John Maus

saw him last nite. the man is psychotic. he makes music for lonely folks. only for the faint of heart.

i love the music, but the vocals sounds like if the big horned tim curry demon from legend had his own bedroom pop project

Really loving this lately.

just wanted to bump this thread to say that love is real is one of my absolute faves of 2007/8 and it's sad it'll never get any poll luvv.

the vocals sounds like if the big horned tim curry demon from legend had his own bedroom pop project

how could you not want to check it out after reading that though?

I never really liked this dude but today this album was playing when I woke up from a nap and it all clicked and now I think this guy is incredible

Sex with god/sex on top of god

don't know anything but love is real, but prefer that to most ariel pink

"my whole world is coming apart" for all time

Sex in car/Sex with Ringo Starr...genius...

would love some new stuff from him

bow bow bow bow bowww

No love for "Quantum Leap"? The squiggly synth freakout about two minutes in, the awful/brilliant lyrics that really are about the TV show, anything?

http://www.ribbonmusic.com/label/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/WeMustBecomeThePitilessweb1.jpg

My second most anticipated album of the year just behind Gang Gang Dance, I think...

Didn't know a new song was out
I was thinking yesterday about how John Maus was probably my favourite musician living in Hawaii
I have no idea why I ever thought he was living there

i thought he lived there too. don't know where i got that tho

Maus lectures political philosophy at the University in Manoa.

Didn't know new work was on the way, excited!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMku-GbafEg

like.

also like

love his sound, though the songs are sometimes only halfway there

Sounds a bit like Shocking Pinks. That start bit I mean.

This has leaked, and it is glorious.

He expanded his sound so much on the new record. I stayed away from all the songs that were floating around the web already in live/demo versions, so it's all fresh to my ears. It's way less dense and galling a sound than the previous album. There's more room for fizzy frivolities, both synth and vocal wise. There's colorful backing vocals, This is still John Maus, mind, there's no 'wall of sound' all of a sudden, but there's so much more space in the sound. I can't describe it any other way. He's broadened his audio-scope for sure.

'Hey Moon' immediately stands out as an alternate-universe lullaby/love-song classic, warm glowing piano sounds tickled by metallic lo-fi beats he's got a patent on, a high pitched synth line swirling through the song coyly. And there's so much going on on this record, so much to discover and drop your jaw at. Wow.

'Matter of Fact' and 'Believer' instant faves too. Esp the latter, which chorus really reminds me of an eighties hit, but I can't for the life of me figure out which one.

Maybe it's just 10,000th 80s choruses

Can't wait to listen!

Yeah, good album. Interviewing the guy tomorrow, anyone want me to ask him anything?

Really enjoying the new album, as I said above.

Ned, I don't so much have a direct question, but I do wonder about his recording process. I believe he's still a philosophy professor, no? Does he pick a period to retreat in a home studio and write and record the album, or is it something that comes together over a long period of time, when he's got some spare time?
Not a real question but I'd be interested to learn more about this.

Could be fun! I'll ask and see.

Fun interview! Dude talks mile a minute but I like it!

PUSSY IS NOT A MATTER OF FACT

the last show I saw of his, his performance was pretty eclipsed by geneva jacuzzi's

funny that geneva jacuzzi hasn't really blown up yet in any way I know of and the last show I went to, one of the acts was a clone of hers

xp Was she wearing mime makeup?

The forthcoming tour will allow for compare/contrast again there -- he was also talking about how he's looking forward to playing with Puro again, loved them at the SXSW shows they did.

yeah her face was all made up

Did you get to discuss the recording process, his working ways? And if you don't mind me asking, for which publication are you writing this interview?

Great record, kicking myself for not seeing him live when he played round here 6 months back.

just want to say that jacuzzi is a must see live imo

saw her years ago and she was rolling on the floor screaming in sparkly clothes while a bunch of strobe lights went off and now she has like a whole fuckin stage performance, like she is a real live performer

But she's just a cdr performer. I would've been happy to see her when she came to town a couple weeks ago, but they doubled the ticket price from $10 to $20 ($7 for preorders).

