all horse force

In no uncertain terms, this new Girl Talk is the shit. It’s hilarious, insightful and joyful in all the right places. If I know you, expect to endure this soon: “Here, let me play this bit for you…see, isn’t that crazy…the way he cut in that track is like whoa…c’mon, laugh/smile/gasp, goddamit!”

Gregg Gillis, d/b/a Girl Talk, is not really the new Eddie Murphy in any intelligible way, but his recent albums (Night Ripper and the new Feed The Animals) make me feel just like the first time I heard Raw or Delirious. Here is this continuous aural experience for what seems like hours, where every 10 seconds something happens that forces you to grin like a loon while forcibly stifling an involuntary “oh no he di’int.” It’s quite literally drugs- you want to feel like this all the time, and you want to share the experience with all your friends. But then you do, and you stand there unsatisfied, both with the reaction you’re getting and your own enthusiasm for the work. The problems are limitations we’re all familiar with in comedy: the joke just isn’t as funny the second time, especially if the second time is right after the first, and it’s awful to have to explain why it’s funny. The former is satisfied just by giving yourself a break from the material, but the latter is a barrier everyone has to surmount on their own; you really to have to recognize the samples to appreciate the “jokes.”

I really don’t mean to imply that Girl Talk just does musical jokes, though; I mean to call it comedy of the highest order. The Internet is littered with mashups that amount to nothing more than knock-knock jokes, but Girl Talk is like the Daily Show: not just funny because it’s true, but also true in spite of the funny. An amusing revelation is no less a revelation. Girl Talk pokes the tracks he samples with as sharp a stick as Jon Stewart ever wielded, but instead of lampooning, he’s celebrating. He takes out all the context and holds up the fragment, but instead of saying “look how ridiculous,” he says “look how excellent.” It’s aggressively optimistic, but it is just as trenchant as any cutting parody. He’s giving us a whole new perspective on the tracks he samples, not only by juxtaposing them so drastically, but by taking only a few bars of any one track. He’s giving you just enough to appreciate what is truly great about a particular hook or phrase, while weaving it in and out of an undeniably funky tapestry. You’re left with a renewed love for your old favorites, but there’s also a sneaking suspicion that the original artist may have grievously overused that sampled bit. It’s work in the best tradition of recontextualization, but it’s also enormously fun. Just like great comedy, you never stop wanting to laugh, or in this case, dance.

No one track does the album justice, but this one has a particularly inspired use of one of my old favorites, Aphex Twin’s “Girl/Boy Song”: Girl Talk - Shut The Club Down

Stay tuned for Part 2: the obligatory IP wonkery. It’s not for nothing that Girl Talk’s on the Illegal Art label

evan :: Jun.28.2008 :: Notions, The Roll :: 1 Comment »

A new year has come, and the constant deluge of spam comments and pings has forced me to flee from my antique version of Movable Type into the Open and waiting arms of WordPress. I’ve known it was the right thing to do for some time, but I finally bit the bullet only a few weeks ago, feeling newly empowered and enlightened at the end of finals. I’m sure the newer versions of MT are great and all, but I think for something I am so fickle about updating, I can’t really justify spending any money on it. Plus the openness and the freeness of WordPress just gives me that warm fuzzy feeling.

I’m going to ease back into the process of blogging here by doing something of a cop-out post, but one I hope might still be interesting: Top New (to me) Tracks of 2006. Instead of just the best songs released this past year, I thought I’d throw in older things that I have only just recently discovere, too. So here, from the infinite wisdom of iTunes, are the ten most played tracks I added to my library in 2006:

1. Heartbeats by The Knife off Deep Cuts (2003) (20 spins)
This track needs little introduction, and I’m obviously coming way late to the party, but if you don’t know, now you know. Epic and irresistible.

2. Sheffield Shanty by Monkey Swallows The Universe off Jimmy Down the Well EP (2006) (15 spins)
This track is much more under the radar, but really just as irresistible. I’m not usually one for this kind of mope-folk, but it’s a testament to the excellence of the track that I just couldn’t stop listening to it.

