8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

The Isolator

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Hello, Distraction, My Old Friend → I meant to take a two-week break with my email newsletter and ended up taking five weeks off. That surprised me. It also made me think about distraction. The holidays — during which I announced my ‘short’ hiatus — are always a considerable distraction already. And then, this time around, we’re also navigating a pandemic and a volatile news-scape.

The beginning of each new year is usually calm and reflective, and I assumed the first week of 2021 would be the same, allowing time to seize back attention. Nope. So far, this new year has been a crazy one, a worrying one, a hectic one, and, as it turns out, a not entirely unexpected one. All attempts to write and publish Ringo foiled and unraveled.

Distraction’s a problem, always has been. Things seem to be settling down a tad, in both the outside world and my personal sphere. Here’s hoping the political winds change, and distraction levels decrease, but I’m not holding my breath. Personal and professional occurrences are distraction enough. I’m on a Sisyphean quest to defy and deny distraction so I can more easily do things I want to do this year — like send out a weekly Ringo. 

Anil Dash recently posted about his Personal Digital Reset. This piece poses his alternative to New Year’s resolutions, a typically 2021 cleanse of one’s digital life. Many of his proposals make sense: a lot less (to no) social media, ingesting online news and information solely with intention, replacing FOMO with YAGNI (‘You Aren’t Gonna Need It’). Others, such as wiping your computer and reinstalling everything from scratch, seem drastic but might actually be a good idea. Honestly, getting bogged down for hours maintaining a computer sounds like another distraction to me. But we are recalibrating here, right?

Have you seen The Isolator? Here’s a helmet worn while working, to relieve the writer of all distractions. It even includes an oxygen tank, so you don’t have to come up for air. On the other side of the coin, there’s the TV Helmet — an enclosure that feeds the wearer nothing but distraction, uncontrolled and divorced from intention. Notice how similar these are in concept despite the dichotomic applications. Happiness is found somewhere in the middle, no headwear required. 

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Ken Burns’ Jazz → Noting this because chances are you are an Amazon Prime subscriber so you can get those dark gray vans to visit your doorstep frequently. Jazz is available on Prime’s streaming service at no extra cost right this very moment. This astonishing series from K-Burns was released in 2001. That was just in time, as I doubt many of the interview subjects were around much longer. This thing is massive — is it like 20 hours, maybe more? Well, the pressure’s on because I think it’s leaving Prime (as a ‘freebie’) on the first of February. You’ve got a week. At the very least, watch the first few episodes — the origins of jazz are compelling, instructive, and say a lot about US history. Of course, the history of any country is in the history of its music.

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Elijah Knutsen – Pink Dream → Elijah Knutsen is a regular occurrence on the blog, and he’ll continue to pop up as long as his ambient experiments remain so alluring. Pink Dream is his latest, the second in a promised series of ‘micro releases’ issued through Knutsen’s new Memory Color imprint. The showpiece is “Wonder How,” which opens the EP with cavern-drenched guitar chords and reverb-maxed plucks. Bonus birdsongs add to the heavenly atmosphere — one almost imagines a giant, glowing harp in luminescent clouds — and the overall effect neighbors the instrumental passages on Cocteau Twins’ seminal Victorialand LP. Other cuts are shorter but no less fascinating, especially the closing “Somewhere Knows.” An intro of gentle crowd sounds fade into a ballet of organ tones and swooping hints of melody as the light throng of people slowly returns. The tune doesn’t sound like anything else that’s recently hit my ambient inbox, which is about as high a compliment I can give for something in this genre. 

Infect the Mainstream

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Spotify Song Purge → There’s something fishy going on in streaming-land, according to entertainment lawyer Wallace Collins:

It appears that on January 1, 2021, Spotify enacted a massive, global takedown of music from thousands of independent artists. Upon information and belief, some 750,000 songs were removed, the vast majority of which appear to have used Distrokid for distribution. This appears to be targeted at any independent artist who used a third party playlist or independent marketing service to promote their music – or any third party advertising outside of the Spotify platform … in the case of my particular clients, we are talking about legitimate third party advertising and promotional services as opposed to “bots” or other artificial means of generating increased streams.

It’s worth noting that Spotify has a financial stake in Distrokid, which was also named by the platform as one of its ‘preferred distributors.’ If Collins’s info is accurate, then this is an embarrassing moment for Distrokid. Hypebot spoke to a source within Spotify who claims the purge wasn’t as dramatic and didn’t favor Distrokid.

I also wonder, outside of Collins’s clients (who surely make up only a tiny percentage of that 750k), if these removals are mostly due to bootlegs and identical track schemes. Spotify has received recent bad press about podcasts filled with unlicensed songs and the proliferation of ‘white noise scammers.’ Knowledge of these issues has floated around for a while, but a featured article in Variety might be the thing to inspire this sudden action.

