John Maus

I love this album. Really, really creepy. "My Whole World is Coming Apart" is great.

I kind of wish "Rights for Gays" wasn't on it even though it's one of the catchier songs and I'm sure he's sincere. It plays a little too much like a novelty song I think. But the rest of it is really excellent.

There's some other element besides Joy Divis./N.O. but I can't really put my finger on it... it's almost Italo-y in some parts I guess, but I don't think that's it.

I want to say there's a dash of Arthur Russell here and there, but pretty much everything these days is said to have a dash of Arthur Russell in it...

a few more comments here

I love the whole album, but "Do Your Best" is the one.

thx, and shame on me for not searching...

Right, who's up tomorrow in the "not that one" artist list? Yesterday was f/5ive...

this guy!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61GH2KN4C9L._AA240_.jpg

Listening now and I love what I'm hearing. Yeah, its pretty fucked in a good way. Haunting vocals, 80's art damaged keyboards, like taking a bunch of downers and trying to make a skewed version of what you remembered late-night movie soundtracks sounded like. I agree "Best" is the one.

Haha. I found that Bobby Brown record in a dollar bin !

Yeah, "Rights for Gays" is awesome but when John Maus sings it sounds like a Ween song that you and your long lost friend have an inside joke with.

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.

trying to cover all his bases if he needed a pardon in the future?

lol imagine being john maus and donating your actual money to donald trump, lol i cant even with this guy

"JOHN M., we need your help! Donate now and claim your FREE GIFT!" lolol what a fucking moron

i bet he thought he was playing 5D chess donating to bernie & yang on some rush limbaugh Operation Chaos shit

From what I saw the trajectory of the donations was early 2020: Bernie & Yang; late 2020: Winred. This is reminiscent of an anything-but-Hilary bro type I encountered in grad school (though I dunno if he would have joined the Yang gang).

i want to say, "wtf?? This guy seemed too smart for this garbage behavior/ideology" ... however I know a guy who graduated from Harvard and was also a smart guy that has somehow expatriated to stupid QAnon talking points, so ... I sense a pattern. Also Maus' donation pattern is definitely that of a white dude.

idk donating to all three is a little strange and I don't think I've ever met anyone who would do this

like I can definitely think of a couple Types Of Guys who would do this for a couple different reasons but I've never actually encountered any in the wild

i realize his responses to this were insufficient (he quoted some part of the Bible? lol) but i kinda feel bad for the backlash he’s getting which should really be directed 100% to abuser and trump supporter ariel pink. maybe im naive but i buy that he was attending out of sociological curiosity, i feel like the presence of the tfw no gf documentarian is corroborative

i was reading his statements about the alt right cartoon show, where he doesnt defend it but also resists giving the kind of pro forma denunciation that’s necessary. he’s just like “from the clips i saw i thought it was hyper violence like superjail and the animators seemed nice.” i get why that’s not enough for some, but it’s not like he says “no this show is actually good” it’s more pleading ignorance

i get that some people thought it was cool that he was a dark radical philosophy prof and connected with what they imagined to be his politics and are letdown. 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. that part of vhs idiot Jon Maus was always lame to me, so i don’t feel letdown and feel no anguish blasting ‘cop killer’

maus donated to winred? Jesus...

don't worry flopson i know that ariel pink is a worse person than john maus

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. Maus donated 4-figure sums to getting trump reelected, attended the protest, then got busted trying to cover his ass about it, saying 'ariel went down there to meet with someone about a project and i tagged along', and then pink saying 'hell yeah i went there to go to support donald j trump'. at what point does engaging with trump support in a detached anthropological way become actual trump support?

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