i’ve said it before, and i’ll say it again: i’m a list man. well, man-boy, whatever. lists are always good fun, and music lists are even gooder fun. so i was rather tickled to see this latest entry from pitchfork – the 200 best singles of the ’90s! talk about a gargantuan job. and some would say a pointless one too. but i wouldn’t be one of them.

anyways, the candidates are being revealed this week, with the top 20 clocking in on friday. i’ve only had a chance to skim through 200-151, but i have to say that i was pleasantly chuffed to see the inclusion of a handful of standout jungle/drum ‘n’ bass tracks – including ltj bukem’s oceanic remix of “atlantis (i need you),” omni trio’s immortal “renegade snares” and dillinja’s darkcore dirge “angels fell,” which squeaks in at 198.

i wonder which other junglistic gems will make the cut – certainly, my pickings would include “shadow boxing,” the numanoid slab from nasty habits/doc scott; the breakbeat funk of roni size’s “brown paper bag”; and goldie’s epic “timeless.”

and if there truly is any justice in this world, asend’s ”can’t play bass” is gonna top this list. i actually found a youtube clip of the choon, but the sound quality is so crap that one can’t even hear the soul-shredding bass that defines this monster.

which is a pity, ‘cuz it’s pretty much the best song ever.

so when’s the king sunny ade lawsuit coming, then?

and now, a completely different take on this whole technology/music/listening thang…there’s an upcoming wire salon entitled “we hear a new world: microphony, technology and the rise of sound art.”

this made me think of the way technology has been used, mistreated and misunderstood to produce unexpected, and sometimes uncannily fantastic, environments. i’m thinking of musique concrete, christian marclay’s shattered vinyl symphonies, gordon monahan’s speaker-swinging sounds (see photo above), dub’s inversion of the studio as instrument, neubauten’s mechanical mayhem, the acidic squelch of a roland 303 pushed beyond its limits. sometimes mistakes sound so good.

anyways, the salon looks like it could be a tasty little soiree, even if i’ve veered off course with this post. so check it out on september 2 if you’re in london. which i won’t be.

interestingly, i’ve stumbled upon a couple of other recent musings by Simon Reynolds and Geeta Dayal that also probe similar thoughts on how today’s tech is changing the way we listen to music – and, indeed, the way we relate to the world.

a lengthy quote appears below from reynolds, part of a larger essay that appears in Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture (don’t let the title scare you off) that examines the debate around a particularly virulent sound called the hardcore continuum. 

anyways, debate aside (and what’s to debate really? of course the ‘nuum exists, haters!)  what particularly struck me was this bit:

“Here I’m getting into a more speculative area, but the impression I have is that for many of the younger generation, historical thinking has grown foreign to the way they relate to music. The musical past has become spatialized: sounds from all the different eras of history are equally available to us, and, furthermore, they are just as available as the music of the present. In one sense the past is totally present, all of it, in a way that it’s never been before. But historical depth drops out, the original context or meaning of the music becomes steadily more irrelevant; music is just material to redeploy. If you’ve grown up, as anyone under the age of 30 really has, with a relationship to music based around total access, superabundance, and the erosion of a sense of sounds having placement within an historical or temporal scheme, then thinking about music in terms of causal links and development through time becomes ever more alien to your consciousness. The idea that jungle led to UK garage, or 2step evolved into grime (so crucial to those, like me, who lived through these transformations, thrilled to them and puzzled over them in real-time), becomes both irrecoverable and simply irrelevant to their practice as DJs, or producers or consumers. Leaps across the genrescape, through affinity of sound, seem more persuasive, even if there’s no actual historical connection there.”

reynolds admits he’s getting into a more speculative arena here. but i side with him (no big surprise, if you read my post above) – instant access does erode historicity, linkages, a sense of connections. increasingly, we’re ending up in a world of surface, not depth. as reynolds writes, ”The musical past has become spatialized.”

and so we come to dayal’s piece, which appears in frieze. here, she reflects on the effect of having endless downloadable mixes at the tip of your fingers:

“After many years of engaging actively with dance music – tracking every notable 12-inch release, digging for vinyl in crates, writing reviews – I felt a bit like Herbert in ‘Leipzig’, a lone wanderer in an empty club. I was downloading more music than ever – bleeding-edge dubstep mixes, obscure German techno podcasts – while becoming numb to the experience of listening. It was almost impossible to keep up with the avalanche of DJ mixes posted to Facebook, Twitter and various blogs. Despite all this social media, I felt less connected to a larger experience than ever before. In some cases, social media seemed to have backfired completely; some DJ friends recently lamented that fewer people were attending their nights; instead they are waiting until after the event to look up the photos on Facebook and download the recordings.”