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The Toxic Music Svengali → Phil Spector’s death is renewing uncomfortable — but necessary — conversations about the artist’s separation from the art. Generally, it’s okay to appreciate the beautiful art of horrible people. But the artist doesn’t get a pass when the art is brilliant and influential. BBC News’s flubbing of Spector’s obituary headline illustrates the outrage of not understanding this nuance. Laura Snapes addresses this eloquently today in The Guardian:

Spector is known as the innovator of the “wall of sound” recording technique and countless moments of pop sublimity. They are inextricable from his everyday barbarism, waving guns around and holding them to musicians’ heads to enforce his will. The combination created a pernicious infamy: if the songs are so majestic, then the behaviour must be justifiable. Where Spector’s famous “boom-cha-boom-cha” drum sound on Be My Baby (played by Hal Blaine) instantly summons a pristine moment in pop history, Spector’s living legacy is that of music industry abuse going unchecked because the art is perceived as worth it – or worse, considered “proof” of wild and untameable genius.

The whole piece is worth reading, addressing a history of behind-the-scenes producers (all men) using aloofness and supposed genius to excuse terrible behavior. As Snapes notes, “Not all producers are violent predators, but the role offers ample cover for anyone who chooses to exploit it.”

It’s fine to continue enjoying the cavernous qualities of Spector’s production, but not without remembering (and discussing) the man’s cruelty. One simple part in punishment for abuse and awful deeds is linking the work to the context of the monster who had a hand in creating it. That doesn’t necessarily make the work any less brilliant, but can serve to instruct others of their responsibilities as artists and mentors. 

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Hyperpop Redux → A tip of the hat to Joe Muggs for turning me on to this educational video about the emergent genre of hyperpop. I previously gave hyperpop some ink in my examination of genres here on the blog, and I remain fascinated. In a clickbaity way, the video title asks if hyperpop is “the future of pop.” The short answer is “no,” but hyperpop is undoubtedly influencing the future of popular music. I believe Simon Reynolds once pointed out that one can look to the extremes in genres for oncoming trends that will infect the mainstream. 100 Gecs might not become pop, but dialing back their excesses creates a blueprint for an edgier top 40. And, as you sample recent work of some of the artists named in the video, you’ll hear moves away from some of hyperpop’s defining characteristics. It’s a genre in flux, which is evidence of its potential longevity and influence. 

Dream Songs

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Here’s a bit of fun to close out this Xmas weekend. This video, by British comedian (and accomplished Bowie impressionist) Adam Buxton, imagines the recording session for “Warszawa,” a track from David Bowie’s 1977 album Low. Buxton’s video isn’t new, and you’ve probably seen it before. But this is one of those rare things that gives me a chuckle and brightens my mood every time I watch it. I’m probably responsible for at least one hundred of its 600k+ views.

Adam Buxton also interviewed Brian Eno on the former’s excellent podcast. A good sport, Eno refers to this video as “one of the funniest things I’ve seen on the internet” but, “unfortunately, I keep meeting people who think it’s a real depiction of how things were between us in the studio.” Don’t make the same mistake, dear reader. 

The interview, in two parts, is casual and fun. Here it is on SoundCloud:

I also ran across Tony Barrell’s history of Brian Eno’s solo song “The True Wheel,” from 1974’s Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy. (I love in-depth articles that break down the origins of individual songs and recordings.) It turns out that the song is a reenactment of a mescaline-fueled dream. Even some of the exact lyrics appeared to Eno in his fevered slumber:

[Brian] had a surreal dream about a bunch of girls, which included his friend Randi, serenading some sailors who had just come into port. The men weren’t exactly regular sailors: “They were sort of astronauts,” he clarified later, “but with all the psychological aspects of sailors.” […] The girls in the dream were singing: “We are the 801 / We are the central shaft.” When he returned to the real world, Eno jotted the phrases down and realised he had something interesting (to use one of his favourite words). It sounded meaningful, though he didn’t understand it, and it used the first-person plural. “I woke up absolutely jubilant, because this was the first bit of lyric I’d written in this new style.”

Barrell touches on other songs and lyrics written while asleep, including when Paul McCartney famously had a dream that bestowed “Yesterday.” Have you ever had a song, or anything, given to you in a dream? 

When I was in my early 20s, I dreamed that I was in the passenger seat of a car that was speeding precariously down a dirt road. It was night, and I could only see the road and the surrounding forest in headlights, kind of like in a David Lynch movie. I was frightened and looked over to the driver’s side to see who was at the wheel. It was Lou Reed. 

