Hello. talk.oaklog and film.oaklog seem to be having some problems. Not so new, I guess, but I'm pretty tired of it, so I'm going to move oaklog to a new server. Been meaning to for a while anyhow.
Starting the process now. Might take a day or two. Hopefully it'll be done by Monday. Should be relatively transparent, but things might be a little flaky until I give the all-clear.
I think this happened last year. The site went down because the domain expired right before Christmas. Turns out we registered for the first time on December 22nd, 2001. We will be doomed to a holiday season scare every year, maybe.
This time around I registered it for two years, which is what I thought I had done last time, though I should have figured out I was wrong.
Having oaklog go down, especially with the threat of it being registered by someone else, sort of kicked my ass. I haven't spent much time on the site lately, and haven't developed oa2k6log since I got back from Argentina. Moreover, I haven't listed anything at all since December, 2004, though that's been pretty intentional. But this weekend, over Christmas, I accidentally drank one million cockails with my Great Aunt -- a real beast of a woman -- and wound up drunk in bed in the room I grew up in. I wrote the first version of oaklog in that room too, and waking up, was pretty afraid of losing this community due to some ridiculous oversight on my part.
I won't promise things now, as I'm classicly bad at keeping myself honest about shit like that. But I'm aiming at making oaklog great again: reinventing tune.oaklog as a more independent DJ platform, adding comments everywhere, and making good on the stuff I was talking about months ago. Hope you'll stick around.
EBN-OZN - AEIOU sometimes Y: While searching for Freez's I.O.U, I came across a bunch of other songs that were deceivingly similarly named. This song is a story, and it's fucking great. "It's amazing we communicate at all!"
Annie - Happy Without You (Riton Vocal mix): This song is something like a plane flying into and out of a stormcloud. It's got a clean, metallic precision on its way in, gets fuzzed up by static rain in the middle, and comes out the other side washed.
Modeselektor & TTC - Dancingbox: TTC have been on here before, but Modeselektor shreds them on this track. At second 70 your heart will start stopping, starting.
mp3 wednesday - wednesday, september 21, 2005 - 10:00
Been some time, but I'll try to do these again every two weeks. Started pulling down new music again from work, as my home computer life is a shambles. Here're 5, with 4 from this year:
Dir En Grey - C: I am saving the best for first. I think this song is a convincing example of a superior Japanese pop aesthetic, as applied to any fucking genre out there. Listen to this song and tell me this doesn't sound at once like Boy Sets Fire, Atreyu, Eliot, The Bled, or even Stabbing Goddamned Westward. But there's growling! That shit get borderline Black Metal! Simple riffs and a consistent, unified band image have made Dir En Grey a huge force in the Visual Kei scene. Plus the album this track is off of is called Withering To Death, which is pretty serious (the tour to support the album was called the 'It Withers It Withers' tour). Ears wither!
Franz Ferdinand - I'm Your Villain: Album out in a few weeks. Bet you've all heard most of it. Who knows if this'll single, but it's one of the only tracks on 'You Could Have it So Much Better...' that I think has something extra going for it. There's a sort of waiting-to-let-go throughout the intro, and when the bottom drops out you get about 20 seconds of the sort of bass built to slug your guts.
Röyksopp - What Else is There: It's her voice. This is the slow jam everyone says they want but that no one will dance to. It's got too much of Norway tied up in it; all hollow ice and singing strings. This is the sort of music that would play in the frozen cave in Logan's Run, with the robot guardian and the plankton. You should seriously sex to this.
Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch: A little darker. Fairly non-stop too, with density filling in the background so you don't get that sense of spareness and space that's almost overwhelming, now, with Electroclash. That is to say that this is something else than that, and it's totally welcome. I think everyone's over not liking Ladytron by now, so we can get on with enjoying it simply.
Xiu Xiu - Ceremony: Off an old EP, Chapel of the Chimes. Somehow I kept passing this up, but sought it out once La Floret quietly bored me. I know you hate Xiu Xiu but you're wrong, so just listen to it. This is the most melodic part of them, wrapped up in reverb and pots and pans falling down. The beginning whirs like the New Order song you're predisposed to love, so don't get discouraged by his voice. It's a tea kettle, whistling up and sizzling down.
As mentioned last week, this week music has got a theme that is as irresistible as it is French! And since it is all French, you had better believe it's all going to make you completely reinvent your aesthetic and you will probably have to destroy all your lame Saxon music after hearing it.
Lio - J'obtiens toujours ce que je V: Starting off with some classic 1980 Lio. If you've heard much of 2 Many DJ's mixes, you'll have heard a few of her more popular songs ("Amoureaux Solitaires" is a big one), and there have been some remixes floating around in the last few years, but this stuff stands up just fine on its own. It's got some Italo Disco lines running through it, and some of the almost electro-twee melodies you heard on Alphaville's releases a few years further into the decade, but this whole album is infectious like a Hepatitic strain of the Epstein Barr virus. I SHOULD KNOW!!!
