Month: March 2008

33 1/3 :: 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Drew Daniel [Continuum, 2008, $10.95]

Pop is, by its very nature, glossy and superficial, glancing off complexity and thorny ambivalences with blithe assurance.

With 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Throbbing Gristle attempt—in their own profoundly warped way— to make peace with pop music’s influence upon them; at the same time, the album plays out with such profound ambivalence —running hot and cold all at once, constantly vacillating between attraction and repulsion and back again— that its exploration of “pop” becomes heavily weighted —its like a mille-feuille of ironic distance. Upon its release in 1979, TG’s third full-length album was received with head-scratching condescension for the most part. Daniel’s artfully written little volume makes the case for this strange, unlikable album and its often unpalatable charms.

Alluring and repellent in equal measure, the group’s masterwork remains indelible for the ways in which it reworks the last vestiges of 60s optimism (as evinced in psychedelia and prog) with the darker, more ambivalent strains of punk and post-punk. In this way the band doesn’t simply straddle genres but whole philosophical, moral and sexual divides. This is what makes their music so enduringly strange and repugnant —yet fascinating.

I fell into this book like Alice down an unfathomably dark rabbit-hole. It reads like a riveting detective novel, so concisely has Daniel (AKA one half of Matmos) woven personal history (both TG’s and his own), (un)reliable narration (thanks to the members of TG themselves, contradictory bastards the lot of them), close dissection (a forensic/anatomic tack being particularly appropriate with TG) and overarching pop-cultural critique.

I haven’t read Steven Ford’s Wreckers of Civilisation, but this tiny volume on only one album in the massive TG oeuvre situates the group so powerfully in the appropriate historical, personal, and musical contexts that I never wanted the book to end. It’s a vivid, revealing, and very personal work that is beautifully written from start to finish, and my favorite of the 33 1/3s so far.

For a more in-depth discussion of the book, Brainwashed has a great interview with Drew about his just-published volume here.

Throbbing Gristle [Official Site] | 33 1/3 [Blogspot] | Drew Daniel/Matmos [Official Site]

Throbbing Gristle, “Hot on the Heels of Love”

Throbbing Gristle, “Six Six Sixties”

FROM LEFT: GEN, CHRIS, COSEY, SLEAZY | INDUSTRIAL RECORDS PROMO CIRCA 1978

Too often, loved ones leave us far too soon.

There’s nothing that can prepare you for such moments, or for how painful it is to watch someone slipping away and being able to do nothing.

My father passed away when I was very young, after a protracted battle with lymphoma.

My cat Mister Henry passed away last week, a mere month after I found out he had untreatable myeloma.

Brainwashed.com’s Jon Whitney has curated a two-cd requiem for his mother, Marilyn Whitney, who passed away last November.

The fifth release in the Brainwashed Handmade Series, this lovingly compiled mix —titled Peace (for Mom)— gathers new, old, and previously unreleased music donated by friends of Brainwashed, including Matmos, His Name Is Alive, Marissa Nadler, Sybarite, A Place To Bury Strangers, Carter-Tutti, Ida, Little Annie, and many more.

All of it is in honor of Marilyn, whose intense love of music in turn inspired Jon’s own, seemingly boundless enthusiasm.

Proceeds go to the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, where Marilyn often volunteered. For ordering information visit Brainwashed.com.

Sybarite [myspace] | Antony & the Johnsons | Official Site

Peace (for Mom)
Track Listing:

Disc A:
1. A Place to Bury Strangers, “Sunbeam”
2. Antony and the Johnsons, “You Are My Sister”
3. Aranos, “Fall’s Golden Whispers”
4. Jessica Bailiff, “Fly High”
5. Little Annie Bandez and Paul Wallfisch, “Smile”
6. Boduf Songs, “Little Song for Jon”
7. Boy In Static, “Stay Awake”
8. Caribou, “Hummingbird”
9. Carter Tutti, “Woven Clouds” (alternate version)
10. Current 93, “All the Pretty Little Horses”
11. Fridge, “Five Four Child Voice” – [MP3]
12. Christoph Heemann and Andreas Martin, “Walla Mashalla”
13. His Name Is Alive, “This World Is Not My Home”
14. Ida, “See the Stars” (acoustic)
15. The Paula Kelley Orchestra, “Life for Life”
16. Kinski, “Waka Nusa”
17. The Legendary Pink Dots, “We Bring the Day” (edit)

Disc B:
1. Andrew Liles, “The Comfortable Illusion of Meaning”
2. Matmos, “Staircase”
3. Monster Movie, “Vanishing Act”
4. Marissa Nadler, “Stallions”
5. Nudge, “Greener”
6. Amanda Palmer, “I’ll Follow You Into the Dark”
7. Pantaleimon, “Idumaea”
8. Sandro Perri, “Family Tree”
9. Rivulets, “You Sail On”
10. Ulrich Schnauss, “Wherever You Are”
11. The 17th Pygmy, “I Know My Train’s A Coming”
12. Stars of the Lid, “Requiem”
13. Sybarite, “Mochi Swt”
14. 27, “Windows and Glass”
15. Volcano the Bear, “Wooden Sailus”
16. Keith Fullerton Whitman, “Weiter”
17. Windy & Carl, “I Have Been Waiting to Hear Your Voice”

Antony & The Johnsons, “Hope There’s Someone” (from I Am A Bird Now)

Sybarite, “Unica Zurn” (from Nonument, 2002)