Lou noticed that I was scared, so he looked at me reassuringly (while still driving) and sang a song to calm my nerves. The song went, “You’re so evil, oh Macbeth … you’re so wicked, oh Macbeth …” 

I woke up and hit smartly hit ‘record’ on the boombox next to my bed. I sang the fresh song and then fell back to sleep. In the morning, I looked at the boombox and wondered if that really happened. I hit ‘play,’ and there’s half-asleep me singing the lyrics and melody for this dream song. It wasn’t bad. A few years later, the first band I joined in Orlando played the song (with me singing). I have a recording of it somewhere in that box of 4-track tapes I mentioned in the previous post.

From the clandestine processes in the studio to the shadowy visions in our heads, music (and music-making) remains a delightful mystery.

Update: Adam Buxton has released a delightful follow-up to his video above to commemorate David Bowie’s 74th birthday, almost five years after his death. Check out the “Ashes to Ashes” Clown Suit Story.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

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I was obsessed with my Tascam 246 Portastudio. I mowed a bunch of lawns, saved my money, and somehow found the Tascam for sale (cheap!) in the local newspaper. A church was selling it. The Tascam was practically new. I assumed the church bought it to record choirs or whatever and then realized a four-track multitrack recorder was more than what was needed. 

I lucked out. At the time (1986), the 246 was the Rolls-Royce of Tascam four-track recorders. It had features like two speeds (you could run the tape faster for better audio quality), pitch control (handy for creative tomfoolery), and an effective dbx noise reduction system. I learned most of what I know about recording from my experiences with that Portastudio. I recorded my punk band, one-off ‘bands’ with various friends, and my solo experimentations. I ended my teenage years by recording almost every day. 

I was a fan of albums over songs, so I was always recording with some future ‘album’ in mind. Sometimes I assembled songs into an album, fitting them snuggly on a 60-minute cassette — or a 90-minute cassette if I was feeling proggy. I was always looking for ways to connect songs for these imagined albums, or finding ideas that maintained my interest for the time it took to record a long-player from scratch.

It was on a Halloween — again, probably 1986 — that I walked into a shopping mall and heard Christmas songs. Though we now accept the Christmas season seemingly starting earlier each year, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How dare anyone play Christmas music on Halloween? At the very least, someone should ‘spookify’ the songs, giving the holiday standards a ghostly twist. 

Light bulb moment — my next album project was born. I called it something like Have a Spooky Christmas, but I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember a lot about it. 

There’s a box in my closet with all the original four-track cassette tapes from those years. But I can’t play them without a Tascam 246 — these are one-sided cassettes recorded on four-tracks. They’re at double speed, encoded with the 246’s aggressive dbx noise reduction that rips the sound quality apart when played on anything else. 

Maybe someday I’ll hear this (and my other teenage tape experiments) again. But, for now, it sits only in my fractured memory. Chances are it sounds better trapped in nostalgia. In my experience, my music never sounds as good as I remember it. That doesn’t mean a lot of it sounds terrible — just not as good as I think it will. 

Here’s what I do remember:

  • A version of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” turned into a horror soundscape, voices ominously whispering the unaltered lyrics revealing the creepiness of the words: “He sees you when you’re sleeping … he knows when you’re awake …”
  • “Jingle Bells” as a funeral dirge. The “laughing all the way” lyric triggered multi-tracked tortured, maniacal cackling. 
  • “Twelve Days of Christmas” was epic. It was a somewhat straight cover musically, but I substituted the various items (turtle doves, lords-a-leaping, etc.) with sounds from Halloween sound effect records. Thus, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me: (werewolf howling).” This track was a particular endurance test (just like the real song) as it cycled through all the Halloween sound effects in reverse order as the song went along. This was long before I ever touched a digital sampler, so I have no idea how I technically pulled this off.
  • Out of all the tape’s songs I want to hear again, “Silent Night” sticks out. I remember creating all sorts of droning ambient tones and noises as the initial music bed. Then, I plucked out the “Silent Night” melody from memory using an echoed piano-ish Juno-106 patch. I didn’t rehearse and didn’t know the song ahead of time — I figured it out while the tape was recording, one take only. This is my memory talking again, but I recall the song ending up especially spacious, mysterious, and melancholy-sounding. It was my personal favorite on the album.
  • I know I recorded two or three other songs. I did a strange version of “Blue Christmas,” but I don’t remember anything about it except that I drearily repeated the song’s opening line throughout. 

I filled a 60-minute cassette, dubbed off about ten copies, and gave them to my close friends as Christmas presents. No doubt, confusion and concern for my well-being followed.

Someday I’ll get ahold of a Tascam 246 and go through this box of four-track tapes. Those old Portastudios aren’t cheap nowadays (retro fever — catch it!), so it won’t happen anytime soon. But, when it does, the spooky Christmas album by 17-year old me is the first thing I’ll revisit. 

I’d love to follow up this post on a future Christmas day with a stream of this odd early attempt at an album. But only if it sounds at least half as good as it does as I sit here remembering it. No promises. 

