I loved Terry Gross's interview with Antony. As someone who's fascinated with questioning my suppositions, and withdrawing from society's psychological rules as much as possible in my own slow way, a trans-gender artist like Antony has a perspective I want to learn from.
I had a similar experience reading Esquire's "What It's Like" piece on Coral Hull, a writer with multiple personalities.
In Antony's case, he's been seeing things from an outsider's height since he was a child. But even now as a trans-gender adult, and in Hull's case as someone with many selves, they bring up questions of identity that go beyond the usual classifications of male/female, gay/straight. When asked by Gross to define trans-gender, and why sexual surgery isn't a part of his path, Antony is quick to stress that there is a level of cruelty and lack of subtlety involved in reducing people to their genitalia or sexuality. It's not a question of erotic orientation or physical makeup, but a difference of spirit. He feels that what sets him apart is a sensibility about life.
I also loved his answer when Gross asked him to describe how supportive his parents had been to him as a "different" child. He says that all of us emerge from childhood with a level of brokenness and our work is to look at what went right and what went wrong. This is a part of the human condition, not just his own story. He has a good relationship with them now, and that's what matters.
Gross also picked my two favorite cuts from his new album The Crying Light.
That's all I have to say, really. You need to get with Jazmine Sullivan. And that Top 40 music needs to follow her direction: i.e. lyrics can be smart without being preachy; modern and raw without being hedonistic. And that her record has the songs, but it also has the production, so everybody wins. And that she's got weapons-grade pipes, but she keeps it in check with real-soul phrasing and leaves the fake out. And that Jazmine Sullivan is the middle path. And that you need to get with her.
The Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship long player is finally available today for download at Romantic Air Records' web site. This album is a phenomenal work of art. The group is largely the work of Detroit-area composer/artist Trevor Naud, done in collaboration with PAS/CAL drummer TLD. Like the name of the project, the music is mysterious, rare and elevated. Download it now and you might just survive the winter.
I'll repost my original blog about HGBS from this past fall.
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(L-R, Trevor Naud and LTD)
Back in June I leaked some early mixes of Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship, a new project of my good friend Trevor Naud in collaboration with Pas/Cal drummer LTD. (I hesitate to mention that Trevor is kin because I don't want to imply that my fascination with his music is in some way pro-rated by my affection for him as a person. The majesty of Trevor's gift is wide and timeless and I just happen to know him.) And now, I have the final album in my hands and I need to talk about it.
Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship is like some rare exotic flower that flourishes in the secret dark and contains double helices of hallucinogenic gunpowder entwined deep in its stems if you know how to unleash it. Trevor told me he made it in a period of extreme personal blockage. No doubt, part of that frustration was with his own band, Zoos of Berlin, who, with over four years of stunning gigs and avant-garde alchemy under their belts have yet to produce a full-length album (there is every indication that dawning of the Zoos long player is finally nigh). So Trevor set up some mics and a computer in his kitchen and made this in a season. His impatience emerges in the ADD'ness of it all, the quick-acting brevity and the conjuring of swift, but complete, worlds of sound. They are less songs than glints of melodic hooks strung together like Christmas lights to form a shimmering path. The best way to listen is to avoid grasping - just let the vignettes fly by fully formed in their warbled and buttery baroque shapes.
HGBS came out more gentle than early mixes suggested. The first mp3 Trevor slipped me last summer was "A Head For Gabriel Dove," two and a half minutes of compression-crushed jazz drumming and reverb-soaked baritone that was as carnivorous as it was surging. But a listen to the finished record shows something much more haunted than hunting. It is a quiet anxiety slowed into sadness, more in keeping with the winter around me and things falling into sleep and death. It's a pop requiem for emotional shut-ins and the spiritually claustrophobic.
Fans of Scott Walker, David Bowie, Arthur Russell and Eric Matthews - in other words, artists trying to repossess dead rock forms with the jagged spirits of 20th century classical and avant garde - will come pre-primed for going deep with these tracks. But it doesn't require some kind of exclusive, arty membership to respond to something this gorgeous and immediate. It's very tuneful, very lucid stuff.