Also, it was dance music and nobody was dancing. Trite complaint, I know, but I felt a little like dancing at the time.

man I didn't even mention the prerecorded aspect of it because I've just seen so many performances like that and was so happy to see one that was good

but yeah you made the right call $20 is way too expensive for her

Did you get to discuss the recording process, his working ways? And if you don't mind me asking, for which publication are you writing this interview?

I did, and you'll find out more when the piece runs next week in the OC Weekly. :-D (In brief, it's very much an on the fly thing.)

Maus/Puro playing in LA when I'm in town, I think the Echo.

Great Ned! :-) Looking forward to it!

Yeah, that lineup's playing earlier that week in Costa Mesa (thus the story).

Meanwhile, interview up at the Quietus:

http://thequietus.com/articles/06499-john-maus-interview

Yeah, good album. Interviewing the guy tomorrow, anyone want me to ask him anything?

man do i regret not reading this thread last week! i didnt have the record until this wknd tho...

This is a great record, I want to write more but my thoughts are mostly about "degradation" plug-ins, mastering to VHS, "Is this chillwave and what does liking it say about a man" etc.

"Is this chillwave and what does liking it say about a man"

hope it says good things!

yeah this is the sorta record that tempts you into writing/saying a bunch of grandiose garbage about it, mb? it also feels like the sorta thing that i might be embarrassed about liking cuz its so pseud-friendly

my thoughts are mostly like: '...'

I'm kind of worried about attending to it in too much depth.

Would love to see him live.. there's a great YT of him doing 'Matter Of Fact' in Paris, he looks like he gets into it.

Absolutely not making any grand theoretical statements about it, but... it is undeniable that it is a fucking great record.

simplest explanation just seems like he supports trump but is afraid of the financial/career consequences of being publicly identified with it, not exactly the first person to get caught in that quandary

There are radical leftists, especially Marxists, who supported Trump out of a Hegelian desire to heighten the contradictions of our society. Some of these people are appalled at the idea that this is accelerationism, which is too crude in their view. I feel that John Maus, with his talk of the truth content of his work lying in negation and other sort of Adornian themes or whatever, is likely one of these guys. And in the words of Jeff Tweedy, liberal sentimentalist, “no it’s not OK.”

i have some friends who are in humanities and do the edgy pseudo profundity thing where you flirt with dark ideas and go on evil parts of the internet in this anthropological way and then smoke cigarettes and talk about Bataille, and they all think of themselves as radical leftists but also have some truly idiotic and reactionary opinions (mostly around race/gender) that would get them cancelled if they were public figures.

yeah, i think that's how it started with this Harvard guy ... and I definitely have other friends (who are also friends of this guy) who are similar but not quite as "far gone" ... and I haven't quite gotten to the point where I unfriend them, possibly out of my own anthropological curiosity about them ... but a number of other friends have done this, at least one of whom had been friends with these guys for 20 years. One of these dudes did get kinda called out and his band broke up sorta as a result of it, though not because he got called out, because at least one of the other band members was sick of the gross bullshit that included racism.

basically the Gen X hipster bros are dividing into factions: the ones that are actually kinda stupid and sexist / racist / transphobic and the ones that aren't.

Someone posted a photo of a Vietnamese restaurant that was still flying the Pete 2020 flag months after he was done and then cut to the owner of said restaurant at the Capitol riot. Lots of people seem to have caught the brainworms after August.

His wife donated a bunch to WINRED fwiw

John Maus's wife? Didn't he get divorced in 2019? I recall seeing him perform and literally two weeks prior he confessed to his wife leaving him in an AMA on Reddit

its weird to me that ppl are so invested in a framing of this that casts ariel pink as a charismatic villain and maus as a Good Guy Who Got In Over His Head.

i don't think that's really how i'd frame either of them. ariel has never been charismatic and maus is at best an unsympathetic idiot, just not a malicious bigot like pink. i largely agree with flopson. maus has always professed to be left-wing but the substance of that has always been abstract enough that i'm sure he can believe he is left-wing while having strange positions (like going sanders -> yang -> trump) that reinforce my view of him as an "unsympathetic idiot", and it's not like 'having good politics' was ever much part of his image.

rights for gays -- oh yeah

"On FEC you'll see John Maus donated to Yang and Sanders when he was living in Austin, MN. It appears he then reconciled with his ex-wife and moved to Arcadia, CA, after which donations made a hard right turn. The merch store he set up with Ariel Pink might have been used for sen pic.twitter.com/rSRX7NBPkp

— Nick Newman (@Nick_Newman) January 12, 2021

lol Arcadia

Yikes... well fuck.