3. Crazy by Gnarls Barkley off St. Elsewhere (2006) (14 spins)
No introduction necessary, but I would like to take a wee bit of credit for being up on this track from the very beginning. When I heard that Danger Mouse’s next project after Dangerdoom would be with Cee-Lo, I knew it would be excellent, but when I heard the first radio rip of Crazy, I went nuts. Magical postmodern gospel to accompany the Prayer of the Bobbing Heads.

4. Heartbeats by Jose González off Veneer (2003) (14 spins)
The song’s so good, it made the list twice. This is actually the first version I heard, in that Sony commercial with the bouncyballs. It’s also a testament to Matthew Perpetua’s point that the song is a new standard that can sustain wildly different versions.

5. Heaven Help Us All by Stevie Wonder off Signed, Sealed, and Delivered (1970) (14 spins)
The real reason for a list like this. It’s tragic that I’ve had hella Stevie in my collection for years but never had this track. As anthems of unity go, this beats Ebony & Ivory so bad it ain’t even funny.

6. Hey Girl by Curtis Vodka off Yeti Bounce (2006) (13 spins)
Any DJ who can make my list by remixing a Chris Brown track is a force to be reckoned with. It’s not that the original song is that bad, but it falls prey to the worst evils of modern R&B: anemic drums and completely uninspired verses. Thankfully, Mr. Vodka cuts both of them out in favor of an up-jumped boogie and looping the most excellent chorus.

7. Go Go Gadget Gospel by Gnarls Barkley off St. Elsewhere (2006) (12 spins)
No less fantastic than Crazy, but less smooth and a metric ton more funky. Having these two on the list also shows that fabulous bias towards items added earlier in the year.

8. Breathe Me (Mylo Remix) by Sia (2004) (12 spins)
Not the manliest of tracks, but I love me some Mylo. Plus as the song from the final montage of Six Feet Under it’s got that goodness wrapped up in it.

9. Sing Me Spanish Techno by The New Pornographers off Twin Cinema (2005) (11 spins)
I think it says a lot about a track when you don’t really care for a band but you love one song this much. It seems like the track is then more clearly an excellent piece of musicianship and not just another riff on a style you particularly enjoy. So yeah, don’t buy the album, but getting this track for 99 cents will be the best deal you see

10. A Sunday Mystery by Aceyalone off Magnificent City (2006) (10 spins)
RJD2 on the boards making a beautiful little noise. This one probably makes the list because it’s short and starts with A, but I have no qualms about it.

evan :: Jan.13.2007 :: The Rock, The Roll, The Soul :: No Comments »

…even though that’s pretty much what it is. I’ve recently been falling in love with electronic music all over again, and blair at music.for-robots deserves a lot of credit for that. While the entire blog is great, his posts have always led the pack as far as I’m concerned. Over the past year or so, he’s chipped away at my encrusted prejudices about all things bleepy and thumpy, showing me grand new vistas of unexplored funkiness. From the hills of German techno to the shores of Folktronica remixes, it has been quite a ride.

Those who knew me in high school know I’ve always loved the bright lights of the Warp Records stable: Aphex, Squarepusher, Autechre, etc. Eventually I figured out that they call that kind of music IDM, and so I signed on as an official Fan of IDM. Like many fans, over time I built up a hard shell around my genre, sealing up everything dope and making sure nothing wack infiltrated the edges. If there’s one thing fans love to do, it’s categorize, and electronic music fans have made it into an art in and of itself. Nothing is better proof of that than Ishkur’s Guide. Though the presentation may be a bit lacking in artistry, the breadth of information there is glorious. With such categorizations in hand, I proceeded to exclude all the genres I thought were not serious or intellectual enough; basically if you weren’t pushing to the bleeding edge of what was possible, you were “formulaic” and deserving of scorn. Thanks to Isaac’s influence, I always had a soft spot for jungle, but house, techno, breakbeat, etc. were all written off as frivolous and wack. It was a narrow-minded approach and I regret it, though I was not always wrong; Happy Hardcore and Anthem Trance are still both completely ridiculous. Thankfully, I have mellowed with age and can now appreciate all things that are dope, not just what I allow myself to believe is dope.

