Sasha Frere-Jones: Really?????

"Akita’s tools are usually electronic, sometimes just a laptop, and he has produced some of the harshest and most punishing music around. (His long-standing interest in physically demanding forms of sexuality, like bondage, is probably related.)"

Probably.

Other forms:

Sprinting Reacharound
Tit Wrestling
Steeplechase
The Jerk-and-Lift

Don't really get what's wrong with that bit you quoted

It's dumb. It's drive-by, intended to do nothing more than make the reader cock an eyebrow. "Bondage, you say?" If he thought it was important he'd have mentioned early releases that featured bondage photos in the art, the fact that Merzbow actually put out a CD called Music for Bondage Performance, and then maybe talked about how why and when he moved away from that into his current nature-fixated area.

word

Would sacrifice my NYer subscription for one more Dan album with a song on it called 'concealed tattoo'.

like he might've been one of the only big critics at one point writing well about why Timbaland is important, but he seems to rewrite the same 'why Timbaland is important' article every couple years

agreed

I still like reading him most times though. the noise piece is pretty good except for the goofy lede paragraph about the post-it note

I read that lede as his way of saying 'hi ILX, I know this seems 4 years late to you but this is the NYer'

haha I guess so

seems a little bit beneath a big critic to attempt to play that card

Are post-it notes really still sticky after four years? If so that's kind of incredible stickiness technology at work.

I kind of wish Malcolm Gladwell would do a connect-the-dots piece on Merzbow rather than SFJ. I think he did one on people who make chart-topping hits according to some dubious mathematics that was pretty interesting.

Gladwell would have taken the article more in the sticky-note direction.

whenever i see sasha's name i start singing "sasha frere jones! sasha frere jones!" to the tune of basketball jones. every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIbp5C-5WXM

in my head though. not out loud.

lol

unless dj rupture played them

do you actually dislike dj rupture's mixes or just the people who rep for them because if the latter then wtf, dude is solid

I believe there was a positive reaction to his arrival at the New Yorker because, um, he was replacing Nick Hornby. As for K., he's at the New Yorker, too, right? But all I can remember reading is his gay gospel piece and the (toothlessly fair) profile of ... Savage, right?

Anyway, that LCD piece read like it was written several months months ago.

somewhat off/on-topic, Alec Wilkinson's the Los Tigres article this week is really good.

Los Tigres Del Norte?!?

abstract: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/05/24/100524fa_fact_wilkinson

that's kinda cool. I can't think of a music that is more widely reviled/ignored/dismissed by white music fans. which is weird considering that its musical roots (polka) is like the whitest shit in the world. but polkas aren't cool anymore, much less polkas sung in a language that they don't understand, and blasted at top volume out of Mexicans' cars. I find it kinda fascinating, if impenetrable (since I don't speak spanish)

But all I can remember reading is his gay gospel piece and the (toothlessly fair) profile of ... Savage, right?

Also profiled Jeremiah Wright, reviewed a slate of books about the history of whiteness in America, probably a couple other things I don't recall.

do you actually dislike dj rupture's mixes or just the people who rep for them because if the latter then wtf, dude is solid

― in which we apologize for sobering up (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved), Thursday, May 20, 2010 5:02 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i disliked his set when i saw him live. so did the grrls i was with -- i was kind of embarrassed to have recommended it tbh

peaking the set w/ dubstep U_U

shakey, wish the whole thing was online. check the story out at border's or something. he briefly describes the roots (which i'd always wondered about) and some of the...i dunno, reasoning behind the song structures. the descriptions of concert attendees dramatically acting out and singing each line is really wild. What band could play in front of 67,000 people at the Astrodome that I'd never heard before? Wild.

As for K., he's at the New Yorker, too, right? But all I can remember reading is his gay gospel piece and the (toothlessly fair) profile of ... Savage, right?

his first one for the NYer was a profile of the preacher Creflo Dollar I think

x-post

Based On SFJ's Arcade Fire/miscenegation thing, and the hip hop is dead thing, I though SFJ was gonna be highlighting all kinds of interesting worldwide beat-based sounds, but yeah, all he does in this vein is pick up on a few things (mainly UK-based) pushed by DJ Rupture

ha deej ok but his mixes are great

unclear as to why US dudes are so weird & dismissive about dubstep, which is interesting & fun music, but I also understand that the trenches have already been dug on that q & it's too late to say "listen with an open mind maybe?"

most us dudes have been obsessed w/ dubstep -- its totally replaced idm as the thinking man's dance music

us = US not 'us' = me

i didn't fuck with dubstep stuff until purple/wonky cuz they sound more or less like rap beats, but not vinyl digging dilla type ish which i find kind of boring

i've never really tried to love dubstep. i'll get around to it. spritually i might be more aligned with u.k. funky. the dubstep i get in the mail is, like, industrial avant garde dubstep. i wouldn't even know to call it dubstep if i didn't read the descriptions of it. its all clanking of chains and doomy and shit. haven't heard anything GREAT out of that stuff yet, but i'm all for beats & doom.

The dubstep I've heard (and I listened to a whole bunch, not just Burial but several multi-disc compilations and other things, because fuckers kept raving about it) a) reminded me of stuff I'd heard on WordSound Records years earlier, but not as good, and b) seemed to be made by people with a lot of "black people = scary/appropriation of black culture = fast track to badassness" shit going on, to the point that I found all the rhetoric about "darkness" kinda bothersome. Plus it was boring. Like, more boring than minimal techno.

I also downloaded a whole bunch of DJ mixes from Barefiles, in addition to the aforementioned albums and compilations. I really did give it a try.

If only the 'dubstep community' had the same nuanced approach to racial politics as the "Tom Tom Club with a tan" guy

most us dudes have been obsessed w/ dubstep -- its totally replaced idm as the thinking man's dance music

― its like why GROCERY BAG and not saddam? (deej), Friday, May 21, 2010 10:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

weird, dubstep is the go-to music for unwashed hordes of ravers and frat boys here, at least among people my age. iirc the problem with a lot of dubstep was like, there was this sub-scene of innovative beautiful interesting artists who are (now) somewhat hesitant to identify as dubstep, with an ever-increasing and now ubiquitous scene of music for drunk frat dudes to rub crotches to (bass drops, wobbles etc). uk funky is amazing, but isn't really catching on sadly.

Where is dubstep the soundtrack to drunken frat parties???

i live in montreal

my friend who's into dubstep calls it "brostep" though \(o_O)/

This reminds me of how little I know about my neighbor to the north.

There are frats in Montreal?

they must freeze their asses off in those togas.

liberte, egalite, fraternities

Heh, in Ottawa 10 years ago, I mostly seem to remember jockish guys listening to Limp Bizkit or Korn or 311. That's actually kind of awesome if that scene has moved on to stuff like Burial or Shackleton.

haa when gr80 was djing @ the party i had a few weeks ago he told me how earlier in the night one of my friends came up & asked him if he was going to play any dubstep.

Gr80's like "Not really..."
my friend gives gr80 a hi five & goes "MY MAN!!"

sorry if thats fratty

There are frats in Montreal?

― Sundar, Saturday, May 22, 2010 3:11 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

there are, but i'm conflating frats and mcgill residence tbh *blushes*

and i don't think they're into burial, i don't know what producers make this kind of dubstep, like maybe recent benga?

Hahaha 80% of the dubstep crowds at the all-ages events of last year's Decibel Festival in Seattle were hippies. I men, of course: that's who listens to dub in the U.S.

I mean, of course

And granted that's a west coast thing too, obv. That's where hippies flock. I wonder if/how it shakes out in Colorado and large college towns.