SMH at people trying to defend this fuckface:
“John is, by the way, 1001% on Team Trump now.”

https://variety.com/2021/music/news/ariel-pink-dropped-label-mexican-summer-trump-support-1234881742

sarahell - what's the deal with Arcadia? never been, don't know much about it, a friend of mine from high school lives there, looks beautiful in Facebook pictures

SMH at people trying to defend this fuckface:
“John is, by the way, 1001% on Team Trump now.”

personally I would not take known shit-stirrer Ariel Pink's words at face value

here are his political donations since September.

$500 to Trump and $1000 to Winred

it's not a question it's a fact

https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/?committee_id=C00580100&committee_id=C00694323&contributor_name=John+Maus&contributor_city=Arcadia&two_year_transaction_period=2020&min_date=01%2F01%2F2019&max_date=12%2F31%2F2020

That's putting your money where your mouth is for sure. Given the above observation that his donating habits changed post-reconciliation with his wife and with his move to LA, I wonder if that played a part.

In any case, this all just makes me sad.

He's a dead maus to me now

fwiw i didn’t realize he’d donated to DT4PREZ and winred when i wrote my post above, obviously that’s beyond the pale

He's a dead maus to me now

― kieth chagrin (NickB), Saturday, January 16, 2021 4:20 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

vector control has been called

please tell me Gary War doesn't suck too

So where does donating to Winred sit on the cancellation scale in comparison to rape, sexual assault and openly sexist verbal abuse (thinking in relation to say Mark Kozelek, Derrick May, and Michael Gira) or marrying an anti-labor billionaire who relishes in toppling governments to retain supplies of lithium (thinking Grimes)?

There's no Cancellation Bureau, you can make your own decision (or: Instances where you can't separate the art from the artist. vs. instances where you can.)

"basically the Gen X hipster bros are dividing into factions: the ones that are actually kinda stupid and sexist / racist / transphobic and the ones that aren't."

I suppose it's inevitable that our generation would go through this same thing, we saw it happen to our parents.

"I learned it from watching you!"

lol all those ppl suck too

xxp - I think our parents' generation went through it earlier on? This is like the hippies that became yuppies after getting older and making $$$, minus the making $$$ part, because some of these dudes still live in the same rent controlled apartments.

some people graduate but be still stupid

xp It’s hard to say because Bush won every age group (including the youngest voters) in ‘88, and the same with Regan (by a much wider margin) in ‘84. Anecdotally, the former-hippie Boomers I know who became Republicans didn’t do so until the early ‘90s, when they were in their early ’40s, and earning $$ wasn’t the driving factor (as that had already happened) as much as other cultural factors.

(Also keep in mind that white voters in every age group voted for Trump in both ‘16 and ‘20—it’s not like it’s some anomaly—but I don’t know how to account specifically for supposed non-Trumpers who went Trump only recently.)

(White millennials seem to have turned out even harder for Trump this year than last time; though CNN shifted their exit-poll age group brackets, so it’s not apples to apples.)

fun situation brewing in the vaporwave community thanks to this guy, apparently George Clanton invited him to headline Electronicon 4, which caused a big stir due to him being at J6 and donating a ton of money to Trump and just being an idiot in general, to the point where George uninvited him, which is now causing all these people to whine about safe spaces and cancel culture and what not, it's just a big dumb mess that could've easily been avoided

George deserves the benefit of the doubt on this imo and he ultimately did the right thing, but the dude can be tone deaf sometimes

Guess he found god or something:

“The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time a claim is made to realize, within history, that messianic hope which can only be fulfilled beyond history through the eschatological judgment.”

(This in the PR for his new single "I Hate Antichrist.")

So when he says "scatological judgement" is he referring to shite or that "bip bip boo mmm mama lama wikk wee hoo" type of singing?

Checks out, really; he put a cathedral on the cover of his first CD-R and then used the same image for his last release.