John Maus

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.

It is a great record! Also thx this record for alerting me to the existence of Molly Nilsson, since "Hey Moon" was the track to leap out at me on the first few listens.

That is the first one that jumped out at me, as well.
Molly Nilsson, eh? Any relation?

The grand theoretical statements about this record are wildly offputting.

Probably so (ditto Ford & Lopatin), but the record IS pretty great. As is, of course, the Ford & Lopatin thing.

Hooray my interview. (Euclidean thoughts? Not my headline!)

Nice piece, Ned! And you indeed get him to talk about what he sees as the "artist's process", the unveiling of artistic work.

It does read as if you could've written an article four times as long!

Hahah I could well have done. But wordcounts are wordcounts!

That's not a bad headline! I thought it was gonna be "The Maus That Floored...Me" or something like that.

Every interview I read with that guy he's so Tragic and Heavy I LOVE IT

He actually sounded pretty exuberant! If intense.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/click-track/post/in-concert-john-maus-at-black-cat/2011/07/06/gIQAInK50H_blog.html

Washington Post writer hates the live show
an excerpt:

A number of questions run through your mind during a John Maus concert.

What's he saying? Is he being serious? Is he okay? Isn't this a Kajagoogoo song? Who told that kid dancing up front that was an acceptable haircut?

But one question comes up more than any other — what's the point?

When Maus performs, as he did Tuesday at the Black Cat's backstage, it's like '80s karaoke night minus the hits — plus a hint of crazy. For 25 minutes the 31-year-old electronic music composer stalked the stage, leaped into the air, pulled his hair and howled along to his pre-recorded music that sounded like the third generation audio cassette dub of a long-forgotten new wave band. The way he shouted, flexed and bulged his eyes you half expected his skin to turn green and for him to transform into The Incredible Maus.

Sounds like a review of mid-2000s Ariel Pink

All week I've been planning on picking this up after wory today, but now that BNM is going to mean it'll be sold out if they didn't order enough copies. Thats really my only beef with Pitchfork.

I've been a little lukewarm on his stuff prior to this album, but "Cop Killer" and all the iTunes samples I've heard make this sound like pretty much the perfect fit for my ears in 2011.

I've never seen him live, but the pics at that Washington Post link are pretty hilarious.

(to be fair, there are tons of bands I love where live pics of them wouldn't do any justice to how intense the shows can actually be)

Hmm. Do people really have a problem with "Rights For Gays"? I'm surprised that people would write it off as a piss-take.

John's live show reminds me of the live shows of other people I know who also went to CalArts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLpadyo9cFw

When I saw him last, his laptop was screwing up with the playback and he shook it and pounded it, in character, 'til it fixed itself. I love this guy.

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.