I hope you’re having a wonderful Christmas day.

Gingerbread Mixtape

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ASCAP, BMI Partner To Launch SONGVIEW Comprehensive Song Database → If you’re a music publisher, perennially at the top of your Xmas list is a central database for looking up song rights information. In other words, a search engine that’s PRO agnostic: input a song and find out the writers, the publishers, and the shares no matter the rights owner. But BMI’s search only shows songs with BMI representation, ASCAP shows only ASCAP, and so on. So, until you strike gold, you’re going from PRO-to-PRO to find writer and publisher details on a song. 

Here’s a start: today, BMI and ASCAP announced Songview, a search platform that shows results from both repertoires. It’s slicker than the companies’ previous search engines (it’s especially an upgrade for BMI) and seems to return more accurate results. This will make things easier, but I’d love SESAC and the others to come on board. And my face would assume a permanent joyful expression if one day Songview included details from international publishers and PROs. How cool would it be to look up a song and see if other publishers control it in different territories? Often it seems that half of a music licensee’s job is figuring out this complexity, investigating like a song-rights sleuth. Regardless, I’m encouraged by Songview. Fingers crossed that these are early days, and the participation of other PROs on the platform is on the horizon.

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Every holiday season, David and Jennifer send us (and other lucky friends) an assortment of hand-crafted gingerbread cookies. This year I got a mixtape. Goes great with coffee. (Be sure to check out David’s blog 1000 Cuts.)

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Holy Tongue – Holy Tongue → No one knows where dub goes. UK duo Holy Tongue are doing their damndest to track it down. Witness: Post-punk spliced with dub the way it was done, anachronistic but futuristic like if at the end of Primer the time machine room was revealed to be This Heat’s Cold Storage studio. Holy Tongue are Valentina Magaletti on drums and percussion and Al Wootton on guitars, synths, and the occasional siren. The performances are improvised, phase two of the magic apparently happening on the mixing desk where the Tubby/Sherwood spirit inspires all manner of echoing, hi-hat filtering, spring reverbing, and other ravishing embellishments. The result is as good and gritty as many early ‘80s On-U experiments. It’s refreshing in 2020 to hear something so raw yet technical, unsequenced but rhythmically tight. There’s no word whether Holy Tongue is a one-off or a continuing affair. I’m rooting for the latter (and live shows!). This tradition of exploratory studio hybrid-dub needs to live on and on and on, like a tape delay’s rising, infinite ghost tail.

Hitting Me Sideways

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Mapping the Creator Economy → Online tools are aplenty. It’s impossible to keep up. To the rescue: Hugo Amsellem is doing his best to track various ”companies are building stand-alone tools to help creators create more and better content.” His article is an invaluable, bookmark-able resource, listing over 150 apps and sites that can help you monetize, build an audience, and manage your content business. Hugo wasn’t thinking of record labels and recording artists when he put this together, but there is a lot here for the music-minded. Side note: If you’re an artist manager, or want to be one, familiarizing yourself with all of these tools (and trying them out) is now part of your job. The most valuable managers will learn the differences between tools and platforms, knowing the ones that are the best fit for each represented artist. You do the research and make recommendations. It’s your artist’s job to use them and create.1And if you’re an artist without a manager, don’t stress or spend too much time on tools. Just quickly sample what’s available and trust your first impressions when choosing.

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Unendurable Line → Here’s a brilliant short film that illustrates the “thresholds hidden in everyday life” and “how things change from A to B when a parameter exceeds a certain value.” The examples are seemingly mundane, but tension is amplified by charting the distance to the threshold, accompanied by dramatic choral music. It’s brilliant, and more of these videos from Design Ah! (a Japanese educational show that explores different types of creative thinking for viewers of all ages) are available here. (h/t Kottke)

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Body Meπa – The Work Is Slow → Body Meπa named themselves after an Ornette Coleman album (though Coleman’s lacks the crafty pi sign). They create an occasionally-at-odds-with-itself rumble that isn’t too far off (at least conceptually) from what Coleman was transmitting on that album. Music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, Grey McMurray, Melvin Gibbs, and Greg Fox handle a standard guitar-guitar-bass-drums line-up but, in righteous post-punk fashion, Body Meπa sonically exiles standards. The Work Is Slow is Body Meπa’s new album, comprised of mesmerizing riffage, cometary improvisations, and a sharp rhythm section guiding the reins. There’s no nonsense to the production (in the stereo field, Sasha is credited with “right guitar” while Grey wields the one leaning to the left), but the variety of squeals, squalls, and cyclical melodic phrasings bends the album away from simplicity. And you kinda want to see just what is happening to these guitars. A good intro track is “Money Tree” with its opening eterna-looped guitar and double bass action (I think — which would be a call-back to Sasha’s dual-bassed former band Ui), calmly landing in Tortoise territory. Body Meπa’s album has earned many listens in my lockdown space, a noble achievement in a time when new music temptations are relentlessly hitting me sideways. As for the title The Work Is Slow, Sasha had this to say in an installment of his essential email newsletter: “I use ‘the work’ as a way of describing a daily practice of spiritual health and emotional sobriety, but you may have another discipline that fits the bill.” A limited number of bumper stickers with the phrase are available.