“On this new online dancefloor, I was more in control than ever – constantly pointing, clicking, downloading and hearing new tracks practically instantly. But I had forgotten how to surrender to the music I loved so much, to an experience more expansive than myself.”

i feel a real affinity with what dayal’s saying. having dug for music for decades in all sorts of nooks and crannies, the availability of a seemingly infinite amount of mixes has been, in one way, awesome. i’ve managed to get my hands on so much dance and electronic music, which can be particularly difficult – and yes, pricey – to track down in the physical world. and for that i’m grateful.

but the experience can also seem overwhelming – the sheer volume of material that’s available online starts to, as dayal notes, make one “numb to the experience of listening.”

her comments on social media are also illuminating: “Despite all this social media, I felt less connected to a larger experience than ever before.” yes, everything and everyone is increasingly bound in all sorts of ways, but we’re also becoming more atomized by the nano-second. so are we just more isolated, all together? or is something else coming – some other way of listening, dancing, being – that we just can’t envision in the midst of this flux and noise?

again, i’m not one to preach for the abolition of iPods and MP3s – far from it. but technological developments do not occur in vacuums. technology is not just a tool; it also bleeds into our very sense of being and identity, whether we’re listening to music or relating to another human. personally, in this age of access and demystification, i’d argue for a remystification of sorts – a bit more surrender now and then.

perhaps that’s a future post. right now i’m off to download the new mix from xxxy - which is ace, by the way.

fantastic dubsteppy, ravey mess that takes on technotronic’s mighty “pump up the jam” and churns out a monster. CHOON!!!

never thought i’d read a piece on slayer in the august globe and mail, but here it is – by J.D. Considine, no less.

really, Slayer are the ultimate indie band. they’ve never compromised (can you imagine a Slayer ballad!?!), they’ve put out heavy as f**k albums forever, they’ve toured to maniacs year after year, they’ve received zero radio play and they’ve sold a gazillion albums. whether one appreciates their razor-sharp riffs and medieval world-view - or not (but how couldn’t you, really – i mean, can anyone with a proper set of ears resist “angel of death,” ”raining blood,” “south of heaven” or a fistful of other tracks), their impact remains undeniable. slayer are the band that all proper parents, adults, musos and other well-adjusted types love to hate, and yet they remain untouchable.

and considine is also way off target when he says that tony iommi sounds quaint compared  to today’s riff merchants. prime sabbath still sounds like the apocalypse, and iommi’s guitar is the blackened engine that’s driving the mayhem. just look at  sabbath’s offspring – black flag, sunn o))), boris, queens of the stone age et al. iommi and cohorts weren’t just the stepping stone – they were, and are, the foundation.    

synchronicity, eh?

i couldn’t disagree more. sure, the ’80s had their fair share of lameness – as does any decade. what will people think when they look back at tweeting?

and yes, the ’80s have plenty to mock. but aside from the usual suspects – miami vice, shoulder pads - it needs to be stated that the  ’80s were a phenomenal decade for music. here are eight reasons why:

1 - hip hop comes into its own

the beats developed, as did the rapping and the vibe. the ’80s were a golden period for hip hop, when a sound really began to find its footing. and that sound was so diverse – de la soul, nwa, eric b and rakim, ice t, biz, schoolly d, rob base and hell yeah the beasties – licensed to ill and paul’s boutique stand among the best one-two punches ever. and then PE comes along and the bomb squad blows it all up.

it’s strange how history repeats – the noughties were a modern-day take on the ’80s, with grime and dubstep echoing the two-decades-old template of hip hop and rave.

2 - hardcore

and no, i don’t mean pre-jungle breakbeat. although that will come in my eventual ’90s post.

i mean the (mostly) north american strain that took punk and made it harder, louder and above all, faster (well, most of the time – apologies to post-damaged black flag). hardcore was young and crass and violent and stupid and fun and mind-expanding, often all at the same time. going to hardcore shows in my teens was a godsend, a portal to another reality, i guess. lots of crappy bands, to be sure – but some amazing ones too – minor threat, bad brains, black flag, husker du, DRI, corrosion of conformity, snfu, doa, christ on parade, mdc, suicidal tendencies, circle jerks, government issue, crucifix, blast, reagan youth…then there were the crazy europeans, rattus, crude SS, etc…

anyways, i suppose this formative stuff never really dies. last weekend, i went to a gig celebrating the 50th birthday of ron reyes, who was the second singer for the legendary black flag. greg ginn, the god-like guitarist for black flag back in the day and the dude who founded the essential SST record label, guested on a few songs. having never seen black flag (during the one chance i had, i was camping with my parents), it was a divine experience to see him onstage, playing as only he can play. and when the ron reyes band launched into “gimmie gimmie gimmie” and the immortal “police story,” i was transported, grinning and screaming the lyrics like an idiot.

