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You know the story: The year is 1976. Brian Eno hasn’t yet collaborated with Bowie on Low, and is looking for a project. Eno had already shown huge Krautrock interest with Roxy Music and (possibly apocryphal) quotes from the era have him calling Harmonia “the world’s most important rock band” at the time. What is clear: He loved the band, a group composed of musicians from Neu! and Cluster. And so as the leaves in Forst, Germany, turned from green to gold, Eno and the boys lay down what would become Tracks & Traces.
And then it was forgotten. Not to be heard from until 1997 when the original masters were discovered in a climate-controlled space capsule hovering over Berlin. (OK, I made that part up.) Either way, they were released by Rykodisc more than a decade ago. And rereleased this year on Grönland Records. And the results—if you don’t already have them in your amniotic playlist—are pretty much as to be expected. Wistful, chuggy, fun, sad, corny, shimmering, eschatological—and above all, pregnant with the sounds would set Detroit and Manchester afire in just a few short years. Durutti Column fans, this is the Nag Hammadi Codex.
Tiga is a lot of things—a genre ironist, a gender jockey, a genius debatably—but subtle he is not. On his latest, Ciao!, he waxes obvious about information overload “All I feel is in this data stream / I see the eyes in the computer screen /Misinformation is surrounding me / It brings me down, I’m on my knees”—but the big joke is that song itself (“Beep Beep Beep”) is frenetically overproduced mess of Purple One invocations, Basement Jaxx snipes and inch-deep pop profundity.
Enter Loco Dice with a dub that doesn’t even deliver anything close to the song’s hook until about six minutes deep into the cut. A persistent little string flick and some mechanically feisty bongos building to Tiga himself exhaling are all that remain. Now, I love taking something overdone and underdoing it for effect—but this is the remix equivalent of Garfield Minus Garfield.
Parisian mnml producer Kaine goes the opposite route—instead of dialing back Tiga’s enthusiasm—he organizes it. What was funky and goofy on the original becomes all New Romantic lush and dark. Tiga James Sontag’s “beep-beep-beep” refrain stops being a reminder of technological interruption and starts to be the sexy pulse of the cyborg nightlife. The message is lost, but who cares? This B bangs. [<-----------read more @ RA------------>]
You know how when you’re a kid, everything is absolutes? Modern dance music is kinda still stuck there, flipping between the night-and-day of dour seriousness vs. punch-your-mom-in-the-face party ethic. It makes it hard to find music that does more than soundtrack individual emotions.
Somewhere between the Juan Maclean’s raucous four-on-the-floor formula and chamber vox techno of the likes of Imogen Heap or Bat for Lashes, there lies a fabled land called subtlety. Most the time, only Brian Eno lives there. But for goddamn once in our lives, a new guy, Vitalic, nee Pascal Arbez, hits it. More than hits it. Owns it.
Vitalic’s debut full-length OK Cowboy made waves back in 2005 with its woozy blend of smarter-than-average synths and weirder-than-average samples. But there was this one track, “The Past,” that came on like an Adderall-powered freight train loaded with paperback copies of Steppenwolf. (That’s a metaphor for being rad and subtle at the same time.) And it left you being all “Why can’t he make a whole record like that?”
Wish granted. Our boy Arbez is back and he’s got a danceable Enola Gay filled with subtlety bombs. Eponymous cut “Flashmob” feels like the bastard child of Justice and Lindstrom—detuned and headfucked, but not too far gone to exude shy thoughtfulness.
The Dead Weather
Horehound
(Third Man Records)
*3.7*
Goes well with: The White Stripes, The Kills
In 2003, Rolling Stone named Jack White the 17th best guitarist ever. Now, three Grammys later, he’s featured—alongside Jimmy Page and The Edge—in a documentary about the history of the electric guitar (It Might Get Loud).
Am I the only one who thinks there’s something wrong about the way White’s been fast-tracked to rock-god status? The dude’s basically a decent vessel for Southern rock traditions, but short of “Seven Nation Army,” he hasn’t written a catchy, heavy tune for the ages. All of a sudden, he gets acting gigs, gobs of cred and the creative license to launch indulgent, spotty side projects without actually laying the groundwork of a Physical Graffiti or a Joshua Tree to deserve it.
The Dead Weather is another such vanity project. This time around, Jack’s chosen to pass much of the vocal duties to Alison Mosshart of The Kills, who manages to wrap her voice in enough bad-mic flatness to sound exactly like White himself. The record is an uneven affair, full of half-formed solos, shoddy drum clatter and the sort of creepy Dixie posturing that makes people who have never been to the South think Black Snake Moan is a factual cultural study.
Ultimately, Horehound sounds a lot like the rest of White’s oeuvre—self-satisfied and undercooked but with frustrating glimpses of brilliance. I’m sure it will win him another Grammy, and then maybe Obama will appoint him ambassador to Electric Ladyland or something. FULLPAGE>>>>>>>>