These two tracks are from the most excellent BPitch Control label in Berlin, who are the vanguards of German minimalist techno. Headed by Ms. Ellen Allien, it is the first label since Warp where I have bought into their aesthetic and appreciate everything they are releasing, whether it is to my taste or not. Both these tracks were posted by blair on MFR, so apologies all around, wherever necessary, but I had to give the world another crack at them:

Paul Kalkbrenner: Gebrunn Gebrunn
from Camping 2 (BPitch Control 2005) [MFR post]

Fuck a song of hope for the new millenium, this is The March of Victory In The War Against Unfunkiness. It is a relentless destructive onslaught against Those Who Do Not Bob Their Heads. V-U Day is here, deny it at your peril.

Apparat: Cheap Thrills
from My Parade (BPitch Control 2004) [MFR post]

This is The Other March Of Victory, from the opposite flank. It shuffles and sneaks along, rather than stomping everything in its path flat, but it is no less undeniable. Resistance is futile.

All I can offer to conclude is that if these tracks were too massive, if they plowed you under and left you buried under the weight of their funk, don’t be afraid to come back. We’ll have some nice soft soulful tracks for you next, and hopefully “next” won’t be more that week away.

evan :: Nov.17.2005 :: The Roll :: No Comments »

Squarepusher: A Journey To Reedham (7 A.M. Mix)
from Big Loada (Warp 1997)

Today I’d like to talk about what makes a “Song of Hope for the New Millennium”. That’s the title IK awarded to this track, way back in the halcyon days of high school. The world was a brighter, happier place then, and while we had plenty of excess angst to stew in, deep down we knew that it was just a phase. We would go on to college and big things, navigating the Information Superhighway at full speed, stopping only to collect our rewards for being so cool and doing such interesting stuff.
I don’t think I can really sum up my feeling about the track any better than with a video treatment I’ve been carrying around in my head ever since I first heard it. It begins with a shot of an open manhole cover on a New York street. Slowly rising out of it is a life-size Super Mario, rendered in old school 8-bit glory. He begins to walk through the city, which is almost completely empty, like early on a Saturday morning. Along the way he finds other beloved Nintendo characters, who start following him around, until finally they form a huge pyramidal procession down Fifth Avenue. I wasn’t even that huge a gamer when I was younger, but there’s still a lot of nostalgia bound up in those characters for me, and I think their triumphal parade through the real world speaks of the optimism a lot of us felt about the merging of the virtual and the physical in those wild pre-millennial days.

Blockhead: Insomniac Olympics
from Music By Cavelight (Ninja Tune 2003)

Alas, the actual new millennium leaves a little bit to be desired. Even if 9/11 and its ensuing conflicts did not, in fact, change math and Jesus, it did change a lot about how much hope we had for this brave new era we had entered. Things weren’t going to be shiny and awesome all the time. For me, this Blockhead track captures perfectly the slight menace bred by the fear and uncertainty we all feel a bit of now. It’s not terrifying, nor is it angry or indignant; it’s just vaguely creepy, in the most beautiful way. It’s also a march, like the Squarepusher track, but this parade can’t be attended by anything so unserious as videogame characters. It’s got a be a brotherhood of broken but hopeful people finding their way through the urban canyons, kept going by the sunlight that peeks through the clouds.
The beat here is of course undeniable, but it’s the primal, warbling vocal sample of the chorus that carries the day. It stirs you from complacency and demands that you see the good in the world, and do some good of your own. That makes it my new official Song of Hope for the (still) New Millennium. If anyone else wants to hope along with me, feel free.

evan :: Oct.24.2005 :: The Roll :: 2 Comments »