20.6.08

Tuning In This Week

It's been an interesting week for music. Well, for the kind I pay attention to...



My Bloody Valentine played a warm-up show at a small London venue last week. Wired's Listening Post points to MP3's of the show (sounds like they were recorded in the room, not off the board). This tease of what's to come around Chicago in September might not be enough to make us forget that the much-anticipated MBV re-issues are delayed (again) because Kevin Shields is allegedly still writing the liner notes. Maybe he should have started those sooner.... like, in 1991?




Another bit of mixed disappointment came from Illegal Art this week: the new Girl Talk album. See, I paid for this album months ago as part of a four-release deal the label offered (I did it mainly to secure a copy of the Steinski retrospective). Well, the Girl Talk album, Feed The Animals, was delayed. Then released for free earlier this week. Hmpf! So in six weeks when the CD arrives (a schedule that still baffles me), I'll be long-since tired of an album that I legitimately downloaded yesterday. Girl Talk told Pitchfork that he pushed the release (wait, it was delayed... how can he call this a push to release it early? WTF?) because of the timely samples he's using, admitting that they'll be stale by the time the CD is pressed. Well, why bother pressing a CD at all, dude? And why ask me to pay for it several months before you're going to just give it away? You could have refunded me the purchase price, given me store credit at the label store, and made a better fan of me. Instead, I feel a bit swindled. I suppose I asked for it, but it's probably the last time I bother to buy Girl Talk's collage of what amounts to random preview clips of everyone else's songs in no apparent order. First listen: it's cute. Second listen: I think I could have done this better myself.




Things got better this morning when I was greeted with an email from Amon Tobin regarding his new online store. In addition to an official release of his soundtrack for Taxidermia, there is a slew of freebie content - live mixes and DJ sets mostly. There's also a feature called This Month's Joint, which is a new track available for purchase (MP3 or WAV) every month. This will help me keep my fix of Tobin until his Two Fingers collaboration is released. Nice. This guy is one of my favorite recording artists, and has been a big inspiration on my own recording endeavors.




Oh, yeah, there are also rumors flying about a leak of eight tracks off the much-fabled Guns-N-Roses album Chinese Democracy. If you're into that kind of thing.

5 comments:

Chris B. said...

Looking forward to MBV music, but I'll probably skip the concert. I saw them last time around and don't want to potentially dilute that experience. Kevin Shields seems just flaky enough to ruin it for me.

Also, I've been through the Portishead CD a few times now. I like 50-60% of it, but some of it is just painful. What's your impression?

Anonymous said...

Chinese Democracy? How long have we been hearing this is almost done? I will never believe anything regarding that alleged album until I hear it, not release dates, cover art, tour dates, I will believe none of it until I hear finished songs.

And then I'll probably be really disappointed because even with low expectations how could it possibly live up to 14 years of hype?

Chris, I've barely listened to the Portishead but had the same initial reaction. I loved a few tunes and then I found myself hitting the skip. A few more listens are needed though.

Anonymous said...

So it took around 30 seconds to find Chinese Democracy. Sorry Axl, there was no way this was staying under wraps for too long. But I'm even more sorry to tell Mr. Rose that it totally bored me. At least the first two and a half songs before I hit stop. Maybe it will sound better in sequence and mixed but I hold little hope. It could be a hit though, as brand G'NR still appears to be strong.

Anonymous said...

I freakin LOVE Amon Tobin! I'm going to download all of these DJ sets. Thanks!

PYLB said...

chris b.:
My impression of the Portishead is perhaps a little more positive. But I'm not taking it as trip-hop; it's a prog rock album. I listen to it like I listen to Can or Neu! - it tends to be background music more than flat out jam after jam. I do think some of the production sounds a bit rough, if not deceptively simple.

But if I were in Portishead, I don't think I'd come back after 11 years with the same stuff I had on those first two albums.

I kinda feel like I need them to release another album to see if they keep trying other styles or fall back on their trip-hop notoriety (they still play the old songs live, so it's not as though they've abandoned all that entirely).

niki:
You're very welcome. I'm a huge Amon Tobin fan, too.