Infamous Bathrooms

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Listening After Months in Lockdown → In The Quietus, Daniel Dylan Wray (who claims to listen to five new albums a day) feels that 2020 deadened music’s healing power for him. As the months (and pandemic) dragged on, music only added to the deluge of information (“Pressing play sometimes felt like opening up Twitter …”), and silence was often preferable. Though Daniel still experienced euphoric music moments, a lot of music (or the act of listening to it) felt “draped in sadness.”

Daniel has a theory. His 2020 listening experiences are happening in a singular space — the same place where he’s locked down, living monotonous days, working from home, endlessly worrying. He’s not bonding with music in grungy nightclubs or record shops, or discovering new tunes with friends, or equating albums to time spent on road trips or in unfamiliar cities. Daniel explains:

The process of discovering and experiencing music is intrinsically linked to a sense of place. We all have indelible memories – from the profound to the prosaic – attached to where we were during a musical epiphany or awakening. This year that process has been hacked down to nothing more than sitting in front of a computer screen at home. … Music is a multi-sensory experience, from the sweat and pulse of a club to the stench of stagnant gig venue carpets, and from rifling through fusty charity shop records to perfectly programmed light shows that dazzle the eye as music tickles the ear and chugging smoke machines engulf you. 2020 has robbed music of these other senses.

He has a point. I do equate many of my favorite songs and albums with events, people, or places. And I don’t go out as much as I used to (even before COVID-times), which might be why I don’t have too many current songs with strong memetic connective tissue. 

Music critic Ann Powers writes about similar feelings in her moving new essay Diary of a Fugue Year. Like Daniel, she refers to music as another layer of information to digest. But she also finds that her mindset toward music has transformed after months of lockdown, flavoring the act of listening with a strange intimacy: 

Music makes me yearn for what feels lost: a whisper pushing breath onto my neck, a voice singing loud into a crowd yelling back at it. In my solitude, though, recordings become a lifeline. Spending time with music has never felt more private, a way of both sheltering from and mediating the noise from outside. At the same time, the sound always takes me somewhere; it’s often the only way I hear a stranger’s voice on any given day. See what I’m getting at? Nothing’s got just one meaning. In a year crowded with contradictions, music’s way of enhancing emotion can feel clarifying, or it can overwhelm. Like every other form of information, music is reaching people through static-filled channels, distorted, muffled, feeding back.

We know many new practices will linger after the pandemic: working from home, live-streamed concerts, and telemedicine, to name a few. We might also listen differently, our ears heightened to receive the emotion of the moment. At home, songs will continue to sound much more personal than before COVID-times. And in the wild, music discovery becomes a visceral experience like few others. 

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CBGB Virtual Tour → Experience the grime, grit, and magnificence of CBGB & OMFUG just before shutting its doors in 2006. I was lucky to visit the club in 1991 (Monster Magnet were playing — this was during CMJ Music Marathon), but I could only handle about five minutes as the place was so hot, tiny, and packed. I had a better time next door at the Gallery, where I watched Jad Fair stomp his feet and sing songs a cappella.1He mic’ed the floor so his foot stomps would be amplified. The bemused sound guy spent 10 minutes moving microphones around until Jad was satisfied with the sound of his stomps. This virtual tour is a trip, though. Don’t miss out on the infamous bathrooms. And Unsane were quite strategic with their band stickers, weren’t they? (h/t Joe Livingston)

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Matthew Cardinal – Asterisms → If calming those pandemic nerves is the aim, then Asterisms is the game. Matthew Cardinal, a member of the Edmonton band nêhiyawak (described in the press release as ‘moccasingaze’), pleasingly layers tones and washes of sound throughout his solo debut’s enchanting 43 minutes. There are some things to decipher here — the song titles are dates without years, and it’s not clear if “Dec 31st” and “Jan 8th” are yet to happen or already passed. Maybe these are the days the tracks were recorded, or when best to listen. And the album’s title either references typography or astronomy, both realms where the term “asterism” exists. This fuzziness reflects the music, lost somewhere between past and future, between rigid text-space and intangible star fields. There are hints of melodies that fade in and out of each other, and occasionally a Schulze-esque synth sound will bubble up from the haze. And with nearly half the tracks clocking in at under three minutes, these aren’t elongated, drifty drones, but the shorties also don’t come off as unfinished snapshots. There’s enough variety here to imbue a thoughtful motion to the album, as recalling past days in our lives reveals different colors and fading experiences. Most importantly, Asterisms is a comforting listen, and I happily give in to its spell. Matthew Cardinal has confidently earned his gold star among the busy field of 2020’s ambient exporters. (P.S. Here’s a kaleidoscopic video for “Dec 4th.”)