As far as I know he's currently figuring out the terms of the record's release. Go bug him about it.
NOTE: For some reason my audio player is being weird about these files. You might have to hit play, then pause, then play.
Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship - "Glass Case"
Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship - "Jonaccce"
Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship - "Nineteenth Usher"
Hidden Ghost Balloon Ship - "A Head for Gabriel Dove"
I know nothing about Hawthorne. Just some white kid from the burbs who moved to LA and ended up sounding black. Aside from the Marvin Gaye-on-grass intro and roomy backbeat, I'm hearing way more of a Jamaican influence than Detroit on the way he's singing those notes: dipping down, rather than up "out."
Mayer Hawthorne and the County - "Just Aint Gonna Work Out"
There is so much cool music. But most of that cool music has nothing to do with me and my life, and I often suspect that it has nothing to do with anybody's life, including the people making it. And so what good is detachment?
Once in a while, I'll see something by somebody who's cool but not afraid of sentiment. It takes skill to walk that fine line. I think that this song by Mr. Hudson walks it gracefully. I especially appreciate the joyful, simple moment where he says, "Imagine that, getting paid to sing."
So I'm standing in the living room of my friend A.J. making small talk when it happened. I had come by to borrow a midi controller and it was my first time setting foot in his home. We had digressed about cats, Christian rock and a pretty mindblowing concept for a screenplay based on A.J.'s recent breakup when I looked across the room and saw it. And my speech slurred to a stop. "Wha–? Is that... I don't, under...."
A.J. stared at me, perplexed, his big, sweet Ewok eyes growing wider. He said nothing.
"Why do you have that...? I mean, what is that? I just don't understand."
I was staring at this painting, on the cover of an LP, which he had framed and set on his table.
And the tiny tear in the fabric of the universe happened in my brain, which short-circuited because I couldn't understand what multiple levels of perverse indie irony had caused someone to create a retro-tinged oil painting of spoof-epic Tropic Thunder's Kirk Lazurus (actually the white actor Robert Downey Jr. in blackface), and dress him in WWII-era pilot garb.
I heard A.J., as if from a great distance, mumbling something about Jazz composer Thelonious Monk and great deals on frames from Urban Outfitters, but I had already fallen down the rabbit hole.
Daniel Demaggio is a visual artist working out of the Detroit area. He's been drinking the next-level gravy for sure and I'm a little infatuated with his perverse and beautiful style. A friend hipped me to "Circuit Bending with Satan" yesterday and I can't stop watching it. In this bizarre short, Satan patiently explains to his child viewers how to hack into their music toys and rearrange the circuits to produce hip, experimental sounds - the better to make (the devil's) tracks with.
It's funny on many levels and visually ebullient, with crude lo-fi giving way to gorgeous bursts of dayglo animation. The way it tweaks the "learning" genre of the Saturday morning kids' TV programs from my youth is cute, and could lend itself to only working on one level of ironic nostalgia. But it's too strange for that and doesn't come off as ironic on any level. Like all great comedy, it works because it takes itself completely seriously and abides by an internal logic: of course the devil is wearing dishwashing gloves; of course he speaks in a dated hard-rap cadence; of course he's trying to capture children's immortal souls, and yet takes a moment to caution them about socket safety.
The thing I like most about this is that it was clearly done for the love. It justifies itself and sells nothing. There's no product tie-in, no band being plugged. It's just a brief, distorted thought bubble popping from one artists' brain that needed to be captured.
The record is called Tronic. A made-up word that combines "The Chronic" + "Tron" = the second territory of rap. Black Milk is a disciple's disciple - a producer who's clearly separated the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the landfills of mostly-stupid urban music that have preceded him. But he sifts through it to pave his own way, like half-trained Jedi with the right amount of reverence for the good and powerful things that have come before, and the right amount of "fuckit" to say, let's move on. He's the manifestation of the J Dilla spirit. Keeping everything in his tracks at cross purposes to serve a higher groove. His sounds raw and not-stock. His beats always sick with the flu.