3 - duran duran – rio

a tehnicolour orgasm. those suits! that hair! the videos! the girls! rio represents everything fabulous about pop music.

4 – 1988: year of the giants

 in 1988, three stupendous albums were released: daydream nation, isn’t anything, it takes nation of millions to hold us back.

sonic youth’s daydream nation, a double album, came out on blast first, and represented the apex of the youth’s oeuvre. a grand, sprawling epic, daydream nation took the band’s atonal groundings and merged them with star-spangled psychedelia and full-on grooves – the perfect culmination of a trio of albums that includes evol and sister.

my bloody valentine’s isn’t anything came out on creation. what a debut, and what a departure from their earlier garage/gothy sound. loveless, the next album, is the one that gets all the attention – and understandably so, given that it pushed rock about as far as it can go (surely no one has surpassed it). but isn’t anything is also beautiful – sometime punishingly so, as in the case of “feed me with your kiss” and “sueisfine,” and sometimes devastatingly so, as in the case of “soft as snow (but warm inside)” and ”no more sorry.” i reckon that isn’t anything stands just as mightily alongside loveless.

and then there was public enemy’s it takes a nation of millions to hold us back, released on def jam. what to say? one of the greatest titles ever and one of the greatest albums ever, a torrent of organized chaos infused by flavor flav’s psychosis (a legacy later borne by ol’ dirty bastard), chuck d’s crushing baritone and the machine genius of the bomb squad. when this came out, it sounded like alien funk – and it still does. 

5 - acid house

i remember reading in spin mag, in the later ’80s, about this sound called acid house. it had roots in chicago, and then got massively fucked up by brits on drugs (er, ecstacy). anyways, the article featured a photo that’s pasted itself permanently onto my brain cells – this sweaty bloke, completely out of it and wearing a t-shirt featuring the album cover of the the’s soul mining. everything around him is dark and blurred, he’s smiling like a loon and dancing like a madman. i was instantly hooked on a revolution that made punk seem, well, rather pedestrian.

6 - joy division – closer 

the second and final album from one of the all-time greats. a stark and sometimes terrifying record, closer is joy division’s grand closing statement, and ian curtis is otherworldly – about to step into the next realm. amazing how a bunch of kids in their early 20s could produce such an overpowering, eternal sound. what a cover, what an album, what a band.

7 - melody maker

in the late ’80s, melody maker rose to the challenge that had been set by the NME of paul morley and ian penman. it featured an amazing stable of writers – david stubbs, the stud brothers, chris roberts, jonh wilde and simon reynolds, who influenced me enormously. and it featured music writing that didn’t shy from theory – the big thoughts about why this matters and what it means. and why oblivion = release, etc. think mbv, loop, spacemen 3, acid house, techno, sonic youth, hip hop, extreme metal. and it also had a great sense of humour, championed by the peerless mr. disagreeable. i was a lucky lad – i was working in the audio-visual department in edmonton’s main library, which subscribed to melody maker and so enabled me to devour every issue during its golden years and get turned on to so much great music. thank you, edmonton public library system!

8 - the grand triumvirate: the smiths, the cure, new order

what review of the ’80s could possibly leave aside this hallowed trio? i loved hip hop and hardcore, but i was also anglo-obsessed, and these three helped soothe the cravings. the melancholy of the smiths, the day-glo darkness of the cure, the machine funk of new order. i wonder how ian curtis would have danced to “blue monday.”

and some more reasons why the ’80s don’t suck: a thousand plateaus, the fall, the birthday party, nick cave and the bad seeds, einstuerzende neubauten, metal (slayer’s reign in blood, south of heaven, metallica’s ride the lightning, master of puppets) neuromancer, blade runner, alien, predator and terminator.

plus, i always kinda liked miami vice.

now add your own justifications. or belittle me mercilessly.

What made me think of the cure again was a recent pitchfork review of the reissue of 1989’s disintegration.

A 10? Really? Y’know, at the time, I loved the album, and still do. However, it ain’t perfection.

But the cure damn near reached it with an outstanding trio of albums, the ‘80s answer to bowie’s brilliant ‘70s comedown triumvirate of low, lodger and heroes, formed in the shadow of cold war berlin.

So I worked my way backwards. started with the head on the door, got sucked in, and then began discovering the earlier output.

There are hints of what’s to come on the cure’s first album, boys don’t cry (released as three imaginary boys in the UK). “Killing an Arab,” which remains one of the cure’s signature tunes, gave a nod to the outsider, albert camus’s existentialist touchstone. But the brittle pop-punk sound doesn’t really presage the claustrophopia looming on the horizon.

Up next is seventeen seconds, the first of the cure’s great trio, released in 1980. The sparse sound of boys don’t cry remains, but something else starts to seep in, a sound of confusion, a hint of dread. And they’re branching out – there’s a reverbed, gauzy effect that takes hold on seventeen seconds, a cloak that’s slowly lowering.