First Exposure

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Sandinista! at 40 → The Clash’s ambitious triple album Sandinista! was released 40 years ago this month. It was the first vinyl record I ever bought. I remember wandering into the mall record store thinking, “I should get something by this band The Clash I’m hearing about.” Looking through the bins, I see that Sandinista! packages three records filled with music for the price of one.1The Clash reportedly agreed to a cut in royalties to keep the price low on this album. So, that’s the one I picked over London Calling or the two others. 

As I told Lawrence Peryer at the end of my interview on the Spot Lyte On podcast, Sandinista! probably wasn’t the best first exposure to The Clash. The album was difficult to latch on to — there was so much music, and the styles varied wildly from track-to-track. I remember liking “Magnificent Seven” and “Police On My Back,” but I didn’t get it overall. Maybe I chose the wrong intro album, making The Clash a band I’d merely appreciate through the years. 

Simon Reynolds recently wrote about Sandinista! on his Blissblog, calling it a “fan-perplexing triple – which must be their least-listened record (well, apart from Cut the Crap) but which makes for a surprisingly listenable listen for streaming-era ears.” A vintage album best suited for streaming, then? Simon explains, “It’s not a record that can be listened to in a single sitting, especially in those days of vinyl — all that getting up and removing another disc from the sleeve, or flipping over the platter.”

When we first dip into a catalog, I wonder about the effect of that first record we listen to from a band. It can make the difference between becoming a fan or “meh.” Catalog dipping is a lot surer with streaming. You’re not really taking a chance anymore. And it’s easy to know which albums are the favorites, the most listened to, or the critically lauded ones. Before digital music, we were often guiding our chance-taking by album price. Three albums for the price of one was tempting. Also, there was the cut-out bin. Those $3-and-under records were often our intro albums, but, usually, only a band’s least popular records ended up as cut-outs.2Though I did discover Eno via the cut-out bin. It was Before And After Science, I believe.

Of course, I now enjoy Sandinista! quite a bit. And I see “Magnificent Seven” (and much of the album) as an ’80s milestone, ahead of its time. Here’s a fascinating oral history of that song from Consequence of Sound. And there’s a new music video for “Magnificent Seven.” The legendary Don Letts edited it from footage from The Clash’s time in NYC and their 1981 Bond’s residency. So good, so nostalgic. 

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Library Music → I’m intrigued by Tracks Music Library, a streaming platform set up by the Chapel Hill Public Library. Tracks is an online music site solely focused on artists from the ‘The Triangle’ (Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Durham). Via Indyweek:

[Local artists] are compensated for their submissions and given full ownership of their tracks. Upon visiting the website, you can search curated music from more than 70 musicians and bands; if you have a Chapel Hill library card, you can also download music.

It turns out Tracks uses a streaming engine called MUSICat, allowing libraries to create an “affordably priced” platform for “music streams and optional downloads to library users.” Libraries across the country are implementing this (here’s a list), with most focusing on local music. I assume payments for streams and downloads are paid to the artists through the grant pools and public funding given to libraries. 

I love the idea of streaming platforms based on local music and regional scenes. It’s a welcome antithesis to the temptation to always think globally on the internet. The rights are easy to secure as the platforms are dealing directly with the artists, most unsigned. And I see that Tracks is working with Durham’s Merge Records, so prominent local labels can also get involved. This is how you foster a community, which is an essential exercise in fractured times. 

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Monta At Odds – A Great Conjunction → Kansas City’s Monta At Odds are a spacey band, both in sound and obsessions. Science fiction literature had a heavy influence on their Argentum Dreams album (released in 2018 on my 8D Industries label). And the band’s recent single “When Stars Grow Old” is inspired by a vision of a future culture remembering its past on a distant world. So it’s no surprise that December 21st’s ‘great conjunction’ of Saturn and Jupiter would inspire the band to summon a new set of cosmic tunes. These five songs are Monta At Odds at their Oddsiest — a crafty mix of soaring space-rock, frantic jazz drumming, fluttering sine waves, and post-rock echoes. “The Gods Are Conspiring” is the highlight, a rousing instrumental sound-piece that imagines an agitated Popol Vuh blissfully rocking out. Along with the other tunes on this EP, it’s a fitting soundtrack for watching heavenly bodies appear to collide in space.

An Accommodating Tinge of Distortion

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An Update on Bandcamp Fridays → You can’t have too much of a good thing. Since the very beginning of COVID-times, Bandcamp has waived their revenue share on the first Friday of every month. That means after payment processor fees, artists (or their labels, if managing the account) got an average of 93% of the total.

