Shining

Mort Garson, “Baroque No. 2”

Mort Garson is a synthesizer pioneer, one of the first people to record music with a Moog. Sacred Bones has been reissuing his work, both his records and various rarities from his estate’s archive. This is one of the latter, Music From Patch Cord Productions, and it’s just lovely stuff.

Basement Jaxx, “Cish Cash”

Talk about missing the boat. Basement Jaxx is best known for their debut album, Remedy, which was huge. I did not get it, nor their follow-up. But they put Siouxsie Sioux on this record (on this song, in fact), so sure, let’s give it a try. Sure, let’s not get the big record. Anyway, it’s fine. Not really my jam. Hard to really say anything bad about something this cheerful and energetic, though.

L’altra, “Slow as Cake”

Is cake slow? I don’t think of cake as a particularly slow food. I suppose it takes a while to pre-heat the oven, bake the thing, let it cool, and then decorate it. So…maybe they are slow. But they’re not what I think of when I think of slow food. Beyond the obvious molasses, I think of, say, smoking things as slow.

The band Cake isn’t really slow either.

False, “Saturnalia”

The opening to the 2015 album from False (called Untitled, the same as their first EP, because fuck you!), featuring their blend of black metal with other elements like thrash. The stretch around 1:30-2, for example, is pretty thrash-y. The middle section of the song is pretty doom-y. These kinds of passages are a nice change of pace from just the crush of black metal.

Hüsker Dü, “Chartered Trips”

Hüsker Dü’s 1984 double-album Zen Arcade was a monumental landmark in the rock underground. It’s hard to really call it a hardcore album at this point, it’s really moved far beyond it, but so many bands after this would try and sound this good. Everything is still super loud, but the songwriting has stretched much farther than the first couple records indicated they were capable of.

The Emotions, “My Honey And Me”

This comes to us from early in the third phase of Stax Records’ life, after they reached an arrangement with CBS Records. This period still contains plenty of fantastic songs, but Stax was also on a slow decline. Luckily for them, they had plenty of space to decline in to.

The Jam, “Start!”

I wonder if I could play this on the bass? I should try. (I cannot.)

Today’s tunes.

The Nation of Ulysses, “Maniac Dragstrip”

There’s a search for authenticity in rock music that goes back decades, where bands are judged to be real or poseurs based on a variety of markers, many of which make no sense at all. And in this view of music, artifice is usually heavily discouraged. A band that is self-consciously trying to be different, to make art as opposed to just blasting raw emotion is seen as inauthentic. I get it, the drive for the visceral, particularly in rock. But clinging to this structure leaves out so much interesting experimentation, and ultimately can be so limiting, that you just want to sometimes embrace artiness.