“I’m running towards nothing, again and again and again and again…”

Then there are the words. The line above may seem a clichéd bit of angst that would sound just as home on some emo disc. And it would. But there’s another side to them too…a glimpse of the random absurdity of existence (again, camus) and the notion of an endless, nameless return (nietzsche). to an anxious teen in Edmonton, Alberta, attending a private religious school, I suppose the lyrics tapped into some gloriously pleasurable darkness that I didn’t really have many ways to access.

Around this time I also started going to hardcore shows. And, well, I absolutely loved them. They offered a wild blast of mayhem and volume and a world I didn’t know but really wanted to. But hardcore also offered a pretty black-and-white stance, and sometimes I wanted grey.

Then I heard faith. And I got sucked in further.

The cover echoes the sound – a monochrome, blurry montage that feels like crawling through fog. Faith is austere, meditative and cold. It’s the sound of alone.

“in caves all cats are grey…”

“Primary” is the pop song, dark velvety funk. Listening to it again perfectly evokes an ‘80s sense of hip ennui (faith was released in 1981), yet if Interpol came out with it today, it would sound right. It’s dated, and it isn’t.

Faith is also a comedown album to match Bowie’s low. Grey is the perfect colour for the sleeve…it’s an interzone, strange and compelling, disconcerting yet comforting.

Any vestige of comfort was obliterated by pornography, released the following year. It boasts one of the best record sleeves ever – the figures of simon gallup, lol tolhurst and robert smith violently blurred beyond recognition, just a smear of malevolence bathed in overpowering blood red. It’s a mushroom trip gone horribly, vividly wrong. and make no mistake, this is a bad-trip album – and so it’s not too surprising, then, that stories abound about the cure descending into their own drugged-out dead ends whilst making pornography. Rarely has a cover been so indicative of the content.

And the title. perfect. A single word, dirty, filthy, illicit, an apt cipher of the sounds lurking in the grooves.

“it doesn’t matter if we all die…”

The first line of the first song on the first side pretty much sums it up. Again, just reading it, it comes across as impossibly trite, almost comic. But it’s backed up by a swirling maelstrom that makes the words hit so much harder and deeper. Pornography, after all, is the cure’s black masterpiece. it doesn’t matter if we all die, and smith means it.

the sound is HUGE on pornography, a precursor to the white light-heat-noise effect that was a signature of some of those lumped into the shoegaze scene – most notably my bloody valentine (there’s an aesthetic echo between the sleeves of pornography and mbv’s loveless), but also ride.

Smith had been bleak before, but on pornography he’s brutal. His voice has never sounded so twisted, wretched – sometimes howling, other times not so much bored by existence as hollowed out by it.

“is it always like this?” (again, nietszche’s eternal return…)

The final two tracks are stunning, in both senses of the word. “cold” is overpowering, a machine death dirge paired with frozen synths and a gorgeous, glowing guitar motif that engulfs everything. “your name like ice, into my heart.”

“pornography” is the end game, the final plunge into the abyss. It begins with the absurd, the insane – backward tape loops that haunt the edges of the entire track and then re-emerge as the final fucked-up farewell. The guitar is serrated, ugly, backed by tribal beats and a punishing drone arpeggio. Smith is angry and broken and desperate: “Another day like today and I’ll kill you…”

The rage ebbs, ambient noise engulfed by machine babble. madness.

“I must fight this sickness…find a cure…”

And well, the cure did find a cure. Or they found some sort of different direction. They decided to come up for some air and a bit of sunshine – or, at least, a moderately overcast climate. They had to, really – had the cure continued their current demonic descent (when does one really hit rock bottom?) they could have well beaten venom to the black metal punch.

The top, the next album, entered newish territory, still weird and dark…and yet lighter and, well, poppier (“caterpillar girl”). This pattern was perfected with the head on the door, followed by the sprawling psychedelia that defined the gorgeous double album kiss me kiss me kiss me.

And so, the circle works it way forward to disintegration – another gloom masterpiece. Yet here, smith is older, and he sounds, well, resigned – not fucking terrifying, like he does on pornography.

I’ve pretty much lost touch with the cure…the latest album I have is wish, which came out eons ago. Perhaps I should check out their newer offerings. I’ve a feeling that I’ll be disappointed though – not necessarily because of the music (although that might be the case), but simply because I don’t think they could hit me at this point in the same way that they did those many years ago.

But this isn’t just about nostalgia. I hadn’t dug out and listened to the cure’s defining trilogy in ages. Now, re-listening, those records remain utterly captivating, a great gloomy troika, lyrics emanating from my mouth that I hadn’t uttered in ages, like I’m speaking in tongues. Possessed, still.