TTC - Dans Le Club (Prod. Para One): Another track you've probably heard in a mix somewhere, but it's worth hearing it all the way through. Off TTC's new album which is good and goofy Electro Rap. Great because it doesn't bite oneally seems to bite 1998 stateside Hip-Hop beats (which I never really liked to begin with), as a lot of French Hip-Hop does. There's a good instrumental version of this on an EP too, but listening to lyrics you can't understand (well, maybe you can?) is a lot of fun, because the baldness of the posturing is totally impossible to ignore.
Amanda Woodward - La Decadence de La Decadence: Whenever I post hardcore to this mp3 thing, it's got something at the center of it. It's the reason I like that genre at all: the bait-with-no-switch of the slowdown into melody, and there's nowhere to go but back up the ladder towards crescendo. Here, the steady climb out gets built on reverb, with echo chamber guitars, and you're just waiting for it to breach back into the chug and the thrash, but while you're waiting, the middle almost sounds like it's full of violins. When you finally surface you're up to your fucking neck in solid rock and it's inescapable. Give it a try?
La Caution & Chateau Flight - Deserts & Lezards: More hip-hop, only this stuff is dirty-future-awesome. Sort of all over the place with the beat so you're guessing at it, and following the flows like you're hitched to their hinds legs, because they are FUCKING SPACE HORSES and this is the galaxy, you know?
Vitalic - No Fun: Last one. Vitalic put out an EP a few years ago and every song on it was gold. Everyone used the shit in their sets, it got put on comps forever, everything. This is from his new album and I think it sounds like father and son synthesizers, arguing about going to a party. The dad-synth is all , SCHOOOOOL, HOMEWERRRRK, RESPONSIBILLLLL-- and the kid cuts in like CRAAMMM ITTT POPPP, because he's just gotta dance, he's gotta get it out. They go on like that for a little while, not getting anywhere, and then Dad comes back in the middle like, trying a different tack, a little fuzzed out like he's trying to relate to the kid, all YOUUUU CANNN HAVVEE FUNNN PLUSS BEEE COOOL AFFTER THE S.S.S.S.A.A.A.A.T.T.T.T.s, and that's when the kid loses his shit, and he's like III HAATTEE THHHIIISSS FAAMMIILLY ALL II WANNTED WASS AA PEPPSSSIII. He's screeching like a rebel computer banshee and at this point, and his dad's gotta give it up because, kids, you know?
No real theme this week. Next week, though, I've got some real shit in store.
Fannypack - Twisted: Starting with the one you'll probably like the most. Off their new release and it's sort of banging. If you don't have this album yet you'll wind up hearing this song soon enough, I'm sure, at Target maybe.
The Ogyatanaa Show Band - Disco Africa: Of course Afrobeat is huge and dope but I'm posting this track because it's way less brassy than most of the shit on the Ghana Soundz comps (where I found this song. I'm not that deep into this stuff yet.) There's this part where the drumkit gets in a fight with some woodblock/cowbell combo, and then the organ comes in like Dragnet or something and just drops the whole ass out of the thing. This song is its own dancefloor. (What does that even mean?)
Duranduranduran - Relentless Decapitation: Got this a while ago and never listened to it because I mostly only liked looking at the name of the song on my desktop. But then I went through it and it's pretty likable, I think, if you're at all into glitchy low-amp power electronics. It's not as experimental as all that, and I think this guy does some Ace of Base covers too, but I don't know, smoke pot, listen to this track, turn yourself into a television.
Hanged Up - Kinetic Work: This is the only really aggressive song on the album, I think, but it's not aggressive in a hardcore way, since they only play the viola and drums. I think the timing throughout the song is really compelling, and sets the rest of the album up (this is the first track) to be something more than it is, which is disappointing. Please give this one a shot even if you hate the music I usually post.
Tussle - Tight Jeans: This is penance for having told Simon that Tussle probably sucks when I hadn't really heard any track besides Don't Stop, and I didn't even know that was Tussle when I heard it. This band is good, but you had better like that one fucking bassline they bring to the table for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This song is comfortable building slowly into something that stays gradually interesting but never goes ape, and I think there's a certain trustworthiness in that you don't get from faddier dancepunk.
Finally got around to writing up a recap of our experience with polyphasic sleeping. Lara's log has had some reports she kept while we were at it, but my write-up is more about our observations and thoughts on the whole thing, a month after having stopped fucking around with it.
The review itself is posted over at argentino.saur.us, our Buenos Aires travelogue. There's also a journal there about Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay (which we visited recently while Erich was in town) and some new pictures, if you are interested in seeing some awesome shit.
I missed last week because Erich was here and we went to Uruguay. Actually we went on Saturday and I didn't post still because my suspicions were correct: the music I'm posting is too awesome for most ears so those ears aren't downloading it. Adam came to town a few days ago and was talking shit about almost everything I'd posted so the jury is fucking IN on him: go back to your singer-songwriter den of shame because the future (and past) of good music hates you.