Bandcamp Fridays were a rousing success for everyone involved, not the least Bandcamp itself. Though the company led us to believe these first Fridays ended with 2020, I suspected these events would continue. And here’s Bandcamp with breaking news: 

Although vaccines are starting to roll out, it will likely be several months before live performance revenue starts to return. So we’re going to continue doing Bandcamp Fridays in 2021, on February 5th, March 5th, April 2nd, and May 7th. As always, isitbandcampfriday.com has the details.

Also, in the announcement, Bandcamp rightly points out that fans shouldn’t think these are the only days to buy music and support artists. Normally, “an average of 82% reaches the artist/label” through Bandcamp on a day that’s not the first Friday of the month. That’s still pretty good and remarkably better than those other guys. 

So why have these special Fridays, then? Well, they’re a lot of fun. Bandcamp Fridays remind me of Tuesdays at the record store — new releases came out every Tuesday in the olden times — and fans would line up at the door before we opened in anticipation of their favorite artists’ fresh music. Nowadays, Bandcamp Friday’s excitement carries over to social media. The social platforms come alive on Bandcamp Fridays with recommendations, exclusives from the artists, and praise from fans. It’s a nudge to the broader public that there’s something more than Spotify, that an inclusive music community bubbling with intention and enthusiasm exists in 2020. And because of that, I expect Bandcamp Fridays — or some version of it — to continue well beyond next May.

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In 2021, support people. Screw the brands. → The argument over streaming royalties and how the services don’t adequately pay artists often loses sight of an important factor. If a recording artist releases through a label, that label might take as much as 90% of the streaming royalty pie.190% would be a really bad — but not unheard of — major label deal. Then, there’s the issue of labels that don’t pay at all — whether that’s intentional or due to a combination of laziness and bad accounting. 

In 5 Magazine, Terry Matthew calls out labels that infamously don’t pay artists. Terry mentions classic Chicago house music labels like Trax, defrauding pioneering Black artists like Larry Heard and Robert Owens. But Terry notes a more significant problem: as fans, we sometimes mythologize the labels at the expense of the artists behind the music. We continue to support labels while (often unknowingly) hurting the artists. Here’s Terry:

Too often as an industry, we elevate packaging over product, memorabilia over music, brand over artist. All might be forgivable except the last, because there are real people involved in this, many of them are still alive and still active artists.

Terry’s prescription: Stop fetishizing labels at the expense of artist fandom. Buy releases directly from the artists when you can (via Bandcamp or artist sites). And be aware that the classic record you’re buying might be a dodgy label’s make-a-fast-buck repress.

There’s also a reminder not to get caught up in our beloved artists’ catalogs of classics, ignoring their current output. Many pioneering producers are still making vital music. A lot of it is self-released. The best thing we can do as fans is to follow our heroes as they continue their musical lives, supporting them when we can. 

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Shea Betts – Sea / Sky → This album is the first release from NYC-via-Canada librarian and music-maker Shea Betts. As evidenced by the title Sea / Sky, the album is an ode to both, with the first half inspired by the ocean’s movement while the second reflects the windiness of the atmosphere. Shea tells me that he had “a desire to make a more ‘abrasive’ ambient sound – something more distorted and overdriven than the subdued ambient that I often listen to.” That abrasiveness is anything but, closer to an accommodating tinge of distortion on keyboards that sustains like church organs. This organ-like quality gives Sea / Sky a religious air, an almost worshipful respect for the natural world inhabited by the album’s two subjects. With measured difference, the ‘Sea’ half conveys roughness while the ‘Sky’ portion is lighter and flowing. And the songs in the middle are a combination. “Where the ocean meets the sky,” says Shea. Despite its simplicity, Sea / Sky is expressive and visual — listening in full, with the concept in mind, is movie-like. I imagine a vertical slow-motion camera pan from the water to the clouds. Probably in black and white and dramatically contrasted. Is Béla Tarr available?

A Boy Can Dream

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Will 2021’s New Music Hold Out For Tours? → One positive thing we can say about 2020, it didn’t lack for great music. Here’s MusicREDEF’s compilation of various 2020′ best of’ lists as proof. For the most part, it didn’t particularly seem like anyone deprived us of their new music this year. In the superstar category, where the absence of touring is a significant detriment on release strategy, artists embracing lockdown life — like Taylor Swift and Charli XCX — prospered. On the other hand, business-as-usual releases from the likes of Lady Gaga and Childish Gambino seemed here and forgotten. 