It's not a competition, but this is the only hip hop album I've heard all year* to get under my skin.
Black Milk "Overdose"
Black Milk "Bond 4 Life (Feat. Melanie Rutherford)"
Black Milk "The Matrix (Feat. Pharoahe Monch, Sean Price, & DJ Premier)"
Black Milk "Try"
*Unless you count Kardinal Offishall's amazing Not 4 Sale.
Mp3 blogs are mostly an indie-rock medium. This is an mp3 blog, and yet, indie rock has never left me more cold than it does now. I spent time this year with probably 75% of the records listed on Pitchfork's year-end Top 50. It felt dutiful, like being in a relationship where you're trying to talk yourself into being in love. To indie rock, I say this: it's not you, it's me. I've changed, I guess. I now only need three things from music: songs, soul and good beats. What I no longer need are obtuse lyrics, affected anger or fashionable disconnect.
So what I use this blog for is more of a celebration of what moves me than just another series of blips on our increasingly ticker-fed radars. The emphasis is on my own personal connection, and not the fact that I got there first. And though the handful of readers I do have is a form of pressure to post in a relatively timely manner, I try not to pro-rate the quality of a track just to get something fresh in your RSS feed.
I said all that to say that making a year-end-best list makes even less sense on this blog than it does elsewhere. Although I do seek out and try to celebrate new music, I'm usually late to the party anyway and couldn't give a shit if it's trendsetting or not. But I do find it exciting and surprising to look back on 2008, a year in music culture that I think of as celebrating cold, dated or obnoxious sounds, and see how many things came out that made my soul (and/or ass) quiver.
I am all for the fact that music is moving back to a singles format, and so I wasn't disappointed to find that 2008 was not a good year for albums. (If you are the type that still enjoys owning the physical artifact of your favorite records, browsing the artwork, displaying it in your home like a stuffed boar's head - then I'd say the records to have are: Al Green Lay It Down; Joan as Policewoman To Survive; The Walkmen You and Me; NOMO Space Rock; Raphael Saadiq The Way I See It; Kardinal Offishall Not 4 Sale; Black Milk Tronic; and - if you could only buy one - Jamie Lidell Jim.) But if you're like me, and only have a thirst for concentrate, here, for your consideration, are 15 songs that made my year. Songs that never seemed to wear out their welcome.
Al Green "Lay it Down"
The miracle. Or sign of musical end times. Or both. A furious God casts judgment on a soulless urban music culture by sending his messenger Al Green - resurrected prophet, his flesh, face and dexterous voice still youthfully in tact - back to earth to show the motherfuckers how it's done. Nobody could have predicted it, or that it would sound so vital. Compared to elder Green, the state of youth seems dire.
Gnarls Barkley "Who's Gonna Save My Soul"
Al Green's record could make me despair that soul singing is a dead form. Cee-Lo's performance on this track is the best proof that the end is not yet nigh.
Portishead "The Rip"
When I first zeroed in on this track, it was as much about Portishead's strange, clunky neo-krautrock production, and the hypnotic casio keyboard riff. Then I heard it out of context, when Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood showed up on YouTube covering it with acoustic guitars. I saw the timeless Kate Bush-ness in it then. Beth Gibbons has a strange sense of melody. I'm convinced that she writes more conventional tunes, keeps them secret in her head, and then sings harmonies to them on the record.
The Reflecting Skin "Cavedweller" I sometimes daydream video concepts when listening to my favorite music. The one for Cavedweller involves some lonely guy at a party. He sits in the same armchair all night long, ignored, while the party rages around him. Then in synch with the pummeling, distorted climax of the piece, his head shoots back, his mouth snaps open, and he suddenly vomits hideous light out of his mouth, eyes, nose and ears while the house is shaken to its foundations.