Here're this week's scathers:
Ellen Allien - Come: This one's off her new album, which is way more Aliens than Alien³, with more organics, less glitch. It's spookier stuff and more repetitive sometimes, but this track is driving and gets stompin' before the strings really even kick in. It's like propaganda music for an oppressive machine future that you already half want.
Linda Perhacs - (Hey Now) Who Really Cares: Everyone is going granny-crazy over Vashti Bunyan and I think she's only ok. Fuck a maypole if I care where Joanna Newsom got the idea to sing like a little girl getting strangled, but at least she's getting more people (like me!) into ridiculously good folk that we wrote off because we were afraid liking it was the first step on a long road leading to a dandelion winery run out of some dude's garage, where every beanbag chair is dirty and deflated and everyone washes themselves with the same deodorant rock. This song is languorous and strung like a cobweb, and its singer disappeared into the fucking woods. Have you ever considered how much more hardcore log cabin hermits are than, say, straight edge kids? Fuck Earth Crisis; Thoreau wrote the book on that shit.
Daïtro - Mes Chiffres: French screamo. Got some brutal bits and some shit where the dude's voice can't keep it together so it gets quiet and moody. One of the first bands I've heard in a while that really reminds me of my love of paperthin hardcore, and I think their name is cool too, in a car insurance company way.
Woven Hand - Bleary Eyed Duty: Dropping you back into a P[rozac]-Hole. This shit is dank like a cave where all the moss on the rocks is actually marijuana; a depressive piano dirge, filled with this dude's fantastic voice like a he's behind a gas mask until the chorus, where he breaks out clearly, with what I think is a totally enviable resolve. This guy comes through with a dedication I wish I could bring to everything I do, like washing dishes, all fucking somber and staring straight ahead. Or walking my dog with my head down, pregnant with burning goth intent. This is the heavy vein shit that metal wishes it could inflict on the whole planet but can't, because it is totally clowny.
Starsailor vs Junior Jack - Four To The Floor vs Stupidisco (Thin White Duke Remix): OK, this song is a mess, but let me explain. Starsailor, as far as I know, is a middling UK act whose albums are a mix of shitfolk, coldplayz, and spineless dance music. Four to the Floor is one of their most popular songs, and you've probably heard it before. It sounded really familiar when I first heard it here in Buenos Aires, coming out of every shoe store, taxi cab, and locutorio on Avenida Corrientes. Motherfuckers have penetration here, and the song is almost 3 years old. It plays in hip bars and lame bars. It plays in malls. It's more indefatigible than Menem (who's still holding his shit down in Chile, while half of Argentina hates his guts and a quarter miss his crazy ass faux-dictatorial stylings. The other quarter here just hate fucking anybody in power, and will picket a cake walk if there's a film crew nearby). I've posted a long version of this track, coupled with some fun disco. The file is like 16mb or something, but it's way more interesting this way, as the other mix I have is just 6:30 of Four to the Floor and it's excruciating.
I've been weirdly sick all this week, and this update is about all I can muster. I am entertaining myself by believing my sickness may well be malaria, but that seems unlikely. Here's the music:
Architecture in Helsinki - It's 5: The last album by these guys totally impressed me, and while people say the new one is even better, I've gotta give it some more time. This song is just too joyful, and showcases the weird childishness in one of the singers' voices that I definitely adore.
Pinback - My Star: From a tour EP I hadn't heard about. Sounds like they put those things out pretty frequently, so I'm going to have to go track those down. I think this is pretty classic Pinback, but the progression sounds otherwise familiar.
Liquid Liquid - Bellhead: The second mix from the DFA comp that came out last year. I love how it starts fucking clanging and keeps it up, even once the spooky ghost noises start up in the background.
Navio Forge - Haloed Eyes: One of the only studio-recorded emo songs I've heard where the singer sort of breaks down while taping the thing. Even if it's not genuine, I buy it more here than when Strictly Ballroom did it, but mostly because this song has chops.
Been listening to a lot of music that's new to me, at least. Figured I'd choose an mp3 for each weekday and post them on Fridays. Right-click download them for now, and maybe I'll move to torrents in the future so you can download the whole 5-pack at once:
Tom Vek - I Ain't Saying My Goodbyes : Dancepunk from a guy whose album is really all over the place, and doesn't contain any other songs like this.
Jaga Jazzist - Jaga Ist Zu Hause : 10-piece from Norway. Elegant and unnoodly, packed with progression. This song is from an older album but it's all just so good.
Fun Fun - Living In Japan : Found this Italo Disco track on some compilation, and I swear the chorus gets ripped off by The Strokes on one of their albums. I don't have them in front of me so I can't check. Anyone else hear the similarity?
Kaos - Now and Forever : Was about to post the song after this one on the album, but then came back to this one, which I guess is the single after all. Just a big fucking bounce groove. The kind of track that people will find a summer too late, so let's try to preemptively strike that.