I think, at first, the uncertainty of the times actually ended up pushing artists to keep the releases flowing. If you remember, there was a time when acts figured they’d be on tour by the summer, and everything would be hunky-dory. There was a feeling that if bands all held their albums for a few months, then there’d be a glut of releases when the time came to tour. So, bombs away. And credit to Dua Lipa for being one of the first to jump in the water, with an end-of-March high-profile album release during the early throes of pandemic panic. Future Nostalgia ended doing quite well for her, giving other acts the nudge they needed. But, most still believed they’d tour in the summer or fall.

2020’s uncertainty is giving way to 2021’s certainty. That certainty is that there likely won’t be any major tours for another year, at the earliest. For that reason, we might see fewer big releases next year or a planned glut of releases (preceding an excess of tours) in early 2022. Here’s Larry Fitzmaurice in the Last Donut of the Night newsletter:

Let’s put visibility aside for a moment (especially when, in the age of social media, it takes a lot to translate that into something you can make a living off of) and talk about the big problem with releasing new music and not touring behind it: No touring means no income, since an increasingly scarce number of musicians can afford to make and release music without touring to recoup the cost of, well, making and releasing music.

Smaller and mid-sized bands are more nimble and can do things that big acts can’t, like book short-notice regional tours and vary the types of venues they play. But there’s also the audience problem — will people be ready to attend concerts before the end of next year? Right now, I’m doubtful. I don’t know if I’ll be comfortable going out until I’m absolutely sure I’m not putting myself and my loved ones in danger. With all the vaccine good news, I hope we can all safely put aside these reservations before we ring in another year. If not, we’ll need all the great new music we can get.

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Apple TV Was Making a Show About Gawker. Then Tim Cook Found Out → I have mixed feelings on this story: 

Mr. Cook, according to two people briefed on the email, was surprised to learn that his company was making a show about Gawker, which had humiliated the company at various times and famously outed him, back in 2008, as gay. He expressed a distinctly negative view toward Gawker, the people said. Apple proceeded to kill the project. 

Several episodes were already in the can, so this wasn’t a small decision. And reportedly, there are other things that Cook (and Apple) object to in Apple TV+’s programming. Unsurprisingly, too much violence and nudity (the reason Cook killed a Dr. Dre biopic despite Dre’s involvement with Apple) or religious controversies (crucifixes were removed from Servant) are on the list. But then, supposedly, a scene was excised from a show because the script called for damaging an iPhone. Oh, and no one in a program can disparage China.

That all sounds dicey. But, in a way, I don’t mind the leader of a content platform setting guidelines based on personal convictions that influence the company’s vision. Most platforms are solely profit-driven and have no content guidelines at all (besides the legally enforced ones). Society’s present mess is partly because platforms try to please everyone, even if everyone includes those spreading dangerous misinformation, bullying, and filth. I’m not saying Cook’s personal views and convictions inspire all his policies (unless he really does love China), but I’d like to see more CEOs express convictions that act as constraints on their companies. I think, in this case, saying ‘no’ to Gawker applies.

Of course, there’s the chilling effect. Will studios take chances when having to navigate a CEO’s personality? On the other hand, could this become the differentiation that we miss in platforms? Like radio stations programming by loose definitions of genre, video streamers become separated by content that follows corporate vision. There will always be platforms that take more risks (that’s a corporate vision in itself), complimenting those that want to remain ‘family-friendly.’ Why not?

I admit what I’m proposing is naïve. Reed Hastings pulling an episode of Patriot Act off Netflix because it criticizes Saudi Arabia is not what we want more of. But if Twitter and Facebook suddenly decided that misinformation, hate-speech, and harassment weren’t allowed because it was against what Zuckerberg and Dorsey believed in — I’d enthusiastically welcome that. They are private companies, after all, and can do what they want if they wanted to. 

I know, I know. Just let me enjoy my fantasy for at least a few minutes.

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Elijah Knutsen – Music For Vending Machines 1 → Elijah Knutsen, who gave us the exquisite Blue Sun Daydream album a couple of months ago, is back with Music For Vending Machines 1. Elijah refers to this first-in-a-series as “a miniaturized listening experience … much like something purchased from a vending machine.” The three songs, each clocking in at an average length of nine-and-a-half minutes, note a particular noise in their titles: “Air Conditioner Sound,” “Vending Machine Sound,” and “Purple Wisteria Tree Sound.” Those titles are red herrings as these ‘sounds’ are spacious, melodic, and far from mechanical or ordinary. “Vending Machine Sound” in particular gives our ears a visceral variety — layers of mesmerizing, shimmering tones fade into a chorus of voices and footsteps. And then those noises succumb to warm bendy chords alternating in the stereo field, like an interim track on that lost mid-90s My Bloody Valentine album. As with his previous Blue Sun Daydream, Elijah Knutsen’s self-described “micro-release”1It’s still longer than most early Van Halen albums btw. is a gorgeous-sounding diversion, transporting and soothing the listener within its sonic world.