Santogold "L.E.S. Artistes (XXXChange remix)"
Sometimes the remix is better.
Jamie Lidell "Little Bit of Feelgood (Mondkopf Remix)"
Sometimes the remix has absolutely nothing to do with the source material. And is better.
Jim Noir "On a Different Shelf"
Fugue-like synth noodling gives way to distorted classic rock and vocal rounds about finding inspiration and getting unstuck. Glorious all over the place.
Jonny Greenwood "Prospectors Arrive"
Jonny Greenwood began his foray into absolute music with the score for Bodysong, a wordless documentary with the modest goal of representing the entire human experience - from bloody birth to muddy death - in pictures. His music lived up to the task. It was actually that primordial and base. Greenwood understands the way that orchestral instruments are tools of vibration, and that, when wielded with the right combination of coloring and harmonic perversity, they can strike a frequency so heavy and ancient it predates good and evil.
John Legend "I Love, You Love"
Legend is almost too smooth for his own good. But if you strip the production down enough, say, to just 909 kick drums and Dire Straits guitar swaths, his flavor of over-pretty can really work.
Jamie Lidell "Another Day"
The first video they shot for this was bananas - (somebody help me find this! They've purged it from the web) just Lidell in some toddler's bedroom, playing with puppets and exuding joy. It was a perfect way to communicate why Lidell's retro experiment is more relevant now than it should be. Happiness is always in style, as long as you can dance to it.
Kleerup "Thank You For Nothing"
Hits all the right '80s notes with all the right sincerity.
Q-Tip "Move"
J Dilla will never die. Here his production lends an ass kicking to the most urgent hip hop track of the year.
Raphael Saadiq "Sometimes"
Personally, my song of the year. Wore this one out, up and down. As soon as that filtered organ loop crackles in at the intro, the goosebumps just erupt. I can't explain it.
Black Milk "Bond 4 Life"
With no disrespet to Flying Lotus, he is not the successor to Dilla. Black Milk is.
It's hard to shake my conditioning, raised, as I was, slanted as a row of pews. It's hard to delete the want of soulful communion with fellow travelers. Or to end the search for a liturgy that I can get behind, some kind of text that speaks to the bursts of reverence emanating from my own heart. Because those bursts seem to have a very uncommon frequency, and I've never found a hymnal that could contain them, let alone enough kindred spirits to form a choir.
I've been going out a lot the past few weeks. Some of it has been edifying, some of it simply fun. I've tried reconciling the irreconcilable. I've tried stretching my heart. Holding my liquor. Owning the room. Reaching always deeper. Sometimes you can make a little church in a bar, but the little preacher's kid in me occasionally wakes up wanting to shower off the noise and smoke and projecting in dark rooms to make way for something brighter, quieter and more reflective. When I feel that way, I wish there was a church for my people, with hymns of peaceful uncertainty, blessings of affirmation, a congregation lit in the eyes and hot for the joyful noise.
In another world, my kind of world, 2006 would have been the date entered in Wikipedia for the creation of a new, timeless hymn. A fresh entry into the cannon of Works of Truth. Brian Eno would have been the author. I fantasize about whole groups of people singing, in booming unison, a text this confused and sacred: High above the single bird/ it drifts above the dead volcanoes/ Who's to lose and who's to find/ There's nothing here that I could choose at all.
I imagine that and it's hard not to feel the pang of spiritual exile. But then I think, if Eno wrote this there is at least one other. And probably more.
Brian Eno "Caught Between"
Caught between the earth and the sky One too low, and one too high Falling free and holding on Nothing there at all
Dropped and lifted Gotta breathe Bottom drifting on the wave Holding just a few poor words or nothing at all
Reaching out to still the sand The light connects the breaking moments Drifting to another shore There's nothing here that I could change at all Nothing at all
Forced to bend a broken line Let to hold what we can't find Then to let it go again Nothing said at all
High above the single bird it drifts above the dead volcanoes Who's to lose and who's to find There's nothing here that I could choose at all
