include incessant humming and poor falsetto imitation, but it’s quite worth it.

I realize Wildheart and Venice are really similar, which i guess is mostly reflective of the mood i’m in right now and maybe the hole Frank Ocean has created in my heart.  So if this smooth r&b stuff isn’t really cutting it for you, I understand and offer you this sludgy slow building single from Ireland’s Girl Band.  Shouts out to Robin Hilton at NPR for this one.  He described it as a release punk music could never give his not so angry and angsty youth, and I can relate to that. enjoy

as you read this i am probably sweat drenched and wundereyed in the grand canyon.  surrounded only by the sounds of my spanish speaking companions and rattle snakes, my listening habit will be of the harmonia mundi, but i hope it happens while i am gone...

Boys Don’t Cry

please Frank