PondaBlog

a revelation, courtesy of vancouver photog extraordinaire Graham Winterbottom.

last year, canada’s very own and very fab junior boys released their third full-length album, begone dull care.

loved the album (although if you haven’t yet heard last exit and so this is goodbye due to some horrific twist of fate, you must – now). and that was that.

except it wasn’t. trolling around on the interweb, i came across the fascinating item below on Graham’s blog – an amazing visual treat brought to us by Norman McLaren in the ’50s, titled, natch, Begone Dull Care. i’m assuming this was the inspiration for the junior boys’ naming efforts. and if not, what a great coincidence!

enjoy the show. you can read all about McLaren’s wild work here.

flavorwire on the second wave of dubstep.

first up is philly’s starkey, who just happens to have a fab new mix up at resident advisor. it’s synth-heavy and technicolour, big phat sounds bursting out of the speakers. plus, it features some neck-tingling stabs at vintage hardcore that put a goofy smile on my face.

faltyDL is also name-checked, along with six others…so dive in. bass for your face, london! er, vancouver…?

“it’s really just that feeling of being very intimate with the music that keeps me going.”

resident advisor brings the bass with a kode9/Steve Goodman interview. 

as much as i love the man’s penchant for making and releasing amazing music – and lordy, has he put out some amazing music – i’m also fascinated by his theoretical bent and his roles as both beatmaker and renegade academic.

his involvement with the cybernetic culture research unit sets the stage – the CCRU was (is?) a semi-legendary cabal that operated on the fringes of philsophy, posited impenetrable yet addicting manifestos, and included writers/tacticians/ciphers such as Sadie Plant (zeros + ones) and Kodwo Eshun (more brilliant than the sun: adventures in sonic fiction).  you can check out a piece on the CCRU by Simon Reynolds here.

sonic warfare also looks very tasty. i haven’t sunk my teeth into some heady theory in a while…mebbe it’s time.

love that quote too…an intimacy that keeps you going…

music has the right to children – boards of canada (best title ever)

taking drugs to make music to take drugs to – spacemen 3

dragging a dead deer up a hill – grouper

reign in blood – slayer

trout mask replica – captain beefheart and his magic band

axis: bold as love – the jimi hendrix experience

unknown pleasures – joy division

millions now living will never die – tortoise

vincebus eruptum – blue cheer

bad music for bad people – the cramps

now add yer own!

indie rock continues to infect the masses with its poison.

yes, it’s that time again – record store day! – the best day of the year besides halloween.

read all about it here and here.

and check out vancouver happenings at zulu, red cat and scratch.

when i become supreme world leader every day shall be record store day!

alright, i know i’m a wee bit late on this, but RIP Malcolm McLaren.

he’s a tough one to write about, because really, what hasn’t been said by this point? from a strictly personal point of view, McLaren’s undertakings and shenanigans frequently fascinated me, although many of them i became familiar with posthumously. From the Sex shop to the sex pistols,  from adam and the ants to bow wow wow (so much promise! such a failure!), from buffalo gals to madame butterfly – it’s a chaotic and hugely entertaining CV, if not an altogether successful one.

as he aged, so too did his familiar role as impresario. to be expected, i suppose – especially since he was typecast from the pistols on.

yet he should be remembered, in particular, for two feats: engineering the right people and fomenting the right conditions to produce Never Mind the Bollocks, one of the 20th century’s singular pieces of art; and, along with fellow provocateurs like Jamie Reid, injecting a hearty dose of theory – situationism, in particular – into popular culture. Or, as he might prefer, starting a revolution of everyday life.

i’ve been in vancouver for a while now, and i’ve heard the same complaint the entire time – namely, nothing happens here. or not enough.

i can understand why people say that. vancouver can be an oddly anti-social place at times. but if you scratch below the surface and do a bit of digging, you soon discover that there’s actually a lot of cool stuff going on.

case in point. in the last little while, not one, not two, but three electronic albums (okay, one’s an e.p.) have come out of our fair burg. first up is connect_icut’s fourier’s algorithm, a lovely concoction of glitchiness and détournement that begins with an undoing of the chimey opening to the velvet underground’s “sunday morning.” download it now, courtesy of the extremely generous artiste, here.

other offerings have also come forth from loscil (on kranky) and babe rainbow (on warp). i haven’t heard these (yet) but you can read about them here and here courtesy of the pitchfork mafia.

now go forth and dig!